DC15 wants to identify as female

[FrogInAHat23]

I'm still struggling to figure out how I feel about this, to be honest. DS (now DD?) wants to identify as female. They are 15. I fully subscribe to the 'do no harm' school of thinking, but it has raised so many questions for me. Saying they identify as female isn't hurting anyone (although there will be some close-minded individuals who are offended by that, which I don't think should be a barrier). However, what do I do if they say they want to use women's toilets or changing rooms (esp if a unisex version isn't available)? They identify as female (and is very effeminate, to be fair). We haven't discussed the whole sex change op situation yet, and I'm wary of bringing it up because I don't want to put ideas in their head (given the risks etc I'd rather they didn't!). DC has ASD and is very young (mentally) for their age. I've been buying them makeup and very feminine clothing, which they wear around the house. I had hoped it would just be a case of having a DS who was more feminine with feminine tastes, but it seems not.

I think my feeling is that, while DC has male genitalia then they ought to stick with unisex and mens changing rooms / toilets. I think. Argh.

What do you think? I know trans stuff is a hot topic at the moment, this isn't me trying to get a response from people. This is the genuine situation I find myself in currently!

Actually, it went to two theres in one short post! Swiftest Bingo card fill ever!

A theoretical, but vicious, row about where a small minority of people are allowed to go to the loo

Why do you keep reducing it to toilets? Do you not care about women prisoners, women fleeing abusive relationships, ill and disabled women in hospitals?

Meanwhile men will find plenty of ways to abuse women and girls, regardless.

And self-ID makes it a whole lot easier for them to gain access to do so. Which is why we'd quite like to keep the imperfect safeguarding we have, not weaken it even further.

Meanwhile, could you get back to me on those gender identity questions?

Bizawit
If a 6.5 foot rugby-player built man sees a 16-year-old girl go into the women's toilets on her own and decided to closely follow her in and wait outside her toilet door do you think she should be allowed to ask whether he should be in there? Or

Just for you

Look. Nobody asks me what genitals I’ve got when I use the loo, and I for one would prefer to keep it that way That's oice dear. Now, as 'passing' really doesn't happen, can we women just point to the door and say 'out' whenever a man wanders in?

Shall this be the hill that feminism dies on? It dies on many hills... too many, too often!

A theoretical, but vicious, row about where a small minority of people are allowed to go to the loo, which can never be policed anyway. Ah, but you will find that because that small monoroty was hiojoacked by a loud, angry, extreme set of 'others' women are now saying 'out!', sarting to police our own spaces - and being criminalised, defunbdeed and sacked for it!

Meanwhile men will find plenty of ways to abuse women and girls, regardless. Oh, I can't remember the word I want to describe this!! Or is it because I fear being banned? Fuckwit will do!

But think about why you want to make it easier for men to abuse women?

Meanwhile men will find plenty of ways to abuse women and girls, regardless.

Are you not ashamed to be using this as an argument against keeping single sex spaces? That women and girls will be assaulted anyway so why bother fighting this battle?

Every battle is worth fighting, though obviously not for you.

I wish I had proofed that

I think having ASD in some ways makes this a simpler thing to address:

Bear with me:

How about a Carol Gray Social Story (you can dress it up as somerthing else if you think he'll feel patronised I'm not sure how HF he is?) very simply explaining the differences between the human sexes and then the difference between masculine, neutral and feminine 'genders' of different cultures over different time periods?

I know he's 15 but something tells me a fact-based approach will do more good than fudging it.

1) How can anyone know whether their internal sense of themselves is any more 'male' or 'female' than anyone else's internal sense?

• they can’t, nor would they need to. What is the relevance of this question?

• “2) If not gender stereotypes, what is this internal sense being measured it against?

3. What are the markers for feeling 'male' or feeling 'female”.*

• the only measure or marker is to ask the person. It is the internal sense of “knowing” one’s gender: it’s a subjective experience of oneself in the world.

4) How is what it means to be male (or female) being defined, in order to know what is being rejected by trans men/ trans women.
5) How is what it means to be male (or female) being defined, in order to know what is being embraced by transmen/transwomen

• I already tried to answer the question of how gender can be defined, and acknowledged that I don’t have all the answers here. See the post about it being complex; that we don’t have all the answers, but we know that it can’t be reduced in any simple way to expression, action, behaviour or body, and that internal identity plays an important part.

Argh there isn’t the time or the space or the mental energy. But just to clarify, because I would be mortified if I didn’t, I really do care about men abusing women, and I don’t think we should just sit back and allow it to happen. I am an ardent feminist and always have been.

I just don’t hate trans people.

We all have a lot of feelings, experiences and emotions @bizawit. Which ones are worth society reorganising itself for and language disintegrating into meaninglessness for and which ones are not? Who decides?

You do know you contradict yourself in there, don't you? Clue: look at the words you typed around the word 'internal'

If it is sbjective then it has sod all meaning in the world beyind your own nose.

I have no idea whatsoever what it is like to feel like a woman. I feel like me and am aware that my resolutely female body has different experiences to that of my DHs, mainly because it has different functionalities - being not being able to stand up whilst peeing and missing my shoes, being one that springs to mind!

Continuing to behave as though biology matters hugely, in terms of the danger one sex poses the other, as it always has done, is not "hatred" @bizawit

Bizawit I at least appreciate you responding, even if I think your definition of gender identity is utter bobbins. And dangerous unethical bobbins, if children are being mutilated on the strength of saying "I feel like a girl" without any objective measure of what "feeling like a girl" actually means.

I just don’t hate trans people. Nor do most posters here. You just don't see it, yet!

Many of us would have used the same pretzel logic of your last post, myself as little as about 2 years ago. But looking at men in womens sport, in womens prisons, looking at a man and wondering why he wanted to do that - Pips Bunce for example. Made me re evaluate and suddenly all I could think of was why Why would he want to do that?

Bizawit you didn't answer my question about whether any woman or girl should be allowed to challenge anyone they perceive as male in single-sex spaces. Obviously they wouldn't know the person's innate gender identity so run the risk of being transphobic.

@RuffleCrow I also think biology matters!

What is it with the 'don't @ me" that this topic always get?
In a fast moving thread, even if you're on it posts are easily missed so it's a way of knowing you'll see a reply.
You can turn the function off in settings I think, that way you won't get any notifications.

you didn't answer my question about whether any woman or girl should be allowed to challenge anyone they perceive as male in single-sex spaces.

I think this would be really problematic, putting all kinds of people at risk of harassment, including “butch” or masculine presenting women. This would have the effect of entrenching and policing hyper -feminine stereotypes. Demanding that everyone present in an unambiguously “feminine” way. Have you ever read the book “female masculinities”? The author describes exactly this experience, of being harassed in public toilets, because she looked so masculine.

I think this would be really problematic, putting all kinds of people at risk of harassment, including “butch” or masculine presenting women

This, although no doubt you'll get "never happens as you can always tell what a woman looks like"
whatever the fuck a woman's supposed to look like

I think this would be really problematic, putting all kinds of people at risk of harassment, including “butch” or masculine presenting women.

So you're now telling us that we can't challenge a 6'5" clearly male rugby player in a female space? And you still don't see the problem here?

You've just described perfectly why female only spaces should be protected by a blanket safeguarding rule - no males allowed. No matter how they dress, no matter how they identify.

So you are basically saying that a fatal flaw of single-sex spaces is that butch looking women might be challenged in them? Nothing to do with trans issues then - you just think single-sex spaces don't work and so we should get rid of them?

You can't have it both ways - if you want it to be a free for all and anyone can go anywhere and no one can ever be challenged because it appears they're in the wrong place, then what you want is unisex facilities, everywhere. That's quite a big change, and not really anything to do with trans people specifically.

You've just described perfectly why female only spaces should be protected by a blanket safeguarding rule - no males allowed. No matter how they dress, no matter how they identify.

And those apparent thousands of old-school transpeople who have already been using the women's loos for years (while also apparently simultaneously being a tiny minority) can thank pushy, entitled and/or predatory men for us no longer being prepared to turn a polite blind eye to them using our spaces.

TWAW and self-id don't work together - as a society we can probably just about cope with one or the other -

• TWAW but with serious gatekeeping so the only TW are the properly dysphoric and medically treated

OR

• self-id where anyone can say they are trans and want to ID as the opposite sex, but without this having any legal or political significance and without it giving them access to the spaces of the opposite sex.

I still don't agree with TWAW as a statement though.

You've just described perfectly why female only spaces should be protected by a blanket safeguarding rule - no males allowed. No matter how they dress, no matter how they identify.

But how would you police this? They can’t even work this out in the olympics! We can’t have all those tests going on, every time we walk into a loo!

Maybe I’m re-opening a can of worms, but I just find this whole debate a bit weird. I mean, unless we live in a completely separatist society, we are going to come into contact with people of different genders and different types of genitalia. My understanding of safe spaces was that they provided an opportunity for people with a shared experience to be together, discuss issues that affect them in a “safe” (sympathetic/ knowledgable) space etc etc., not literally to be a physical barrier to protect women/ girls from becoming prey to the rabid, unrestrained violence of men? or have I misunderstood? What proportion of violence against women occurs in this way in these kinds of contexts? I thought most abuse occurs in the context of intimate relationships and in private (plus the odd attack on the street/ other public spaces late at night etc.)

Safety in prisons is obviously a specific and complex question and one that, I have to acknowledge, I know little about.