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Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To feel everyone is anti trans?

1000 replies

Kitjo · 22/01/2025 07:14

I'm well aware of current US views led by Trump - but are these views generally held/supported in the UK? Of course I understand opinions on NHS gender reassignment funding, as well as controversies over trans women in sport. Needless to say I'm fully aware of concerns over women's safety issues. Are there any sympathisers or supporters out there? What about trans masculine folk who are surely no threat to women's safety or sport? None of these people would choose such a hard life, socially, financially, physically, mentally, emotionally... am I alone in thinking a bit of kindness and compassion towards the trans community might be appreciated for the massive personal struggles they have to face? I am open minded to hearing and understanding your views.

OP posts:
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MissScarletInTheBallroom · 22/01/2025 13:20

@Kitjo I think you need to define your terms a little better.

Some of the opinions you express in your own OP would have you labelled "anti trans" by a lot of people.

Ultimately, if most people actually believe that male people who believe they identify as women shouldn't be in women's single sex spaces or competing in women's sports, and that doctors shouldn't be performing irreversible medical interventions on minors in the name of "gender affirming care", perhaps you should consider the possibility that it doesn't mean most people are "anti trans", it means most people are right about these things.

Namechangedforgoodreasons · 22/01/2025 13:22

@Plawp :
I don’t read replies from transphobes so you’ll only be wasting your own time if you feel like you have to defend your bigotry.

And there we have it! Plawp prefers to live in an echo chamber so she doesn’t have to see things that might disturb her certainty that she is right and anyone who disagrees with her is wrong. It’s the mindset that cancels speakers who might say something controversial and disrupts meetings of people with viewpoints that are lawful but differ from the disruptors'.

Plawp, aren’t you embarrassed to demonstrate to everyone what a closed mind you have? You ought to be.

LoveACoffeeMorning · 22/01/2025 13:23

Ereshkigalangcleg · 22/01/2025 13:08

This really sums it up so well , beautifully put. As for the rest of the 'argument ' in this thread, well that's enough toxicity and obsessive speculation about rapists in toilets for one day .

Having put precisely zero "argument" of your own as to why women should consider men women just because they say so. Well done though!

I'm flattered you have taken so much interest, I wasn't aware of the request for expansion on this specific question . However, you are right ( although it's weird) that I have been light on the arguments and that's because there is absolutely no point on this issue; the toilet watchers, the JK devotees , the genitalia police and all the real ladies, make anything real, futile . I just had a bit of fun and tried to keep the toxicity at arm's length.

SerafinasGoose · 22/01/2025 13:23

lifeturnsonadime · 22/01/2025 13:17

I'm fairly sure it's Men's Rights Activism.

I think women had gained too much ground.

Time to make a subset of men 'the most vulnerable' and remove women's rights wholesale in the process.

Then there's the Queer theory stuff and big Pharma seeing $$$$ in keeping people on unnecessary life long medication.

Lots of strands of stuff going on.

True. And 'queer' theory isn't necessarily the monster they've often misappropriated it as, same as the law is conveniently twisted between the law according to the statute books and the law according to Stonewall et al. A great many faulty premises rest on shaky foundations like this. Queer theory - the earlier likes of Foucault despite his considerable flaws and dodgy predilections - very explicitly defines gender as a social construct. A massive body of his work relates to the social position of the individual subject in relation to their historical and cultural contexts.

So the godfather of 'queer' theory takes a very similar position to the one I've always understood: gender is a set of stereotypes, and we don't have a great deal of say or control over how (and by whom) these stereotypes are constructed. I can well see why building a solid identity on such shifting sands as these is a cause of angst and uncertainty.

As to what you say about MRA - yes, yes, yes. An opportunity has been spotted here to indulge violent, threatening misogyny in a supposedly socially legitimate way. The Q+ is an interesting part of the umbrella to look at here. Any movement - or faction of a movement, and I suspect this one is the most vocal - which sees the word 'safeguarding' as a dogwhistle is effectively announcing exactly who and what they are.

HyacinffBookay · 22/01/2025 13:25

TCCOS · 22/01/2025 07:26

i think most people in the UK are pro-trans in the sense of believing everyone should have the right to present themselves as they choose and live life free of harassment and discrimination. Lots of people think this while also thinking that choosing to present yourself as the opposite sex doesn’t actually make you the opposite sex. That’s not anti-trans, it’s just pro-reality.

Agree 100%

Dressing up in a dinosaur costume doesn’t make you a dinosaur. You can swap and change your privates, dress how you like, but medically, biologically and realistically, you cannot become the opposite sex and never will be.

THAT’S LIFE FOLKS, IT BE LIKE THAT.

Alina3 · 22/01/2025 13:25

Honestly, IRL I rarely if ever come across the sort of staunch anti-trans rhetoric you tend to see online in places like Mumsnet. 99% of people are live and let live, call people by the name and pronouns they request. It's not rocket science to treat somebody with respect, even my 5yr old can do it.

CautiousLurker01 · 22/01/2025 13:25

Tandora · 22/01/2025 13:14

The only characteristic that matters is gamete type?

Why? Who decided this? On what basis? Plenty of people don’t even have gametes. Why have you decided this is the most important characteristic of the body?
Factually it’s not how sex is assigned medically and legally in all kinds of cases.

Edited

FFS, who decided ‘green’ should be called ‘Green’ or that a table should be called a table, whether it rests on a pedestal or 4 legs.

“Factually” sex is arranged around gamete production and millennia human experience has noted observable, shared external characteristics such that babies with genitalia that does not include an obviously visible penis are deemed to be female. Relying on what we see means we don’t need to cut the baby open to check whether its innards comprise of a womb or not.

Just as tables, over the same extensive period of human history, have been observed to be man-made objects comprising of flattish surfaces, of varying size shape or depth, which are constructed to rest on one or more posts.

NDSceptic · 22/01/2025 13:26

As opposed to over 92% of girls experiencing sexual harassment in school, “The frequency of these harmful sexual behaviours means that some children and young people consider them normal.”

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-sexual-abuse-in-schools-and-colleges/review-of-sexual-abuse-in-schools-and-colleges

It should also be noted that using correctly sexed pronouns is considered ‘hate’ by transactivists.

Review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-sexual-abuse-in-schools-and-colleges/review-of-sexual-abuse-in-schools-and-colleges

Namechangedforgoodreasons · 22/01/2025 13:26

LoveACoffeeMorning · 22/01/2025 13:23

I'm flattered you have taken so much interest, I wasn't aware of the request for expansion on this specific question . However, you are right ( although it's weird) that I have been light on the arguments and that's because there is absolutely no point on this issue; the toilet watchers, the JK devotees , the genitalia police and all the real ladies, make anything real, futile . I just had a bit of fun and tried to keep the toxicity at arm's length.

In other words, you won't give any rational arguments because you can't.

ArabellaScott · 22/01/2025 13:28

Alina3 · 22/01/2025 13:25

Honestly, IRL I rarely if ever come across the sort of staunch anti-trans rhetoric you tend to see online in places like Mumsnet. 99% of people are live and let live, call people by the name and pronouns they request. It's not rocket science to treat somebody with respect, even my 5yr old can do it.

99% of people are live and let live, call people by the name and pronouns they request

Source for this somewhat unlikely statistic?

Blondiebeachbabe · 22/01/2025 13:28

IdylicDay · 22/01/2025 11:49

Maybe consider why female only toilets exist, in the first place.

Or consider this: Women flee from males to the toilets. Seek support from other women. Miscarry. Cry. Rinse out blood-stained underwear at the sink and Mooncups. Its the COMMUNAL facility that gives support.

Or this:

"I had an early miscarriage in a public toilet years ago.

The pain was so bad I could barely stand and there was blood everywhere.

Another woman helped me.

I can't imagine the added horror of experiencing this with strange men walking in and out.

Allowing men to use women's toilets is inhumane. If this was being forced on women in Riyadh or Kabul everyone would be up in arms, (particularly the traitorous Democrats lining up to support this). It's time to put an end to this. It's barbaric, indefensible and wholly unnecessary."

Or finally, this:

"here is a rather wonderful poem that I love by Kim Addonizio. It is called To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall. It details bad sex, bad haircuts, bad bleeding and bad heartache. Its last line is a message from one woman to another in the next toilet cubicle: “Listen I love you joy is coming”.

I have been that woman crying in the toilets. I have been that woman listening to others crying, vomiting, pouring their hearts out, passing tampons and tissues under the door. I have seen girls patch each other up emotionally and physically, find out they are being cheated on by the same guy, wash the blood from their clothes, swap make-up, take drugs, plan to run away together.

It is not that women’s loos are some kind of utopia, but they are a female space where female bodies do female things. They have never felt entirely safe, especially public loos, but safeish, I would say.

The advent of the gender-neutral toilet has stopped all that. Many places now have a “gender neutral” loo or “men’s, women’s, plus gender-neutral” – which effectively means twice as many toilets for men as for women.

Theatres have excelled themselves in alienating women. At the Lyric, in London, for instance, women are invited to walk past a row of urinals to get to a cubicle. Who actually wants this? Do men want to pee in public? Do women want to see them doing so? And if somehow “trans rights” is your answer, then, again, we must ask why it is women who must always make way, have less provision than men, when women’s needs for clean and safe loos matter.

So I am relieved that the Government has said that new buildings – restaurants, schools, hospitals – must have separate male and female toilets and not these “universal” lavatories.

Thank God. Wanting to maintain women-only spaces has been a ridiculous ongoing fight over the past few years. The tide is turning. Our privacy, dignity and safety are not to be given away by men or anyone who cannot be bothered to think about why women might need those things.

Indeed, there is a fundamental refusal from those who believe that being female is just a feeling in a man’s head to accept that there is a difference between male and female bodies. Menstruating women have different needs to men. This can be hugely difficult for teenage girls. My daughters always came home from school bursting because the school loos were horrible places at the best of times. It is ludicrous to me that we are made to feel like blushing naïfs for wanting privacy.

Menopausal women may find themselves flooding and need space to sort that out. Remember when Fleabag’s sister miscarried in the restaurant loo? Well, that happens. I am sorry if this is all too much information for you, but female experience is always somehow too much, too real, too damn inconvenient for those who think what matters is simply disembodied gender.

When I was put on a mixed-sex ward after nearly dying because of an ectopic pregnancy, I was throwing up constantly because of the morphine, had a catheter and was emotionally in a right old state. The men in the beds around me probably were in a bad way too, but I just didn’t want anyone seeing me like this. Do I really need to explain myself? Does any woman?

“Gender neutral” has meant, in reality, fewer facilities for women and more for men. But that’s part of the current stupidity that calls restricting women’s access to safe, private spaces progress. In reality, there is nothing neutral about shutting down women-only spaces."

👏👏Brilliant post!!

namechangeGOT · 22/01/2025 13:29

Alina3 · 22/01/2025 13:25

Honestly, IRL I rarely if ever come across the sort of staunch anti-trans rhetoric you tend to see online in places like Mumsnet. 99% of people are live and let live, call people by the name and pronouns they request. It's not rocket science to treat somebody with respect, even my 5yr old can do it.

Has your 5 year old been taught about human biology yet? Or will you tell him/her that scientific fact is irrelevant?

hihelenhi · 22/01/2025 13:29

Tandora · 22/01/2025 12:50

“There’s none… other than…”
start here

DSDs are nothing to do with trans though. Affect entirely different groups of people, although TRAs do love to try to appropriate their conditions to make themselves seem more "sciencey", and particularly, as we saw with Khelif who had a DSD (5-ARD I believe) but was championed by the trans movement, to gain access eg to women's sport. DSDs are also all on either male or female pathways. They're not a "spectrum".

Can you explain why you are conflating a scientifically observed physical reproductive difference with a postmodern humanities concept of inner "gender identity"? Where is the correlation? What are you mapping? How does it compare with the rest of the male and female population?

Men who claim they have female "gender identities" largely seem to have grown up with normal male reproductive systems, after all. And there doesn't appear to be any real evidence of "pink ladybrains". So how exactly are DSDs relevant to claims about "gender identity" - stereotyped ideas of supposedly "female" and "male" personalities?

AccidentallyWesAnderson · 22/01/2025 13:29

Alina3 · 22/01/2025 13:25

Honestly, IRL I rarely if ever come across the sort of staunch anti-trans rhetoric you tend to see online in places like Mumsnet. 99% of people are live and let live, call people by the name and pronouns they request. It's not rocket science to treat somebody with respect, even my 5yr old can do it.

I bet your five year old would know you were talking shit if you pointed to a man and called him 'she'.

NDSceptic · 22/01/2025 13:30

AccidentallyWesAnderson · 22/01/2025 13:29

I bet your five year old would know you were talking shit if you pointed to a man and called him 'she'.

Don’t count on it. An awful lot of indoctrination goes on in schools these days.

Riapia · 22/01/2025 13:30

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

Blondiebeachbabe · 22/01/2025 13:31

lifeturnsonadime · 22/01/2025 11:51

Oh what a privileged position you come from.

Do you care about the women who have been forced to be incarcerated in prisons with trans identifying males?

Do you care about the women who have not been able to get single sex rape crisis care and who have been told to 'reframe their trauma'?

Do you care that lesbians have been called transphobic for not including males in their dating pool? Or that it is now illegal in Australia for lesbians to meet in single sex groups?

Do you care that young women in the USA have lost lucrative sporting scholarships to males? Do you care that women have lost sporting opportunities and then been forced to change with males with erections in their changing rooms?

Does none of that matter to you because you're OK?

It not us who are doing the punching down.

Well said!!

Upstartled · 22/01/2025 13:31

Pro-reality, pro-free speech, pro-women, pro-sensible and proven medicine for distressed children, pro-women's sports, pro-safe institutions for women 🤷🏼‍♀️

Babadookinthewardrobe · 22/01/2025 13:31

Alina3 · 22/01/2025 13:25

Honestly, IRL I rarely if ever come across the sort of staunch anti-trans rhetoric you tend to see online in places like Mumsnet. 99% of people are live and let live, call people by the name and pronouns they request. It's not rocket science to treat somebody with respect, even my 5yr old can do it.

You must move in very restricted circles since the erosion of women’s rights in association with this debate is a huge talking point in uk mainstream and social media and was credited as having contributed to Trump’s recent win. You are aware of the US election from your narrow little vantage point I presume?

DogRuff · 22/01/2025 13:31

I care about transpeople as much as I care about any other group of people with certain mental illnesses - I sympathise but I don’t share their delusions and I won’t pretend I do, no matter how sad it makes them or how much of a tantrum they have.

NDSceptic · 22/01/2025 13:32

I am still waiting to hear what other characteristics of sex PP shares with an apple tree other than gamete type.

Grammarnut · 22/01/2025 13:33

MioDioMio · 22/01/2025 07:32

Who are trans masculine folks?

Women.

Loobylu66 · 22/01/2025 13:33

My son is transgender, diagnosed as a child with severe Gender Dysphoria and spent years in therapy. However he personally does not agree with trans women taking part in female sporting events as he believes biological men would have an unfair advantage and a lot of the other things being demanded. He especially gets mad when someone who has not transitioned at all in anyway whatsoever, no therapy, nothing mentioned on medical notes, still looks and dresses as their biological sex, but suddenly claims to be trans then demands to be sentenced to a women's prison or starts using a female toilet for example.

He fully understands he will always biologically be a woman and no amount of surgery will ever change that, however he can not ever live as a woman so he is prescribed Testosterone and has just had a double mastectomy to make HIMSELF feel better about how his body looks.
Although his passport/driving license says Male and he changed his name he has never once felt able to use a gents toilet. After Gym he comes home to shower/change rather than use the men's changing room because he himself would feel uncomfortable doing that. As he looks 100% male and no one has ever guessed he is trans he would feel awful using female facilities. If he cant hold his pee until he gets home he has occasionally quickly used a disabled toilet (he is also autistic).
That is his personal views. He just lives his life quietly without bothering anyone or demanding things be changed for him.

hihelenhi · 22/01/2025 13:34

The "rhetoric" (which is about women's legal rights, not "live and let live" or "how we think men and women should behave") is because some of us are very aware of how our rights came to be, on what basis and what they are and what aspects the current "trans" movement is threatening - and has been dismantling. Without any discussion, and often violence and abuse if any women dared to object or even ask questions.

I couldn't care less what people wear or how they choose to express themselves. But if you are imposing your regressive views of "womanhood" on my legal rights, then you are not "living and let living" are you? This is one of the most authoritarian, batshit movements I've seen in my lifetime. And it's unduly focused on women.

Why do single sex spaces exist, do you know? Why were they fought for?

Were women's hard fought for rights in the West in the 20th century (like the right to vote, an education, to work outside the home, reproductive rights, to earn our own money, to not be raped or beaten within marriage, to be considered as more than the property of our fathers or husbands, and of course, spaces and services) mainly fought for on the basis of sex or gender identity?

When women globally are oppressed by men who don't think women should have these things and will often enforce it, are they chosen for that on the basis of "gender identity" or of what their sex is?

CautiousLurker01 · 22/01/2025 13:34

Grammarnut · 22/01/2025 13:33

Women.

Yeah, women with short hair and sensible shoes. We used to have a word for those…

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