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

I have seen too many posts that are claiming a neovagina is better than a vagina, more fragrant, more receptive, and doesn't smell of fish, to make me anything other than pro vaginas, pro vulvas and an advocate for making distinction.

I don't doubt your word. I'm sure those people are out there. But I've never heard any of that. I've never encountered that in my day to day life.

I'd be the first to admit that I've never gone looking for it, I know that the Internet can be full of the most objectionable shite, so I stay away from it.

I've heard that there are anti feminist men, who fill up whole sections of the Internet talking about how much they hate women but I've never googled for it. Normal men don't speak like that so I don't blame normal men for those awful words. I don't want to distroy all men because some men hate women. I don't want to take away the liberties of all men because some men hate women.

Shall we have another thread in case this one is full by the time I return?

I'm finding I mostly agree with you, Jaycee, and then you come out with something crass like breast reconstruction being a 'neobreast'. No, breast reconstruction aims to recreate the appearance of something that was already there, not to change it.

I'll assume you were getting pissed off by this point.

That's an excellent plan, Rat, you start and I'll join in.

It's not very specific and doesn't tell you anything.

But we both know what it is, we've been talking about it...

That's the problem with this. Every single man who thinks like this has a free pass now.

Maybe it's a difference in exposure.
I am absolutely jaded and aghast in equal measure over the things that these men say and do.

People think that these people are niche. The problem is, that every single one of them has an in.

Transgenderism is their golden key.

@jayceedove "Yet with my trans head on I feel ashamed at what looks like me saying they are less trans than me because I know this is not so. They are just different. And that is not fair reason to be exclusive with any group of society."

But we do in society exclude all kinds of people from things that are not appropriate for them. Random adults from schools, random children from the work place, unless your work place is a school, people who are not medical staff or patients from operating theatres.

The GRA was for a certain group of people, not for any old person.

Being wrongly excluded is wrong, being rightly excluded is right. IMHO.

Every male does not have a right to be included in 'womanhood' because they or any other person says so.

jayceedove

Youve been very eloquent on this thread

It must be very difficult for you at times

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3196357-To-carry-on-this-most-excellent-discussion-that-is-only-very-occasionally-touching-on-the-subject-of-transmen?watched=1

New thread...

Dodo, no I was not suggesting the use of that term. Just pointing out that words are created to mean something necessary.

In both these cases parts of the body are taken and reshaped to mould them into something else, possibly adding artificial tissue ot=r grafts from elsewhere.

The aim in both cases is to replace something not there with as good a recreation as possible of something else.

These are surely similar enough procedures to mean they do not need different names. They could both be an artificial breast or vagina, or a neo breast or vagina, or, as I suspect 99% of people would just say if this was nothing to do with transgender matters a breast or a vagina in short.

As for the difference being that one replaced something that was there and the other something that wasn't.

A wooden arm or plastic arm or robotic arm or in a year or two stem cell grown arm is what it is whether it replaces an arm hacked off in a tractor accident or a congenital condition where there was no arm.

It would not be differentiated.

It's not very specific and doesn't tell you anything.

I'm not getting your point. We've agreed that 'castration' is the removal of the testes, we've agreed that there is more to the surgery we're discussing than the removal of testes.

We seemed to stumble on 'neo vagina' but we did agree that neither of us would call a prosthetic leg a neo leg.

You said it was because of the weight of trans opression and I agreed that there might be trans opression but that there hadn't been any here.

But we're back to a definition now..?

Italian I was not disagreeing on your points in the extract you post above. I actually agreed with your stance.

It just looks a bit out of context quoting my 'trans head' reference to what I was feeling about letting others down without also noting the other part where I explained why I was supporting excluding them.

Surely it is okay to say what I believe is right, as I have, whilst also acknowledge that it bothers me that I feel like I am thereby elevating myself above others as in an 'I'm really trans and you are not' statement.

I accept the need for exclusion here but am expressing my discomfort at being exclusionary whilst having included myself.

We have to do it but from my perspective it feels a bit like running over the moat, hauling up the drawbridge and shouting to some potentially needy souls - sorry you don't get to come in.

This is not a thing I feel comfy with whilst recognising its necessity.

GRS involves taking the tissue from the whole area 'down there' and keeping it alive and sensitive and using it skilfully to fashion a vagina, vulva and clitoris.

This is all done at the same time. A castration, per se, and on its own rarely happens.

So the vagina constructed is in many ways more 'real' than a breast implant or reconstructed breast. As in it uses tissue and nerves and blood supply of the person and usually results in full function afterwards other than lubrication. Though some of that happens to in the better surgeries.

With trans men a penis is created using grafts from the skin,. such as the arm. It usually requires a pump to create an erection though they are working on better options.

Thank you jayceedove

Full function afterwards, hey? I beg to differ, as there are some surprisingly exciting things a vagina can get up to of a Friday evening...

Sorry. Lowering the tone a bit there. But the child is in bed and if bloody DP doesn't get back from his works do pretty soon I'll have fallen asleep and missed our chance for the next few weeks

Fair comment, Dodo and full functioning is indeed probably overstating it.

I was being discrete. :)

And I (ahem) wasn't.
Wine might have been taken.

Lol. 9 o'clock on a Friday night and the thread degenerates into everyone's wine o'clock.

Datun I did not want to ask in the other thread as I prefer to sick to one thread for now.

But I noticed someone posted that the GRA must be repealed because it has been a disaster for women or girls.

I am genuinely curious as to how.

At present there are 7000 people enfranchised by it. How many instances of any of the other 6999 (as I know one for sure, of course) has our access to toilets, changing rooms and hospital wards severely effected women or girls let alone been a disaster?

It was also said that if it was revealed existing holders would not be disenfranchised because they will have passed for years and so will just be let in unchallenged.

So if that is true then how is it a disaster if the existing law lets in those who will still be let in afterwards on appearance alone.

Seems as if it has really just legalised what previously was waived through - certainly suggested by the lack of major incidents or media hysteria in the years up to 2004.

And if access is and will be again granted on passing alone if the GRA is scrapped because it is a disaster then any man who wants to can surely just get in regardless simply if he is able to dress up and pass.

I am struggling to see the negatives of the act right now.

The only disaster I can see is the looming possibility of all these self identifiers gaining access if the GRA is replaced or modified.

Which will not happen if that change to the act doesn't.

Repealing the GRA entirely is quite likely to annoy so many that it will lead to more trouble and deliberate attempts to access spaces out of rebellion that are not occurring now whilst the act determines some legitimacy to those who do enter.

Surely the disaster would be removing that 'hall pass' and potentially leading to a mass trespass scenario like the one that led to open access to wild land.

@Beholdtheflorist I think my post last night was a bit direct and rude. My apologies. I'm very interested to hear you say that Catholic countries take the time to look you in the eye. And are less judgmental.

There could be another theory about the mis-gendering/mis-sexing (is that even a word!)

JC. The GRC is a bit of a red herring.

It will only really affect prisons and all women shortlists. (Although the Labour Party have decided it's already a done deal in terms of self ID.)

What the proposed amendments have actually done, is alerted women to the fact that self ID is here by any other name because of the equality act.

The wording is so woolly and vague, that it allows absolutely anyone to identify as a woman.

Women were unaware of that, until they started to object to self ID.

At which point transactivists also became aware of it, and started exploiting it publicly.

If you're not au fait with the law, self ID takes on a meaning that it doesn't really have.

At the moment, groups like a woman's place want to make sure the protected characteristic remains gender reassignment, not gender identity, (which is being pushed by TRAs). And to beef up the exemptions to make them clearer, and disseminate them more widely so people understand them.

Personally I would like to see the protected characteristic of gender reassignment changed. To exclude chancers and all these Johnny Come Lately fetishists.

But again, how that is done, is anyone's guess.

JC. The GRC is a bit of a red herring.

It will only really affect prisons and all women shortlists

Oh my god, this is what I have been trying to explain to everyone; self-ID would make so little difference because it isn't having a GRC that gets you "treated like a woman" in everyday society.

In everyday society people take your word for it, so what does it matter if getting "proof" would be easy?

What I don't understand is how you're linking that back to the wording of the Equality Act exactly?

And subsequently, I don't believe there is any suggestion of changing the protected characteristic is there? I don't for a second see that that would happen - there is no reason to protect "gender identity" whatsoever as there's no evidence that anyone is discriminated against on the basis of it. And that's the whole point of the EA, to protect against discrimination.

Unless you have some pretty convincing links I'm going to put it out there that any worry of the protected characteristic changing is surely unfounded.

Blimey! You know you missed a programme about the Undertones on Telly? And it had an interview with Kevin, who was the real “My Perfect Cousin”?

See you on the new thread