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.

Almond, beanella, I'm glad we can agree the genderbread person is a load of crap. Unfortunately it has gotten a lot of traction in trans and liberal feminist circles.

Beanella, women are not a protected group. Gender is a protected characteristic. The law protects all genders equally.

Transgender is a protected characteristic.

In this thread, there has been a discussion of two people mainly - one who is trans and a women (and therefore has two forms of protection), and one who has PTSD (a disability) and is a woman (and therefore has two forms of protection).

The law does protect female biological sex as a protected characteristic, but only is the person is pregnant, breastfeeding or has given birth within the last six months.

You agreeing with the law is advancing a liberal feminist perspective - that gender should always be given protection while biological sex should not. Radical feminists would presumably want biological sex to be a protected characteristic always, not just in pregnancy and maternity.

The fact that a group doesn't have rights under the equality act or has limited rights doesn't mean they aren't disadvantaged. Social class being an example already given here.

almondcake that's not true, I've seen lots of people (even on MN, where I originally saw it) put it forward as a straightforward way to understand trans. Apparently the guy who designed it uses it in schools FFS.

bean I don't agree that trans have less power than women, it was you that said that. You asked me to set out what I believe and I did. Like every other transactivist I have discussed this with, you are now telling me what I believe. There is no such thing as a "right to be a woman" but I set out for you when I thought there should be an accommodation of a need to live as a woman. Like every other transactivist I have discussed this with, you are ignoring that so that you can make a more dramatic point. Like every other transactivist I have discussed this with, you are ignoring the wide spectrum of attitudes from trans people about what it means to be trans or a man or a woman (particularly on whether there is a need to have a fixed identity or any medical intervention). Like every other transactivist I have discussed this with, you are clinging to this concept of "identity" as having some meaning or currency without any ability to set out a rational basis for such a thing existing. Same old same old.

After breakfast, you skip back into your bedroom and playfully place varying outfits in front of you, pleading your partner help you decide what to wear. You’re feminine again.

Holy crap, WhentheRed. How do they manage to pass this stuff off as cutting edge and progressive?

It is quite possible to debate for eternity about the Trans identity, what it is and what it isn't. What is justifiably an identity or not. You have an identity. Why is a transwomen's identity anymore ambiguous than yours? Any less viable? Whether 'identity' exists or not there is still a person at the centre of this debate.

It is at heart, about respect. Respect for individuals particularly those individuals that have the least power in society and are most likely to be discriminated against. I believe that transwomen have less power than cis women in society, are more excluded from main stream society are as likely to be violently attacked by men, are less likely to be able to secure employment etc.
By denying a trans women her identity, you are denying her her fundamental right to life. A life that she has determined herself. When minority groups are denied access to the rights that the majority are able to obtain, this is called oppression.

It is a dangerous discourse when individuals intrinsic 'self' is oppressed by fundamentally, dogma.

I saw a poster advertising a talk at my university. The talk was something along the lines of 'when academic debate becomes a tool used to bully and exclude' or something along those lines.

I didn't really know what that was about. I think I do now.

Anyway, thanks for the opportunity to help me sharpen my thinking on this. I think we have a long way to go until Transexual People are treated with dignity and respect that all people should be afforded. The fear and ignorance that prevails will continue to mean people are excluded from fully participating in what is essentially normal, everyday life.

FF, I will attempt to find the whole explanation from trans people as to what is wrong with it, but I have a rubbish connection.

I would say that there is a clear conflation in it of gender identity and gender role.

Kim earlier said she wears skirts to appear more like a woman. I am not trans and I do the same. If in ten years men wear skirts and women wear dungarees, I'd probably be in dungarees.

The creator of gingerbread person (and if there are more posts about this I am going to say GBP because I am sick of typing it) is trying to make out that wanting a particular gender role is innate and what gender identity is. Gender identity has no actual characteristics agreed upon by any group of people. A trans person could be totally opposed to, for example, women not being allowed to drive cars in Saudi Arabia, but still considers themselves to have a woman's gender identity.

Gender identity is purely a person's innate sense of being a man, a woman, or something else (or indeed having no gender identity). Because it has no characteristics, some people, like the creator of GBP conflate it with gender role to suit their own sexist agenda, and it then gets liked and copied by other sexist people.

I disagree that the individual feelings of males should be prioritised over the material reality of female lives. Women and girls are the largest group of oppressed people on the planet, and they did not 'identify' their way into this - they were born into it. They need a strong political movement that will stand up for them and prioritise THEIR rights and safety. The only political movement in the world that has ever done that is feminism. Where legislation and structures that can accommodate both trans and women's rights can be worked out, I will support this. But I will never apologise for putting females first. Someone has to.

Beanella, both gender and transgender are protected as identities under the law. There are no posts on this thread asking for those protections to be removed.

The issue is whether people who identify based on biological sex should have the right to that identity.

It is not academic debate. People have worded it very clearly. They feel their body matters in determining who they want to be naked in front of, they get PTSD if they have to expose themselves in front of people with different bodies.

The only reason people have taken it away from those simple statements and into discussing the basic ideas is because various different posters didn't seem to understand that these were expressions saying, 'my biological sex is part of my identity and I am very uncomfortable/disabled by this being ignored.'

Discussions like this would be far more likely to reach an understanding if we stopped misinterpreting what either group is saying, which I've made clear since my first posts.

It is a dangerous discourse when individuals intrinsic 'self' is oppressed by fundamentally, dogma.

This is pure individualism - what Elizabeth Hungerford calls 'identity libertarianism' - the idea that individual identities should trump the shared material reality of whole classes of people. I wonder if you would agree that it would be 'dogma' to state that a white person could not 'identify' as black - and claim that black people held cis-black privilege over them - if they sincerely felt they were really black inside. Are all identities to be sacralised, or just trans ones?

It is not 'dogma' to state that female human beings exist as a meaningful class of persons, and that they are oppressed on the basis of their female biology. The erasure of this material fact, which underlies the oldest and most widespread form of oppression in the world, all because it conflicts with a small number of male individuals' feelings about their 'intrinsic self', is what is 'dangerous discourse' - as well as fundamentally male supremacist, because it means you are saying those males' feelings are more important than the rights and lives of three and a half billion women and girls.

Donkey I AM talking about women! Transwomen. Women who's gender is or will be recognized by law as female. Women who have birth certificates that say female.

You appear to completely deny that Trans Women are actually Women! European Law says transwomen are women and has said this since 2004.

By law transwomen are part of the group that you describe as needing protection. women and girls

as long as you choose not to include Transwomen in that group. You are being discriminatory. I'm sorry but it is bloody european law that transsexual women ARE actually women and have the same rights as women who were born with the biological sex functions of women!!

You can pitch it how you want and no doubt loads of people will support your view BUT your view is not in line with Equality Laws.Equality laws that are in place to protect people from discrimination and give them equal rights. We are not talking about the right of any men.

Right, I'm really really going now!

And beanella, I am talking about female people. Who do exist, separately from male people who identify as women, as a meaningful class of persons.

beanella I don't have an identity or at least nothing more than knowing my name, nationality, ethnic background, sex and species. These things are just my knowledge of factors about me that I did not choose. Nothing more than that. I am a woman because I was born female and now I am an adult. This is an external biological fact about me but it has had a huge impact on my life through the imposition of expectations on me based on my sex. I would like these expectations to be removed for me and for half of the world's population who are affected by and sometimes their lives are ruined or never begin because broadly similar (although mostly worse) expectations. All of it based on our capacity for sexual and reproductive service to men. Sex based oppression suffered by a class of people. We can wish to be individuals as much as we like but we are oppressed as a class.

The dogma here seems to me to be a belief in identity as anything other than the simple knowledge of various aspects of what type of person you are together with the mantra that "transwomen are women" and any question of that is met with accusations of bigotry and transphobia.

The key thing here is that there is no such thing as lady brain. It's insulting to suggest there is. Not least, to those people who have to jump through hoops for literally years in order to be allowed to have the surgery they need so that their bodies match who they are.

DS has a transgender (MtF) teacher. She is his favourite teacher. She is apparently absolutely brilliant - I have met her briefly and she certainly strikes me as being fab. She is happy to talk to DS about their shared interests of BSG, GoT and trek, and he works hard in her lessons and is doing well in her subject. I really hope she continues to be his teacher next year. I'm not aware of anyone having the yips about her teaching at the school. I do hope there isn't anything unpleasant like that - she's clearly a good teacher and a nice person. Which is more than can be said for many people in this world.

While I strongly oppose the concept of lady brain being enshrined in law, I don't blame anyone other than the (probably old white male) legislators who shoved it in there for the current backwards step in human rights that making it a legal 'thing' has caused. The disadvantage is and will be felt equally as much by trans women as by CIS women.

I feel I ought to have a bingo card: feminists compared to the religious right. Tick.

Where have women here behaved like that? Why all these straw men?

I just want to respond to the op. The way I will explain it to dd is that some people look like a boy/girl on the outside, but they are a girl/boy (the opposite) on the inside. Therefore they want to look like what they feel inside and live as a boy/girl (whichever is appropriate).

I would explain sexuality as a completely separate issue. People like boys/girls, it doesn't matter, girls can like boys, boys can like boys and girls can like girls. All that matters is that they treat each other nicely and are happy together.

I don't think there is any need to go further into it than that with a child.

with the mantra that "transwomen are women" and any question of that is met with accusations of bigotry and transphobia.

Hmm, well,

If somebody questions whether women should have no right to vote would that be met be accusations of bigotry and sexism? Yes, because it is.

If somebody questions whether black people are human should that be met with accusations of bigotry and racism? Yes, because it is.

When somebody questions whether transwomen are women of course they will get accusations of bigotry and transphobia, because it is bigotry and transphobia. It really is the most basic and fundamental parts of the whole trans issue. To deny it is to say that transwomen are mixed up blokes in flowery frocks.

Trans bingo? How come every thread that mentions trans in any way end up with the same result? You could mention you're meeting a trans friend for flower arranging classes and you can be sure that within a few pages the conversation would have moved on to hordes of transsexual rapists waiting to pounce in toilets. This one about trans people being gay or straight took 7 pages, which is fairly good on here.

Rad fems and trans will never agree. If people want to talk about trans things, they should go to a trans site instead of harassing the one trans person on Mumsnet.

It's not helpful to escalate this discussion into an arms race of unacceptable acts perpetrated by extremists on either side of the debate

BTP that is exactly how it started!!

The dogma here seems to me to be a belief in identity as anything other than the simple knowledge of various aspects of what type of person you are

And, yes that is exactly what identity is. BUT as soon as someones identity needs are threatened in any way, by oppression, abuse, isolation, culture, structural factor and bigotry, it is not as straight forward as 'simple knowledge of various aspects of what type of person you are'

It is something that can cause a person great, life threatening distress. This is why, for example, in Social Care Practice a great amount of emphasis is placed upon a service users identity needs. It is recognized that it is fundamental to a persons wellbeing that their identity needs are met. It is also recognised that a persons identity needs can be threatened by discrimination.

So, we understand that a Transexual Women has identity needs. The need to be recognised as a woman. Without recognition or outright denial of her identity, she is to all intents and purposes oppressed.