Aibu to not understand all the trans stuff...?

[cansomeoneexplain]

I've NC for this.

Apologies first off if this thread sounds dumb, ignorant or goady. I genuinely don't mean to come across that way.

I read a lot of 'trans' topics on here mainly in the feminism boards. I do feel like I've missed something entirely.

On MN there appears to be a growing number of concern for trans women 'taking' the rights of women as their own.

I don't use Twitter but a lot of links get referenced to that regards transgender people trying to 'erase' females etc. I have clicked on the links referenced on MN to Twitter and even google and the guardian and find that it appears on the surface to be true.

However I feel like I've missed something fundamental. A few years ago I hardly ever saw six topics on MN - maybe I wasn't reading the right threads at the time? I don't really socialise much outside of work but when I do, none of my social circle ever mentions such things regarding trans issues. I watch the news but I don't really see anything there pertaining to trans people taking away women's rights.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm only made aware of it via mumsnet (apart from the male transgender weightlifter who competed in a women's event).

So can I ask the more enlightened of you, has this always been an issue or has it only recently just come about?

Why does it seem to be such a strong theme on MN but hardly anywhere else I look? Like I said I don't use Twitter at all unless someone post a link to something specific.

How can trans people possibly 'take away the rights of women'? How can that even be legal? Have new laws been passed that I'm not aware of?

I hope I don't come across as goady but I really would appreciate someone taking the time to fill me in especially as I can't seem to log on to MN these days without seeing similar threads re trans issues over and over. Also I don't understand how all these abbreviations have come about like TERF, TRA, etc. I'd genuinely never heard of them til a month or so ago. No one talks about this stuff irl.

Is it something kids are being taught in schools, the whole trans/non binary thing? I don't know what half of it means. I feel like I'm in some parallel universe reading some of the threads on here. I go to work and these issues aren't mentioned at all. I take care of my kids outside of work. What have I missed?

Sorry that was long. I'd appreciate genuine replies to this post, I'm not looking for a bun fight, just honest answers.

Thanks all in advance

Meant to put trans topics* no idea where six topics came from

Should I get this moved to the feminism chat? I'm not sure why I posted on aibu

Tbh, and I'll probably get shot down in flames, but they're doing my effing head in Sick of people going on about it

What social media do you use? I see trans issues discussed on all of mine, Twitter, FB etc.

At last, a response! But what started it? As far as I know, trans folk have been around forever, I used to know one.

The conservative Party have introduced the idea of gender self identification. Its already causing problems for women, for example in domestic violence shelters and prisons and sports.
And swimming pools and gyms.
It's been taken up by all the political parties.

Its going to erase women's right, for example, to ask for a female doctor. Or hospital ward. Or rape crisis counsellor.

So sorry to inconvenience you all.

Just Facebook @TheStoic and literally no one mentions it. Have approx 300 'friends' on there. So why is it not talked about?

A brief summary would be:

There have always been transvestites and transsexuals.
Most people have no issue with this. It is how it is. Live and let live.
Previously people could transition to the opposite sex (at least in so far as taking hormones and having surgery. Obviously chromasomes don't change).

Then more recently there has been a wave of trans activists who are a lobbying group who seek to claim that sex and gender are the same thing and that if someone 'feels' like the opposite sex then they are transgender. They also claim that biological men who feel female are actual women in the same way as biological women. They use sex and gender interchangably and will argue black is white and whiten is black. They believe that sex segregated sports are really gender segregated abd think biological men should be able to takr spaces from biological women. They call biological women cis women because clearly the biologically correct term woman doesn't mean a biologically female adult human. They focus a lot on 'feels' and have lobbied for self identification to be the way forward and that alone should give men access to female spaces (as well as equalities opportunities designed to level the playing field such as women's networks). These radical activists insist on mansplaining being a woman to actual biological women and think that it should be fine for a man ti wake up one morning, say he's is a woman and then be able to access rape crisis centres etc. They claim that lesbians who don't want ti have sex with a penis are transphobic and should open their minds. When people point out that lesbians like women then they get abuse hurled at them including rape jokes. These activists say thay any criticism to their ideology is transphobic and they shut down debate calling people TERFS and bigots.

Most of these radical women hating trans activists are just white men who are utterly misogynistic and are a threat to women's rights.

The only place I see it mentioned is on here. If the people on Mumsnet stopped talking about It, the extreme trans folk would not be heard!

Well, it IS talked about. Just not by the people in your life.

When did they do that @UpstartCrow and is this would you say, when the whole thing spiralled?

Surely no sane person would let them in a women's only safe place?

Although I watched orange is the new black recently and there's a trans person in the female prison

It's really important. So, so glad it's been picked up so well by Mumsnet. I'm incredibly proud. I've never contributed to any of the threads to date.

Yes, it's in the media now too.

This is an issue that has provoked me for a good 20 years now since having read Germaine Greer's 'Sacred Cow back in my student days. She had it right then.

Thank God so many voices are now speaking.

The law is going to change to allow people to self determine what gender they are. So a hairy arsed bloke with male clothing and a beard will be able to announce he’s a woman and gain access to women only spaces. He won’t even have to so much as don a rubbishy blonde wig or garish lipstick.

It’s being discussed on mumsnet because self id is changing the definition of what a woman is, and most of us here are women, ( in the traditional sense of having a vagina etc) and because it is not safe to discuss anywhere else.

Thanks @MaisyPops that helped a lot.

But surely if they hate women so much they wouldn't want to be one of us? Where did they come from? Have they always been into dressing as the opposite sex or is it something that's come about online with the conservative party's self ID bollocks?

Gender is a complete myth!!

Surely no sane person would let them in a women's only safe place?
But that's what new self identification legislation would mean.
Sex = gender. They are one and the same.

So i could wake up tomorrow, say i self identify as a man and then expect access to male spaces. Except most people advocating this move are men wanting to come into women's spaces.

The reason it's not talked about much in ithet areas is because the momentum is so pro trans activists that people get hounded if they dare disagree.

Take Lily Madigan in the labour party. A year ago he was making rape jokes about women and cracking jimmy saville jokes. Then liam decided he was lily. Lily and her trans activist crew hound a woman out if a woman's rep post and then lily stands for a womens posf and succeeds. Lily then argues that she knows more than actual women and pushes a trans agenda at the expense of women.
Riley Denis - biological male, no surgery or anything thinks lesbians should stop discriminating against trans women becUse of their penis. Riley is in a relationship with a biological female but riley claims this is a lesbian relationship.

Oh, yet another 'Oh what's with all the trans stuff, I don't understand please explain' thread.

You're either really thick cos you don't understand the myriad of easy to understand threads, really lazy (same reason), a TRA trying to make people get bored of the issue and stf up about it, or very possible one of the new JJ sycophants who think they're being helpful by starting another thread, but actually they're not.

So which is it?

Surely no sane person would let them in a women's only safe place?

And this is why I keep posting about it on MN.

MN is one of the only places that is allowing these conversations to take place, (other sites and media moderate them so you won't see them) so MN is one of the few places I can say that "yes, sane people, like NHS Managers, Care Home owners, universities and schools ARE letting self-identifying "women" into women's safe spaces".

And, just to reiterate, yes, self identifying means anyone who says they are a Woman. And a few weeks ago, Jeremy Corbyn stated on prime time TV that he believed that a woman was anyone who says they are.

I will keep commenting and starting trans discussions anywhere I can until everyone understands this.

I'm using sarcasm here but fine, if they want access to the gender pay gap they can gladly have it.

I may just front as a misogynist bloke to get one over on them!! I feel a bit manly today

They did it last year, and they rewrote The Equality Act so that any manhas legal protection from the time he sees his GP and announces his intention to change his gender.
He does not have to do anything else to qualify. We aren't talking about transexual people.

There are already several full bodied men in womens prisons, The women have to shower with them. They say they are women, and legally there is now nothing anyone can do to challenge them.
Women's sports are finished.

Google 'wendy jones animal porn' Crimes committed by these men are recorded as having been committed by a woman.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/7

7. Gender reassignment (1) A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.

cansomeoneexplain YANBU!

You haven't heard much about it because:

1. It hasn't hit the mainstream yet. (It will though, this year I reckon).

1. You may have friends who are aware of this but arenot mentioning it in public. People who are gender critical (i.e. anti the trans rights ideology) are very aware of the abusive vitriol and threats they may get (especially if they are a woman) if they are open about their thoughts - also their jobs may be made more difficult or they could even lose them

1. In a lot of places online (like the Guardian comments section) gender critical comments are censored

1. Until very recently, most of the press has been ignoring this. The Guardian is a particularly bad example

For good recent articles see:

Can we have an honest debate about trans

And the follow-up article - Jeremy Corbyn has a new enemy - Mumsnet

Janice Turner in the Times is good (Sorry for the paywall!)

And Labour are imploding, sadly

But surely if they hate women so much they wouldn't want to be one of us?
Your average trans person genuinely seeking to transition wouldn't hate the opposite sex and woud be appalled at trans activist nonsense.

The men identifying as women but really want to wear a dress and keep their penis want in on women's spaces usually because it closes down women's spaces (or they weren't good enough to compete in their own sport so they'll claim woman and gain victories in women's sports).
For some of them (cough riley denis/lily madigan) it seems to be the latest cool way to be an oppressed victim. When i was at college/uni dabbling in a bit of same sex romancr and exploring your sexuality was a fairly accepted thing to do. Now for some it seems thr way to be cool and out there is for boys to stick dresses on and whine that lesbians don't like them and that they kniw more about being a woman than actual women because they live in this bubble of hysterical whining and victimhood.

titchy ODFOD.

The mainstream doesn't know about this stuff yet.

The OP is entitled to ask. Even if they're not all they seem, this stuff reaches new people every time.

If you're bored of explaining it, go do something else.

MaisyPops sums it up quite succinctly there...

Most people don’t have a problem with men undergoing hormone treatment and operations to “become a woman”.

What women object to are men who “feel” like a woman today and demand the right to invade female only spaces based on their “feelings” of being a woman. They don’t want to get rid of their cocks though!

So in essence what women now have to look forward to is burly men waving their cocks around in female spaces... particularly changing rooms. And if women ask tosee a female doctor or rape counsellor they could well end up with a bloke who “feels” like a woman today.

It’s fucking disgraceful that men, yet again, are having their wishes and demands fulfilled - at the expense of the safety and comfort of women and girls!

No need for that @titchy, I don't spend all day every day on MN. Funnily enough I laid off it for months, came back on and there was loads of trans topics hence I only started picking up the acronyms about a month ago. Do you speak to people like that in real life or just from the comfort of your keyboard?

I'm happy to be educated, not called thick for not grasping the first whiff of a trans discussion