Kathleen Stock OBE: Trans Women Aren't Women : A discussion

Thank you for posting this interview. Interviewer was well prepared and asked all the right questions. Professor Stock was measured and fabulous as always.

There are so many of us. Several of my feminist friends have had the same discussion with me. That they went through the wanting to be a boy stage. Now any girl who feels like that, unless she has gender-critical adults around her to help her think about other possibilities, is at risk of being pushed into transitioning, with the risk of having her female body irreversibly damaged and becoming infertile, and worst of all being led to believe this is all about being her “true self” and celebrated and deluded into thinking she’s so happy about it all. We know from detransitioners that they felt this and were totally sure. That makes sense when it’s being pushed at children like this and they are so young.

If I were being ultra cynical and apocalyptic I might wonder how a system that sterilises and medicalises all the most “boyish” girls arose. The ones who would grow up to be feminists, lesbians and GNC women, the ones who would take plum jobs in engineering, science, politics and leadership, because they were not the ones who would be as effectively limited by bowing to gender expectations. Those girls get effectively drawn into a system that neutralises them. They will never be men, or taken as men by men. They will just be women who this process has tried to shove out of womanhood for not being feminine.

Campervan69 are you me? Gosh. All of that.

Haven’t read the full thread as it seems to have gone off on some kitchen appliance tangent.

I have just watched the full interview. I want to thank Childrenofthestones for sharing it here. It was really interesting and Kathleen was, as ever when I hear her speak, clear and got the most important points across. I thought the interviewer had a very pleasant and concise style too what a pleasure to listen to.

This is the other side of the debate

Yes

Speaking of the 70s, anyone who was in secondary education around 1965- 1977 Could you please help this wonderful student out? Researching second wave feminism (Studying under wor Selena I believe.)

Masters dissertation on second-wave feminism, help needed! www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4252614-Masters-dissertation-on-second-wave-feminism-help-needed

Viper smoothies are great for the complexion. (Just filter out the twiggy bits first.)

Looking forward to my morning feminist brain boost and my mind is now full off a nest of vipers in a blender.

Accurate, I'll take it.

In 1977 I had a centre parting, now I have a side parting.
Evidently one's parting is now of vital importance in certain circles (none in which I run): www.vogue.co.uk/beauty/article/the-side-parting-debate

also your name sounds like a blender
If not Vogon poetry (it might be), could it be another "purple monkey dishwasher" as that heard at Springfield Elementary School?

I am another one who wasn’t born in 1977.

The ageism is quite something to behold. Always.

@Imasoulman if you have come on this thread to present a different side to the debate, please feel free.
“You’re wrong I’m right because I said so” doesn’t do your cause any favours.

The Blendphobia on this thread is shocking.

Us women who went through this and grew up happy to be women are clear examples of how wanting to be a boy did not equal being trans. It just meant we realised being a girl was crap and being a non-girly girl even harder

like that poor 4 year old girl in the news recently.

off to watch Kathleen Stock, thanks OP.

there are those who have lived to regret it

You really think people were not transitioning in the seventies

A tiny handful..adult males.......and it was never proposed that you could actually change sex. Transition ( full re-assignment) was seen as the last resort. And even then those who have lived to regret it. A relation of my husband, for example.

Lots of people, however, experimented with expression through clothes, through hair and make-up, through, name change and so on.....but without the enforced pronouns, or push for children to be transitioned.

The 70s? My state Catholic secondary school restricted the subjects girls could take into the 1990s, and still won't let them wear trousers.

Who the fuck 10 years ago would have though it would be the right thing to talk about vagina havers, and that rapists would be in women's prisons?!

I know...progress

not being allowed to wear trousers (and organising a succesful protest!) was a key 1970s experience for me

Being forced to take a particular subject in school that the boys were allowed to avoid made me rebel for the first time against sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes. I was nine. I had zero interest in needlework. But my protest fell on deaf ears.