Would you ever consider a transman a man?

This is a very interesting post thank you stealthsquirrelnutkin.

On another thread I posted about growing up gender confused and lesbian, and I said that I realise in retrospect that by despising all things 'girly', I was also despising myself.
Fortunately for me, I discovered feminism, and learned to value myself as a woman, a different kind of woman, a lesbian woman with butch tendencies😎

Like you, I worry about young lesbians who never manage to balance the rejection of gender stereotypes, and of heterosexuality, with keeping self-respect for themselves as women.
The lure of becoming a transman instead of a lesbian must be powerful, the trans juggernaut being as powerful and all-pervasive as it is, resulting in a zeitgeist where the scars of an optional double mastectomy can be celebrated.

There is, I think you will agree, a line to be walked between being butch because there's something about the style and swagger that makes you feel good, and trying to look like you're not a woman full stop.

The danger for young girls growing up gender-confused is that they may step over the line from not wanting to look like a gender stereotypical woman, into not wanting to look like a woman at all, and then not wanting to even be a woman.

Then if they start to find puberty blockers, hormones and surgery promoted as 'gender affirming care', they are in real danger of long-term mental and physical problems.

And after all the hormones and surgery, the likelihood is that they won't really look like men - transmen often lack the height, gait, mannerisms, voice, bodyshape, comportment etc., to pass as men.

But by then, as you say stealthsquirrelnutkin, the damage is done.

How many genuine gay males do you think actually accept a female playing dress-up, as one of their own?

I'd guess about 1%. If that.

A woman cannot be a gay male.

And if I'd saw myself having to actually type that 10 years ago, I would have thought I'd lost my mind.

• and to the guy who said he wasn't charismatic and was boring: whoever told you that had no right, so don't ever describe yourself that way again please. Laters xx

Don't tell me how to describe myself "please", and you might want to find out about self-deprecating humour. I'm quite comfortable with who I am, thanks, and I'm not actually as 'umble as Uriah Heap. You have no need to make assumptions about my self esteem. Plenty of people think I'm boring, and others (who actually spend time with me) may or may not think so; it probably depends on what I'm doing at the time. There's nothing worse though, in my opinion, than someone trying to force a quiet person to be the life and soul of the party. It's my party and I'll cry if I want to, thank you very much.

💐

This is a very wise post that deserved highlighting.

It's criminal that so many organisations who should be able to offer effective therapeutic support and advice for parents in this situation have been captured or bullied into silence by the extreme trans lobby who have done so much harm.

It's been pointed out before that alienating children from their parents is a key tactic of too many influential trans organisations / individuals. Society is completely failing these parents and children by allowing these groups to dominate and influence professional practice.

I'm not far off 70 and a lesbian who has always been drawn to big, strong, butch women. Despite that my initial interest in a masculine looking woman shrivels and dies if she turns out to be genderqueer or trans.

Misogyny and homophobia are a fact of life, but I've never felt the urge to bring extra quotas of those harmful beliefs into my own personal domestic space. If a woman needs to convince herself that she has turned into a man before she permits herself fancy me I'm saddened, but the ick is instant and permanent.

And don't get me started on all the gorgeous young butch girls who realise being lesbian is still the lowest status sexuality, and that by binding their breasts and trying to walk and act like John Wayne will give them a social boost into the overpromoted trans category. Mostly it takes them ten years to grow out of it, and realise that even in the world of transgenderism it's the men who get to set the rules, and who expect and demand all the attention. Many of them have already destroyed their healthy young bodies by the time their brain matures enough to allow them to see the truth. It's the biggest social and medical scandal of our time, and all done in the name of "inclusion" and "kindness".

Don't expect me to admire or endorse a metal illness that leads its sufferers into self-harm.

I would add to that that becoming a 'transman' is a form of self-harm, just as much as the traditional cutting, anorexia and bulimia.

All ways of punishing ones female body for being female, some more fashionable than others.

An edit.

Many women are denied care for many and various ills that derive from having a female body in a world full of men, (including some caused by some men's expectations), which causes intense distress

all women live with prejudice, (particularly that coming from genderists), harassment (ditto) and the constant threat of extreme violence (most of it sexual) which results in exhausting hypervigilance and intense misery. (Doesn't stop them being women though, nothing can)

self-harm is sadly very common as there is almost no MH care for abuse- something girls suffer just as much as 'trans' people.

"Third...what on earth are you doing examining photos of strangers?! Being thiat obsessed with a tiny minority is deeply unhealthy behaviour."

You mean the photos of people in promotional material about normalising elective double mastectomy scars from extreme body modifications to fit a person's body to their personal identity, including billboards?

I didn't realise we were not supposed to notice those images. You had better speak to the trans support groups who sponsored them or supported the promotion of those pictures.

Or was this just an attempt to shame people pointing out the harms of those very campaigns.

I have worked with over a hundred children and their families who believed that ‘being transgender’ provided ‘the’ explanation for high levels of distress and poor mental the health the child was experiencing.

When the new name and pronouns didn’t cut it, the belief that all would be well once puberty was blocked and cross hormones administered often kicked in. When this wasn’t the magic bullet, the lack of acceptance from others was often blamed. It was unusual for parents to say ‘hold on a moment, this was all meant to be sorted by transition’.

Many parents are between a rock and a hard place. Firstly, the magic bullet of ‘transitioning’ is enticing - the thought of all the distress and turmoil just disappearing delivers the hope that their child will be happy and well adjusted again, and soon. Then, when they see that social transitioning and/ or hormones aren’t removing the distress, they can either (I) blame everyone else (lack of acceptance) (ii) accept the cause of the distress was not ‘being born in the wrong body’, and go back to the drawing board to find the real underlying causes for the distress. However, if they do this, this reveals to their child that they don’t actually believe they are the opposite sex, and this is often inconceivable to them.

I think many parents feel completely trapped by the situation - whether they acknowledge this or not. It’s a travesty that they are not able to access psychological services to help them navigate this. It is absolutely possible for parents and children to express different views/ beliefs and for alternative explanation for distress to be safely explored. It’s a travesty that families aren’t educated, prior to ‘transition’ that not everyone will perceive or accept the new identity and that’s something that the transitioned child needs to be able to tolerate - and if they can’t, this should be worked on prior to transition. Of course, this takes away the ‘magic bullet’ answer that they so desperately want to escape in to - so as long as they think transition will bring happiness, it may be difficult to engage them in other approaches which don’t offer miracle solutions.

I don’t consider Transmen to be men because they’re not. What has occurred to me, and I’m sure is obvious to many, is the reason they often go for the beardy, tattooed, pierced look is because it’s difficult to imply maleness by clothing. Therefore the reductive tropes of maleness (as above) are the go-to and is rather insulting to men (poor lambs).
The other thing I’ve been thinking about is, when considering the outcome of surgery such as mastectomies, neo vaginas and penises, anyone who has had surgery knows that the surgery site is numb afterwards and often for a very long time after. So all the fake big tits, neo cocks and internal tubes are likely to be quite dead and unresponsive.

I consider myself straight but some women I look at and fancy but if I think about doing anything sexual with them it's an immediate turn-off - I feel the same about transmen - some are good looking but I know they have a vulva and that just isn't attractive to me. An over-enlarged clitoris from testosterone use or a pseudopenis made from arm tissue is even more of a turn-off.

Controlling sources of information is yet another requirement enforced on people by trans activists. If they can imply some sort of nefarious intent on the part of others there's some sort of extra excitement 🙄

Firstly, why are you trying to
shame pp for looking at public photographs like advertising billboards? That’s a very odd response.

Secondly, if your ‘identity’ relies on affirmation by others, it is always going to fail because other people have freedom of thought and perception (for now).

Have you considered that it’s the chosen remedy that is wrong and that’s why the mental health problems continue? The studies are showing that m/h gets WORSE after a medical ‘transition’. This is most likely because surgery, medication and a self proclaimed identity will not fix a mental health problem like gender dysphoria.

Why not explore other treatments? It’s been shown that the children who grow up to be the most settled in their bodies are the children who are not labelled as ‘trans’. That should be a starting point.

Your homophobia is very disturbing. But that is what trans is, homophobic at it's very nucleus.

We're not interested in hearing about a person's Transhausen by proxy.

Schizophrenia exists. Bi-polar exists. Anorexia exists. It doesn't mean we promote mental illness as valid.

Would you ever consider a transman a man?

No, though I might at first mistake her for a man if she ’passed’ exceptionally well.

That made me laugh! Reminded me of "Patience" and Mr Bunthorne.

Other than, what? Mutual charisma?? 😁

Sexual attraction is all about charisma. And anyone who says they don't have charisma is lying. It follows that we should all be attracted to absolutely everyone, and choose sexual partners by selling raffle tickets in order to be scrupulously fair and open minded.

I've heard of a trend in some places of lesbians microdosing testosterone, with no intent to transition.

So may in fact gain some more male secondary sex effects.

It seems to me yo be part of the general body mod trend.

The idea that to challenge homophobia in the trans movement is to be homophobic towards the trans movement was a particularly fine piece of pretzel logic, wasn't it?😏

No

I suppose I should be flattered, but I've lost count of the number of times I've posted a reasonable, politely-worded question[s] to somebody like TransParentlyAnnoyed, like I did at 16.27, asking for some evidence and stats about all this alleged violence against trans people, plus pointing out that the hypervigilance she says trans people have is actually stirred up from within the trans movement, with their talk of 'genocide' and 'literal violence'.

And the poster leaves!

I posted at 16.27.
At I6.29 it was 'Bye Mumsnetters' from TPA, so there goes any chance of evidence about those violence against transfolk claims.

I'm sure it was a coincidence. I'll try not to take it personally

Pretty much all my life I have been intensely attracted to men whom I don’t trust, with whom I’m incompatible (other than sexually), with whom I share few or no interests and who have been largely charisma free.

It’s known as having bad taste in men. I’ve had my share of fun, though.

Attraction is about compatability, trust, charisma and shared interests.

oh don't be so ridiculous.

Loads of people shag each other without trusting them, identifying charisma, or have any shared interests, whatsoever!

Sexual orientation isn't 'charisma', or 'thank God we both bloody love backgammon'.

Good Lord.

Plus, as I have noted many times before, TRAs thoroughly enjoy using words like straight, gay and lesbian, without having any kind of definition for any of them.

Other than, what? Mutual charisma?? 😁