Following on from the TERF thread...

[CailinDana]

Trying to get my head straight on this. Surely the whole malarkey around transwomen wanting to be recognised as women even though they have penises will eventually actually help to break down the idea of gender?

What I mean is, if a person with a penis can be labelled a woman simply because they want to be labelled in that way, surely gender becomes meaningless as it tells you nothing meaningful about a person except perhaps the clothes they like to wear?

This is a half-formed thought, feel free to develop/challenge.

Is anyone surprised that R Kelly's 13-year-old female child is rejecting her femaleness? Given that R Kelly is notorious for raping girls that age.
I think it's easy to empathise with those people who wish to reject their gender role - I just don't agree with trans ideology.

I think it's good to think about the word "gender" as many people (me too, sometimes) use it as a "polite" word for "sex"

www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415539401/ Gender Hurts - read it online until the end of the month

The Ruby link really upsets me. She probably just wants to be a boy because she doesn't like dresses and thinks boys toys and games are more fun. Who can blame her? Boys toys are way more fun than dolls and tea sets. As a kid I liked putting on nice dresses for family get togethers and stuff but if I'd been made to wear them all the time I'd have kicked up a fuss too (I live in dresses now because I find them more comfortable and don't do as much running about as I did when I was a kid). I also would have had a hissy fit if I wasn't allowed to play with my transformers and had to play with Barbie dolls.

The natural reaction to children being told that you can't do something because it's only for boys/girls is to say "OK, I'm a boy/girl then". That's the sort of logic that young kids have. I've been told I can't play with the toy I want to play with because I'm a boy/girl - therefore if I was a girl/boy I would be able to play with that toy - I'll tell people that I am a girl/boy and I will be able to play with the toy.

If their parents then make a big deal of it and immediately go out and change their name and buy them a whole new wardrobe then that child will be indoctrinated into thinking that they are actually a girl/boy trapped in the body of a boy/girl when actually they just wanted to play with a toy they liked. There's something wrong with a world where we'd rather sterilise minors than accept that some boys like dresses and some girls like tonka trucks.

There's something wrong with a world where we'd rather sterilise minors than accept that some boys like dresses and some girls like tonka trucks.

YY ^ this.

I think it was Germaine Greer who said if the shoe doesn't fit, change the shoe, don't change the foot.

Especially when you consider how gendered kid's lives are nowadays.

Toys, clothes, what they supposed to be like, how they are supposed to behave and look...

I know its always been like that to some extent but it is particularly bad for kids nowadays.

Beach, she lists 'the hyper-liberal politically correct' parent/s as the first type of parent susceptible to diagnosing their child as trans, followed by 'the classic homophobe' parent/s and the parent/s suffering from Munchausen by Proxy.

Why doesn't that surprise me DonkeySkin

Adult women under 30 often find it hard to get sterilised because we might change our minds but it's fine to sterilise a sex role non-conforming child at 16 with hormones and 18 with surgery. Not to mention Lupron at 11 which is a massively powerful drug meant for girls who are menstruating at 6 and adults with severe endometriosis and prostate cancer.

That's before we even get into the likes of Norman Spack who happily gave a 13 year old born male oestrogen at the age of 13 and full SRS at the age of 16. That practice has been criminalised now but it's shocking that it was ever allowed to happen.

Have been lurking on this thread as it is so interesting and very pertinent to a situation in my family. I am very nervous of posting about it for several reasons.

Anyway, thought I should also warn you that there is a complaint about the thread on Site Stuff.

Thanks, Gurlwithacurl.

People who don't think gender theory should be debated are obviously going to complain about this thread. We know there are people on here who think that, so it's no surprise. If they think there are attacks on transgender people, though, they should report the attacking posts, rather than starting threads-about-threads.

It doesn't surprise me there is an attempt to shut this thread down. The whole MRA argument is that women are the oppressors and they are the victims. It's silencing and Orwellian to claim that women analysing their own oppression are somehow causing violence to others. The day I picket a memorial event for victims of violence (as transactivists did at the memorial for victims of Marc Lépine) is the day I accept I am a bigot.

These threads are the debates that should have happened pre-2004.

We don't bite GurlwiththeCurl. The posters you've seen us put down on this thread are the same posters that turn up on every thread about the subject and try to shut down discussion. After this happening a dozen or more times we've kind of lost sympathy.

Haven't got time to engage in detail with this thread but am enjoying the discussion immensely!

I find I have to teach the po-mo stuff, and I use it, but as an irriotant, a tool for digging out the analysis (I could say a lot more about binaries and dichotimies as oppressive tools of patriarchy, and the values of questioning them) but Gah! I'm writing against a deadline about that dominant and oppressive category: women artists! How very dare I?

So just to say thank you & fascinating reading.

Found this thread a couple of days ago and I've read every single word with a mixture of fascination and horror. I was originally confused by a term "terf" which sprang up on twitter and this thread has been so enlightening. Hope it doesn't get deleted, if anything, it should be moved to classics.

I have not posted much on this thread, but have been avidly lurking. I think it is great that MN have allowed this conversation and debate. There seem to be so few places on the interweb where this can happen.

I'm not concerned about the reaction on this thread, but about disclosing some difficult family stuff. Also, I can't really get my thoughts in order about what I actually think. It is all very confusing.

My dilemma is that a family member tried to kill herself at around the age of ten and then told her parents that she had wanted to be a boy for as long as she could remember. To cut a long story short, she has had counselling and has seen expert doctors and now, several years later, has embarked on therapy to suppress puberty. She has changed her name and dresses as a boy.

I am not as close to the family as I would wish and have tried to be as supportive as I can, but I am so conflicted about this. As a feminist, but not very well read, the whole issue has torn me apart. I worry that she is confusing her need to be herself (interested in cars and motorbikes, not interested in traditionally "feminine" pursuits, unlike her sisters and mother), with a need to change her sex. I have sons and have tried to talk to her about how my lads are not stereotypical macho men, that they have a mix of different interests and characteristics. I feel that she has been brought up in a very different household to mine, where her sisters and mother are obsessed with looks, manicures, hair, clothes etc., and she and her father go to motor shows.

I am sorry if I am not explaining this very well and am I not using the correct terms. I am just very scared at what will become of her. See, I even find it hard to call her "him". Am I just being old fashioned, prejudiced and unfair?

I think your feelings are entirely understandable.
It seems like you've done everything you can to put forward an alternative point of view sensitively but questioning someone else's parenting decision's fraught at the best of times.

I really dislike the 'you can't misgender someone' stuff. People misgender me all the time. It's not the worst thing in the world.
I find it maddening to have someone expect to be called 'he' etc when they're visibly female because it's a bit like gaslighting - expecting someone to act as though something is fact when it isn't.
Then there's the fact I fight to be recognised as female when I'm not necessarily visibly feminine - seems counter-intuitive to argue that, then act as though masculinity or lack of femininity is the same as maleness.

I see what you mean Gurl. This is one of my big problems the transgender movement - rather than breaking down societal expectations of gender it is reinforcing them. There's a chance that your family member would have still identified as trans before trans became so mainstream or if she was born into a family where it's not an issue if girls are into cars and motorbikes rather than manicures. I suspect that in a less gendered environment though she'd just be a tomboy who could grow up to be a lesbian.

The fact that on top of this she's on puberty blockers when 80% of adolescents with these feelings grow out of it just makes it all the worst.

I understand your conflicted feelings - you want to be supportive of your young relative but aren't convinced that this course of action is the best thing for her (apologies for putting words in your mouth if that isn't actually your position).

Superloud - thanks for your comments. I was worried that I might get flamed for my lack of coherence apart from anything else.

QueenStromba - your last paragraph puts my position into words much better than I managed. Many thanks :)

Are you in a position where you can take her out to car shows etc so she can see that it's not just a boy thing? Or could you turn up to family events dressed androgynously/without being made up so she can see that how her mother and sisters behave and dress as women isn't the only way that women can behave and dress? It really just seems like she's rejecting the over girliness of her close family so a female influence of a non-girly girl kind could really help her. As I said up thread, adult women have trouble getting themselves sterilised, also the only way to get a double mastectomy as a woman who doesn't identify as male is to have breast cancer or BRCA gene.

To sterilise children and remove their breasts before they've had a chance to really get to know themselves is just wrong. I knew from a young age that I didn't want children but, quite rightly, there's no way I'd have found a doctor who would have sterilised me at 18. Why then is it ok to sterilise someone at 18 if they feel wrong in their bodies?

Dr Norman Spack is a class action law suit waiting to happen.

Trying to stay calm and not seethe.

I think the best argument against male brains and female 'lady brains is the trans activists. All those 'lady' brains acting so typically and horrifically male with a twisted view on what it is to be a woman.

'Cis' women know your place, it's down there at the fucking bottom.

QueenStromba, good ideas but sadly I'm not in a position to do anything like that to help. I'm bedridden at the moment and can only reach out using social media. Can't help worrying about how all this will work out over the next few years. I hope that things can be reversed in the future if she changes her views.

I definitely believe 'wrong body' syndrome exists - I don't think anyone's disputed that here? And I accept that I can't know what it feels like. I did have severe dysmorphia in my anorexic teens; it must be a hell of a lot worse than that, and that was bad. But I share everyone else's concern about stereotypes - particularly female stereotypes, I think - being seen as determining gender, rather than deriving from it. Where does that leave the many women who, like SuperLoud, get mistaken for men, and the men who 'look feminine'? There are millions more, of both sexes, who don't match the stereotypes. Nobody can say we're not really women/men on that basis. Who creates these stereotypes, anyway? (Let me guess: the patriarchy, or at least its butch members!)

I'm not finding the right words for everything that's making me uneasy about the currents state of transgenderism. I think I'd be more comfortable if it were possible to do away with binary 'gender'. Although it's the norm in mammals, it's not even a hard and fast natural rule.

I quite liked Facebook's 52 gender choices! A transwoman (etc) should be able to self-identify as such, surely, instead of insisting they're a woman/man now. Having to build extra toilets and prison cells isn't really a good enough reason to evade that development.

I think the best argument against male brains and female 'lady brains is the trans activists. All those 'lady' brains acting so typically and horrifically male with a twisted view on what it is to be a woman.

Yeah. Especially when the disagreement with feminists takes the form of threats of sexualized violence.

GurlwiththeCurl, I really feel for you and your family member. You are in impossible position.