Why my transgender son dosent want self ID

[justanothetnamechange]

HI all, so I've been wanting to make this post for a while but I hire honest Ive been scared to but tonight I'm going for it.
I'm a regular user but have obviously name changed for this.
So I frequent this board often but have never posted before, I am very much for women's rights- as many of us are!! My world turned upside down 6 years ago when my son started having conversations with with us reguarding his gender identity, tbh to begin with I constantly shot him down, but realised that there was no harm in changing his prounouns and name if that what makes him comfortable, although this choice toke a couple years and a lot of arguments! We didn't rush into anything, at school he used disabled toilets and he didn't do PE anyway as it was extra catch up. But wasn't going to do medication at this stage- he could make this choice as an adult if that's what he wanted. He went under CAMHS. That brings us to 2018 he is know 18 years old so it's all very much his choice. He is soon to be assed for testosterone.
I don't want this post to be to much about his journey and please don't go on about how he will never be biologically a man, he knows this he is a proud trans man. This is how self ID would ruin that.
it brings another side of the argument that people might not have always thought about.
My son has gone through a lot of challenges and mile stones to be where he is today they have been emotional.
He feels self ID would take away these milestones.
He recently got his passport through saying male, to do this we had to get two doctors reports and a MH report and proth he was living as his gender. When it came through he cried, celebrated and went for a drink.
He was recently allowed to play for a male football team to do this he needed club approval, a doctors report party and proth he was going to medically transition. He needed to be present for a pane. He just played his first game it was celebrated and a good game to watch.
He works as a man and is treated as a man. But it took a lot of battles.
He is soon to apply for a GRC something he feels is the final step for social transition.
But when he tells people he is transgender he feels people accept him more when he says he's had to go through this. He feels genuine. He under stands sex segregation and respects men's boundary's. He only changes in the male changing room at football for example because they had a meeting about it and everyone said it was fine and even then he come in at the end when everyone's changed to take part in the talks etc.
He doesn't like the idea that someone could say I'm trans one day and get all the rights he's fort for. He doesn't like the idea that people who don't understand transition will come into sex segregated spaces. He doesn't like that he won't feel his long struggles will be looked on in the same way as they were before. This one may sound Selfish- He Dosent like that already stressed resources will become even more stressed as boundary's to be accepted will weaken. He wants to be accepted and knows he won't by everyone but in his opinion it happens more when he has that M in his passport and plus for his local team and when everyone can do this it's not as real. His struggles aren't as real. His battles aren't as real. His tears aren't as real. He feels even more invalidated. when he was 17 we talked about the GRC and he said how happy he'd feel when it came through and how he would have a weight lifted from his shoulders know someone wants to take away from this.
I hope this was right to post and makes sense!!
If anyone has any questions my son and me are happy to try and answer them.
I'm going to go put my hard hat on and hide in a corner just in case!

Cantgetridofthekids. I think once you get used to the reasons why women on here feel as strongly as they do about the appropriation that trans ideology seems to relish and the obvious risk to women's rights and safety that it poses you will come to appreciate the need for a rather blanket approach. There is huge misogyny out there from trans activism, often I suspect unconscious. It has to be called out. We just need to accept that. Indeed we should call it out too when we see it.

Sex has an important necessity of statement here and in the biological sense is inarguable with TS. So it is just something to accept and live with because words have power and are being used rather viciously by the trans community. There has to be a fight back.

In my long experience of living in society as a woman I find it is easy to accommodate that reality underpinning your life without it compromising who you are day to day. This is a disconnect the trans activists seem to have and never overcome.

Most of the time you are you and definitions are not as important as they are on here when fighting to right wrongs. So it is less that people do not see the differences or over focus on the similarities. It is that they need to emphasise biology when it matters.

For instance, you cannot discuss the total absurdity and horrible danger of housing a male sex offender who says he is a woman into the company of vulnerable women - not without stressing biology. There are times when that matters and we have to be OK with that.

We are sorry you don't understand what " meaningful transition" means, Langcleg. People have outlined that enough for the meaning to be clear.

It was my post, not Lang

Its a genuine question asked respectfully based on having read an article which was recommended.

I don't think 'the general population' do know at all.

No-one is obliged to answer of course.
Please dont misrepresent me Kay

Sex has an important necessity of statement here and in the biological sense is inarguable with TS. So it is just something to accept and live with because words have power and are being used rather viciously by the trans community.

Its true Lass

this was from the Times article:

"We seek to find common cause with women against male violence and we condemn the threats, harassment and intimidation of women who argue that sex-based protections are vital in a society still punctuated by sexism. Women are oppressed because of their sex, not some metaphysical gender identity. We are concerned that women are being dehumanised as “TERFs” (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) in order for abusive males to unleash misogynistic rhetoric and violent abuse with impunity.

We call for respectful discussion and debate, and for transgender rights activists to distance themselves from physical violence and attacks on free speech carried out in their name."

apologies, Times Letter!

You absolutely cant put transsexual and transgender into the same pot

Nobody is saying that there aren't discrete populations here. But if you're arguing that one group of males within the umbrella should be entitled to women's spaces, rights and protections while the others shouldn't, and - surprise, surprise - the group you think should have that entitlement includes you, you're going to find that plenty of women say no, not you either.

Do you think women's consent applies to you?

Rowantrees, I know Debbie and she is a great advocate for TS people. And certainly is TS. I am not saying that if you marry a woman and have children and transition later in life that you cannot be TS or have GD. I do not think that at all.

What I said was that if you have lived and worked up until your 50s or 60s as a man and been a husband and father for many of those years you will see and experience life differently than if you transition before you start your life (say at 19) and knowingly forego the chance to have a family (which is a huge sacrifice for a TS person - especially in days when there was no way to preserve fertility as now) and then worked from day one in society as a woman, not a man, and only ever had relationships and have married a man.

Not saying one is better or more trans. Not at all. Just that such very different life experiences over much of a life are going to have an impact on the person. And that it might explain the different desire to seem to want to settle down and live a quiet life versus being more openly active. That's all.

We are sorry you don't understand what " meaningful transition" means, Langcleg. People have outlined that enough for the meaning to be clear.

What are you talking to me for?

Women (espacially those with first-hand experience of it) recognise male-pattern abuse, coersive control etc & misogyny.
This can be seen in some males regardless of their gender-identity.

I am not saying that if you marry a woman and have children and transition later in life that you cannot be TS or have GD. I do not think that at all.

Ok and some transsexuals are activists.

I undestand of course the huge numbers of people under the Stonewall 'transgender umbrella' eg non-binary, occasional cross-dressers etc whose exprience is completely different to transsexuals.

I'm trying to understand though who might be under the 'TS umbrella' so to speak.

It seems important to do this.

Hamster00 I stepped away from the thread, briefly, and yesterday you said..

"When I was a kid, there was no Mermaids or similar. I ended up seeing a child psychologist/educational psychologist, but even if there was "a Mermaids", my mother - who was a very sensible and pragmatic woman, would have never fallen for this "new ideology". She thought I'd "grow out of it", and happily supported my GNC (probably thinking I'd grow up to be gay tbh)."

How do you think your mum could have better helped you.

Cannot speak for the authors, of course, but I would interpret meaningful transition in that statement as knowing you have a medical problem, being willing to investigate any way out of it with specialists and following various attempts at resolving it with psychoanalysis, lifestyle changes or other means, but if it is eventually decided by your specialists that the right course is full time transition physically modifying your body as best as possible then this is the course you pursue to the maximum that is determined to be appropriate on medical advice.

Versus deciding that you like to wear dresses at weekend and thinking it might be nice to be given legal rights to do that as often as you like and, without needing to consult with anyone else as this is your choice not any doctor's business how you express as often as you desire. Though not at work if that risks your high powered job.

Neither means you change sex. But are different.

One has for at least half a century been an established course of action that can successfully resolve an as yet not understood problem.

And the other is a kind of self expression that is fine to do within your own life as long as it does not impose on others but is a choice, not a defined medical necessity.

Right now the difference is defined by gatekeeping and psychoanalysis and the amount of both is being asked to be relaxed. Too far in my view. I f you remove it entirely then you potentially hurt those who need the medical support to get through this long and difficult process and you stifle research into causes and treatment methods.

And you do so to enfranchise people who have no such needs and really should be assessed differently.

Even more seriously it makes women collateral damage.

you will see and experience life differently than if you transition before you start your life (say at 19) and knowingly forego the chance to have a family (which is a huge sacrifice for a TS person - especially in days when there was no way to preserve fertility as now) and then worked from day one in society as a woman, not a man, and only ever had relationships and have married a man.

You start life at birth and from the start girls and boys have different experiences, socialisation etc.
By 19, the effects of this will be profound.

Im not sure what 'working in society as a woman' means, unless you are an adult human female who experienced childhood as a girl.

I'm trying to understand though who might be under the 'TS umbrella' so to speak.

Yes, quite. Because "TS", meaningful transition™ or otherwise, does not seem a particularly homogenous gryoup to me politically, which is the way that matters in discussions of activism around public policy.

I know some lovely TS people. I'm also observing quite a few who display clear male pattern Duluth wheel behaviour. As Materialist points out, how do I know which is which before it's too late?

Rowantrees, I know boys and girls have different socialisation and TS children have different socialisation to either too from early on. Not argued otherwise.

There is also nothing sinister in working as a woman from 19. It just means that. Having transitioned, applying for and getting a job under what for a TS will then be their permanent identity and perceived by most around them as a woman, and under terms of employment as a woman. That's all.

It is just different from working all your life as a man and changing identity late into that career.

All I have said is that (bearing in mind these things will be talking about several past decades back from now) these will bring different experiences. I was only looking at differences in expression between two types of TS not anything beyond that.

Please do not read too much into my words.

I am not seeking to prove anything in is thread. I responded initially for the OP who is facing a difficult situation and to offer words of encouragement that all could be well if they take things slowly and not jump into irrecoverable actions.

I have tried to answer the questions since posed. But this thread should really be left to be about the problems faced by the OP.

Please do not read too much into my words.

I'm reading very carefully what you're writing and trying to understand.

Suggesting that I might see something 'sinister' suggests that you're reading something that is not the case in what I am saying.

I think I understand how you have lived your life.

The discussions though are about more than individuals and so not personal.
Policies and laws have been made which affect women's rights, safeguarding, free speech etc.
Many were made without scrutiny as the Guardian article I linked previously descibes the formation and lobbying by Press For Change:

Much of their campaigning remained on the quiet. The passage of the 2004 law to give trans people legal status was "remarkable," says [Christine] Burns, because "the government was able to pass an entire act in parliament without anyone throwing a fit in the press".

Rowantrees, I was not talking personally, but generally, so as to try to answer your question about the TS who are activists.

I (perhaps wrongly) sensed that you thought that my saying working as a woman meant something appropriative of that word than it was meant to be given that you followed it by qualifying it as not possible unless you are an adult human female.

When I only meant such a person would be doing so in material terms treated as a woman irrespective of such wider definitions. Because then that is how society interacted with a transsexual.

We talk about these matters today in a very different way from how society did so years ago.

Today the debate is at the forefront (and rightly so) - and not considered in a wider debate over terminology for what was then a few isolated cases dealt with one to one as the rarity it was.

So someone getting a job as a TS woman at that point would likely explain their situation to employers but there was not the same context as today.

It would be like anyone else going for a job with some little known condition where questions asked were about impact on the job (if any) not social context or impact of wider implications. About the crudest it got in rare instances might be - do you have a penis or vagina - and the answer was one or the other not any of the qualifications of today.

I know why these are necessary now. But it was a simpler time then and things were never considered in the way they are today.

The world has changed. I understand that. But what is argued today about reasons and consequences, whilst likely true then as now, were not in the mind set of society in the same way.

This is important reading to understand how the GRA went through parliament also how the issues which are being raised now were predicted by some MPs at the time:

by @ HairyLeggdHarpy
"tweets from 2003: The Gender Recognition Bill

I'm going to tweet out a few of the illuminating comments from the debates that led to the GRA 2004, to save you all ploughing through Hansard.
One of the primary motivations (if not the foremost) for the bill was to avoid legalising same sex marriage. This featured VERY heavily in the discussions...

One of the obvious flaws in the entire process was the deliberate confuscation of sex and gender. The govt admitted that the two concepts were NOT THE SAME

Note the NO.
And then note the utter balderdash that follows. In this order:

1. Gender is not sex.
2. Govt will legally recognise gender
3. Gender should be legal sex
4. Acquired gender = legal sex
5. Something unexplained about man, woman and male and female
6. Sex = Gender

To recap, sex and gender are not the same, govt acknowledges, but we'd like to create a law that pretends they are, whilst still knowing they are not. Cool. This paved the way for what we've now seen evidence for: that 'female' people with penises can commit rape. As we now know, this happens

Tebbit anticipated it, and the Govt acknowledged this would happen.

(What is even more disturbing is that long before the EA2010 was created, the Police were recording 'female rapists' by their preferred gender identity without them having a GRC. The Met started doing this in 2009)

It's like the GRA was just a foot in the door.
The govt doubled down on every opportunity to confirm that yes, criminals could compel everyone to pretend they were the opposite sex. It's not like nobody thought this through. The Govt saw the consequences and accepted them." (continues)

goes on to discuss the impact on women's sport etc

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1049289194370002945.html

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3388967-Illuminating-Twitter-thread-about-the-origins-of-the-Gender-Recognition-Act

I am going to leave it at that. Not running away. Just do not want to take the thread in other directions as the OP might wish to return.

Sorry I cross posted with you Lass the post above wasn;t in response to your previous comment.

Do please consider what I've written and the links I've shared.

It isn't just about the current post-modern queering of gender and the likes of Philip/ Pip Bunce & Jess Bradley etc

Lang - But if you're arguing that one group of males within the umbrella should be entitled to women's spaces, rights and protections while the others shouldn't, and - surprise, surprise - the group you think should have that entitlement includes you, you're going to find that plenty of women say no, not you either.

See, that's really interesting you say that - as I was thinking the exact same thing yesterday but didn't bring it up.

I may be totally off the mark, but do you think because of the previously unspoken tacit agreements/kindnesses from women allowing "old school" transsexuals into some women's spaces (loos for example - not crisis centres obv) that some transsexuals now see it as a "right" they should have access to "everything"? Subconscious or even conscious misogynistic expectation perhaps? Perhaps a case of "now the penis is gone I've a right to go anywhere...."?

Forget laws, Acts, GRCs etc - just from a moral? (is that the right word?) or behavioural viewpoint.

I'm not being contentious (and probably not articulated the above very well) - just interested in your opinion as we seem to agree on a lot of things.

I think you know my views on women's spaces being women's spaces WHATEVER they are, and that men's (transsexual or otherwise) admittance to them be on an invitation/consent basis - if at all.

I'm just curious as this was rattling around my brain yesterday and I couldn't find an answer.

re post at 17.15, and later; langcleg and Rowantrees; I was not misrepresenting anyone, I was showing how crap my aged memory is ,and making a mistake over who posted what. Sorry to confuse.

Pity I ballsed it up, I thought the point I made would have been a reasonable enough one..... note to self; MTH

I think you know my views on women's spaces being women's spaces WHATEVER they are, and that men's (transsexual or otherwise) admittance to them be on an invitation/consent basis - if at all.

Sorry - to clarify - as that was written appaulingly.....

the "if at all" meaning - they don't by default.....

I may be totally off the mark, but do you think because of the previously unspoken tacit agreements/kindnesses from women allowing "old school" transsexuals into some women's spaces (loos for example - not crisis centres obv) that some transsexuals now see it as a "right" they should have access to "everything"? Subconscious or even conscious misogynistic expectation perhaps? Perhaps a case of "now the penis is gone I've a right to go anywhere...."?

I've seen this with some TS yes (of course no idea, nor wish to know whether they have had genital surgery). When they were challenged with women's concerns or wish to re-assert boundaries/ women's identity, the response was telling.