Transgender child the subject of a class reader?

[armpitz]

here

Now, I haven't read it yet but AIBU to be a bit unsure about this?

I dont know why you bother toastie

Its still the same patronising bullshit as last time

I read the whole thing...again

Should have just skipped to the end

I think that's the least you can do if you're campaigning to remove someone's rights

The only ones campaigning to have rights removed are the transactivists who want the right to single sex spaces removed. I think k everyone would agree that transpeople deserve the same rights and respect as everyone else, but this should involve their own rights and spaces, not infringing on the rights of others.

"Heaven forbid someone on NMs actually doesn't hate the trans community" Strawman.

How come that not a single pro trans agenda poster on 100 + MN threads on this issue has been able to explain what it actually is about them they think is 'woman' 'female'?

I reject the inference of trans ideology that a women is defined by stereotypical characteristics e.g. long hair, make up, figure hugging clothes and object of male gaze and what not.

Sure enough there are some troubled individuals out there who feel conflicted about not adhering to gender stereotypes to such a degree that they want to look and act like the opposite sex but you cannot change your sex, you can't. Just accept yourself as you are, not conforming to typical ideas of man / woman. On a structural level, male on female violence and sexism needs to be addresses much more rigorously so women such as in the video upthread don't feel they have to present as men to escape the sleazy male gaze, everyday sexism and fear of being raped.

People can change their clothes and behaviour but you cannot force the rest of the world to pretend that they are not xx or xy. People know. Stop trying to pull the wool over people's eyes. rather than saying we are women it would be better to say we don't accept traditional male teroptypes

Perhaps S should be added to LGBT as straight people are now as wierd as everyone else

Straight people are already part of the T. Would be a bit superfluous to add them separately-

I have never ever, not once, seen a thread on mumsnet where anyone at all expressed a desire to remove transpeople's rights to work, live, marry, love, live free of violence

When men demand access to women's bodies and safety nets, and want "rights" to speak over them, they are not the ones being oppressed

I think everyone would agree that transpeople deserve the same rights and respect as everyone else

Except transactivists, who think they should have more rights than everyone else.

I can't believe that video! calling a woman transphobic for saying that her little boy going through a phase of wearing dresses as a preschooler didn't mean he was a girl!

Jesus, my girls went through phrases of wearing monkey onezies and saying "I'm a monkey", they weren't "telling me" they were transspeciees

I'm obviously such a bad hateful biggoted mother for telling my kids that there's no such thing as girls toys and boys toys and they can play with whatever they want!

Some of those talking points are poor arguments, but others are flat-out lies, Tabasco.

1. Within patriarchal society transwomen are seen as "lower" (much, much lower) than biological women, due to rejecting masculinity. We are simply not going to develop a culture where men on masse start identifying as women while still retaining male privilege. It would go against the very foundations of partriarchy.

False. The highest-paid "woman" CEO and highest-paid "woman" film directors are all biological males. When men who are attracted to women (i.e. men not subject to homophobia) come out as trans, they do not suddenly end up on the wrong side of the wage gap. There's plenty of material out there for you to research if you believe this is wrong -- please, go find it yourself, and you will see that their salaries drop on average by just about 5%.

3. Transwomen suffer high levels of abuse and discrimination. The number one cause of death for transwomen is murder.

This is false. Do you have any proof of this whatsoever? This is 100% false. This is a lie. I don't know how many ways to say that. Literally not one trans person in the UK was murdered in 2016. Two trans people committed murder or attempted murder, but not one was murdered. Do you have any evidence whatsoever that murder is the "leading cause of death" for MTFs? It seems like a lot of your argument rests on this, and it's a lie.

"The majority of transwomen work as prostitutes to pay for their gender reassignment."

Citation needed. This is another falsehood. This is a lie. This is 100% not true. This seems to have come from a comment on MN where someone said most of the MTFs she knew personally had engaged in prostitution to pay for surgeries. Needless to say, "most of the people a random MNer knows" is not a good random sample, and no actual studies have shown it to be true that even half of MTFs want surgery, much less that they'd be prostitutes to get it.

5. Research shows that transwomen suffer the same level of misogyny after they transition as biological women, even from people who knew them as men.

Citation needed. This is false.

8. There are people who are born intersexed or with various medical conditions meaning their biological sex is not clear-cut, and their needs should not be overlooked in the current trans hysteria. In the past I've raised this point on threads here and been told it was irrelevant - sorry, but it's not irrelevant. Posters have explicitly stated that anyone who ever had a penis even if they do not have a penis now should be barred from female toilets. A statement like that affects intersexed individuals; you can't pretend it doesn't or not think about how their rights are going to be accommodated.

There is no such thing as an intersex person who has their penis removed at an adult age for intersex correction. This intersex thing is a red herring, and you don't seem to understand it very well.

10. The idea that men "need" to become transwomen in order to access female spaces is naive. Men don't need to do a damn thing to access female spaces. For the most part they just barge right in. Why would a man put himself in an extremely vulnerable position, give up all his male privilege and male power, put himself at constant high risk of attack and discrimination, and face the complete rejection of his gender and patriarchal society, just to do something he can already do just fine from his existing position of power and privilege?

Yes, why WOULD men do that? And yet, they do. This "why on earth would someone rational engage in this behavior?" question line is insanity when we have actual evidence that men DO engage in this behavior of crossdressing to get in women's spaces and HAVE engaged in this behavior to spy on and harass women.

11. If a man wanted to get into a ladies loo in order to commit a sex crime, he'd just walk straight in.

Interesting how so many of them have dressed as women to do it, then.

12. Lesbians are not being "forced" to have sex with transwomen -- we do not live in a world where women can be ordered to volunteer to have sex with anyone they don't want to have sex with.

Sure, they'll just be ostracized from LGBT groups and feel the force of their community withdrawing support from them. No big deal. As long as they can't be imprisoned, it's all good, right?

13. "TRAs" do not represent the views of all trans people, in fact much of the time the are diametrically opposed to the views held by the average trans person. For example, every single trans person I know (which numbers dozens) keenly supported the women's marches...

Yes, interesting. How many of them stood up against the TRAs, then? Mm, I'm going to guess ... NONE? This is a "no true scotsman" argument, and it doesn't hold up, because none of your "true good trans" friends are actually speaking up against this. TRAs get women no-platformed for speaking up. Trans people are the only people who have the ability to speak up about this and even possibly be listened to by transactivists ... and yet this supposed majority of reasonable trans people is shockingly silent.

14. Some TRAs are NOT trans but men exploiting the trans community for their own agenda.

Great! How am I supposed to tell the difference? Also, saying to someone "you're not really trans, you're a man taking advantage" is regarded as triggering transphobia that can get women removed from groups and activities.

16. Some anti-trans actions actively hurt biological women, for example proposed legislation that would allow forced genital checks.

There is no such proposed legislation. This is a falsehood. This is a lie. Any "bathroom bill" has not proposed some sort of system with guards checking vulvas at the door. You're not allowed to do heroin in a public bathroom, either, but there's no guard checking you for needles at the door. The real effect of these laws is that if someone else reports that you're violating them, you will face legal consequences. "Genital checks" are and always have been a straw man with no more reality than a unicorn.

18. Some transwomen are abusive or just plain assholes, because they are people, not because they are trans.

Studies indicate that over 80% of MTFs have diagnosable personality disorders, with over half being narcissists. It's not a "some trans people are assholes" problem, it's a "huge majority of trans people are mentally ill in ways that cause them to have no control over being assholes" problem.

19. If you have strong feelings on this matter, I urge you to go out and meet actual transwomen face to face.

You'd be amazed how many women on "my side" of this issue are where we are because of the MTFs we met. I challenge anyone who thinks autogynephilic fetishism isn't a real thing to meet some of the MTFs who proudly proclaim themselves to have autogynephilia.

Toastie seeing as we don't actually have any official stats on how many trans people there are, how on earth can we know their leading cause of death?

My child is trans. She was born a boy and at age 12 started counselling. Nothing happened physically until she was 18, when she started hormone blockers. She's now in her 20's and awaiting surgery.

She's not "feminine" and wears normal gender neutral clothes. She has no interest in getting access to female spaces to attack poor innocent women, she just wants to be accepted for what she is. And what she is, is my daughter. That's it.

Had I acted like some on here suggest and told her not to be silly and insisted she's a boy, she wouldn't be here today. She would have committed suicide. That's not me being dramatic, that's a fact.

I have no agenda to push any version of LGBT, and I don't care whether she's male or female, lesbian, gay, bisexual or straight. As long as she's happy.

I read threads like this and I hate the world we're in where people who have no idea about my daughter and how she feels, can be so bigoted. I just hope by the time she has children (IF she chooses to and it's right for any potential child - and yes, they'll not genetically be her's as she's now sterile through her choice) then the world will be a better place where people can live their lives without bigots deciding she's clearly only trans for some underhand and devious reason.

I really shouldn't look at these threads as I veer between anger and upset that these are the bigoted views my daughter will have to live alongside.

Also Toastie there are transwomen on MN who completely disagree with you. Loads of us know trans people and all you do when you try to conflate our questioning of the TRA agenda with transphobia is hurt them more.

She has no interest in getting access to female spaces to attack poor innocent women, she just wants to be accepted for what she is.

I accept your child as a male with dysphoria. Happy?

Had I acted like some on here suggest and told her not to be silly and insisted she's a boy, she wouldn't be here today. She would have committed suicide.

How do you know that? Did you use a crystal ball or the tarot cards?

I wonder where this epidemic of trans teen suicide was when we were all younger, or before we were born. Isn't it interesting how supposedly trans people have always existed and being trans is so terrible that it causes all these suicide attempts if you can't transition, yet there was never any suicide epidemic among teens or young adults until suicidal it became an effective cudgel to make parents get on board the trans train? Where are all the despondent Victorian letters from 18 year Olds who cannot bear to go through life without wearing dresses and corsets? Where is the medical literature from the early pioneers of psychoanalysis indicating that 1 in 200 or so people have suicidality caused by gender identity issues? Why is it that mothers of transportation kids are forever saying in news stories that they caught their kid trying to cut off their pens and got there just in time, yet the medical records don't indicate that any children have actually injured themselves in this fashion?

Something else is happening here.

VestalVirgin - aren't you a charmer. Funnily enough I'm not going to upload copies of my daughter's medical and mental health notes for you to rip apart. We went through many years of hell whilst my daughter struggled with who she was, and getting some acceptance of that.

Silly comments like yours completely sum up everything wrong with this world. A mother is on here talking about potential suicide of her child and you make a snide remark. Hopefully you'll look back on this and realise quite how silly it makes you look.

really it's terribly sad that your child has been sterilised because society tells people there is a right type of body to match a type of personality.

Really . My daughter is also MTF

Toastie I think you are fabulous

Ahhh, nostalgia. These threads remind me of the good ole days when white folks was sayin' black folks couldn't use the same seats on the buses.

I love the smell of discrimination in the evenin'.

Sounds like a good way to teach kids to be open minded. I believe that can only be a good thing - to learn to be accepting of people who are different for whatever reason and learning to respect other people's wishes and whatever makes them happy - as long as they aren't harming others.

Thanks for the flowers Fl0ellafunbags (it's more than I got for Mother's Day!). I haven't worked out how to bold or insert emojis yet

Sounds like a good way to teach kids to be open minded. I believe that can only be a good thing

Yeaaaaah.. cause the reviews of this book about how certain activities/behaviours are "for girls" and "not for boys" is such a good progressive message innit?

yet there was never any suicide epidemic among teens or young adults until suicidal it became an effective cudgel to make parents get on board the trans train?

There allegedly was an epidemic of young men who dressed up as Werther from the famous novel and committed suicide in the way the hero of that novel does.

Though it could well have been just an epidemic of suicide attempts and suicide threats, or young men who were suicidal anyway making their suicide look like that in the novel.

No proof of transgenderism, but proof that teens are easily influenced and overly dramatic and will imitate what they read.

ethel it would be a lovely thing if people could accept themselves and their personalities and live however they want without having to sterilise themselves and require other people to validate them as something they are not.

Exactly FloraFox, I want my childrens generation to know that boys can be boys in any way they like (wear dresses if they like 'em, as a boy wearing a dress, and that would be fine!,

I'm also an English teacher who gets no say in the books I teach. I'd be deeply uncomfortable teaching this book for all the reasons people have discussed already. I have never been told to teach a book with a gay or lesbian main character (our indeed any homosexual characters at all), and indeed I very rarely get to teach books which are either written by women or have female protagonists (basically Jane Eyre and that's it). Now those I would wholeheartedly welcome.