Rowantrees
I am going to get off track a bit from thread but I think I need to start substituting “sex stereotypes” for gender when I talk to people in my life as it seems to me so many people don’t understand that *gender” is nothing more than a made up construct, or that the make-believe varies in time, country, culture, generations, etc. They hear gender and think sex, so the people I meet day to day don’t understand that transgender does not mean the old school transsexuals we knew of and were friends with 20-30 years ago.
I mean it was not all that long ago in the Western world (16th-early 20th century) that all children wore “dresses” - boys were only “breeched” (put in trousers or breeches) once they hit 2-8. The purpose of this was related to toilet training. There is a picture, for example, of Franklin D Roosevelt - seen in US as one of the greatest presidents, but also as far as I can tell accepted to be a man - at 2.5, from the 1880s, wearing long hair, payment leather party shoes, and a white dress/skirt, holding a pretty hat with a feather. Would these TRAs go back, see that picture of a boy in a dress and party shoes, and revise history to claim FDR was a “trans kid”, and say he should be put on puberty blockers? Well, now that I say that - some would, because it is shown time and time again context is not relevant. And until the 1920 and 1930s, pink was routinely considered the appropriate colour “for boys” (eg. Time magazine, 1927).
Then social expectations and customs changed again and dresses and pink become more stereotypically associated with girls. And now many - specifically many of these TRAs - not only rely on and reinforce these “newer” stereotypes to claim themselves as transgender, because they aren’t “their gender”. No, you reject sexual stereotypes - that are particular to the time, society, country, culture, generation you are in - which does not make you unique or not your sex
Anyway, hi all I am new here and stumbled here recently after reaching peak trans. As someone who grew up as a non-conforming to sex stereotypes girl in the 80, 90s, where I felt the message was I could be whatever I wanted and do whatever I wanted, where my uni classes were still called Women’s Studies, I feel we are seeing a massive backslide of girls and women’s rights, and it angers me. I also am pained by what I see happening to children - if I - who is still not conforming to sex stereotypes - was a child today, or my brother was a child today - who as a young boy said he wanted to grow up to be not only a woman, but a Chinese woman, and is today a very happy gay man married to an equally happy gay man - well, I could see how my mothers acceptance of us as we were would be seen as “abuse” by TRAs and so on and we would be encouraged to secretly take puberty blockers and hormones and so on. The “could have been” is horrific, and the future some of these children face is incredibly saddening to me. I am childfree and sterilized, but I give a damn more about these children then those pushing them to forever alter their bodies and medical futures - before they even understand the implications - do.
That was getting off track, but I just wanted to say it is refreshing to see someone like Fionne in all this insanity.