WIBU to ask MNers who think Trans Women are 'Chicks With Dicks' to ...

[KKCupCakes]

Take a look at this article about supporting families of Transgender people by the Gires.org.uk Website to see why that view is so utterly incorrect and harmful?
www.gires.org.uk/assets/supporting-families.pdf

So where's the OP?

OP said on the other thread that they'll leave mn for a while because they found the attitude to transgender people on here upsetting I think.

I really don't understand what all the offence is for. Never on MN have I read anything that suggests TG should not be treated with respect and equality

Why is it so unacceptable to think that your biological sex is determined by biology, and not byhow you feel?

So where's the OP?

I think the thread was a set up.

Not a troll thread.

Just a set up.

Agreed - a great thread and a platform of sanity (as are many of the other threads on this issue on MN).

I don't really have much to add, as others have put it so much better than I could. However, does it strike anyone else that if you accept that MTF are 'real women' then you also have to accept that e.g. Rachel Dolezal is actually and properly Black/African America/whatever non-caucasian race she says she is these days? RD was widely perceived to be batshit, deluded and just plain wrong about her racial identity. She is not black, and no matter what she does to her external appearance, the choices she makes with her life in terms of the activities she engages in, her social and professional life, etc, she will not become black. Her race is not mutable and cannot be chosen. But I am required to accept that a MTF is a woman and in that in their womanhood they are no different to me? Further, that the defining categories of 'womanhood' are those and only those that MTF are able to partake of (therefore no menstruation etc)?

WTAF?!?!?

I don't think the thread was a set-up.

I think the OP is absolutely genuine and is very close to a transwoman, as she said, and thus will have witnessed her partner's vulnerability to being distressed by anything that questions the trans world view. So her emotions will be running high and she won't necessarily have been in a place to think carefully about what she was writing (eg whether 'chicks with dicks' was really a relevant phrase).

She hasn't come back because she's not likely to be after a theoretical discussion in that frame of mind.

Unfortunately the heightened emotions around this tend to generate more heat than light and just make the conflicts worse.

mathanxiety I agree with you.
I think that, even with the complications associated with surgery 'down below', if a transwoman really 'feels like' a woman and wants to be a woman, then I would expect them to not be keen on their penis and not to have a fully functioning penis. Hormones can do that very well.
If that person actually still wants a fully functioning penis and wants to have sex with it (with another woman or a another man), then they cannot really be wanting to be a woman.
In the same way that, I'm pretty sure a FTM would be very upset by still having periods.

So in effect, a transwoman who will NOT fully transition to a woman isn't a woman.
I'm not sure what to call that person. But she/he isn't a woman nor does she/he want to be one.

As Noodle pointed out, it seems that this situation is born from a very misogynistic pov of what makes a man/woman, one based on very old fashioned ideas that men and women are somewhat different in their brain etc...

The OP mentioned they were flouncing because of attitudes re. transgender on here when they said their wife is a transwoman.
I don't think they ever intended go come back to this thread.

A growing number of F2Ms are gestating and giving birth to babies. Something that always surprises me. Giving birth seems to me a very female action.

Yeah, but you don't get the option of fathering it, do you? So I can see how you might feel that having children is a major priority so you will put up with the horror of doing female stuff to make it happen.

(On which subject, I've always felt that line of Germaine Greer's about how no transwoman has ever asked for a womb and ovaries is silly. I am sure many of them would have loved to have a female reproductive system but they'd have to be really quite ignorant to know it wasn't an option.)

It is a big thing to go through for 9 months though if you supposedly hate your female body.

Not got links but there was something about abortion & miscarriage not being women's issues because FTMs have them too. Hence talking about pregnant women is transphobic (you couldn't make it up, could you?)

silver here is a real life example of a feminist conference being cancelled in the face of protests by MRA and TransActivists.

www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2013/may/fury-irish-centre-cancels-radical-feminists’-conference-booking-amid-fears-over-safety

www.standard.co.uk/news/london/feminist-forum-axed-in-row-over-transsexuals-ban-8602424.html

empress a link to discussion of whether saying abortion is a women's issue is cissexist because 'men have abortions too'

www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/17888-not-everyone-who-has-an-abortion-is-a-woman-how-to-frame-the-abortion-rights-issue

What ?!?

So, in effect they are saying, men can have babies and be raped and/or need an abortion.
And women can father children, use a penis to rape a woman etc...

Now I really wonder. Is being a man or a woman just about appearance ie clothes you wear, breasts or no breast and what ... a 'feeling' that you are one or the other?
What on earth is their definition of being a man or a woman???

Fiwiw, if a trans had the op to change their sexual attribute ie no penis for a transwoman, or a reconstructed one (?) for a transman, then I could accept they have 'become' a woman/a man.
If they are keeping their reproductive system intat and are using it as such, then they are NOT what they said they are.
On what else do you want to say they are man/woman?

And then, if you have changed the meaning of the word 'woman' to mean some who feels like one....what is there left, to actually feel like?

Its a circle of nonsense tbh. But whatever, then we just need another word which means people born with xx chromosomes/uterus etc, so that we can continue to organise the spaces and services that we need due to our biology

Cheers for the link, Imust.

Shortcut, funny you should mention that... Read this and boggle.

it is essential to our work and to a deeper understanding that reproductive justice does not only apply to women, but to all people. All people who need an abortion should be able to access one, and that does not solely apply to women.

do they even know what they are saying here?

I mean - if you get pregnant surely that is a big clue that you are female? A big clue?

Ubik

Woman: An adult human female

Female: Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes.

Of course transwomen and -men should be addressed as the gender they present as, that is common courtesy. Pregnant men? Pregnancy not a women's issue? Fuck that.

I believe that in Canada they have removed reference to women in pregnancy and childbirth literature and refer to "pregnant individuals" and "birthing persons". Midwives in Canada wrote an open letter expressing their concerns about the erasure of women from this inherently female experience. There was a HuffPost article from a transman expressing his hurt that his midwife has signed this letter. It was surreal.

My head hurts

Hermione I'm in Canada and read that. Canadian culture is wonderful and infuriating in it's open-mindedness and kindness.

I agree that if the biology/sex is erased and all we are left with is gender, we will need a new word for biological women. May I suggest 'women'?

There was an intresting point raised recent-ish though about irelands pro-trans gender classification law but the 'illegal for women to abort a foetus' law. So irish women just need to identify as male and they can get a speshul man-abortion...