I don't want to be a TERF

[PullUpTheTERF]

Please help.

I've NC'd for this because, well, obviously. I assure you I am a regular poster on many forums on MN, including Feminism.

Bit of back story; I am a loud and proud leftie feminist, massively pro gay rights, I am known in my circle of friends (I've been told) as being a champion for minorities, I've been to 12 gay prides and counting.

Being on this forum (since way back when it was FWR) has exposed me to gender criticism and TERF idealogies.

And I wish it hadn't.

I find myself agreeing with some (please note - not all) posters who have explained the, seemingly many, issues with the trans movement.

I'll nod along to certain comments and then hate myself for doing so.

I feel like I could never say any of this in public.

I really don't want to start a bun fight.

I'd really like to hear from some pro trans people specifically with some counter arguments.

I worry about going against gender stereotypes being labelled and parcelled as Trans.
My DS wanted a pink phone and my DMIL said he might want to transition when he's older. It infuriated me.
The thought of children having medical interventions really concerns me. I worry that someone can just say what they are and then they are that (but this doesn't extend to race, just sex)
I worry about female prisons and women only spaces being encroached. Can't believe I just said the word encroached.

But then I hear 'Being my true self' and 'Cis genders don't understand' and 'trapped in the wrong body's stuff and I feel awful.

I know if some of my friends knew about this they'd probably think I was a bigot.

I don't want to have these opinions anymore.
It puts me in the same camp as Trump FFS.

I hope this post is taken in the light it is intended.

[SuburbanRhonda]

You don’t see men wanting to transition because they can’t wait to pick up socks, take care of elderly parents, and write all the Christmas cards.

That made me laugh, though in truth it’s not funny.

[FactsAreNotMean]

Is believing that a man can become a woman - or indeed be a woman - based only on his identication as such really a moderate view? I'd say believing that there is no objective definition of woman or man is pretty extreme tbh

[tiptopteepe]

Im have a trans friend and she still has a penis and no intention of altering that. To me she is a woman. I cant see her as anything else. Shes always known she was a woman and she has lived as one (taking hormones) since puberty. She just doesnt want the invasive surgery and I think thats understandable. So I totally do support trans peoples rights to identify as whatever they are even if it doesnt tally up with what external people see or whatever

HOWEVER I like you have some problems with some types of trans activism and also some trouble in understanding myself the concept of 'knowing' your gender.

There are loads of different issues at work here. I think its really a work in progress over how best to accept and support trans people but not at the expense of feminism.
I dont consider myself to be transphobic because I totally accept peoples rights to self identify. If someone tells me they are a gender then thats the gender they are to me! What I do have a problem with however is the use of language in some trans activism.
I think it silences the work of feminism to pretend that women who were born with male genitalia are exactly the same as those who werent and are having exactly the same experiences.
If you were born with male genitalia and if you now identify as a woman but would appear to someone who did not realise that, to be a man, then your experiences are going to be very very different from someone who was born with female genitalia.
Im not saying women who were born with male genitalia have it easier because they face challenges and abuse that women who were born with female genitalie dont actually face, but this works the other way round too. If you were born 'male' you will have grown up being treated in a specific way.If you appear as male to a casual observer even though thats not how you identify, you will be treated a specific way. To deny that prevents people from pointing out the way society is geared up towards people who were born male.
Another problem is the way some trans activists react to the term 'woman' being used to mean people with a female productive system ie: 'you cant say that its trans exclusionary!!' but the problem here is that women have been oppressed and controlled for hundreds of years BECAUSE OF AND USING their reproductive systems. Access to abortion, maternity rights, access to contraception access to education about their own bodies and so on and so on..... How do you campaign about these things as a group if you cant talk about them because its 'transphobic'?!?!

Then theres the whole question of how defined gender is or should be etc etc
Like someone was saying earlier if a woman is a lesbian and likes to dress in a traditionally masculine manner she can face cries from people saying she is trans. But why should you have to identify as anything outside of what your genitals are? If you hate your genitals thats one thing... but why is gender more than that? I for one do not 'feel like a woman' its just what i was told i was an so i accepted it thats all. Some people worry that some trans activism is actually making gender fluidity harder and reinforcing misogyny by saying that gender is about more than your reproductive system... because i suppose the idea that follows on from that is that women are then very different to men not just in terms of their biology... which could be problematic because then theres more of a case to treat them differently.

Its all very confusing and I just think its important to keep an open mind and listen to all sides.

[raisinsarenottheonlyfruit]

I cannot believe it's true that Trans people want to eradicate gay people.

I think this points to part of the problem. You (along with many other people) are conflating being against the ideology that trans rights activists are pushing with being against trans people.

The two are different things. Not all trans people are TRAs. Not all TRAs are trans.

It's perfectly possible to be for trans people and against the ideology.

In some ways I love that young people are challenging gender, but I wish they had a different framework to do it with. The twisted irony of the trans movement is that it's not breaking down gender in a way that fights the partiarchy. It's fighting women instead.

What's happening with trans teenagers is utterly irresponsible. They and their parents are being sold a lie that puberty blockers are reversable and safe, that medical transition is the answer. Parents are being advised by Mermaids - who are not impartial and don't give evidence based advice. Mermaids are hugely biased and are spreading misinformation and propoganda to serve their agenda.

We're already starting to see young adults want to detransition. The law suits will come soon.

You can care for trans people and still question the way young people are being dealt with and question the whole #nodebate nonsense.

[GuardianLions]

Yes - I wonder what 'moderate' is supposed to mean and 'screaming' is supposed to mean.....

[Datun]

SuburbanRhonda

I can’t tell you how it pissed me off. Not because I had any problem with him wanting to be able to assume the mantle of someone who could be vibrant.

But because it utterly disregarded what it really means to be a woman.

We are vibrant, sexy dolls. Hair tossers extraordinaire. High heel wearers. Pyjama party participants. Sirens and seducers.

He coveted what attracted him.

And it was right around the time when my mother was dying and I was her sole support. Was working and raising two children.

I can’t tell you how fucking vibrant I felt.

[GuardianLions]

datun

[Datun]

raisinsarenottheonlyfruit

I agree with most of your post.

The problem is what constitutes ‘support’.

Understanding that presenting as the opposite sex helps gender dysphoria, is support.

Agreeing that it means you are a woman, to me, is not support. It goes beyond support and becomes a belief system.

You can use pronouns and refer to the person in the way they like and ‘indulge’ them. (Although this does massively reinforce damaging stereotypes).

But you can’t take the next step and say that they are women.

You can agree that they are, perhaps, halfway between men and women. As a third option.

But what ever option is, it has zero resemblance to being what a woman is.

[PastaOfMuppets]

@BahHumbygge excellent post.

[Datun]

GuardianLions

Thank you. Very kind.

[FactsAreNotMean]

I think, TheHumanRace, is that even if they had no concept of the name attached to it that their sex would be evident not just to observers but to the two individuals concerned too.

Of course it's possible that if there were only two of you on the island that you might think that was just down to natural variance and that you were essentially the same (although I suspect not) but what about if more than just two were stranded? How long would it take them to work out that there are two distinct groups? Not very bloody long I reckon.

That's one of the fundamental problems; the TRAs despise any word which differentiates between women and TW (I've even seen TW saying that they are cis-woman because their body is female and so is their mind, ergo they're cis...) and yet these different groups - the two sexes - categorically do exist and no amount of vocabulary policing is going to change the fact that people can know this.

[tiptopteepe]

yeah the island thing.... thats a good point. Often sex is about what is placed upon you externally. Certainly 'being a woman' for me has been about what other people expect and what happens with your biology itself rather than anything I have actively identified with. Its more something you deal with than identify with. I look to other women for support and advice about it but im not sure I 'identify' with them as everyone is completely different. What binds me to other women is often that weve had to face the same type of bullshit!
When I think about it I didnt feel like a 'woman' when i was younger at all I just felt like a person and it was only as I got older and became pregnant that it really kicked in what being a woman meant to me and the help and support i might need from other women.
I was actually really shocked and hadnt seen it coming. Never been around kids, was an only child left home early, most of my friends were male and I actually even attended a boys school which my parents got cut price fees to as they were trying to make it mixed and I was the first in there. So altho I never had any issue with my genitals and just accepted it when people said I was a woman I only actually properly felt 'oh my god im different to a man' when I got pregnant. Then I developed huge compassion and admiration for what other women went thru, then I realised what a struggle it is. It then dawned on me how hard women have had to fight to be protected by the law. I was in such a vulnerable state (difficult pregnancy) that it just hit home all the work that had been done for me by feminism without which i would have been well and truly fucked.

So i do understand that it irks people when some people who were born men just turn around and say 'actually im a woman' because its makes it seem a bit like its something you can choose whereas in reality its forced upon you. It does seem like they get to choose actively to identify with what they find positive about the gender rather than people who were born women who are forced to endure the negative aspects of the gender and how people feel about the gender.

However many trans people are genuinely in pain because they 'know' they are the wrong gender and so they probably wouldnt frame it as a choice themselves.

[diddlemethis]

I found the more I read, the more critical of the TRA movement I became. That seems to be fairly common.

[tiptopteepe]

Thehumanrace Its very strange but if you met my friend you would understand. She just IS a woman. If she were walking around trying to pretend to be a man that would seem very very strange. You can just tell shes a woman. I mean she lives as a woman and has breasts and dresses in a traditionally feminine way, but even if she didnt I dont think I could see her as anything else. Theres just something about how she interacts and just IS
I dont quite understand it myself because it doesnt tally up with my logic or what I was brought up thinking.
It might be because she believes she is and has lived like that for a reasonably long time? Im not sure.

I watched that Louis Theroux program on Trans kids the other night and there were kids on that who were the same. I just saw them and immediately believed them for some reason. Like 'yeah I see it, you arent a boy are you'

[AdalindSchade]

You're experiencing cognitive dissonance. It will pass when you embrace the truth and stop trying to avoid people thinking you're a bigot.

[tiptopteepe]

'The Truth' eh. Where did you find that then and what is please enlighten me?
Is it that men have a penis and women have a vagina? Because thats not a 'truth' that is scientific terminology that is subject to change as all language and symbols are. We are constantly learning about the world. Things are changing whether you like it or not. A discussion needs to be had about how best to deal with everyones needs and support them. That discussion wont even get off the ground if you start talking about 'the truth' as though you have ownership of that in some way. As though these terms werent invented by humans and built by societies but just found in tact on a rock somewhere like the ten commandments!

[PullUpTheTERF]

Adalind maybe you're right.

I found the more I read, the more critical of the TRA movement I became. That seems to be fairly common.

That's exactly how I'm feeling. I took the 'red pill' of Feminism 15 years ago and there isn't a day goes by when I'm not pleased and proud that I did.
This doesn't feel like that for me, it has more negative connotations and feels like.its jarring against all my other beliefs.

[Lancelottie]

But things aren't really changing in that sense, Tiptop. If babies are to be born, they will still be born to those with vaginas. If sperm are to be created, they will still be created by those with penises. Centuries later, what will be identifiable from a skeleton will be its sex, not its self-definition.

We might as well keep the same words we've always had for those categories.

[PullUpTheTERF]

TipToe Thank you for sharing, I'm pleased your friend is happy

[Mrskeats]

Yes men have penises and women have vaginas. Was that a rhetorical question?
They also have a differing set of chromosomes. This is a fact i'm afraid. Pesky science is not what the Trans community want to deal with.
Based on this (flawed) logic we can also be Transracial.
All the faffing about with labels (the Trans community being the ones so keen on them) does not alter simple biology.

[Lancelottie]

I do feel quite saddened that the current rancid, hypersexualized debate makes almost any topic off limits with the five (oh Christ, so many?) sets of family friends who now have a transgender member. I've given up on trying to persuade my brain to ignore my eyes and past recollections of their daughters (or father in one case) in order to remember that they are now their sons and mother. We talk about work or cats instead.

Actually, one family has a member with Alzheimer's who everyone tacitly agrees can't be expected to remember the new name and pronoun, so gets a free pass for all mistakes. Looking at their small gruff serious-minded teenager, I really hope this gives them a link and a route back to their birth sex, should they need it.

[FactsAreNotMean]

But that's kind of the point, it almost doesn't matter what the term is because these two categories will always exist.

[tiptopteepe]

lancelottie but even the traditional science is not that black and white. People can be born with genitalia combinations. People can have hormone combinations/issues.... theres all sorts of variables that sometimes make the line between man and women quite arbitrary or people choose to have medical assistance to push them more towards one sex or the other.
Now days they are doing research into artificial wombs and maybe people who are born men could end up being able to give birth. You dont know whats going to happen!
Its just not all as clear cut as people seem to want to believe. Concepts around it are changing. As ive already detailed i have my own worries about that and can see other peoples worries but you cant just deny its happening. Concepts of gender have been changing constantly throughout history and now they are changing more and concepts of sex are also subject to change. Its not about how people are born but how we interpret how they are born and what that means in society.