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.

Are gay men transphobic if they refuse to sleep with people with vaginas? If so, where is all the outrage against them; I haven't seen any.

I dunno about most trans bingo things on the card Kim I'm just waiting for someone to mention the cotton ceiling and then I've got a full house.

Tiggy, there you go again throwing slurs around and not actually listening to what people here have said.

I don't know - from this whole conversation it seems that it's not enough to accept trans women as woman and trans men as men (which I do, and have made it clear here that I do), but to question any aspect of that is a breach of some sort of unknowable dogma (ie dicks in women's spaces, which does happen, for all Tiggy and Beanella deny so very hard that it does), and it's all OMG we are bigots and transphobes.

I didn't know about the situation in Canada, which is exactly the thing I'm frightened of, and if anyone tries to introduce it here, I will fight as hard as I can to stop that happening. Because what I've learnt from this thread, what I will take away from these 19+ pages, is that women without dicks (non-trans women and post-surgery trans women together) still have to fight every second in order to stop us all being pushed to the back of every queue.

I, for one, am sick and tired of debates about all kinds of identity (race, sexuality, gender etc. etc. etc.) that focus on really simple models of subjectivity.

If you think about it from an everyday perspective - imagine a busy day - we ALL negotiate identity in a very complex way on a near constant basis. At some points, I will identify primarily as a woman primarily, at others, as a professional, as a member of a certain class. This doesn't make me schizophrenic - we ALL do it ALL THE TIME!

The models: Lacanian 'other', Hegelian 'recognition' are ludicrously basic in comparison to what we actually do on a day-to-day basis. The models of 'otherness' (monolithic patriarchy, monolithic white power) are also stupidly simple. Power works in a highly complex, diffuse, multi-nodal way.

Levianne, I have found the best way to fight for biological women's rights is to keep your own focus on what used to be the core feminist issues of sexism before it became all about gender - FGM, safe pregnancy and childbirth, maternity rights and abortion.

It doesn't matter what you identify as. Girls don't get FGM happening to them because they identify as girls. A caribbean person doesn't get beat up by a racist because they identify as black.

Identify as what you want. It doesnt have the slightest impact on hwo others treat you. A woman I know says she doesnt identify as either a woman or a man. She is a woman, and sexist men treat her like a woman. They don't give a toss that she doesnt identify as one.

I personally do not have ANY kind of problem with pre transition or mid transition or any stage of transwoman using a changing room, in principle. I probably wouldn't want any drunk or lairy or high person, whatever their gender status, sharing a changing room with me, but I doubt I'm alone in that. However I do wonder whether any of you talking about changing rooms have ever BEEN in a gym changing room, as opposed to a swimming changing room. I have belonged to many gyms in my time and without fail it's been communal changing. And no, most gym users don't do the towel dance. They just get changed and desperately try to look anywhere but at their fellow changers but at busy times that isn't possible so we all just get changed as quickly as possible. Or change in the loos (what my teenage DD1 does). So, quite honestly, it would entirely be possible to see "a dick" in a changing room if one of the people getting changed had one and you looked in the wrong direction at the wrong time. But it wouldn't bother me. I'm personally more likely to be bothered by the women who insist on bringing their 7, 8, 9 year old sons into the female changing room even though at my gym there is a family changing room, because those kids often COMMENT and STARE. And they make the young girls of similar ages feel really uncomfortable. Especially if they go to the same school! I also find the jolly hockey sticks hearty types who plonk their stuff next to you and try and engage while you're just desperately trying to pretend you aren't there and trying to get your clothes on with maximum speed and minimum fuck-ups far more disturbing than any potential "dick" could ever be.

Kim - you absolutely should be allowed in a women's changing room but just don't try and talk to anyone who looks like she might have difficulty fastening her bra! Because it might be me!

For me the core feminist issues are education and careers related. That is why I worry about the concept of "ladybrain" - it does rather leave open the opportunity for those who have bad agendas to return to the old knitting and fluffy kittens narrative. I'd be fine if the ideas of 'living as a woman' (which one?) and 'having the brain of a woman' were more nuanced. And they easily could be - we see passionate and eloquent examples of that in this thread. But the overall, 'summary' narrative always reduces to one that could be seen as dangerous - for all women, whether cis or trans.

When I began my career, women weren't allowed to wear trousers in the workplace. Because women's clothes= skirts and dresses. And many potentially attractive careers were virtually or completely closed to women just because they were women, not for any logical or practical reason. The thought of returning to that sort of thinking is not a happy one. We have come so far in the last 25 years. We need to find a narrative that works with embracing and improving the rights of trans women in a way that pushes us all further forward, that's all.

Whenthered, I know about the reframing, but will continue to view then as women"s issues.

Hmm, every gym I've belonged to including my current one has had a mostly communal area with one or two cubicles for the body-conscious. They've all been council gyms though, I've never dared been in one of the posh ones.

I quite frequently get looks or worse for having armpit hair. It's fine when it's small children asking (though sad that they apparently don't know that adult women have hair there) but I suspect that some women would happily ban me and my armpits from a communal changing room if they thought they could.

As to what are the "core" feminist issues, I don't think I can do better than the Seven Aims of the WLM, from the 1970s:

The women's liberation movement asserts a woman's right to define her own sexuality, and demands:

Equal pay for equal work
Equal education and job opportunities
Free contraception
Free 24-hour community-controlled childcare
Legal and financial independence for women
An end to discrimination against lesbians
Freedom for all women from intimidation by the threat or use of male violence. An end to the laws, assumptions and institutions which perpetuate male dominance and men's aggression towards women

Posy (excellent name!) I have belonged to council gyms, mid range gyms and posh ones (well. David Lloyd feels posh to me and it certainly costs enough. It's not posh like the Chelsea Harbour club or similar though!). It's all the same. Communal changing, maybe if you're really lucky one or two cubicles for the whole changing area. The family changing room has cubicles though.

I try not to look at people's armpits. But sometimes you can't avoid it and I've seen all levels of hair and not hair. I don't think anyone cares, do they? Same for other bits. I don't think anyone in the changing room apart from the young boys who shouldn't be there give a monkeys and I think we all try not to see (or, to resist the urge to scream 'my eyes!' dramatically) - but sometimes you just can't help it because sometimes wherever you look (unless it's at your own feet) there's someone there, in a state of undress. Doing their thing. Quickly.

I just think the argument should be couched in terms that match reality which is that it is possible you might see something but so what, the person with the thing you don't want to see is much more likely to be trying to break the world record for changing speedily than wanting you to see anything. Rather than saying nobody ever sees anything in a gym changing room. Because in all the changing rooms I've ever been in, try though I might to glaze my eyes and move around using psychic power only, sometimes you do see things.

We have come so far in the last 25 years. We need to find a narrative that works with embracing and improving the rights of trans women in a way that pushes us all further forward, that's all.

Amen. In a way that doesn't reference the patriarchal hegemony. ;)

My own view, for what it's worth, is that yes of course the concept of the ladybrain is damaging and regressive. BUT I don't think that this is quite what is argued. I haven't read Julia Serrano's most recent book but in Whipping Girl she argues for conscious and subconscious sex. Conscious of course being the pink-cupcake-fairy-princess-bleaargh that women are supposed to like, and subconscious being something more profound than that, a part of one's id that surpasses performative gender.

I am not gender-conforming. I very often do not "feel" like a woman because society tells me that feeling like a woman is sex, shopping, vacuous celebrity stuff and not much else. However, I do not believe myself to be a man. To the extent that my id is aware of being anything, I am female.

Although it makes me wince, I have some sympathy with trans women who come out and immediately adorn themselves in a billion pink glittery unicorns. That's because I remember coming out as gay and immediately trying to make myself look "like a lesbian" and the model I had to work with was that presented to me through my life, so I cut my hair extremely short and wore baggy trousers. That had nothing to do with my sexuality; it was a means of being identified by others in the way that I wished them to identify me, and it worked. If lesbians were meant to have waist length hair or blue faces I'd probably have done that. So I can understand and empathise with people conforming to hideous stereotypes in order to be read in the way they want to - and of course I didn't have a shrink who was in charge of whether I was 'allowed' to be a lesbian.

I don't think that the two sides are as far apart as they think they are. Unfortunately there's too much shouting (and outing) and not enough listening on both parts.

Herc I've obviously just been lucky with the cubicles in gyms!

But yes, you'd be amazed how much people care about other people's bodies. To the point of commenting (along a spectrum from "you're so BRAVE!" to "eeewwwwww!"). It's probably a tiny minority who give a toss but they can make you feel REALLY unwelcome.

Posy, it's pretty rare for anyone to use their armpit hair to hurt anyone, nor is armpit hair usually cited as a trigger factor in PTSD (though I suppose it could be). You comparing the two is pretty belittling to women who have been hurt, and who have a legitimate and well-founded fear of being hurt again.

Posy perhaps it's because I'm old and raddled now. Or perhaps it's because I give out a strong 'leave me alone' vibe. I do tend to have hair free armpits bit in the other key area I am usually far from groomed.

Like you, I do not gender conform much. I rarely wear slap, my key issue with footwear is 'is it vegan' followed by 'can I walk in it' (am v dyspraxic, can't manage heels etc) my key issues with bags (which I do, to be fair, have a lot of, because I GENUINELY believe that if only I found the right bag my life would be solved) apart from being vegan are (a) does it have enough room for my tech plus enough books (b) does it zip up so light fingered fred won't have my iPhone/purse away. And that's it. I was 'the only girl in the village' at sic fi cons etc back in the 80s (not actually the only girl but one of a teeny tiny number) and I was also one of the minority of female season ticket holders at the footy before Italia 90 (which saw a sea change in female engagement with watching the sport). My 'male; interests aren't just those of typically straight men either since my other big thing is show tunes and with particular reference to Streisand! Also, I've been a glass ceiling breaker in my own profession. But I'm definitely a girl/woman/old crone.

There is SO much to what makes a female a female. And there as many ways of living as and dressing as and feeling female as there are females. It seems to me, and obviously I may be very wrong, but if a person is trans, then they are already living as female (because they are a female and they are living) apart from the bit about telling people they are female (and even that, I do wonder, should they need to?) I think this idea of jumping through hoops for a defined period of time before allowing them to have the surgery they need is just cruel and a way of someone else engaging in power play. I think a cooling off period before surgery is absolutely vital, of course. But forcing people to play act until they satisfy someone who doesn't know them? That seems wrong to me. Having said that, we all (women) have to play act to a certain extent to just live in this world. And that's wrong too.

Oh, did I just belittle myself again? Whoops. Seriously though I am more than aware of male violence against women, it has happened to me.

I wasn't drawing a direct comparison with the hair, it was just an aside on the subject of people looking at each other in changing rooms. :-)

Well quite, levianne. Penises have been compared to chocolate already and now armpit hair. What next in the parade of reasons women are supposed to be okay being around naked penises? This is sheer boundary pushing / boundary violating what is a very rational concern about women's safe spaces.

Women had to fight for these safe spaces so they could participate in public life. There is a plaque at Mornington Crescent marking the first female public toilet in the UK. When I first saw it I snickered but it was a very important achievement for women being able to leave home. Lack of female changing rooms and toilets were cited as reasons for women being unable to participate in male-dominated jobs and activities. This pretence or unwillingness to recognise the real need for women to have safe space in public is either naïve or dangerous.

My DH would present no threat to any woman in a changing room because he is not a rapist. I don't expect all of you to take my word on that or be relaxed about him being in a changing room with you because you don't know him.

What about this advice published in a mainstream news publication in Canada? It may be hypothetical (or not) but the advice is that a man with an erection in a women's changing room asking a woman if she comes there often has a right to be there and the woman has to get over it:

www.thestar.com/life/2014/01/04/transgender_mans_behaviour_in_changeroom_unacceptable_gallinger.html#

I totally agree with grennie on identity. If your perception of yourself differs from what is demonstrably true, why is the answer that everyone else must pretend it is true? We don't do this with anorexics, people with phantom limb pain, people who "identify" as animals, as disabled or as another race.

Read the whole thread. Now feel fairly confused.
For me, the question I always come back to is "what makes someone a man or a woman?"
If it's not biology is it society?
If I transgendered would I be a man if I could have a perfect biological match, or would having spent part of my life as a woman still mean that I could never be accepted as truly male?

Talk of loos and changing rooms are not the important points for me as we move to more unisex facilities in public places.

This has been a fascinating discussion. I'm glad that mn has been able to host it.

Posy, you are absolutely entitled to react however you like to whatever trauma you have experienced. It isn't, however, up to you to use your own experience to decide how other women should react.

Just so there isn't any doubt: you belittled me, and my experience. It's possible that you just don't care about that. But there it is, and you continue to belittle what I have gone through with your attitude.

I don't think some of the people on this thread realise they are actually turning people away from their arguments by this sort of stuff.