@FreshFancyFrogglette
I don't think we should have hijacked the thread. It's just I'm fairly new to mn, and I've never actually seen any transphobia. I've never spoken to anyone who doesnt believe that people should be granted the right to use whichever bathroom they legitimately feel comfortable in.
If we replaced trans with any other strata, and then had to talk this way, there would be uproar. I don't like to see discrimination against anyone, it makes me sad. A friend of mine was trans female, they killed themselves. Very hard to exist as trans in this world apparently! Hopefully in the future there will be more legal protection for trans rights, the same way there now is for women, different nationalities, races, disabilities and LGB identities.
I don't doubt for a second that it is difficult feeling such strong sexual dysphoria that you believe that you are actually a member of the opposite sex. I recognise that there are people for whom the most helpful course of action, for them at least, would be to live and be recognised as a member of the opposite sex. And if it really was the case that the only males wanting to use our toilets and changing rooms were those who'd had the surgery and the hormone therapy because to live otherwise would be nye on impossible... I'd have probably said "Alright, fine then."
However, that is not the current narrative. The mainstream trans narrative has many, many flaws. At the moment we have adult males with no intention of ever having genital reassignment surgery demanding that they be allowed into changing rooms and refuges with us.
Because to go in the men's would feel wrong. It would be triggering. But to retain your penis and testicles? Absolutely fine.
And then to demand that teenagers be allowed into puberty blockers, asserting that if children aren't allowed them, they'll probably kill themselves. Conveniently overlooking the fact that many trans women (and trans men, I presume) who have never taken blockers are asserting that they are a man or a woman based on how they FEEL and that everyone else must go along with it. So young teens (including a massively disproportionate amount of ASD girls) have to take frankly dangerous medication in order to be affirmed but all a grown man has to do to feel affirmed is to assert he is a woman and strong arm others into nodding along.
And what is a woman? I don't identify as a woman, I know it to be true by the fact that I have female anatomy, that I went through female puberty, that I menstruate, that I have been pregnant and given birth and breastfed. And I should clarify, before you come out with "But not all women menstruate." If you menstruate, you are a woman. As you are if you become pregnant and give birth.
So, what do I have in common with a male who says he's a woman that I wouldn't have with any other male? If trans women are women- why, exactly?