To carry on this most excellent discussion that is only very occasionally touching on the subject of transmen?

[RatRolyPoly]

Thoroughly interesting, AIBU to keep it rolling?

We are here to assert our right to name ourselves as a group and to name our oppressors.

What name do you have? Who are your oppressors?

Women. Men.

@EverlastingLove I am really sorry you are so upset.

o me it feels like there are lots of different debates going on here, we are all talking at each other, sideways on, not necessarily answering each other's points. Which is all fine but it does mean that I don't think things are necessarily directed at specific posters. It can feel like that if one person posts something straight after another. But actually, maybe, someone is off crafting their reply over several minutes and by the time that gets done posting another two or three messages have come in.

So I am not sure this is such a personal debate as you seem to be taking it, even if it is about things that affect you personally.

I don't feel that the debates that are going on in this thread are directly referencing you at all.

People are sharing their thoughts and beliefs. It doesn't necessarily mean they are trying to be hurtful or that they will have any power over other individuals.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that because I don't see this as being about individual people, it is about wider ideas in general.

Having read many posts on Mumsnet , its seems there are a great deal of angry people , complaining about their MIL, Toilet Brushes, other school mums, Cheating Partner, Trans men and women but this is a new one Intersex people who had to see the same Drs but who don't fit the criteria of Trans people but we get lumped in

look at it from my perspective if I accused any woman on here as being the same as Myra Hindley , or any other such well known criminals am sure you would be rightly upset

and at that am off to bed , am off to church early in the morning

unless anyone wants to attack my faith before I got to bed , night night
its unlikely I will post on here again please believe what ever you want to believe

Still "sex is a biological concept", no sex is a biological reality. This is one of the problems, reducing biological reality to a concept, an idea.

It's like saying breathing is a concept. It's not, it's a reality. Most people cannot hold their breath for more than three minutes.

Somewhere, pearl diving off the coast of Japan, there may be people who can hold their breath for more than three minutes. But these all realities they are not concepts. Some people will be on the extremes of what is possible in terms of breathing. It doesn't make it any less a biological reality.

Does that make sense? Do you agree?

@EverlastingLove goodnight, I too will be off to church tomorrow and will not be attacking your faith. Sleep well. As you rightly say people are debating on here anything from toilet brushes to MILs. We do not know each other's struggles and lives but we come together to debate and discuss because we see some value in talking.

EverlastingLove

I'm at a complete loss to understand why my post upset you so much. It's just about the most common view that radical feminists hold.

It is a view held on virtually every single thread on the feminist board.

It's the cornerstone of every single talk from A Woman's Place UK and We Need to Talk.

Gender is damaging. There is ample evidence for it. Particularly in terms of how is is applied to women.

I don't see how my post would even apply to you. Intersex is a medical condition, it's not transgender.

Intersex people have my sympathy. And I don't apply the arguments over my objections to women losing sex based protections, to somebody who is intersex.

However you present, as long as it feels right for you, would find no objection in me. Intersex people are not a threat to women's sex-based protections.

Transmen aren't a threat to women, so again, they don't enter into the specific arguments re the loss of women's rights.

Women have every right to be angry over the equality act that says any man can identify as a woman, whatever his intentions!

It's a piece of legislation that is being exploited to every degree possible. Something that I am sure it was never designed for.

I, and many women like me, are absolutely furious that the gains that feminism has made over the last hundred years are being eroded.

Just today, a 19-year-old boy (who identifies as a girl) who holds the post of Labour women's officer, and says that Muslim women should be 're-educated' if they are uncomfortable undressing in the same space as male bodied people, has attacked a gay nightclub because he wasn't patted down by a woman.

They say women have to put up with male bodied people in their changing rooms, because women's boundaries are irrelevant, and then go yelling transphobia, because that's suddenly okay, when it is they who are objecting on the basis of someone's sex.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Not to mention, that their stance means they would be forcing a woman to pat them down.

If women aren't angry over instances like this, perhaps it's because they don't realise quite how recent the gains that feminists have made are.

And how quickly they can be lost. Are being lost.

look at it from my perspective if I accused any woman on here as being the same as Myra Hindley , or any other such well known criminals am sure you would be rightly upset

Absolutely. Please point us at the posts where you have been accused of being the same as Myra Hindley and we will gladly report them.

We might swear here but we don't do that shit.

Very clear Datun.

Night all.

Morning people.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3188264-Am-I-alone-in-wondering-where-the-WOMEN-wanting-to-trans-are

In case anyone wanted to go back to the beginning

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3195612-Transsgernder-man-the-face-of-new-campaign-to-challenge-stereotypes-round-periods

So, here we have a trans man in the public eye, bucking the “quietly getting on with it” trend.

Kenny himself sounds like a nice enough person. I wish him well with his chosen career. It is not easy getting modelling work and he isn’t responsible for being on trend. I also think it’s healthy that he’s happy to talk about the intimate physical sides of his transition.

But the fact that periods are, and are about, female bodies is not a stereotype. It’s a fact.

And here’s the bit I object to: the idea that “only 8%” of literature about periods talks about the trans experience.

So we see a three part move:
1 decent seeming trans man doing his thing >
2 business seeking maximum exposure taking advantage of what’s on trend>
3 political organisation takes advantage of both the above to advance its agenda.

Comments/corrections?

Everlasting, I agree with Datun (on most of that post actually). But specifically on the fact that intersex is a proven medical condition and is not and should not be subsumed into transgender arguments.

You should have the respect and protection of any woman as a given.

I cannot imagine how any of even the most strident Feminist critics on here would not appreciate that difference and the tragedy of your life and leave you in peace to be happy.

You should not even be caught up in the transgender debate at all, but I am pleased that you were able to do with passion. As it may have added a little understanding to the complexities of these things and that it is easy to judge on the basis of patterns of behaviour and broad brush strokes of necessary gender reform whilst missing the real consequence of words on tragic situations such as yours.

Datun, it does look like the equality act has created real issues. I was unaware of its impact until someone mentioned it the other day. I had not even realised it had any relevance to transgender issues.

But if it is being abused as in the examples you cite then of course it needs to be reconsidered. At those things are a very lopsided protection.

Equality means to respect both sides of the argument and do not disadvantage one over the other. And if it can be misused as indicated by those examples then it clearly is not doing that.

So it seems in need of urgent attention.

The idea that GRS always involves fashioning of any kind of pseudo-vagina or other tissue resembling a female appearance is incorrect.

In the US and Canada, many MTFs simply get an "orchi," i.e. the balls get the chop. Many of the MTFs I have known only go this far, and do not have the penis removed but have the testes removed because that way they stop producing testosterone. In Canada, this is often all that's offered within a reasonable timeframe that would be covered by the government.

Very few, by comparison, are having the full creation of an imitative vagina or labia. Nothing separates their procedure from that creating a eunuch, but they don't want it called castration.

"Comments/corrections?"

@thanksjaneshusbandatcaresouth

Just as I (a post menopausal woman) would not expect to be advertising sanitary products, I do not expect to see a female person who has transitioned and stopped having periods advertising period products. Lets she black and white, Chinese, all ethnicities and races, able-bodied and disabled or alternative-ability people, from the earliest stages of mensuration to the later stages, etc etc advertising products. But not people who will not actually use them!

Women my age do menstruate so include them.

Talk about this as a normal thing that affect half the worlds population for at least half their lives, usually.

But don't jump on a bandwagon to sell women something, it's crass.

Womb, as I think we discussed earlier somewhere this move away from full GRS seems to be occurring in increasing numbers.

But my suspicion is that it has more to do with a fundamental difference between those who are transsexual, who consider the need to adapt the body as far as possible as not an option but a necessity, and those who are transgender and so using any physical changes to modify appearance in a cosmetic way to aid gender identity presentation.

I know from the outside looking in there probably seems no major difference here, as it looks almost like a technicality. But from within the difference is very stark.

In terms of the reason for transition in terms of the individual - one is basically following a drive to change body to match mind. Hence the popular talk of 'sex change' and 'trapped in the wrong body' that is rightly decried as a cliché, but exists for a reason. It is an apt analogy if you are transsexual.

Of course, we also completely realise that what we are doing is not changing sex in any biological sense. Only too aware. It is the biggest disappointment of our lives and we have to live within its limitations forever. We are just matching up as far as we can out of instinct rather than making presentation easier.

But if you are transgender that seems more a desire to change your mode of expression and there will be less of a need to adapt the body.

Looked at this way you can probably see why one group would be much more concerned over trying to 'cure' the body dysmorphia whereas the other probably just wants to do enough to pass and integrate but not lose anything too fundamental or put themselves t risk with major surgery that for them is an 'optional extra'.

I cannot imagine how any transsexual, if they were physically well and had no other factors involved, would wish to keep their penis.

That seems to me a complete contradiction in reality.

If you are okay doing that then I have to seriously question that you are transsexual, though I can accept that you may be transgender and wish to identify as female and not see anything odd in acting female whilst remaining visibly male.

And because whatever causes you to be transsexual - and I don't know that, of course - is by the looks of it pretty rare and has displayed numbers in the hundreds that appear reasonably consistent over the past decade or so and that also are not miles out of kilter with what they were decades ago, the apparent prevalence of people transitioning physically is falling.

Not, I suspect, because the numbers are falling in actual terms, but because the numbers of those who are transgender but not transsexual have in that same decade taken advantage of many things.

The greater freedom of expressing as gender fluid. The possibility to use the GRA and equality act to become legitimised and the activist movements that have sprung up. And the much wider debate that has even brought many children into the picture being faced with these options for the first time.

So if more and more of these are using that fluidity and transitioning in the transgender sense so without the desire to go far into the physical transition the balance between those who have GRS and those who have not shifts and it looks like it is falling.

When it is only falling because other things are escalating dramatically.

@Everlasting all unnecessary surgery on children and adults is very wrong. I am so sorry that intersex people have been subjected to it in the past and hope it is changing now for good.

Italian, you are quite right about that and I agree.

But it also creates another possible problem. Doctors have always judged on perception in cases of confusion over gender.

In the past it was often just genitalia and/or which was easiest to modify. So if these were not matched externally to internal make up of the body errors occurred and led to problems down the line if assigned gender was not the mind sex of the individual.

By which I mean what the person insists they actually are if raised in error from the decision made on external genitalia.

These days, of course, there are far more sophisticated ways to judge at birth true sex and, of course, you would hope that our current perception of true is 100% accurate and that if we do it that way nobody will grow with a different sex concept in their minds.

It will resolve cases of intersex and hopefully stop that trauma from getting involved in the transgender question which it never should be,

But the fact that such problems occur at all leaves open the possibility that some as yet unidentified anomaly causes the same body/mind sex perception discrepancy reported by transsexuals.

I have no idea what the actual cause of being transsexual is. I don't think anyone does. There are ideas and theories but no real evidence of a consistent cause.

It might be physical. It might be psychological. All I know is that it is real, occurs very early in life and is immensely powerful and has to be redressed. I don't have any real concern how it eventually proves to be found to occur. I just hope they find the cause one day and they maybe find it is possible to treat it at source and stop it from happening as it is pretty insidious.

If it is possible to stop it then that option should be available on choice. If it turns out that it is inherent and cannot be stopped then we will have to carry on 'curing' it as best as possible.

But finding the cause is certainly not something we should give up on doing.

Been doing some interesting reading on the subject of the trans men phenomenon, which this thread is tacitly about.

I was quite surprised to discover (from an article by Stephen Whittle - who posted in the first part of this thread - amongst others) that in the first 20 years of transsexual surgery the split was pretty much 50/50.

Many know of Lili Elbe, played by Eddie Redmayne in the Danish Girl - the first fatality known directly from surgery. But before her there was a mastectomy on a trans man and another trans man was operated on in the war and had the first creation of a penis in the late 40s. Interestingly he went on to have a successful life as a man serving as a ship's doctor and then becoming a Buddhist monk up to his death in 1962.

So the early polarity where surgery on trans women much outstripped that on trans men was not evident in those early most urgent cases where those so deeply effected they were willing to go through risky and experimental surgery were more balanced.

I also found a pdf at www.bournemouth.gov.uk called Gender Reassignment the population of interest.

This seems to have amassed figures for several years or so from 2000 onward (to 2009 from context I think).

These are NHS figures.

This reveals there were 54 GRS operations in the UK in 2000 - which compares with the 90 - 100 that occurred in 1975/76 when I was on the list. In 2009 there were 143. And in the full decade a total of 865 - averaging out almost exactly the same as the mid 70s.

Only 12 of these were on trans men.

The average age of surgery was 42 and only one involved a person under 21. The cost to the NHS was about £8.6 million.

By 2010 the split of trans women to trans men going through the system - not necessarily to full GRS - was, if I read it correctly, 480 trans women to 240 trans men.

By the date of this report latest figures available showed 2004 people had obtained a GRC. Of which 680 had obtained a new birth certificate.

They guesstimated that would equate to 5894 by 2010.

to answer the question posed: I have also wondered where the trans men are in all this!

I've talked to a few of my 'trans men' mates about this, over a beer or two, and asked whether they would consider to contributing to an online debate.
All said they really limit their online stuff to what is absolutely necessary for family and friend's purposes i.e. a bit of facebook and that's that. Though many said they used Whatsapp to talk with family quite a lot.
It seems some go onto computers when at work, but most don't even do that - they are very hands on people; a doctor, a ceo, a dentist, a teacher, a manager of a day centre, a physio, a occupational therapist, a firemen, a stable owner, a policeman.
They only go online when real life obliges them to do so - such as talking to their mum.
They said they go on to buy absolutely essential items; a sprogget needed to fix a toilet flush, bracket to fix the kid's bunk beds, or when told to change the milk order cos their partner was going to bed.
Two said they went online to get a new book on their kindle, or to find a film for their partner, their kids, their mother etc.
Most said they don't want the hassle of participating in online talking. As another put it: "by the time the evening has arrived, I have run out of words. I simply cannot carry on talking, and typing means saying the words in my head". (I understand that feeling) .
Another said "going on the computer is just too much when all I want to do is stop, eat, wash and go to sleep."
Another said "ask me to come round, and choose between 1. digging your garden, 2. print and pack 2000 newsletters, or 3. type words, I'll chose them in exactly that order: 1, 2 then 3".

And another said; "as a journalist I am online a lot - watching, but I limit my participation to when I have something worthwhile and different to say. That's not often".
It seems, therefore, from my small selection of consulted trans men, that most trans men limit computer use to work. And we just don't want to do it after that.
I understand because that is how I feel, and have no urge to change that.
There will be some who participate online (as I do to a limited extent), but if people don't want to, they don't have to - and they are probably mentally healthier for not doing so.
Has anyone counted up men's and women's use of talking chambers on the internet? I wonder what hormones have to do with it..

Decided to move this to a better title, as it is about Trans men
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3212371-Where-are-all-the-trans-men-An-Answer?watched=1