ITV Transformation Street

[RedToothBrush]

On tv tonight.

But here's an article to give you a taste of what its going to be like:www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/transformation-street-itv-transgender-documentary-a3737876.html

@thebewilderness where did you get the rules of misogyny from, very interesting.

I don't think the complaint of bullying relates to the r
'Rules of misogyny'. I think it was the tirade of comments addressed to one person in that way.

It was horrible to read, adversarial and in that sense I think it's counter productive.

It's maybe impressive for some to see our strength as women (especially other women) feminists have impressed Mr so much here with their wisdom.

But for me shows of strength need something more, from females or males, like some compassion and willingness to listen as well as strength.

@SophoclesTheFox although I agree with very many of your early post at 6.58 this morning, especially I agree with your comments 're women's biological reality. And I think we do need to make this known.

However, I think this is unfair..."But why you actually did was bowl in here, not make the slightest attempt to engage with the topic at hand, make it all about you and your suffering, type some rubbish about the massive difficulties of taking three months of hormones and a doctor telling you you were going through the menopause, frame the discussion as "aggression" and "bullying" when it didn't go in the direction that you wanted it..."

48 was engaging, talking about her own experiences, personally I doubt any woman would assume a trans woman's 'menopause' was really a menopause. But the topic of this thread is a tv show!

Trans women are allowed to talk about their owen difficulties on a thread about a programme about a clinic for trans people.

The behaviour shown by many posters was intended to shut down debate and perhaps to 'silence' the opposition. No it is not pulling hair out by the roots but maybe if that has happened to you, that is how it felt!

So it is a form if online bullying to me. I don't blame 48 for feeling that way.

It did not feel like just giving facts. I know a lot of people are really angry around this topic. But I think we should be able to discuss some aspects without the need to verbally 'squash' people.

Ps "Italian, your posts were very lovely and supportive. I'm not having any kind of dig at you, by the way"

Thank you.

Italiangreyhound
I disagree I'm afraid. Whatever the context claiming to have experienced menopause is an outrageous lie and an appropriation of a condition that for many women brings with it genuine physical difficulties but is also used in its societal context against women as part of their oppression.
It's as outrageous as TIMs who claim to be infertile women. It belittles the real agonies women experience.
Disclaimer : i am an infertile woman going through the peri-menopause. The time I've been most aware of being female was during my second miscarriage and I thought of Ann Boleyn and all the trillions of women who have experienced that same despair. A uniquely female experience. As is menopause. How dare men rob us of the language to describe these experiences and claim to be sharing in them.

Attempts to steer women towards performing femininity by nurturing trans women who appropriate experiences that they do not actually share with us and then default to the most absurdly regressive sexist nonsense in an attempt to prevent us from pointing that out are in themselves a form of silencing, albeit a very female socialized one. As Datun pointed out, there is a pattern here, and we're not evil for noticing it.

Women are allowed to be angry, sarcastic, and otherwise unladylike. The world won't fall off its axis if women feel free to say what they're really thinking, honest.

@AngryAttackKittens the translation of wombs is, indeed, s very disturbing development. And I say this as someone who has had masses of fertility treatment including (unsuccessfully) with donor eggs.I do have two kids one birth and one adopted and fertility journey took 12 years. So I am not unsympathetic!

I expect there might be consultation on this in the UK as there was with mitochondrial material a couple of years ago.

The only ethical position I could see is not to do it or if it is done the transplantation should only be done where doctors are already removing the womb anyway.

Sadly, once the knowledge of how to do it is successfully is known, other less scrupulous places than the UK (which is more regulated in terms of assisted conception) will climb on the band wagon.

But I hope the NHS can continue treating those who are sick, especially dire need like cancer patients and giving them the best possible chance - and not get into transplanting wombs for anyone (female or male), IMHO.

Good morning Girls, first may I thank italiangreyhound for your generous observations and kind words, they helped me a lot.
Gender dysphoria is traditionally thought to be psychiatric condition ( mental disorder) but now there is evidence that the disease may not have origins in the brain alone, studies suggest that gender dysphoria may have a biological cause associated with the development of gender identity before birth.
I was all prepared to come back on today to face a further lambasting about my masculine attitude, and was pleasantly surprised that the tone had mellowed a little.
My comment which ignited the frosty attitudes of some who commented about my symptoms echoing a menopause was innocent enough and I accept that it was nothing like what real women experience and I regret that it upset so many of you.
HRT is something I will be taking forever 2m per day with all the risks that entails risks I gladly accept.
The womb would be created so I understand by advances in gene manipulation not by stealing one from another woman, I have donated all the organs I can after my death and strongly abhor organ trafficking as the evil it is.
the only time I mentioned the word deaf was when my original apology to you all was rebuffed as insincere which it wasn’t
I did get upset at some of the references to my “ masculinity” in your replies to things I said as I was hurt by the responses, that was only natural I guess,
I can never claim to be a biological woman and accept that as fact I was not brought up as a girl nor did I have true life experiences of puberty as a female all my early learning was that if a boy , my mental state was always in a flux over the contradictions of what my body said and what my mind said..
I would like to stay on this forum but won’t if I am causing offence
Thank you all

Even the transplantation of wombs into women seems like a massive waste of medical resources and far too risky to be worth it to me. The first case that went public was a mother who donated her womb to her daughter, and that was already questionable from an is this a good use of medical resources perspective but at least from an ethical one you can see why the mother would want to do it. Introduce the potential for profit into the equation and it's horrifying.

The risks of trying it with a male recipient are substantially greater and the likelihood of success so low that you'd think it wouldn't even be considered, but my faith in the ethics of the medical profession isn't exactly at an all time high right now.

A note - it's unlikely that there are many girls on this forum. Adult human females are called "women". Many adult human females find being referred to as girls patronizing.

@Datun "Your initial responses gave you a soft landing here" I was very fearful of that. That my responses woulf not be the general one! But yours was measured and I wish you could have been the first to say it, you may have got a better reply. I think if you look back you may see your response was more measured and polite and might have De- escalated things.

That's not a blame, just am observation!

@Deadlylampshade good post.

Yeah I'm not buying it Italiangreyhound

I absolutely know that you are coming from a good place. You seem incredibly kind. Attributes to be admired.

But there is a problem if you read what has happened on this thread in isolation.

It is such a repetitive pattern, it's not funny. It happens every single time.

So much so that, before I got to the end of the thread, when I saw harvs several posts in appreciation of their soft landing, I knew exactly where it was going to go next.

It always does. There is a particular way that men and transwomen praise women. It's cookie giving.

It's not a detailed analysis of why they approve of what you're saying.

It's patting. A reward for 'good', ie sanctioned, behaviour.

It often invokes a knee jerk appreciative response. I can't tell you how many times I have seen women using kid gloves with transwomen. Far more than they would with a woman.

The sense of security leads the transwomen into saying something controversial. Always. It's never far from the surface. You just have to wait.

Because even the nicest, most benign transwomen are operating under a delusion that by its very nature requires affirmation and validation.

As soon as that is switched off, the responses are automatic.

A huge overreaction calling women aggressive, and likening us to people who have actually pulled out their hair.

And then the complaint that we are not ladylike enough. The sarky 'LADIES', attempting to undermine women based on the reinforcement of gender stereotypes. To me, it appears almost involuntary. The product of male socialisation. The go-to insult. That not only, does not insult feminists, it merely underpins what they say.

Sorry. I know you are being nice. And I applaud you for it.

I'm just analysing the thread differently to you. Based on having seen it 100 times, albeit this being fairly mild version, from both sides.

italian, you seem like a very compassionate person, but I strongly disagree that any of my actions on this thread constitute bullying.

I feel very strongly about the treatment of women's health conditions, for many reasons, and when I see transwomen throwing around these terms, I am compelled to point out that this is not OK.

Thank you for your post, harv, however I'm going to have to pick you up again on the use of "HRT". You do not take HRT. This is what women take to help ease the symptoms of menopause. I imagine that you are on some sort of hormone therapy, but not HRT. These words matter, and it's still not OK to misuse them like that. I object. I object on behalf of women everywhere who have, for hundreds of years, had men telling us how our hormones make us irrational, mad and lesser.

Can you try to understand where I'm coming from?

Sorry, my comment above was posted before I read harvs comments and Italians comment.

Please don't take it out of context in that it was not referring to those posts.

@ellaoldie I am truly sorry for the miscarriage and experiences of infertility. I kind of went through menopause during fertility treatment. Had unsuccessful treatment with donor eggs and have a birth dd and ds by adoption. Please feel free to pm me if you want to 'chat'.

I totally understand you disagreeing with me.

@AngryAttackKittens I've no desire to make women ladylike. Women can point out things all they like. I've no desire to silence anyone. I just see some things as presented in a counter productive way. And of course that too is a choice. But I do feel 48 layer sarcastic comments came as a result of the way some posters were posting. And it all muddied the water to me.

Your analysis is spot on, as ever, datun.

"It often invokes a knee jerk appreciative response. I can't tell you how many times I have seen women using kid gloves with transwomen. Far more than they would with a woman. "

See, this is the thing, I would neither give other woman that kid glove treatment nor expect them to give it to me. That specific sort of softly softly, be very careful of the person's feelings, phrase things in the most indirect way so you avoid offending them behavior pattern...it's how women are socialized to treat men. But exaggerated, because this particular group of male people have been framed as the most oppressed and vulnerable group of all. But by treating them like that and trying to make other women doing the same you're showing that you don't actually think they're women. Because women don't treat other women that way.

I know that the women doing this are mostly just trying to be nice and are acting the way they've been socialized to, but it's frustrating when you've seen the pattern a hundred times before and can already see what's coming.

It's fine for individual women to choose to coddle trans women if they want to, but if there's an expectation that other women are required to do the same then I am going to push back against that because it's not reasonable and it's not fair.

48harv

You might feel that we are deliberately picking apart your posts. But it's incredibly important.

Women are losing the language to describe their reality.

HRT is not something that men have. You're not replacing hormones that you have lost.

Just because it has the words hormones in it, doesn't mean that you can appropriate a term that is applied specifically to women.

However comforting that might be to your feelings.

It's accurate and offensive.

If you want to have a discussion about hormones and share some experiences that may or may not overlap, the compromise is you don't call it HRT, and our compromise is that we share. If you want us to.

( I don't mean specifically on this thread, just generally).

@48harv welcome back. You are not causing offence to me. please stay.

(Maybe don't call us girls, another minefield may errupt!)

• Inaccurate

I haven't hit menopause yet, but my personal "oh no you don't" issue in regards to trans women appropriating female experiences is the Paris Lees style "being sexually harassed is so validating" crap. Tell that to any girl for whom it started when she was still in primary school.

Italiangreyhound, Thank you for this. I think this makes me so angry because i've found both experiences very isolating and the only solace has been knowing that, while the people around me can't understand, millions of women around the world and going back through the centuries have shared those experiences and survived them without mental collapse. That men who have no CONCEPTION of what these experiences mean on any level: individually, politically or culturally are now claiming them as their own seems horrifying to me to the point I can barely contain myself. They want to take everything. It's unbelievable.
Maybe I'm overreacting. ...
The "Morning Girls" comment has just about finished me off..

harv I would like you to stay on the forum as I really do think it’s important both ‘sides’ speak to each other.
I find it interesting that you mention the idea that ‘gender identity’ exists before birth, I was wondering if you could expand on that?

In the spirit of transparency I want to just say why I think lots of women (ie me) get upset when this is inferred. Feminists have literally been fighting against gender identity for hundreds of years, when we infer that gender identity is innate we are saying that gender therefore gender roles are natural, that women were born to do the caring roles and be pretty and men were born to be the breadwinner and leaders. We see gender as an oppressive structure created by the patriarchy to keep everyone in their place. We abhor gender and wish to abolish it completely so men and women can be free to be individuals with personalities rather than ‘men’ and ‘women’.

It’s very difficult for me to not get prickly when I hear talk of gender identity but I must learn to listen and I’d love it if you can please put your side forward.

Thank you

@Datun I. Not sure what you mean about kid gloves. I think I try and treat everyone the same on relation to situation.

So on an anonymous forum where I don't really know people I'd be or try to be kid gloves for all.

Maybe I am a bit cautious in real life too! But I am not sure how to be otherwise!

@SophoclesTheFox it's ok to disagree with me, I rather thought you would. I was not singling you out. I felt the weight of responses and language used was ott. Plus the apology sounded sincere. It could be accepted or not. I do get where you are coming from.I honestly do.

"And then the complaint that we are not ladylike enough. The sarky 'LADIES', attempting to undermine women based on the reinforcement of gender stereotypes. To me, it appears almost involuntary. The product of male socialisation. The go-to insult. That not only, does not insult feminists, it merely underpins what they say. "

The "well you're not feminine enough and I do not approve, so there!" doesn't insult me, it embarrasses the person saying it. Or at least it should, and it makes it highly unlikely that I'll take anything they say after that seriously.