Please change my mind : trans

"Assigned you can disagree with me but my experience and opinions are just as valid as yours."

This is problem right there ^. Experience and opinions are not facts Daim. The facts are more valid than your opinions. Boys are not girls. That's a fact. And objective, scientific, observable fact. Stop being so fucking stupid.

Being gay, I empathise because I could feasibly have lived my life without having a relationship with a woman but it wouldn't have been a happy or fulfilling life. There are still many Christians that would fight against my right to marry as they feel it undermines their religion.

From what I understand, trans people can feasibly live their life as the sex they were assigned at birth but it would not be a happy or fulfilling life. And GC people will fight to stop them legally changing sex.

Both being gay and being trans means having a strong sense of self identity that is hard to articulate but is very real for the person living it. I don't understand being trans at all but I appreciate humans have different experiences and I would like to live in a world where this is acknowledged and respected.

The existing Equality Act has relevant exemptions to protect women so i don't feel trans women pose any significant threat to us.

We need a big basic biology education program in this country. One that is not connected with Mermaids.

(extracts)
"Schools are supporting increasing numbers of transgender students, using a variety of guidance from the teaching unions and charities such as Mermaids (which has a grant of £35,000 from the Department for Education to deliver training to 35 schools)."
“There needs to be clear statutory guidance for schools that incorporates the views of experts from education, the medical profession, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and trans people,” she says. “Rows about a vulnerable and marginalised group in education are not helpful.”

"The EHRC is planning to issue guidance of its own next month, something Birkenshaw welcomes. “Schools want to support the transgender young person, but at the same time they’ll be reflecting on how other children may feel, on how staff are going to feel and parents.”

www.theguardian.com/education/2018/may/15/transgender-row-teachers-afraid-challenge-breast-binding

Rebecca Reilly-Cooper tweet:

twitter.com/boodleoops/status/1001751836100055040

embedded link in tweet: gendertrender.wordpress.com/tag/afab-transwomen/

I feel very very sorry for the children caught up in this. In the instance Daim gave it sounds as if she was genuinely suffering from disphoria. Personally I would have no objection to have her in my space, but then I am not vaunerable.

The trouble with enshrining this in law is that it becomes open to all. You can't say yes to that little girl and no to AGP unless there is a way to differentiate. For now that is the GRC, although it is no longer working as people are increasingly afraid to challenge it. There needs to be something people carry that shows their sex (or gender they have legally changed it). And it needs to be routinely checked for everyone, not just those you suspect is not the sex they are presenting as. I don't really want to suggest ID cards though.

The other reason I really feel sorry for the children is the way they are being lied to. I don't know if the attached tweet is genuine but I've seen enough similar things to suspect it is. These children are being lied to about reality and about what is possible. It's not surprising they are angry - they think we are lying when we say things aren't possible. When they say we are denying their existence some at least really do believe it - as far as they are concerned they really do have female brains and male bodies. Us saying that isn't possible sounds to them as if we are saying they lie when they are speaking the truth. I would imagine we can all remember something where we weren't believed as children and how we hurt.

We need a big basic biology education program in this country. One that is not connected with Mermaids.

The question is also not about beliefs. It’s about classes. Beliefs are protected in a different way to sex, sexuality, race etc because beliefs are different.

I also had a Christian upbringing where I was told it was okay to be gay, just not to have a gay relationship or formalise it by getting married

It wasn’t OK to be gay though was it? If your religion had thought it was fine to be gay they’d have been fine with gay marriage, gay everything. They weren’t, and ‘hate the sin love the sinner’ isn’t acceptance. It’s still control and hatred.

There are excellent reasons why homosexuals should be allowed to marry and have relationships. Homosexual people were fighting to have homosexuality recognised as equal not to have homosexuality recognised as heterosexual.

Gender identity is not a sexuality.

Relevant article:
(extract)
"Thus, the association of pink with girls is itself cultural; devoid of culture, pink has no meaning with respect to the preferences of children, or even adults, of either sex. Notably in the stories for young transgender females, many include a rejection of pink, dresses and princesses, the diametric opposite of the stories from transgender males."
mirandayardley.com/en/common-threads-and-narratives-of-transgender-children-and-what-this-means-for-our-lesbian-and-gay-populations/

Assigned you can disagree with me but my experience and opinions are just as valid as yours. I am all for girls playing with Lego and boys playing with dolls but in my RL experience with my friend this was completely different. She was a girl.

I also had a Christian upbringing where I was told it was okay to be gay, just not to have a gay relationship or formalise it by getting married. I think this is why I empathise with trans people, they are 'allowed' to identify as the opposite sex but there is strong resistance to them having this formalised.

I am including sexuality in sex based protections there BTW.

No daim... as you really should know by now, there is a ‘perception’ that it is the small number of misogynistic, homophobic aggressive activists who are speaking for all trans people and who have gained the ear of law makers and service providers and that what they are lobbying for will undermine sex based protections and rights for transsexuals.

She always used the girls toilets at school, played skipping with us, practised doing our hair in French plaits. It's hard to describe but her very essence and soul just felt female.

I played with lego, Meccano, chemistry sets, dinosaurs, and wanted a telescope. I hated dolls, I hated pink. I loved maths.

Was I boy? Or can girls just, you know, like what they like?

Can’t you see how awful it is to say annoy likes skipping and plaiting hair so he must be a girl? Why can’t he be a boy? My friends’ boy was wearing an Elsa dress and skipping round with a wand last time we were at theirs. He’s a boy.

All this ‘french plaiting hair means you’re a girl’ is just sexist, sexist sexist.

This is not a logical basis for laws and policies which affect everyone in society.

It's hard to describe but her very essence and soul just felt female.

This is so depressing. Do people really live their lives categorising people into genders? This is how sexism continues.

"She always used the girls toilets at school, played skipping with us, practised doing our hair in French plaits. It's hard to describe but her very essence and soul just felt female. "

Seriously, this is just sexist bullshit Daim. You friend should be allowed to do these activities like braiding hair and skipping and be allowed to enjoy them. But it doesn't make them a girl. Fuck sake, women have been trying to free ourselves from this regressive bullshit for years and here you are trying to make it some 'essence' of being female. Fuck that shit.

And btw, this is your personal experience here that you are trying to impose on the rest of us.

I think there are wider issues. These are less frequently discussed.

R0wan I don't think the level of fear and concern over self ID is proportional to the risk to girls and women. I know this has been discussed to death.

There are wider issues daimbars, such as press freedoms parliamentary process and free speech:

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/why-are-some-mps-trying-to-shut-down-the-transgender-debate/

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3222471-AIBU-to-be-extremely-proud-of-Justine-Roberts-Mumsnet-right-now

Thank you, lurker. You've explained it more eloquently than I ever could.

lurker33

Other than for validation, what reason would there be for transwomen to use women and girls spaces if there was a third, unisex space to use? Remember the whole idea of safe spaces for woman and girls is segregation by SEX, not gender. Sometimes segregation is the right thing.

I think most trans women would opt to use a unisex space if one was available. Especially if they had not fully transitioned.

I went to school with a trans girl. I know she was born male but i could never see her as anything other than a girl, she was simply one of us. She always used the girls toilets at school, played skipping with us, practised doing our hair in French plaits. It's hard to describe but her very essence and soul just felt female.

I know GC feminist opinion is that she was a feminine male but knowing her the way I did I just knew she wasn't a feminine, gay male. She was a girl.

I realise these 'genuine' transsexuals aren't the problem and it's the potential for dodgy TRAs to self ID as women which is a concern. But every time I read on here about trans women trying to access female spaces for validation I think of my friend at school and the other trans women I know now in RL and how genuine they are.

The trans women i know in RL don't want to upset or offend anyone they just want to peacefully go about their lives. If there was no unisex toilet available they would just want to use the ladies without any commotion.

And I think there is a perception on here that a handful of TRAs saying abusive things on Twitter are representative of trans women as a whole. If you are truly honest with yourselves how often do you come across trans people in RL? And how much are they threatening you?

The perceived threats from these TRAs is far bigger than reality IMO.

OP there are signposts to other MN threads covering different aspects of the debate in this link. If anyone can think of some useful historic threads please feel free to add. Hopefully a few more people will be coming onto mumsnet after the Hampstead Heath/Twitter ban escapades and this could be a good introduction. If anyone fancies giving it a bump that would be

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3246322-A-Beginners-Guide-to-the-Transgender-Debate-A-Signpost-to-Useful-Mumsnet-Threads

lurker33
I read this article yesterday. Its from a few years ago & an interview with Helen Highwater, a trans women:

(extracts)
"Yet she has come to reject the idea that she is truly female or that she ever will be. Though “trans women are women” has become a trans rights rallying cry, Highwater writes, it primes trans women for failure, disappointment, and cognitive dissonance. She calls it a “vicious lie.”

“It’s a lie that sets us up to be triggered every time we are called he, or ‘guys’ or somebody dares to suggest that we have male biology,” she writes. “Even a cursory glance from a stranger can cut to our very core. The very foundations of our self-worth are fragile.”

From the perspective of the contemporary trans rights movement, this is close to blasphemy. Most progressives now take it for granted that gender is a matter of identity, not biology, and that refusing to recognize a person’s gender identity is an outrageous offense. Highwater herself long believed that: “I came from a point—and I think most of us do—of really, really low self-worth and deep shame about who and what we are,” she tells me. “And when people started telling me that trans women are women, you’ve always been a woman, you have a woman’s brain in a man’s body and all this kind of stuff—it’s a lifeline. It’s something you can hold on to. It really helps you to come to terms with things and move beyond that shame.” (continues)

"At first, Highwater felt incensed by these radical feminists. But she also wanted to understand them, and so she began to engage with them online. She discovered “people who had a pretty good grasp of gender as an artificial social construct—the expectations of what females are supposed to be, the expectations of what males are supposed to be, and how much of that is socialized,” she says. “What I started to find is that the women I was talking to actually made so much more sense than the trans people I was talking to.” (continues)

Highwater, for one, struggles to reconcile her convictions about gender with her desire not to hurt other trans women. “What I think a lot of trans people hear, if you suggest that trans women aren’t women, is, ‘Stop kidding yourself, you’re just a man, go back to living as a man,’ ” Highwater says. “That’s not what this means. The fact that I hold these views doesn't mean that I think that trans women aren’t valid. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think they don’t have a right to live their lives the way they live their lives.” (continues)

www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/12/gender_critical_trans_women_the_apostates_of_the_trans_rights_movement.html

This is why we have sex segregation in the first place

That's how I feel. I am sympathetic to transpeople, but it doesn't change the fact that women and girls need and want sex segregation at times.