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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

847 replies

KKCupCakes · 31/10/2015 21:49

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

OP posts:
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7
Ubik1 · 03/11/2015 17:22

I want to ban use of the word 'trope'

MagickPants · 03/11/2015 17:25

"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."

I really strongly disagree with the first part of this.

Yes the second part is completely true - that in a culture where men are as they are, women need protection from it.

But I don't think it follows to posit as some ideal that all boundaries can be swept happily away and nobody would suffer from it. I love privacy, in many different modes and contexts. I think better alone, I sleep better alone, I am only comfortable with a certain amount of privacy factored into my life. This is not because I am surrounded by abusers. Actually I live and work with lovely people and I get so much from their company. For this reason I strongly contest (as I do in many contexts) the idea that only when something is wrong is privacy required.

On that basis there would be nothing wrong with opening others' letters when there is nothing to hide, for instance. This is just not true. It is abusive and intrusive to open others' letters even if all they contain is chatty stuff about the weather. (I mean if you choose to walk about naked and choose to share an email account with everyone in your house - fine - but I couldn't bear it)

Similarly I completely reject the idea that if you could demonstrate that some kind of abuse is vanishingly unlikely, then privacy and single sex spaces are unncessary. I just really disagree with that.

MagickPants · 03/11/2015 17:32

I read a mind-blowing piece on this online:

rs21.org.uk/2015/10/29/our-existence-is-not-up-for-debate-a-reply-to-germaine-greer-and-her-defenders/

I don't mean it's mind-blowing because it's insanely shouty and strident. Actually it's written in a pretty reasonable tone and there are whole sections where I'm nodding along.
Like the end:

"Our understanding of how gender is used to oppress us needs to be able to tear apart the way it is constructed, and that starts with championing solidarity for the marginalised and oppressed, not by participating in denying their existence."
How could you argue with that?

And what about this:

"gender, and especially a binary gender, is a historically constructed phenomenon. During World War Two, for example, what it meant to be a woman changed from the weak, cared-for housewife to women as powerful, independent and strong enough to carry on the manufacturing work left behind by men at war. After the war and into the 1950s the return of men led to the intentional re-establishment of woman as a docile, sensitive housewife. The assertion that there is anything essential and eternal to men and women, and that gender assigned at birth determines almost every aspect of your life, is a political ideology. Gender is constructed."

I like all that!

So how do you get from that - from a lucid analysis of the time-sensitive and oppressive nature of gender - to "GENDER IS ALL AND IF YOU CALL ME THE WRONG ONE I DISAPPEAR AND CEASE TO EXIST"?

I am not being an arse. (deliberately.) I just literally don't get it.

MagickPants · 03/11/2015 17:41

I am not cis. And I think I might start telling everyone that to see if I get access to male privilege.

I was mistaken often for a boy as a child and I quite liked it. I was active and outdoorsy and played with boys often.

As a teenager I developed a very curvy figure and was miserable about it. I wanted to be skinny and even when very slim I never was. This has caused me misery.

I have suffered mental illness (depression and anxiety) on and off since puberty. This has included self harm and suicidal ideation.

As a young woman I was treated always as a sex object at college. Being at college was 3 years of running a gauntlet of constant objectification and occasional sexual assault. This made me miserable.

As a young woman working, or attempting to find work, I received constant objectifying feedback on my appearance. I have repeatedly found that my logical and unemotional manner receives censure at work even when the content of my work is excellent. I have failed to progress because my manner was not considered suitably sycophantic or empathetic.

Now that I am older I am less likely to be regarded as as sex object or as an ego boost for men and I am much happier at work. My direct and knowledgeable communications are more likely to be well received. I am interrupted less and am finally progressing a little where the recommendations I have made have been heeded and proved right.

As my work life becomes more satisfying and less closely tied to gender-based expectations on me to be feminine, my whole life is easier as my mental health improves. This makes all my relationships run more smoothly. It is reducing my self medicatino with alcohol and self harm and suicide never cross my mind.

Am I a transgender man?
Or does all that look pretty standard for a woman suffering under an oppressive regime called GENDER?

HairyLittleCarrot · 03/11/2015 17:52

Somebody pondered what would happen if the girls started using the gender neutral bathroom.

My cynical assumption is that a. girls would still find themselves sharing with male bodied people since it is gender neutral and not segregated so it is for boys too, and b. an argument would be contrived that wherever the majority of the girls went necessarily constituted and defined the girls' bathroom, and thus this would now be the facility the TG student now desired to validate their identity.

It's not about a TG person needing a safe place to pee, is it? It's about preventing women and girls from asserting "we females have our biological sex in common. We are not the same as you. We have the right to segregate ourselves in a very limited set of circumstances."

Thus the default position will always be reduced to: the female sex must never, ever have the right to their own sex-based privacy. Males will violate any and every attempt at erecting a female boundary.

It feels like girls and women are being hunted down no matter where they seek refuge.

reni2 · 03/11/2015 18:01

It could really screw up school admissions, many areas have much better girls' schools than co-ed or boys' schools.

hedgehogsdontbite · 03/11/2015 18:02

This has all reminded me of a special interest forum I used to frequent. I had a female sounding user name and was open about being a woman. I found it really hard to participate because it was such an aggressive, hostile environment.

Then I set up an account pretending to be a bloke as a joke, in response to something someone posted. Nobody questioned my 'maleness' even though they knew I was that person. I used that male persona for the rest of my time there because I felt like I was treated with much more respect and far less aggression, from both men and women but mostly men, when they thought I was a bloke.

It was an eye opener and kind of sad too.

hedgehogsdontbite · 03/11/2015 18:04

*knew I wasn't that person

CactusAnnie · 03/11/2015 18:06

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Atomik · 03/11/2015 18:22

Yes I wonder what would happen in that school if all the girls started to use the neutral changing room?

I'm not sure that will be the most obvious option in the mind of parents of some of the girls.

Some parents may want their female children to drop phyisical education, or competitive sports... or school.

Homeschooling is a legal choice. Those that have previously not leaned towards, or felt equipped for it may reconsider for current and future high school age daughters if sex segregated facilities are no longer a given.

The legacy of this ruling may spread well beyond this one small locality and shrink the educational options some parents will consider for their female children. Parents who, were it not for cases like this, would have had no issue with their daughters being exposed to an education (classroom and social) outside of their family/church circle.

CheerfulYank · 03/11/2015 18:25

Jesus wept.

I despair.

It isninteresting how things go here in the States...porn is another issue where some feminists and some hardcore Christinas form an uneasy alliance.

howtorebuild · 03/11/2015 18:27

When we were at school we had a PE teacher who liked to look at us showing and getting changed. We would help each other by creating a wall of bodies in turn until someone had the idea of creating a bathsheet elasticity at the neck, so we could get changed without being looked at.

howtorebuild · 03/11/2015 18:28

Showering

SettlinginNicely · 03/11/2015 18:33

If conservative ChristiAns will be the last to hold the line for girls in the USA, who will do it in the UK? Perhaps Muslims?

CactusAnnie · 03/11/2015 18:40

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

CheerfulYank · 03/11/2015 18:42

I have a very liberal friend who says "well white people used to be 'uncomfortable' with black people in their space too..."

How to explain that it's NOT THE SAME?!

Imustgodowntotheseaagain · 03/11/2015 18:49

Some conservative cultures, even here in the UK, will only allow their daughters access to HE if they attend an all-women college.

Cambridge has a couple of woman-only Colleges. There have already been cases of male-bodied trans women applying to be placed at those Colleges for student shadowing. If male-bodied trans people win places at these colleges there will be female students who will be unable to attend as a consequence.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 03/11/2015 18:50

Did anyone else notice in that article about the college locker room the wee bit at the bottom about a transgender first grader who initially hadn't been required to use the toilets of his gender.

How can a first grader possibly be diagnosed (for want of a better word) as transgender!?

Imustgodowntotheseaagain · 03/11/2015 18:52

From Cactus link:-

"Whether through rampant bullying in schools, the persistent threat of both street and intimate partner violence, or the risk of parental abandonment, trans women bear burdens unlike other applicants. "

Because no woman undergraduate has ever been assaulted in the street or by their partner.

Fucks sake.

howtorebuild · 03/11/2015 18:52

Are you suggesting there is a misogynistic group of psychiatrists using children and adults to undermine women and girls?

Imustgodowntotheseaagain · 03/11/2015 18:58

I think that Guardian article 100% reinforces Germaine Greer's point. It seems to be saying that women's colleges should prioritise trans women because they have more interesting insights about being women than we do.

LurcioAgain · 03/11/2015 18:59

Cheerful Yank - when I was at college I was sexually harassed by a guy who happened to be black - and I guess for me it's the "happened to be" which is important. His race wasno mmore an integral factor of what happened than say someone having blue eyes and sexually harassing someone, or having rrd hair and sexually harassing someone. But when it comes to say a rape crisis centre, possession of a penis isn't an incidental part of the situation the women are dealing with the aftermath of - it's the actual weapon used against them. That, for me, is the difference.

CheerfulYank · 03/11/2015 19:08

HowToRebuild I wouldn't say there is a conscious agenda, no.

I would say that people born and socialized as male are not used to not being listened to and not used to not being able to steamroll over the rights of women and girls.

That makes sense Lurcio :)

slugseatlettuce · 03/11/2015 19:09

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

howtorebuild · 03/11/2015 19:09

Germaine Greer has done the right thing, sit back now, let events play their course. There will indeed be some strange bed fellows in years to come.

I asked dd what she would do in PE, she said she would bring in a bed sheet and work with a group of girls to change behind.

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