MNHQ now email posters with how to "get around" the talk guidelines.

[GoshAnneGorilla]

There is yet another thread on FWR about trans people. Like nearly every other thread on there about trans people, it's a load of transphobia dressed up as gender analysis.

Nothing new, sadly.

What is new, is that MNHQ have now sent an email to a poster whose post was deleted, telling them how their post could be within the guidelines, even including a copy of their original post to make editing all the easier. This is because "discussion is important".

So, a few questions for MNHQ.

Are GLBT rights at all important to you?

Will you be extending this " How to bend the talk guidelines" services to racist, homophobic, or disabilist posts too, or is it only trans people who deserve to be discussed in a manner which is extremely offensive?

I find the whole thing mind boggling TBH

As an ordinary punter who gas no experience of thus sort of debate I have no idea how I would even put forward an opinion with falling into a flaming pit.

It really does seem to be a matter of semantics. Would rather not be referred to as a 'menstruator' though

I'm glad you feel normal. Body dysmorphia must be a terrible burden.

However, the question was whether "transwomen are women in exactly the same way that bio women are women".

I don't think so. And you say you don't think so, either. So we agree.

Beach - Here is a transwoman disagreeing with that statement. Who is it that agrees? I'm curious.

A few people with a strange and clearly incorrect claim wouldn't make Beachcomber write the following, though:

Transgenderism (which is different to transsexualism) is based on the idea of a defining inner gender identity. If you accept that, (and it is transphobic not to) then the statement 'women menstruate' is always transphobic, no matter what the context. Because transwomen are women in exactly the same way that bio women are women but they don't menstruate - and to generalize about women in a way that dismisses or leaves out or erases women who happen to be transwomen, is transphobic.

I'm just wondering if ^ this is now what is accepted as reality so that pointing out the glaring difference between transwomen and bio women is considered transphobic.

IonaMumsnet wrote - "we think we need to sit down at MNHQ next week and see if we can come up with a definition of transphobia that explains what it is, how it may be manifested and exactly what Mumsnet's policy is on transphobia on the talk boards."

While you are in the process of defining Mumsnet guidelines on transphobia, can you please give some consideration to the following:

Is it transphobic to refer to a transman as a biological female, for example when discussing that person's own pregnancy and childbirth experiences? (Several transmen have become pregnant and given birth, after transitioning from their original gender role of living as a woman to their new gender role of living as a man).

Is it transphobic to refer to a transwoman as a biological male or male-assigned-at-birth ?

Is it transphobic to refer to a transwoman as Male-to-Trans (MtT)?

Transsexual people have become a relatively small group within a larger transgender population. Will Mumsnet transphobia guidelines distinguish between transsexual people (who, under official monitoring, are taking hormones, living in the opposite gender role, having surgery) and other transgender people (who identify as the opposite gender but have no intention of altering their body in any way)?

For example, is it transphobic to refer to a biological male, who is transgendered but not transsexual, as a man or male?

Is it transphobic to not accept that someone with a penis cannot be a lesbian?

I hope your Mumsnet transphobia guidelines will bring some much needed clarity for all MNers.

Wow vesuvia, coming from a position of ignorance In would have assumed all in your list are fine. They are just a statement of the facts. If others find those offensive I can see why it is such a minefield

Good luck MNHQ!

"Is it transphobic to not accept that someone with a penis cannot be a lesbian?"

oops, too many negatives there.

I meant: Is it transphobic to say that someone with a penis cannot be a lesbian?

Good luck, Iona. You will need gin and a lot of chocolate biscuits!

Therefore discussions generalizing about women with the assumption that things like menstruation, abortion, cervical cancer, FGM, pregnancy, hormonal contraception, etc, etc are women's issues or that they affect women in general, are transphobic (and essentialist). Because they marginalize transwomen and suggest that they are not real women.

All of MN is transphobic in that case.

"is it transphobic to refer to a biological male, who is transgendered but not transsexual, as a man or male?"

What else are we to call an adult male human?

I certainly hope that MNHQ will not come up with guidelines that make it a deletable offence to use words in their correct dictionary meanings.

The viewpoints are so different - and the people on FWR who post on trans threads do tend to have a fixed view on trans issues - that there is little point posting on there anymore. Bear in mind that on these threads there are people like me. Lurking, getting an overheated brain from the problem, thinking (3am last night) about this. But I don't post much on threads about gender and trans-issues because of two things; I like to work out what a feel and think and I just don't know yet; I have a suspicion I would be crushed like a bug. By everyone.

I wildly vacillate between feeling that gender is a damaging societal construct and wanting to mount the barricades to defend your hard-won right to call yourself a woman. Are both possible? Is it possible to keep safe spaces, hoping in the future we won't need them, while making everyone feel as welcome as each other?

The other issue is that when I talk to XY, white, straight DH, he goes "huh" and doesn't even know there is a debate he does now. I feel like we are all the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea arguing about crumbs while the Romans eat swans tongues and laugh about crucifying us.

I wonder if men's websites are so preoccupied with discussions re transmen are men in exactly the same way that bio men are men, it's transphobic to say men ejaculate because transmen who are just as men as bio men don't ejaculate, etc.

Somehow, I don't think so.

Generally transactivists don't attack men, they attack women. It's women and in particular feminists who get the death threats, accusations of bigotry etc. I wonder why that would be....

Rad Fems don't threaten transactivists or tell them to die in a fire. They don't post pictures of a man wielding an axe over a woman lying on the ground and say they want that to happen to all "TERFs". This is not a case of there being two wrongs. This is abuse and harassment of women.

Good luck MNHQ and thank you

I wish MNHQ much luck in drawing up that list.

Good luck MNHQ.

I have faith in you to not come up with anything which imposes a belief and acceptance of gender on women. To accept gender (which is not synonymous with sex) is to accept that the subjugation of girls and women is the natural order.

I have faith in you not to come up with anything which stems from the notion that girls and women have "lady brains".*

I have faith in you not to come up with anything which stems from the notion that lesbians are faulty and the result of their mother's faulty bodies.*

I have faith in you to not come up with anything sexist or that encroaches on biological women's rights, including the right to question and defy restrictive sex stereotypes and gender as a social construct and hierarchy which places women below men.

I have faith in you not to come up with anything which imposes a belief in gender and "inner gender identity" over the female lived experience of what it is to be an adult biological female. To not impose a belief in oppressive social constructs over neutral non oppressive biology.

I have faith in you not to come up with anything that implies that femaleness is nothing more than a feeling.

I have faith in you not to come up with anything which implies that the most important and valid factor in what it is to be a woman is what men think we are.

For the points on lesbianism and lady brains please see the section "what causes people to be trans" from this link provided by The F Word in their guidelines about transphobia.

Yeah an explanation that is entirely theoretical and which is offensive about mothers and lesbians and homosexuals as faulty. Probably due to "mother's stress" (like we mother's have never heard that one before as the cause of most of the world's troubles).

It's a made up theory which is offensive. As is the notion of a brain not "masculinizing" or "feminizing" properly, whatever the fuck that means.

It's lady brain theory. It is misogyny dressed up as science and has no actual scientific evidence to back it up.