Trans friendly thread!

[100lbtolose]

Hi MNers!

Just first of all want to say this isn't going to be a goady thread or a place to slag anyone off of be abusive. Everyone can have an opinion and everyone's allowed to think that they like.

2nd, if your anti-trans or don't believe trans people should be alllwed to self ID or that they aren't the gender they say they are etc pls be respectful and don't post here. There are loads of threads about all kinds of discussions about being trans that you can post on and I think it would be fair if you didn't do that here. I Obviously can't prevent anyone but It would be nice for this space to be respected as trans friendly and not taken over for other reasons. If you don't agree just leave and post somewhere else instead of using this thread please!

That now said - I'm all for trans rights and I think trans men are men and transwomen are women. I don't know if many MNers feel the same but if you do say hi! Or if anyone is trans know that you have an ally in me this thread can be for a chat or support or (friendly!) discussion. Or maybe I'm the only one here lol and I can just talk to myself...

It does strike me Greensleeves that there is one side of this debate - the feminists - who manage to consistently post reasonable debate backed up with evidence, facts and examples. And the other side who post threats, abuse, emotional blackmail and dead dogma such as 'transwomen are women, nodebate'. The two sides are most certainly not intellectually matched.

titchy
Good analogy about the vegan board! Except many vegans wouldn’t be so polite.

So I’m anti trans if I don’t believe in self id...except that I’m not anti trans , know some lovely trans people but I still don’t believe in self I’d . So where does that leave me in your ideology

Do you regularly post in FWR? If not why are you trying to colonise space in it?

FFS. Starting a thread isn't "trying to colonise space". Anyone on MN is entitled to start a thread wherever they like. There are some ridiculous responses on here.

Hairy how would they know who anyone is? I can't see anyone bothering what anonymous MN posters think . . .unless it's to be heartened that there is an area of the internet where these issues can be discussed without intimidation, name-calling, doxing and threats of violence.

When I was raped I went to a blue sky centre.

The two women who were there may have saved my life, I was suicidal and injured.

If I had walked into that room and there was a man pulling on rubber gloves to give me my colonoscopy and gather evidence...I would have walked right back out. And in that dark place I was in, I would have probably jumped off that bridge I's eyed up on the way there.

Op, please explain to me, exactly why worrying about this happening to another woman makes me 'transphobic'?

The only hatred I've see in real life is the hatred some transwomen show towards women. It's frightening, frankly.

YY. OP is either very goady or very naive.

patrickharviesorganicmuesli, the more I read the more glaringly obvious that mismatch is, and it worries me, because the people who really need to be convinced aren't the pre-existing feminist academics. Teenagers in particular are flocking in droves to the simpler, louder message and not hearing the counter-arguments at all.

Many trans people report a very high level of self harm and depression. I am concerned that self id takes away the support of the medical process and will leave many trans people vulnerable.

This is one of the concerns of trans people I've spoken to.

It's true, OP, many traditional transsexuals oppose self-id and are very concerned about the actions of TRAs. If you say that to be protrans you have support daft ideas like self-id then you are, in effect, anti many trans people.

I do support trans people, so much so that I self ID as a transwoman. My life experience of having babies and shit may not be identical to theirs, but I like painting my nails. Biology is irrelevant anyway, so what's the problem?

It should be ok for there to be one totally trans friendly thread right?
Contributors to this board are not trans unfriendly transphobic or whatever else you want to call it.
If you read the threads properly you would see that. But I suspect you dont want to.

Now can you explain to me why when men are the main source of violence against women, children, trans women and transmen - why so many trans activists spend their time campaigning against biological women rather than against male violence?

Isn’t this because they’re a) jealous of women, b) not afraid of women and c) perhaps because a certain proportion of TRA’s are actually MRA’s, who hate women that much they’ve found the best form of attack is to infiltrate, divide and conquer?

'Anti-trans'. Oh do go away. Nobody here is expressing anti-trans views. In fact, from everything I have EVER seen, women have been nothing but supportive of the trans community - past and present. What women are objecting to is their erasure by the PPB (Penis Privellage Brigade).

It's not 'TERF' war, it's 'TURF' war in my eyes. I will happily fight right alongside the trans community to ensure they have protected places, spaces, rights and opportunities, the same way I would for ANY minority group. BUT NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF WOMEN'S. Women have fought so goddamn hard over the years to battle against near-constant repression. It is not anti-trans to want to protect the precious few measures in place safeguarding us and granting us equal opportunity.

I don't care if you wake up tomorrow, declare yourself a unicorn and want to be known as 'Sparkles'. Live and let live. Be whoever you want to be. Nothing but support here! But the simple fact is: a transwoman is NOT a woman, and a transman is NOT a man. Why? Biology. Simple as that. Denying or arguing that doesn't make you 'progressive', it makes you a moron. It's like being told the world is flat when we KNOW it's round. It's fucking absurd 🙄

If you disagree with me selfIDing as a transwoman, are you unaware of how many transwomen kill themselves because of such bigotry, or of how many transwomen are murdered for their trans-ness? Perhaps you should check your privilege...?

Disagreeing with me is literally murder. Probably genocide, in fact.

I don't get it...I mean how can people so convinced that transwomen actually can be real women, not be able to tell us what a woman actually is?

They don't really believe they are women - no one does. What people mean when they repeat the 'transwomen are women' mantra is that men have the right to claim ownership of womanhood. Because everything that women have rightfully belongs to men.

The same principle is at work in the slur 'TERF'. They root of people's disgust with 'TERFs' lies in the word 'exclusionary'. Women are not supposed to exclude men from anything, and those who do are monstrous, unnatural. Back in the 70s and 80s, the slur for feminists who were deemed to be unnaturally 'excluding' men was 'man-hating lesbian'. Whether the woman in question was actually a lesbian didn't matter - its use as a pejorative was integral to the slur, because lesbianism is by definition exclusionary of men.

Both 'TERF' and 'transwomen are women' spring from the belief that women should not be permitted to have any boundaries. Most often this is an unconscious belief of course - its cultural roots are very ancient.

Witch
Suffragette
Lesbian
TERF

FFS. Starting a thread isn't "trying to colonise space".

It's goady. She specifically wants there to be a "pro trans thread" in FWR because she knows that opinion is not popular here. But as someone else said, there are no safe spaces here. This isn't Everyday Feminism.

It reminds me a lot of the really horrendous backlash against gay people when it was really bad a couple of decades ago- a lot of the same rhetoric going on.

hummusscot, I keep hearing this said, but I don't recognise it - and I came out 35 years ago. I'm honestly struggling to think of what rhetoric you would mean - can you give some examples?

FTR, for pretty much three decades of my out lesbian life, I thought of trans people as allies. NOT as part of the same struggle, but as friends alongside. After all, we often shared social spaces and some of my friends transitioned. I didn't, truth be told, think that transwomen were 'real' women - but nobody ever asked me to, I was polite and so the subject wasn't discussed. I was intensely comfortable socialising with trans people, and would definitely have considered myself 'pro-trans'.

What happened? Did I suddenly become a bigot? Or was it actually that the trans movement changed, and started demanding that I deny my reality, my feminist analysis, and my understanding of my own lesbian existence?

I still hope that one day we will move on beyond this impasse, as fundamentally I don't think trans women and feminists are oppositional categories. And I remember other times when the movement felt split right down the middle - the feminist sex wars, those few years when the debate about Zionism was so intense that coming out as Jewish in a feminist space was much scarier than coming out as lesbian.

I accept that, to move on, both sides will need to accommodate a bit. Men will start living as women and women will have to budge up (I'm not saying this is ok with me, but it will probably happen). Trans people will have to stop trying to define everyone else's reality and the activists will need to back the fuck away from children.

But it isn't tenable to expect everyone to become flat earthers - most people only go along with gender essentialism because they know very few trans people and so can afford to be polite occasionally; that is very different from transforming how societies throughout history have viewed biological sex and trans activists are being beyond daft in how they are taking that on.

I have worked with women and children for over 23 years. Over 10% of my yearly salary is pledged to support women and children as well as weeks to months of my time and even sometimes my own home and you know what?
I support trans people too!
I support their right to healthcare, to not be attacked or marginalised, I support their right to exist, their right to happy lives free from discrimination.
Do you know what I don't support?
Self ID.
The erosion of women's rights.

I consider myself somewhat of a professional.
I have driven women to hospitals and hand held countless times as they've had rape kits done.
I've driven a woman 140 miles to safety with 3 police cars following me because her husband was trying to chase us down despite a court order and current arrest warrant.
I've taken girls as young as 13 to safety (with the support of other agencies and law enforcement) when they are being beaten and abused.

I have worked with women from upper class housewives with 4 house keepers to working class girls with nothing, prostitutes and addicts. Under 16 victims of incestual rape. I've seen A LOT

A man threatened to kill me and my son when I got his wife away from his abuse. I did it well enough that he couldn't find her. I didn't have the same courtesy for myself, but I'll throw myself into the firing line for ANY woman in ANY part of the world (thus far I've worked in Mexico, the USA, the UK and australia. I'm also planning to assist another woman's escape from the Middle East this year).

Because I believe abusers need to be stopped.

Don't give me a pat on the back but I will laugh at anyone who calls me any less than a huge supporter of women. I've gone through so much personally, financially and emotionally to help so many girls and women. I believe that my experience allows me to be an expert on many angles with regards to the oppression, marginalisation and abuse of women and girls.

If anybody cares about what I can see here. Here it is.

I see "trans people" normally biologically male, who may or may not be trans, fetishists or trend jumpers, threatening to rape, maim, kill or beat women for disagreeing with their ideology.

I also see them screaming for justice when they are denied access to everything from breastfeeding areas, cervical smears to the changing room in a store.

My experience also allows me to foresee.
Women will be frightened to receive medical care because they will no longer be able to stipulate the sex of their doctor. Well, they will, but their for all intents and purposes female doctors will actually be male. If they say "you're not a woman, get me a female doctor" they could be facing charges.

I see abusers further restricting the movements of their victims because they will no longer be able to go to a female only gym that their abuser "permits" (which may actually be a library for internet access while they gather documents and info for their escape)

I see womens only sports teams becoming "trans" sports teams holding mainly or all male members, further marginalising what is already stigmatised ("women don't play rugby!" Isn't uncommon to hear yet, unfortunately).

I see women more in danger of cat calling, random sexual harrassment and more "she asked for it" "look at that mini skirt, shes asking for it" based rape culture when trans women come forward and go "oh I love it when a man treats me like a piece of meat" seriously. That's a quote. I'll link if you don't believe me.

I see breastfeeding rates dropping when women realizing that random blokes with a formula fed baby can call themselves a woman and sit in a feeding room to get their kicks.

I see men gleeful that they now have an excuse to try to force themselves on lesbian women, because if they don't accept it it's transphobic init.

I see men who would love to control women who will get off on the fact that they are embarrassing, hurting, upsetting and scaring women and these women can do nothing without facing the weight of the law.

I see gender critical women (transsexual ones no less) being beaten in the street for attending conferences. Then trans people egging it on and cheering it on on social media

I see so many things but the scariest thing of all, the lack of debate.

Much like your post OP.
"No debate".

I'm having flashbacks to the last time women weren't allowed to say no.... seems it's all coming full circle. I remember the change of law in the early 1990's to allow marital rape to be a crime. It was my first push into doing what I do and I have sacrificed lots in my life for it.

If you live your life in peace, I don't want to hurt you. I don't hate you, I'll fight for your liberation, I'll fight for your rights, I'll fight for your spaces, I'll vote for the parties who promise the same.

If you want to take my rights or enable others to do so, to marginalise women and oppress them under full weight of the law. I won't shut up, I won't go away, I won't die or "set myself on fire" as I've been told to do by many. I won't allow a man, even one wearing a dress, to make me sit down.

Tell me what is hateful or transphobic about my post and I'll ask MNHQ to delete it.

I think the transgender movement has sweet FA to do with real feminism and I'd very much appreciate an explanation of why it does without any thought terminating cliches like "trans women are women".

I'm really pro trans.

I'm hoping to get my daughter a double mastectomy at 16... like my idol Susie Green I'm going to flout UK law and find someone who will do the surgery on a child.

Likewise we're hoping that our boys get castrated,.

DH believes in trans rights so much, as she is now DW, that she's taken a massive £40,000 pay cut to be in line with other women at her level in the company. She also picks up all the free labour jobs that I used to do. I spend most of my time holding on to the remote and watching copious amounts of porn, because I am woke.

I'll be friendly to trans people - as long as they don't mean that my daughters don't miss out on opportunities designated for women only, and you don't expect me to deny basic biology and pretend that they are women.

swerfyterfy what a post.

You say that everyone can have an opinion Let me tell you a lot of transactivists don’t agree with you. I was under formal investigation at my job for having an opinion about the potential problems of the proposed changes to the GRA. I was fixed - activists wanted me sacked.

So you’re either goady or naive. If it’s the latter please be careful. Some activists aren’t particularly fluffy and from their speeches and actions some appear to dislike and resent women as a class.

Not fixed - doxxed