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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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wedding, hen do, transgender

750 replies

user1488971792 · 21/03/2017 17:11

Hi I'm after some advice.
I am getting married and just organising the hen do. Im in a bit of a predicament. My cousin (who is quite a bit older then me not that thats really relevant i suppose) is transgender- male to female. All the family have been very accepting and we would rather see her happy then living a lie and she is aware this is how we feel. This isn't a new thing and we have known about her becoming transgender for 2-3 years now.
now the difficult part!! Im organising a hen do, nothing wild, just an overnight stay, spa that sort of thing. its obviously all women, but i don't know whether to invite cousin or not. If it had of been a night out it wouldnt be an issue as i would have just invited her. However, we are all staying in a house together with a hot tub, she is in a relationship with a women and hasn't had any surgery so still 'male' physically. There will be young girls there who i know won't feel comfortable with a 'man.' i think it would be different if she had had surgery, i don't know why? if i don't invite her it will be awkward and i know she won't want to go on the stag do which i completely understand. I am yet to mention anything about the issue at all as i genuinely don't know what to do and dont want to hurt feelings etc any advice on how to handle this issue sensitively ?

OP posts:
kua · 21/03/2017 23:16

For the love of god. It is up to the OP who she wants to invite . There will always be contradictions 're this friend and that . If the OP is worried about the dynamic . It is her perogative not to invite anyone.

hotsouple · 21/03/2017 23:20

So... essentially, you are inviting a male bodied, male socialized 40 yr old to a bathing suit gathering populated by young women, some teens. Honestly, I would be so creeped out. Even if you accept your uncle as a woman, the other girls might see this as a 40 yr old man in a bikini, which would make me sooooooooooo uncomf with being there.

GreyDey · 21/03/2017 23:24

What is the issue with the terminology?

CoteDAzur · 21/03/2017 23:30

"she isn't female but she is a woman."

There is no such thing as a woman who is not female, as per definitions of the word 'woman' which you can find in any dictionary:

Woman = Adult human female.

GinSwigmore · 21/03/2017 23:47

grey "a transgender"
transgender is an adjective not a noun.

GinSwigmore · 21/03/2017 23:48

^ like you wouldn't say "a black" if you were referring to a black man.

MrsToddsShortcut · 22/03/2017 00:13

Please don't underestimate rape or abuse based PTSD. I am a multiple rape survivor. I flatshared briefly with a lovely woman who kept inviting her new boyfriend to stay over. Despite the fact that he seemed nice etc etc, I used to lie awake at night, too scared to sleep, knowing there was a man in the flat who I didn't know or feel safe with.

Totally my issue and I started looking for a new flat. But in the meantime I put a lock on my door in order to sleep. Irrational? Yes. Overreaction? Yes. Was he dangerous? Very unlikely. But PTSD isn't rational. I never regarded it as anyone else's problem but my God, it was so real. It still is and I've had years of therapy.

Put bluntly, if you have a penis and I don't know you, I am nervous/scared/triggered by being alone with you or in close proximity.

The other thing that I think is really important, is female socialisation. The OPs cousin may well be jolly decent, but in some ways that is irrelevant. Not to misgender the cousin, but until pretty recently they lived and presented as a man.

Lots of men are lovely. But as a sex class, men commit 98% of sexual crime and 93% of violent crime. In the UK 85,000 females a year are raped and another approx 150,000 are sexually assaulted. Very few women have not grown up being catcalled, groped etc. It is part of who we are.

We are not socialised to get undressed around males. We are not socialised to share intimate space with them outside a relationship or family. We are taught to keep ourselves safe, to stick with our friends, to not get in strange cars or unlicensed taxis. Not to walk home alone in the dark, or down alleyways or isolated places.

We are taught all of this because we, as females, have a collective understanding that males, as a class, can hurt us. And often do.

Now, OPs cousin, as I said, is probably lovely. But you are asking a group of women to spend time with someone who, however much of a woman they feel/are legally, is, due to their age and late transition, in all likelihood still identifiably male in many ways and who still has a male body.

Now, everyone there might be A-OK with that. But what if they aren't? Because this isn't just spending the weekend with a bunch of women and a man.

It's a bunch of women and another woman who until 3 years ago, was a man. Who sadly for them (because gender dysphoria must be hellish) probably still looks largely male. And the other women are being asked to pretend that they don't know that. And they at being asked to throw all of that lifetimes socialisation about how they behave around males straight out of the window and pretend it is irrelevant. And that is gaslighting.

MrsHathaway · 22/03/2017 00:27

Flowers MrsT

Datun · 22/03/2017 00:45

MrsToddsShortcut

Brilliantly put.

I'm sorry for what happened to you.

RogueBiscuit · 22/03/2017 00:58

I wouldn't attend something like this. Men being there wouldn't bother me. What would bother me is having to pretend that these men are women when they are not. I'm not willing to misgender myself to validate a man's delusions.

In this scenario your friends and cousin are not all girls together. Why should everyone lie?

Your cousin is a biological male. If you believe he's a woman, then what do you believe yourself to be? Because you can't both be women.

MrsJayy · 22/03/2017 01:52

God op you clearly know how to rile this lot up its like bingo man in dress young girls in hot tub penis in vicinity of abused woman and they are all falling for it well done. Mumsnetters love a man in dress story this is the best one yet what a load of shite.

Italiangreyhound · 22/03/2017 03:49

OP "As awful as it sounds its not particularly important to me that cousin is there but i think it will cause tensions within the family if I'm seen to exclude her, and she will see it like i have excluded her because she's transgender!"

It does not sound in the slightest awful. As far as I can remember none of our cousins came to either my sister or I's hen dos.

It is your event and you must invite who you want to invite.

'i think it will cause tensions within the family'frankly I'd say let it be so, you've said you were welcoming and kind to her so it really is no one else's business.

Yes, it does matter that she is older if most people are younger, just as most women don;t invite their mum or aunts on their hen dos.

Yes it does matter she is male and has a penis and you have young guests one of whom is a survivors of abuse, and to be honest we never know how many of our friends have experienced unwanted attention from men. So a hen do one would expect will be all females.

"if I'm seen to exclude her, and she will see it like i have excluded her because she's transgender!" but you are not doing that necessarily you've said you don't especially want her there and you have mentioned her age too.

I think having a male present in an otherwise all female group is going to change the dynamic quite a bit. So it is your call. If your cousin got married they might not invite you to their hen do, and even if they did you may not go. As I say I don't think any of my cousins were even invited!

MrsToddsShortcut I am so sorry for your experiences. Your post highlights why the presence of a male-bodied person at a hot tub hen do is totally inappropriate.

Italiangreyhound · 22/03/2017 03:53

MrsToddsShortcut I've heard really good things about Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) for post traumatic stress disorder. I don't know what sort of counselling you have had but I have heard this has very good results.

www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Post-traumatic-stress-disorder/Pages/Treatment.aspx

Italiangreyhound · 22/03/2017 04:10

CoolJazz

"When will the blinkers fall from your eyes, and you will see we don't have to sacrifice everything to accommodate trans.
We can be accepting without having to put them at the centre of everything."

So true.

user1487175389 · 22/03/2017 06:54

grey the thing about the genitals not stopping people being equal and doing what they want in life - I agree, except where that thing is explicitly related to genitalia or biological facts relates to genitalia. As a bisexual woman I might have a fantasy about impregnating my female partner with my (non-existent) penis, but that's never actually going to help us create a baby is it? For that we'd need IVF or a turkey baster. It's not inequality that I'm incapable of doing it the old fashioned way, any more than a trans woman with penis is unequal when they have to urinate standing up at a urinal. It's just biology. Not bigotry.

Universitychallenging · 22/03/2017 06:59

Just to come back to a post that was addressed specifically to me, after it had been said that women who went to a mans house on a first date might get raped.

This was then said

WombOfOnesOwn Tue 21-Mar-17 19:53:41
OK, so because you engaged in risky behavior once, other women should have to, or they're bigots?

Many women would be comfortable with an MTF or even a known fetishist in the hot tub with them, as long as they were confident nothing bad would happen. Others won't be. Why are you shaming one choice?

Firstly engaging in risky behaviour or not does not make anyone a bigot. The risky behaviour that I engaged in had nothing to do with anyone else and whether or not any one else would not do it does not make them a bigot and I never said that it did.

Secondly I did not and am not shaming anyone. And there is no evidence that this particular transgender woman is a fetishist.

And thirdly, and most importantly, it doesn't matter what kind of risky behaviour I or anyone engaged it, the only person to blame for a rape is a rapist. This part of the post is victim blaming.

Trifleorbust · 22/03/2017 07:50

Italiangreyhound;

Has that poster actually said a single thing which you would describe as 'accepting' though? Confused

There is NOTHING 'accepting' about snide name-calling, othering, excluding and isolating a person because of their needs.

CustardShoes · 22/03/2017 09:16

Wombs post makes perfect sense. Women, no matter what they have been through, are expected to pretend biology is irrelevant because a man has declared their feelings, and that takes priority

This

lemonzest123 · 22/03/2017 09:28

What would bother me is having to pretend that these men are women when they are not. I'm not willing to misgender myself to validate a man's delusions.

Shock

So if I introduced you to my trans friend at a party and said rogue this is Jennifer, she lives in the same part of town as you.... You'd say no he doesn't and flounce off??
Sad

CustardShoes · 22/03/2017 09:31

Lots of men are lovely. But as a sex class, men commit 98% of sexual crime and 93% of violent crime. In the UK 85,000 females a year are raped and another approx 150,000 are sexually assaulted. Very few women have not grown up being catcalled, groped etc. It is part of who we are.

We are not socialised to get undressed around males. We are not socialised to share intimate space with them outside a relationship or family. We are taught to keep ourselves safe, to stick with our friends, to not get in strange cars or unlicensed taxis. Not to walk home alone in the dark, or down alleyways or isolated places.

We are taught all of this because we, as females, have a collective understanding that males, as a class, can hurt us. And often do

Mrs T Flowers - thank you SO MUCH for this post. You put it so clearly & rationally (and I'm sorry for the experiences you've had that have forced you to think this through).

I am a fairly liberal, non-pearl clutching type. I was a 1970s Women's Lib feminist, when the intellectual & political arguments for women-only spaces were made, and are still pertinent & important I think.

But I was also raised in a home where nudity was frequent, and there wasn't really an insistence on privacy. And so I do find I question why there is a current worry about women sharing spaces with biological males, whatever they identify as. I'm used to the German way of mixed-sex nakedness at saunas etc, public swimming pools with mix-sex changing & so on.

So I'm sort-of on the fence about mixed sex lavatories etc.
But you put it so well - the fundamental reasons for single sex facilities - that men as a class not individual men, are perpetrators of sexual violence & harassment.

So you've helped me understand the radical feminist concerns about transwomen in women-only spaces - it is about masculine socialisaion.

And I did say upthread that I thought most late transitioning transwomen are recognisable as such. Not that any "real" woman can spot a transwoman at 30 paces. And that most people are polite and live & let live. But I've had a drag queen tell me that not shaving my legs is rather yukky. He has no right to tell me how to be a woman ... and neither frankly, does a transwoman tell me how to be a woman.

I have 2 transwomen colleagues - one transitioned late and just looks androgynous. I don't think of her as "him" at all, but I also don't see her (or experience working with her) as the same thing as a biological woman. She's a sort of androgynous presence =- she's just her as we all are just ourselves. My other colleague transitioned much younger and "passes" pretty well (she asked me whether she passed), but I tend to interact with her in the same way I interact with gay male colleagues ... go figure

We're all socialised to deal with gender roles/ gender differences; it's the way our society is structured.

LaurieMarlow · 22/03/2017 09:37

Jeez though, a hen party is not a legally defined female only space. And neither is a hot tub.

I've been to hen parties with male attendees. So I fail to see what the big deal is about inviting the OP's poor cousin.

SookiesSocks · 22/03/2017 09:55

No other men are invited.
The OP has decided it is women/females only. Her cousin is niether a women or a female so why should they expect to be invited?
If the hen do was mixed sexes there would not be an issue at all. Its not so there is.

Universitychallenging · 22/03/2017 09:57

Her cousin is a woman. She may not be female but she is a woman.

MadMags · 22/03/2017 09:58

No, her woman is a trans woman. Not a woman.

MadMags · 22/03/2017 09:59

Ha! Her cousin.

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