Question about gender change

[lougle]

If someone is making a transition to one gender from another, what does their sexuality relate to - their original gender, or their new one?

For instance, if a man is transitioning to become a woman, and is attracted to women, would that make them 'straight' or 'gay'?

If a woman is transitioning to become a man, and is attracted to women, would he then be 'straight' or 'gay'?

I'm likely to have to explain 'gender change' to my children, but it occurred to me that I really don't understand the 'gender' part of it at all.

I understand the physical processes and the medical timeline, etc. (ie. live as new gender for x period, medication, initial reassignment surgery, final reassignment surgery), but I don't understand how someone who has had gender reassignment would identify their sexuality.

I hope I haven't offended anyone - I may not have used the right terminology and may have been clumsy in the way I've asked the question.

and thanks for answering donkey. i appreciate it.

i really dont know a lot about feminist discourse but there are certainly some powerful feelings coming through from the people on this thread who identify it. I don't really understand how a transwomen is a threat to women. I think i'm missing something.

I personally would have thought, if one was to push this through a power and discrimination model, like thompsons PCS model, the Transwomen would have less power that the cis gendered woman, thereby negating much of the threat element.

That's my view, though as I said, i dont really fully understand feminism. Actually i don't understand it at all!

beer I think she makes a good point too. A lot of the fear is about rape and sexual assault. kim has just presented the reality of the Male to Female Transexuals errm..equipment.

Beanella, transactivists aren't generally trying to dismantle gender. The whole dispute is between liberal feminists, with the addition of a few transactivists, trying to dismantle identity based on biological sex and radical feminists who want to dismantle gender.

I agree that medical and social transition should be viewed as two different issues, and surely they have to, as the first has to involve medical ethics, while the second doesn't always have to.

sorry kim i hope that didn't offend.

And.....here we are talking about genitals again!

Blimey.

I remember when some person I knew first learned that DH (then DP) was Transexual. The first think she asked about was his genitals and how we have sex.

I told her that I dint want to talk about it. Next time I was her she told me that she had looked it up on the internet!

I don't see her anymore.

I dont really understand all that Almondcake it all seems like groups of people evangelizing for one schema or another.

'Gender should be dismantled so that people are free to live their lives however they want without the constraints of expectation on them'

This is exactly what the transactivists are trying to achieve!! And you are saying it is harmful to women. You want protected womens spaces free from Transexuals but you also want gender to be dismantled? How utterly contradictory!

No, trans activists are reifying gender, by writing 'gender identity' into law and saying that performing gendered roles is what makes a person a man or a woman.

We are saying that there should be nothing about dresses, or make-up, or short hair, or sports, or certain feelings or behaviours that are considered the province of one sex or the other. Gender is 'the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women'. This is what needs to be dismantled - transgenderism instead says that these socially constructed roles, behaviours etc. are what defines men and women.

I can't link to that stupid genderbread man image right now but bean I don't agree transact ibises are trying to dismantle gender. Not at all. They are saying that because X like pink and makeup, they are a girl. That's what "identifying" with the female gender means. It's deeply regressive. Also, claiming there is a biological element to liking things associated with the opposite sex is not dismantling gender. It is reinforcing it.

I acknowledge what you are saying but we have to put individuals at the centre of this debate.

Individual people with individual rights and individual needs.

The Equality Laws were created for exactly that reason.

Is an individual a threat or a perceived threat?. In this case you are talking about perceived threats. Accepting the presence of bodies without question is exactly what we should be doing. Unless the people that inhabit those bodies impinge on our safety. If people are concerned about sharing a changing room with a Transexual person, why should the transsexual move elsewhere? Why not the person with the perceived fear?

As i sed in an early post, if you look at the situation through a power and discrimination model, it is the transexual persons rights and safety in shared space that require more protection than the cis gendered woman.

That, sadly will alway be the case. Therefore, IMO it is compounding discrimination to exclude transwomen from shared spaces. Where should the transwomen go? To a pool with individual cubicles on the othher side of town?

I tell you what, it is YOUR issues, not hers. you go across town. That is my view.

I will certainly do some reading on what radical feminist believe as it is clear that quite a lot of people are strongly influence by it.

Beanella. I am not sure what you don't understand. Biological sex refers to whether somebody's body is mostly male, female or intersex. If I am knocked down by a bus tomorrow, my biological sex can be determined by a pathologist anywhere in the world.

Gender refers to difference in social roles and behaviours which are considered to be the norm for different groups within the context of different societies. Usually, there is one or more gender roles given to people whose biological sex is female and one or more gender roles given to people whose biological sex is male within the context of their society.

Liberal feminists along with a few transactivists want to abolish biological sex. Depending on the extremeness of their position, they want to identity based on biological sex (very frequently stated), people collectively organising based on biological sex, legal rights based on belonging to a biological sex. It obviously isn't possible to abolish biological sex itself.

Radical feminists want to abolish gender. Depending on the extremeness of their position, they want to abolish the social existence of gender roles (very frequently stated), legal rights based on gender and collectively organising based on gender. It may not be possible entirely to abolish gender.

People on this thread are generally not arguing extreme positions on this, but they are arguing from these two perspectives.

Beanella, I think Posy described what the actual law is, and it is far more moderate in balancing people's concerns that you are claiming. Posy describing what the actual law is has been the least polarising post on here.

Surely any contemporary power and discrimination model would not lead to the conclusion that we simply choose which group has the worst time and protect that group, it would attempt to see that there are two groups with different needs and that solutions would involve trying to find a solution that worked for both?

Sorry, my post should say, 'they want to abolish identity based on biological sex.'

Here's the ghastly Genderbread person:

everydayfeminism.com/2013/01/breaking-through-the-gender-binary/

Note that the ideas promulgated by this cute little pink and blue model completely erase 40 years (actually 200 years if you go back to Mary Wollstonecroft) of feminist analysis:

Gender identity is all about how you, in your head, think about yourself. It’s about how you internally interpret the chemistry that composes you (e.g., hormone levels). (Claims that hormone levels are what determines stereotypically masculine/feminine behaviour. Erases the insight that females are socialised (often quite brutally) to be 'feminine' and the female gender role has been FORCED on women and girls since birth in order to confine them to a particular place in society - this is the entire thesis of Simone De Beauvior's 'The Second Sex).

As you know it, do you think you fit better into the societal role of “woman,” or “man,” or do neither ring particularly true for you? That is, do you have aspects of your identity that align with elements from both? Or do you consider your gender to fall outside of the gender norms completely? (SO WHAT IF IT DOES? Does that mean you shouldn't consider yourself a 'real' man or a woman if you fall outside of gender norms? Why can't you just have your own personality and not have those traits be 'gendered'?)

The answer is your gender identity.

It has been accepted that we form our gender identities around the age of three, and after that age it is incredibly difficult to change them. Formation of identity is affected by hormones and environment just as much as it is by biological sex.

This takes gender, an oppressive social system that was designed to relegate women to a submissive, subordinate role, and declares it to be a personal identity that is determined by hormones and set in stone by the age of three.

If that is the case, what about all those women in history who rebelled against their gender role? Where they not women at all - were they really men all along? If gender identity is set by the age of three, and the 'female' gender identity is defined by femininity (as the Genderbread person clearly states it is), I guess we have to say that all those women who didn't 'identify' with the societal gender role forced on them were really men - or at least closer to 'male' on the 'gender spectrum'.

What a load of blatantly sexist, regressive horseshit.

Individual people with individual rights and individual needs.

The Equality Laws were created for exactly that reason.

^^This is wrong. The Equality Act deals with classes of people. It recognises that people have been treated unequally based on the class of persons they belong to (although notably not social class, but that's a whole other issue). Denying that women are oppressed based on their biological class, denying that biological class even exists, undermines women's struggle for liberation.

As i sed in an early post, if you look at the situation through a power and discrimination model, it is the transexual persons rights and safety in shared space that require more protection than the cis gendered woman.

There we go. Women last. Again.

Sadly, DonkeySkin I have seen attempts to claim heroic women from history as trans.

Yep. Flora

And Trans people and women are both protected groups.

Trans women belong to TWO protected groups.

Transexual AND Women!

And in terms of a healthy functioning society, it is essential that the people in that society with the least power, who are MOST likely to be discriminated against get the most protection.

This is why positive discrimination exists.

But the rub here is that you don't actually believe that a transexual women has the right to be a woman. Despite her intrinsic identity, despite medical intervention.

This is where the issue lies.

Thanks for sharing the genderbread person. Donkey whatever the theory, a lot of Trans people don't actually identify themselves as Transsexual. If they do it is a temporary identity while they are transitioning. They simply identify as male or female.

Sadly, DonkeySkin I have seen attempts to claim heroic women from history as trans

Like joan of arc right?

Donkeyskin, the gingerbread person has been criticised by people on all sides of the argument. Nobody thinks it is right. It doesn't make any sense at all.