Am I alone in wondering where the WOMEN wanting to trans are?

[loveyouradvice]

They feel so invisible....

Everywhere I look there are men who have or are transitioning to be transwomen - on magazine covers, on all women shortlists, in the media....

But where are the natal born women who are/have transitioned?

The only two I've come across are:

• one who detransitioned and wrote movingly about it, after ten years as a transman
• the american high school wrestler who is fighting to be allowed to fight in men's categories

um, so you are basically saying what radical feminists have been saying in response to the gender dogma spouted forth by trans activists.

The women who are labelled TERFs are just trying to point out that it is erasing women’s struggles by telling them not to Centre their female bodies as part of their campaigning and activism.

If we agree that the oppression of women because of their biology because that is they way society has developed. And we agree that it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, mankind would benefit from equality between women and men through the breaking of chains put on women.

So it follows that demands that women don’t mention their biology and don’t Centre their issues as part of a women’s movement is erasing women’s issues and contributing to that oppression.

Recognising that their are biological differences between women and men is not lessening women or their causes. It is recognising that women’s bodies are different but equal and the roles of those bodies are important but don’t make us lesser than men.

@FallenforTom was it you who posted www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/04/13/a-feminist-biologist-discusses-gender-differences-in-the-animal-kingdom/#7661f44319b5

I think it says some sensible things, except it uses the word gender when the author means sex. Plus as long as long as we recognize the author, Suzanne Saladin, may be an evolutionary biologist, but to some extent she is presenting her views and not necessarily facts across the board

EG "Low-status males are duped into accepting their fate via manipulative social norms. Being treated as property is bad for women, but at least they are generally a valued resource in patriarchal societies; low-status men have it worse."
And " The term patriarchy, as used by contemporary feminists, often seems kind of meaningless. I think when we talk about patriarchy, what we’re really getting at is the re-emergence of social hierarchies that resulted from sedentary farming starting around ten thousand years ago. Individuals in sedentary communities were better able to control and monopolize resources, including women. This led to greater specialization, technological innovation, and social inequality." His is monopolizing females as a commodity not patriarchy. And note she also links it back to farming.

So for me, in the words of Vicki Pollard "Yes but no but yes!"

I think it says some sensible things, except it uses the word gender when the author means sex.

This is an opionion presented as fact. ;-) The author isn't discussing biological differences, she is discussing behavioural ones. She makes a clear distinction, with a paragraph heading when she talks about biological differences as they relate to brain size etc.

I think the author is giving a degree of biological back up for intersectional theory, which basically explains that there can be worse positions to be in than a middle class, Western white, heterosexual, Christian woman. This theory has always miffed WASPs.

I think your 'yes but no but' response was more drawn out in standpoint theory, which is the theory that it's easier to be a white woman than a black woman but it's easier still to be Oprah Winfrey, who has a couple of billion dollars in the bank.

I think that most people would agree that there is a hierarchy and the fact that most of the top of that hierarchy is occupied by men, doesn't mean that there are no men at the bottom. (Oddly enough, this is the main stance that those anti feminist online bloggers take, well it's the main argument of the more articulate one, they do have a large subsection who just shout ''cunt" when you ask them anything.)

Been trying to follow this discussion and I agree with much of it. But one thing puzzles me from my trans woman perspective.

I accept the historical issues that created feminism and the way that a woman's biology has been used - and in many cases still is being used - in a deeply repressive way. And that is as a consequence of a patriarchal society which we have been inching away from but in many ways still do largely live in.

But exactly how are we trans women denying this or negatively impacting onto it? I am certainly not seeking to in any way usurp or diminish those realities. Many (most?) trans women totally understand the limitations of their biological change. Acutely. As we have had to live with them all our lives.

We know that you cannot currently transform a fully functioning make body into a female one and whilst progress is happening all the time that will be true for some time yet. If that were possible the trans women I know (and certainly myself) would have striven to achieve it regardless of risk. Early trans surgery was dangerous. Even 45 years ago when I was going through these things patients died. We knew this was incredibly painful too.

We did what we did because we were driven by something within us to achieve a kind of unity between body and spirit. And that was in full knowledge of the cost and consequences from sterility to death.

Now you can argue and agree or disagree all you wish about how much of a woman that makes any trans person but I do not see how this impacts negatively on the struggles of women as a whole to very rightly and naturally wish to escape from the oppression of men. Or from the fact that much of that is biologically based.

It might not add to it or be accepted as part of it. I appreciate that.

But how do a handful of what you still consider men putting their lives at risk and striving to the maximum ability possible to aspire to becoming women negatively impact the feminist cause?

Hi jaycee

It isn’t what you are asking for. But it is what many prominent voices in the trans lobby are asking for and calling women out for.

An example, Hadley Freeman wrote a really touching article about her miscarriage in The Guardian and was abused on Twitter by trans supporters for erasing trans women by writing about a problem with her female body.

Another example is the TiM protesters at an IWD march who was demanding women remove all mention of uteruses and cervixes and destroyed signs.

So, it is not your position that I have a problem with. People should be able to present however they want. I would support someone through that struggle. They deserve as much support and help as possible. But not at the expense of other groups. There is a line.

As far as I am concerned. Trans women who take pains to present themselves as women and behave as women are, for the most part, women and should be accepted as such without comment. But there are still some sex based exemptions. As currently covered by the equalities act, that should still apply. This is only fair to the female users of these spaces and services.

Bathrooms are red herring. I couldn’t give a fuck about those.

Can you see that a lot of the complaint being made by women about current trans thinking isn’t about your view point, it’s about that of those TRAs who seem to hate female biology and sexuality and want it erased from all conversation if they can’t have it.

Jaycee thanks for sticking around and answering questions patiently and with what feels like a wish to understand other people's points of view. I realise that it can feel like people are telling you what you are and what you believe - which is maddening for each point of view.

Now you can argue and agree or disagree all you wish about how much of a woman that makes any trans person but I do not see how this impacts negatively on the struggles of women as a whole to very rightly and naturally wish to escape from the oppression of men. Or from the fact that much of that is biologically based.

Saying that trans women are women implies that being a woman is something other than biology. That women are innately different (inferior) in ways other than biology. That is why women were not allowed to vote, are still discouraged from certain jobs etc.

I have got absolutely no problem with people presenting however they wish and on an individual level it makes no difference at all (to me) but in order to fight sexism we need to recognise sex (not gender) and have correct stats to reflect what is happening. When men and women are treated equally then it really won't matter but while women are still being discriminated against because of their biology it really does.

@ NannyOggsKnickers

I think that the kind of behaviour you've described is appalling and should be called out at every opportunity. However, I think it should be seen as the kind of nutty, fringe behaviour perpetuated by a tiny but vocal minority that it is. I think that it should also be considered that, you never know who someone is online and that you never know exactly what someone's motivation is. It's not impossible that for every insane TRA behaving appallingly, there could well be a 'RF' attempting to pour petrol on the flames.

Personally, I have no problem with anyone picking up Lily Madigan on the rubbish she spouts but comments about her appearance really get me down. Comments about anyone's appearance really get me down, they don't feel like feminism in action to me.

Still I wish is was an insane fringe of trans activists. But it’s not. The people spouting this stuff, including people like Munroe Bergdorf, are the leaders of this new transmovement.

This is the kind of stuff that the women on the feminism boards are pushing back against. There seems to be some misunderstanding on what it is that is being discussed on there.

I know that the transactivists do not represent the majority of trans people. But their demands are being heard and acted on by a lot of people in power, especially in the Labour Party and in politics in general.

Have a look at some of the threads on the feminist boards by lesbians who see their spaces being colonised by trans lesbians and their gender queer girlfriends. If you can stomach it, Have a look on Twitter at ‘the cotton ceiling’.

This new wave of trans activism is homophobic, misogynistic and incredibly violent. And they are dominant if the narrative. See what Miranda Yardley, transwoman, has to say about it.

@Italiangreyhound - for some reason I can't reply to your PM, sorry.

Thank you, I appreciate the patient explanations.

I cannot imagine why anyone would argue anything otherwise.

Yes, I know there are some silly activists out there saying idiotic things and taking offence at the drop of a hat. I see them partly as a consequence of the social media generation that does this about many things and are using the opportunity to push some revolutionary agenda to alter gender perceptions.

But it is mostly that as opposed to sex - notably obvious given how these people are in the most part making no effort to modify their sex just their presentation. So - sure - argue that there might be more ways of gender expression. But arguing of clear sex based matters and wishing to diminish them is inconsistent with their position and intentions.

The trouble is most trans women are not activists pushing an agenda in the way that is being implied. We have sat back and got on with life quietly and never attempted to secure any rights. Nobody was more stunned than I was in my 50s to discover after a lifetime that I would gain legal recognition and could try to alter my birth certificate with medical support.

I have myself argued as I do on here in trans forums and other public sites. You can check out many threads on Digital Spy where I have been active for years to see I am consistent in saying these things. But on trans forums I have been told I do not understand by some and I have seen other mostly older trans women say things like I am and being driven off those sites because they also get abused. I have even seen them told to get back to their TERF mates!

So the anger is running high on both sides and it possibly is because those of us who transitioned and quietly got on with our lives - the vast majority until the past year or two - were so content with how far we had got and were happy to live the live we had striven for that we were grateful enough and had no desire to change definitions or everyone else's way of life.

Doing this quietly, integrating into society without causing society to need to feel discomfort was the intent and I only realised recently that this was the right way. I had a message from a trans woman who was in the news recently for being the first trans BBC radio host. I gave her some congratulations and encouragement and was surprised that she knew that she was not the first and that I had made programmes with the same BBC radio channel 30 years ago but as these were not on trans matters and I was not telling the world I was trans to make it a big deal nobody noticed. Apart, it seems, from other trans people who saw this as a path to pave the way towards a future where you could be open.

Unfortunately - though - today - and especially with the young generation who like to wear their hearts not so much on their sleeves but on the internet - there seems to be a mood today that is revolutionary rather than evolutionary and which is also rather more self centred than before. This tends to focus attention on me rather than us.

Not entirely sure what the right approach to deal with this might be. But it has to involve less bitterness on both sides and more search for common ground.

The reality is that neither side will get what they want here. The GRA will not be repealed. Nor will self declaration and de-medicalization. If any changes are made they will be small.

I hope.

But either side pushing this to one extreme or the other will make that outcome harder to achieve.

@Nanny, it's not that I've not read or tried to engage with the feminist board, I have and found it frustrating for a couple of reasons.

Firstly when I've disagreed with a poster, I've been accused of oppressing women. For me, that's not a basis for discussion, if I can't politely disagree with a point without that poster claiming to to every woman, the exchange of ideas is impossible. I speak for myself, I expect those I'm speaking to, to speak from themselves, once either of us claims to be speaking for every woman, we've entered the land of fantasy.

Secondly, it annoys me to be given male pronouns because someone disagrees with me. I'm a fifty year old dyke and, frankly I've had enough of that shit.

look at some of the threads on the feminist boards by lesbians who see their spaces being colonised by trans lesbians and their gender queer girlfriends. If you can stomach it, Have a look on Twitter at ‘the cotton ceiling’.

Other lesbians, have other views that they're welcome to but you'd be wrong if you thought that they spoke for the entire community. There are more trans lesbians than there were, they are more visible and they are more vocal but the term 'colonisation' is offensive. There are also more out Muslim women now and more Easten European ones, it's not a big deal.

The cotton ceiling thing does annoy me. I've replied to this question so many times on MN that I should copy and paste it, so I don't have to type it out again. I've been out since I was 15, in that time I've had countless people state that they had an entitlement to by body, some kind of God give right to have sex with me. In the overwhelming majority, they've been straight men. Next up have been straight women who've felt that I should 'preform' in front of their partners and coming in at the back of the race, have been fellow lesbians.

All of them have been arrogant, entitled wankers, who I've had no problem telling where they could shove their mercy/performance fuck. To a man/woman/dyke they accepted the rejection with very little grace and a lot of name calling.

While I haven't personally experienced it, I'm not surprised that some trans women are getting in on the act but I don't see it as worse than the straight men, the straight women or the lesbians who do.

Why would I be more offended by a trans woman telling me that she has a right to have sex with me than I would by a straight man doing exactly the same thing?

Presumably, as a woman past puberty, you've had to put up with exactly the same thing?

It's not good behaviour, it's not nice behaviour, it's not correct behaviour but it's not uncommon behaviour.

I do get what you are saying still but I would say that things have gone further than you think. There’s a great young lesbian blogger that did a big post on this recently. Will find it. The crux of her argument is that there is an insidious invasion in to lesbian spaces by trans lesbians and their straight girlfriends. She is saying that older, married lesbians don’t see this as they aren’t on the scene as much and aren’t trying to use lesbian dating sites. Am cooking dinner now but will find it later.

Labour have just confirmed that they will be using self id internally for selections for AWS and women’s officers. They are pre empting her they expect will be a change in the law.

It is worth engaging with A Woman’s Place now if this is not what you support. They are reasonable. And also count trans women amongst their ranks. They are looking for a way to counter TRA bullshit.

I’ve just realised that it sounds like i’m trying to preach to you about your own community. I’m really not. Just passing on what my lesbian friends are talking about and what i’ve Noticed going on online.

I personally know more F to M than M to F

I think the reporting is biased as M to F upsets people more with the women's space issues (cause men are evil and all women are sweetness and light and will get horrendously abused.)

Why would I be more offended by a trans woman telling me that she has a right to have sex with me than I would by a straight man doing exactly the same thing?

This is one of the things I don't get. Surely nobody has a right to sex with anyone else, whatever sex, identity or sexualité is involved? I could be with someone who absolutely ticks all my boxes about looks, availability, intellectualism, sexuality, height, politics, sex, eye colour, whatever. I might be crazy for them. But I've still got the right to say no, because it's my body, and if I don't want sex with that person at that point or they don't want sex with me, then there's no sex. That’s the point of mutual consent - the only rights are over your own body. Sexuality or gender identity or whatever doesn't change that.

The 'Cotton Ceiling' argument is brought up in nearly every trans thread on here and in almost every other place trans rights are mentioned. It isn't just a non point, as I've explained above, it's actually quite offensive to have straight women, who aren't otherwise conspicuously concerned about the plight of lesbians, use us as fodder to attack another minority group.

It reminds me of things I've read about how monumentally pissed off black African feminists are at the way white Western feminists constantly bring up FGM as a sort of oppression top trump. They feel that FGM isn't something that happens to white Western feminists, that it's not something they have to fear and that the only time they mention black women is when they are using their mutilated labia as a rallying call.

@stillscreaming I take your point and agree that we have to be careful of using other people's Experiences to back up our arguments, but a lot of women using this argument are lesbian or bi themselves, myself included.

@Stillscreaming how can we know why animals perform certain behaviors, to suggest it is down to 'gender' to me seems a stretch, since they don't have, as far as I can see, behaviour that we could identify as 'gender'. But anyway, it's a small thing.

I said what I thought and that is fine, you can disagree. But anyone who thinks men have it worse than women, the author, isn't a feminist as far as I can see.

Yes, humans have been successful in that they have colonized the whole plannet and got a lot of people out there.

But we have destroyed bits of the plane in a way no animals have, we can cure diseases and send our fellow humans into space, yet children starve and are sexually abused and enslaved. So no, I don't think we are a successful species, we are a fuck-up!

Survival of the fittest is not really a nice thing, not something to aspire to me, for me anyway.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand...

Of course no one has a right to have sex with you without your will, and I am sorry and appalled that these attempts and suggestions have happened so much to you Still.

It's never OK from anyone.

What some people are doing is arguing that you don't have a right to either a sexuality that excludes them, or rather if you do, you are bigoted.

No one is on You Tube telling women they have to sleep with men or other women but some people are on there arguing you don't have a right to say no to someone because they are trans. Yes, this flies in the face of 'You have a right to say no to anyone for any reason', but there you go.

Interestingly men are sometimes getting this too, there are a few articles about men and trans women, and to stick with our theme on this thread, trans men and ... interestingly not women but men. Gay trans men are not getting picked a lot on certain dating aps and they are unhappy about it. There was an article and I can't ind it now.

I think people should be free to date or have a relationship/sex with anyone they want but they should not be coerced into it and videos suggesting you are bigoted if you do want to sleep with a trans person are coercive.

This doesn't really affect me as I am married and no plans not to be. But if I were dating now I would find all the 'advice' out there about who people should date to be really unhelpful and coercive.

"it's actually quite offensive to have straight women, who aren't otherwise conspicuously concerned about the plight of lesbians, use us as fodder to attack another minority group."

Just as you think I can't speak for lesbians, I think you can't speak for all lesbians. Actually it is not just lesbians presurized to sex with trans women but also women who are married to men who then present as trans and expect them to stay married to them and not mind them transitioning to be trans women.

I do care about lesbians, I've got wider friends and family who are all kinds of variations of sexuality, I don't think it is fair to suggest that we should have no interest in other peoples rights juts because we are not them.

@KnitFastDieWarm

A. It's not a reasonable argument for the reasons I've given above.
B. I've no problem with you discussing your own experience but the 'cotton ceiling' argument took place on Reddit, between Americans.
C. You undermine lesbians by suggesting that they are incapable or even don't have experience of telling people they don't want to have sex with to 'fuck off'.

Just as you think I can't speak for lesbians, I think you can't speak for all lesbians. Actually it is not just lesbians presurized to sex with trans women but also women who are married to men who then present as trans and expect them to stay married to them and not mind them transitioning to be trans women.

I'm very specifically not claiming to speak for all lesbians, simply saying that it's unreasonable to lump me in with this 'what about the poor lesbians' trope.

Women who want to divorce, for whatever reason, should be given all the support they need. That some of them are divorcing transitioning partners who are being arseholes, is not an argument against the entire trans community or anyone except the arsehole involved.

That we need to learn and teach our daughters that it's alright to say 'no' is a broad topic that I'd like to see discussed in a non trans thread but I don't see that happening.

Hi still here’s that link

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3146166-Transactivism-and-the-lesbian-community

Was actually Mumsnet but still an interesting perspective. Obviously this person is more familiar with the current lesbian scene than I am.

Shout out to @iwantmycommunityback

I think transmen, being female and socialized as female, tend to blend into the background a lot more. There does not seem to be many of them that attention seek, like so many 'transwomen' do. Transmen do not, generally, demand to be centre of attention and have everything their own way. There is no demanding from transmen to be into male areas (there has been like, one story about this. And the transman was denied the use of the male facilities because men objected to females in their space..oddly) and even if they WERE demanding in, women, on the whole are not a danger to men, so its not the same as men wanting into female areas

I think another big difference, is transwomen are more visible..as they tend to not pass anywhere near as well. And also..and I know I will be slaughtered for bringing this up but I feel it is a large part of it...transmen do not tend to be fetishists. Autogynephilia is a very large part of how visible transwomen are..they want to be noticed, they want to stand out, they want their own way and will scream and shout til they get it.

But anyone who thinks men have it worse than women, the author, isn't a feminist as far as I can see.

I'm a white, Western woman who earns more than 92% of the world's population. I've got a big house, a nice car, food in the fridge and money in the bank. Are you really telling me that I have it worse, that a poor, black African man, who didn't get to go to school and has watched his children die of starvation?