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.

[FloraFox]

feministsunknown.wordpress.com/2014/06/16/on-becoming-a-terf/

This is an interesting blog post.

[SmallPress]

Holy shit, FloraFox, that's a perfect bit of writing.

[GoshAnneGorilla]

What bothers me about this discussion is that there is a lot of taking what the most mouthy, most OTT say and using it to condemn all trans people.

Most of the self-styled warriors against cis-sexism aren't trans, so their words should not be used against trans people as a class.

[CailinDana]

Those questions are tough to answer kim.

But in general, all I want from those who are born male is an acknowledgement that being born female puts you at a disadvantage that you can't truly understand if you were not born female. The biggest headfuck of being female is the sense of being gaslighted all the time - that you are treated a certain way, but you are told again and again that that's not the case. For a person born male and brought up male to claim that they know what it's like to be female is galling. A transwoman might want to be a woman, and a transwoman faces their own, very difficult challenges. But they do not know what it is like to be female.

[FloraFox]

gosh who are the non-mouthy, non-OTT transactivists who are standing against this sort of behaviour? Roz Kaveney? Sarah Brown? Jane Fae? These are the people who are in the mainstream press and their behaviour is the same.

kim transwomen should stop trying to encroach on women's space and women's rights. They should not demand that women validate their feelings and should not demand access to women's spaces or women's bodies. I would like transwomen who do not agree with the most mouthy, most OTT transactivists to speak out about it.

[allhailqueenmab]

Part of the problem is in a simplistic attitude towards what the actual threats that men pose are.

Most men don't want to rape most women. But men AS A CLASS are, all the same, really inconvenient and uncomfortable in certain sorts of space in which we require a certain kind of peace and privacy. just pointing out that rape is, for whatever reason, unlikely, doesn't make men AS A CLASS fit to share women's space.

Analogously - I have been groped intrusively by gay men who insist that it is fine because they are gay and don't want to sleep with me. I don't care if they want to sleep with me or not, I don't want hands of other people on my breasts and bum that I have not invited and if they belong to straight men, or any kind of women who don't want to sleep with me, that is not ok either. (Actually it never is women who do things like this. It may be different if you know Trinny and Susannah but I have never come across women like this in real life.)

[TiggyD]

"I would like transwomen who do not agree with the most mouthy, most OTT transactivists to speak out about it."

They do, but as in many areas of life, the moderates are ignored in favour of the extremists.

Maybe you could join a few trans sites and see what the others are thinking.

[FloraFox]

What would be a good site to see a different perspective on transwomen's views?

I'm not going to join any trans site, that would be an odd thing to do but I'd be interested in seeing other perspectives.

[FloraFox]

Sounds like I wouldn't see anything different than I see elsewhere then.

I know there are individual transwomen who don't agree with the current trans narrative being expounded by activists. If they are not going to stand up and speak about it, it can't be much of a surprise if people think what is being said by the "mouthy" "OTT" ones is representative.

[ReallyFuckingFedUp]

I thought that most sports insist on MTFs waiting for medication to kick in and for any advantage to disappear.

Posted by queenstromba on the other thread

6ft 6, 220 and ex navy.

What medication will get rid of that advantage?
thehangoutsportsshow.com/tag/gabrielle-ludwig/

[CrotchMaven]

I would quite like trans women to stop insisting that they are women.

(kim, you got the thread deleted where I said some nice stuff to you before you read it, I think. In a nutshell, you are coming to the hardware store for bread.)

[ReallyFuckingFedUp]

How would people on here like trans people to behave? What things shouldn't trans people do? Whatt things should trans people not expect to have? How should trans people approach male / female space

I think male /female space should remain male/female space.

But If someone wanted to go to a "ladies night" at an event or something like that... then I think it's a gender thing and really anyone who identifies as a woman could go.

But, the reason certain things have been segregated are absolutely down to sex and not to gender. Also, personally I'd feel very different about someone who has had the operations (or plans to) and transitioned compared to someone who says they are a woman because they feel like it but have no interest in removing their penis.

I think trans people should not claim something is cis-sexist because a person says women deal with certain things.

I think it is unfair to expect people to use the term cis-gender, when some of us disagree that anyone is cis gender.

I also think it is really unfair for someone to benefit from male privilege do better physically/financially and then play against women in sports, or skew the statistics by graduating in certain degrees etc. There were many good example on the other thread is anyone wants to read it. It upsets me that people think it was just written to be hateful it really wasn't

Again from original TERF thread. This link was provided by another poster

www.infowars.com/girls-threatened-with-hate-crime-charges-for-complaining-about-transgender-bathroom-harassment/

I mean genuinely what does everyone think about that?

[SweetGrapes]

I have read quite a few of these threads in the past few years.
Every time I wonder the same thing - what about the trans women? Do they also want access to men's spaces? There is so much discussion on trans men in women's spaces - but where is this other discussion?

Or is it so laughable that it doesn't exist?

[CrotchMaven]

I always wonder if trans men know that men know they aren't part of the group. More importantly, they haven't been socialised to dominate the discourse and expect to be heard and noticed.

As for the op, performance (or not) of gender and the judgements thereon is a problem that would be eliminated with the extinction of gender. The existence of sex, though, cannot be socialised away. The attitudes towards it could be, though.

[TiggyD]

The reason I suggested going on a trans site is mostly to see/chat to moderate trans people. 95% (made up) of trans people do not walk around thinking from a trans perspective about everything. I had a picnic with lots of trans folk, friends and partners and children, de-transitioner etc on Saturday. The talk was about further education, food, engines, skateboards, relationships, dogs and trans issues.
And at risk of sounding like Joey Barton, if you want to find out more about trans issues it makes sense to talk to trans people. To stick to talking with feminists about trans and listening to extreme transactivists would be like finding out more about Manchester United by searching on Liverpool FC forums and listening to only the most rabid Man U fans.

And it's always good to see the people rather than the label.

[rosabud]

What little experience I have had has been with transmen who were considered lesbians pre-transition so become straight men after transition. In that regard, they are not imposing on non-transmen for sex, for instance. It's a whole different dynamic.

Good point! So obvious when you say it, but the concepts in this debate so far have so muddled my head that it's hard to see the obvious!

So a MtoF person who still has a penis and identifies as a lesbian so expects lesbians to have sex with them (even though lesbians clearly don't find penises attractive otherwise, presumably, they'd be heterosexual) is like me being FtoM but keeping my vagina and then identifying as gay and expecting gay men to have sex with me (even though gay men clearly don't find vaginas attractive otherwise, presumably, they'd be heterosexual). Also, the fact that I am a female who has had a vagina since birth means that gay men are the one goup of people who I really have had least to do with. I have some friends who are gay men but the vast majority of people who I have had close relationships with are either all women (because, as they are the same biological sex with me, our paths have been thrown together in millions of circumstances since birth) and straight men (because I am attracted to people with penises so, again, our paths tend to have crossed over the years.) So, let's assume that I become a man with a vagina but, as I have always been attracted to penises, I identify as a gay man and seek out gay men to have sex with: I would actually find myself seeking out the one group of people with whom I have always had least in common and, therefore, with whom I am likely to have the least idea of their lived experiences. I have enough humility to understand that, as that is the case, the gay men whom I approach may be a little nervous about that.

Can you imgine if that actually happened? If a FtoMs with vaginas went to gay men and started expecting the gay men to have sex with them which involved the vagina in some way? And then, when the gay men were a bit nervous about it, started berrating them and calling them bigots and started internet campaigns against them? I don't think gay men, or any men would stand for that. The FtoM people would become laughing stocks to both gay and straight men. It would be a rare instance of straight men being on the side of gay men for once. It would be ridiculed and dismissed.

But when it happens to the other way round, women (especially those pesky lesbians who really, rather oddly and amazingly don't seem to like penises) are expected to accommodate men's desires (no matter how odd, marginalised or plainly ridiculous those desires are) and, when women object, it's an excuse for everyone to blame feminism for being bigotted because, of course, after hundreds of years of female oppression men would quite like that to continue and so any far-fetched example of feminists being bigotted is jumped on with glee.

It's beyond stupid. It would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerous.

[FloraFox]

tiggy are you serious or do you perhaps not realise how condescending that post is?

I'm not interested in collecting a group of token trans friends so I can brag about how cool I am. I'm interested in real friends and feminism. The type that puts women first. I couldn't give a fuck what trans people think about skateboards.

[ReallyFuckingFedUp]

I wrote a response and then deleted it.


Bu basically what Flora said

[ReallyFuckingFedUp]

Tiggy, the same could be said about straight "cis gender" heterosexual men. Couldn't it? That what us "rabid feminist" have to say about them is getting the wrong idea about them?

Does that mean we shouldn't discuss the way men affect us as women? Trans people outside the potential feminist issues are just people. It wouldn't occur to me that they didn't have their own own individual ideas about skateboards.. or that I couldn't be friends with a trans person (like I am friends with heterosexual "cis gender" men).