Sarah Phillimore and Robin Moira White interviewed by Andrew Doyle

Frankly the less people butcher themselves the better as far as I’m concerned.

I’d never criticise someone for avoiding surgery

Many trans women manage to change their voices without surgery but I think it does involve quite a lot of hard work.

This thread has made me cackle. And I never had chin hair before I joined Mumsnet.

Not so much radicalised as bewitched!

The other point RMW fails to mention (or perhaps chooses to ignore) is that RMW could choose not to have vocal surgery in order to leave RMW’s voice as it is and avoid any potential impact on work.

Women don’t get the choice of whether they are treated as lesser because they are women. They may choose not to have children but they will still be discriminated against because, by virtue of being female, they might get pregnant.

One of the (many) fundamental issues with this forced teaming of women and people who identify as women is the option to opt in and out of womanhood, including others’ perceptions of what you will or won’t do.

Leafstamp · Today 14:48

OldCrone · Today 00:56

“It is also strange that someone who is living as though they are a woman is impervious to so many concerns of women and advocating against them.”

A male person cannot live as though he is a woman. Male people who say they are living as women tend to live as a male fantasy of what it is to be a woman. Their concerns are male concerns. They don't understand what it is like to be a woman, but it is odd that they have no interest in trying to understand. They seem to think they know better than actual women what being a woman is like, because of their superior male brains or something. Like mansplaining womanhood to women.

100%

Only adult human females can live as women.

I said that about living “as though they are a woman” and thought the “though” was enough to make it clear the state of living that way isn’t real.

Otherwise I agree with you both, but would like advice about what would be a better description - true but not unduly derogatory?

100%

Only adult human females can live as women.

And this

I wanted to join in with the other posters hard agreeing with this.

I am really annoyed with 15 year old me. I denied the true witch in me, fell for the social and medical pressure and got them frozen off.

I feel so let down by the people around me who told me I wasn't a witch, when it's obvious I was born a bloody witch, and that in order to be a proper girl I'd need to remove an essential part of who I am.

Now at 50 as I come into my full witching powers I find myself shunned from the supposedly more inclusive tervens due to my lack of witchy warts.

I've tried stick on one's but they tend to fall into the cauldron due to the heat and It just fucks up the spells. The guy next door has been trying to work out where his extra three legs have come from, and I was only trying to mute the sound of his tv.

Luckily you lot here accept my youthful attempts to deny the true witch I've always been and accept I am a true witch despite my youthful stupidity in removing a perfectly good part of my body.

Now I'd better get my cauldron going there's some dodgy double parker outside who needs to discover on his return that he parked his car in Albania.

I wear a lot of black and have been known to have a hairy chin.
Not sure if that makes me a witch or a transwoman though.

Sorry, further to my pp, I should clarify it's this duck

And whose behaviour is always instantly identifiable as being of the same sex class as that bloke in that work meeting who always insists on asking your male subordinate questions only you can answer and then goes red in the face when you point this out.

I remain endlessly fascinated by the men who insist they are women, but then seem distressed to discover they don't actually like women that much.

I weigh less than a duck.

It’s lovely to still have so many friends from school…

Hogwarts, obvs.

Also don’t forget all your warts Tinsel

<nods sagely>

I have not one, but several cauldrons.
I am green. It's not easy.

Hence all the buttergasping and ‘you’re so rude’ when someone says ‘but you’re not a woman’

because there’s no answer to that, because men aren’t women, and any man who says he is is lying or delusional. It’s not complicated or rude, those are just the facts

so it had to become too rude to say. We just have to ignore that and keep saying it. I think we’re coming out the other side now

I've got a besom and a bosom.
<proud>

I have not one, but several cauldrons.

Sorry not sorry.

<shyly raises hand>

I've been known to cackle.

Quite.

but insisting that you are a member of the opposite sex, something that is literally impossible, does of course reveal disordered thinking.

I've had posts deleted in the past for saying that truly believing you are the opposite sex is a delusion, but what else can it be? Anyone who truly believes they are something they are not is suffering from a delusion.

I think we’ve all been reluctant to say that by definition trans people have disordered views about sex because it feels like a sweeping generalisation and we get told they are bad

but insisting that you are a member of the opposite sex, something that is literally impossible, does of course reveal disordered thinking.

how could it not?

Baldieheid · Today 09:20

Cauldrons? Only cauldrons?

What about the cats? I've got 3, Robin. THREE of the feckers. Doesn't that count for anything???

No, you must have a besom, too. It's The Law, sorry.

Thank you @BernardBlacksMolluscs for articulating so clearly a concern that has remained stubbornly unformed in my mind.