Aren't transpeople still a tiny minority?

Thank you for posting this, it’s really interesting.

because they want to be in womens spaces....

I think you have continued to attempt to polarise people’s words. For instance, you seem take staement about fetishists and to mean ALL male trans people, when it doesn’t necessarily refer to all male trans people. That is you choosing to interpret it as a generalised comment.

You keep referring to us having to advocate for people like your child in all our aims and never acknowledging that this is not our role. If you feel strongly about this, form your own advocacy group. Of course, we have been advocating for additional spaces already and for better medical support for people including mental health support to allow people to live without hormone treatments and surgeries.

It is wrong of you to expect us to centre your child in our own work though. It was not respectful to any poster to attempt to shame them for not using the pronouns you want to use for your child, yet you have not acknowledged this either.

Instead you expect people to act as a support for your child and his decisions and you label it as respectful, when it actually is you placing obligations that you personally accepted for whatever reasons on others.

I can fully appreciate the difficult situation you are in. I can also understand how worried you are for the future. As a start, if your child take hormones, how likely is it that he will continue to follow your thinking that he hasn’t changed sex? You might find all that work you have done to strike what you consider a balance is all significantly changed. Yet, as he is an adult, what can you do.

The reason you are getting the pushback that you are and you end up feeling like you are repeating yourself is that you have placed unreasonable expectations on others.

No matter how you have explained it in your own head, your child has a belief that his subjective reality is material reality. The expectation is that it is somehow respectful that others treat that subjective reality as if it is material reality.

Sure, you say he knows he is male. But he likes it when people use female pronouns and female descriptors for him, else you wouldn’t do it. Even adding trans in front of daughter does that. You can use that language, not one other person should be expected to though.

You insist there is a middle ground. Is there a middle ground? I consider the only middle ground suggested involves changing established language for an entire society to suit someone’s subjective reality that is not material reality. Even if you say ‘but it is just a few of them’ or ‘we don’t really know how they feel but it makes them happy’ as a reason, the middle ground is not middle ground at all.

The actual middle ground would be more like additional provisions and accurate language is maintained for all who wish to use it with not emotional manipulation to force compliance. Ie. No expectation at all when people are speaking to you about your son.

But instead we keep getting accusations that we moderate and change our language to suit your personal interpretation of statements. As has been said already, instead of assuming that statements about fetishists don’t mean all trans people, you want people to add a disclaimer because of your personal interpretation that they must mean all trans people are fetishists.

That could be considered a disruptive tactic, and one that could be intended to silence discussion.

So, if they can do that when all trans are swimming, then why can't the transwomen keep the hell out of women's facilities the rest of the time?

No man knows what it is like to be a woman. So when they say they identify as a woman they are saying they identify as a male’s fantasy of a woman - and that fantasy is driven by porn amongst other things.

Just because a man decides that they would rather identify as more feminine, what makes you believe that their inherent male personality/traits/actions change because of this???

do you believe that a man putting on a dress and a smear of lippy magically changes him into a rainbow farting unicorn???

of course it doesn’t, and it’s been proved time and time again, that offending rates of cross dressing men is higher than for men without this urge.

in fact in many police forces cross dressing was seen as a prequel to extreme sexual harassment or abuse.

These men have become emboldened by the taking away of our safeguarding. In many cases this isn’t ‘transgender’ it’s just cross dressing…a sexual fetish coming out in the open for us all to have to deal with. The fact they feel brave enough to colonise our safe spaces shows how far this lunacy has gone.

Part of the reinforcement for many for trans (not OCD) is of course sexual.

They aren't yet acknowledging that trans people do have a right to present as they wish and to move through life with dignity.
He can present as a woman, but in doing so he needs to respect the dignity of others, not just his own.

This is why I loathe drag. It's such a crude parody. It's reductive and insulting.

Trans is like OCD - obsessions (identifying as opposite sex) then compulsions (acting out this obsession) which provides some relief to the obsession which also reinforce the obsession leading further compulsions in a destructive cycle. Like OCD it requires the individual to realise the obsession are not real but are destructive thoughts and to step out of the cycle.

Yep. An umbrella term that encompasses such different meanings seems quite meaningless in itself.

Either its gender non conformity, or its pretending to be the opposite sex. The first shouldn't be an issue. The second can cause all sorts of problems.

@Diverze I have a lot of sympathy for parents who have a child that declared they were the opposite sex. It must be incredibly difficult to navigate if as a parent you feel that this is a futile path to go down and yet the powers that be will all jump to affirm your child's understanding, from school to therapists to the medical system, media and so on. It must be like walking a tightrope where one step out of place and your child could cut you off - again persuaded by the messaging that is ubiquitous eg. What sticks in mind was a meme going around where well meaning and not so well meaning people shared "If your parents don't understand you, I'm your mother now". In addition, there was something around "chosen family" that I think may have appeared in the likes of Primark and other stores.
I get how hard that must be and how much better it must feel to try to push those nagging doubts down and try to "meet your child where they are at".

A parent with a child is really not functioning in a vacuum but within a system that tells everyone that up is down and down is up.

The problem is that it isn't one thing.

It's used to describe a medical condition similar to anorexia; gender non-conformity; men who, by their own testimony, are indulging a fetish; people who in previous decades would have identified with subcultures like punk.

I'm sure that isn't an exhaustive list.

And meanwhile, sex has not stopped being relevant and women still need sex specific rights.

Posting this again because it is so good. I recommend reading the whole thing:
https://x.com/prof_curiosity1/status/2046106359247077884

Excerpt:

None of this means the young person is lying, performing, or acting in bad faith. It means that the certainty is doing a job, that the job is psychological rather than epistemic, and that the certainty will remain impervious to reasoned challenge for as long as the underlying distress that the identity is managing remains unaddressed......

....The certainty is real. It is also a symptom. Treating it as a symptom rather than a conclusion is where the clinical and parental work actually begins.

Encouraging people to 'admit to oneself that one is trans and that being trans is ok' is surely entrenching the identity that is managing the distress, rather than dealing with the distress. It might be a useful interim phase, but it should not be an end point.

Absolutely.
I had this convo with one of my DC, who thinks I'm a mean old terf. I had to explain that we'd already offered third spaces as a possible solution and been shouted down.

After the behaviour of the trans lobby, and the time and money I've put in to pushing for the retention of women's rights, and the resentment I feel about the waste of that when we could have been making world better for women rather than trying to hang on to what we have already fought for, and the utter fury I feel about all those young bodies forever damaged by hormones and surgery because of this acceptable delusion that you can change sex, well, I'm not helping them.

They did their utmost, in the most aggressive and spiteful ways, to make their problem our problem, and they're still doing it. Not all trans people, obviously, but the influential ones. The more moderate ones (with one or two exceptions) haven't had the insight or the guts to stand up to the bully-boys (and they are almost without exception male) so I find it very hard to dredge up any sympathy. Yes, I know autistic teens and YAs are wildly over-represented, but my concern is with women's rights. Once upon a time, I'd probably have helped the autistic ones find a voice, but not any more. I'm done, and have been for some time. Stonewall can fucking do it. They're a campaigning organisation. I'm not.

I would do what I could to help detransitioners, especially the female ones, who I feel have been sold a pup, but the trans community as a group has been selfish, greedy and extremely unpleasant. The goodwill, the 'let's find a way' attitude that I once had, has not evaporated - it's been burned off by their aggression.

You made your bed, so you can damn well lie in it. Don't expect women to 'be kind' - yet again.

It's correct that gender ideology has been pushed in schools, by the media, in adult education and the government.

Its a very powerful movement. But at no point did the movement say 'and what we need is to acknowledge gender nonconformity and build third spaces'.

That's something that people outside of the belief system see as a compromise. Those who have trans identifying friends and relatives often think its feminism thats stopping this happening and should do something about it.

It isnt, the trans movement don't want it, so the government didn't legislate for it.

Your son doesn't really want a third space. He wants the woman's space because if transition is real to him, a half arsed compromise will never be enough.

You want what's best for your son, but you are asking other women to spend time and energy providing it for you. If a third space is what you want, you fight for it.

Trans is the exact opposite of gender-nonconformity. It is extreme gender conformity - and imposing this gender conformity on others. It defines men and women by conformity to sexist regressive and oppressive gender constructs.

I mean, what IS being trans at its heart?

For me, it's just gender non conformity, which we were becoming a lot more open to before the concept of 'being trans' disrupted it completely.

No human can change their sex. But there is no 'right' way to be male or female. That's the sensible, healthy message in my eyes.

@Diverze
"but I think it's mentally unhealthy not to admit to oneself that one is trans and being trans is ok."

May I please ask what your definition is of 'is trans'?

Do you mean wider societal issues have caused the person to form a strong and unshakeable belief? What belief? (I'm trying not to assume or put words into your mouth)

Do you mean someone who was always going to grow up to believe they were trans regardless of outside factors? Again not sure what trans means to you?

You have indicated that your child's school has been massively instrumental in your child being trans. But from what I have quoted, it sounds like you don't think it would be healthy for your child to examine where their understanding of themself came from in any wider context because they are simply trans?

Whereas starving to death does solve the problem?

To the PP who asked about medical transition - that's a private matter and I won't be answering. Thank you!

I think that you did say upthread that he was on the list for hormones

What I am trying to say is that in complex conditions where a person has beliefs about themself that are not in line with objective reality it's not as simple as where many PPS have hinted I should "stop pandering to him and he'll get over it". Because in anorexia, so often used as a comparison as a delusion that is not routinely affirmed, where people may have to be hospitalised for months, tube fed, etc, medically and psychologically aggressive non affirmation still doesn't solve the problem completely for more than half. And it's also closely linked with autism btw.

I really do feel like we are going round in circles here and I feel like I am just saying the same thing over and over so I am bowing out, noting that the poster above this post continues to portray trans women as fetishists parading round. So I am wasting my breath with some people who refuse to comprehend that trans people are just people. Some are horrible, some are not.

To the PP who asked about medical transition - that's a private matter and I won't be answering. Thank you!

They aren't yet acknowledging that trans people do have a right to present as they wish and to move through life with dignity.

Why do they have ‘a right to present as they wish’ when that wish is to dress in fetish-wear or parody of womanhood? And it is not ‘moving through life with dignity’ to demand everyone around you affirms your delusion, take part in your fetish or trample the rights and boundaries of the opposite sex.

They get as far as Be K, and then the splintery rolling pin comes down.

Transition is impossible. He will always be a man regardless of how many drugs or extreme cosmetic surgeries he has.