thank you from a TW

I’ve got a better idea. Make it a fifty not a tenner, find a castle going cheap & we’ll turn it into a feminist stronghold. With a pub that sells decent pies.

Wouldn't a castle be quite draughty? Although I do fancy standing atop windy battlements, looking thoughtful, with my cloak billowing.

Alternatively make it a grand each and we could buy an island.

Thick skin on chips. Wondering if we could get the Harlequin in Sheffield to open a branch there if we asked really nicely….

God, YY to the castle please. And I'll have steak and ale with puff pastry. And chips and mushy peas. I'll even eat it respectfully and will use cutlery instead of my fingers

And believe me, I'm behaving "better" than I would elsewhere or in RL because of MN rules! I think I (and many others) have taken time to politely question the OP as to what living like a woman actually means. If MN wasn't moderated the way it is, I think I would have just said oh fuck off Shania Twain.

Be respectful, ha. I'll start respecting men when they start respecting me, and that isn't the case here.

I think the poster may be referring to the post that says 'Oh behave!' Which is not by the OP.

We are being told how to behave.

If I had a tenner for all the transsexuals on here who've told me they're not like the other girls, and their relationship breakdown was completely different to all the others, I could take all my trans widows out for afternoon tea at the Ritz.

To be pedantic fair, it wasn't OP who told us to behave.

So in your first post you say you are a "male who lives as female".

And then you say you "have no idea what living as a woman means, it makes no sense".

You see the issue here? It sums up the whole fucking thing.

PS Just to help you out, a man thinking they are living as a woman means reinforcing and conforming to gender stereotyping. Women would be much better served by men removing gender stereotyping. So I won't thank you for deigning to come here and say thank you (while instructing us how to behave, of course). I will say you are part of the problem women are facing. Fuck sexist stereotyping.

PPS if you have used this board as much as your posts say, there is no way you would not be aware that women don't give out personal details on PM. So stop being disingenuous, and hopefully no one here will provide you personal information.

happy to discuss off the forum but it is private No, we don't do that here. There is a long history of MN posters being enticed off site and then attempts at doxxing being made. It is generally seen as a bad sign!

Also, having read the voices of trans widows, and heard those of once married gay men, nothing makes it possible to avoid the emotional devastation. It's simply too much of the bedrock of a relationship that is torn away. A woman's sense of self, sense of partnership, internal reality, is destroyed - no matter how brave a face they slap on for any kids, family and freinds.

That's another of those things that many transwomen really need to re-evaluate. Often what they believe, in order to protect their sense of being a fair, nice person, has few points in common with what their ex spouses feel.

I know my aunt has had her later adult life blighted by being the ex wife of a gay man. 20 years and 3 kids later she has no idea what really happened to her younger self. Everything she thought she knew, the feelings, emotions, partnership she relied upon simply isn't true, it can't be!

Properly managed gender dysphoria can avoid that

Not in my experience, from speaking to many women.

No I don't want to discuss it off forum.

e.g. the "therapist" who calls me the mother of my children FFS

So there's at least one trans widow in your background?

I know the thread's moved on a bit, but I think this is a great point

Our male allies (GC men of whatever persuasion) should be campaigning for the acceptance and safety of TW in men's spaces. They could start with a sticker campaign in men's toilets 'Transwomen welcome here'
I would really like a conversation about male aggression/violence, rather than about female 'transphobia'.

@flingonaps don't apologise. I only put that perspective forward because it might help some understand that transwomen aren't Borg. I have know him since we were in our teens. He is the reason I remain permanently conflicted over the individual consequences of being as GC as I am. That he understands and has, for a few years now, changed his mind over his use of single sex female spaces, makes him as close to an ally as his dysphoria allows. That he has "lived as a woman" for the whole of his adult life makes him no more female than the Pope. But as I've known him for all of that time, he is also a lifelong friend. Allow me that cognitive dissonance, if you would!

*Surely it's better to support people to feel ok as they are.

It rarely works. That is why we have gender identity clinics.*

Changing sex never works so rarely is still more successful. If changing sex did work I suspect the men clamouring to be women would have a swift change of heart - once they got to grips with the realities of female biology, misogyny and harassment instead of the fantasy version of women hood that is all doing each others hair and swapping makeup I suspect it would be slightly less appealing.

'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings! ...'

-- 'Erh, no: you are Baruchd, who cleans the offices ...'

'Aargh! Denying my existence! Help! ...'

If anybody is denying another's existence via lack of validation, it's the trans ideologues who tell us that males have a better understanding of what it means to be a woman than females do. It's the people who talk about 'non-men', 'menstruators', 'cervix-havers' and 'gestational parents' that deny the existence of women.

But the whole “deny existence”, it is only withholding validation isn’t it? That is why it is exhausting. Most people don’t need constant validation