Struggling with trans friend

[Llamallamadingdong]

I have a friend (male) who has decided that they are actually female.

They’ve felt this way for many years now and confided in me and have not told anyone else. Recently had their first gender clinic appointment and have been told that the clinic will not help until they have at least tried to present as female (so far they have messed about with some clothes and makeup alone at home but never gone out in public)

Anyway they recently approached me and asked if I would help pick an outfit, do makeup and help with hair and then go out with them trying to present as female.

The problem is I just can’t do it. Fundamentally I don’t truly believe that we can change sex and I feel like I’m supporting a weird fantasy. Not sure what I want from this thread, I seem to be the only GC person in my friendship group and I feel like I’m a horrible person for potentially denying someone something they really want.

Do you believe there are things that “women do”?

There are biologically things only women can do, but otherwise we must be beyond there being woman activities by now.

Being kind isn’t a female only activity either, or shouldn’t be.

But that's meaningless. I might as well say "recognising oneself and being recognised by others as being" Prince Harry, a wolf, a teapot or anything else I'm not, or category of person I'm not. To recognise oneself as being something you're not means deluding yourself or announcing you've changed the definitions. To require others to recognise it means forcing them to lie or accept your new definitions. But the categories still factually remain and there is still a category you are not actually in, but just say you are.

Identifying as trans"gender" meaning you're drawn to the stereotypes associated with the opposite sex would make sense, and not make impossible demands of other people (still massively sexist, but lots of people are).

But if you think being trans actually means having something about you that means you should actually be treated as a member of the opposite sex and seen as a member od the opposite sex, you need a good argument. Not just "because I say so and require others to say so".

No I don’t believe there are things that only women do apart from biological things such as giving birth. Thst is why is is so bloody insulting when men claim they are “living as women”. It usually involves all the stupid, sexist stereotypes such as liking pink ir wearing make up or being weak. They can fuck off to the far side of fuck with that shit. And if being kind is not expected only of women, how come man aren’t being told to be kind and let their trans identified brethren be accepted as men? Males with a trans identity claim they are unsafe in male spaces so why are men not being told to be kind and welcome them?

I don't understand this.

I am a woman and I couldn't give a monkeys how others perceive me.

But for a man to become a woman he needs everyone around him to go along with this fiction? To what extent does a man need society to validate his existence as a woman? Should a doctor perform a gynaecological exam on him and just play along? If he presents at a hospital and says I think I'm having a miscarriage should the medical staff check that out?

@Blessthismess2 without resorting to outdated sexist gender stereotypes, how would a male be recognised as a woman?

All I can come up with is being accepted into female spaces and categories. I think all it boils down to is women "being kind" and not saying no to men.

It is true.

See how useful that is? We could go back and forth ad infinitum. It is true times infinity, no returns.

Ok, so what makes others recognise the male-born person as a woman? The fact that they say 'I am a woman'? I mean... I could say 'I'm a giraffe' or 'I'm a six year-old', but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't make people recognise me as such.

Or... does the male-born person expect to be 'recognised as a woman' because he is displaying what he considers to be womanly traits and appearance - i.e. embodying stereotypes which do not in fact make someone a woman?

You can't 'recognise' yourself as something you categorically are not. You can believe whatever you like about yourself of course.

Shouting ‘IT’S MA'AM’ repeatedly into someone’ s face is one way of making people recognise you as a woman.

Totally - except they don't though do they? They recognise you as an aggressive or self-centred male making demands, and may then pretend to treat you as a woman out of fear, social pressure and/or trying to be nice.

Only TW who really successfully pass, of whom there are very few especially in the flesh, will gain some insight into what it's really like being a woman and being frequently sidelined, ignored or patronised. (Though even if they have that experience, there are many other aspects of being a woman they can never understand and they will always have the protection of their relatively greater strength.)

For most TW, they are more often pandered to and put on a pedestal because everyone knows what they are - male, and the sacred caste of trans who must be coddled and lied to to avoid being a "bigot".

This is your opportunity to actually put forward your argument if you have one.

“because I say so” just isn’t going to cut it.

Are there any other topics on which you are so dogmatic (and so wrong)?

What is a woman if a man can also be one?

Well, the fact remains that being gay is also about 'feelings' and was considered a mental illness just a few decades ago. There's also the fact that some studies have observed brain differences in both groups related to the areas responsible for sexuality and gender identity (e.g. a lack of prenatal testosterone in gay men).

I've no issues with gay people but it feels a bit problematic for somebody to call another group mentally ill based on that group's feelings but simultaneously expect validation of their own feelings, with an absence of concrete science to explain said feelings in either group.

Perfectly put.

Most people recognise them as men who identify as women, as distinct from actual women.

Except that the feelings of gay people need no more than to not be used as a basis on which to bully or discriminate, whereas the feelings of men who call themselves women require the whole of society to be revised, safeguarding yo be removed and everyone to deny the reality in front of their eyes and pretend they see a woman.

There may or may not be differences in the brains of men who call themselves women from normal men (please provide some sources, you may succeed where others failed) but there is absolutely no study on earth that show that some men are actually women.

Thank you, I’ve learnt from the best 😉

it feels a bit problematic for somebody to call another group mentally ill based on that group's feelings but simultaneously expect validation of their own feelings

Depends on the feelings surely. Feel yourself to be Jesus Christ, able to fly, or fat when you're severely underweight? It's quite appropriate to classify you as mentally ill and in fact important in order to help you. Feel like you have a headache coming on or would like to read a book? Not mentally ill, you get to decide about these feelings as they affect no one else and are not in conflict with reality.

Likewise with being gay, it's about a person's orientation and who they are attracted to, as is being straight. It's a feeling that literally only affects who you have relationships with and assuming they are consenting adults, that's your business.

Whereas being trans (at least in its modern, TWAW version) is not just about feelings, it's about requiring other people to believe or pretend to believe something that is demonstrably untrue and makes no logical sense.

It would be fine if being trans meant you "felt like" the opposite sex and wanted to perform a stereotype of the opposite sex and that remained your business and didn't involve anyone else. The problem is when sex comes into it and trans people start demanding rights and protections and categories accorded to only the opposite sex – which generally harms women way more than men because they are the ones who need these protections more. You can't change sex, so this is an unreasonable demand, yet transactivists want "gender" to mean "sex" when it suits them.

There's also another problem in that being trans generally involves being put on a pathway to irreversible and mostly harmful medical treatments - so it's not just a feeling. And anyone who might want to change their mind later is shafted. Very unlike being gay (or atraight), where there are no physical consequences and it's unproblematic to change your mind and people often do.

I’m one of three sisters and went to a girls’ school. We did sometimes go shopping together and share clothes. But I haven’t done that since I was about 15, 50 years ago. It’s not something most adult women do, especially now there’s t’internet.
I was pondering, TIM =
a man in distress OR
a man in dis dress 👗

Whether they can actually change sex or not has absolutely no bearing on whether or not it's a genuine cognitive divergence (as opposed to a trend/mental illness etc).

I agree that they shouldn't be able to barge into the facilities reserved for natal women but I'm not going to let my views on that influence my critical thinking to the point of confidently proclaiming it to be 'a sexual perversion' without any evidence.

Yes, there are genuine perverts and people love to post the examples. However, what about all the people on here with trans identifying children? Are they sexual deviants too?

Yes, there are a lot of very problematic things happening around it but these don't necessarily change what may (or may not be) a fundamental cognitive difference.

We used to lock autistic children away. Now we understand the condition better and accommodate it in such a way that many live happy and fulfilling lives. But the actual condition has remained the same throughout. They were autistic 100 years ago and they're autistic today. How society reacts to a condition is separate from the condition itself.

In our society, those things ARE specifically male or female. Women can wear skirts, dresses, or trousers, and men cannot wear skirts or dresses. Not without a ton of trouble and social blowback. That's just the way it is. I guess it would change if most men wanted to wear skirts and dresses, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

No one is locking trans people away or saying they can't live happy fulfilling lives. And I don't think society is reacting to the condition - whatever the condition may be. (I actually think it's a range of sometimes overlapping conditions including internalised homophobia, AGP, not fitting in for various reasons, trauma, and social contagion. Being "trans" can have very different forces behind it for different sexes and ages.)

What pisses people off is not that some people may have a particular condition, but the overreach in saying that means they ARE the sex they are not and must be treated as such. It's ridiculous, harmful to women and children, and harmful to the social contract and the general consensus that we're allowed to challenge untruth and it's normal to feel discomfort about lies and being forced to lie.

It doesn't actually matter in this regard, if it is some kind of real neurodivergence or not. Whether you have a real, testable brain condition that makes you wish to be the opposite sex, or it's a fetish, or a way to get cool points, or a plain old lie to get predatory access to women or a more lenient sentence - none of these mean you are the opposite sex in any way, and no one should be categorised as the opposite sex in situations where it matters - like changing rooms, prisons, hospital wards, sports, toilets, breastfeeding groups, anywhere where single sex facilities are there in the first place for privacy, dignity, fairness and/or safety, and certainly not tolerated forcing their way into homosexual groups or apps or meet-ups when they are not the right sex for that group.

If some people have a brain condition then that's hard for them but newsflash, lots of people have conditions that make life harder or dearly wish they could be something they're not. No one else gets special treatment.

As I've said before I think trans should literally means transgender - you wish to present in what you perceive as the gender expression of the opposite sex. Fine, people have been rejecting gender stereotypes forever, and probably 99% of people don't actually fit strictly into a gendered box anyway. I can also get on board with such people having standard equalities protections, as long as they're subject to the same expectations of decency as everyone else (no bollocks dangling out of tiny miniskirts when that kind of self-exposure wouldn't be OK for others). But no one is somehow magically not the sex they are and it's time sanity prevailed and everyone can stop pretending.

So society needs to change. We need to normalise men wearing skirts, dresses and makeup if they want. Let’s get rid of gendered clothes and just let everyone wear what they want.

Normalise men wearing skirts and makeup if they want to, without normalising the idea that this makes them women and makes them entitled to use women's spaces, and without normalising the idea that it's OK to expose yourself or play out a fetish in public.

If we can normalise the former whilst still stigmatising (and where appropriate, criminalising) the latter, I suspect far fewer men will be interested in doing the former. A skirt is just a skirt, after all. I'm all for men expressing themselves with makeup though. Let's definitely move away from the idea that women need makeup to make themselves look nice but men look fine without it.