to be confused? Transgender pregnancy.

[troisgarcons]

In the papers today.

In short, a woman commences the transgender process into a man. She becomes/lives as a gay man. But keeps her womb and overies. Stops taking her medication, gets pregnant (deliberately) by her gay male lover.

I'm a bit lost here. Clearly she isn't a man? And I have to ask where the gay male boyfriend thought the was popping his sausage?

no-one seems to have noticed what most struck me.

The father had nothing to do with the decision to have a baby and had wished that they had been able to plan it together rather than being almost tricked into it.

i dont really care what gender a person wants to be known as or dress up as. I dont care what theyve got in their pants. They had a baby, thats nice.

Birdsgottafly the confusion comes when somone says their so desprate to be a man born in the wrong body blah blah blah can't stand to even look at themselves ECt

Are then given drugs, support no doubt at grate cost to the nhs next thing you know they stopped the drugs and are pregnant

Also if the partner is gay then I am also confused as he is clearly having sex with a women on a regluar basis which would make him straight

My brother is gay a wouldn't have sex with a women for all the tea in china

"Of course you can make breasts, and vaginas and penises. How arrogant are you to decide that man made ones are not real? "

They aren't real, they're artificial. Any surgeon will tell you. Please don't call me arrogant, that's rude.

Nobody has come up with a definition of man yet. I guess we're back to a feeling.

Given that sex is actually real and is present in every part of our bodies right down to our cells, it's odd that feelings should be given so much primacy over physical reality.

NYAC - I agree. But I also think that there is a lot of evidence that many transgendered peopel are unhappy - high rate of suicide for example. So if having surgery makes someone happier, then shouldn't we just accept this? We don't have to buy into or agree with the discussion about why people feel this way or that somone feeling themselves to be for example a man is more important than the physical reality. Just accept that if it makes someone happier, then fine.

It is arrogant for YOU to decide what is real. Would you say that to the face of someone who has waited and saved and agonised for years, decades, and had surgery? Would you say "your new penis is not real and you are not a man. You are still a fake"
If yes, you are arrogant and vile, if no you are a hypocrite, happily opining in the abstract.

Have we met?

Culturally, transpeople do stir debate, as they manage to challenge gender whilst (often) essentialising it at the same time. Or to put it another way the very statement 'I was born in the wrong body' claims to uncouple the individual's experience of gender from the empirical signs of 'male' and 'female' such as breasts, penises, vaginas etc, whilst also claiming that there is such a thing as essential 'maleness' or 'femaleness'. That can be problematic for all sorts of perspectives. MTF transpeople get quite a mixed reception in the lesbian community, for example: an ex of mine was ditched by his/her girlfriend when s/he decided to transition, as the ex identified as a lesbian and didn't want to be going out with a man.

Personally I've noticed an increase in recent(ish) years among acquaintances who I knew as butch lesbians to move towards gender reassignment. I find myself torn between respecting their preference and personal feeling and feeling a bit sad that women I admired for the challenge they posed to 'conventional' female presentation are (as you might see it) giving up the fight to expand what is considered normal for female-bodied people and instead calling themselves male. But conversely again, I don't feel it's my place to tell others that they should persist with a presentation they find uncomfortable just to further political aims that I see as desirable.

I don't think it's arrogant and vile not to pander to people's delusions, it's rude to say that to me though. If someone claims to be Napoloeon or a giraffe then we don't agree with them that's what they are, so what's the difference with being a different physical sex.

Sex is physical, it's not something that resides in the mind and feelings.

Manatee, we may have met before......

I totally agree with you Manatee. I reject the idea of an essential maleness or feamleness or a male or female brain. But ultimately, if it makes people happier, then who am I to object?

I haven't really seen the move to gender reassignment in the lesbians I know. I am 47, so don't know if that makes a difference? But I have been saddened when a few butch lesbians have confessed to me that they wish they had been born a man.

sassy i think you are beign deliberately rude.

this is a discussion forum, where everyone gets to ask and answer questions, and give, form and change thier opinions. just becuase you dont agree with a poster, it doesnt make them wrong.

NYAC - Using your examples, if someone claimed they were really Napoleon in the wrong body I would first of all wonfder if they were mentally ill. But if they weren't and they were insistent that they were really Napoleon, I would think it very odd, but accept it.

What does accept mean though Lesley. Someone who truly believes they are Napoleon usually ends up in a mental ward.

Excuse me I am not! I am giving my opinion which is that their is no other word for it but arrogant for someone to sit there and tell a whole group of people that they are fake, their body parts are not real, they are artificial, and they are not allowed to define their own gender.
This is not an abstract theoretical issue to be idly defined by internet randoms. This is real life, life and death in fact. I would like to know why people think they believe they can tell others how real they, their lives and their bodies are?

Lesley - most of the MTFs I know/knew are/were in their 20s or early 30s, so it could well be a generational thing. Certainly I can imagine that having made it all the way to your 40s or 50s as a butch lesbian it might just seem like too much hassle to start faffing around with hormones and surgery and so on. Particularly given that culture tends to desexualise older women to an extent anyway and so (though aged 32 I'm hypothesising here) the imperative to present as a 'proper' instance of either one gender or the other might diminish somewhat at that stage in any case.

I dunno really. To me it's hard to see it as a cut and dried issue, and I tend just to shrug my shoulders and conclude that it's no skin off my nose either way if it makes people happy.

Are you using this dimple phrase because there is no longer a name for the group of people formerly known as women?

what i find strange is the man being a complete hypocrite and i want to be a man i feel like a man i am a man Oh wait i will have a baby first and use my womb , I find it all very confusing .

sassy - Sorry i know for people living with this issue it is not an abstract concept to be discussed as peopel are doing on here. And I appreciate some of these musings may be very hurtful. But nobody is attacking transgendered people - just trying to understand their own ideas about this issue.

Of course cancer survivors with breast reconstructions have fake breasts and of course I would never say that to their face.

And of course breasts grown with hormones are real.

I don't see what the two groups have in common.

Losing breast tissue doesn't change the whole of somebody's body.

is this a case of the emporors new clothes?

we were out last week and saw a man dressed as a woman. my DD said... BUt hes a man!

so i said.. yes but if dressing like that makes him happy, dont you want that?

She said: yes its good to be happy... but hes still a man.

What would you recommend i say to my DD who is 8?

Like i said earlier i'm happy for you to be happy. but i'm with Lesley33 i dont want to see penises in the female changing room. I'm happy to use the continental system of having family cubicles with shared locker area.