Yes another trans thread

[NewMummy579]

I'm struggling to understand this documentary I'm watching on catch up called sex map of Britain 'the pregnant dad'. Two trans men in a relationship one of which is pregnant. He is having a home birth to avoid pronouns in the hospital and being wrongly identifies as 'she' or 'her' and struggling with body image now he has a pregnant belly.

If you are born female but believe you are in the wrong body and transition to live as a Male, surely it's not being unreasonable to expect that you therefore do not partake in female biological acts like pregnancy and giving birth??

The couple are quoted as saying 'oh one of us had to delay hormone treatment and bite the bullet in getting pregnant if we wanted to have a family'. If you both identify as a male couple then why not adopt as many gay couples do and give a child a good home?

After the baby is born, they refer to 'chest feeding' instead of breast feeding and say it's ridiculous when he needs to be put on the birth certificate as 'mother' since they gave birth, rather than as 2 fathers.

I'm perhaps being unreasonable and openly don't understand all aspects of this complicated gender topic but I'm seeing it a bit like having your cake and eating it - you either either identify/live as one sex or another and not both when it suits circumstance?

Some of those people are insane.

The day 'womb transplants' become a thing is the day I want the world to stop so I can get off. It's fucking ridiculous.

There are some things science should stay out of. Trying to alter nature so that men can give birth is one of those things.

The picking and choosing of gender really bothers me as much as it would with a TIM. I don't doubt that the person who bore the child expereinced dysphoria and distress whilst pregnant but it still seems the height of unreason, and self harm even, to decide to 'use' her female body to do a job, whilst simultaneously declaring herself a man.

It really troubles me that as Bubblea and others have pointed out that there are so many people out there not receiving any recognition of their mental illness and thus getting no help - or the unstated opinion perhaps that their conditon is intractable and only appeasement will work (not true).

I am also really concerned as disorders like DID/Multiple Personality Disorder and other dysphoria are often be caused by significant childhood abuse/ childhood sexual abuse and yet so many people are dismmissing sufferers/ trans people as 'not ill'. Obviously this is a very sensitive topic and we can't cast aspersions about people's individual experience, but it is true for many with identity and body issues. I think we are failing people by taking the path of least resistance in the name of I don't know what - cost cutting, denial, laziness, being 'right on', people pleasing, perpetuating misogyny etc.

Even people easily labelled as narcissists may have suffered a dysfunctional or abusive upbringing. It is so sad. And it saddens me when a child is brought into the picture, right in amongst the picking and choosing of logic and pronouns.

I’ve gotta say I agree with you. I don’t understand either. Why would you keep insisting you are a man and decide you want to give birth?

UpaBitLate yes I agree that the whole woman as a vessel and the disconnection is most disturbing. It is classic dissociation from a psychiological point of view. When I mentioned the child's mother 'using' her body this is what was disturbing me.

I might be old fashioned on this issue but if you want to become the opposite sex then surely you will need to have the full operation?

To me it - transgenderism- is an issue that has far more publicity than it deserves, given the minuscule number of people affected.

I think they are all a bit odd anyway, sorry but I cannot help thinking this. OK to transition privately and all that, but the publicity around some of them makes me shudder. Why would anyone publicise something like this?

I do not like the idea of men in women's spaces or vice versa either, and in sports.

It is essentially a private thing and should be left that way I think.

I shall duck down now and await the nuclear fallout lol.

Hecky Would you advocate chaging the law to allow people to legally identify as mermaids/ mermen if they had the surgery to join their legs and would so wish? And have new mermaid rights enshrined in law saying that they must have access to water at all times because the person, oops sorry mermaid, believed that their fish-tail would turn back into legs if they got dry?! And that we all have to publically say that they are mermaids not humans who have had strange surgery?

Again it'd be no skin off my nose. It'd make no difference to me to say hello merman/whatever they chose to be called. Saying hello person pretending to be a merman would just make me an asshole.

I really couldn't give a toss about how adults choose to dress, present, makeup or no makeup, what name they want to be called by etc

Most feminists have been saying for years that gender roles are shit and everything would be better if we were all free to dress and behave how we wanted.

Surgery - cosmetic surgery generally is a tricky area but for individuals if they want to change how they look then OK. Some people want to alter themselves to look different in all sorts of ways and that is fine.

Where the stumbling block comes is with the insistence that changing presentation / name / surgery / any combination of the above or none / literally means that the persons sex has changed, and all the quite obvious consequences which fall in the vast majority on the shoulders of women (old style cunty women), many of which have the effect of dismantling protections that we have fought tooth and nail for, over a hundred years or more, because we had to due to our position in society as "lesser than". This is the bit that the feminists are upset about.

Our position in society as lesser than which is a direct result of our reproductive potential.

This new idea that women and girls are oppressed because we are "feminine" is crass in the extreme and ignores totally the utter shit GNC women especially lesbians have always been confronted with.

The pretence that sex differences, that biology is irrelevant, that it is a social construct!!! So offensive. The number of women and girls who die or are seriously injured every year as a result of this "social construct" is staggering. The suggestion that we could opt out by saying "oh no I'm a bloke actually" is grotesque.

I have to disagree you absolutely should be able to have the parts you want (paying for it yourself please) however the result should be called what it is trans, transman or transwoman or third gender. What you should not be able to do is be a woman if you were born a man you should be proud to be a trans woman not usurping and redefining woman to suit your needs at the cost of ours. If you were born intersex then and only they should you be able to 'change'

Absolutely agree with this.

Sure hecky. You seem determined to not look at the bigger picture and the enormous significance of changing policy and law. Your view is as narrow and limited as some transpeople's.

Again, a MN trans conversation seems to degenerate into reactionary bigotry. It's getting like Stormfront for paranoid, sectarian anger

Bollocks. There has been little if any of this on this thread. What is happening here is a typical TRA response, an attempt to close down discussion by labelling reasonable dissent as bigotry.

I just watched the programme this thread is inspired by, and I was struck by how immature and silly these two 'trans men' seemed. They seemed to have no idea of what parenting would entail, and were utterly ridiculous about the birth certificate issue.

I don't see why it hurts anyone it they're named as fathers on the bc either, tbh.

if they want to call themselves fathers, manicinsomniac, then I don't care. If they want to force the rest of us to collude in a lie and agree that they are fathers, then I do care. Not least because them forcing us into this lie doesn't just affect what's written on this baby's birth certificate, but has wide-ranging knock-on effects and changes what being a man or a woman is. Which then means, as we have all been seeing, the abolition of sex-segregation and the abandonment of any hope to preserve women's resources and women-only spaces.

I have to disagree you absolutely should be able to have the parts you want (paying for it yourself please) however the result should be called what it is trans, transman or transwoman or third gender. What you should not be able to do is be a woman if you were born a man you should be proud to be a trans woman not usurping and redefining woman to suit your needs at the cost of ours. If you were born intersex then and only they should you be able to 'change'

Absolutely agree with this.

As do I. The law saying you can become a woman seems to have been sneaked in without anyone realising the consequences. Now that they are becoming clear it seems to need tightening up and certain areas clarifying.

I'm still really, really uncomfortable with medical ethics being reduced to a choice narrative - i.e. its OK as long as someone pays and there is someone willing to do the service for the fee. I still think of 'do no harm' as fundamental and would like to see invasive procedures minimised as much as possible in terms of trans (especially on younger individuals) in favour of less invasive ones.

If they are going to be good and loving parents, surely that's what matters?

All couple could choose to foster or adopt, most don't despite the many children waiting for a family. I wouldn't judge this trans couple for choosing not to any more than I would judge anybody else.

Some women put their careers or other important aspects of their life on hold to get pregnant, because that urge is stronger than their other desires. They probably still plan to get back to their other slightly less strong urges/desires at a later point. I'd say this is similar. Two strong biological urges; one can be put on hold in order to allow the other to be fulfilled.

I find it hard to believe that body dysphoria, a mental health condition can simply be 'put on hold' in the same way a career can be put on hold to have a baby.

If only I could put my depression and anxiety on hold. Sadly mental health doesn't work like that.

If they are going to be good and loving parents, surely that's what matters?

slookiroo them being good and loving parents is not the issue here, nor what is being challenged. The issue here is these parents trying to force everyone else to collude in the lie that they are fathers, not mothers. And if they did succeed in forcing everyone else to collude in that lie, then it has extreme knock-on effects for all other women, as it effectively abolished sex-categories.

@deleteordecay body dysphoria and gender dysphria are not the same thing. It's outdated to view gender dysphoria as a mental health condition. Obviously living as a trans person in our society can lead to mental health conditions.

@archerieannie Sex is biological. Gender is social contruct. In our current society some people feel that they need to change their body to fit who they are as a person. Who knows if they would feel this way if gender wasn't so prescriptive in our society. They want to be parents. They want to be called rather as their gender is male, despite being born with female sex organs.

Perhaps their mistake was to appear on the documentary, which I haven't seen. I would guess they hoped to help some people understand their situation.

I know that, @slookiroo . I've said upthread that I have no problem with anyone presenting however they wish, and if they want to call see themselves as fathers, I can't stop them, however sad I find it. (I have not personally encountered any gender-critical women who have a problem with people being gender non-conforming. Many gender-critical women are gender non-conforming themselves.)

It's the bit where they are trying to force us to collude in a lie - that they are fathers, not mothers - that I object to. I will not be forced to collude in that lie, and especially not when it affects my life and that of other women and girls.

Just watched it...

Since the 'mother' is exactly that both biologically and legally at the moment of birth, it would be a lie to record anything different and seem like a cover up.

Presumably the son will know the history and have it explained? What if he were grown up assuming he could give birth because his 'dad' did?

@ArcheryAnnie the word mother is used for parents who identify as women. It makes perfect sense to me that they don't want to be called mothers. I'm not a parent and I identify as the gender assigned to my sex, so perhaps I shouldn't be trying to relate. I think I would identify as a parent rather than using a gender specific term, but gender is obviously very important to them.

I think my main point though is I don't understand how it's a problem to choose the word father as it matches who they are. I would imagine it would be more damaging for the child to be seen by peers calling their parent 'mother' when that parent is clearly not a woman (I'm talking gender). I should think that would lead to bullying.

@ArcheryAnnie the word mother is used for parents who identify as women

Eh? I thought it was rather more about gestating and bearing a child?