Please change my mind : trans

[lurker33]

I've been lurking in the feminist boards for a while now, watching the discussions on trans. I am generally a live and let live kind of person, as long as it's not affecting anyone else adversely. Unfortunately I am coming to the conclusion that transgenderism is not a good thing; mainly because it appears to be reinforcing gender stereotypes. Why can't we have boys that like traditionally girls things and girls that like traditionally boys things?

Recently I was at an event where there were people who were talking about their experiences in a technical, male dominated area. 5 speakers were billed, two of which were women. Oh, well done organisers of said event I thought, for providing a well balanced panel of speakers, including two women who I could hold up as role models to my 8 yo daughter who had attended with me.

On further reading it transpired that one of the women billed was actually a transwoman.

How can I hold up a transwoman as a role model for my daughter, especially one who has transitioned late in life? My daughter won't have the same opportunities that a boy growing up will have, won't have to put up with the casual sexism us women all have to deal with, and quite frankly my daughter has nothing at all in common with this speaker.

It made me quite angry, which surprised me, and it dawned on me that calling transwoman a woman is actually an insult to women. I'll get flamed for this I'm sure but I can see a similarity to blackface where it's insulting for a white person to pretend to be black as white people are opressors of black people. It's insulting for a man to say he is a woman when men are opressors of women.

I do acknowledge the transwoman's struggle to be accepted for who they are, but that struggle has nothing in common with the struggle that women go though every day. Transwomen should be free to live their lives as they see fit but please don't think they have anything in common with women other than being part of the human race.

Transwomen are transwomen and are of the male sex, women are women and are of the female sex. There is nothing wrong with excluding people from a group if they don't have any attributes of that group. If you are insulted by scientific fact then perhaps you need to think again.

I am not sure what I am asking really. My female socialisation means that I feel slightly dirty for having come to this conclusion. If there are any transphilic people out there, I am happy to have my mind changed if you provide me with some coherent arguments as to why I shouldn't feel this way.

TerfsUp how would I know if you'd even recognise one if you saw one? ON the internet no-one knows you're a potato.

How dare you mis-species me, you giraffe-phobe.

Poor FaithSeed. Can't keep h** arguments consistent.

you know you've made a clever move

Well i would agree that in many debates about all sorts of things that people THINK theyve made a clever move...

Op sees how men being called women may make current bias against women worse and therefore is biggotted? Surely simply saying we have one woman and one transwoman ( no transmen) and three men is letting live and let live. Anything else is live and let's lie.
If we didn't have bias against women then it wouldn't matter, but we do so it does.

Coherent arguments in support of transgender ideology? I’d love to see this.

Also, it’s not bigotry to refuse to submit to someone’s faith. It’s our right.

Hello ratrolypoly, I have seen some of your posts, and tbh you are one of the people that has me questioning my stance on this. Would you be able to humour me? I really am listening and learning.

Oh look, people who don't agree with me don't think my arguments hold water, I'm shocked. I'm not so stupid as to not know I can generally string an argument together - I have the pieces of paper to prove it - so whilst I don't expect anybody to agree with me I think it's quite transparent to suggest I have never made sense. Laughably so in fact.

Anyway, I'm aggro on account of the baby being sick, so you lot can have your fun without me tonight. I was simply telling the OP she can advanced search me if her mind is any way still open. I agree with a pp though, it's highly unlikely that it is.

Sorry lurker the youngest is really not well. Will you let me rain check? my tone would not be what it usually is tonight I'm afraid on account of the general stress levels.

I’d love to see a coherent argument for transgender ideology.

As you've explained, Rat, your point of view boils down to "be nice, and accommodating". Nothing more than that.

Hope they feel better soon rat

OP, Rat will tell you in a huge wall of text, TIM's are women and we should allow them in our spaces with no gate-keeping what so ever.

you won't begrudge a transwoman sitting on a panel who is simply living their life and not encroaching on yours at all, except for the fact that some of us are happy to call that person a woman.

But if you've got a DD and you're wanting to show her female role models in a male-dominated technical area, then the fact that a 'woman' on a panel is actually a male, a late transitioning TW, then this does encroach.

To take a rather obvious different example - personally, I'm absolutely delighted that Pips Bunce can be gender fluid, be gender non conforming in presentation some of the time. The encroachment comes when an award specifically for women is offered and accepted. Transwomen/gender non comforming men who don't encroach like this exist and are much more worthy of respect and full support. (If Miranda has ever accepted a woman's award, I'll eat my hat... hell, I'd eat his hat).

Cheers Rufus

Hi rat, no problem. I hope your youngest dc gets better soon.

I must have missed the part where op said she thought transwomen shouldn’t sit on panels.

I thought what she was saying is that in a male dominated industry where it is difficult for women to gain access to places on panels she felt at first excited to see an almost equal representation of sex and then let down when she discovered it was actually not so.

As you've explained, Rat, your point of view boils down to "be nice, and accommodating". Nothing more than that

This has been my understanding of Rat's posts - whilst her logic often doesn't work in the detail - for what its worth (not really very much) my impression is that Rat is quite genuine and wishes to apply a balanced liberal approach. Which is as your OP is exploring - actually doesn't pan out when its actually applied to this scenario.

When a balanced liberal approach is applied and though out - you do not get the answer of a man= a woman on a balanced panel - even though you might start of thinking thats where you should get to.

I think Rat would pass out if she meant and discussed ideology with some of the actual folk who are pushing "transrights" (which I put in quotes because I don't think they really have a whole lot to do with concerns for the rights of trans people)

you won't begrudge a transwoman sitting on a panel who is simply living their life and not encroaching on yours at all, except for the fact that some of us are happy to call that person a woman.

You could have read what the OP said were her concerns regarding representation and responded to that. Instead you took a cheap shot at the OP.

Sorry lurker the youngest is really not well. Will you let me rain check? my tone would not be what it usually is tonight I'm afraid on account of the general stress levels.

Hope nothing serious. Go give them a cuddle. Arguing on here can wait.

Errol's post gets to the nub of the particular issue that seems to have prompted lurker to start this thread.

There's a thread going elsewhere at the moment (AIBU, chat? I don't remember) started by a mum whose daughter is choosing GCSEs, and has been told by the dinosaur of an IT teacher at her school that since she'd be the only girl in the class, she should think of choosing different subjects. I'd hoped that that sort of battle (one I was all too familiar with 35 years ago at a similar age and stage) had been consigned to history, but no.

I went to an excellent talk the other week on women in male-dominated industries (given by the psychologist who coined the phrase "glass cliff"). Among other things she talked about the need both for positive role models at the top, so you can see that despite the preconceptions from popular culture, women can succeed, and also the need to avoid a workplace which delivers "death by a thousand cuts" to women's ambition (ignoring your point in meetings only to greet a man making the same point with hearty applause, suggesting you take the minutes, side-lining you onto the lower profile projects, giving the really meaty technical challenges to a man by default...)

A late transitioning transwoman is not a role model, because they have not battled their way through this "death by a thousand cuts" environment. They will undoubtedly have had their own battles, but not being taken seriously simply because they were born with a vagina is not one of them.

Own those battles unique to being trans, and I'll be an ally. Try to co-opt my struggle and I will fight back.

I would say exactly the same about an individual with AGP. Except there’s an added sexual dimension which makes it even more offensive.

AGP as a major cause for transition or cross sex identity is not accepted by the majority of those practicing transgender medicine. It was put forward and supported by one researcher, one psychologist and one transwoman.

'Sexual dimension being offensive' is an interesting concept. I wonder if when some women use very penis-shaped sex toys they could be described as fetishising a male member. Some lesbians simulate a penis using 'attachments' - I wonder if that is offensive.

How can someone have a ‘cross sex gender identity’ if their gender identity determines their sex?

It doesn't determine their starting physical sex. It determines the sex with which they identify.

Supermatch As much as I like the WHO's definition of sex and gender, the fact that they're trying to remove gender dysphoria along with distress by one's sex characteristics being a requirement for encouraging people to take powerful medications means I do not have much faith on their analysis on this. Also, the entire idea of any identity as fixed or innate for someone to have it as a 'core' doesn't really match most writings, psychiatric or otherwise, on how identities form or are sustained. Traits - like having gender dysphoria - is not the same as an identity which is a social identity to represent someone to others either applied by the individual towards others or others apply it to them.

lurker33 The difference between blackface and being transgender is that blackface was designed and rooted in demeaning black people while the concept of being transgender is rooted in treatments for those with gender dysphoria. Not everyone who is dysphoric identifies as trans and not everyone these days who calls themselves trans is dysphoric and I can certainly see the argument that certain individuals are doing womanface or manface but not simply by identifying as trans.

There are concerns with kids and young people that stereotypes are being used to push issues that are not there but in general gender dysphoria doesn't have much to do with stereotypes but in distress in how our bodies are and how they are seen. Gender dysphoria is a complicated conditions likely with many roots from a predisposition in brain develop or hormones to a trauma response (that the largest survey showed that the majority are survivors of child abuse with a horrifying 50% having survived child sex abuse specifically does raise further evidence for the hypothesis that that is one cause). In general, dysphoric people are not trying to demean or insult you, we're trying to figure out how to survive in the body and world we're in like everyone else.

It would be nice if there were more women visible to be role models, but that there isn't, isn't the trans woman's fault. Maybe you can find resources other than a panel at an event. My city has run Day of the Girl events which often have a wide range of female professional giving talks often with hands-on activities.

AGP as a major cause for transition or cross sex identity is not accepted by the majority of those practicing transgender medicine. It was put forward and supported by one researcher, one psychologist and one transwoman.

AGP is a specific form of fetishistic cross dressing. We all know that exists. And it is a red flag for other sexual boundary pushing behaviour and ultimately significantly correlated with sexual crimes.

If you don't think these people should be sheltered by the transgender umbrella, suggest you go and have a word with Stonewall?

AGP as a major cause for transition or cross sex identity is not accepted by the majority of those practicing transgender medicine. It was put forward and supported by one researcher, one psychologist and one transwoman.

And yet Stonewall's definition of the trans umbrella explicitly includes cross-dressers. Someone posted a video on another thread of a prominent transwoman delivering a lecture to HCPs in which the lecturer explicitly mentioned the fact that some people's reasons for identifying as trans might be sexual.

Which is fair enough in the privacy of your own home - like the women who like realistic dildos. Whatever, let a thousand flowers bloom, get your rocks off in private however floats your boat so long as it's all happily consensual and no-one is harmed.

But it is these people with sexual motivations who we are being asked to accept into women's prisons, rape crisis centres, homeless shelters, hospital wards - spaces with women in who have not consented to be part of someone else's sexual fantasy and sexually-motivated quest for validation. And I'm sure as hell withholding my consent from that.