What does your network think about trans people?

[deeter]

Immediate family think it's all a bit silly, trans people should be treated well but you cannot change sex. Women's spaces should be protected etc.

But interestingly all of my university friends think trans women are women (did go to a London uni with well to do sorts).

I'm 31 btw.

biology matters but you can wear what you want and we will be polite about it but we will stand up for sex-based rights.
professional woman mid 30s to mid 40s. Those of us with children are hoping that our children are not infected with the social contagion but will defend our children’s right to be who they want to be while telling them the reality of biology.

Have you responded to the right post?? How bizarre 🤯

@notknowledgeable thanks for sharing. Interesting. I wonder if this is more common than the TRAs would make it seem. Sounds very harmonious 👍

Not sure about "identify", but there are a good few prominent transwomen who are certainly the age to present as menopausal, and also some who do dress in a very demure, although admittedly cliched "middle-aged" manner.

I don't think you can dismiss it without asking them directly, but then I wouldn't really be comfortable asking a woman I didn't know about that, never mind asking a transwoman if they are roleplaying being menopausal. 😐

Are you assuming that there are, in fact, no transphobic bigots out there who would just reject a transperson out of hate?

I do not accept that as a premise.

Thanks @XDownwiththissortofthingX

I agree re opportunities for all, ie non-discrimination - except when justifiable Equality Act exceptions come into play as a proportionate response to provide specific, sex-based services. Safeguarding matters.

I'd wager there are far fewer than you seem to think. Far less "hate", too.
Like I said, sex matters. Single sex spaces matter. There's no hate there.

How can you possibly conclude how many I "seem" to think there are?

The only thing I have postulated is that transphobic hate is undoubtedly a reality, so it follows that some people are evidently transphobic bigots. I said absolutely nothing about preponderance or prevalence.

My female gay friends have been subjected to abuse from trans women on dating sites so it is something we talk about. My friends have been called bigots for not wanting to date a trans woman. They do not want to date someone with a penis because they are attracted to women. We all agree that trans women are not women but should be free to feel and dress how they want to. What they should not be free to do is to accuse people of bigotry if they cannot bully them into thinking a certain way. I also do not want to be called a cis woman. I am a woman.

Right?!

@XDownwiththissortofthingX your example here though refers to discrimination which 'trans' people already have protections from, like everyone else?

If a job requires a person to specify that only a female person or a male person perform intimate procedures on them, the job is absolutely not about the male wishing to be accepted as a woman. It is patient centred. There is absolutely no place for a person’s feelings about being rejected in that situation.

They are NOT likely to be rejected because they are ‘trans’. They highly likely to be rejected because their material reality is that they were born the sex that patient doesn’t want to do the procedure.

Framing this as ‘because they are trans’ and ‘done nothing wrong’ is dishonest. If they tried to force another human to accept them as the sex they are not, even through non-disclosure, they are in the wrong. We hear from numerous posters that their friends and loved ones with trans identities don’t do this. And accept this readily.

Again. It is not likely because they are trans. It is likely because they are the sex that the person doesn’t want.

This is like the headlines saying trans people are banned from
sport. No they can compete in their sex, with the proviso that they have not taken performance enhancing medicine. But the language has the same effect.

If those support groups had ever said, there will be some parts of your life that you will be still considered your sex, I think that those insisting that they be only ever treated as the sex they wish to be considered would be better able to cope with this if they have chosen a carer / HCP role. Will there be transphobic people ? Yes. Just as there are racist and sexist people. People wanting single sex provisions should not be considered transphobic.

Fair enough. You do think people wanting same sex services are rejecting trans people "simply for being trans", though, which is kind of turning it on it's head 🤷🏻‍♀️
They're simply the wrong sex. There's no hate involved in saying so.

Full acceptance in my social circle and amongst family. Non -issue really.

I’m glad I don’t have to listen to the mumsnet and daily mail nonsense in real life.

On the contrary, this website is one of the most hateful on the internet. It's as hateful as any you could name. The only difference is which groups it deems an acceptable target. The vicious campaign against an already marginalised group in trans folk is yet another example.

100% this.

Yes, and I acknowledge as much in the original post with the comparison that it is ultimately no different to anyone being rejected on the basis of a preference for the other sex.

I'm aware that being able to go through life without encountering hate or prejudice is not a "right" as much as it is a reasonable expectation, but perhaps if I'd embellished the scenario by suggesting a transperson who was rejected face to face, and that rejection was accompanied by a stream of transphobic invective that left no doubt as to the motivation.

Again, no different to what many people will experience, including women for no other reason than being women, but that doesn't mean I can't empathise with the transperson in that scenario, yet have very little empathy for the person "confronted" with a transperson.

And yes, I also accept that actual instances of this occurring will be rare. That does not mean it simply does not happen though.

We do hear enough of these anecdotal reports of male trans people who don’t use female single sex spaces and who try to respect female people to know that they are out there. There may be other issues, but for the most part it is always good to hear this. Thank you.

My friends know trans women are trans women but feel obliged to keep their mouths shut.

Don't care who sleeps with who or wears what but won't be adding pronouns to email signature any time soon. Avoid using pronouns and refuse to use they/them... it's grammatically incorrect for a start!

No male bodies should be in women's changing rooms, sports or refuges.

My teen rolls her eyes at the trans kids at school... they change their minds every 5 minutes... no one takes them seriously.

Sorry, did I miss how exactly male people become women?

No, I don't think that. Again, I thought that it was pretty clear from my first post when I said I think expectation of single-sex service is perfectly understandable and reasonable.

What I don't think is perfectly understandable or reasonable, is expecting to live your entire life without ever encountering a transperson, then raising an almighty rumpus just because you do when that transperson is doing, and has done, absolutely nothing wrong.

Perhaps it’s not a compelling aspect of womanhood to identify with… the familiar hot flushes, the drudgery of caring for elderly parents, ill-fitting clothing etc.

Well there are certainly plenty transwomen in ill-fitting clothing! 😛

People can dress up and cut off/fashion new genitals all they want and if they want to be called he, she, cat, unicorn, that's fine, I'll comply and internally roll my eyes.

But no matter how much you modify yourself you can never change the sex chromosomes you were born with. That's the consensus of my network.

Everyone I know is gc. I cannot recall having spoken to or met anyone who believes in trans ideology.