Hello,
Posting with some trepidation and appreciate this is a very contentious/divisive issue and that the MN feminist forum has come under some fire about this recently. But here goes, I've found myself increasingly torn recently when it comes to the issue of transgender rights. In a nutshell, I'm a fairly liberal type and on the whole if there is a debate I'm on the side of the marginalised group so my instinct has always been to support transgender rights. However, some of the stuff I've read recently has raised alarm bells, particularly in the context of women's sport and the treatment of transgender children and young people.
The latter is more personal to me so I'll tackle that one specifically. I have a DD who is non-gender-conforming in that she has always refused dresses from a very young age, worn 'boys' clothes, will only have short hair, has mannerisms/habits/interests that are more typically associated with boys than girls. She will be 9 in February. She has never, however, suggested that she feels like a boy. I'm immensely proud of her and the fact that she doesn't, yet, feel the need to conform to anything. Some of the discussion around gender makes me anxious that we as a society find it increasingly difficult to accept women or men who don't want to act or dress the way that we feel they should i.e. 'if you are interested in boy stuff you must have been assigned the wrong gender at birth, this is a medical issue and there is something that can be done about it'. Clearly I'm over-simplifying a bit but that does seem to be an underlying assumption in some of what I've read. As a separate issue, I do also have concerns about the threat to single sex safe spaces. And I suppose I mean specifically spaces that have, until now, been female spaces.
But, (and it is a big but), I freely admit to being very ill-informed about all this and I don't want to jump on any bandwagon without having done some proper research. So, although I'm not starting from an entirely neutral position, I am open to changing my mind and I'm looking for some good, clear, objective resources if such things exist. I guess many would say that this is not the place to come for objective resources but I do trust you lot to signpost and then let me make up my own mind.
In particular I'm interested in the following:
- the percentage of transgender people who were born as men and now identify as women by comparison with those who were born as women and now identify as men.
- the difference between having gender dysphoria and being transgender (and how much of an overlap there is)
- the percentage of children and young people who have temporary gender dysphoria i.e. they have a period of time identifying as a gender that is not their birth gender but then revert to their birth gender as adults
Then, specifically, on transgender women in sports, what are the guidelines:
- do you have to have had gender realignment surgery in order to compete as a woman (if you were born a man) or vice versa?
- do you have to have lived as a woman (if you were born a man) or vice versa for a specific period of time in order to compete in that gender group? And if so, what is the period of time?
- If someone has transitioned to being a woman with surgery, hormone therapy, lived as a woman for years etc how big, really, is the competitive advantage (bearing in mind the fact that athletes born as women come in all shapes and sizes and with bodies that are more or less suited to athletic activity etc)?
I've googled the above obviously but there is a hell of a lot out there and I thought someone more up on this would probably be able to direct me, faster, to accurate information.
Thanks in advance for your input