Conciliatory Conversation On gender

[FairAdvocate]

Hello!

In the last few months I have been reflecting on the transgender and feminism debate and I feel I've got a few things to share with you on it from a perspective perhaps you wont maybe often hear.

To preface and explain, I am a transgender woman/female and I'm writing here today not to create any kind of argument or discord but because I am here to say that I think there are things that my side of the floor has gotten wrong.

I want to start from a position of saying that I can understand why some of you feel erased or afraid. I dont say that in a patronising way; I say that from a position of being fully periceved as female in society and I often to feel quite vunerable because of that in certain situations just like I imagine many of you do aswell.

I started down this road from hearing about how a 'A woman is person who says they are a woman'. I must admit I never quite got it. It makes no sense but yet, there are many transgender people and allies who say this like it has any kind of meaning. Just like when they also say that 'woman' is defined by a certain set of catagories etc. Its always bothered me and I didnt know why. For me, the more I have medically tranisitioned to female, the more Ive began to understand the word and defintion of female cannot be just removed from the term woman.

Now, I suspect this is where most of you reading this will be in decent agreement of. However I suspect what I say next will cause more issues. I believe myself to be female not just because of my physical aspect having been changed through medical transition (albeit its not a perfect process) but also because I believe my brain structure to have formed female in the sex differences between male and female likely at birth. There are quite numerous studies that do back this up to an okay but emerging degree and I am also aware that there also a few that dont say that exactly but say my brain formed in a kind of third way. Either way, I think it is clear from these studies that my brain developed differently to that of a male and it has manifested itself so I am quite closely alligned with being female.

To me, I feel like this makes a me kind of intersex person but perhaps in a different kind of way than we usually think of the term intersex. Though, through my medical transition obviously estrogen has, at least for me, solidified my mind to that much more towards female.

With this in mind, I find myself looking at the world as a woman but a woman who came with unique challenges and hurdles that are difficult to explain. For example, often I have been accused of saying its wrong that GRS gives me a vagina and have often been shouted at and saying im just sexualising it. However for me, the vagina isnt and wasnt the main source of my distress. The main source of my distress is that I will never have ovaries and will never have children and be a biological mother. I have never been interested in having a child as a male in anyway.

For me, it reminds me that I am not just a straight forward female and many will not accept me. After some deep reflection I think that I have also accepted that I will have to go through hurdles and I will have to remove my male form in such a succfient manner that I can be accepted by other women in certain areas. With that in mind I have also come to accept that self indentifcation shouldnlt be accepted. That tears at me because I wish I lived in that ideal world. But, as a woman who is only attracted to men, I understand frankly just how dangerous some of them can be. But ive come to the conclusion that if we keep pushing for this we are only making it harder for everyone and it will only lead to further division, more toxicity and we will just tear oursevles apart.

I do look at my rights from five years ago and I look at them now and see how they have reduced from prisons putting people such as as me in mens prisions, to the recent SC ruling, sports associations banning us. I do truly think that most women do and have historically accepted women like me but I also understand that came with agreements and understandings. Understandings which I think have been overstepped in the last ten years.

While I dont and will never accept calling me a man; I can understand why some of you that are reading this may have gotten fed up and stopped caring. I suppose what I am really trying to say is, can we all start again? If I can accept that women (including myself) need protections in some areas and I can accept the need for medicalising, the dropping of self identification, the need for due process in changing your sex legally can you accept that Im not a man? Can you accept that calling me certain things and the misgendering, using terms such as Trans identified Male is actually causing more harm than it is good?

Can we not as women actually just get our heads together and work out a decent solution? I do believe we might remain with some differences. For example I do believe a woman is a person who was born with a female gender identity by which I mean the overall average structure of the brain and therefore mind. And I do understand you will use a defintion to be defined by your anatomy. But I do believe that actually both of these can be true. While I cant be 100 percent true to your defintion I have tried to be because of where my defintion has led me and I understand how difficult that may be for someone who has all the correct anatomy to understand. But I have tried to understand how you feel so I am trying to ask for the same.

Finally, thank you for reading my long message. I am very nervous to be leaving it. Please can I ask you from refraining to calling me names and refering to me as a man, this is a request and not a demand. I have very much put myself out there with this and I hope that what is reflected back to me is the same spirit in which I wrote this.

Thank you

P.s I hovered over the 'Post' button for about five minutes before clicking it.

Ah ok so anyone saying 'You're not a woman mate' is ranting? Even though you apparently came here seeking dialogue? (But only if we agree with you!)

You should call us hysterical for a full bingo card 🤣 Good luck 👍

'To me being a woman is about periods and the menopause and how that affects not just your body but your behaviours. Motherhood but also non-motherhood and the very gender-specific realities you have to deal with as a consequence of either. The very real fear of being physically overpowered by even the weakest of males. Unequal pay and opportunities.'

To be fair I find that valid. I do actually get a ghost period? Estrogen basically cause a cycle inside of me somehow that I cant explain or find any real explantion of. Its makes quite badly ill for 2 or 3 days around the same time every month.

I do want you to realise also that I do plan to be a mother. Im sad about the no ovaries thing and all that but I am going to adopt. Theres so many kids out there with a mother and I think I can be a good mother. I hope I can be a good mother.

'The very real fear of being physically overpowered by even the weakest of males. - Yeah, has happened to me so its a fear that became real.

'Unequal pay and opportunities' Had to take out a case against an old employer for this. I won. Cant talk about it due to settlement but yeah.

What I have taken from your posts OP (paraphrased):

Women don't accept me as a woman and that makes me sad
Oooh, sports is... complicated
Me using gender neutral toilets is ...complicated
Nazis
TW are attacked more than women
I have lower testosterone than you even

Oh I have to give up now because I just read your "The Nazi state reserved its worst violence for trans women."

Just stop.

Cause men arent smarter than me because they are men.
SURELY WE CAN ALL AGREE ON THAT ONE 😅‘

But you are contradicting your first statement, which is that ‘men’ win at chess, because they are ‘smarter than us’. By ‘us ‘ you presumably mean women, amongst whom you are erroneously including yourself,

So you either mean that men are ‘smarter’ than women, or you don’t. But you can’t mean both things at the same time, because they are irreconcilable opposites.

There may be a hidden lesson there….

No I said that we could have a decent discussion and people didnt have to call me a woman because compulsion is wrong and stupid but could they just refrain from calling me a man for the purpose of the conversation. Take a look how many replies it took for that to happen. Ive been nothing but respectful

Oh do fuck off dear, you do not have periods or a cycle on account of you being a man.

Well, as much as you might not like it, it does happen.
But I get your skecptism, I didnt expect it either.

There's no such thing as a "ghost period".

A period is when your womb sheds its lining roughly two weeks after you ovulate, if pregnancy has not occurred in the mean time.

If you are bleeding from your genitals you need hospital, not a tampon.

Im not playing words games with this one.
Do you think chess should be gender segreagated or not?

I didnt say anything about bleeding

To be fair, you said you'd gone, and actually I was just really bloody cross.

We agree to avoid using words like "man" and he/him pronouns out of kindness because lord knows, lots of us still actually try to be kind when it doesn't conflict with our rights.

As I thought you'd left and weren't returning, I didn't try to tiptoe around and engage in the usual language contortions. However, I wouldn't have actually used those words directly to you - even though they're technically correct.

The thing is, you've arrived on this forum to do what? Educate us all? You think we haven't heard similar arguments, time after time after time?

And you keep insisting that you're a woman. You're not. You're a trans woman. The two are not the same thing. That's not insulting, it's just honesty. I'm sorry that causes you pain but it's a fact.

You need to meet us halfway if you want us to take what you're saying seriously. You're just expecting us to all nod sagely at your imparted wisdom and scolding us for "shouting" when we don't immediately accede to what you think.

I don't hate you or any other trans person. Most of my friends are gay, so LGBT has been my world for a long time.

But if you're going to come to a woman's forum, at least have the decency to act like it's a two-way conversation rather than a TED talk you're giving.

Just stop.

.....no? 😅

You said you have a ghost period.

There is no such thing.

You can't have a period without bleeding.

FairAdvocate, as Helen Joyce has said - 'your right to swing your fist ends where it meets my nose'

You are trying to sound as if you want to reach a compromise, but to me you are just making the same demands as we've heard before - your idea of compromise seems to be 'budge up women and do as you're told'

I hope you find a way to live your life in a way that is comfortable to you without impinging on the rights of others and without getting upset when people don't see you as you see yourself. Disagreement is not hate.

You're being incredibly offensive.

This is one of the very most offensive things about the transgender movement, the way you claim other people's oppression and wear it like a garment. The way they claim that trans people were front and centre of the gay rights movement, the most persecuted during the Holocaust, that you experience misogyny and what's more, you experience worse misogyny than women do.Do you have no shame?

I agree with this poster. You are being unbelievably offensive. And you have the gall to accuse women of attacking you? You are deeply misogynist.

I believe my brain structure to have formed female in the sex differences between male and female likely at birth. There are quite numerous studies that do back this up to an okay but emerging degree and I am also aware that there also a few that dont say that exactly but say my brain formed in a kind of third way. Either way, I think it is clear from these studies that my brain developed differently to that of a male and it has manifested itself so I am quite closely alligned with being female.

I am sorry, but this is wrong (psychology grad/neuroscience background). There is no such thing as a gendered brain at birth.

All the reputable/peer reviewed/recent studies show that the brains of deceased new borns are indistinguishable by sex/gender. The brain is ‘plastic’ however and develops over the course of the human lifetime, adapting in response to lifestyle, nutrition, stimuli (educational input and social environment) and - of course - pubertal hormones and post-pubertal hormone activity. As a result of exposure to all these biochemical and social influences, brain tissue analysis/brain scans of adults evidence very slight differences between the sexes in developed adult brains. However similar and more signifiant differences can be observed between musicians and non-musicians (eg. the former have a thicker corpus callosum, the bridge between the two halves of the brain, suggesting a higher number of neural networks connecting the L and R sides of the brain).

The handful of studies suggesting otherwise were completely discredited under peer review and subsequent replication studies. If you have been led to believe you have a female brain in a male body, you have been wildly and egregiously misled. Your brain cells contain the same chromosomes and DNA as every other part of your body.

We simply cannot have a ‘conciliatory’ conversation with someone so far removed from reality.

No empathy.

No shame.

And no sense of basic biology (ghost periods?!?).

Dress how you like but stop appropriating women's experiences and stay out of spaces where you have no legal right to be.

its very offensive to any homosexual person, what did the Tavistock call it? “Trashing the gay away”. Their words not mine.

It's a shame this thread is tucked away in the feminism section and not in AIBU.

I think threads such as this could benefit from a wider readership, to show those still on team "Be Kind" why it is right for trans people to be excluded from single sex spaces for members of the opposite sex.

🙀🙀🙀 ‘ I plan to be a mother’

Monty Python had a go at this one decades ago. You may ‘plan’ to be a parent (curious choice of words) but you can’t plan to be a mother, because you cannot conceive, gestate , carry or birth a child. If you can’t accept that basic reality, you might not be prime parent material in my old fashioned bigoted eyes.

Before you start, don’t give us a load of rubbish about women who need assisted reproduction, or adoptive mothers ( I am not going to open the can of worms that is surrogacy) being the same as a man who is planning to be a mother. Because most of us on here have heard them all before, and …🌑

This. Sacrificed at the alter of trans. Women have been shoved aside to make way for men who feel they are something they can never truly, factually be.

There's just no middle ground to be had here - single sex space either are single sex, or they aren't.

If males are in female spaces, then they are mixed sex spaces, and males are males, no matter what they wear, what drugs they take or operations they have, or what they think or feel.

Attempting to play on women's sympathies is underhanded. I am a mother, but I'm not your mother as the saying goes.

@FairAdvocate can I ask you about some hypothetical situations?

I am presuming that most people you live and work with know you are trans?

Suppose you are a medical professional and you work shifts. You know you are the only male on your shift. You need to change your clothes. Both male and female changing rooms are empty. Which do you use and why?

Now suppose you know the female changing room is occupied by a Muslim woman who you know, because she has said so, does not want to change in front of a man, and regards you as male. Waiting isn’t an option for either of you. The male changing room is still empty and you know it will remain so. Which room do you use?

Now suppose the same as the second scenario, apart from the male changing room also has one of your male colleagues in, who knows you are trans and who you don’t perceive as a threat. Which room do you use now?