Please can we have a Trans topic?

[LooseSeal]

The trans debate seems to be devouring the boards at the moment. It's spread across feminism, chat and AIBU and it's often not clear from a thread title that it's going to be another trans thread.

Considering that trans threads are accumulating in numbers and attract hundreds of posts and posters I think it's time trans was given its own topic.

A trans woman is now generally considered to be any male who identifies as a woman. Doesn't particularly require any treatment, hormones or surgery.

And it's retrospective. The director of Bridget Jones is the first woman to have a successful trilogy in the box office. Except she isn't, because the wachowski brothers are considered to have been women when they made the matrix although they didn't transition until way after.
Meaningless.

Garth - afaik transvestite still just means cross- dresser. People who have medical interventions to change their bodies to be more like the other sex are 'transsexuals '. Until relatively recently that was it... You might (regardless of sexuality have butch women or effeminate men - gender nonconformists. But now theres's 'transgender' which seems to have encompassed the previous 'trans' but also people who just 'identify' in some way as being the opposite sex. Someone can declare themselves to be 'trans' with no sort of medical diagnosis.

Thank you. It's most confusing.

Errol, that's where it's all gone wrong imo.
By putting transvestite & transsexual under the same umbrella.

The only way someone can dress or present as they choose nowadays is to 'be' transgender.
With rigid uniform rules in various jobs (and also the unofficial 'uniform' rules in our everyday work) a person cannot just 'be' or present as they wish; the only protection offered wrt protected characteristics is transgender.

If a man wanted to wear a frock & makeup to work in (for e.g.) the armed forces, he couldn't and isn't allowed - he is forced to conform to the gender presentation that has been constructed by society; he could only present as he wanted to by declaring himself as transgender.

If the wording of the protected characteristics was changed from 'transgender' to 'transsexual & transvestite' then no-one would have to be 'transgender' anymore iyswim.

The whole thing has become too convoluted now, at the expense of women (as per usual).

I'd word it as transsexual and gender-nonconformist - 'transvestite' generally also you're turned on by crossdressing. A woman who wants to reject a stereotypically feminine uniform and wear trousers, or not be expected to wear high heels and makeup isnt 'transvestite'.

It shouldn't really be that gender nonconformists should get protection anyway - it should be that enforcing gender stereotypes is abolished.

I so agree with this Mango. Would I allow my son to wear a dress to primary school in these times? Possibly not, because of the danger of being targeted by trans trained professionals. Which would make him MORE likely to say 'in that case I want to be a girl!' But 10 years ago it was no big deal.