Trans media watch are lobbying mnhq

[BeyondTheHarpy]

I know this has already been mentioned in the PL thread, but I thought it might be an idea to bring it to the attention of mners in a thread of its own.

After the PL debacle, there followed a thread in AIBU about toilet. On which this post appeared...
"I'm with you OP and I'm horrified by the transphobia on Mumsnet. I have done some work with Transmedia Watch who are trying to persuade MNHQ to treat transphobia as they would treat any other hate crime. I don't know what MNHQ have against the trans community or why they don't challenge the widespread belief that trans women are rapists in frocks who want to see fannies."

So, yeah, just letting you know that they are (allegedly) on the case with mnhq.

Who has acknowledged that gender is a spectrum? There's no psychological evidence of that at all.

I do think the growing acceptance of transgenderism has the potential to make gender roles more rather than less fluid, to acknowledge that gender works on a spectrum rather than being something binary, and that has the potential to help rather than hinder feminism.

I'm all in favour of abolishing the concept of gender altogether. In an ideal world I think everyone would have a biological sex but that would be a simple fact and have no bearing on their personality / appearance / tastes / skills or society's expectations of them.

The mere word "transgender" goes against that, though, because it's reinforcing the idea of masculine / feminine stereotypes and I don't think that's helping feminism at all.

It all come back to this odd binary thinking where everything has to be either a binary or a spectrum. Most things in life aren't either.

Am I being idealistic to think that in a decades time this will be easier, and that the tension comes from trying to resolve the position of people having late transitions? That children who have had support to resolve their gender identity will feel less threatening to women?

I think that it is idealistic to think that things will be 'easier' in another generation, simply because all transpeople will have transitioned in childhood. For starters, a disproportionate number of young people transing are adopted, and/or on the autism spectrum (especially the latter). I hear anecdotally that a fairly high proportion have been sexually abused.

More boys seem to transition at a very, very young age, and girls when they hit puberty. We all know how awful puberty can be for young girls. Especially today when they are bombarded by impossibly unattainable imagery of what a 'woman' should be. That to me is a huge red flag. And why are there never any late FTT transitioners?

It all (to me) points to something more sinister about our society, rather than wrong brain/wrong body stuff.

The country with the highest proportion of MTT is Iran. Homosexuality is illegal there. I honestly worry there is a smattering of gay conversion therapy going on with very young transitioning children.

And I think there will be always late male transitions, who frankly are just more brazen about enjoying their fetish publicly.

Who has acknowledged that gender is a spectrum? There's no psychological evidence of that at all.

Do you mean sex? Or gender?

and how are we deciding what is a "girl" thing to be doing, and what is a "boy" thing? In some countries/cultures men wear tunics/robes, which are more or less the same as women's dresses. There are pink Barbie cars (does it being pink transform a "boys toy" into one for girls?) And what about football/soccer? In the UK it's more a boy/man thing, but in the US it's mainly a women and girls sport. But then David Beckham wore a sarong that one time, and played football in the US, did that make him a woman (but only until he put some trousers on, and stopped playing football in the US)?

This whole debate goes nowhere until someone somewhere tells us definitively what is a man and what is a woman without biological descriptors. Up till that point I (and I suspect most people, male and female) are non-binary in gender, and therefore all special snowflakes .

I don't really agree with you because I do think the growing acceptance of transgenderism has the potential to make gender roles more rather than less fluid, to acknowledge that gender works on a spectrum rather than being something binary, and that has the potential to help rather than hinder feminism

How?

In somewhat more 'traditional' feminism, gender is a hierarchy with masculine at the top, feminine at the bottom. It helps feminists to understand how the world works, it's a class analysis, it provides a framework for understanding male and female interactions. If you understand gender in this sense, you can analyse, understand and then potentially change everything from the personal to the global.

In this somewhat more 'new' feminism, gender is a spectrum with arbitrary and fuzzy definitions at either end and all along it. We all have a place on it somewhere, depending on personal choice and/or feelings (rather like 'personality', really, rather than gender). And so what? What does that analyse? How does this help? 'We're all different'...and then what?

I am cis-gendered and am a regular mom with no connections to any trans lobbying organisation. However, I agree that Mumsnet does come across as a very transphobic place whenever trans issues are raised. Obviously, not everyone is but there's a horrible nasty theme with all the trans threads. It is very depressing, and often the comments are made with no knowledge of actual trans issues. I'm glad that mnhq are being made aware of this problem in their site. Trans parents need answers to parenting questions too and shouldn't have to wade through transphobic posts to get them.

Please quote some transphobic posts.

What do the posters on this thread not understand about trans issues?

I'm interested to hear the explanation of trans issues from a cis-gendered and am a regular mom with no connections to any trans lobbying organisation.

Sorry; actual trans issues.

Freshwater - well, I have a hope (possibly unfounded) that by acknowledging that when it comes to gender, 'we are what we feel', it could move the focus away from both the sex we are born into and the gender characteristics we have. If we could say 'I was born with a vagina; I am happier with a penis and a beard; I do however fancy men not women; I enjoy gossiping and I am very nurturing; I am competitive and I like to box', rather than having to say 'I am a woman who is unhappy in my own body with both stereotypical male and female gender characteristics', then surely that would be moving to a world where neither gender nor sex defines who we are.

I agree Aunt that it makes traditional feminist analysis harder (impossible, I suppose.) But if were truly in a post-gender world, I wonder if it would matter? If it really mattered not one jot what genitals one was born with... then would that not be beneficial to women? And by allowing anyone to define themselves as they wish, wouldn't that aid the creation is that post gender world?

I accept we are a long way off it. But I would think transgenderism would aid rather than hinder its creation.

So to answer your question Venus... I accept that to promote trans rights is to overlook that concerns of some more traditional feminists, and both sides cannot be kept happy. But to my mind a world where who we are is defined by how we feel, and where our genitals are our business, is more likely to aid women's rights than otherwise.

I'm not prosthelytizing by the way. I think the tendency of both sides of the debate to do that is where things have gone so very wrong.

So are you saying women should just STFU and suck it up?

But if were truly in a post-gender world, I wonder if it would matter? If it really mattered not one jot what genitals one was born with... then would that not be beneficial to women? And by allowing anyone to define themselves as they wish, wouldn't that aid the creation is that post gender world?

No, yes, and it's a nice idea but I don't see how.

I mean, in the world as it is, women are discriminated against because of their sex. The class perceived to be capable of child-bearing is oppressed by the class that isn't. That's traditional feminism in a (very tiny) nutshell, right? So if we fuzzy up those boundaries of the classes, we become unable to name the problem. It's just some people doing stuff to other people, when this is demonstrably, overwhelmingly not the real case.

If we nominally eliminated race, we wouldn't be able to name, analyse and counter racism. If we nominally eliminated disability, we wouldn't be able to name, analyse and counter disablism. But it's OK to nominally eliminate sex because...that's the state of the ideal world? I'm not convinced at all. Like, not talking about it means the problem goes away? That's just adding repression to oppression IMO.

What do you think should happen where women's rights and transactivists' demands clash?

I don't accept that transpeople have a "right" to be thought of as the opposite sex in every possible way, though I believe this should be accommodated where possible.

Or what venus said

Venus I very clearly haven't said that. I think the ideas are important and need to be discussed, and I was enjoying doing so with mutual respect.

Aunt - yes, I agree, women are discriminated against because of their sex in the world as it is. And I do take your point. As with much in life it's a cost / benefit analysis - there will be gains and losses. My view is that women would gain more from the erosion of the 'genitals / life chances' connections than they would lose from the analytical difficulties that would pose. I would rather fix the problem than analyse it. Are we a long way off? Yes. Is it, as things stand, utopian? Clearly. But it would I hope be a step in the right direction.

Marmite did you really just illustrate your point by including 'gossiping' and urge to nurture to illustrate someone's more 'female traits'?

Sorry, I don't want this thread to go off at a tangent (I agree it's been one of the more productive trans threads of late), but just to response to IPity, I categorically am not saying that serving halal meat in schools is an indicator of Islamism. My analogy was that many schools now serve halal meat because they are eager to be accommodating to Muslim students and advice, including that written by known extremists, has been that they should serve halal meat for school meals. But this has been taken up without any critical thinking about the implications: what about students who cannot eat halal because of their own religious beliefs? What about students who object to halal slaughter? Their rights - and ability to object - have been pushed to one side because of some over-zealous accommodation of one group, much as women have blinked and missed the fact that we are now apparently supposed to call ourselves menstruators and child-bearers and be happy about it.

One last comment on this theme: perhaps MN is "radicalizing" people, who are becoming more aware of what is happening in the world of TRA. But I think the better analogy is the many chat forums and support groups for children who are seeking answers to their issues and who are told that the only way to resolve them is to trans (along with "help" on how to convince psychologists, how to buy and self-administer illegal hormone blockers, how to respond to parents and friends who have doubts about transition etc etc).

My view is that women would gain more from the erosion of the 'genitals / life chances' connections than they would lose from the analytical difficulties that would pose. I would rather fix the problem than analyse it.

Can you say more about your cost/benefit analysis here? What would be some of the costs and benefits with your solution? How would this feed into fixing the problem?

Sometimes radicalisation is necessary and good. I won't make Godwin analogies, but sometimes people need to be made aware of what is happening in their name.

I respect your view MxMarmite. I'm reading between the lines because you haven't answered the question. I'd be grateful if you could say what you think should happen where there is a clash?

Manu Well no not exactly, but the fact you assumed I was sort of illustrates my point! I was deliberately picking stereotypes. My point was those are stereotypes that might, at the moment, be considered by some to be 'female' (not by me, clearly!) In the same way boxing might typically be seen as 'male' by some (again, not by me.) My point was how much better off we'd all be (especially women) in a world where those were just 'characteristics' rather than 'gender characteristics'...

Hmm. It looked like a straight alternation between tedious stereotypes from where I'm sitting.