Anti-Transgendered thread in Chat

[countessmarkyabitch]

Started off as a vague question about what makes you feel like a woman, lots of people started mentioning transwomen, naturally. Has now turned into some posters stating that transwomen are just men and shouldn't be allowed use female things like toilets and rape crisis, pretty much anything.

I find this really offensive and have stopped engaging. My personal feminism encompasses women who were born in male bodies, and supports their struggle to be recognised as women. I also think they need the protection and help of feminists as a particularly at risk group.

Is this an unusual stance? Does anyone agree with me?

You've lost me. If gender isn't about stereotypes, and isn't associated with male / female, then what is it? How does a person know what their gender is? What does gender mean to you?

I'm sorry. I don't even know how to engage with someone who seems to be suggesting that transpeople don't exist. On a thread where people have compared being trans to mental illness. On a forum for parents, who are shaping future generations' attitudes towards transpeople.

I'll formulate a well-thought out answer to you soon, but right now I need to go and restore my faith in people's desire to accept and understand and things beyond their own experience.

Oh cigars, you are my favourite.

I thought it was a reasonable question. To me, gender means the cultural expectations put on a person on the basis of their sex. That isn't what it means to you, from what I have read. So what does it mean to you? It's a genuine question.

Many students won't have had to opportunity to live as women though. For many trans people leaving home is the first opportunity they have had to be fully open about their identity.

The same goes for LGB people. Not that this is a perfect analogy at all, but I know of few LGB people who would have been able to join a LGB activist group straight away at university if it was a prerequisite to have lived as an LGB person previously.

If your child were transgender, would you wish for them to be excluded from doing this?

@heart.

If my child was trans, hopefully I could still teach him that you can't always get what you want, and that other people's feelings matter too

How is being transgender a case of 'want'?!

The feelings of bigots should never be allowed to matter. If they are allowed to matter, they are allowed to define society.

I suppose prejudice would be more appropriate.

I suppose prejudice would be more appropriate.

I suppose prejudice would be more appropriate.

Oops!

Oops!

Thanks House, yes that was what I meant. He may want to share a woman's room at university, however I hope he would consider the feelings of his potential roommate and have an insight into why it might not be appropriate. I accept that this would be sad and hurtful for him if he genuinely had feelings of gender dysmorphia.

I know. To my mind, trans women are women, therefore its not a 'want' to enter specific women's spaces but a need (as much as it may be for any of us) and imo, a right.

The questions about shelters, prisons, women's spaces etc - these are real and important issues which transactivists are campaigning about.

These become non-issues, if people can bring themselves to see trans women as women.

Why do you believe that trans women are women? I really don't mean to be offensive, but I can't see any evidence for this, and hence I find it hard, if not impossible, to believe. Can you explain why you are convinced?

And I don't wish them any harm, and I think they should be treated with respect and addressed how they prefer and included in society, but not at the expense of born women, who have their own problems

I suppose, for me, feminism has never been about defining a gender. It's not about defending my gender or being precious about my gender (and I'm not accusing anyone here of this).

For me, feminism has always been about deconstructing the male/ female divide. It's been about demolishing the stereotyping and the limitations.

For me, welcoming transgender people is part and parcel of deconstructing the boundaries which have separated us as a species. I truly believe in equality and in that, believe trans women are equal to women and women are equal to men, etc.

To me, people come first. How they identify is a personal right which should be protected. I can honestly, genuinely accept a trans person for who they are, which is why I view trans women as women. To me, they just are!

To question that, is as equally absurd as it would be, should someone approach me in the street and say I'm not a woman, because 'they say so'.

I am - and I genuinely believe trans women feel that certainty too. I don't need to know or understand how or why, to believe them.

I don't mean its absurd to question my belief. I mean I feel it's absurd to question the identity of trans women!

Some people who may appear transgender, will be hermaphrodites, whose gender was assigned for them at a young age.

If you would feel unable to welcome other transgender people into certain spaces, would you also feel unable to welcome a 'biological' hermaphrodite?