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

"They really don't. Most sex offenders are regular straight men wearing regular, straight men clothing, there simply isn't a big spate of men dressing up or claiming to be women so that they can attack women, sadly they just don't need to do that."

People who have concerns about Self-ID and the impact on women and women's only spaces aren't saying that there is a spate of men dressing up in order to attack women, but I think you already know that.

People raising concerns are not claiming that every MtoF transperson is like Marie Dean targeting women and teenage girls to steal their underwear and film themselves wearing it, or like Karen Jones who tried to rape a woman because she was angry at her for being one.

And we're not concerned that men will dress up as women to gain access to women's only spaces. You're right, they don't need to do that, because they are being granted access to more and more those spaces anyway without the need to dress up or change a single thing about their body or appearance. They type of man who will attack a woman just has more access to women to do that now.

Women are being told that they cannot challenge anybody in those spaces, in case they are trans or non-binary or just feel that they should be there. We're being told that referring to our own bodies is transphobic because it excludes MtoF trans people.

Making women feel that they can't challenge anybody for fear of being called transphobic opens up the space to every one of those regular, straight sex offenders.

I think people know that this is the real concern. But it's easier to pretend that raising it is transphobia than it is to admit that sex offenders will use this to their advantage.

Jack Monroe appears to be a woman again, after a small dabble.

Hey Roly - Transmen are no more or less visible than trans women so I don't think your generalisation holds water, sadly.

You are judging on the new young generation of trans people and most of the numbers of trans men that have escalated in recent years are not yet adults. So we need to see how that works out.

I doubt Stephen - a university professor - has felt himself not part of male spaces at all or if he did because he was socialised as a girl.

And your argument ignores the hundreds of trans women in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s before the GRA and this recent hoo ha over new rights who quietly got on with our lives.

As I have pointed out I have made or appeared on many radio and TV shows over the past 40 years and not once have I used my trans background to get attention. Nor, despite publishing many books, have I sold one telling my trans story.

My case is the norm with trans women during those decades. You never heard from us because we were just getting on with the life we had fought to achieve since childhood and were now so relieved to be living that this was what mattered not shouting to the world.

Remember in those decades we were not fighting for new rights we had NO rights at all. So we had even more reason to be doing what you suggest and yet we still largely weren't.

And Troll - I am not quite clear of your point about MTF - Male to Female - trans people making excellent men as they know how shit it is to be a woman.

Aside from seeming to be the wrong way round - MTF are those who have transitioned into females - it is all predicated on the assumption of late transition and socialisation of trans people as their native gender. Which is often only really true for those who transition late. And is becoming less and less true with cases today where those who go on to physically transition at 18 have been socialised and brought up in the gender they transition into from very early childhood.

Jaycee

I think what women are finding hard to understand is someone opting in to the gender based restrictions placed on women, the ones women’s movements have been trying for hundreds of years to overturn.

Things like the Wachowskis being classed as the director of the highest grossing trilogy directed by women. But having gotten funding for those projects and having directed them as men, with all the power and make priviledged that goes with that.

Do you see how women might find that upsetting and frustrating?

Going back to people's earlier posts about transphobia on MN I've definitely noticed an improvement. I first joined the site over a year ago but then deleted my account because I was so taken aback and depressed about how transphobic it was. Since I rejoined a month or so ago I've seen a really heartening push back against those attitudes. I still try to avoid the feminism boards where it's really bad, but when those kinds of comments creep onto other boards there now seems to be a good handful of MNers pushing back against some of the really awful attitudes and it's so heartening to see. I think it's really reflecting the real world where people are becoming so much more educated and tolerant about transgenderism.

There is still transphobia here but the problem is that the posters don't see it as transphobia so there's no point in going round in round in circles arguing it.

I agree it's getting very slightly better in terms of more posters like Jaycee but in other ways it seems worse. MN used to delete for misgendering but after the Spartacus threads they kind of gave up and now it's widespread. Which if you object to it results in the 'but so and so IS a man, that's just science'.

Hygge who is telling you that referring to your own body is transphobic? I am struggling to understand how that even makes sense.

As for challenging people in spaces not been allowed.

Again if there are legitimate reasons for concern about any individual I do not see how challenging them on their actions is wrong.

Of course, the real question is are you saying that you would challenge a person in a woman's space who you feel is not a woman based, I assume, on appearance.

I can see the potential reasons for concern but judging on appearance is fraught with problems.

On This Morning today they had a very hirsute woman who had more chest hair than any man I have seen recently. She is not trans. But I would imagine that the risk is she might be mistaken for that if in a space and so challenging on appearance alone creates that kind of danger too.

My view would be challenging on the basis of perceived threat is not transphobic if handled properly. I, for instance, would immediately get the nearest security guard to observe and intervene if necessary.

Calling out someone and throwing them out on basis of suspicion over appearance I regard as not so much transphobic but quite possible peoplephobic as it could cause distress to someone who is merely unfortunate.

I agree we have to think through these matters of space and as I have said before I am not a supporter of broadening the GRA to include self declaration and remove of medical assessment.

The proper way to deal with this is try to make the changes to the GRA - if any occur - sensible and proportionate - not call for its abolition entirely as that is doomed to fail in a free society like Britain.

And will lose the chance to get appropriate changes that I agree should not be those currently proposed.

Nanny, I agree that the Wachowski's films should be judged in the context of when they were made.

In fact I bamboozled a friend the other day when we were talking about their films and explained that that one was made by the W brothers - that one by the brother and sister duo and the Netflix series now by the W sisters!

She laughed and said, oh just call them the Wachowski's.

But I don't think anyone is asking that history be rewritten. Well I would not be.

Stephen - thanks for your posts. I'm mulling over a few things you have said.

I forget the pp who said that I'll never forget one 18 year old break down and weep with joy when he was told he'd be getting a full hysterectomy and wouldn't be having periods any more. That was when I realised, ok I'll never fully understand this, but it's real.

If someone had offered me a process at 18 to never ever have another period, I would have bitten their arm off. I hated periods - they were heavy, painful and embarrassing. They gave me spots every month, my boobs ballooned into painful lumps, and I was terrified of "flooding" on my heaviest days (which were 4-5 days out of my 8 day periods, with a 24 day cycle....) I didn't want children at that point, and couldn't see any point in having a womb and reproductive system that seemed to hate me.

But I'm not and never have been trans, and I worry so so much that young adults are being offered treatments that they will regret in the future, when maybe there are better treatments out there for things like heavy periods (much praise to the doctor who prescribed me the pill, for example). A hysterectomy is a major operation, that is denied to many hundreds of women who beg their doctors to have one. I can't begin to imagine how any doctor thinks it is OK to remove a perfectly healthy reproductive organ from an 18 year old girl

I used to be friends with someone who came out as FTM, this was in the 90s when we were still at school. We were then very good friends for several years but have now sadly lost touch. My friend just quietly got on with things. Minimal drama. It seemed obvious to me, even as a teenager, it was the way my friend had been brought up; as a girl. Girls don't make a fuss. Most biological women seem to subconsciously realise that deliberately attracting attention to oneself outside of the group, is an unwise thing to do.

i have not read the thread but obviously anecdotal the only trans person i vaguely know is going female to male

One of the FTM trans people I know is genuinely one of the hairiest men I've seen. Nebido injections must be pretty powerful because he's covered in thick hair, even has that thick line in the middle of the stomach.

He's also almost 6ft, heavily tattooed and heavily pierced. He still has a vagina but has had a double mastectomy. I think a lot of women would cross the road to avoid him at night and certainly would be alarmed if he was in the womens toilets or changing rooms.

Hygge so often on here the conversation centres around the ability within the law to ‘challenge’ people in single sex environments (loos and changing rooms mainly) being removed but as Jaycee has pointed out the real life practicalities of that are often impossible. I would never dream of challenging anyone if I thought they were the ‘wrong’ sex for the environment because you can never be 100% sure who is male and who is female, unless perhaps I got an eyeful of their genitalia but honestly that would be in very few scenarios (open changing room). I’ve actually witnessed several highly embarrassing situations where people have done just that and been wrong. There are people who’s sex is not determinable and they are probably growing in number with more acceptance of people who defy gender norms. Yet when I've pointed this inconvenient truth out in other threads I’ve been told that it’s untrue and studies have shown that humans can identify the correct sex of someone 100% of the time, and (get this) we can even SMELL them to identify. I’m not saying I personally agree with self ID because I think it could be problematic in the prison system but I would like to see more acknowledgement of the whole real life picture in debates. It’s not as simple as ‘someone looks like a bloke, must be kicked out ladies loos immediately’.

Does nobody even stop and think whether that is a positive thing for women. So they basically had their breasts cut off. What are we doing to gay women or women who don't fit a gender stereotype.

It's reductive to suggest that all trans people are gay or just not conforming to gender stereotypes. And it's really patronising too.

Being transgender is real. We don't understand it fully but it exists.

We wouldn't know though would we. Because any research on this subject is blocked. I am not going to stop asking questions about why women are having their breasts removed. Because you know I actually care about those women.

Making women feel that they can't challenge anybody for fear of being called transphobic opens up the space to every one of those regular, straight sex offenders.

As you agreed further up in your reply, sex offenders don't need to access women only space to assault women. Sadly, women only loo aren't a safe space and never have been.

I think people know that this is the real concern. But it's easier to pretend that raising it is transphobia than it is to admit that sex offenders will use this to their advantage.

I haven't used the word 'transphobic', I've carefully addressed the points made by the previous poster. I think that there are bigots posting on MN but I don't see the value is pointing out their bigotry, they deny it and pretend that they have a valid concern. I'm addressing those 'concerns'.

The majority of sex offenders are male, straight and known to the victim. They don't need to pretend to be trans and even if they did, that's no reason to take away the rights of trans people. If some other group of criminals pretended to be some other minority group, say wheelchair users, would that be any reason for closing off accessible spaces?

And no-one else does care obviously birds?

We have Prof Stephen Whittle on the thread who was a successful campaigner for lesbian rights and then started to transition in the 1970s, decades before most people even knew FTM trans people existed.

To suggest he just felt uncomfortable being a successful lesbian activist so decided to alter his body and life completely as a result is patronising and is in no way an adequate explanation for his transition.

Or for the lives of the other thousands of transgender people who have been living their lives for years and are now being questioned, doubted and patronised because there's a sudden panic about self ID (which I don't agree with btw).

A friend of mine transitioned from a female to a male. Although I only knew him after he began to transition and tbh didn't even know until he told me.

I can give an an example of a gay woman that demonstrates exactly the opposite. So what. It is not wrong to ask questions about this. Are you saying that a woman who removes her breasts but has a vagina is a man.

Does nobody even stop and think whether that is a positive thing for women. So they basically had their breasts cut off. What are we doing to gay women or women who don't fit a gender stereotype.

I don't think that a trans man, owes any responsibility gay women to have a body he's uncomfortable with.

As a gay women, I'm quite used to straight woman imagining that they are in some way defending me or speaking for me when they discuss trans people in a derogatory way. The gays are quite like real people, in that we're a disparate bunch who all have opionions of our own, however, generally, we don't like being spoken for by straight people.

As for your suggestion that you're asking this question because you 'care about these women', I don't think that post op trans men would want that kind of care, just some respect for their choices and a little dignity.

If you want to defend the gays, there's a thread with quite a few homophobic comments in AIBU, there's lots of stuff about how reproducing is the worthy life choice and unavailable to the gays. Personally I'd rather you started with those comments.

I am not straight.

Are you saying that a woman who removes her breasts but has a vagina is a man.

Why would you imagine the contents of a stranger's pants are any of your concern? Why would you imagine that someone else's gender is open for you to ponder?

Because it affects women. And you know that tricky thing known as science.

They can be whatever gender they choose. But sex matters.