Nice thread with lovely wishes for transpeople

We are always framed as horrible bigots when actually a lot of concerns stem from a place of being caring maternal women.

I'm not remotely maternal & never have been. But I do feel terrible for all those younger lesbians who have either been caught up in the gender dysphoria contagion & damaged their bodies, or have felt forced to accept male partners in order to avoid being labelled transphobic.

Is there going to be a nice thread with lovely wishes for disabled people? Or a nice thread with lovely wishes for lesbian people? Or multi racial people?

Cos I tick all those boxes and frankly I'm cringing at the thought, alongside wondering what 'lovely wishes' are and how they're helpful. I think most people would think please don't patronise me.

Or do I need to self flagellate for wanting to be a nice person to continue engaging on Feminist chat?

Oh do grow up. Nobody's telling you not to engage. People are telling you that you can't control how people respond. You're being childish because you started a thread and it didn't go how you'd hoped. We all get our arsed handed to us here at some point.

Prawn Yes, agree totally. I suppose if I'd come across the thread on page 1, that's something I would have said - that, and hoping that research could eventually get to the bottom of genuine gender dysphoria, and come up with a better answer.

Thanks to everyone who responded. I suppose my thoughts were prompted by the opening of the thread referring specifically to "transpeople" rather than to TRAs. I know transmen are considered on many other threads, though.

Kesstrel I went to a genderist meeting by mistake last year (I read the title as implying it was gender critical). One of the speakers was a transman. I was uncomfortable before the session started at the bollocks being spouted during previous sessions but I found listening to the transman so distressing I had to leave.

The self hatred, the denial and lesbophobia of this very young person were heartbreaking. Imo what this person needed were lesbian role models and a hefty dose of second wave feminism.

That's what I wish for transmen. They're physically more vulnerable than transwomen as testosterone does much more harm - and more quickly - to a female body than oestrogen does to a male one. Binders destroy healthy tissue and can cause serious harm including broken ribs. I dread to think of the detransitioners.

Though Man Has Baby tends to get a similarly wtf response

kesstrel - there are many discussions of transmen on MN, they are not forgotten by us as they seem to be by many TRAs, but they tend not to be the ones threatening violence towards gender critical women, nor does the threat to women's rights involve them so directly.

You ran it out. What does that mean?

Threads go to 1000 posts before they close....

And I don't know why you think the thread is not wanted. There are quite a few of us here, responding, trying to discuss your OP!

Kesstrel that comes up a lot. But it is in response to TRA actions, which NEVER include transmen. You never see a TRA demand that TRANSMEN ARE MEN. You never see transmen stand up and demand anything from men.

Meen don't seem to have a problem having transmen in their male spaces - wonder why? Oh, yes....

But yes, Transmen are women, just as transwomen are men! But we, GC females, are not trying to speak for men. They can decide for themselves what they will and will not accept in their single sex spaces.

Congrats. Job done!

Or do I need to self flagellate for wanting to be a nice person to continue engaging on Feminist chat?
Over-dramatic much?! People have shown a very reasonable criticism of the post due to the constant emotional abuse they've already received from TRAs which involves being shamed for not 'being nice' ie. having opinions that counter theirs, and frankly you now seem to be doing the same. Sorry, but you don't get to have a stranglehold over the contents of a thread any more than TRA's get to control the contents of women's heads. If you want a piece purely dedicated to this that you are in total control of I suggest you write a piece on Wordpress or Medium.

The controversy on this thread is interesting. That way so many comments are entirely about male-born TRAs, ignoring transmen, makes me wonder something I hadn't thought of before: if feminism is supposed to centre women, have transmen forfeited their right to be included as part of that centring? Or is it just that women are so angry about aggressive transactivist transwomen that we tend to forget about the transmen when something like this thread comes up?

I want everyone who is ill in any way or non-conforming in any way, to be considered equal to those who are not. "Trans" is irrelevant here though, I'm with Julia Long on that.

And WLS (what Lang said).

Or a ... insert hundreds of examples... So you want us to post thinking/self editing in consideration of all sorts of hypothetical posters rather than be honest and respond to the posters who actually are engaging?

Whataboutery at its finest!

Having had an ED in my youth I know exactly how it feels to look in the mirror and see a fiction. luckily I had a lot of support and with the right help was able to realise that the person i was seeing in the mirror simply wasn't there, the 'fat' me didn't exist. A man who looks in the mirror and sees a woman (and vice versa) is exactly the same, seeing a cruel fiction.

Please get help, the right help, you deserve it even though you may feel there is a stigma around mental health issues. There isn't.

We don't need to prostrate ourselves, our arguments speak for themselves, these are what need to be engaged with without having to plead for anyone to like us, it's pure misogyny to suggest we need to beg for approval before we can speak.
And TRAs are NOT open-armed to detransitioners.

What will you read? One MN thread and decide it's full of bigots and go away to the crowd who is open armed

Can you point me to a thread from which an openminded trans-person would come away with the impression MN is full of bigots?

And would a thread that does not discuss policies but is only about wishing well, change any minds? If I know MNers are generally against the informed consent model and if I consider them bigoted for it, nothing will change if they wish me 'access to science based high quality health care'. I'll still think they are making up all their little silly arguments to deny me an informed consent clinic, because they are bigots.

We are here, talking to each other. Stop asking us to perform labour for imaginary people. Or, carry on asking, and get women telling you that they think it's a load of old bollocks. Up to you.

But we do have things other than banal things to say, we say them across other threads

That was what stuck out to me when I read your original post and what I first commented on: we say all these things in all the other threads. How we wish no discrimination, good health care,.... Constantly. So, if people read these threads and still think we're 'horrible bigots', then I dare say we are not the problem and repeating the same stuff in an extra thread won't change how anyone frames us.

interestingdebatetoday - you may have had good intentions, but anyone who has survived narcissistic abuse knows that explaining/defending yourself against the groundless accusations of the abuser is only playing into their hands by letting them control the narrative, it is not recommended. If I were to engage with this post as you intended, I would only have something extremely banal to say: trans people are people like any other. I don't have any specific wishes for them different than for any other human beings. I would respond the same if being asked to give lovely wishes for black people, Muslims, Jews etc. We're all human, that's it.

I really can't see the relevance of this thread on a feminist board, when we currently have male bodied people locked up with women in prison....& attacking women.

Womens rights to sex segregated spaces are being eroded.... there is a clear safeguarding problem embracing all our schools, affecting our children with a very harmful ideology that it is possible to be born in the wrong body....these realities are more important to me, than sending good wishes to any other human, no matter how they identify.

interesting don't do that!

You're only creating an echo chamber for yourself.

Re-read the posts you dislike. Think about what was posted. Reflect on it, reflect on what you posted, why it may not have read how you expected it to!

If I told you that many other posters here posted in a very similar way a year or so ago would you believe me? I'll say now, I did. Often. And I too thought the dissenting voices were mean, nasty, missing my point. Until one day someone told me that my 'voice' was too accepting of my socialisation and it was irritating to other posters. Plainly put I came across as a bit of a plonker with all my sorry buts and pleases.

I did some more reading and realised they were right. I was apologising for the plain speaking of other women. So I stopped!