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.

Sorry, Herc, you are right - I should have said "clothes marketed as men's clothes". It's amazing, when the kids are very small, just negotiating what other kids find acceptable once they hit nursery, and they state categorically that men wear trousers and women wear skirts. My DS has never ever seen me in a skirt, ever. I also pointed out to him that his best friend's dad got married in a skirt (OK, a kilt) and that his own great-grandpa, from India, wears what in other cultures would be referred to as a dress, and his grandma and great-grandma both wear trousers. He kind of had to concede the point after that.

Posy, the horrifying thing is that these people have thousands and thousands of followers, and are treated like the second coming - unchallengeable.

Julia Serrano has articulated those views. They didn't appear from nowhere on to Twitter. Her views have been highly influential. It is ridiculous for people to claim ignorance of them and be discussing her at thesame time. She was the first trans woman I read and listened to because people on here recommended her. It is not some weird twitter thing. I don't use twitter.

FloraFox - that quote from that women you mentioned is exactly the kind of thing I fear. Her case was all over twitter when it happened, and she was treated like Mandela and Gandhi rolled into one.

I personally think if you go to another country knowing you haven't got the proper paperwork, you can't be too surprised when you end up in jail. I suspect there was a lot of "I'm young, white and cute, nothing bad will happen to me" going on there, which speaks to a huge sense of entitlement, so I suppose I shouldn't be too astonished she has the same sense of entitlement going on in relation to her dick.

WhentheRed - stupid question, but what were trans activists saying the abortion rights benefit should be called? Even if you are a trans man, unless you'd had constructive surgery you'd still have a vagina, and if you'd had the surgery, presumably you couldn't get pregnant and so abortion rights wouldn't be your issue anyway?

For, ah, obvious reasons I am reluctant to google "a thousand vaginas" to find this out myself...

thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/12/29/julia-serano-explains-how-her-penis-threatens-to-undo-gender/

Kim, yes I know you didn't mention her. Reading your posts on MN was the first alternative perspective I got on trans women. Before that, people had always said Julua Serrano explained it well.

...reminds them they have vaginas? I would have thought having a vagina would remind them they have a vagina, not it being mentioned on a bloody event leaflet. That's a bit through-the-looking-glass.

I've read the whole thread and many past threads on the same topic. I have friends who are trans* and friends who are rad fems and it tears me in two.

I'd love us all to find common ground on this but it seems impossible until and unless we can agree on a couple of things -

What is a woman? (or a man for that matter)

What is sex?

What is gender?

If we could agree on what these things mean, maybe we could all edge forward.

I think the changing room thing (and all other 'facilities' type issues) are at least potentially not real issues, because I have never met anyone who actually likes communal changing rooms - it is not beyond us to design facilities which give everybody privacy, dignity and safety. It just needs money throwing at it - easy peasy.

The bigger issue for me is whther women who were born as women are still allowed to organise around issues that affect them and only them. If this cannot be accommodated without accusations of bigotry then I deeply resent that.

levianne I find a lot of this stuff through-the-looking glass. Especially about biological sex itself being socially constructed, female penis, cervical cancer screening for transwomen.

Tiggy it's very appealing to look for common ground but some of the things you have pointed out are at the very heart of the problem. It's hard to see what the common ground could be on those questions.

Sorry that last was to plenty not tiggy

What I can't understand about the whole debate is how radfems can criticise patriarchy for defining women by the way they look and act then themselves criticise transwomen for the way they look and act.

If we want everyone to be treated equally and have equal rights we must include transwomen in that surely?