AIBU .... to open a transgender discussion thread for respectful debate !

[wrexhamtrans]

For the last couple of days I enjoyed a great discussion over transgender rights on a thread that has now closed. Despite over 1000 posts it was on the whole very respectful and insightful.

So let's have something new.... let's have a thread started by myself, a transsexual woman where we can have a healthy dialog. No TRA agenda, no erasure, no abuse or disrespect......

To kick things off I'd like to pick up on a comment made on a previous thread.
I fully accept many other women, who would previously allowed this [transgender women in women's spaces], now wouldn't because "we gave an inch and they stole a mile"

In the past there existed generally a happy coexistence between transsexual women and women.

Unfortunately the goalposts moved and we now have this broad umbrella of transgenderism which I will be the first to say is completely ridiculous. It is this new label that campaigns for cross dressers rights and acceptance of those who are sexual motivated. And of course self id is a dangerous and foolish idea.

Please remember there is still a quiet minority of transsexual women who do want to live their life in peace and who are as much against this as any woman. These TRAs do not represent me.

Being a woman for me is who I am. It's how society sees me because it cannot accept the way I am as permissible as a man. I am castrated and hormonally transitioned and awaiting surgery. I live every day as a woman and i am treated as one in many ways including misogyny, oppressed by male privilege, sexualisation....For some transition was the only way to have a life.

Those who cross dress and are sexual motivated are making a choice. Those with gender dysphoria are not.

There needs to be compromise on both sides, probably more so on the TRA side.
As transsexual I would like to have seen the following...

1. No self id. All those identifying as women to be psychologically evaluated and screened. Gender Dysphoria is no joke.
2. Any rights given to trans women go to dysphoric transsexual women who are in physical transition. No rights at all to other groups eg cross dressers....in other words is transsexual rights not transgender rights.
3. Access to some women's spaces permitted after X months of HRT and testosterone blocking therapy ie when Oestrogen and Testosterone levels are that of a natal female.

Unfortunately I think too much has been conceded already to revert.
I am fed up having my identity hijacked and turned into something it's not. I wouldn't wish gender dysphoria on my worst enemy. People with GD are damaged people who struggle considerably with gender identity and face daily abuse, ridicule and violence.

I absolutely do believe it is possible to born in the wrong body.....to have a brain chemistry of one gender and a body of another. Indeed we know of one generic condition called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome which does exactly that. The idea though that it's ok to mix this up with sexual fetishism is sooooo wrong.

Can you think of any other medical condition where it would be accepted for someone else to claim that condition because they like to pretend they have it ? If I applied to the Council for a Blue Badge because it turns me on to sometimes pretend I am disabled I would be told, rightly so, where to go. Why oh why would the Government capitulate that with gender dysphoria ? You were born in the wrong body, have significant mental health issues ? Yes, we will help you. You like to pretend you are a woman because it turns you on ? Of course, jump in there too.....

You complain about it being playground but it's actual discussion from both sides before you turn up at the end lolling and ridiculing.
As someone said, you get back what you sow.
You mentioned criteria upthread in a question. Which they answered.
You were asked though "what's your criteria for having a problem with them all?" Why have a problem with them all?
There's a word for that.
I presume for example you wouldn't have a "problem with them all" if it was foreigners coming over here and taking our jobs?
Why are transpeople fair game to have a problem with them all?

Sorry weetabix I was trying to compose my appropriate response.
You actually don't know how many differing abilities posters on MN, or this thread, have.

You complain about it being playground but it's actual discussion from both sides before you turn up at the end lolling and ridiculing.

Are you talking to me? I've never mentioned playgrounds...

Show me your risk assessment that assesses the risk of men who have transitioned and how they are less of a threat than men who haven't.

Shriek
Just in case you haven't realised disabled people are individuals you know. Just because 1 or 10 or 100 disabled people feel something it doesn't mean that we all do.

Do you think all black people are the same? All gay people? Or is it just disabled people that have a hive mind or maybe in your view we have an inability to hold our own opinions?

Obviously I've failed as a disabled person because I'm not brave enough.

Early you are ignoring a lot...

As I said just it used to be that no woman raised much of an eyebrow when a trans woman entered a female loo! So little that trans women could convince themselves that either no woman cared or maybe no woman noticed. That accommodation held for decades! Maybe over a century.

Then came the TRAs. All of that reciprocal blindness has now been halted because of the VERY public occurrences of men using 'trans woman' to sexually attack women.

As I said earlier "That will never happen" has very quickly become "Well, that won't happen very often"

Why do you think it is OK for women to be collateral damage?

Why can't you even begin to acknowledge that right now, prior to Self ID being law, so many organisations are behaving as though it is already in place and that women have been sexually attacked by trans women because of that? Not just here in the UK, it is worse in Canada, for example!

Do you (the usual suspects) believe that women who give bikini waxes should have to wax male genitalia by law?

Sackrifice - being so determined you're right, refusing to listen to others who say that for THEM, it isn't just their biology, and sticking fingers in ears and saying no that's not being a woman, try again - extreme and closed off.
I can see BOTH sides. I don't just blindly accept as facts something that was clearly false mid thread and would have been likely to have gone unchallenged elsewhere.
And I am not just my biology. There seems to be something else too. (explained mid thread by others too)
Stop telling people that their experiences aren't valid. "Your way" is right.
Because it's not just all about you and your view.

Are you talking to me? I've never mentioned playgrounds...

Sorry, no, not you.
Was a cross post

My broadband is down so I can't use my PC which limits me in terms of accessing all the scientific papers I have bookmarked there.

However it appears from my reading that men can essentially generate gender dysphoria if they watch enough transgender porn. They may move over the years from an interest in lingerie to a point where full transition is a must.

The influence of the internet on sexuality and identity is massive and, I believe, dangerous. What we can do about it is another matter.

Why can't you answer the question?
You've a lot of little bits to say now. Are you a bot?
These threads are insane lol.

I explained myself, I printed out the positive way my expression was used. I have never said all abilities are the same, hence my use of the term 'varied abilities'.

You cannot see the ppl you are aiming comments at to know what anyone suffers ability-wise, you don't know whether I am black, or any other group that you try to make me as generalist about
Bit extreme.

I think Ereshkigal that people should abide by the law.

If the law allows businesses to refuse a service on these grounds then fine.

Would you accept a business refusing service on the basis of any other protected characteristic, outside of exemptions provided by law?

However it appears from my reading that men can essentially generate gender dysphoria if they watch enough transgender porn. They may move over the years from an interest in lingerie to a point where full transition is a must.

I'd be really interested to read, Prawn when you have access.

Fuck! Are you really asking a really prolific poster if she is a bot?

OK! I agree, these threads do become quite mad!

Oh and before anyone counters that with but you don't answer questions Verbeena, yes I do, but when you do actually answer the numerous ones thrown you get accused of making it the Verbeena show

I think Ereshkigal that people should abide by the law.

So rape in marriage pre 1991 was fine? Or is the law sometimes wrong? Or are there sometimes loopholes which allow for bad things to happen?

OK! I agree, these threads do become quite mad!

They bloody do lol

Sackrifice - being so determined you're right, refusing to listen to others who say that for THEM, it isn't just their biology, and sticking fingers in ears and saying no that's not being a woman, try again - extreme and closed off.

It is great that you can hear both sides. I am genuinely happy for you.

But you cannot give away my rights, even if you want to chuck yours away.

If the government, institutions, schools, colleges have all sucked Satan's lady cock, that is their choice. But at the very least they need to show us the RISK ASSESSMENTS that they are ALL duty bound to have done before they change the arrangements that women and girls are entitled to by virtue of the Equality Act.

If you want to argue for less privacy and security for women and girls, show us your workings. Show us how a male who transitions is less of a threat than one that doesn't.

Surely that is not too much to ask?

If the law allows businesses to refuse a service on these grounds then fine. Unless of course you are in Canada, where Self ID is a fact...

There is an ongoing case about that! And guess what, women working alone is salons, in their own homes are being made bankrupt for refusing just such a service. By just one man who seems to have a real, deep seated hatred for women!

Bot as pattern, had it down to a tee mid thread lol, it is fascinating and scarily funny

Am I allowed to say how patronising, and derailing, your post is to me.
That you feel you have to point out the basics of discrimination, agai, you have no idea how insulting you might be by your lack of seeing who I, or others are.
I have explained my good intent. There is nothing more I can do to help you, sorry

They bloody do lol Did you understand the sentence above the one you are agreeing with? I find that quite a wierd 'lol' !

No Shriek.
I explained why I can see a reason why transsexual people may not want to draw attention to themselves, based on my own experience.

Your response was to tell me to embrace it and then to give me an example of a disabled person who is rising to the challenge and using his disability as a learning experience.

Truly I am thrilled for him. But that is him and if he can do that, great. I can't. I rale against my disability and my limitations and my pain. I am angry at what I am losing. I am angry that I am othered every day.

It doesn't matter what you are or have.

You don't get to tell me how to feel or to shame me or not being as brave as someone else.

What a goding thing to say. so rape in marriage was ok

Jeeezus fucking Christ, extreme, much!??

Yet it was ok to use Debbie to illustrate a previous point was it? It wasn't me who introduced her story into this argument.

I shared Debbie's story which she chose to do in national newspapers for altruistic reasons. It was discussed on FWR two weeks ago when it was published. I've no idea if AIBU readers were aware of it
With fast moving news and threads, important voices are often missed or forgotten.

Debbie's article in the Mirror concludes:
"It should never have happened. It was a big wake up call.

"I was traumatised by what had happened in my life and it was misdiagnosed as being transgender.

"I was vulnerable, I just though that if I wasn't a girl my life would be different, I would be different, I would be accepted and that would be it.

"I thought that becoming a man would make me worthy and I would become a different person."

He added: "I'm not a man, I am an approximation of a man.

"I wish I could wake up as Debbie and realise that the last 15 years were just as bad a nightmare."

Lee primarily blames his father for what has happened to him.

But he says he believes the private psychiatrist who started off his transition should have "picked up on the fact I was abused".

"I should have had help somewhere along the line," he said.

"Nobody ever raised the idea that I could feel like this due to trauma. Not once - until it was all done.

"I have spent my life despising my own body.

"It's so inhumane to feel that was about your own body. But the fact is I now know I rejected my body because of the way my father treated me.

"I was seen as a piece of s* on the bottom of a shoe - and that's how I then saw myself.

"I can't fathom the huge increase in gender reassignment surgery.

"I know a couple of trans men from when I was going through it and I know they were doing it for the same reasons as me.

"Trans-men and women come out of hospital saying everything is great - but that's not always the case.

"If they are doing it for the right reasons then that's fair.

"But nobody is honest when it goes wrong."

Lee, who remains married to husband Alan, went to see his GP about becoming a woman again at the start of the year.

He says he is now awaiting an appointment at a specialist gender identity clinic.

"On the inside I'm just not me," he said.

"I'm a different creature on the outside.

"Inside I am still that young girl calling out but I miss looking in the mirror and seeing my feminine self.

"The thing I dream and long to do is to go out for a meal.

"But most of all I just miss the old Debbie."