Gender swap situation

[TenThousandYears]

I know you're all probably fed up hearing about this subject...I just need to vent.

DD has been friends with "Sally" for 10 years. (Both 14) Since nursery. In the last few months Sally has decided to change gender and now wants to be called " Ron"

DD just can't wrap her head around this. If she slips up, she gets nasty looks from "Ron" and so she's treading on eggshells.

Ron's brother still refers to Ron as Sally so DD is very confused by it all.

I'm on DDs side. Personally, I would hate to be in her shoes right now. I think if you meet someone and are introduced to them as whomever then that's easier to accept than having to change names and pronouns of someone you've been friends with for 10 years. On TV shows people just accept this straight away and move on but I'm not convinced that it's really that easy.

I also think 14 is a bit young for these changes but that's just my personal opinion.

Are me and my child horrible people for not being able to accept this right away?

You have this all backwards! They aren’t fundamentally distinct concepts until the mid-twentieth century. Medical and philosophical writings on sex and sexuality routinely conflate them well up until the early twentieth century. It’s only after the decline of “inversion” theories and the rise of sociology and anthropology as academic disciplines that modern Western distinctions between sex, sexuality and “gender” emerge. There isn’t even a word in any European language for a concept of “gender” (as distinct from sex) until then.

You really need to go and read a LOT of historical medical texts and philosophy from the Classical world to the present. In the originals, as far as is possible. Stop believing half-baked digests of ideas on Wikipedia and the internet, and go back to the sources direct.

This is all pseudo academic bullshit. In history gender roles were quite set and it was really extraordinarily easy to behave as someone of the other sex - literally wearing pants achieved that if you’re a woman. But oh no ‘we need to look for extraordinary accounts.’ Literally nobody understands transgender diversity, as no trans rights activist or trans person has ever been able to provide a meaningful definition.

You have this all backwards! They aren’t fundamentally distinct concepts until the mid-twentieth century

yes exactly! Mid20 c in Europe. Yet , seeped in these historically specific , culturally situated logics , you are engaging in an argument about whether a person was transgender or gay!
What if these forms of diversity are more or less continuous expressions of the same qualitative type of difference and on the very same spectrum- as is the viewpoint within some Asian cultures. Then you wouldn’t read evidence of homosexuality in history as disproof of trans diversity but rather as evidence of it!! These accounts are accounts of both.

You havent engaged with previous point about male sexuality throughout history and the need to box into the modern concept of transgenderism...

Do gay people demand that others change their fundamental understanding of grammar and act nasty if they don’t comply?

I am honestly flummoxed at how you think OPs DD is the bully in this situation - have you read OPs posts properly? How is OPs DD bullying the other child?

I didn’t say you were pushing an agenda? I corrected your words and explained why.

How is this an unfair situation other than unfair to OPs DD?? do you demand your children capitulate to unreasonable demands like pretending someone has changed sex and changing to an artificial use of grammar in any other situation?

In the 90s a lot of people said that the fundamental definition of marriage was a man to a woman and that it would introduce an unbearable level of confusion to allow the term to apply to same sex marriage. It’s why a lot of countries opted for ‘civil partnership’

Im sure you’ll say that’s not grammar. But it is the exact same concept

Exactly.

Indeed - @Tandora, what we do have lots of historical evidence of is male fetishism, particularly accounts, many of them first person, of men crossdressing either for gay sex or erotic fetishism. (A lot more evidence than for “trans”.) Earlier, you said “trans” isn’t a fetish. So are you saying all these men who crossdressed for erotic reasons were mistaken? Or not really “trans”? Or Hirschfeld and Ellis and the Berlin clinics were right when they said some people really are the opposite sex, but wrong when they said most of them are men indulging in “erotic transvestism”?

And where are all the male fetishists now? By your own arguments, they must still exist. If they are now claiming they are trans, are you saying they are wrong? They aren’t truly “trans” either?

And how would we know the difference? Is it a case of take people at their word in the present day; but make them confirm to anachronistic notions of “trans” if they’re in the past and can’t talk back?

Ah, so this is where your issue lies. Words have meanings. We use them to convey ideas and facts but to do that effectively we need a common understanding of meaning. We could do with some fixed definitions and consistency in their use.

I can see what you are saying though. Your examples of historical figures all clearly demonstrate Marshmallow’s point about social and internal drivers such as homosexuality, using ‘woman’ as an insult, the sexual activity/fetish element around men picturing themselves as women, power plays and the social oppression faced by women who circumvented the rules by lying about their sex.

I can absolutely see those aspects being enacted in today’s ‘transgenderism’, the power plays, the oppressed females trying to escape being female, the obvious element of public sexual fetish for many of the males, the homosexuality/internalised homophobia etc.

So maybe you and Marshmallow are both right. The words have changed but men abusing their power and prioritising their dicks and women looking for creative ways out of oppression have always been around.

EXCEPT - and I was there, and an “LGB” person myself - very few people actually said that. Almost none apart from a few religious organisations who were pretty fringe anyway. There was almost no social opposition to civil partnerships (and some of it, in fact, was actually from gay people who didn’t like heterosexual norms being applied to gay people); and civil partnerships were replaced in law with equal marriage within seven years - by a right wing government - with no opposition.

That hardly speaks of a mass historical oppression and opposition to gay people, does it?

My DD is just talking to Ron normally, as if nothing has changed, which is what Ron wanted as far as my conversation with his mum suggested. However, he seems irritated that Dd isn't using the name or the pronoun. Buy she never would have anyway.

So OP described it like this. The ‘friend’ is being nasty to OPs DD because she is talking to her like she always has and not shoehorning ‘pronouns’ into the face to face conversation.

Are you suggesting that gay people using the word marriage is the ‘exact same concept’? Seriously?

(Mass historical oppression to civil partnerships in the 90s and 2000s, I meant to say.)

Cross dressing for erotic fetish is not what being trans is.

If the friend was gay presumably she would understand that because it’s a reality. Nothing to pretend.

Why try and link same sex attraction which is real, to a friend pretending that they are not the sex they actually are.

You can’t believe in same sex attraction if you believe sex is mutable.

Men cross dressing for erotic fetish are most definitely 'trans' for the purpose of using single sex facilities.

I have no idea what this means.

What happened to them, then - did they disappear?

Why are they explicitly included in the “trans umbrella” by Stonewall and other LGBT+ organisations? Is Stonewall wrong?

What about well known trans activists like Andrea Long Chu, Roz Kaveney and Julia Serrano who have written bestselling books saying that their experience of being “trans” is rooted in porn and erotic fetishism? Are they wrong, too? Are they not really “trans”?

How would we tell who are the “true” trans people, and who are the fetishists? Are you gatekeeping them? Or are you saying there’s no fetish element in the “trans umbrella” at all?

Julia Serrano who gave written bestselling books saying that their experience of being “trans” is rooted in porn and erotic fetishism?

Erm this is categorically not what Julia Serrano says.

Cross dressing for erotic fetish, is cross dressing for erotic fetish.

Being trans is not about “cross dressing” and it’s not a fetish.

How can you tell the what the sexual intentions of a roman man were and that he was trans and not performing an fetish? Especially when your evidence base is patchy at best.

How can you tell the sexual intentions of a contemporary man today, when there is more social capital in claiming you are trans rather than having a fetish?

I'm very curious as to how you have a special superpower that can tell this, when us mere mortal gender criticials lack this power?

Or is this magic power simply 'blinkered bias'?

Fascinating to see the linguistic gymnastics going on around this, giving that language doesn't matter.... apparently.

Please see a paper by Julia Serano:

www.juliaserano.com/av/Serano-CaseAgainstAutogynephilia.pdf

Oh well that settles it...😂😆

We take the word of elite individuals rather than settled consensus of the meaning of the word.

And we are supposed to take this seriously as being spontaneous rather than top down academic nonsense imposed on the rest of us, which redefines words and meaning that had consensus on meaning.

Oh dear.

@Tandora

So you believe that trans women belong in single sex spaces reserved for biological women. But you don’t believe that cross dressers for sexual fetish do belong in these single sex spaces? Have I understood this correctly?

None of these questions make any sense. How do you tell if someone is gay? Well presumably if you need to know that for any reason , you can ask them? Similarly, if for some reason you need to know whether someone has a cross dressing fetish or if they are trans you can ask them if they have a cross dressing fetish of if they are trans! 😆

I don’t understand most of your posts

Funny that.

Your head exploding at the very idea of alternative explanations you don't like?

It says it all.