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?

(By 'appear to be transgender', I'm referring to if a physical hermaphrodite has had their gender assigned as male by others but has reverted to female.)

I've concluded from this thread and others at the moment that I can't really say I am a woman. I've never felt like a woman and tellingly the women in my family felt I was all wrong at "it"!

As an adult I have adapted to the world, yes, but wouldn't even say I "perform femininity", I go along with it in a fairly desultory fashion as a flexible pragmatist.

Logically I think I'd best describe myself as a heterosexual female.

Amantes, do you think lesbians are being prejudiced if they don't want to sleep with male bodied trans women? What about straight men, are they trans phobic if they aren't attracted to male bodied trans women?

And if a woman doesn't want to share intimate and vulnerable space with a stranger with a penis, she's prejudiced? What if she's been raped?

"For me, feminism has never been about defining a gender. It's not about defending my gender or being precious about my gender "

As far as I'm concerned as a feminist I want to get rid of gender as a concept altogether. these rigid gender roles cause women and men huge amounts of harm, in particular women. I don't want to define or defend my gender at all.

I would hope that if we as a society could move towards that it would help trans* people too

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.

Well said, TheCow. I'd love and support my DS however he chose to present or identify, but if he did decide to live as trans, I would expect him to consider the needs of other people, too, and to respect women's boundaries. (I expect this from him if he doesn't decide to live as trans, too.) I would not, for example, be happy (or pay for) if he decided he was entitled to enrol at a women's college just because he could. There are plenty of mixed educational institutions out there, and it would be incredibly selfish of him to do so.

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)
Feminism isn't about "defining a gender" anyway. Feminists believe that gender is a social construct, whereas trans people believe it to be innate. Feminism is about destroying patriarchal structures which oppress women.

X post with Petula

Yes Annie, I do actually have a ds and I am really trying to teach him to respect other people. I'm also hoping that he will be able to follow his interests as far as possible and not feel confined by what society expects from him because he's male. I hope and expect that this will mean he's unlikely to feel he is transgender, but only time will tell. Im making sure he knows he can like pink, not like football and be gentle, or whatever, and still be a boy/man. He's also aware that I can be assertive, use tools, be head of a household etc, and still be a woman!

TheCow funnily enough, mine has been taken for a girl all his life (pretty face and very long hair, his choice). He doesn't care, doesn't correct anyone and half the time doesn't notice, but so far at least is perfectly secure in his identity as a boy.

That's great, that he obviously doesn't see "girl" as some kind of hideous slur!
I'm fighting a bit of an uphill battle sometimes, but he's at the "girls are rubbish" stage at the moment. I'm noticing he's slowly getting the point though. Not boy things, not girl things, but people things. As he gets older I'll introduce more complicated stuff when I've managed to work it out myself so I know what I'm talking about

Annie do you think that if you weren't comfortable with your ds' hairstyle and you knew about transgenderism, you might feel that you were doing the right thing for him in encouraging him to explore this, and therefore a problem would be created where there previously was none?

Ha! Exactly. I'm hoping mine stays true to himself through his teenage years, which might be a challenge - most of his friends have a very traditional, socially conservative outlook on gender.

Well, I can't imagine giving a toss about his hair, but until very recently I saw the trans community as sort of political siblings, so yes, I can imagine that. Did you see the thing I posted (can't remember if in this thread) about a 14 year old who was convinced online that he was trans in a matter of days - less than a week?

When before rhis hasn't been part of his identity at all - but he'd had a failed romance with another boy, who had then gone off with a girl. (Being a teenager is so hard. So glad that's decades behind me!)

Yes I did see it. Frightening and abusive imo
As you say "true to himself" I suppose trans people would argue that to be true to themselves they have to transition.

I think my struggle with this all comes from reconciling supporting individual transpeople with trying to reject gender roles. On an individual level, it doesn't feel right to police what people feel about themselves and which labels they choose to identify themselves by. However on a macro level, isn't that reinforcing that gender isn't a social construct and that masculine and feminine identities are made up of a prescribed and defined set of behaviours?

I understand that it's not an ideal world, and so people who identify more with "traditional" behaviour of the sex other than their own may prefer to alter their sex to match the gender roles they wish to live by, but as we are dealing with an imperfect world, shouldn't we be able to protect women's rights and spaces from the shittiness out there without sacrificing their needs?

It feels like some people are saying yes, everything is crap; because of this, let's be understanding to transpeople and reinforce the existence gender roles at the eventual greater cost of everyone but at the same time let's not afford the same allowances to women and expect them to suck it up and be "role models" and give up more of their space to make room for others, to the detriment of themselves.

I don't know if any of that makes sense but it's been something I've been grappling with for awhile.

Amantes: part of the problem is that the very idea of transgender relies upon and reinforces the gender binary. It cannot challenge it in any way.

That's how I feel phonyics

I have genuine compassion for trans people who are just trying to find a way to live their lives as contentedly and peacefully as they can in this imperfect world, that isn't going to be made perfect within our lifetimes. The vocal trans activists who direct their ire at feminists also target trans people who don't agree with them as traitors, it's bonkers

But many of the demands and threats of vocal and extreme trans* activists, and much gender theory, actively harm women

There are plenty of trans people that agree with the feminist analysis, btw. Gender critical transwomen exist. Their position is, broadly, that their transition is a pragmatic response to their "gender damage" just as radical feminism can be, and they retain the right to organise their own private lives, bodies, and self expression in a way that best minimises that damage. They are not taking the position that they are literally biological adult human females, but that they are human and deserve to live their lives in the way they see fit so long as it's not hurting anybody. I don't think that anyone here could argue with that. Gender critical transwomen are hounded and attacked by transactivists also.

couldn't and wouldn't argue with that at all.

That's what I was trying to say catotanca

They are viewed as traitors by the vocal trans activists and receive similar treatment from them in terms of abuse and threats

Similar to feminists that is (and other people who don't call themselves feminists but dare to question the transactivists' ideology)