Controversial but curious.....

what do you think of statements from organisations like CAN-SG who are doctors who are worried that the treatment protocols are not good, @JBEM4

i worry about that

Thefempirestrikesback I’m guessing you haven’t actually read the thread, or you would be aware of the huge amount of compassion for children struggling with their identity.
Obviously, men using women’s single-sex spaces resulting in women feeling threatened not so much.
A male claiming to be a transwoman now uses my local pool - open changing rooms, just a few cubicles which they don’t use. Do you think I should still let my young teen dd’s continue to go alone? That person may be completely lovely, or they may not. But the potential consequences are too awful to contemplate. It’s not a risk I’m prepared to take, so sadly, the girls miss out.

Oh, and while you're at it (since you care so much about Muslims) can you explain how to make a women only space inclusive of both trans women and Muslim women, who can't share such spaces with members of the opposite sex?

Or it is simply the case that the Muslim women need to believe harder that the trans woman is female, and if they can't, they shouldn't expect to be able to use women's spaces?

Can you tell us how we (a) tell the difference between a "perverted cis man" and a genuine trans woman, and (b) implement and enforce rules preventing the former from accessing women's spaces whilst allowing the latter in?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ppunWKRn5YY

bit of a tangent, but here’s the conference panel re: boys affected by gender Dysphoria

My son is my son. His genitals do not define him

So why is the poor thing going to harm his health forever to change their appearance?

Once you see/read all the harm that testosterone causes a body, you cannot unsee it. All in pursuit of a beard. Couldn't your child go to a voice coach to lower their voice, instead of taking harmful hormones?

I don’t think that’s true at all.

Primarily, this is Mumsnet, and babies are still born 50/50 m/f so plenty of us are mothers of boys and we’re just as concerned about vulnerable boys as we are girls (although actually they seem to be less negatively affected by the physical aspects of transition right up until the point of genital surgery).

But this is the Feminist section, so there are posters here who are here to discuss this topic specifically from the Feminist angle (and then mumsnet shunts non-feminist angle posts over here too) so obvs the focus of this section is always going to be on how transgender encroaches and damages female humans (including transmen).

Plenty of GC gay men & detrans me. get FWR shout outs - Menno, Clive and Dennis, Arty, Duncan & Ritchie for starters, and Ritchie (Tulip).
Loads of GC straight men worth name checking too (If only Mumsnet wouldn’t keep us silo’d on the naughty step, where the need to keep chat at least somewhat on-topic means ensuring it stays female-focused).

It’s the heterosexual late transitioning males we have little tolerance for, and that’s because it chucks a hand grenade into their families, negatively imparting their wives and children (and even then I can think of an older detrans man who got nothing but support when his story was reported, as his cross sex identity was so clearly the result of extreme disassociation due to PTSD).

That was in response to another poster, talking about her son.

The sheer fucking irony of that statement.

I think you are right that we are not always qualified to have an opinion on something if we have no experience of it.

Even when we have some experience, our experience is often partial. Partial in the sense that we are only one individual so if someone is "trans" they still only have one experience out of many possible experiences of being trans; and also partial in the sense of having a powerful vested interest in believing particular things, such as that cross-sex hormones (even anabolic steroids) are harmless because who wants to believe that by doing what they want to do they are causing themselves serious physical damage? Or worse still, who wants to believe that they have been unable to stop their child causing themselves serious physical damage, or that they have even encouraged their child to do it?

Sometimes an outsider can have a broader view and a more objective view and therefore offer a more reliable opinion.

In an ideal world we get a mix of both. It's what I like about MumsNet and this thread is a shining example - women with the facts at their fingertips, and women sharing their own individual experiences, and women linking to the experiences of others.

Why does no one ever say that to trans women who think they're qualified to tell the rest of us what a woman is?

I think you are right that we are not always qualified to have an opinion on something if we have no experience of it.

The OP's "son" is female, not male.

@ReunitedThorns The vitriol towards tw here isn't for children. I've never seen that for boys.

@Delphinium20 I'm carefully avoiding most of them tbh, covid has broken most of them and they don't have any sort of personality outside of it anymore. One of them is making stupid money scolding white collar workers for not being woke enough ofc. And my partner is an nb but slowly digesting what I'm trying to tell him. Regardless, it's still so much better out here in the sunlight :)

Unfortunately I don't think you'll find much sympathy for your son on MN as users only see the female detransitioners as victims and would rather demonise all MTF and see them only as the enemy. There appears to be no nuance for accepting that young impressionable males can be victims of this too.

That's bollocks, posters on here have every sympathy for Jazz Jennings and Jackie Green both of whom are high profile victims of this, plus all the other not well known young boys who have been sold this lie and are now living with the consequences.

Unfortunately I don't think you'll find much sympathy for your son on MN as users only see the female detransitioners as victims and would rather demonise all MTF and see them only as the enemy. There appears to be no nuance for accepting that young impressionable males can be victims of this too.

Give over, we have been banging on about how they 'trans away the gay' for a fair old while now. Unfortunately women who actually give a shit about the medical scandal unfolding are always demonised as unable to be 'nuanced' and I've had a guts full of disingenuous posters coming on here to have a pop at us whilst championing the sterilisation of kids to be perfectly honest.

OP I've had osteoporosis. It is a fucking nightmare. To have it in one's mid 20s or 30s is going to be an unholy clusterfuck.

But hey ho. Here's a Detransitioners panel at Genspect last week. Just one shot of testosterone will change your child forever. It is pretty dangerous to be pumping kids full of cross sex hormones because they are deluded into thinking they will change sex. It isn't discrimination to point this out.

I very powerful statement, and glad your son is much better now and accepting of himself.

I feel for the effeminate boys and masculine girls who are now coerced by society to transition.

Unfortunately I don't think you'll find much sympathy for your son on MN as users only see the female detransitioners as victims and would rather demonise all MTF and see them only as the enemy. There appears to be no nuance for accepting that young impressionable males can be victims of this too.

Firstly, you say it came as no surprise to you that your child came out as trans. Why? What were the first signs?

My bingo card says - like wearing 'boys' clothes, played with 'boys' toys, hated having long hair, maybe she even hated pink.
All the things that many female children do every single day and yet this parent decided that her daughter was a boy because of it.

I work with a young transman and they are popular part of the team, and not treated differently than others, but that said I don't know exactly how the men on the team view them, a man or transman. I don't know if many men feel threatened by transmen, i think generally women don't, so I think it's easier to go under the radar as a transman, even if not passing.

So I think your child should be fine in day to day life.

@Redbird87

I am so, so sorry. What you've gone through would test anyone. I hope you've found a way out of these toxic relationships and are in a better place.

I have a couple of questions OP, if you wouldn't mind answering.

Firstly, you say it came as no surprise to you that your child came out as trans. Why? What were the first signs?

Secondly, if in ten years time your child decides to detransition, and says, "It was futile, obviously I could never become a man. And now I won't be able to breastfeed my children, if I can even have children. I'll never be able to live a normal life and I massively regret doing this."

What will you say?

Fortunately FTM individuals don't seem to attract a fraction of the hostility, outrage and offence that MTF people do - why is that?

That's easy.

It's because they're no threat to men.

They aren't raping men in men's prisons. They aren't competing in and winning men's sporting events, taking opportunities away from male athletes. They aren't preventing male rape survivors from getting the support they need.

I do believe that they are being used as pawns in a game that doesn't benefit them in any way.

Because most women aren't really bothered if other women want to identify as men, but you can't logically agree that trans men are men, whilst disagreeing that trans women are women.

And every time we try to talk about the importance of single sex spaces, the usual suspects start bombarding us with photoshopped pictures of muscular, bearded trans men and saying, "Do you really want these people in your single sex spaces?"

(I can't imagine OP will be back any time soon - but FWIW I'll respond as though they will, and with as much compassion as possible in hopes of a response because frankly I'm desperate to know the answers to some of my questions;)

I genuinely don't understand the use of denying "existence" or saying people aren't real.

No one sane has ever has debated or argued whether or not trans people exist.

The debate, or argument if you'd rather call it that, is that gender does not equal sex. And there are some (not all) instances where sex rights should have precedent over gender rights - Happy to give examples.

I think there's a line to be drawn between genuinely transphobic people, and people who have GC views. They are not one in the same.

As someone with a FtM son, surely you of all people should understand that no matter how many transitional steps your son may take to change the external, he will always have a biologically female body with all the draw backs that come from that?
(For just one example, lower capacity for strength compared to bio men, putting him at increased risk of being easily overpowered and assaulted by predatory males.)

Surely your lived experience as someone with a female body, and as someone who has raised a son with a female body, surely the differences between the sexes (not genders) should be stark and obvious to you??

Give the benefit of the doubt that we're not all bigots, humour us even if it's from a place of disdain because you want to protect your son - Do you not think there's any substance at all to sex based differences that cannot be changed with surgery/hormones?
Do you genuinely in your heart of hearts know that surgeries and hormones will make your son equally as capable of defending himself for example, as a biologically born male?
And if yes, why do you think that?

Anyone that feels anything other than crushing heartache and sadness for Jazz, who should be a healthy young person enjoying their life, I do not understand.

This is a tragedy. But because it was done deliberately, and it was an entirely unnecessary process, based on some nebulous theory about an inner feeling, and because the evidence is not there that this has better outcomes longterm than watchful waiting, it is arguably an atrocity.

I feel very much for anyone who has been sold the idea that its possible to change sex. Or that they have any need to later a healthy body. They've been let down repeatedly by the very systems and people who purport to have their best interests at heart.

Adults can do what they wish to their bodies. Children cannot consent. They can't even begin to understand what is at stake.