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.

Kim, is it more that if you disclose the HCP might be prejudiced and might give you poor mental health advice?

self 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.

Sheila Jeffreys says ""Gender functions as an ideological system that justifies and organises women's subordination and for this reason it must be dismantled."

Radfems do not criticise transwomen for the way they look and act. They criticise a line of thinking that looking and acting that way either makes them women or is because they are women. Radfems think men and women should be able to look and act however they want to look or act no matter whether they are women or men.

Gender is the chain that connects our biological sex with how we look and act. We need to break the chain, not create new chains.

The best solution is somebody who specialises in trans clients so that they can see beyond that, but it is also presumably then private and not affordable to many people.

Flora, so you just don't accept transwomen are women? They are just deluded? What is the RF view of transmen? Never seen anything about that despite following debates on twitter!

Of course they are not women but it's not a matter of whether I accept it or not. It's simply a biological fact as is the fact that transmen are women. At kim's request, I outlined above why I think people become trans and what protections I think the law should make for people with gender dysphoria or who need to live as members of the opposite sex to survive the patriarchal social constructs imposed on all of us. I don't think I am RF (or not wholly) but I am gender-critical and I agree with RF analysis of gender.

I thought MtoF were at the same risk of breast cancer as men because they have the same amount of breast tissue. Is that not the case?

You get a small amount of breast growth on hormone treatment, but rarely much. Which is why many MtoFs have breast implants. Have you get a link about the increased risk of breast cancer on oestrogen? If this was the case surely women on HRT or the pill would be at increased risk and I have never read this anywhere. But if it is the case, that needs to be more widely known.

Thanks for the post with the Sheila Jeffreys' quote above Flora; it neatly encapsulates my thinking on this issue, something I was struggling with.

You know what's great though: so many people giving their opinions on what transsexuality actually is when they haven't actually experienced it personally.

Kim, you asked me what I thought transsexuality is on this thread. You can't complain that I (and others) answer.

Also, if women are being asked to treat someone with a penis as if they were a woman, including accepting them within women's safe places, women have the right to talk about what it is that makes this acceptable or unacceptable. If it were just a question of going about your own business, I would agree that other people's opinions would not be important but when you seek validation from everyone else, it ceases to be simply your own business.

i bemused at how the experience of being trans is unfathomable to the non trans person, but at the same time a person could grow up socialised as male, with a bepenised betesticled body, with everything that entails, and transition in middle age, secure that they know exactly what it is to be a woman.

hm.

i am aware that under the law anyone is anything they claim to be. i fully accept your legal status as women.

i am just bemused by this attitude that there is no material difference trans and non trans women

Kim you're right, I don't know what it feels like to be transsexual but if we are limited to only speaking of our own experience, none of us can speak about trans issues as you also do not know what it is to have any other sort of transsexual experience other than your own.

I was lucky enough to be raised by my feminist mother who taught me that my personality is completely separate from me being a girl/woman and my father who supported this perspective. It was very much a "you are who you are" environment (and it was to my mother's sorrow that none of her children were gay as she would have enjoyed being genuinely supportive of their circumstances).

I learned the performative aspects of gender outside of my parents' sphere of influence. I was a "late developer" in this respect because I realised only after leaving home that regardless of who you think you are, you are slotted into a box of "woman" and if you do not meet the minimum standards of conformance with the requirements of that box, it is difficult to navigate patriarchal society.

I am lucky that I have a family and DH who accept that I minimally meet the standards of femininity (with apologies to chibi for cribbing her post on another thread) generally expected of women. I wish other people would experience the same level of acceptance.