Push and pull factors in transitioning

But what's the difference between him amd other transwomen? Sexual assault aside? If you call some she, surely you have to call then all she.

Your willing cognitive dissonance is baffling if not surprising to me. It's all a bit Sturgeon.

I'm interested in the boundary between push and pull. When does not wanting to be your actual sex cross-over into wanting to be, or even believing you are, the opposite sex? Why do some people not stop at removing or reducing or trying to hide their sex characteristics? Why do they then move on to trying to mimic opposite-sex characteristics and stereotypes?

Your OP is very well put and it makes really important strategic points about who is vulnerable and who isn’t and who is benefiting from the conflating and obscuring that is being done. Thank you so much for this.

No, I feel no obligation to call that person ‘she’. He is a serial sex offender and I think it’s offensive to refer to him as ‘she’.

I haven’t said anywhere that women should share spaces with him or other trans women…

There’s one other type of people who identify as trans. They are what I would once have called the ‘misfits’ of society. They would have been kids on the periphery of all the different social groups in their teens, not sporty, not clever, not musical, not attractive. They would have been children who went under the radar in school.
Now, those very same people have discovered that if they self identify as trans (and often physically disabled and ND), they garner a great deal of attention because suddenly it’s cool to be ‘marginalised’; they see celebrities championing their cause, MPs telling parliament that these people deserve love, and kindness, and support - even going so far as telling them that these people deserve laws to be changed so that men can have unfettered access to women’s spaces, and women should be able to get their breasts removed as its empowerment. So now, those once considered misfits are at the apex of the pyramid of identity.

It follows the brilliant saying: women run from things and men run toward things.

I think we'd all like an answer to this.

Right.

So why are you calling him 'he'? Wouldn't that make him 'she' according to you?

And 'she' should have access to women's spaces, correct?

So how do you explain that to biological women? Why are you making their spaces less safe by subjecting them to Paula? What have they done to deserve that? How is that right or fair?

Yes, unfortunately he is

I am speaking from experience of trans people in my family, as well as observing the online behaviour of many others.

At that point they stop being trans and become a cis man. You have to stay in character.

He's one of the trans-est I've seen.

So is Paula a 'transperson' or not?

The perceived advantage of not having to perform femininity (or having to believe you have failed at performing femininity) cannot be discounted though.

There is also a new phenomenon in young trans-identifying girls, that they dress extremely femininely - low cut tops, very short skirts, heavy makeup, super high heels - while simultaneously stating that they are boys. If you think about it, this makes a weird kind of sense: if they are boys dressing like this, then it is a choice - “I am a boy who chooses to dress femme” rather than “I am a girl who is conforming to the world’s expectation of how I should present.”

This all feels like a “running away” from femaleness, and all its accompanying baggage. A push, but not towards something, rather away from it.

women don't need to pretend to be male in order to get sexual access to men

Not quite true. Young women do it to get access to gay men, just like men do it to get access to lesbians.

I do think there are fewer middle-aged transmen than transwomen, but one important factor is visibility.

First, lots of transmen can easily pass as queer women, so they wouldn't necessarily be counted as transmen to begin with. Transwomen, especially middle-aged ones, are much more visibly transwomen rather than gay men for example.

Another factor is, well, exhibitionism. There are plenty of "quiet" transwomen who don't try to attract anybody's attention, but there is also an awful lot of "loud" ones who want to be seen. Transmen, by contrast, tend to be mostly on the quieter side, not as showy or attention-demanding (we were, after all, socialised as women.)

So all in all, I think that even if there were the same number of middle-aged TM and TW, there would appear to be a lot more TW.

The young women I know who claim.trans or non-binary identities have all suffered from mental health issues and in several cases abuse. It seemed clear to me they were running away from, rather than towards.

In Time To Think, Hannah Barnes discusses this with stats to back it up. These girls are damaged and desperately trying to find a way to live safely. It's a tragedy that the lie they've been sold as something to help, will instead harm them.

Can you clarify point 2?
Does anyone need to pretend to be a different sex to get sexual access to anyone? I don’t think many men increase their chances of sexual access to men or women by transitioning. In fact I always thought it tragic they are likely to significantly reduce their chances of finding someone compatible.

Increased opportunities for voyeurism, I suppose.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Are you arguing that mental illnesses are unfalsifiable? Because, well, that's just not true, is it?

I agree, OP- interesting points.

I tell you what I'm fed up of, and it's trolls deliberately going off on a silly argument to derail threads on this topic.

No it was your failure to acknowledge the broad range of people that claim a trans identity. Precisely on point.

No one here has asked to open up women’s spaces. You’ve come here and hijacked a discussion on the reasons why people transition.

This is a typical MALE crime. 99% of sexual crimes are committed by males which is why we keep males out of places where women and girls are vilulnerable. Transwomen are male. You are asking to open up women's spaces to these sorts of crimes and then use the criminal justice system after the damage has been done. How about a simpler solutuon. Keep males out of female spaces. Was that difficult to follow?

Ahaha. Come on, this is just silly. You're either a believer, or you aren't.