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People with a cervix is usually preferred
Preferred by whom?
People with cervixes who aren't women, some women without cervixes.
I think you're confused, I'm a man trying very hard to stay away from women's spaces
Ok. How about “do you agree there are obvious dangers in allowing penis owners access to women’s spaces?
The danger is not the person having a penis. The danger is a possible predator. To insist the penis is the problem, not the behaviour, is insisting the danger is innate in the body and unchangeable. Safety should always be key but safety should be raised and encouraged to begin with.
^I felt I was a boy
I'm greatly mentally more comfortable now that I'm seen as a man
Feelings have no gender^
Are you able to see the contradiction in what you have written?
The difference is innate feelings, which describe who you are, and cognitive feelings. I assumed the latter was hinted at, which I might've needed to ask on about.
Why are your feelings about not wanting to be referred to as a woman more important than my feelings about not wanting to be referred to as a person with a cervix?
If you have a cervix and you need treatment for it, it may be wise to address the cervix as such. Then you are a woman with a cervix. I'm not insisting you need to refer to yourself as a person with a cervix, I'm not insisting others need to refer to women with cervixes as 'people with cervixes', it's that the health care for people with cervixes who aren't women would drastically increase if hospitals and specialists stopped refusing treatment (which blocks even the most willing person) or automatically insisted on treating patients as women (which blocks people who are already hampered by the invasiveness of the treatment).
Would you want to be in a men's prison?
I would prefer it over women's prison.
I genuinely can’t believe that governments all over the western world are changing fundamental laws left right and centre over this bullshit. I’ve never seen someone who is trans been able to explain what they feel that makes them the opposite gender but here we are.
I genuinely can't believe that governments hadn't changed it sooner given that it is a tremendous health concern. Trans people being granted direly needed health care literally saves our lives.
I had a simple question (which involved severe pain in the surgery site) after my hysterectomy and had to wait three days before I could finally receive an answer from the surgeon who operated on me because the main department refused to answer someone listed as male in their system, and redirected me to the gender specialist, the hospital I was operated in refused to answer me because it was a surgeon from a different hospital, my GP wouldn't help because it involved specialist care and my specialist practice redirected me to the gynecologist department as they do not have one on practice and can't legally, or in-depth for that matter, offer advice.
Call me entirely selfish but I do not believe that it's right that I was stopped, and many of us are stopped, from asking a routine post-surgical question simply because I am trans.
I have a cervix and I do not prefer being referred to as a person with a cervix. I am a woman. If my cervix was removed would I then just be referred to as person?
I'm the last guy to insist that a cervix is what makes someone a woman, so I don't understand the need for this question. Without your cervix, you are a woman, or a woman without a cervix if medical need calls for the specification.
What was the part of being seen by others as female that made you suffer so? What was the discomfort that made you feel that it was wrong for you to be seen as a female person?
That it felt like an enormous lie perpetuated by everyone around me and that I was required to uphold to avoid ridicule or violence.
I am afraid I do not understand why gender expectations are not related to being trans, though. The term is transgender - so you transition from one gender to another. What is gender then? It is not biological sex, it is societal and cultural expectations of how each biological sex should be (I just checked a dictionary to be sure). So transgender is from one set of social and cultural expectations to another; otherwise it would still be transsexual, as it used to be? I have just checked and google tells me it is from one gender identity or expression to another. So gender expression - how is that understood if not as societal expectations of gender otherwise it would just be how one is, no need to transition.
Gender is a sense of self. If gender was exclusively societal and cultural expectations of how one should be, any gender nonconforming person would immediately be trans, or, in the case of gender nonconforming trans people, would immediately no longer be trans. Gender conformity (meeting the expectations óf a gender) and gender itself are two different things.
Transitioning is not a need to be trans. I was still trans before I transitioned, I know plenty of trans people who are still trans who don't want to transition, some who feel forced to socially try to adjust themselves in order to receive some respect for their identity. I did have the need to physically transition myself, however.
A letter every 3 years is classed as 'harassment' hmm
Perhaps I should clarify that I'm originally Dutch and never in my life received a letter for a cervical screening, despite having had one until a few months back, because first I was too young and then I was off the automatic mailing list.
As Mummyoflittledragon asked, what's your view on non trans people, just natal men, accessing previously women only spaces, abusing the sort of things you have fought for with your activism?
As you say, many trans people have used facilities by their chosen gender for many years, through the torelance and kindness of those who the sexed space is actually for. Now anyone can access these spaces: a man can come in the changing room in an open space next to me, not a trans woman to be clear, a bloke who is always a bloke, other than when claiming to be female to perve. Can you see how this causes a danger to women?
Obviously I do not support men abusing these rules, the same way I don't support men pretending to be janitors, men pretending to need to work on electricity, men pretending to need to open a locker, men otherwise lying to be granted access, men becoming PE teachers, men becoming prison wards in women's prisons to abuse or rape women. Anyone could already access these spaces. Women's spaces didn't have an unbreachable force field before hand and to insist no woman was ever abused or raped by a man in a woman's space beforehand would be lying. It's not like a rapist cares what the law says. Banning a specific set of women doesn't increase safety.
*Why do you get to change laws to impose the ideology that gender is an innate reality when so so so many people are saying that this is not their experience and when that ideology so clearly harms women.
How can feminisms work if all a woman has to do is simply identify out of their oppression?
Do you think that's true? That a trans man no longer experiences sexism and a trans woman no longer has male privilege simply by identifying themselves as the opposite sex?*
There is nothing 'simple' about any of this. It's impossible for anyone to identify out of oppression. Anyone who insists 'trans men are simply trying to identify out of oppression' is either gullible or intentionally acting out of bad faith. We're fully aware of reality. We may receive less harassment on a day to day basis if we're perceived as natal men, it's exchanged for the next obstacle to deal with. It's not a better deal.
I do struggle to understand slightly though. If you accept that biological sex cannot literally change, and you also indicate that you believe traditional gender roles are irrelevant to gender and are happy doing some traditional feminine things and describe yourself as sometimes being feminine, why bother?
Why not just be the individual person you are, and embrace the fact that your biological sex and your personality and personal identity aren’t tied together, therefore you can and should be whoever you like?
Being a feminine man doesn't make me a woman, doesn't mean I shouldn't continue a path that proves to be better for me. I'm already an individual person and that includes the medical path I've taken. I've tried accepting myself as a woman for decades and it did not work, not with therapy, not with guidance, not with help books, not with the help of friends, not with anything.
1) You mentioned about changing rooms at work. What would you say to a man who felt uncomfortable with trans men in the space?
That's his problem, not mine. I'm not anywhere to ease his comfort and I'm not going to work on his comfort.
2) what do you think about people who request a specific sex of medical professional for certain things?
Personally I think it's ridiculous. It's the care they provide that's important. Next'll be demands for medical professionals of specific sexualities because otherwise it's 'gross'.
3) what would you think of (for example) a pharmacy who wouldn't give out contraceptives because of their religious views?
I don't think they should be allowed to. If your religion bans you from doing your work properly, you shouldn't pursue it or ensure someone's available who can offer contraceptives.
As you are against gender stereotypes OP, can you explain what you mean by being seen “as a man” or living “as a man”? If stereotypes are bullshit then how is there any real way to be seen or live “as a man” that is different from “as a woman”?
I am against gender stereotypes. I'm also aware we use them for how we see others. I'm in some ways forced to adhere to them on a daily basis to be respected, but I'd prefer a society where a woman can walk freely with a beard and a man can walk around with a full chest and still be respected based on personal identification. That is a future I don't see happening soon, unfortunately. Nor does my desire for that change that I had significant dysphoria about my chest (would've been easier than wearing a binder, though, but I'd still have gotten my double mastectomy).