Transsexuality and rejecting gender expectations- a male view?

[enimmead]

You may have missed it but over on the FWR board, the issue of trans people comes up a lot and is massively controversial.

An argument goes that TS people do not fit into the gender expectations for their sex and find it hard to live within those expectations. So they think "I am not what a man should be. Therefore I am a women"

Another argument is the feeling inside that something is deeply wrong. That's why they transition but that goes against the feminist view that sex is genetic and you are brought up "according to gender rules" so there is no such thing as gender identity.

How do you see men who fall outside of gender expectations - who are very feminine in their behaviour? Who need to wear clothes designed for the opposite sex and who present as female?

How do you see women who go the other way and transition to men?
Does that worry you - is the definition of a man being redefined?

This has been a massive debate - how do men see it?

Couldn't care less what anyone is or how they define themselves as long as they're not interfering with others or how I live my life.

And I don't really understand what it is to be a man anyway, (apart from the penis) we seem pretty different to each other.

There isn't a typical man.

Missed it ? It's my daily entertainment to see how much obsessing is going on in FWR. It's completely bonkers. There's probably less angst in the Vatican.

I couldn't give a flying fig. Live and let live.

"I am not what a man should be. Therefore I am a women"

that really is highly offensive, or have you simplified for the men?

I'd still be interested to know if there was a RadFem government what they'd actually do.

I bet the Trans community would be in trouble.

I do wish I could care about how MN handles this issue, but I've v. recently learned to not do so.

Looks like RadFem Fest 2012 is off... due to discrimination ( I assume not letting the trans gendered take part ) as the venue is not satisfied it conforms with the Equality Act (2010)

< head explodes from the irony >

I cannot speak for all men but, to be frank, I generally tend to fall in the "live and let live" camp and that goes markedly so for gender identity issues. If there's someone who feels deep down that they were meant to have different genitalia and they're an adult who can make an informed choice to consent to the surgery then fair enough. It's nothing to do with me.

If instead a man wishes to dress in what is generally seen as women's clothes, again, fair enough. And the same goes vice-versa of course. It's none of my business.

I can see the point about how gender identity issues such as trans-sexualism tend to clash with the feminism-bred views of sex and gender. Arguably a F-to-M trans person shouldn't have to demonstrate them "living as a man" prior to approval for surgery because that does reinforce the view that men are like this whereas women are like that and that goes against much of the arguments about equality. I get that. And I get that there are issues over women-only spaces and trans people.

But I really genuinely cannot get particularly worked up about it. I have seen all the rhetoric and passion on the FWR boards about this topic and it leaves me nonplussed.

There isn't a single "definition of a man" and even if there were I suspect I'd get quite a low mark. There are societal expectations of course but many of them are contradictory.

As Randal so wisely and eloquently said to Dante in Clerks II, "Jesus, if you had any sense whatsoever, you'd fucking stop trying to bray it up with the rest of the sheep and live your life the way it makes sense to you, you fucking ass."

Words to live by I feel.

You may have missed it but over on the FWR board, the issue of trans people comes up a lot and is massively controversial... This has been a massive debate - how do men see it?

If a man decides to live their life as a woman (or a woman decides to live their life as a man), then they end up being on the receiving end of how society treats that gender.

So I can understand the radical feminists wanting to exclude female-to-males, but not male-to-females. In addition, their basing of admission on a particular biological configuration at the time of birth isn't as clear cut as you might think - what about persons who don't have the normal XX/YX chromosome and undergo surgery to assign them to one sex or the other?

But if there's more than one kind of feminist conference then m-to-f persons should leave the radfems to talk amongst themselves and go to another conference where women are prepared to talk to anyone who sympathises with them.

I don't care one way or the other, either.

I'd had a chance this morning to talk with an agency colleague who helps provide womens services to my work place - a women's rights activist, who said, not verbatim, 'well, it's a problem, but nothing changes very much, you just work round it'. Which I thought, 'yep' to.

You mean you didn't have a 19-page debate? How could you possibly resolve anything?

Well to be fair I did contribute a chunk of the 19,000 page debate over about 8 threads in the last 2 months or so. Most of the 'debate' has been a poloarised one, and I was mentioning this mornings exchange as a reminder that not all women's rights activists are seeing the 2010 Equalities Act as the work of the devil and means the sky will fall in on all women. And generally discussions about women's rights are had well beyond the FWR section on MN.

I think there was no problem with the woman's rights activist because she was not on the extreme end of things. There are people who hold extreme views in all groups, apart from Liberal Democrats of course. The battle between Radical Feminists and trans-activists is kind of funny because they are both kind of the same. They believe they are absolutely 100% right and anybody who disagrees is 100% wrong and must change their views, and they'll kick up a fuss until they do.
The major issue seems to be that RadTrans consider M2F TSs as identical in every way to a typical woman, whereas RadFems consider them as identical to Chuck Norris.
I think both sides are best ignored as nutters, the same as RadCyclists, RadDrivers (Clarkson), and RadWhatevers etc.

I am generally impressed with radweld, though.

Do you think that you can feel like a man?
Some transsexuals claim to feel like a member of the desired sex?

Do you think that's possible? Do you get upset if a FTM says they feel like a man?

Or is Dadsnet not a male activist site unlike FWR?

Is it possible for a FTM trans-sexual to "feel like a man"? I have no idea. I've got no real basis for comparison either. I know what it feels like to be me, and as I'm a man some of the physical feelings will inevitably be related to being a man - having a beard, possessing undercarriage that often needs rearrangement etc - but that's relatively trivial. I can't say for sure if I feel differently inside to how someone who's gone FTM or how a woman feels because I've never been in either of those positions.

All that being said, I don't think it would even occur to me to be upset if a FTM says that he "feels like a man". I thought a defining characteristic of the whole trans-sexual thing is that they feel like they belong to a different sex to the one they were born as. If anything, I'd be surprised if a pre- or post-op FTM trans-sexual said he feels like a woman because that would suggest they're not trans-sexual.

Whether his view of what it feels like to be a man matches up with mine, I don't know. Can't say I particularly care. It's no skin off my nose either way.

"Or is Dadsnet not a male activist site unlike FWR?" I think you mean 'like' the FWR?

It's a bit of a naive question tbh. IF Dadsnet was to be a male equivalent, I for one would be ignoring those threads. As would most dads who post here, I think, probably, which is pitifully few.

I think the overwhelming 'view' here re transgendered issues is, as MrGin and Snorbs indicated is a "live and let live". You can see the basis of a radfem grind about the legal definition of what it means to be a woman, but 1. the implication is not something which affects most people, male or female, and 2. feminism isn't totally about the 'destruction of the patriarchy', so once the trans/radfem debate is being couched in those terms it will pass by lots of people, incl. the posters on Dadsnet. In my humble opinion.

oh and yes, I do feel quite male, and yes I do quite like that feeling. I've lived it for decades and it's a massive part of who I am.
Am do I feel odd about a F-M transgendered person? Well I know one very well. We were out in M/c last month. So no, for me it's an absurd question.

Dadsnet is a male inactive site.

A bit unfair, Huansagain. In the next 3 weeks or so we could achieve our first 'more than 1000 posts' thread!

I find all the talk about what it feels to be a man/woman etc. rather strange.

I only know how it feels to be me.

Some men cry at films
Some cry at football
all are different

So if a F-M trans person says "I feel like a man" who I am to say that he doesn't?

Pan- Started on the 8th December 2010

A very speedy thread.

'So if a F-M trans person says "I feel like a man" who I am to say that he doesn't?'

I'm sure there is an inappropriate joke in there somewhere screaming to be made, but as I'm not in the pub, so I won't.

Speed isn't a notion we respect on BB's thread. We take the long view.

Huansagain

I saw the joke when I wrote it down but thought that I had better keep in line with the terms in the thread:)

I do find it amusing that those calling out for equality are those that have the biggest difficulty accepting something that is not the "accepted" norm.

Cos so far all those "menz" (sorry had to use it) have said (paraphrased) "don't really care".