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 I know what Intersectionality is! I was studying feminism (inter alia) at university when it was first being identified as ' a thing'. You have misrepresented my quibble with the previous post.

It's anecdotal so may be dismissed, but in answer to nurseywursey and other posters who've expressed surprise that some MtFs might display their penises in order to intimidate women, where have you been?

Perhaps you don't get out much.

I attended a couple of shows in London by transvestites/female impersonators/MtF pre-op transsexuals - I didn't interrogate them - at the badgering of a straight female friend who likes that entertainment and said it would be a great night.

I found the experience very insulting and intimidatory and I would never want to go again. One of the guest acts was Lily Savage/Paul O'Grady, who I believe is a gay man who liked dragging up in his earlier career.

Vile and intimidatory towards women and we had to suck it up - even though many women in the audience were laughing at his insults. I am shocked by the benign way he is treated now. To me, he is just as much a misogynist as Jim Davidson. Same goes for Michael Barrymore.

As a 19-year-old in Marbella I walked into a women's toilet in a club and found the atmosphere so threatening by men dressing as women towards me as a woman that I instantly left and ducked into a KFC for a wee.

Over the last 20 years I like to go to a bar in Ibiza town in a street dominated by bars for gay people - mostly men.

It's run by a straight couple who welcome all comers - mostly gay men, but it's one of the few bars there that is welcoming to gay women and straight people too.

Opposite is a transsexual cabaret - I don't peer into people's knickers, but because I go there, I know that's what it is.

Part of my entertainment is watching women walk in there, often as one half of an ostensibly straight couple, and then watching them emerge shell-shocked an hour later at the abuse.

Grim. I want to welcome them into the bar I'm drinking in because it's welcoming to everyone no matter who they want to shag and what's in their pants.

I am not saying that all MtF transpeople consider themselves superior to natural born women. But some of them do and I am flabbergasted that you claim not to have noticed it

Anyone who wants to know about the Rad Fem perspective on gender and transsexualism can read the thread. It has been outlined by several posters.

This is more than simply about the law as it currently stands today. It is also about how women are treated in general for not wanting men in women's spaces and not wanting to have to pretend that men are women based on a mere statement of subjective "identity". In most social circles, behaviour is not simply based on the letter of the law. Women are being shamed and excluded socially and in political groups if they do not accept that men can declare themselves to be women. This is eroding the concept of women as a class suffering from oppression as can be seen when feminists deny the existence of a shared experience of girlhood / womanhood. It reduces us each to individuals with no collective basis for understanding our oppression and organising around it. It also erases the existence of lesbians who are shamed for not accepting the female penis. These are not extremist views. As grennie says above, there are different trans viewpoints, not everyone believes the same.

Since the thinking around identity/gender/sex originated in and has most traction in the US, since it is taking root in the UK it is useful to look at what has been happening in the US. Cathy Brennan is a US lawyer who co-wrote a letter to the UN submitting that transwomen should be treated as women only after they have had surgery / hormones or some other objective test and not just a subjective statement (as is the law in many US states). For that she received death threats and threats against her children. Many trans people would agree with the position she put forward as is evident from some of the posts on this thread.

The logical progression of this thinking (and which is actually happening) is that there is a growing voice saying that men don't need to get surgery ever, can take hormones or not, can remove hair or not, can dress as women or not. Simply saying "I am a woman" is enough. They believe they have been female from birth and everything about themselves is female, even the penis. That does not create much of a barrier for any man to stroll into a female space, does it? The misogynistic assumption that presenting with a woman is so awful that no straight man would ever do it doesn't help much where all that is needed is a simple statement "I am a woman".

There is no universal shared experience of girlhood/womanhood.

Do I object to men having the right to make female-only gatherings physically impossible? Of course I fucking do. Of course women should have the right to meet with no men present. Well. I say "of course" but it's by no means a widely accepted idea, is it? Allowing men to insert themselves into women's every waking moment seems completely normal now.

Herc there is a wide range of experiences that many or most girls and women have and which they have because they are girls/women.

Many or most != universal

I am always deeply deeply suspicious whenever anyone, be it a trans woman, a rad fem or caitlin moran, tries to tell me what being a woman is. Because invariably, they are wrong.

Herc I didn't say universal. I said shared. There is no universal experience of being black, gay, poor or disabled but there are shared experiences. This attitude pisses me off. It's not enough that we should socially accept men claiming to be women. We must go further and say there is no meaningful experience of being a woman FFS. What is the actual point of feminism if you think that?

Being an individual is vital. It's not a 'reduction' as someone misguidedly said upthread. It's when people are perceived as individuals not as a faceless group that we can get a toehold on dismantling bigotry and prejudice.

No flora, I said universal. You tried to reframe my argument because...dunno. Because you wanted to. There is no universal experience of being a woman therefore you cannot talk about undermining the shared experience of being a woman or girl because there is not just one homogenous shared experience of being a woman or a girl. Believing that trans people, women and men, should be treated decently, does not undermine the essential woman-ness of anyone else on the planet. Believing that human beings shouldn't be treated like human beings diminishes everyone. So, some trans activists are behaving in a dangerous way and some feminists likewise. But most people are nice and try to be nice and would be nice if they were not constantly being stirred up by others, and being fed misinformation designed to create folk demons and moral panics.

Being a woman is being an adult human female. That is all.

Flora you are contradicting yourself from one post to the next. I'm going to leave this thread now too because life is too short.

I assumed you were responding to my statement about feminists denying a shared experience of girlhood / womanhood but recasting that as if I had said a "universal". There is a shared experience of girlhood / womanhood.

I can't agree that most people are nice or trying to be nice. RadFems are having increasing difficulties meeting or talking about anything on their own terms. They are being increasingly policed and silenced.

No I'm not. Being a woman is an adult human being. The experience of being a woman is a shared experience of the female sex, of women.

It's really not that hard.

Your problem is that you are doing mental contortions to justify your denial of a material reality - that there are two sexes with a tiny number of intersex people. One of those sexes is oppressed based on its biological capacity for sexual and reproductive labour. Concepts of "gender", that a personality is connected to the sex, organises and enforces the subjugation of one sex. You cannot believe transsexualism exists unless you believe that there is some essentialism in gender. So you are contorting the concepts of womanhood, trying to make it meaningless, to accommodate men saying the feel like women or they want to be women.

Does the adoption of an identity require the consent of the community you seek to join?

To move away from penises, I was thinking about national identity. My parents were both Scots, but I was born and raised in England. I have an English accent, and English school qualifications. I have worked my whole career in England.

I know all the words to Auld Lang Syne. I like whiskey. I eat haggis and know how to dance the Dashing White Sergeant and the Gay Gordons.

I could declare myself Scottish. I could move north of the border and sing "I belong to Glasgow" every Friday.

But I think "real" Scots would tell me to Get Tae Fuck.

I agree with WhenTheRed above. I also think that although the realisation that certain shit things have happened to you purely because you are a member of an identifiable group is a bitter pill to swallow, it is easier to deal with than the idea that the shit things happened to you because of who you are as an individual or because of something you have personally done or because you have bad luck.
It is soul destroying to look at the world around you - and to look back over your own life - and allow yourself to see how much contempt there is for women. But it's better than thinking the contempt you routinely encounter is attributable to something you're doing wrong. Nope: it's just because of your sexual organs.

with can you imagine if you trotted down to the Southhall Black Sisters and told them you feel like a black woman inside and they must let you in otherwise they are hateful bigots?

I think I'll join Herc in the nice feminist camp. Thanks to everyone for the interesting views on this.

Yes, women are often told they should be nice to men and put their needs first.

There IS a universal female experience that is present in every culture, religion, race and class, and that is a sexual double standard. Having seen a recent documentary about porn on BBC 3 that interviewed teenagers, the attitude that girls who sleep around are 'sluts' and the boys who do it are given a pat on the back is still alive and well here in the West, despite ill-judged attempts to combat it, like 'slut walks'.

Trans women would not have experienced this growing up. And some, like Paris Lees, seem to WANT to be viewed this way, as it affirms their status as a 'woman'.

It's weird. And annoying. And belittling.

What do the 'nice feminists' (and trans* women and their supporters) believe a woman is? I still can't get a handle on that.