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 go ahead, call yourselves woman, put away your male privilege and fight for the causes of woman

This

If Tara Hudson's done any good in this world, it might be that she's raised public awareness somewhat around problems attached to the default "of course transwomen should always be treated as women" position.

There are others. I get a bit fed up with rows about women's toilets, though I do see where the concerns lie. What about women's refuges?

Very few currently accept teenage sons - this painful compromise is deemed necessary because [a] a preponderance of women & girls in refuges have recently experienced male violence, and [b] teenage boys from homes featuring male violence are likely to have internalised this as desired male behaviour. It is now possible that refuges may be legally required to admit physically male adults, with internalised male-pattern violence, as women.

Hospital wards - we moved to mixed-sex wards in the 70s/80s but that had to be rolled back sharpish because of rocketing sexual abuse, mainly perpetrated on female patients by male.

Internal examinations - most of us are used to having the world poke around our vaginas, but what if your cultural beliefs insist on a female practitioner, or if you want to be sure your daughter's first internal is done by a woman? I'm not sure if the law has changed on this yet, but in principle it already says you mustn't ask their biological sex. (Personally, I'd rather be poked by a 'cis' male with long experience than a transwoman - but this might be prejudice born from too many transwomen mansplaining my own biology very wrongly.)

If you've chosen single-sex schools for your DC, are you comfortable with the thought they might end up sharing a room and facilities with a teen of the opposite physical sex?

Outside of confined situations there are problems around competitive sports and, yes, changing rooms. I'm happy to help anyone do up a zip in a changing room but I really understand there are very many women who would feel frightened to undress in a space shared with a male-bodied adult.

I'm not actually surprised transwomen activists refuse to confront the problem of aggressive masculinity. It's exactly what they are displaying. An obsession with tarty shoes does nothing to mitigate that.

mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0SR2IN20151103?utm_source=Facebook

Quite a clear message here.

Sweet Jesus on a Breadstick, howtorebuild!

No thoughts for the dignity of teenage girls, just the TG student

Depressing.

I hope I've got this wrong, but that ruling seems to say this:

The school district has provided the student with a separate changing facility outside the locker room
Plus, they also installed privacy curtains on stalls in one female locker room
The district says transgender students may use their gender-identified locker room if they change and shower privately.

But that wasn't enough.

The transgender student demanded that there be NO privacy for the (presumably sometimes naked?) girls whilst in the female changing room. The girls are OBLIGED by law to be naked and shower in the presence of male-bodied people.

It's as if the very claim to females needing privacy and boundaries when they are vulnerable is an offence against transpeople.

I just feel utterly miserable.

Yes, to be very clear, this is another case of seven-inch-surprise

"The report, which caps a two-year investigation, found that Township High School District 211 in Palatine, Ill., unfairly denied the transgender teenager — who was undergoing hormone therapy but had not undergone gender reassignment surgery — access to school facilities in violation of Title IX, that bars discrimination in federally funded education programs, causing her “isolation,” “ostracism” and at least one “tearful breakdown.”"

www.chicagotribune.com/ct-doe-report-on-district-211-20151102-htmlstory.html

"Coach A reported that students told her they felt uncomfortable undressing in front of [the transgender student]."

Apparently there was a walk-out at another school after another penis was exposed to the girls:

www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/02/a-transgender-teen-used-the-girls-locker-room-now-her-community-is-up-in-arms/

It's beyond ridiculous. In many ways the USA is much more conservative than Britain or Europe. I am surprised they aren't up in arms.

I think this is a really tricky one. Trying to be even-handed, fair and reasonable here:

I've read the 2nd article from the Washington Post, (not a sensationalising newspaper - more like the Telegraph I think) so commenting on that. The article doesn't say whether or not the transwoman involved, Lila Perry, has undergone counselling or detailed discussion of her choices & feelings. It simply says she hasn't had gender reassignment surgery, but decided at age 13 that she was a girl, and dresses & lives that way. So it's not clear there's even been hormone treatment, which I assume would "shrink" the size of ale genitalia and render them pretty useless? I don't know, so could be wrong there.

I can't help wondering if this is a homosexual boy, or a non-gender conforming boy, caught in a very conservative community, and so the only way s/he can square that circle (to his/her mind) is to "become" a girl so her sexual attraction is opposite-sex not same-sex. That's just speculation though ...

There doesn't seem to be any suggestion that the girls are at any risk from this person's presence in the locker room. But we don't now whether anything she said or did really overtly made the girls uncomfortable, or whether the transwoman (if she is that actually!) was combative or confrontational.

BUT ... at the ages of 13-16 or so, a lot of girls are compliant to our culture's socialisation about modesty in front of the opposite sex during puberty, and may feel that Lila Perry's presence is a challenge to this and an invasion of their privacy. I don't like this socialisation around modesty & keeping girsls and boys separated. BUt on the other hand, it's in teenage years that boys learn and are socialised into masculinist roles which include violence, harassment & aggression against teenage girls. So there are good reasons for segregation.

So this is where it's difficult: I don't really want to align myself with the Christian (sounds fundamentalist) father who is leading the legal protest. Who says stuff about wanting to control what his daughter knows/sees about the opposite sex.

And I can feel for any teenager being forced to do things differently ie use a "special" changing room. I can also see why the boy's locker room & showers would be quite perilous for a teenager undergoing transition - IF hormones have been involved (no mention of the medical and counselling aspects of transition).

To be fair to all involved, it's a tough one ...

If a girl sharing that locker room comes from a battering conservative Christian family, she is at risk, and mostly from her family.

I don't understand that ruling at all. Lila was allowed to use a locker room but had to do it 'privately'. But this isn't good enough. She wants the right to be naked in front of the girls who use the room and for them to obliged to be naked in front of her. She also wants to be able to use all the locker rooms, taking away any choice the girls have over stripping off in front of a teenage lad.

That story is very very clearly showing that the feelings of the transgender girl are massively more important that the feelings of a whole group of female children. Don't know why anyone would be surprised.

I agree, Lila has a tough row to hoe here. And I have sympathy for Lila.

However, it's not a "tough one." It's pretty obvious that Lila's feelings are not more important than those of the girls at the school.

CactusAnnie I actually agree with what you're saying. And thank you for being so clear & string in your response. I was trying to see it from a number of angles, I suppose.

And - this is a broader question - I wonder whether our socialisation around privacy is in part about really old-fashioned repressive notions around gender roles? I'm not sure how much I want to establish those as feminist aims, tbh, yet they are necessities at te moment because of unreconstructed masculinity.

But once again, the problem is masculinity I think. While boys/men are socialised to look and I get that I really do! then women need privacy. Can we imagine a world where that need is no longer there? I'd like to think we can.

It really isn't a tough decision. It's disgusting that all those adolescent girls had their very real objections to sharing an intimate space with a male bodied person were minimised and dismissed and they were made out to be bigots. What sort of lesson does that teach them about what it really means to be a woman? It's disgusting that this is celebrated as a triumph for civil rights. There clearly was plenty of opposition or I doubt the school would have defied the original ruling.

The school may have seen a lot of students leave.

strong

Has anyone Googled to see what Lila Perry looks/sounds like? Here.

Lila looks and sounds exactly like the teenage male that he is (see from 1:14 or so). I would be livid if this person was allowed into the dressing room of my DD who is very sensitive about her changing body.

As well as the rampant misogyny in trampling roughshod over the needs and feelings of so many girls in order to placate one "transgirl", it's the blatant double think that scares me so much, and the way it's accepted as fact.

Like this line:
She now also tries to avoid using the bathroom at her high school: a difficult task for a teenage girl.

So biological and physiological fact have been overturned by this individual's insistence that "she" is a girl. Girls generally need to pee more often than boys, perhaps because we have our reproductive organs squeezed up in there alongside the bladder so it feels full more quickly. Lila does not have these and so "her" need to pee is the same as any other teenage boy's.

Lila will never menstruate. Lila is much less likely than actual girls of this age to get cystitis. Lila should not be demanding to share facilities with girls because "she" is actually male.

I am genuinely outraged and deeply worried by this trend of purveying bullshit as truth and liberalism.

Me too, Talking. Isn't ironic that women's rights in the US are attacked and challenged legally by both the Religious Right and the supposed "progressives"?

I suspect segregation will start, some people not happy will move to schools with no transgirls.

Wow, Cote, yes. Exactly like a teenage male. Go figure!!

And from the intro to that piece - "parents said their daughters aren't comfortable sharing a bathroom with a student who has the body of a boy".

This is where people are just covering their heads with a paper bag that blocks out reality. This person has the body of a boy, and as such has no place in a girls' changing room. How can that be so, so hard to understand?

What the fuck is happening that this stuff is being forced on women and girls in the name of equality and human rights and liberalism?