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To be shocked that Mn has been branded a “hotbed of transphobia”

999 replies

Badmoonsarising · 07/12/2018 14:20

BY Vice msgazine no less!

broadly.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/a3mn9k/mumsnet-uk-mom-forum-terf-transphobia-feminism

OP posts:
Thread gallery
7
DonkeyHotei · 07/12/2018 17:59

By twattishness I don't mean people who disagree with me. I mean the likes of @sackrifice who accuses me of supporting rapists in women's prisons simply because I disagree with them.

feelingverylazytoday · 07/12/2018 18:02

Donkeyhotel the latest research indicates otherwise. In a survey comissioned by Pink news (and carried out by yougov) only 18% of the public supported self ID. An even more recent survey carried out found an even lower figure I believe. It'll be in single figures soon at this rate. An impression that is supported on twitter (for those who don't use terfblockers), readers comments in every mainstream news outlet that doesn't censor, so not the guardian, youtube, and just everywhere else you can think of.
But carrying on thinking it's just a few hateful transphobes of mumsnet if it makes you feel better. It really usn't though.

lassupthebrew · 07/12/2018 18:02

Interesting thread. I am transsexual and speak out publicly in defence of women, whose rights are clearly under threat from allowing trans to mean 500,000 people instead of the 4910 currently covered by the Gender Recognition Act. About two thirds of those 4910 are transsexual women, the rest being transsexual men.

As noted earlier this is exactly the number of people predicted to the government by doctors in 2004 would qualify for the act when put into law. Yet Theresa May and the government say the GRA is not working because the other 495,000 are not applying.

These are the ones who do not have a medical condition and will not see doctors and psychiatrists to be evaluated. So they have persuaded the government to change the rules to make trans not depend on any actual diagnosis but their own belief.

This is clearly risking safety of women and that of those people themselves who might really need help.

It very much tisks 'trans children'. Up to recently very few of these per year - the ones who were transsexual - were seen by clinics and none were treated surgically until they were adults.

Now numbers have exploded beyond the level even of adult transsexual cases per year. And medication is being given whilst in primary school. The number of girls declaring as trans boys has grown far faster than the other way around and is now the reverse of the adult transsexual statistics.

Clearly this is socially driven and a serious issue that needs thorough investigation and women should be concerned about. It should not be just waved through as 'trans rights'.

In the past 90% of those children desisted and realised they were gay or simply going through a phase. Today most put on medication do not desist.

There are many very worrying things like this going on.

So even being transsexual I defend Mumsnet right to discuss this. It is vital.

Yes, some views are strong and hard for me to read and sometimes can conflate all together too much but I understand where it comes from because like plenty of transsexuals I am hated and abused, too, for saying what is simply common sense and urging the respecting of rights of others to define boundaries.

As a transsexual to be accused of transphobia is absurd. But it happens to many of us and we are routinely blocked by trans activists.

This modern activism risks removing all necessary safeguards to make it far too easy to change legal sex via a birth certificate. So letting in cases that should be risk assessed away at present.

Like Karen White who quite clearly is not a woman and should not be anywhere near women in a prison.

As a transsexual woman only too aware that sex cannot change though, by definition we do so as much as we physically can to alter our bodies and then live quietly and respectfully with those around us, I see the threat out there. It is real.

If transsexuals cannot change sex nobody who just self declares obviously can do so can they?

The question is should accommodating this legally, as now, for those with proper medical safeguarding be expanded to far more and all safeguarding removed. And that is a question Mumsnet should be discussing.

Bittermints · 07/12/2018 18:04

Do you have evidence for that assertion, DonkeyHotel? My sense is the opposite, based on the comments below the line every time a transgender story makes it into the press with comments enabled. That and the opinion poll I cited above makes me feel that most of the population have grave reservations about the idea that you can 'become' the opposite sex just by saying you are.

It isn't transphobic to say that the results of sexual reassignment surgery are not very like the real thing they're trying to mimic. This is even more the case for women having phalloplasty than for men having a neovagina created. There are also a lot of significant health problems after surgery and for people on hormones for years on end. These are worrying, especially when they affect children.

I wouldn't walk up to a transgender person in the street and say 'Your genitals aren't the real thing' - of course not! But in a general discussion I can't see why these things are declared out of bounds.

That's like saying that nobody on MN should say that having an eating disorder is a problem because somebody with an ED might read it and be upset.

Hippopotas · 07/12/2018 18:08

I’m not shocked because it’s true

sackrifice · 07/12/2018 18:12

By twattishness I don't mean people who disagree with me. I mean the likes of @sackrifice who accuses me of supporting rapists in women's prisons simply because I disagree with them.

You can call me what you want. But that is exactly what you are doing.

TedAndLola · 07/12/2018 18:12

I’m not shocked because it’s true

Me too. I also describe MN as a haven for transphobes.

TwistedChristmas · 07/12/2018 18:13

I've only been on mumsnet for around 10 months or so and was new to the FWR board in the summer. I knew very little about feminism or the issues currently affected women as they weren't personally affecting me at the time. Or so I thought in my ignorance/naïveté. I didn't consider myself a feminist and had taken in the feminists are militant man haters message so held them in suspicious regard. I was an idiot. Since then I have regularly read a great deal on that board and off, and realised how feminism transcends every day life and situations. The trans issues came up around September for me. I wasn't really aware of it but the more I read, the more I learnt, and the more I realised the threat to women and children from TRAs, I believe gender is toxic to both sexes. I don't believe TWAW or TMAM. I don't believe you can change sex because you can't change every single cell in your body to give them new chromosomes. I believe everyone should be whoever they wish to be as long as they are not hurting themselves or others in any way. Everyone can wear what they like, wear make up or not, long hair or short, heels or flats. It's called personal expression and everyone should be free to express themselves and their style however they want. I've been called a transphobe and a bigot by those who don't understand, or rather refuse to understand, that I have boundaries, both intellectual and physical, and I'm not prepared to let anyone cross them.

RedToothBrush · 07/12/2018 18:15

Phobia definition, a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.

The problem is that, many of the concerns raised DO NOT represent an irrational fear - concerns often relate to situations which relate to basic safeguarding principles and historical development of why and how sexual politics developed.

Indeed, at times I think levelling the accusation of it being phobic on MN - as opposed to other sites which are truly hateful - is precisely because of the historical nature of accusing difficult women of being irrational and hysterical.

I come at this as someone who has suffered tokophobia (an fear of childbirth) and one of the problems that surround the issue is the culture of not taking the personal history of a woman which might have led to her having a particular set of fears based on past experiences. Its too easy to dismiss women's concerns as 'hysterical' even if they are grounded in some sort of material reality.

Of course, no man would question a man fearing an operation or trauma to his dick.

I think as a general rule, its a form of cultural sexism in its own right. Women are simply easier to try and right off as not having validity in their concerns or fears.

SpartacusAutisticusAHF · 07/12/2018 18:17

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

JudasPrudy · 07/12/2018 18:18

'You would be happy for my Dad to get beaten up as long as he wasn't in the female toilets.'

You would be happy for women to be assaulted as long as men could use women's toilets.

sackrifice · 07/12/2018 18:19

Me too. I also describe MN as a haven for transphobes

Most 'transphobes' literally give no shits what trans people do in their own lives. It is when hard won womens and girls rights get trampled on [like rapists in female prisons] that people get pissed off. If you give zero shits about women and girls rights then that is your decision to make.

But other women who do give a shit, are not 'transphobic' in the slightest.

reallyanotherone · 07/12/2018 18:19

What lassup said.

I have no problem with trans people. They are entitled to all human rights. I believe people should be able to walk the streets in whatever combination of clothes/shoes/makeup they choose.

However, i do not believe you can change sex. I definitely don’t believe simply standing up and saying you are the opposite sex makes you that sex, without question. I do not believe in pink brains or blue brains. This, apparently, is what makes me transphobic.

DonkeyHotei · 07/12/2018 18:20

@Bittermints Evidence for which assertion? That transphobes are losing the legal argument? Plenty here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_rights_in_the_United_Kingdom The cultural argument? There are a wealth of articles in newspapers like the Guardian, the Vice cited above and many, many more in favour of trans rights. If you're talking about the comments below such articles then you are talking about populist rhetoric which is not what the phrase "cultural argument" means. Or was it the assertion that someone is a twat for saying that I support male rapists in women's prisons when I said nothing of the sort? Well the evidence is that poster's comment to me following on from my comment where I didn't say it.

Terfing · 07/12/2018 18:20

This thread is very concerning. I am quite worried about the transphobia people have claimed exists here. Could someone please point out some specific examples? I will help y get them deleted ASAP.

Bittermints · 07/12/2018 18:21

Children referred to the Gender Identity Service for under 18s run by the Tavistock.

2009/10: girls 40, boys 56
2017/18: girls 1806, boys 713

No concerns about the sudden huge increase in numbers and the switch from boys outnumbering girls, which has been consistent all round the world as long as figures have been kept on this condition, to the current position where girls outnumber boys by more than 2 to 1 and huge numbers are developing gender dysphoria for the first time in the early teens, not in childhood?

sackrifice · 07/12/2018 18:22

Or was it the assertion that someone is a twat for saying that I support male rapists in women's prisons when I said nothing of the sort? Well the evidence is that poster's comment to me following on from my comment where I didn't say it.

So you agree that rapists should not be in female prisons then? Is that right?

Hyppolyta · 07/12/2018 18:22

Donkey of course we should all support trans rights... unless the right they want is to take rights away from others.

We want spaces segregated by sex.

Transwomen want those segregated by gender.

We could have both. Who is it who is strongly opposed to one group having that right? Why?

ForalltheSaints · 07/12/2018 18:23

I am not shocked that this has not been levied before. I don't consider wanting women to have places where they are safe, such as changing rooms, and not have to be wary of perverted men self-declaring, to be transphobia at all.

Aeroflotgirl · 07/12/2018 18:24

I agree lassupthebrew, it is good to get your perspective as a transwoman, I have no problem with how transpeople lead their lives, their experiences and feelings are their own, it has been fine up until now, since the introduction of the GRA, and the vocal bullying behaviour of the TRAs

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 07/12/2018 18:25

'You would be happy for my Dad to get beaten up as long as he wasn't in the female toilets.

I'm always very confused by this argument. So transwomen are at risk from male violence if they use the men's toilets. But women aren't at risk of make violence if men use the women's toilets Hmm

DonkeyHotei · 07/12/2018 18:25

@sackrifice

You can call me what you want. But that is exactly what you are doing

You really don't even have a nodding acquaintance with facts, do you? Grin

lassupthebrew · 07/12/2018 18:26

Bittermints, there ARE concerns about those figures, as I mentioned them earlier. They are clear evidence that something has drastically changed amidst the current trans activism compared with what was true for decades with transsexuals where the male/female split has long been consistent.

Aeroflotgirl · 07/12/2018 18:27

And their aversion to reasonable and open debate and discussion on the subject, and their prevention of any type of debate on this matter. I was very disturbed that they tried to sabotage a debate on trans boys and girls and the issues surrounding it. In that debate were not just natal women, but men, women and those who were trans all wanting open discussion.

sackrifice · 07/12/2018 18:30

You really don't even have a nodding acquaintance with facts, do you?

Can you not just answer the question rather than dishing out insults?

Do you think rapists should be in female prisons or not?