Frank Maloney - Gender Reassignment

[CKDexterHaven]

Lived over 60 years with full male privileges - Check
Rose to the top of a male-dominated profession - Check
Right-wing political candidate for UKIP - Check
Homophobic public comments - Check
Believes in family values and traditional morality - Check
Believes in a 'female brain' (like people used to believe in a 'negro brain' and a 'Jewish brain') - Check

Nasty radical feminists are meant to be the reactionary ones but, to me, it is the transactivist movement that is conservative, homophobic and longs for the days when homosexuality was criminalised and men were men and women were women.

Fair point, buffy, sorry.

Agreed buffy.

I would like to know that too.

Ah, ok, thank you. I follow.

I'm afraid there are no "Alpha males" among dogs and wolves either.

www.whole-dog-journal.com/issues/14_12/features/Alpha-Dogs_20416-1.html

Buffy YY I am sure there are many people who are very happy in their gender role, both men and women, who therefore are at an utter loss when others say it needs changing.

Of course there is the whole women and girls getting treated like shit all over the world angle as well which obviously doesn't get much argument in the west.

The women getting treated a bit like shit but not actually raped or murdered has a depressing amount of support though. Thinking about things like being restricted in what you're allowed to do / wear. I suppose these are all part of gender role though. And actually maybe I need to say just up to getting murdered (in the west anyway) as many people think that women who get brutalised in other ways were "asking for it" due to not adhering to their role properly.

Sorry thinking out loud.

The desire to get rid of gender roles / stereotypes by feminists is the thing that attracts most argument I think.

I didn't know that, petula, but I don't think it's surprising that humans would categorise and describe animals according to what they thought was 'natural'.

It's a classic circular argument: gender is a natural, innate quality that causes the sexes to behave and think differently; therefore, differences we can observe in nature must divide along gender lines and prove that gender is a natural, innate quality.

Perfectly acceptable as a working hypothesis, but not tenable.

Sorry, briar, don't know why I thought you were petula there.

What is all this "alpha" stuff that's going around?

That bloke who killed all those women was banging on about it. Is it a "thing"?

My understanding is it's the bloke at work who thinks he's marvellous and is a bit of a twat and a bit of a bully and is rewarded heavily in patriarchal workplace environments

I don't personally feel that I am rejecting gender. I wasn't brought up to believe men and women had different brains. Even my elderly family members don't believe in such a thing.

I never had such a thing to reject.

I am quite happy to accept that other people believe they have a very strong internal sense of womanhood or manhood And respect their right to believe that about themselves. What I am not going to accept is them imposing it on other people who have never claimed any such thing.

On some levels it isn't even about feminism. How am I supposed to relate to my son, my dad, my husband or my 93 uncle who do not believe they have this internal difference, if I suddenly decide they are wrong and all different to me? I can't. It would be wrong to do so, and I am not going to be dishonest and claim a belief that is entirely contrary to my own experiences and how the people I love would wish to be treated.

"alpha male" as a concept just seems like an excuse for a man to behave like a dickhead

"maternal instinct" seems to be used as a reason to leave all the gruntwork of parenthood to women

Yes it's a thing Seven.
Check out the Red Pill on Reddit. Community of misogynists who are obsessed with being "alpha" and not "beta."
www.donotlink.com/b5tb

almondakes it's interesting isn't it. I don't feel like there are different brains and was raised to be interested in "male" subjects (maths science etc) BUT got the message heavily that "feminine" pursuits were inferior (I have had to work to get rid of this automatic reaction of "girls things are crap") and appearance was important.

However what made me a feminist was others reaction to my interests. So I had no idea when I was young that X was masculine and it was odd for me to like it but I was told that by others. At which point I thought sod this for a lark, gender roles are shit, I'm going to be a feminist. (Well that and seeing the news etc obv).

This is part of what is missing here. I can self-identify until the cows come home but as my external appearance is traditionally feminine, I will be treated in a certain way.

So again there is a different approach. Feminists say, treat everyone as people, allow them to have what interests they prefer or whatever and don't make out that's weird. Transactivists say, treat everyone in line with what they tell you they are, within the existing gender framework. But this isn't going to work for someone like me, is it. I don't want to have to present as a man in order to be taken seriously when I want to watch a program about space rockets or whatever it might be. So again, we have a problem here.

This is a good, tongue-in-cheek, piece: glosswatch.com/2014/08/14/confessions-of-a-bigoted-terf-mum/

The Alpha Male concept is all linked in to the whole pick up artist, men going their own way, men's rights thing.

It seems to be a sort of carte blanche to treat everyone, but especially women, like arseholes.

The murderous misogynist who went on a rampage in LA subscribed to the Alpha Male ideology. So does a bloke called 'warmachine' who beat his porn star ex girlfriend up so badly he broke bones in her face and ruptured her liver.

BrairRainbow lol @ link. The people who wrote that haven't met many other actual people in real life have they!

Hey everyone,

Thanks for all your reports on this thread, and sorry it's taken us a while to respond; it's obviously an emotive issue, and we've been having a thorough read.

The main thrust of the reports has been about our failure to delete posts which refer to Kellie Maloney as Frank, or that use the pronoun "he" rather than "she". Those of you who read our post on transphobia in July of this year will know that we decided not to come up with a list of deletable transgressions - and tbh, the decision was taken in anticipation of just such circumstances as these, where context seems to us to be critical. After careful thought, therefore, we've decided that we don't think deleting would be the right thing to do in this instance. Our reasoning was as follows:

1. While we obviously support anyone's right to request that others refer to them by whatever name and pronoun they choose, and we think it's courteous to do just that, in this case we're talking about a well-known public figure whom many of us have been used to referring to as "he" for several decades. To expect everyone to make the change immediately, without slip ups, seems unreasonable; in many cases, the use of the "wrong" pronoun will be inadvertent.

2. Furthermore, in the case of Kellie Maloney, we have on public record a series of remarks that she's made over the years focusing on gender and sexuality in what might best be described as a rigid way - many of which were made in the political arena. It seems fair to us, therefore, that Mumsnetters might very reasonably want to discuss the specific issues that her reassignment throw up, and to question the matters of identity and gender that are raised - which is precisely what's happened here.

Therefore, while we'd ask that everyone remember that there are real people with real emotions involved here and to show them the respect online that they'd accord them face to face, we think that in the case of this thread, blanket deleting of "he" would make a nonsense of what has, for the most part, been a thoughtful debate. We will of course look at specific posts that have been reported, and do shout if you see anything that you feel is out of line.

Thanks for your patience, all

LRD, I think trans activists very widely accept non binary identities including agender, as long as the agender person in question is young, thin, white, highly educated and in jeans with an asymmetric short haircut.

It isn't okay for somebody's Auntie Beryl cooking tea to appear out of the kitchen and say she is agender. She is an oppressive liar who is sunconciously aware she has a woman's brain.

As posters on MN, we are assumed to be Auntie Beryl.

Indeed there is a reddit thread about this thread, where MN is considered to be a mothers' support group that has been infiltrated by radical feminists. Because it almost impossible for people to imagine that mothers are people too.

So is VAW a stated aim of these wannabe "alpha" types?

I don't feel like there are different brains and was raised to be interested in "male" subjects (maths science etc) BUT got the message heavily that "feminine" pursuits were inferior (I have had to work to get rid of this automatic reaction of "girls things are crap") and appearance was important.

I had the same experience.

My parents probably didn't mean to imply that 'girl' subjects were inferior, but they wouldn't recognise those subjects require the same level of rigour as 'boy' subjects (a persistent irritation is that - still - my dad believes that he can understand everything about English Lit because he reads books, and insists on mansplaining it all to me. He gave up the subject at O Level. I have a PhD).

For a long time, I thought it was somehow superior to be a tomboyish girl, a girl who was interested in physics and good at DIY and so on. I am interested in physics and as good at DIY as a dyspraxic is ever likely to be. But I ended up with this obscure feeling that I'd somehow 'taken the easy route' by doing English and wearing dresses. Actually, I realize that when I'm doing the things that make me feel most comfortable and most like me, to some people, that's automatically being weak and useless and even a hypocritical feminist. It makes me feel uncomfortable with gender stereotypes all the time.

Maybe if I had some kind of deep desire to enjoy being seen as weak, girlie and none too bright, I'd enjoy all this and feel I had an innate gender identity, I don't know? But it seems so insulting to me to say 'well, you do girlie things so your gender identity matches your assigned sex'.

almond - where's the reddit thread?!

I think you're spot on about that. But this is liberal feminism/queer theory all over, IMO.

I will say, I think it is not unrelated to the way that certain people act as if you can only want to transition if you want to look like a stereotype of a woman. As if wanting to look like a woman who happens to wear jeans is somehow wrong.

"Indeed there is a reddit thread about this thread, where MN is considered to be a mothers' support group that has been infiltrated by radical feminists. "

This.

This comes up all the time, has done for as long as I have been on MN.

Why? If that isn't a real life example of prohibitive gender roles I don't know what is.