Where are all the trans men? An Answer.

[1955stephen]

Someone asked: I have also wondered where the trans men are in all this!

So decided to do a little of record ethnographic research and talked to a few of my 'trans men' mates about this, over my orange and soda, and their beer or two. I asked whether they would consider to contributing to an online debate., like the one on Mumsnet.
All said they really limit their online stuff to what is absolutely necessary for family and friend's purposes i.e. a bit of facebook and that's that. Though many said they used Whatsapp to talk with family quite a lot.
It seems some go onto computers when at work, but most don't even do that - they are very hands on people; a doctor, a ceo, a dentist, a teacher, a manager of a day centre, a physio, a occupational therapist, a firemen, a stable owner, a policeman.
They only go online when real life obliges them to do so - such as talking to their mum.
They said they go on to buy absolutely essential items; a sprogget needed to fix a toilet flush, bracket to fix the kid's bunk beds, or when told to change the milk order cos their partner was going to bed.
Two said they went online to get a new book on their kindle, or to find a film for their partner, their kids, their mother etc.
Most said they don't want the hassle of participating in online talking. As another put it: "by the time the evening has arrived, I have run out of words. I simply cannot carry on talking, and typing means saying the words in my head". (I understand that feeling) .
Another said "going on the computer is just too much when all I want to do is stop, eat, wash and go to sleep."
Another said "ask me to come round, and choose between 1. digging your garden, 2. print and pack 2000 newsletters, or 3. type words, I'll chose them in exactly that order: 1, 2 then 3".
And another said; "as a journalist I am online a lot - watching, but I limit my participation to when I have something worthwhile and different to say. That's not often".
It seems, therefore, from my small selection of consulted trans men, that most trans men limit computer use to work. And we just don't want to do it after that.
I understand because that is how I feel, and have no urge to change that.
There will be some who participate online (as I do to a limited extent), but if people don't want to, they don't have to - and they are probably mentally healthier for not doing so.
Has anyone counted up men's and women's use of talking chambers on the internet? I wonder what hormones have to do with it..

No, Pratchet I just reverted to a conciliatory position, socialisation methinks. I love being called out on it.

1955stephen - that guidance has absolutely nothing to do with the question I asked you. Which was specifically about the Guide policy for mixed sex overnight accommodation on Guide residential trips. That document is generally nice and good and lovely and all that jazz. But it doesn't deal with the question I asked you in any way. I don't mind if you don't want to answer it - that's your prerogative - but it seems pointless to respond with something entirely off topic.

(By sex, I do not mean the social constructionist definition, as you can probably guess, but y'know - if I ask for clarity from you, I should give it myself!)

Just read it lang

I wondered what i was missing

OMG Stephen for an educated man you really are a bit thick aren't you?

Guides have probably had sexual experimentation between them on residentials forever. But this could not result in pregnancy. Now it can. Leaders guidelines on how to deal with pregnant guides are not the issue. Putting guides in a position where they could become pregnant is.

I am not as well-informed or eloquent as most of the posters on your thread here but ffs even I can grasp that one.

Honestly? Back in the 1950s, pregnant teen girls wept and said but they said I couldn't get pregnant if we did it standing up!

In 2018, they'll be weeping and saying but they said I couldn't get pregnant if they identified as a lesbian!

How there is a single soul in this country who cannot see the issue here completely baffles me.

They see it, Lang. They have said repeatedly that women and girls are collateral damage that is a small price they are willing for us to pay.

Can I just say, the most reassuring thing about this thread is knowing how worried transactivists are when Stephen Whittle feels the need to come on Mumsnet and make some sort of a show. That's a major sign of progress.

I am delighted to see @1955stephen and @jayceedove engaging in this thread. I am listening carefully to them. Whether you agree with them or not, their knowledge and experience is enormous.

Deebbie I've seen jayceedove a lot on here and have a lot of respect for her and what she says. She is often a haven of sanity in what is becoming an increasingly insane debacle.

I'm kind of conflicted now though, because she's a sensible empathetic poster and obviously has a lot of time and respect for Stephen.

But me? Not so much. I've yet to see him answer a direct question on this thread. Instead I see lots of psychobabble and legal waffle that skirts around the issues and the facts.

Like I said earlier I am not as eloquent as many of you, or as involved. But even I can see that Stephen, while not quite the enemy, is not a friend of women here.

When they consistently answer the question you did not ask instead of the question you did ask it is a red warning flag.
I am glad that others speak up to say they notice the behavior.

I've only just come across this thread, and just wanted to say thank you to everyone's contributions - lots of very well articulated points made, with what appears to be evasive responses, particularly on the GGUK topic. And I especially want to thank @AgnesBadenPowell for her posts too. My 12 yr old DD deserves to know why she cannot expect single sex facilities as a minimum on her next camping trip & you have broken down the issues that I'm concerned about as a parent. It would be helpful if Stephen could address your points.

Blimey. This thread is extraordinary. I follow this debate mainly on twitter, where Mumsnetters are routinely dismissed as women who don't know their place and are of course rather irrelevant due to their mothering and cleaning stuff status and not being under 30 [mostly]. I respect the rights of trans people to live their lives as they wish, and to be free from abuse and harm. But this fairly recent surge of misogyny and anti-intellectualism that is now being championed by not only hard line MRA TRA activists but by so many brocialists as well as Pink News etc, is truly chilling. Stephen's paternalistic tone is pretty unmissable, though I'd like to believe his intentions are well-meaning.
But gender isn't real? Stephen can you confirm that is what you actually mean? You have volunteered that you don't really know what you are, but that living as a man saved your mental health. Is it at all possible that this is because of society's gender expectations, and that if society was more progressive, ie, did not judge or punish women who want to present in a very masculine way, and did not judge or punish men who want to present in a very feminine way, then you would perhaps have had a different option available to you?

I have a huge concern that people who are taking hormones early and being encouraged to transition surgically early, are giving up their chances of ever having biological children, amongst other concerns regarding the sex-based oppression of women.

Lily Madigan recently tweeted that she finds black women uncomfortable to share private spaces with, and fears them, even though she knows these fears to be irrational, in an attempt to compare this with natal women's fear of transwomen in private spaces. Any natal woman that held any public office would have immediately lost their position had they stated such comments publicly. Does Dawn Butler know about these comments?

why we believe the fears are almost certainly unwarranted.

And just wanted to pick up on the above point too - I've not yet read anything that supports the above, so I'm interested in what lies behind that belief i.e. women's concerns are unwarranted.

I'm very new to all this transgender theory, but it's not hard to see that SW clearly has a vested interest in replacing sex with gender.

If many of are saying 'transwomen are not women', then we are also saying 'transmen are not men'...and maybe there lies the lifelong motivation for SW's theories.

Self-interest. To be a 'real' man.

Disgusted from (not) Tunbridge Wells

BettyGilpin, the forced teaming with Black women is the latest effort by transgender advocates to claim that transgender identified males are a subset of women instead of a subset of males. It started last year at the women's march when they thought the "pink pussy hats" were supposed to represent our vaginas and so declared them racist and transphobic. The forced teaming has been rejected by Black women to no avail.

Oh Stephen, don’t go all disingenuous on us. Half of us are girl guide leaders working with teenage girls, and regularly deal with their burgeoning interest and problems with sex, relationships, and the social coercion and peer pressure linked to being female in 2018. I am seriously ticked that you referred to policy guidance related to general programming circumstance, and refused to engage with the very real situation at hand. As leaders, our organization is telling us that we should accept male bodied teenagers into our units, assign them shared tents with female bodied teens, and not mention this to parents.
You are ignoring the safeguarding issues with this. What is the point of having sex-based exemptions when organizations are too scared to implement them?
Do you agree that this fear has largely come about by lobbying by such eminent transpeople as yourself?
Notwithstanding your utter lack of grasp of the sex between teens issue, I would also like to hear your thoughts on how I, as a leader who is committed to enabling female bodied people to reach their true potential, and destroy as many gender-based socially constructed barriers as possible, can possibly do so when I am expected to balance that aim with not offending the male bodied teenage elephant in the room, who thinks he is a girl because he doesn’t conform to male stereotypes?
We are doing girls and young women a disservice.
As a former Queen’s Guide who was at that point grateful for the sex segregation the organization provided, please know that gender non-confirming girls such as yourself are now being lined up to be managed out. As a teenage guide I was known as George. I then spent many years in the military. I am a WOMAN.
For the love of Pete, at least have the grace to engage with the criticism of the actual 21st century difficulties that are removing sex-based protections for women and girls.
How can YOU help us to right this horrible mess so that both female bodied people and trans people are not pitted against each other, with women, as ever, coming last?

yes I noticed that thebewilderness. As well as some TRAs comparing trans people's oppression with the that of poc's. As much as I sympathise with anyone's feelings of being treated unfairly or badly, to appropriate poc's history of genocide and slavery is....quite shocking.

But what LM said is quite obviously and explicitly racist. I don't understand how LM is still in her post. I don't agree with the pile on of abuse she has been getting since she came into the public eye, but explicit racism has to be addressed, surely.

So Stephen. How's about you answer the actual questions posed?

Well, this was a long read. Interesting, but long and left me feeling unsatified.

There was a lot of promise at the beginning, but to me at least it is clear that there was no genuine desire to engage and listen.

I was happy though to see that SW agreed that womens refuges should most definitely be same sex. I wonder if you’d agree that includes the staff working there? I have received horrendous abuse online from TRAs whenever I have spoken about the needs of women and children using refuges. I have had several TRAs telling me that a TWs desire to work in a womens refuge trumps the needs of the women and children. I have had people ridiculing the trauma of children and their need to be in a male free environment. A favourite question posed by TRAs is whether my child (7 at the time when we arrived) would inspect everyone’s trousers to check the genetalia of everyone and reminding me that my child was traumatised by a man, not a transwoman so there should be no issue at all.

So I was heartened by SW’s statement that refuges should be one sex based.

Then I had a look on Twitter hoping to see balanced posting. No honestly, don’t bother. Expressing disappointment that Linda Bellos attended a meeting with Dawn Butler. A meeting that lasted about an hour by the way. The only meeting Dawn has had with GC women whilst being very much involved with regular LBGT focus groups. One meeting with concerned women needed to be called out.

The reference to “square Cis people”who prefer same sex toilets.

Retweeting dismissive and inflammatory posts about Transgender Trends school guidance (I don’t think he read it)

And then I gave up.

As others have said, this is not a post done with any real intention of engaging. It’s a show piece, a bit of an opportunity to show off whilst subtlety (or not) minimising concerns, ignoring what is happening already in this world of self ID.

A man can walk up to a changing room in many shops and leisure facilities, say he’s a woman and gain entry. I do not get the sense that SW has any issue with that, none whatsoever.

To all the amazing people who have worked hard on this post, you’re brilliant. It’s a shame you have not been shown the same courtesy by SW

LGBT of course

Scientology, a quasi-science, that shows you can fool some people some of the time.
Transgenderism, a quasi-science, that shows you can fool some of the people some of the time.
The scales have truly fallen off my eyes after reading this thread, so thank you, SW. The time for polite pretence is over.
Someone mentioned grooming yesterday…and it all makes sense. SW & co have been grooming the public for at least the last forty years, not with booze and drugs, but with stealth and weasel words.
If you don’t buy in to the transgender cause, you’re bigoted, transphobic, uneducated, not inclusive, not outward looking, not (and I loathe this word) ‘progressive’.
Does that sound familiar? It’s the Brexit debate, all over again. Swap racist for transphobic, and you’ve exactly the same tactics. Well, I didn’t fall for it then, SW, and I’m not falling for it now.
Ask the average person in the street to define a man or a woman and they’ll come up with something akin to the biological models. I bet it’s more than a 52:48 split. Are the majority all wrong there too? Bar a very small number, the world is made up of men and women, girls and boys; effeminate men and butch women, feminine women and butch males with all shades in between.
And as with religious matters, I don’t give a toss how anyone lives their lives as long as it doesn’t impinge on me and my family. Bearded man in a dress? Fine. Woman sporting a hormone-induced beard? Fine.
But let’s stop pretending. The proposals SW and friends are now advocating may well impinge on me and my family now, and I’m calling you out for what you are.

@jammersminde

"I was happy though to see that SW agreed that womens refuges should most definitely be same sex."

The problem is SW's definition of sex. He doesn't believe it has anything to do with your genitals or chromosomes. In SW's reality, gender = sex. In SW's reality (rapidly becoming the reality in western liberal democracies like ours ) what exists in the human mind trumps what is "objective, external, existing in it's own right". In SW's reality, you must repeat the mantra

"transwomen are women"

2+2=5 will no doubt be around the corner

Thank you mumsnet for allowing these discussions to continue. I cannot believe what I am learning. As another poster said up thread, it is chilling.

I find the academic psychobabble presented in support of transgenderism on this thread far more chilling that any derogatory Twitter threats from some clearly confused and troubled souls.