So, what impact has a stranger transitioning had in you; you sexuality or how your place in the world and why should that impact that stranger's decision? What do you imagine they owe you?
And what impact does me not believing you can change sex have on them. What do you imagine I owe them.
The same as you owe anyone, some respect and to afford them dignity.
Sex is tricky for some, sometimes, a proper geneticist has to go rooting around in DNA to find a person's correct sex, it has no impact on the rest of us.
To whom. Well to lots of people. Not sure how else to answer that, it's such a bizarre question.
I'm sorry that you find my question bizarre.
Sexuality matters to me, can I just check, when you say that you're not straight,mod you mean that you're a lesbian, who only has relationships/sex with women or are you living as a straight woman?
My cousin is a trans man. He was miserable living as a woman. He’s happy now, a lovely person.
He hates the trans activist movement and thinks it’s a shit combo of lefty dudebros and common or garden misogynists who are making life harder for actual trans people.
In what way am i not affording people dignity. I don't believe in god but that doesn't mean I don't afford religious people dignity. I am asking questions, when did that mean not treating people with dignity.
Of course it surreal to be questioned, specifically, on your sexuality but if you feel you've got the right to ask questions on another persons body, I thought you'd be fairly open to discussing it. Do you think it's just people you think of as being 'other' who don't deserve that kind of privacy?
So, am I right in thinking that you're saying that a trans man removing his breasts hasn't had an impact on you but you worry that it might have an impact on someone else?
The prison system is a thorny issue that needs to be tackled, but doing so by claiming trans women don't exist isn't right. Biology is more complex than we could have imagined a generation ago - I recall a lab head where I worked say there were St least a dozen distinct sexes in mice and he was sure humans were no less complicated. It is annoying that 'gender' is used to mean both performative roles and the innate feeling that some people have that they are one type of human vs another. I don't get it myself but I do know both cis and trans people who feel very strongly attached to a certain gender and denying that would be as rude as telling people their perception of a god is wrong.
I'm sure that more people would be happier if everyone felt able to present as one gender or another and reverse it if necessary, letting them decide for themselves. It does feel very like the arguments about sexuality 30 years ago - what if children think it's OK to be gay. What if they think they are gay and then decide they aren't, or vice versa? And the answer is, it's actually fine.
No I didnt mean it was surreal to be asked about my sexuality, knock yourself out, both if you need to know and no sex for I think 2 years but may be slightly less. I meant it was surreal that because something hasn't affected you it was seen as not real almost. Not sure how to express that bit.
I sent this thread to my old friend Stephen Whittle , and a previous posting I made where I got savaged pretty badly , trying to explain us older people did what we did and got on with our lives
like Jaycee there are many of us Under The Radar men and women living in the uk ,we did our bit quietly campaigning donkeys years ago
was in the hairdressers earlier today listening to some women talking about some of these issues , the woman sat next to me trying to get me engaged ,(to resign my labour party membership ) I just smiled and told her was more concerned about my grandchildren coming over for the weekend , she has known me 20+ years and doesnt know my past, I have always lived stealth
I campaign now for the rights all all women and men re hospital waiting times cuts to G&O services
we dont talk or think about what we went though as kids , up until recently hadnt a clue who some of the TG activists even were , Stephen asked for my comments on an article he is writing
if some of you were prepared to talk to us older types, you would realise we are all pulling on the same rope,
but don't ask me what makes a woman, or a man for that !
@OlennasWimple that was me, I get what you're saying but I can guarantee you it wasn't just a regular dislike of periods, it was about wanting to remove evidence that he was born in a female body. I can't explain his reaction, it was so overwhelming, like he'd been given his lie back. These procedures were not done on a whim, they were the end point of a life time of psychiatric assessments and interventions. And I have no idea if the patient wanted children - he may well have done. But I really can't see how someone who is driven to such extremes of distress at the monthly reminder of having a female body could ever, even if they wanted children, countenance the idea of carrying one in their own body. But I also believe women should be entitled to the same procedure if they don't want children. It's about bodily autonomy. I don't believe "but you might regret it" should be sufficient cause to block access to a person's right to make choices about their own body. Sufficient reason to not personally feel comfortable performing the procedure perhaps, as long as you sign post to someone who will. And sufficient cause to explain the risks and the chance of regret and have that person sign documents confirming informed consent. But not sufficient cause to deny people deemed as having capacity the right to make those choices.
Jaycee - TRA's mostly but it seems to be filtering out to others. I'm also struggling to see how it makes sense.
But if you have been aware of the the talks by A Woman's Place, for example, and the protests they have been subjected to, even just wanting to discuss what it is to be a woman and what it might mean to widen the definition of 'woman' is transphobic, something only done by TERFs, and has resulted in violence against women with a sixty year old being punched. She identified a much younger pre-op trans woman as her attacker. And a trans activist group condoned this. Punching TERFs is the same as punching Nazis. We must be radically and transformatively violent. Violence against TERFs is always self defence. There was an incident this evening which will be hatefully and wrongly depicted by TERFs as male violence. When TERFs attack we fight back. Any idea where this meeting is happening because I want to fuck some TERFs up.
Women who speak out on any women's issue (and I do this often) are told either "but what about men" or "other women are worse off".
If you need a personal example, a man whose girlfriend had a termination called me a feminazi and a bigot because I had access to a bereavement midwife when my son was stillborn and my daughter died neonatally.
He didn't care that in a hospital that sees thousands of pregnant women each year, they have just the one midwife trained to help women like me.
He didn't care that she was meant to provide physical and emotional care but was so overstretched she could barely see me for fifteen minutes, and that was taken up with urgent physical care. The emotional care was covered by a couple of leaflets she left with us because she just didn't have time.
He didn't care that my woman's body was infected, that I had almost died because of an infection in my placenta, that pregnancy for me is life-threatening, that I was damaged by it and by my losses, putting future pregnancies at risk.
And he didn't care that we were basically left to just get on with it all with little support because that poor woman just couldn't physically stretch herself any further. She did what she could but that was very little due to limited time and funds.
He cared that he, as a man whose girlfriend aborted their baby, didn't get a bereavement midwife of his own.
And when I told him that she provided mostly physical care because she just didn't have the time to sit and counsel me emotionally, physical care which he did not need because he was a man, he accused me of using the 'grow a womb' argument and called me a bigoted feminazi cunt and an exclusionary misandrist.
So he's one from personal experience, although he didn't get as far as calling me transphobic for mentioning the difference between mens bodies and women bodies and the needs that stem from those differences.
I've looked at Leah Jorgensen's interview briefly and I can't see that she would be challenged. Did she say that she had been?
I have a friend and a relative with PCOS, and they both do have some excess hair, although not to the degree that Leah Jorgensen does. I think most women are aware of how certain conditions can increase body hair and I think they would realise this was the case with Leah. She might get a second look, but I don't think she'd be challenged after that.
Since she was interviewed on This Morning, if she, Holly, and Phillip all walked into the Ladies toilets together, if anybody was challenged at all I would expect it to be Phillip.
Women who refer to primary and secondary sex organs are being told that we are excluding trans people and women who have had hysterectomies or suffered FGM.
People are referring to 'vagina feminism', Jack Monroe has been mentioned on this thread and I believe she was very vocal about vagina feminism excluding trans people and her mum, although I believe there was some confusion in her tweets.
Another Munroe (Bergdorf) has been claiming pussy hats are transphobic and racist because they only symbolise white women's bodies and stated that feminists are reducing women to their sex organs. Bergdorf states that women are more than their sex organs and their ability to bear children, which is entirely correct, but it's still a big part of who and what we are and what we experience.
It's not reducing women to anything to talk about women's bodies and the issues that come as a result of having one. If a woman has had a hysterectomy or suffered FGM, it doesn't make her less of a woman but it happened to her because she is one.
There's a thread on here about not challenging people in bathrooms. The closed I've come to challenging anybody was when a man in his sixties (trousers, shirt and tie, moustache) walked into the ladies toilets (through two doors with ladies toilet symbols on them and one of them under a big sign that said Ladies Toilet on it) and then just stood and stared until the three women in there had all registered his presence, which we didn't do immediately but something about the way he was waiting drew attention in the end.
He then said very loudly "Isn't this the gents?" and waited for an answer. Neither of the other women spoke so I said no and he looked me up and down twice, quite slowly and appraisingly, and then walked back out.
He spoke first but I would have asked him what he was doing is he had continued to stand there.
And then there's Lily Madigan (with the Facebook group that has a cover photo reading "Down With CIS" and the secret list of Labour women) saying on that "If you say you're a man I'll believe you but you can't just say you're black because that's more complicated biology and gender is internal while skin colour is external presentation."
Lily's job was meant to encourage more women to join the party and succeed in it, but women are being expelled and driven away and according to one of the other people helping compile the secret list the aim of list is to get them kicked out of the party anyway.
On that radio interview Lily was asked if she would believe a man who said he was a woman, even if he had not transitioned in any way and was to all appearances still a man. Lily said yes, she would believe him just because he said so.
You must be aware of all of this.
And you're aware of the point I was making.
If these spaces are to be opened up because of Self-ID, and nobody is to be challenged, anybody can walk in and they won't have to say a word, let alone dress differently or change their body or appearance in any way at all.
And that applies to far more than just toilets and changing rooms.
We have to talk about biology I am sorry if that hurts people but we do. Women are oppressed because of biology. So yes I am afraid we have to talk about body parts. I am not sure how far back you want to push feminism. I think the Victorian times was when we were last not allowed to discuss our genitals.
You're being very reticent about answering a question, you claim to have no problem with. I didn't ask you about your celibacy, I asked you about your sexuality.
I find on MN there's a lot of dog whistles around the trans issues, lots of people implying that something might effect someone and leaving their cohort to assume the worst.
You said that as a women (who cared) that you felt that trans men removing their breasts would, impact gay women. I asked if you are a gay woman. I said it had no impact on me. As a gay women, I know lots of other gay women, I don't know any who are concerned about what strangers' are doing with their bodies. You agree that it's had no impact on you.
Who are these lesbians, weeping into their pillows over trans men's missing breasts?
We have to talk about biology I am sorry if that hurts people but we do. Women are oppressed because of biology. So yes I am afraid we have to talk about body parts. I am not sure how far back you want to push feminism. I think the Victorian times was when we were last not allowed to discuss our genitals.
I think I have a perfect right to discuss my own genitals. Other people, without their consent? Not so much. Speculating on what other's have in their pants, is tacky at best and bordering on abusive at worse.
I'd rather not push women back to biological determinationism. Escaping that was a major part of first wave feminism. I thought not being defined by my reproductive organs was a battle fought and won.
The bodily autonomy arguement is valid, I am concerned about plastic surgery on women but I think people have the right to do what they like to their bodies. I am still allowed to discuss the impact this has on women even if it hurts the feelings of those who have had plastic surgery. It is a feminist issue as are many of the issues around trans. My dignity would be affected by someone with a penis in a woman only space. Why am I not allowed to be treated with dignity.
Women are oppressed all over the world. Why do you think that is. It's because of biology. That battle has not be won. I wish it has but it just hasn' t.
How do we segregate by sex if we don't discuss genitals.