Saw this headline, thought "It's GOT to be a Mumsnetter!"

[bupcakesandcunting]

Yeah, yeah, it's a Daily Mail article but still [[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1389593/Are-PC-parents-world-The-couple-raising-genderless-baby--protect-right-choice.html BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA!"

They're coco loco, right? Surely no-one can say "fuck off, there's a dear" to THIS one?!

I think that you are totally misunderstanding my post madwoman, I wish that I hadn't mentioned it.

The point was that I decided for my DS (interestingly to support his friend who had cerebral palsy) At no point did I say that he found the dance funny-or the people who taught, it or the fellow pupils funny-I said that he found it funny that he did it. He even has the build-he just happens to have 'two left feet'. If you saw him even trying to social dance you would see his point!

My point was that I sent him to several different things-he chose as soon as he was able to have a preference.

He was an only DS with no father so I was thrilled when I met my DH to do male type things (which I hate) with him. He has to fit in with his peer group.He is a boy-what is wrong with that?

The one in the article is being HEed.(my pet hate 'unschooling'-how you can possibly 'unschool' a child with no school to 'un' I don't know!)
In the article I read in my paper the older one, Jazz, was already having problems with the girls in a group not wanting to play with 'the boy-girl' -to quote. It isn't what I want for my DCs. I want them to be comfortable being male and to get on well with their peers.

Sorry-I got rather lost in the unschooled. He is being HEed so it will take him much longer to find out what makes a 'good friend' and how to get on with others. To deliberately set him up for ridicule seems cruel to me.

would he laugh at a girl with 'two left feet' trying to dance though? just interested in whether it's socially acceptable to laugh at himself for not getting on with it, (as he's a boy) but not ok to laugh at a girl in the same position?

the unschooling thing looks to be gaining popularity though. and most he-ers i know have loads more social activities than schooled kids. i tend to notice that he-ers don't conform so tightly to societal norms, so jazz (and the other two) would have access to a social network which was less rigidly gendered in any case, allowing him to make friends (of both sexes) who would be more open to less-proscribed manners of dress etc. it's only children who aren't familiar with him (such as the random kid in the playground) that freak about whether he's got long hair and plaits.

It's terrible to read the transphobic posts on this thread. I'm not going to get involved in it. Would you try to reason with a racist that believes that black people were not fully human? Just say they're wrong and move on. Bigots are bigots and not likely to change. I'm just happy that we are protected by laws and the world is changing in our favour at last.

The 2 parents in the OP get right up my nose though.

this is fairly mild for a trans thread lol. aibu is a walk in the park cp to the fem board.

Lalalalala I'm not listening.

BTW Dittany, I agree with other points about transgender men but like you I have no scientific basis for my views. It's just a hunch

But you are denying 'transwomen' are women. Yes we do compare transphobia to homophobia to racism. When we hear comments like yours we rate you in the same category as Bernard Manning and the BNP. I'm sure Manning and the BNP don't/didn't see themselves as racist or sexist but to the people they pick on they are/were. I don't care about your opinions. Manning, BNP, Dittany. Same thing, different targets for their hate/ignorance.

The world is changing and the old views are dying out. Thank goodness.

Tiggy, thank you. This is what I was trying to say earlier on.

would he laugh at a girl with 'two left feet' trying to dance though?

I really wish to goodness I had never mentioned it. He was not laughing at anyone-he was laughing at himself and inviting others to laugh with him!
He wouldn't laugh at a boy with 2 left feet, or a girl with 2 left feet! He was laughing at his mother thinking that he would be any good at dancing!
(DS2 is a good dancer-always chosen to dance in primary school plays. He has a good sense of rhythm and is coordinated-he laughs with DS1) Can we forget ballet? Nothing wrong at all, if the DC chooses it themselves-because they want to do it-boy or girl.

Home education is a sensible term, it is education in the home as opposed to education in the school. un is undoing something IMO -fair enough if they have been to school and they are 'undoing' what they see as the damage but it appears to be used by those who have never been. Not that it has anything to do with the subject
Even HEed DCs need to fit in with their peer group, even in HE groups some are given a wide berth if they don't try and fit in and be a good friend.

anyone can see it's a fucking boy. after 2 boys they were clearly desperate for a girl, so they're deluding themselves that this one might turn out girly.

I'm with you tifflins-he is quite obviously a boy-the mother hates anything to do with them and she wanted girls.

Conversely, some might argue that a man becoming a woman is complimentary to women, that they are repulsed by being in a man's body.

Anyhoo, I really, really don't think that this has anything to do with misogyny. I don't. It's a recognised medical condition and the shite that these people have to deal with internally AND from narrow-minded people I can't imagine. I don't profess to know everything about it but then I don't tend to mete out shit to people with conditions that I don't understand. That would make me an idiot.

I think these parents can make their child feel that something is wrong with his sex / gender, leading to all sorts of issues.
They practically force their children to "pick their gender" daily. That's too hard for a child.

On the other issue - can a male become woman? Of course! And she will then give birth to her own children.

Dittany. Earlier when I pointed out that there are women in this world that feel they should be in a man's body, you said "natural reaction to living in a woman-hating world" or words to that effect. is it not possible that a man might feel repulsed at being in a body assigned to the gender that causes all of this misery? I'm just trying to look at things from an angle that you might empathise with. I don't think that there IS one, though.

I'm not calling YOU an idiot, either. Although for someone I'd previously credited with a fair amount of intelligence, I'm really surprised at your attitude on this. I understand your feminist standpoint but really, as one of an oppressed section of society, a woman, firing missiles at another oppressed section seems off. It DOES sound a lot like homphobia. You say how can XY become XX and vice versa, just like my --bigotted- grandma used to say "It's not natural for two men to sleep together because neither has a vagina."

Yes, until a MTF trans can actually give birth from his own vagina from the fruits of his own womb, I fail to see how he is anything but male (male in the definition of the word).

Surely until then he is just a man wanting to wear dresses and be called Brenda?

Likewise for FTM. Until she can produce sperm from her testes surely she is just female (according to definition)regardless to changing her name to Philip and taking hormones to grow a beard?

There is a difference between a trans-sexual and someone with Gender Dysorphia.

Dittany, your posts make me uncomfortable, because in some sense I can see what you're trying to get at. If like me, you don't believe in a gendered society, or that gender fundamentally has very much to do with what you're like as a human being, then wanting to change genders has very little meaning to me.

I can't understand looking at my body, why it would be so important to change it in such a fundamental way. I have what has been termed a very 'masculine' mind (note the '' marks) but I don't think of it like that, I think of it as being my mind. It must be feminine in a sense, because it's mine and I'm female.

However my understanding it is not the issue here. The issue is the substantially larger number of people who are hung up on gender to such an extent that they feel they need to change bodies to match minds and bodies up.

I firmly believe that one of the causes of this is blatantly obvious. A rigidly gendered society creates conflict amongst people who don't fit in. If we lived in the non-gendered society I mentioned earlier, then we wouldn't have trans people because gender wouldn't be an issue.

However we don't live in that society. We live in one where trans folks are derided as in your posts, when all they are trying to do is reconcile their minds with a body that doesn't match what they feel. I have several trans friends and the implications of your posts would hurt them, but not surprise them. It's assumptions like that, that they live with every day, and it's ridicule that they've had to learn to accept. It doesn't stop them from trying their best, and maybe it's time you thought along the lines of 'they're human. For whatever reason they want to be a different sex. Rather than making their lives harder than they already are, I'll just live with the idea that someone is different from me... and it doesn't make them wrong.'

Bupcakes, does that change the fact that neither will be able to re create the reproductive system of the sex they think they should've been?