Anti trans debate

Well I read about the Oct 7th attacks and struggled to sleep for weeks - unlikely my own teen girls will be raped to death by a group of maniacs in front of me but damn right it affects me when it happens to other teenage girls and young women.

@Beedleneedle so this doesn't affect you in your life at all? It may be about to. So I have a question for you.

so, think about your little son, that you know is a boy, you saw him on the scans through pregnancy, you change his nappy every day, you know he is a boy.

Imagine you get him a truck and a doll for his birthday. He likes both toys, but the doll is his favourite so much he won't go anywhere without it. You also haven't taken him to get his hair cut because you think he looks really cute with his shoulder length hair.

You go to pick him up from nursery one afternoon and the manager of the nursery pulls you to one side to tell you that you don't have a little boy but a little girl because he plays with a doll and has long hair and when told by one of the other kids dolls and long hair is for girls announced that he was a girl to a staff member.

What are going to do? Do you explain that he's to young to understand, he just likes what he likes, or do you collude with the nursery staff that your son has declared he is a girl likes stereotypical girl things and therefore actually truly is a girl and change his name from John to Joan?

Because this is exactly what is happening with children even toddlers at the moment. If a girl likes short hair and climbing trees they now get asked if they think they are a boy and if a boy likes sparkly things and dolls grown ups who should know better will tell him as he likes those things he may be a girl and if that's the case then when he grows up he can really be a girl.

The sex discrimination protections would help someone who wanted to do a ‘man’s’ job, but not necessarily protect them if they wanted to wear the man’s uniform instead of the female one, or vice versa, if they weren’t covered by the gender reassignment protection.

@InnCognito thanks for sharing your story. It must have been awful for all of you. I hope your son is doing better now.
And I love your name change so much that I want to change mine to "Ink Og Nito"

we're undstanding the bold part differently.

If I'm correct what @YireosDodeAver means is that women who want to, say, join the army, can't be turned down for being a woman wanting to do a "mans" job based on their sex. Or indeed that a man wanting to be a nurse (largely stereotypically seen as a woman's job) can be turned down because he's a man.

2nd wave feminism got so bloody close, then we took our eye off the ball and assumed that subsequent waves would continue to centre women, even though many thought the sex equality war had been won. (i had it said to my face so many times by younger women - who were fine at work right up until they had a baby, for eg - that gender/sex equality had been achieved)

As we said then i say it again now: a bloke in a dress doing embroidery and watching rom coms isn't a woman. He is a bloke doing "stereotypically female gendered" things and there is nothing wrong with that. Even if other "manly blokes" say "that's girly" and other people say "oh then you are female gendered". He is a man. And that is completely fine. Likewise a female lumberjack who never wears make up, never has a child, drinks beer and burps and farts to olympic standard is still a woman. No matter what anyone says and no matter if she says "I'm not like other girls" (unspoken part: therefore I'm not a gilr)

None of that is anti-trans. It is anti-outdated-gender-stereotypes and pro woman (in that it demands women and men are treated the same in terms of opportunities)

How very privileged are you that you have not yet been impacted by this. I can only assume you are a male poster.

No one should be discriminated against if they choose not to follow the sexist stereotypes that are culturally linked to their birth sex. Protection from discrimination is already law and enfirced well.

The UK doesn’t have laws protecting people from discrimination for not following sexist stereotypes, so they aren’t enforced well as they don’t exist. Those laws are known as gender expression protections. The closest thing in the UK is gender reassignment in the equality act.

I suspect that there cannot be too many people saying this.

Let’s all keep repeating: feminism is about women and girls; focusing on biologically female people is not ‘anti-trans’.

Maybe at some point enough people will say it that all the thoughtlessly #kind people might start to think a bit.

@Itsholly my personal views? Sure. They aren't 100% fixed.

Transition/being trans seems to be a cultural, psychological and sometimes sexual response or coping strategy for a lot of things. It is not a cause but an effect. Trying to fix an unchanging and single legal framework round something like that is quite difficult and imo damaging. Like putting scaffolding around the front of a building when there is a problem with a leak in the basement.

However I would say that the desire either to escape your own sex or to be the other sex is a universal cultural feature for a few people. Some cultures impose it, in that the top man will require young men or gay men who may threaten his power to live as women. In our individualistic and medicine-worshipping culture it is framed as a personal, neurobiological inevitable state that must be accommodated and 'treated', though treatment is to consolidate it and now to push towards an eternally receding perfection.

I think the explosion in girls transitioning is fascinating. I of course find it really sad - I love women, enjoy seeing girls grow up and the idea in general that these kids believe they are men is just depressing and a very obvious deep response to a sexist, lesbophobic, porn-soaked culture and a much more rigid and pressured school culture. Ultimately young people will do things that look crazy to oldsters. Some are crazy, some will develop and settle in what I hope will be a less damaging way.

I will say that there are aspects of sexism that are being exposed by this. There are so many areas of life where sex really doesn't matter in the developed world. There should be a feminist response to that. Ultimately that could be positive.

(Temp name change for privacy)

@Beedleneedle at the beginning of last year I found female hormones and hormone blockers in my son’s room. He is early 20s but quite ‘young’. He had contacted a well known (not sure if I can name them) online trans specialist. After 2 (two) brief calls, one with a ‘counsellor’ (who didn’t appear to do any counselling) and one with a dr, he got his prescription and drugs. These are drugs that can cause long term problems, including infertility. We talked about all his reasons for doing this. Long story short he realised it was a mistake and he stopped taking them.

If I hadn’t have found these it could have been a very different story. What is the relevance to your question? Well. ‘Trans healthcare’ is being painted as lifesaving and vital, and the rigour with which it is delivered together with whether some of it is necessary at all cannot be questioned. Contrast the many investigations that have taken place over the past few years into variously the private prescribing of weight loss drugs, private ADHD diagnoses and the delivery of cosmetic treatments with the absolute failure of most news outlets to look at how life-changing hormones and surgeries are being used to treat our children and young people. When anyone does investigate, they are immediately branded transphobic and attempts are made to shut them down. In addition to the obvious threat to women’s rights that comes from attempting to reclassify what a woman is, I’m immensely suspicious of a movement that is so aggressively committed to shutting down any examination of what it does and how it operates.

And to reiterate what others have said. This isn’t anti trans. It’s applying the same standards to everyone. Largely the debates here are about being pro women, but there are also issues around compelled belief (that we wouldn’t accept from say religious people) and as I outline lack of critical oversight of healthcare.

may i be the 94th person to say it isn't an anti-trans debate it is a pro-women and women's rights debate.

Surely the Post Office scandal has taught us that no one is really that safe from being sent to prison?

Found the information

What a load of bolloxk. Being so inclusive and the exclusion of real girls and women.

www.girlguiding.org.uk/information-for-volunteers/running-your-unit/including-all/lgbt-members/supporting-trans-members/

I can’t believe you can live in a world where nothing bothers you unless it happens to you directly and where you have no concern or compassion towards others simply because you aren’t affected by the issue.

Do you not get angry by the fact that women and children are abused all around the world?

Do you not get angry that thousands of people around the world are being killed in wars?

Do you not get angry that innocent people are murdered every day for no reason? Do you remember about 6 months ago a teenage girl got stabbed to death at a bus stop by her ex because she had broken up with him. Do you not see the injustice in that? Or are you not bothered because it happened to someone else?

Or what about children that are killed by dogs - do they not matter as it’s not your child that’s been killed?

Is that why you don’t care about trans-men, because it’s other women being pushed out of sports or being attacked, and not you or somebody you know?

I’m sure all of these issues anger you, I was purely posing the question to prove a point.

We don’t have to be directly affected by something to know that there are social problems that are unjust and that people suffer as a result.

What is happening to women as a result of trans-men claiming they are women and wanting to be treated as such is a massive, massive problem.

Thankfully most women want to come together to try and tackle it because they understand it’s a global issue that seems to be getting more and more out of hand, and they support and stand up for eachother rather than selfishly only care about themselves.

We're not allowed to tell parents so it has to be anonymously

I didn't know that about guides and camp.

Can I ask what your views are?

Do you have an opinion on why more males seem to transition to female?

Is the reason for transitioning the same for every person and if not what is the most common reason?

Where does mental health fit in with all this?

Think of the creepiest man you know, one that you don't feel safe around as he's a sleaze who would sexually assault you given half the chance.

Now imagine him saying he's a woman, would you feel happy being on a hospital ward with him? How about being locked in a prison cell with him? Being convicted of a crime you didn't commit is all over the news at the moment due to the post office so don't assume it will never happen to you.

Is it anti trans to not feel comfortable with those scenarios? We are fighting to preserve women's rights, if the anti women transactivists weren't trying to take these away, we wouldn't be having these conversations.

As a guider, I am expected by HQ to accept a boy if he says he's a girl. HQ also expect me to take teenage boy to camp, sharing a tent with the girls but I am not allowed to let the parents know. Following Girlguiding rules mean that pregnancy is now a possible result of camp. Should parents know that their daughters are sharing a tent with a boy? Do you trust teenage hormones?

I was properly peaked when I read a woman’s experience of being sexually abused by a transwoman in prison.

I have never been in prison and hope I’m lucky enough never to experience incarceration so that policy doesn’t affect me personally but I am furious that any woman in prison in the UK should ever be locked up with a man, however he might identify.

OP. You can’t have children at secondary school if you have no experience of trans issues. Even if they go to a school that hasn’t been stonewalled there will likely be a number of children, mostly but not exclusively girls, who identify as trans.

I'm an extremely ordinary mum in my 50s.

I married a desister in the 90s.
I have 2 cousins who've transitioned surgically. A male one years ago, a female one very recently.
I know several young girls and women who have transitioned, a mix of social and some medical transition.
I worked in a health service unit that had a specialist strand for trans people - it was about 8 years ago so at that time it was 100% male people transitioning. That particular experience nearly broke me.
A friend of a friend worked at the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock.
A very close friend's spouse has transitioned.

I actually can't think of any single other condition that I have had MORE personal experience of knowing people with. And each one of those situations listed has contributed to my views.

This is like that article someone posted about semantic gentrification. But with the additional redefinition of any position we might take as ‘anti-trans’ and, therefore, bigoted and nasty.

Its about preventing any discussion or debate.

Given then TRAs pop along all the time to demand MNers account for their awful ‘anti-trans’ stance (with absolutely no intent to listen to MNers or to try to understand any position that isn’t enshrined in their own activism), very few people are going to believe this OP is asking in good faith.

I see it in so many areas of my life through my job, through my children and their school, through my volunteer work and the places I go in the city I live. It's exhausting but I will stand up for women and children

I get red flags from the words “anti trans”. It’s not “anti trans” to prioritise women’s rights and needs. It’s perfectly reasonable we are forced to take a defensive position if our reasonable protective provisions that have been in place for years are stripped away because of the feelings of a minority of men. We are going to push back. Odd that that is seen as an attack on trans rights. They attacked women’s rights first we can’t just accede.

It’s pro women sex based rights generally so the framing of ‘anti trans’ is incorrect

Plus gender ideology impacts a lot

I hate this twisting of things to insist any objection to gender ideology is ‘anti-trans’.

It’s not.

If you actually wanted a conversation, I doubt you’d pick ‘you’re all anti-trans [with bigots implied]; this doesn’t even affect you. So why are you so horrible?’