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.

Wow, beanella, I was going to post to ask you what a "boy" looks like at age 5.

But you've revealed your absolute misogyny and disdain of other women. There's nothing more to be said. I shouldn't be so surprised at this.

Obviously, I will never live the life of a trans person. I have yet to meet or encounter a trans person who was raised in a fully accepting environment. This is not theory or academics but real people in real life who should be accepted as they are without the need for dangerous artificial hormones or surgery on healthy bodies. This is not depersonalised.

To the extent that a trans person is not apparent, I agree it is none of my business. However when male bodied persons try to access women's spaces or women organising against oppression, it becomes my business. The problem is that when you try to prioritise one class of people, other people are inevitably affected. The thread becomes about people with PTSD when you tell them they have to get over it to avoid offending trans people.

Those studies you have offered do not provide evidence that trans people are the opposite sex, at best it shows a difference between some trans people and others of their own sex. To a large extent, I don't care why people are trans just as I don't care why people are gay. If trans people meet objective requirements to be treated as a member of the opposite sex, it doesn't much matter to me why they are like that (although I recognise it might matter very much to them). Similarly, I don't care if gay people are born that way or make a choice because I view homosexuality as a valid life whether it is nature or nurture.

beanella do you think your comments will encourage people on this thread to view trans people in a positive light? Or are you perhaps fuelling the fire and building up the perception that they're bitter, angry and weird?

You've done a great disservice to those trying to promote harmony and understanding.

Erm, okay. My last was cross posted with everything after bean's post after my previous last post.

I don't dream of your death nor your husband's as you dream of mine. I don't wish you a shit day. I hope your vag and tits remain as they are. You are correct I am nobody and I certainly cannot destroy your husband's person with my statements on MN. I hope you and your husband have a happy life.

Transgenderism / transsexualism is deeply misogynistic and homophobic. It is only acceptable as an emergency response to patriarchy (which sounds like your DH's situation) but too often transactivists and their allies resort to violent threats just like you did.

I have not reported beanella's posts and I would also like to ask readers not to report them. I have read them so that damage is done and I would like others to see what transactivism looks like.

No. I apologize for my absolutely furious out burst. Lets not pretend anyone apart from perhaps red was every going to show an iota of compassion, understanding or respect for a transexual persons identity. Or give the points I was making any credit whatsoever.

Flora to vehemently uphold your view that my husband is in fact A women in the face of my explanation of his struggle and circumstance with NO acknowledgement of his struggle and circumstance inspires fury in me. I willl not apologize for that but I will apologise for my outburst.

Youh ave acknowledged NOTHING I have said, NOTHING that I have sai to defend the transexual persons position.

You have insidiously pushed your point that my husband is a woman and other transexuals are not the gender they identify as.
That is the most OFFENSIVE thing anyone can say.

Whover pointed out that I'm ill, they are correct. Yup, I by proxy have suffered abuse, discrimination and the knock on effects on my mental health have not been uinclonsiderable. Why I have spent time on this thread knowing the feelins It can trigger in me I am now questioning.

There was never any debate. Just bullying.

Ive discredited myself anyway now. Fuck you Flora.

Yes, I shouldve just left it at that.

and to aDD i an not a tranactivist. I have never been a transactivist and never will be.

I am no interested in transactivism Im interested in human dignity and having just spectacularly lost mine I congratulate you.

I also realise I have been trolled! good work.

no one has wished for your death.
no one has levelled violent slurs against you, or your husband

women have explained, patiently, why they are uncomfortable having to share space when they are naked and vulnerable with people whose bodies have penises and testicles. they have linked this feeling of unease with their abuse.

you have cavalierly dismissed this- they need to get over it, because it's not about them, it's about trans people's rights to participate. if this makes some other women withdraw, well, too bad for them.

how you can then claim you've been bullied...incredible.

No, chibi. You lot hijacked this thread and made it about YET AGAIN the mythical changing room/penis/man in a dress scenario. Then you went on to calmly insist that trans people were women/men when they aren't and that your opinions were the only ones that counted. Although I cannot condone some of the things beanella said I can TOTALLY understand where she was coming from as you are a completely vile transphobic bunch. Who actually DON'T listen to anyone else except your own self congratulatory opinionated selves.

I have just looked up your posts Flora and can see you are a radical feminist.

Funnily enough I'm doing a phd in structural discrimination against men.

I am beginning to understand the rad fem perspective.

Rad fems hate men. Transwomen were born with male genitalia there fore are invading womens spaces and society. Therefore are a threat.

Transmen are rejecting their female identities and taking on the persona of 'the oppressor' ?

It is a very narrow schema flora but having read your posts and how absorbed you are in radical feminism I understand bit more of where you are coming from.

Thanks for opening my eyes to this. I am actually, having now taken a step back, considering it an education.

I love mumsnet for that. I have learned something. All these societies that coexist and at the point of politics lies huge insurmountable unresolved tension between groups of people. Oppressed, oppressor..it will always be so.

I don't support what you wrote upthread bean but I would like to acknowledge how much it must hurt to have your husband's identity reduced to a series of academic points in which his view is not considered relevant. I can understand why you are so angry. If that were someone I loved in that position I would probably be angry too.

incredible. i have posted maybe 4 times on this very long thread, in the last 20 posts or so only, and I've hijacked it.

funny that you disagree with beanella's choice of words only- presumably you were ok with the hate and misogyny they contained?

self-congratulatory? look in a mirror.

i personally could give two shits what anyone wants to call themselves or identify as. their right to do so cannot automatically trump everyone else's though, and it is this i take issue with.

I am actually, having now taken a step back, considering it an education.

It has been

"rad fems hate men"

you could just as easily say "trans people and their supporters hate wome". probably more evidence for that statement though,

No, chibi, I disagree with her choice of words BECAUSE they contained misogyny. I do understand though why she has lost her temper with this thread. Six hundred posts of (mostly) posts that will read to her that your husband is not a man and she finally loses her temper, followed by well that proves our point? That is a terribly familiar route from MRA stuff - man mansplains about why women are inferior until one loses her temper and then that "proves" that women are over emotional. It's not a narrative I admire in any context.

Which, posy, is exactly what I would have replied, only you got there first and did it better :)
I am also married to a transman, this thread has been deeply hurtful.
However, maybe one day things will be better for trans people everywhere and we will look back and shake our heads that such opinions ever existed.

my post was directed at tibbysmum.

for someone who doesn't want to read people's opinions on her husband's gender, it seems a funny thing to do to interrogate them on it, repeatedly.

you don't have to look very far or hard before you encounter misogyny on the other hand- if you are a woman, it will find you

people who lose their temper however justifiably and use racial slurs are racists

people who lose their temper however justifiably and use religious slurs are bigots

people who lose their temper however justifiably and spout misogynist violent threats are...

beanella I have a DH and DS and a large family/social circle mostly comprising roughly equally of men and women. They all know what I think about these issues (and other feminist issues) but if it makes you feel better to think I hate men, so be it.

As I have already said in this thread, I agree your DH should be treated as man for most purposes in life, including in your marriage. I do acknowledge the suffering, I have said I believe the feelings are real and need to be recognised. You know though (surely) that your DH was born as a woman and that a true sex change is not possible.

I think we agree on almost everything. On another thread, you would be piled on for your views that simply stating your identity as a man or a woman is enough.

Structural discrimination against men? Get to fuck with that. Your MRA credentials are showing

I tell you what though, everybody, from whichever perspective you're posting -

• according to GIRES, there are 12,500 people in the UK who have presented for treatment for GID. (They estimate a lot more who might do one day but that is speculation at the moment.)

• there are about 33 MILLION women and girls in the UK.

• women still suffer disproportionately from male violence, which is also aimed at trans women, however you personally wish to categorise them. We also have problems with FGM, gender pay gap, rape culture, porn culture, prostitution, trafficking, glass ceilings, lack of representation in Parliament, lack of representation in corporations, lack of representation at the top of the law, street harassment, lack of representation in media, lack of representation in science, harmful gender stereotypes in schools, reproductive rights, and the whole of MTV. I'm sure you can think of more.

• if we put a third of the effort into the (harder) job of fighting patriarchy as manifested ^ there, rather than the (easier) job of fighting a tiny tiny number of transsexuals and their allies, which inevitably involves feminists fighting each other, we could be living in a bloody egalitarian utopia by now.

Think on.

i am aware of that, cheers. like many women,i am actively working towards full equality both in terms of my activism and how i live my life.

i don't really need a friendly reminder, or a suggestion that, if only i left posting on thia thread i could smash patriarchy once and for all.

and- think on? pfft.