I hope you will be proud of me..

I used to explain it thus;

Sex is knowing you have a baby boy or girl.

Gender is feeling slightly uncomfortable that your son is desperate to do ballet.

I assume men are more likely to have a ‘problem’ if their son wants to become a ballet dancer. (As a mother, I would think there is a shortage of male ballet dancers worldwide so they would always find work!)

Is that really your first thought?

Yes! I’ve known some men who didn’t want their sons to take ballet. They were fine with their daughters doing ballet.

What’s been your experience?

And fwiw it's often easier for girls to act gnc than for boys. The stigma is very strong & deep for boys. It's seen as lowering themselves to lean towards/choose the 'feminine' coded gender choices. Conversely, girls are often admired for choosing to 'punch up' to male gendered norms.

Of course this is all rooted in sexism.

I should add for completeness that of course many parents also harbour prejudices themselves. But from a feminist pov, I'd say gnc behaviour can still provoke mixed feelings for the reasons I gave above. There's also the possibility that a gnc child may provoke memories of a parent's own experiences as a child and maybe react out of those. Parenting can be more complicated in practise than in theory.

I'd like to see a modern Billy Elliot where a father from Islington is horrified when his son decides to become a coal miner. Where's the future in that? And why would a normal bloke want to be underground with all those men?

I'd like to see a modern Billy Elliot where a father from Islington is horrified when his son decides to become a coal miner. Where's the future in that? And why would a normal bloke want to be underground with all those men?

I'd like to see a modern Billy Elliot where a father from Islington is horrified when his son decides to become a coal miner. Where's the future in that? And why would a normal bloke want to be underground with all those men?

Trans women are women. They live, work, are sexually harassed and experience vulnerability to cis male violence exactly as did women do.

Trans women using public toilets - completely open spaces containing cubicles, which anyone can walk into - does not endanger us. Predatory cis men do.

Encouraging hate against a minority, and denying who they are, has never made us safe.

If chat forums like this had existed in the 1980s/90s, do you know who would have been the focus?

Gay men.

I grew up with that. How gay men should not be allowed to use public toilets because they were all fetishists who only used them for sex, to watch straight men or commit rape there. Because being gay wasn't real. Gay men were created by abuse, reading about being gay, and/or not being patented properly. Not being allowed to be masculine by mum's who wanted a girl instead. Being gay was called a lifestyle choice. Opinion colunmists argued there was no scientific basis for gay sexuality - it was all a choice and a perversion. Harmful to children. Sound familiar?

Transphobia is the recycled, vile homophobia which destroyed so many young gay lives. And a fair amount is recycled racism as well - notably the bits about inherently aggression.

While hypersexuality is a trope recycled from racism, homophobia - and porn.

Telling women that they'll be safe going into public toilets once trans women are banned, because cis men observe a fictional social contract not to enter, is both insulting and dangerous.

Most cis men don't go into the Ladies because there are no urinals, the queues are longer and they don't want to. Not because they are noble.

But the predatory cis men who have always gone in, can now claim to be trans guys if challenged.

They not only went in when they wanted (to hide in cubicles and wait for a woman to be alone) before, they now have an excuse if caught.

Well done the anti-trans movement. Forever parroting the myths of the far right which claim Strong Men are the answer.

Men attack us in public and nothing is done. They attack us on buses, in the street, in our homes, at work, in pubs - often in front of witnesses. The idea they'd go to all the effort of transitioning so as to use public toilets is laughable, and a male idea of what sexual violence actual is.

Most men have no real clue what it's like to live with the constant threat of sexual violence. Trans women do - because they're targeted by them as well.

Men like to imagine that women have sanctuaries and safe spaces (granted by them, because they're so noble) because they don't want to hear the brutal reality of how women live. We will see absolutely no progress until that is addressed.

It really is rooted in sexism!

Male ballet dancers possess immense physical strength, power and stamina that rival or exceed professional athletes in heavy contact sports, but often male ballet dancers are seen as feminine or effeminate.

If anyone is in any doubt about this, they need to watch the documentary about the Royal Ballet Principal dancer Stephen McRae entitled 'Dancing back to the light', which follows the journey of the father of three back to fitness after a catastrophic injury.

For my birthday this year, DS and DD took me to the Royal Opera House to see the Royal Ballet perform La Fille Mal Gardee. Stephen McRae should have been the male lead for that performance and after seeing the documentary I was really looking forward to watching him dance, but sadly he was unwell and the understudy stepped in.

What a lovely gift. McRae snapped his achilles tendon didn't he? Coming back from that must be a challenge.
The strength & resilience of male ballet dancers is often underestimated.