To be baffled by and disappointed with the amount of transphobia on MN?

[ShutTheFuckUpBarbara]

I know I'll get flamed for voicing my opinion on this, but I don't care.

I just don't understand why there is so much hatred for trans people on here.

Yes, some trans activists are extremists and no I don't agree with them, but should all other trans people suffer because of them?

I get that there are issues that need to be addressed, as highlighted by recent items in the news and recent threads (which prison should trans people be sent to, can a MTW be a girl guide leader and various others). I don't have a solution for these, but I feel that as a society we should work together to make it work, rather than just spout hatred and insults.

It is especially disappointing as there are a lot of people in the trans community suffering mental health issues, often as the result of how they are being treated, and MN is usually a safe haven for people with MH issues.

I used to enjoy reading the Feminism chat (or most of it anyway), now almost every thread on there is transphobic

Most of us here are women, a lot of us are from ethnic minorities, or have a disability, a lot of us have been discriminated against, we know what it feels like so why do it to others??

shutthe
The reason that example gets brought out so often is not to insult trans people, but to show the logical inconsistency with the notion of gender identity being innate and more valid than physical reality.
If a male can be a woman inside then a white person can be black inside; a human can be a cat inside; an elderly person can be a child inside.
Almost every trans/gender critical poster on these threads used to be of the view that we should always be kind and accommodating and never say anything that could hurt the feelings of trans people. Then a few years ago trans activists started to become really vocal online and in policy and we realised that it needs more than being kind to address the threat of trans activism.
The whole ideology is full of logical inconsistencies and fallacies. Maybe I would have avoided pointing them out in the past due to being nice but the time for being nice is done with.

Is that a language student situation, Kerala? Tricky.

"I don't think questions like 'what is a woman' have a simple answer. I don't know the answer. So I try to err on the side of tolerance and inclusion."

Snorkmaiden you said this up thread.

What is wrong with the simple definition that a woman is "an adult human female"?

Why is this definition faulty in your opinion?

It's a straightforward apolitical factual biological based statement. Seems useful, clear and fit for purpose to me.

Please can you explain what your issue is with this definition and tell us what alternative definition you think works better?

Yes pickle. The school are on it - but no one has dealt with this before.

"for all the people who genuinely want to transition and have done for years, isn't it incredibly insulting to imply that they just woke up one morning and decided to be another gender, like they would pick an outfit for the day?"

I don't care how long it took them to decide they want to be the opposite sex. I honestly couldn't care less. I also don't care how they dress and act, whether they wear makeup and heels, whatever. They should live they way that makes them happy.

The point is that with dresses, makeup, voice coaching, surgery, hormones etc a man will become a transwoman - a male who wants to be perceived as female, with varying levels of success. He will never become a woman - a female adult.

I realise that this may be hurtful to them to hear, but I am not in the business of lying to make people happy, especially when stakes are so high for girls and women everywhere. If anyone who "feels like" a woman is considered one, say bye-bye to women's sports, scholarships for girls, prepare to lose female-only spaces such as women's prisons and communal changing rooms in swimming pools, for example. Statistics will be meaningless as males in a dress killing their neighbours are recorded as "women" (as they already are) and we will be incapable of fighting for or even talking about women's issues such as FGM.

Wake up OP. This is an incredibly important issue and hurting trans women's feelings is the least of our worries.

theOnly Cote I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. I still think it's insulting to tell someone how they're allowed to feel, but we're clearly never going to see eye to eye on this.

As I said before, I don't want to quote any other threads directly, I have reported what I felt needed reporting and it wouldn't be right to link here. I gave an example that has been used often enough that it isn't identifying of a specific poster.

STFU - " I still think it's insulting to tell someone how they're allowed to feel,"

But that is not what we are talking about

They can feel however the hell they like. They can think they are all Mata Hari, or Queen of Sheba for all I care.

What we are talking about is that feeling whatever they feel doesn't actually MAKE them women, just like DS feeling he is a cat and desperately wanting to be one doesn't make him a cat. It is not an insult to DS to tell him so.

This is all so self-evident that I can hardly believe we are having this conversation, by the way.

Surely you know that feeling or thinking you are something doesn't make you so.

Haven't read the whole thread - but, I am SO bored of seeing these issues pop on mumsnet. I genuinely could not care less what men want to identify as women - why do they need everyone's approval? Why always a victim? Why always complaining and drawing attention? Mental health issues, all kind of issues. Do trans people not understand that everyone - however they "identify" have mental health issues? And there are funding cuts on the NHS for everyone with mental health issues? Would any trans people have anything left to say if they weren't discussing their 'problems'. THIS is the kind of thing that puts me off 'working together' with trans people. I am too scared to say anything to any of you because all of the extremist views and terms that everyone is meant to get right first time so i say nothing and stay wellll away from the whole thing. I think OP you need to get a grip. And p.s. No i do not want men in the same toilets and changing rooms as me. Sorry but that is the truth. And yes i realise i am going to get flamed for this post won't log back on here for a month but really am so cringed out and tired of listening to the whole facade.

I am not about policing people's thoughts. I don't care how people identify themselves. I am happy, for example, to use whatever promouns people wish.

What I do care about is when there is a clash of rights. And in a clash of rights I am not ashamed to say that I will stand with women who are born women. And with women who have gone through the whole grueling process of full transition. Not the Caitlin Jenners of the world, who are happy to switch back to being Bruce when she wants to take advantage of male privilege.

Do you feel like a woman, Barbara? What does that feel like to you?

We're not telling anyone how they're allowed to feel. We're telling them that however much they want to be a woman, they aren't - biologically or legally - and they never will be. But we respect their right to feel however they feel, and address them as they want to be addressed, and support them in their fight against prejudice, discrimination and hate.

OP: "I find this story really sad. He is in effect cheating if competing as a girl, but not allowed to compete as a boy. How awful for this kid, how unfair for the other competitors."

I think it's really sad too. I don't know what a workable solution would be, though. It is unfair to the other girls competing, but I imagine if he were allowed to compete against the boys, they would wipe the floor with him. Testosterone gives him an advantage against the girls, but lack of muscle strength would disadvantage him against the boys.

In fact, I think the whole thing is very sad. While I object strongly to a lot of the more extreme statements and demands of transactivists, I can understand that it must be devastating to believe that you have been born into the "wrong" sex. I don't know why it happens, but I can feel sympathetic to people who experience it. Jan Morris has lived for 40 years as a woman (after 40 years as a man) and no harm seems to have come of it. I would never want to minimise those feelings that made her want to transition, because clearly they were overwhelming.

I do feel unhappy, however, at allowing people who are biologically male to be held in women's prisons, or to compete as women in sporting contests.

I still think it's insulting to tell someone how they're allowed to feel, but we're clearly never going to see eye to eye on this

Why then do you think it's okay to tell women they are transphobic for feeling angry that a group of males are appropriating their humanity? Why isn't that insulting? Or why are they not allowed to feel concerned that this group of males is a threat to their human rights?

Your gender identity is not more valid because you happen to have been born with female sex organs

I know this was a way back but - I don't have a gender identity. I have a female body and a personality. I do not recognise the concept of gender identity.

TRans activists tell women how to feel all the time.

"oh men can just decide to be women now, so I decide I am now a cat/ the Queen / a millionnaire /whatever"

But isn't this kind of comment completely disrespectful and insulting towards people who are born male and genuinely, wholeheartedly feel and want to be female and live as such? (and the other way around)

One of the issue's with this argument is the same one that MRA's use to shut down women talking about male violence and it is the "But not all men are violent" trope.

Of course, not everyone who presents as gender non-conforming has the same reasons for doing it - we know that. But when you insist that women (and it's often used against women, more so than men), have to qualify every sentence with "Not all men...", "Not all trans-people", "Not everyone in prison...", "Not all police..." and on and on and on, then you stifle debate. People have to use their time and brain space endlessly stating and restating things that could be presumed by the reader, especially within the context of whole threads.

I understand that for some people it may be uncomfortable, but we all have to take responsibility for our feelings, like Fish does. It is not our job to coddle the readers of our posts, it is our job to express our thoughts and ideas. How others feel about is wholly their business and if something that someone says doesn't apply to you and you're getting upset about it then the problem is with you. If someone says "Mother's who feed their children fish-fingers and chips or pizza everyday are terrible mothers" and I get upset because on occasion I have fed my children fish-fingers and chips or pizza, the fault is mine for applying a statement that wasn't about me, to me. Now, you could still argue that the statement itself is wrong, but my emotional reaction had nothing to do with the author of the statement and everything to do with my comprehension skills. The same applies to your statement above.

If we can only say things that make no one feel uncomfortable, then we can effectively say nothing - and that there, is how you silence a debate.

Trans activists are happy to tell women how to feel. They do it all the time. And they tell women that their feelings are wrong, that they aren't valid, that they are hysterical etc.

But I suspect that wasn't what was meant about it being insulting to tell people how to feel.

Lesbians should be open to sex with male people or they are vagina fetishists
Mothers should be fine with pre op male people chaperoning their daughters on guide camps
Rape victims should be fine with sharing crisis facilities with male people
Victims of dv should be fine with male people in dv shelters
Or is it only trans people who shouldn't be told what to feel?

"for all the people who genuinely want to transition and have done for years, isn't it incredibly insulting to imply that they just woke up one morning and decided to be another gender, like they would pick an outfit for the day?"

I don't believe for a second that every trans person has genuinely wanted to transition for years. Schools are awash with trans children. St Paul's has this week announced they have 10 trans pupils in their 6th form. It's absolute bunkum that every trans person has severe dysmorphia and has agonised over it for years.

When I was at school there were a few girls with eating disorders and probably 2 dozen more who 'identified as girls with eating disorders'. The ones with eating disorders were ill and unhappy, and got thinner and sicker and needed medical help. The others talked loudly about how many calories they burned and how much they had binged and purged and how many calories were in a multi vitamin and went on about laxatives and eating loo roll and went for communal retching sessions in the loos after lunch. They weren't ill. they were attention seeking bandwagon jumpers just like all the little gender fluid demi-boi kids we have now. I don't give a shit if it's insulting to call them out on it. Not only are these kids not the opposite sex, they're not even bloody dysphoric. It's incredibly insulting to dysphoric people and trivialises their condition, yet we have actual adults falling over themselves to engage with it and validate it. The biggest tragedy is all the kids who've been swept along with it who end up de-transitioning with permanent physical damage and the loss of the community who shun them for no longer conforming to the trans narrative. I don't know about MTT but for FTT the peak time for de-transitioning is 4 years, so they are mostly late teens or early 20s, infertile, with deepened voices, facial hair, double mastectomies and no mates. Sorry if I'm not being 'nice'.

I wish some sort of workable solution could be found

There isn't one. Do you understand that? Stop telling women that they're the ones whose rights shouldn't matter. I find that just as offensive as judging by your pearl clutching you find women expressing robustly that they won't be walked all over for an ideology they don't believe in or accept.

Kerala can you tell us what happens, either on here or on its own thread?

Apologies for butting in to what is evidently a very long discussion, just one very small point to make with regards to the definition of cis:

"denoting or relating to a molecular structure in which two particular atoms or groups lie on the same side of a given plane in the molecule, in particular denoting an isomer in which substituents at opposite ends of a carbon–carbon double bond are on the same side of the bond."

It is a scientific term used that has been appropriated from the scientific community. How do I know this? Because I am a scientist xx

It's hugely loaded in its application to women.

I am very late to this but I have spent most of the day reading the Thread.

I would just like to say thank you to the posters on the feminist board for highlighting the trans issue, it is not something I had thought about before but I have learnt so much from reading the threads on here. So thank you to you all and thank you also to mumsnet for allowing these discussions. [Flowers]