Mr Gay England: The trans man competing 'against an idea of male beauty'

Sounds good to me, good luck to him!

I was totally confused by that story. I thought the person was attracted to women, not men, looking at their Twitter. Also, the person's not on testosterone, but have they had a mastectomy?

Not sure why it was on the front page! But strangely there seems to be at least one trans story a week on the bbc, if not two...

From what I can gather some of the debate in the gay community about these issues is as you'd expect - gay men defending their right not to be attracted to vaginas.

But of course a transman with a vagina is not as threatening to a gay man as a transwoman with a penis is to a lesbian.

What I do notice though is a lot of weariness with the domination of the issue. I've seen posts from gay students saying they turned up to their university's LGBTQ group in Fresher's Week and found it was full of people who were basically straight but claiming they were various non-binary genders. And that they didn't have anything against that but it simply had no relevance to their lives.

If "Drop the T" does happen I suspect it will be because of this - that gay people just move away as the organisations supposed to represent them become less and less relevant to their needs.

A trans man can never be a gay man so why are they allowed to compete?

The way that article is written is so dumbed down:

It's a beauty pageant that usually crowns a muscular, gay man - a stereotypical idea of what's hot in a bloke - as the most attractive in England.

I know it's a Newsbeat article, so aimed at younger readers, but this was on the British Broadcasting Corporation's front page on the app this morning.

I will be interested to see what gay men make of this. History shows us that men do not like being dictated to when it comes to what they should or should not find attractive

I may go and have a look on Datalounge to see what their take on this is. Their moderation is much lighter touch than here and they don’t pull their punches.

Somewhat curious to know whether 'except for relationship purposes' applies in the acceptance of this person as specifically a gay man.

So my assumption would by Mr Gay would be a big muscly hunk. I think gay men like much the same physically in a man as women?

So I thought when I clicked on the article it was going to be about a more feminine flamboyant man competing - to go against the basic standard of male beauty.

But its a woman, who idetifyes as a man, entering a competition for men that are attracted to other men. I would have more respect for him if he entered Miss World. It seems a bit offensive to gay men. But I don't know I'm not a gay man. I can only consider how I would feel if a man who had not made any physical change to their body, entered a female beauty competition to try and show that a man can be more beautiful than a woman.

One of the links to the “stats” about trans murder takes you to PinkNews.

It's not easy to understand a female who asks to be accepted as a man, but who performs as a drag king which by definition means a woman dressing up as a man. TRAs are keen to tell people to educate themselves on trans issues but how can you learn about something that is but simultaneously is not?

I know I'm being over hopeful expecting logic, no need to explain

Nothing to do with me.

I too reckon that's one for gay men to work through!

Good luck to him, hope he wins.

Well ... I guess that one is up for the gay men to figure out. Over to you guys!

The organisers seem fully onboard and positive. It'll be interesting to see the wider reaction. Overall men don't fear the threat of physical and sexual violence from women and are more privileged in their position in society and their responses to trans gender ideology are coloured by that.