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Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To be saddened by the transphobia and homophobia on Mumsnet?

999 replies

spannablue · 04/07/2018 21:32

I used to come on here for a good laugh. But now there's just so much casual, vitriolic, uninformed rubbish om here!

Do people really think that trans women are secretly trying it on to take over women's space? Have you not seen what they have to go through (for some, horrific surgery; for others, lashings of abuse; job losses; loss of contact with family; street attacks)? Why would anyone choose that?

Did you know that if your kid comes out as trans, they are around 48% likely to attempt suicide, and around half of them succeed? All the literature/research on this shows that it's transphobia, stigma and bigotry that causes this, rather than some innate pathology. When a trans kid is supported to be who they want to be, those suicidal feelings tend to go away. If you've ever had or known a child with depression, anxiety, or who self harms, you'll know the fear and terror that they might succeed.

We're talking about a tiny minority of people who are trans. But what I'm seeing on Mumsnet amounts to collective bullying.

When did it become ok to be so judgmental? Have you ever actually met a trans person and listened to them with an open mind?

There are people of all kinds on social media - trans, not trans, gay, straight, bi, lollipop ladies, lawyers, teachers, academics and bus drivers. Some talk a load of crap. And others engage in intelligent, informed, openminded debate. Please consider trying out your ideas thoughtfully with these people before perpetuating the sort of hateful kneejerk nonsense which can have terrible consequences.

For the record, I'm an academic researcher in the field of applied sociology. I'm not trans. I'm a lesbian with four kids aged 3 to 25, one of whom is nonbinary.

OP posts:
GorgonLondon · 06/07/2018 23:29

Yes it's GIRES which many will say is biased, so Google the details and fact check. I did. Unlike Transgender Trend's stuff, it does stand up to scrutiny.

Rather than just making these claims, please cite specific information published by Transgender Trend that you claim does not 'stand up to scrutiny'.

You say you're an academic. I'm an ex-academic with a PhD. It is so deeply drilled into me not to make statements like this without quotation and citation.

Do you really expect anyone to believe what you say if you don't back it up at all?

Trans and non trans women both experience sexual violence and we can work together to support each other. At the moment trans women don't have many places to go if they've suffered sexual violence and that does need to change. You can't just leave a victim out on the pavement.

Men are also often victims of sexual violence, from other men. They absolutely need support just as women do. They don't need it in places that are designated as places for women.

most philosophers, sociologists, gender theorists, neurologists and biologists are now quite convinced that the evidence all points to a more diverse reality

OK, now I am finding it really, really impossible to believe that you're actually an academic. Who on EARTH would say something like that?

Please could you let us know what your PhD is in and what subject you now research/teach?

Thanks.

Ereshkigal · 06/07/2018 23:32

Lashing out as a big group against people like @karenna isn't ok though.

Karenna feels that women shouldn't complain about penises in either their own or their daughters spaces though. A lot of women here disagree. It wasn't a group pile on. Someone said something outrageously misogynistic and they rightly were called out for it. Just stop the manipulative emotional blackmail. It's not doing you any favours.

Ereshkigal · 06/07/2018 23:36

Btw OP, this isn't just about safety. It's about the privacy, dignity and comfort of women and girls. And it's not for you or anyone else to decide other women's boundaries, or dismiss the need for their consent.

Ihuntmonsters · 06/07/2018 23:37

If no one would 'deliberately try and throw women and children under a bus' then why are legally required impact assessments on proposed changes not being done? Why are safeguarding principles being ignored? Safeguards designed to protect women and girls like single sex services and areas are already being ignored or subverted so why would we imagine that moves to make life easier for transpeople would not make things even more difficult for women and girls, when it is patently obvious that the needs and wishes of women and girls are being totally ignored in favour of the campaigning of transactivists.

Ereshkigal · 06/07/2018 23:39

Can you please explain what you mean by that? What is homonormativity?

Yes it's an interesting sounding term I've not come across before.

spannablue · 06/07/2018 23:40

Hi @SlothSlothSloth, it describes how gay culture can be restrictive in that it can push an agenda which reproduces heterosexual experience in a way which is normative.

dismantlinghomonormativity.weebly.com/what-is-homonormativity.html

' Homonormativity is gay white men dominating queer TV representation and white cis men playing trans women. Homonormativity is the nation organizing for gay marriage, but not for trans lives. ... In the simplest terms, homonormativity is a set of rules used to decide which people in the queer community are the best' - www.pride.com/firstperson/2017/10/12/what-homonormativity

OP posts:
spannablue · 06/07/2018 23:43

@GorgonLondon I'm not bothered if you don't believe I'm an academic and I'm not sharing that info as it would identify me

OP posts:
Ereshkigal · 06/07/2018 23:43

Are biological males claiming to be lesbians and trying to pressure lesbians to sleep with them homonormative or heteronormative? Asking for a friend.

GorgonLondon · 06/07/2018 23:47

It's not about whether or not I believe you spanna. It's about you making sweeping claims on a public forum and presenting them as fact.

You have, for example, said that Transgender Trend publish 'stuff that doesn't stand up to scrutiny'.

I've asked you to provide a citation, reference or source for that. You have ignored that request.

Given that they are an organisation that gets a lot of donations, you saying that is not only wrong but potentially libellous.

If you have 'Googled' (great way for an academic to research!) and you believe they have published specific information that is inaccurate or misleading, please back that up with evidence.

Datun · 06/07/2018 23:49

GIRES?? Who claim, among other things, that transitioning cures autism?

Anecdotally, young people who have been successfully treated, are often described as having no residual ASD [Autism Spectrum Disorder]. The symptoms have disappeared once the dysphoria has been treated.

gendertrender.wordpress.com/?s=GIREs&submit=Search

I have been trying to understand where people are coming from. And I think some people here may have been traumatised by horrible childhood experiences perpetrated by men and it's understandably prompting a panicky response

Given that 85000 women a year are raped by men, two a week are killed by men and 20% of women will suffer from sexual assault during their lifetime, it's really not very surprising that one of the reasons women don't want men in their changing room is because many of them tend to go around being violent to women.

Did the #MeToo campaign pass you by? It ran to %11 million posts^ in under 24 hours.

But the real red flag is you perhaps not realising that women's reaction is entirely rational and logical. It sounds as though you are dismissing it by calling it a 'panicky response'.

And I can assure you, it is not confined to childhood. It is a lifelong situation.

And of course anyone who is assaulted should have a place of safety to go. It doesn't mean it has to be the one designated for women. Women started rape refuges from their living rooms. With absolutely no funding.

Women who have been raped will not be comfortable around men, however they identify.

Again, a dedicated service is required. I would certainly contribute. Raising awareness of male violence is high on the feminist agenda.

LauraMipsum · 06/07/2018 23:52

OP you probably missed my post in the noise but I'd be really interested to know what you thought of my post about non-binary. I can't talk to NB friends about this because by rejecting it as an identity for myself (when quite a few of them have been insistent that I should identify myself that way) I would upset them, and I don't like to upset friends.

I still feel it's a step backwards to label gender non conforming women as non-binary (or trans*) and therefore "cis" women as gender conforming, because it assumes that gender conformity is innate, and I just can't accept that from a feminist or a scientific perspective.

SlothSlothSloth · 07/07/2018 00:12

Thanks for answering, OP. I absolutely recognise what you/that website describes as homonormativity, but it still sounds like heteronormativity to me...

Homonormativity is not the same as heteronormativity in the sense that it does not assume that every person is gay; rather, it assumes that queer people want to be just like heteronormative people. Furthermore, it rewards the gay guys who "[mimic] heteronormative standards"

From this i understand it’s basically the imposition of heterosexual models as the “norm” in same-sex couples - so it is really just heteronormativity, surely?

Anyway, I don’t want to derail by getting too deep into semantics as that’s not what this thread is about. Thanks for introducing me to a new term. I’ll look into it further.

Beachcomber · 07/07/2018 07:11

And I think some people here may have been traumatised by horrible childhood experiences perpetrated by men and it's understandably prompting a panicky response. I myself am a survivor of this and have had PTSD symptoms. Two years of therapy later and I can now see outside myself again. So I do get how the prospect of self ID can be triggering and result in lashing out.

I'm sorry to hear of your experience and PTSD and I'm very glad you are OK now.

As you say, a lot of girls and women are victims of male violence, sexualised and other. Indeed male violence against girls and women is recognized to be an urgent global human rights issue.

From Oxfam (their bolding) :

www.oxfam.org/en/violence-against-women-and-girls-enough-enough

"Did you know that at least one in three women (35 per cent) will experience some form of violence during their lifetime - more than one billion women worldwide?

Violence against women and girls is a hidden global crisis which knows no boundaries of geography or culture. But, marginalized women, such as poor women and girls, are most likely to experience it, most often at the hands of their husbands or partners.

Violence against women and girls takes many different forms, including domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, child, early and forced marriage, sex trafficking, so called ‘honor’ crimes and female genital mutilation. It is rooted in the gender inequality that women face throughout their lives from childhood through to old age. "

OP, I found the part of your post I quoted above, really unpleasant. You may think it came across as understanding and sympathetic but it really really didn't.

Gender Critical women's response to the erosion of women's rights by genderists is not a panicky lash out. And I find your analysis to be dangerously minimizing of the reality of male violence. And victim blaming to boot. You might as well call us hysterical.

I was sexually assaulted with penetration when I was a child. It was done by a stranger and in a public place. The perpetrator was, of course (in accordance with all statistics and observation), a man.

I've also been flashed at, wanked at, followed, groped, harassed (sexually and otherwise), leered at, ogled, cat called, pestered for sex, etc. All perpetrated by men (no surprises there huh?).

And I am in no way unusual. My 14 year old daughter has already experienced most of these. It's starting to happen to my 12 year old.

Women want and deserve the rights to dignity, privacy, and, protection from men's unacceptable behaviours towards us. We do not ask for these things out of panic but out of plain old fashioned common sense. Men as a class victimize girls and women as a class. The UN, the WHO, Oxfam, etc say so, not only feminists. It's official. It is therefore common sense to protect girls and women from men.

This is not women's fault for not getting therapy or for being affected and traumatised by male violence (no shit Sherlock). It is men's fault for perpetrating the violence and society's fault for it's toxic male supremacism.

I was traumatised by being sexually assaulted and I have no shame in that fact. I think my reaction is one of common sense. And what my reaction was is this; I lost my innocence in a split second. The action of my perpetrator set off this alarm bell in my head men transgress girls and women's boundaries because they can and they want to and they will.

That is what went through my head as I was being sexually assaulted in a busy public place. And nothing I have seen over the decades that followed has done anything to change my mind. Quite the contrary!

As I say, what happened to me is not unusual. We are dealing with a worldwide class issue. This is not about individuals and how they process trauma FFS.

TheCountessofFitzdotterel · 07/07/2018 07:21

'Just as we teach our kids, let's listen and be kind.'

Could you be any more patronising?
The only thing you appear to be listening to is the sound of your own voice.
I used to be an academic too and unlike some other posters I don't doubt you are one. I have met people like you. But I think you have missed the fact that we are not your students who have to profess to believe what you tell them without question and sign up to the shibboleths of your discipline even if the evidence is weak.

karenna · 07/07/2018 07:45

Trans and non trans women both experience sexual violence and we can work together to support each other. At the moment trans women don't have many places to go if they've suffered sexual violence and that does need to change. You can't just leave a victim out on the pavement.

@spannablue

Agreed.

spannablue · 07/07/2018 07:52

Thanks Karenna.

@GorgonLondon just re academic proof and references etc

Mumsnet has an entirely different kind of peer review process. Typing on my phone while DS is distracted by Go Jetters isn't massively conducive to full academic referencing. I like the way Mumsnet allows for us busy mums to discuss things in this accessible format.

I'm confident though that if anyone did want to spend a bit of time on Google or GoogleScholar (not all have access to uni libraries) they'd find the relevant citations.

I could cut and paste my latest article but that would a. be too long for this paradigm and b. out me

OP posts:
TheCountessofFitzdotterel · 07/07/2018 07:53

But that's what happened to two women in Canada who expressed concerns about sharing a room with a transwoman as victims of male violence.
link

This is the new reality in a place where self id is supposedly not causing any problems. Acceptable?

spannablue · 07/07/2018 07:54

Countess- I can see how it sounds patronising but actually I really mean it. We can be kind- lots of people do manage that on here, even without agreeing with each other

OP posts:
Dottierichardson · 07/07/2018 07:55

Beachcomber Just wanted to second your post. I used to like going to the cinema alone but last time a man sat next to me and started masturbating and so I stopped going. I have in my time been groped, had my breasts grabbed and squeezed in the middle of the road, in the middle of the day in a public place, been followed by 'flashers', seen men masturbating on the tube behind briefcases in the middle of the day, been subjected to various forms of domestic violence, and so on...the list is long. I'm not special every women I know has been through these things or something similar - OP do some research, read Laura Bates's Everyday Sexism, google books about violence against women, there are so many it's a list on Goodreads. This is the reality of women's existence, it's not one-off, it's endless. It's the men who need the therapy.

TheCountessofFitzdotterel · 07/07/2018 07:59

Spanna do you think the people who are posting things you consider unkind have never even thought of that?
Kindness goes both ways and ignoring the validity of women's experiences and dismissing their responses and views, as you do in your op, as 'vitriolic uninformed rubbish' is a long way from being kind in my book.

Beachcomber · 07/07/2018 08:01

Thank you Dottierichardson.

And YY to this:

It's the men who need the therapy.

UpstartCrow · 07/07/2018 08:07

Just as we teach our kids, let's listen and be kind.

Boys are taught that women are there to be judged on desirability, and to be sexually available.

And in many cultures, girls are taught not to reveal their hair, legs or arms to men. But you don't want to acknowledge their existence or talk about how self ID will affect them.

spannablue · 07/07/2018 08:09

Re the panic/trauma response and accusation of accusation of hysteria

This is why I think we could be kinder. In this combative environment its hard for anyone to hear anything without being on the defensive.

The hysteria thing is something imposed on us by men. Let's not accept that dismissive analysis and instead think about PTSD and trauma as something to recognise and work with. It's useful information. If our collective experience of sexual assault has led to a mass GRA consultation- prompted triggering then we need to address the institutionalised problem of sexual assault (mostly by men), not attack innocent transpeople.

A trauma informed analysis can be useful. Check out the trauma- informed movement- we now have trauma-informed dentistry, schooling, healthcare, yoga etc.

OP posts:
GorgonLondon · 07/07/2018 08:10

Ok, so you have no evidence at all for your claim that Transgender Trend publish material that 'doesn't stand up to scrutiny'. That much is true.

If you are a genuine academic, then shame on you for spreading lies and hiding behind "oh who posts citations on a discussion forum tee-hee go jetters lol" to cover up your dishonesty.

spannablue · 07/07/2018 08:13

Countess, I agree that that's not acceptable. Everyone needs to be kept safe and included as far as is possible and fair. This might take a change in culture as well as a change in law. It's difficult but not intractable.

The Equality Act is a brilliant piece of balancing (it was largely drafted by Heidi Mirza).

OP posts: