6 year child - stranger talking about her penis

[hermenmumster]

Trigger warning : sensitive topic around Gender Identity

I was at a work event (private garden - bring family along deal) and someone there is a transgender woman- she was tall, bearded ,hirsuite and wearing a dress and heels.
My daughter (6) was roaming around with the other kids and i think must have asked the lady why she was wearing a dress.
She explained that she ´was born a man with a willy , and is now a lady ’

Something jarred in me about a grown person talking about gentalia to a 6 year old child.
What does the mumsnet think?
AIBU to be annoyed?

Someone upthread mentioned how i would feel if a grown conventional male mentioned his penis to her. I would be plain livid and less confused

This is a very telling quote.

So what you're saying is that you don't think gender is synonymous with sex, as has been the case for decades, with the word gender introduced because of the erotic connotations that they attached to the word sex. You believe in gendered souls and that a woman is a feeling and a bunch if stereotypes that men can SEE and emulate and therefore they have the right to use the words woman, she and her and muddy the waters over who should be where. And they haven't just claimed the word woman, they've claimed the word FEMALE. So say you have an issue with them in female spaces all you want, they'll just say they're female.

I agree the man should not say penis to the child.

The man is illustrating to the child - I look like a man and I have a penis but I am a woman.

This is the crux of it isn't it? What does 'woman' mean?

Even though I wouldn't like it if he said that to my dd age 6. I might feel ok with it as he is trying to communicate the paradox of his identity. I don't assume every man in a dress is AGP any more than I look at all the men I meet and think about their sexual interests.

I think now, I wouldn't be that freaked out but there was a time that I would have been.

But if my daughter was in a swimming competition with a male bodied person - then I would be beside myself I imagine. If my d was in a prison cell with a maile bodied person, then so would be too. Saying penis out loud isn't necessarily a terrible thing. I wonder if we can be a bit puritanical?

I also believe it's hard to be in a truly pluralistic society without everyone potentially having to put up with things they find uncomfortable and even wrong.

Women have been putting up with things we find uncomfortable and even wrong for millennia now, Allshallbewell2021.

Expecting us - and children - to put up with our safety and well-being being compromised even more is not the way forward

It’s not progress; it’s the status quo at best, if not actively regressive.

Take the made up dynamic of trans/not trans out of the equation and you leave behind the real power dynamics: male/female; adult/child.

Those who have traditionally been powerless and marginalised; those who are through physiological reality more physically vulnerable, should not be expected to suffer further discomfort and curtailment of our rights and opportunities to benefit those who enjoy the privilege and power granted to them by their adult male status.

Saying penis out loud isn't necessarily a terrible thing. I wonder if we can be a bit puritanical?

It isn't. If you're in a relationship with someone or a parent educating their child or a doctor examining someone.

But context is all. Saying it to a six year old girl you don't know IS pretty terrible if you ask me. What motivation could there be in doing that?

I mean, if a grown man I'd never met before started talking about his penis to me, that would be a big red flag and I'd move away sharpish. It's much worse in the case of a child.

So just to clarify, you think it's positive social change to de stigmatise talking about penises to strangers - is that what you're saying?

My comments earlier up got deleted, what I said was this was a man displaying his fetish in public and breaking boundaries by talking to a child about his genitalia.

Wearing a dress, fine, gaslighting and breaking boundaries with a kid by calling himself a woman, talking about his penis, not ok.

Even though I wouldn't like it if he said that to my dd age 6. I might feel ok with it as he is trying to communicate the paradox of his identity.

I really don't want my 6 year old to be at the other end of anyone trying to communicate the paradox of their identity. They can resolve their communication problems with other adults.

TheKeatingFive

In answer - I am not sure what the positive social change will look like. All I mean is - we are here and it will come out of here - not out of our ideas of an ideal world.

The young will be in charge soon and they will make the rules and then adjustments will follow and then we will struggle on. I don't think this gender thing is going anywhere. So not that we just roll over but that we work positively, lovingly snd realistically into the future. I don't have an alternative as I live with young people and we are a harmonious group. They learn from me and so learn from them

Exactly this. How did we get to a place where people think it's okay to involve children in these affairs. In what universe should that be their job? 🫠

So just to clarify, you think it's positive social change to de stigmatise talking about penises to strangers - is that what you're saying?

No! I really don't like it! It wouldn't be great at all - but if it was a work do then I would not want to address it for fear of looking like TERF.

I think to extrapolate a whole argument from this one act is too limiting. The man said this to acknowledge very inappropriately, the contradiction between his masc/fem presentation. He shouldn't have done that. But this is going to keep happening so I'm assuming that and looking forward. What else can we do? Should OP have gone and said something? I wouldn't have .

I find it very odd that you can call out so many issues with the gender cult and yet you still feel we should roll over and run with it.

Because why? Young people are into it? What if they're totally wrong? What if it's really problematic for society?

I also find all this language of 'loving' and 'positivity' very hard to stomach. There is no love and respect for women's / children's needs here.

The 'love and positivity' seems to be weighted very heftily towards troubled men. Why do you think they deserve all of this that you're denying to genuinely vulnerable people?

For anyone who thinks the march of 'progress' and 'inclusivity' is always a good thing. Here is a cautionary tale for you.

I came across this story about 4 years ago and honestly, I've never been more shocked by anything in my life.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/past-pedophile-links-haunt-german-green-party-a-899544.html

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-experiment-that-placed-foster-children-with-pedophiles

Oh come on, a bearded man in a dress, of course young children are going to be confused!

@RoaringtoLangClegintheDark
Excellent post.

The more I think about it the more I feel this person felt emboldened to talk about his penis to a child BECAUSE it would be controversial and people would be afraid of calling him out. Just like I am (although is shames me to say)

What does 'woman' mean?

If only there were a simple, three word definition of what 'woman' means! I suppose it shall have to forever remain a mystery...

@Italianita harsh, but I'm inclined to agree!

Don't be ashamed. An extremely toxic environment has been created (deliberately) which makes it very difficult to speak up for the truth and basic decency.

its very insidious.

Because this person was clearly a weirdo

But the deliberate use on this forum to misgender is frankly disgusting.

What you need to realise is that that is your POV, your opinion, not an objectively true fact.

My POV is that your stance is frankly disgusting.

I believe that colluding with (what I see as) the lie that some men “are” women is promoting an ideology and culture which to my mind is disgustingly bigoted (misogynistic and homophobic), and dangerous to children.

I personally am disgusted every time I hear wrong sex pronouns used for a male person, particularly; every time a male person is referred to as a woman, transwoman, trans woman, or transgender woman.

I hate the blatant misogyny behind this terminology - as I see it - and the homophobia, especially lesbophobia, it gives rise to. Suggesting that some “lesbians” have a penis, and that lesbians who aren’t interested in “girldick” full stop are “transphobic bigots” is really, really disgusting to me.

Suggesting that it’s reasonable to put male rapists in women’s prisons, or have male people competing in women’s sports, or have male attendees at a “women only” rape support group - just disgusting. All these, along with many other harms, are inevitable consequences of saying some male people are women, or a kind of woman, and referring to them as if they were.

So you can get down off your high horse and just remember that to me, and many others like me, you’re the bigot.

I certainly don't want to be open-minded at any cost but I also believe it's hard to be in a truly pluralistic society without everyone potentially having to put up with things they find uncomfortable and even wrong

There's being pluralistic and there's being okay with people doing sex things in public. Most societies draw a line there. If you're dressed in your fetish gear, be it rubber, dressed like a little doggy and walking round on all 4s, dressed as a baby, a woman, whatever, and you're not queuing outside a club or other event then you're intentionally involving people automatically and without consent in your sex shit. I'm not cool with that

You're quite close to getting it.

The thing is, if you don't believe a trans woman should be housed in a women's prison or competing in women's sport, you don't believe they are women.

If you go along with this idea that a person with a penis can be a woman if they say that's how they feel, don't then be surprised when your daughter has to compete against one in sport or God forbid she needs rape crisis support and she's told she's bigoted for objecting to one in her support group.

Because you and all other right thinking progressive people have been saying they are women. You can't agree that they are women and then object to them being treated as though they are women in the only situations where we actually distinguish between women and men. If you think they should be treated as men in the situations where we distinguish between women and men, that's because you think they are men. So you need to be brave enough to say so.

The reason we are all being forced to go along with this nonsense, the reason why the OP is too afraid to say anything about her male cross dressing colleague talking about his penis to her six year old daughter, is because society has accepted the idea that it's bigoted to say that these people are men.

Allshallbewell2021 · Today 08:35

3] saying penis to a child is not sexual assault

But under some circumstances, it can be considered to be a sex offence. Perhaps not in this case, but at the very least, it was shockingly inappropriate of him to speak like that.

I don't care if some men want to wear dresses and call themselves by women's names. I do care, however, if the breach the norms of normal behaviour, as this guy did, even if you want to be generous and pass it off as him trying to explain simply, but clumsily. He should have known better.

I think we have to acknowledge that some expressions of human sexuality are not good/positive things.

On the one hand, we do accept that, when certain concepts are mentioned explicitly (pedophilia for example).

On the other hand, there's an almost jerk reaction these days when people hear words like 'inclusivity' and 'acceptance' - that this must be positive. But society needs lines and boundaries. It cannot be that just anything goes.

Keating5,

I am happy to disagree and agree with people on all sides. The gender ideology has partly come out of being a very inclusive society, it's a product of saying all are welcome here. Inclusivity will always have costs and be paid for by the least powerful.

I just am a pragmatist - we need to work with this as Hilary Cass has and the American swimming associations have. We need to work with what's happening without sounding like fascists. We want to work together in the future, there's no other ideal world to live in.

Thanks, glad if it helped clarify.

And I think you’re spot on, I suspect that’s exactly why he did it.

And as TheKeatingFive said, there’s no shame in being afraid to call it out - this is your livelihood, your life, and as we’ve seen from the many court cases, lots of woman (and a few men) have lost their jobs/lost work, even their own companies for daring to challenge - in the mildest of ways - this groupthink.

And there have been many more women who lost their jobs and simply didn’t have the resources or the wherewithal to take their employers to tribunal but simply moved on.

You are one of very, very many women being silenced by this toxic culture.