I am about to ID as a man

[YesItsADebate]

In 1.5 hours, I will be identifying as a gay man who does not conform with male gender stereotypes. I expect my local leisure facility to comply with the Swim England guidelines and agree that I am entitled to access the men-only swimming sessions, the male showers and toilets and to wear swimming trunks. I also expect them to re-educate any other man who objects to any of the above.

In other words, I have a meeting with the local swimming pool at 10 to see whether or not I’ll be resorting to topless swimming and public nudity tonight in an effort to prove my point that the Swim England guidelines are ridiculous

Wish me luck!

I'm sorry, TooMany. That sounds shit for your child. I too have a child for whom I would have (misguidedly) tried to adjust the outside world, as he found the world was so unsuited to him.

BUT.

It seems to me that Swim England's change of guidelines would do nothing to ease swimming for a child who neither wants to swim barechested nor in a rash vest. Swimming costumes do tend to reveal, pretty unforgivingly, all the things anyone most dislikes about their body, and I can't imagine how much that must be amplified in a child who loathes their body enough to consider surgery.

It also seems to me that SE's guidelines are very much about 're-educating' women and girls to have no boundaries, while inconveniencing the men as little as possible.

Your child presents no increased risk to men in a changing room. Males in a female changing room do present a higher risk. That's the imbalance.

I'd like to separate people like me from the transtrenders in the eyes of the public.

I've read some of your posts on other threads @TruScum, and this is one of the biggest issues I think.

I'm wholly against self ID, I reset and reject the notion that someone can magically 'become' the opposite sex, and I am fundamentally opposed to the notion that 'transwomen are women'.

However, I have a huge amount of sympathy & compassion for anyone who is struggling to find their 'fit' wrt freedom of identity & personality expression and also for those who have gender dysphoria.
Women have it easier compared to men in that we are accepted & not derided for choosing to dress in a 'masculine' way and we do this whilst still being accepted by our own sex as women - we're just expanding the concept of 'woman', men don't have this freedom.

I am 100% supportive of, and will defend any man's right to wear whatever he wants, to love whoever he wants & to express his own individuality & personality in whatever way he wants - but not when it reduces or affects women.

The TRAs do not represent the true, real, tiny proportion of people who are like you & they are making everything 100 times more shit for you & others like you, and this makes me so angry (as well as being angry at how they are throwing women under the bus alongside you).

(I hope that makes sense!)

toomanytolist I hear you but I also hear biological girls who want, need and deserve safe sex segregated spaces. I can't and won't put your child above biological girls, it would go against everything I believe in when it comes to safeguarding.

No one wants to make your child's life made any more difficult, but few if any will throw girls under the bus for trans kids. I believe a fourth space seperate from men, woman and the disabled needs to be created to accommodate all. Sadly most TRA won't countenance that as it's not 'validating'.

toomany - you will not get any of the women here ridiculing and attacking a child. We are campaigning for single sex spaces for people who need them and unisex spaces for people like your child. I feel sorry for your child that they are not who they want to be and feel marked out by having to wear rash vests and long shorts that are not always accepted, but I have a friend who has to do this due to severe burns scarring and another who does so for religious reasons and who would not be able to swim at all if self-ID allows males into the female changing room.

I wonder if we self-ID our way into the gentleman's clubs around Westminster and washed out our moon cups in the sink we could just stop his whole self-ID thing in it's tracks?

OP, what a man! Well done you, looking forward to hearing how this turns out.

Fascinating thread.

mirialis Good question, and one that deserves further investigation.

Women have it easier compared to men in that we are accepted & not derided for choosing to dress in a 'masculine' way and we do this whilst still being accepted by our own sex as women - we're just expanding the concept of 'woman', men don't have this freedom.

I agree with this, but think it's down to two things. Firstly, women in the past fought for this freedom. When they first started wearing trousers and cutting their hair, I imagine they faced a fair amount of ridicule or disapproval. Secondly, society doesn't like women. Man-stuff is seen as good and woman-stuff is seen as bad, hence why men who actually like woman-stuff are looked down on. Because only failures could embrace the trappings of femininity. When women embrace the trappings of masculinity, it's understandable, because men are ace.

Part of the issue here is that for the person with dysphoria what they want is something that can't be accomplished by even the most diligent social engineering. If a female child wants to be perceived as a boy, and isn't happy with any of the available clothing options for swimming, that it's a thing that any guidelines can fix, because the unhappiness is with the body itself, which other people can't help noticing. They're not noticing to be cruel or hurtful, and the government/whichever organization runs the pool can't stop them from noticing. Amending rules to allow them to wear a rash guard is a reasonable thing to ask for (not a binder though, for safety reasons, and I'm appalled that the guidelines actively encourage that). Demanding that they stop other pool users from noticing that the child is female is not.

You can't control what other people think when they see your child, toomany, and neither can anyone else. Humans are good at detecting sex at a glance. It's not malicious, it's just part of how we categorize other humans.

I have a thought..
Last year I was driving home from a day at the seaside and saw a person in a pair of budgie smugglers and flip-flops. walking along a crowed street.
No if your saying your a man, but have no intentions of doing anymore than this, just what do you think the police will do if 100's of bodies with just a tiny scrap of fabric to cover their genitals decide this summer to walk around a seaside town dressed like this.
While those with Vagina's could be arrested for being topless, the ones with Penis's will be allowed to carry on, with no shirts , or their shirts un button to show nipples...

Isn't a thing the guidelines can fix, rather.

I have every sympathy for your child. I’m glad he is happier now, and I wish him all the best in negotiating his trans life.

However his personal story is entirely different and separate to the issue being addressed here.

Here we are discussing the very important issue of continued protections for women and girls. And the importance of retaining, by law, a biological definition of womanhood. That issue is non-negotiable.

Eewww, Mummmy2017. Maybe the police could kindly decide to arrest all nipple-wavers regardless of sex or gender, in the interests of a more egalitarian and less sunburnt society?

toomanytolist

I agree that life is hard for dysphoric people in situations where naked bodies, including their own, are involved. It seems sensible for businesses to provide private, single occupancy, changing areas for such people. A progressive solution would be to mandate such provision in law.

That said, your child's dysphoria is your child's dysphoria. It is not something that merits a wholesale desertion of women's rights to sex segregation in a world scarred by patriarchal MVAWG.

Your child's dysphoria does not trump the rights of all women to be safe and secure from predatory males in their safe spaces. That you think it should does not reflect well on you.

Swimming in a binder is a health hazard. I trust you have impressed this upon your child. With vigour. There is a real risk of drowning.

Or at least institute a "if wearing clothing covering less than 10% of your body you must wear sunblock" rule to prevent the local hospital from having to deal with their lobster-like weeping selves later.

So will you be swimming tonight topless or will you wait until the answer in two weeks?

Bloody typical.
We women fight to make ourselves heard, and here you are all congratulating a bloke (in a pencil skirt) for mansplaining it properly.
Tut.

You are a legend! I'd never be able to have done that alone. However I'm up for joining a group of others if it comes to it to get this message across!

“the local 'Dads and Tots' group, which meets on Saturdays and gets free bacon butties, whereas the Mums group get to make their own orange squash and pay for the biscuits?

Ugh, same here. It's like the men must be rewarded for spending time with their own children.”

Yes, that’s it exactly. Women generally don’t need that encouragement, but the men they are targeting do.

Childrens Centres have a specific list of groups they target as either vulnerable or needing engagement. Men are on it because they want to help men interact more with their children.
There is no funding for groups that are not on the list, hence the general toddler groups having biscuits and paying for their refreshments.

YesItsADebate I have just caught up on this thread and have nothing to say apart from the fact that you are a fucking legend.

toomanytolist thankyou for putting your persepective on this. This is what I hate about this whole TRA campaign: it catches innocent people like your DS, like the two managers I spoke to today, like the transwoman I know, in the crossfire. It's hopefully obvious to everyone that for someone to gain legal recognition of gender reassignment, they have to go through a process that begins with self-ID.

My point though is that the current drive is for the process to begin and end with that self-ID (except for children, who should be supported/encouraged to ID as transgender and take hormones that render them sterile) and that no one must ever be allowed to challenge that. As a society, we have sex-segregated spaces, services and roles for very good reasons, mainly to do with the dignity, safety and inclusion of women and to redress entrenched social inequalities that put them at a disadvantage compared to men. I strongly believe that these spaces, services and roles should be protected. The campaign for self-ID endangers them.

I believe that no-one should ever be ridiculed or discriminated against for not conforming with sex-based gender stereotypes. In an ideal world we wouldn't be embarrassed about bodies, gender stereotypes wouldn't exist and children and adults could wear whatever clothes, play with whichever toys and take part in social life however they wanted. Even in that ideal scenario however, there would still be a place for sex-segregated spaces, services and facilities purely because men and women have different needs. Doing away with gender wouldn't suddenly do away with these needs, e.g.

• women do not have the same physical build as men. Therefore women's clothing, such as bras and clothes to fit around women's breasts, hips and vulvas, would still be needed. See also, women's sport. Women athletes should be allowed to participate in sport, including elite sport, and compete against other women. Women should be allowed to participate in sports like rugby, boxing etc. where their physical dissimilarities to men don't put them in danger of serious injury.

• women have the reproductive systems required for childbearing. Health services must be allowed to target women in providing peri-natal care. Ditto the provision of sex-based healthcare, like family-planning services, cervical cancer screening, birth injury care, menstrual care, menopause management etc.

• women have breasts that are generally capable of producing milk. Programmes to promote and support breastfeeding should be allowed to target women on the basis of their sex.

• women generally menstruate. Sanitary protection, sanpro bins etc. would still be required in a gender-free world.

Saying that all women's services should not only be open to men but actively targetted at them, it a nonsense. To borrow from a recent article, words like 'woman' should mean things. Denying that 'woman' means 'female adult human' but includes anyone of any biological makeup, socialisation and presentation, is to rob the word of all meaning. Campaigning for the law to change to deny women's biology and lived experience of sex-based violence, discrimination and indignity is wrong. Campaigning for the law to make women who talk about this experience guilty of a hate crime is misogyny.

I feel for your son and hope that his experience is a positive one. I hope I'm not comign across as ridiculously arrogant by hoping that by highlighting the problems when gender is confused with sex, I can help move the world an infinitesimal step closer to that perfect world.

toomanytolist I appreciate you want to do what's best for your child. Are you aware that Swim England's guidelines allow TIM's to show their penis to women, but require TIFs to cover up their breasts?

Even when identifying as trans, girls and women get the short end of the stick. This is not an accident, or an oversight.

toomany
I have sympathy for your child, but I wish they had been given the opportunity to see that 'girl' and 'woman' are descriptors of bodies, and that is all. They are not identities. Nor is man or boy an identity.

The blame for children as young as yours planning to change and damage their healthy bodies lies firmly at the door of every adult who validates the idea that certain personality types are supposed to 'match' certain bodies.

Validating a false idea, to be kind, is dangerous when the conclusion will be surgery and lifelong medical dependence.

If your child believes that it is impossible to keep both their personality AND their body intact, and that one must be sacrificed to change the other, then they have been failed, because there is no combination of brain and body that is wrong.

So I feel for your child, but not because a 15 year old girl can't change with adult men and wear a binder to swim. Rather, because she's being affirmed that this is a healthy path to pursue for her life.

toomanytolist
I hear you and I hear the OP too. 💁🏻 I’m confused and I don’t really know the answer.