"Trans people have always been here!"

Actually, it sounds quite a nice way to live. You're saying 'I am so special that anyone who argues or upsets me should be ostracised, hounded and demonised. I must be given everything I want and I don't have to care about anyone else's feelings.'

The only problem is that you'd either need to have an empathy and conscience bypass or never have had them in the first place.

Just to add, it shouldn't be too hard to believe given until the SC clarified things, TIM were happily using the facilities 'they felt most comfortable with' with the full backing of most major institutions, the NHS included. I didn't notice the NHS issuing guidelines about not following women and girls into toilets to TIM then, and they've not been exactly rushing to do it now. The difference between 'use the toilets (or changing room) you're most comfortable with' and 'use the women's toilets' is no difference at all when they mean one and the same space.

Control of the past is a well known propaganda technique used to rewrite and reframe history with a view to controlling the future.

This isn't some kind of revolutionary concept. Perhaps the best known example invokes Godwin and is about drawing a link between ancient Roman and a form of (then) 'modern' thinking to legitimise a particular regime.

It is however, it's very much not alone in this, and if you go through history you can find examples all over the place. It's how you create a 'legitimate claim to the throne' so to speak.

Do we learn nothing in history any more?!

You really need to stop applying contemporary understanding to a time before that understanding existed. No one would have thought in terms of 'following girls into toilets' apart from some wise women who may have seen this happening, but would have been ignored. Men carrying out 'sex changes' on men would be thinking of those men. The impact on women and girls wouldn't have crossed their minds. Women have had to fight very hard for the awareness you take for granted and are erroneously believing existing 30 odd years ago.

Well you may believe what you choose, of course. I'm simply repeating an anecdote involving one TIM I knew 30 years ago who had nothing to gain from lying to me, as back then I'd have not challenged his use of the women's toilets anyway, as I had not thought through the repercussions or known where we'd end up.
Neither would the therapists for that matter, as the risk you're referring to, that with our current awareness we take as read, had not been recognised. Its taken a long time for those women who saw it to be heard and taken seriously.

You arent a man who has been told to use the womens toilets.

Everyone is forgetting that if a therapist tells a man to use womens toilets, hes telling a man to follow girls into toilets. Remember the men are saying this happens before surgery or drug and before any diagnosis? How would that get through NHS guidance?

As I said, it definitely happened in my country (France) as late as 13 years ago. It's the reason I paid for a lot of my mastectomy's cost: because I didn't want to go through the "official teams", and have to wait one or two years while already presenting as a man, and jump through whatever additional hoops they might have in mind, before accessing hormones and surgeries. That doesn't mean I didn't get therapy, mind you: I just didn't get it through them.

And the thing about Hayley Cropper is that if we were all accepting of old school transsexuals, why did we need educating via corrie, and why was the characters played by a woman?

Thirty years ago was 1995, not 1950.

I'm just not buying the idea that in the 1990s NHS therapists would tell men to use the womens toilets and changing rooms in order to get a diagnosis and treatment. Its not provable, therefore cannot be used as part of the diagnosis and the risk to the therapist if something bad happened would be too high.

Its far more likely that these men would say anything to justify what they want to do, and saying its being sanctioned by a doctor sound as if its out of their control.

Also, how many of these men got anywhere near a therapist? Its probably a myth they've been told by other men.

Obvs. IIRC that's box number one on the TRAs bingo card.

That too. Your polite tolerance and social courtesy isn't enough. You need to be all in with every single demand, every single claim we make. There is no compromise. Pick a side. Small wonder how many of the formerly tolerant have done just that. And what an own goal for the TRA thats been.

And if you have a problem with this then you must wish me harm and/or be actively trying to kill me.

Absolutely, pity was a huge part. I can personally testify to feeling very sorry indeed for the man I knew. How awful for him to long so much to be what I was! How horrible it would be to have that operation! What a shame it was that despite all his efforts he did not and never would really look like a woman, and people would laugh and be unkind to him. My empathy cup was overflowing and I would bend over backwards to affirm him. (Though I didn't know that word for my OTT compliments on how nice his dress looked and my performative public references to him as a lady then.) All I knew was that this nice man was suffering because he wanted something I had and the least I could do was to share it with him.

I have read descriptions from early transitioners saying that doctors/psychiatrists gave guidance on when and how to start using women’s spaces.

I also read an account, perhaps by Blanchard, but perhaps another early medic, saying that it was discussed, but that the men had mostly already been using women’s spaces.

We know, for example, from his own description, that Eddie Izzard invaded the women’s simply on the grounds that he felt uncomfortable in the men’s with women’s clothes on. Presumably for such men, women were irrelevant and all consideration was for themselves and perhaps their fellow men.

My guess is that there would have been a mixture. Some early transitioners would be completely self-centre, others less so. This might also be somewhat correlated with their reasons for it and their sexuality.

@timesublimelysilencesthewhys

“If there were truly a group of men who were tolerated as honorary women, it says a lot about how women are conditioned to tolerate a lot from men.”

This, of course, is a massive factor. I think though that you missed the other angle that transsexuals were also broadly tolerated because women felt sorry for them. Hayley from Coronation St presented a warm and gentle image of a poor soul, subject to bullying when discovered, rescued by a nice kind man. Doubtless women would have been keen to show their kindness credentials and that they were welcoming to those in a difficult position.

My country is a bit behind, and all that was still happening 13 years ago when I transitioned. The "official" medical teams - the ones people went to when they couldn't afford the surgeries through partially private means - demanded exactly that: "You first have to live one or two years as a woman, but we are not going to provide you with anything to help you pass."

The idea this pushed boundaries wouldn't even have occurred as the impact on women of men using our facilities wasn't anything that was greatly considered.

Indeed.

You are looking at something that happened over 30 years ago through todays lens.
The condition of treatment was to convince the practitioners that before embarking on this life changing irreversible journey, that the person was genuine in, and certain of, their wish to 'change sex'.
The recommended means to be certain was to trial life as that sex. Which absolutely included using women's facilities. Obviously it wasn't provable, but no less so than today's 'diagnosis' that rests on self reported feelings.
The idea this pushed boundaries wouldn't even have occurred as the impact on women of men using our facilities wasn't anything that was greatly considered. Certainly not by practitioners arranging 'sex changes' for men.

It would be unethical to provide medical care and surgery based on club membership, and how could any prove which toilets they use?

To get at diagnosis, the patient would have to demonstrate that its a persistent feeling and presentation, not a temp one. So name change. A therapist might ask how successful their 'transition' is, and are happy with the limitations. And an unethical one might suggest pushing boundaries, but that would never have been a conditionof treatment.

Thats interesting. The person I knew described himself as having been born 'in the wrong body' and approaching his doctor to request a 'sex change' and was then advised of the 12 month trial period/evidence gathering before treatment could commence. This person didn't think he was a woman 'yet', but that he would be at the end of a process of treatment that culminated in removing his testicles and inverting his penis.
The idea that changing genitalia could result in (and was required to) 'change sex', which I think persists to an extent in mainstream thinking today, is interesting (true trans). As is the idea that a person was actually changing, rather than aligning with what they always really were. Both being quite different from the thinking of the current TRAs.

Yes, it is. Gender discomfort, as it is now called, is predicated on social and cultural and experiential factors such as childhood trauma, same sex attraction etc.

I just think it's really pointless as a phrase. But I suppose it sounds good to uncritical thinkers. What's it meant to prove? OK, you've always been here, but honestly...so what? What am I meant to do with that information? You're still a bloke and women still need their SSS. The End.

Yes. It all traces back to the first male people who went through treatment. I remember reading about one of these very early male transitioners who said clearly that his doctor (it was a male doctor because he mentioned his name) told him to use the female toilets etc from now on.

Because he said, his doctor told him that he was a woman now.

Of course, we know there are female doctors who say this too (Webberley, Dr Ada Cheung etc) but I think it is fair to say that this initial 'permission' was granted by male doctors with little thought to female people at all.

When I knew a man many years ago who 'had a sex change' as it was known, he had been advised that prior to starting medical interventions he must first spend a year 'living as a woman'. This required him to gather evidence to prove his desire was genuine. This basically involved adopting a female name and pronouns and engaging in as many female stereotypes and activities which are the preserve of women as he could. Joining the WI would have been an excellent example to prove he was sincere.
While I've no doubt much pleasure was had from drinking tea in a flowery dress and otherwise role playing tropes of women, I think its fair to acknowledge that these men were actually advised by care practitioners to do this, and their route to a 'sex change' required this sort of thing.