Changing gender without any medical care/advice/opinion - just saying 'I'm a woman' and it being so

[Oscha]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40692782

I feel so naive right now-I didn't think this would really get to this point: So they actually want to make it possible to turn around and say, 'I am a man/woman' without any kind of doctor's confirmation of gender dysphoria?

What the fuck is this going to do to women's prisons? How many female criminals will end up abused, raped, killed by MEN in what should be safe places for them?! This is nothing to do with trans people-this is just going to be taken advantage of by predatory men.

It's just fucking stupid. I have no words. Next will be I can identify as any animal as I want.

Classics erasure of women's oppression there, NoLoveOfMine! I suppose that would make Jane Austen a trans man too. What rot!

How fucking dare they do that to James Barry. I just read her recent bio and I'm furious.

Fucking hell. Next it'll be Gertrude Bell as transman for wearing a split skirt for riding horseback astride.

George Eliot, is she now a transgender figure, too? Or is it just a clothes and hair thing?

This is meddling with the history of women's lived experiences.

And am I am transperson because my MN name is gender-obscuring? Utter madness.

Don't forget the Brontes who published as Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell, clearly trans! Oh wait. It was because it wasn't respectable for women to write novels. God these ignorant ahistorical fuckers drive me mad.

It is outrageous that James Barry is now considered transgender. She had no other option at that time as a female but to masquerade as a man.

Pen names in male names are of course still going on. Take J K Rowling for instance. This is a good link regarding female writers

mashable.com/2015/03/01/female-authors-pen-names/#UAg9B7MGGPqD

It is outrageous that James Barry is now considered transgender. She had no other option at that time as a female but to masquerade as a man

I've discussed this historical case with a colleague working on writing her/his history. My colleague's view is interesting: that yes, Miranda Barry needed to become James Barry to do what she wanted to do.

But my colleague's view is also that it is difficult to imagine that, after living an almost entire life as a man, including under wartime conditions, that Barry would not have started to "identify" [not in a TRA use of the word] as a man in daily life.

My colleague is very far from a transactivist (although also not really a radical feminist), and I think there's a point there - it shows that masculinity can be learned. Which is precisely the point that any of us would want to make, I think. That gender roles - masculinity & femininity - are learned, ie socially constructed.

But my colleague's work doesn't attempt to erase Barry's femaleness, and recognises that her cross-dressing came about because of the restrictions on Victorian women. My colleague is not the English HEritage people either!

Masculinity can definitely be learned.

Some of the most foul mouth abuse I have seen has come from transmen. Ragingly misogynistic. Really foul. With a female bent. So a bit more 'lavatorial' than sexual.

But my colleague's view is also that it is difficult to imagine that, after living an almost entire life as a man, including under wartime conditions, that Barry would not have started to "identify" [not in a TRA use of the word] as a man in daily life.

Well, yeah, in a way.

I also "identify" as man if I pretend to be male on the internet. (Which I sometimes do in order to not be harrassed) I then try to act like the man I would be if I were a man.

I guess if you do this full time, you can get to the point that you are mildly surprised to find that your trousers don't contain a penis when you go to the toilet. But all this proves is that "gender identity" is learnt.

And instead of harming themselves with surgery, transmen could just learn to identify as women.

There's probably some few people for whom transsexuality is a body-map issue - the brain has a map of the body, and in some people, a body part is missing, resulting in them feeling that body part does not belong to them.
That probably can't be cured with psychotherapy.

But this new wave of female trans who "feel like men" and many of whom just so happen to be lesbian - no one will tell me that this is not caused by internalized misogyny.

Haven't rtft but this article was good www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-orwellian-nightmare-of-transgender-politics/20116#.WXesX7HTWhD

Do we know of any MPs who are on the feminist side on this? Just seen Stella Creasy (who I usually love) tweeting about trans phobia.
Was it Caroline Flint who raised concerns previously?

Does anyone know how all this started? It seems extraordinary to me that we've gone so incredibly quickly to self identification and anyone who thinks even slightly differently is a transphobe. How did it happen? Governments don't usually do things unless they are lobbied. Who is lobbying? Cui bono?

Puff paw that article is outstanding.

These threads get so bogged down with the ins and outs of bathrooms and such like, but the real issue, for me anyway, is that of truth, living a truthful life and living in a world where truth, facts and reality are upheld. the self id proposals chick that completely out the window as that article expresses so well.

Hi everyone, I'm new to MN and have been brought here by the increasingly worrying trans agenda and its threats to women's safety, privacy and achievements. The silencing of women and attempts to no-platform dissenters is truly horrifying.

Great article that Puffpaw linked to. To okay the rewriting of birth certificates is to nurture a new Orwellian era in which past events can be altered upon the whim of contemporary prejudice or hysteria...It would lie to us, and to future generations. Shouldn’t this concern us, this official approval of misinformation?

I'm also bemused as to how this appears to be happening so quickly. Why, all of a sudden, are otherwise intelligent people claiming that a man is a woman if he says he is? Why are all these people claiming that they can see the Emperor's new clothes? I honestly can't get my head round this.

Perhaps it's part of the Backlash against women and feminism. There will always be takers for that.

The survey: www.gov.uk/government/consultations/national-lgbt-survey

Do fill it in, there tends to be low take up of these surveys so what you put in will matter and will stop it being so skewed!

Oh, just to add to the depression, a psychiatrist I worked with considers trans to be a developmental condition 'like autism'. She has no evidence of that, it's just what she thinks. That means she sees it is somehow inevitable so she assumes anyone presenting is trans. So don't think the medics are better informed or thinking about this. They aren't. She worked in a gender clinic by the way...

I'm fascinated by why this happened so quickly as well. And why transgender is "right on" but transracial is not.

My thoughts:
Young people today (the 16-25 yos ) have. Even brought up in the wake of 70s women's lib - a mix of radical feminism with liberal or reformist feminism. The latter necessary to get much needed equality reforms such as equal pay (ha!) etc

There was that thought in popular culture that we were post-feminist now and that it was all sorted.

Clearly not. The told of a structural analysis and critique of sex and gender which I was taught, are not being taught to young people today.

Then there's the desire to rebel, to stake out territory different to that of your parents' generation. So eschewing "old fashioned " feminism (the discourse around Germaine Greer is frankly shockingly dismissive of her) is a way to be different and more virtuously radical etc etc etc

And because we're obviously NOT in a post-feminist world -as if- then women's voices, views, experience. - women's very culture - is as usual erased, made Other, seen as aberrant.

It's depressing...

Re trans and autism. There has been a murmuring in medical research circles about a connection between the two. I know contiguity is not causation or necessarily correlation, but I've observed myself people transitioning whom I would describe as autists.

I guess if you're neuro atypical you might also find gender roles -- masculinity and femininity- quite difficult.

Argh bloody phone: "the tools of structural analysis"

Clearly my phone is programmed to sabotage Marxist feminist statements.

Also, I have taught queer theory and the philosophical underpinnings of trans activism are there.

But

It's complex stuff and the version of Judith Butler parroted by some TRA is a poorly misunderstood reading. And a lot of queer theory is quite anti-feminist. Reflecting the dirty secret of a lot of gay male activism: misogyny. But we know that!

If you're autistic you are more likely to be gender questioning/fluid but the leap to say that means trans has the same cause leaves me agog! I've worked with a lot of autistic people and the back and white thinking some have would make it easy to think 'I don't fit with X group so I must be Y' and having that treated as trans rather than seeing it as an expression of a general experience of not fitting is very worrying!

That read like I think you can be trans - that's not what I mean. I just meant the NAS stats show that.

That's not what I said. I was trying to be quite careful.

It seems like there could become sort of a link between neuro atypical and a tendency to transgender but they're not caused by the same thing.

And not every autist is transgender and not every trans person is neuro atypical.