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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Original poster

Jeremy Vine talking to transwoman

37 replies

CuriousaboutSamphire · 08/02/2019 13:16

He said "No, I was born a girl"

That has started me thinking. Don't want to give the kneejerk reaction, so I am listening. I know males are male and females are female, but that doesn't preclude me for being accepting of each trans individual and their issues and problems.

He is of an age where he would have been locked up (presumably 'for his own good') had he come out, back in his youth (1980s). So, like many gay men did, he got married, played the normal game.

Not sure he is being anything other than a bit self centred so far - which you would be if you had suppressed any part of your personality for that long...

OP posts:
Original poster
CuriousaboutSamphire · 08/02/2019 13:25

The problem is people close to you don't get it, they are embarrased by you (I'd say bloody furious if I was his wife)... they don't understand the journey.

Wife and daughter have been negative... he left them as his existence had been so supressed he would have died had he stayed. So he left to live his new, reborn, blessed life.

See, nothing wrong with any of that! His choice, their choice, sad, probably traumatic, but choices. He - sorry Ann - wears 'traditional womens clothes' JV thinks he might say 'transvestite' but Ann explains the spectrum, still sounds reasonable, even when explaining Stonewall's definition!

GP had no help to offer "What do you want me to so about it?" he went back and asked for a referral to GRC for more support. He was shocked to have to wait for 2 1/2 years for his first appointment, so he went private.

I hope he continues being so 'ordinary' cos I suspect, if he does, many TRAs will hate him/her for having a national platform. Song break...

OP posts:
Original poster
CuriousaboutSamphire · 08/02/2019 13:30

Oh I gfive in! Nikki looks better as a woman... beautiful brave lady who was my husband I'm lucky she is alive, from a wife caller has made me snap!

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Bittermints · 08/02/2019 13:31

I was a young adult in the 1980s. The big mental hospitals were being shut down and the Tories were introducing the idea of 'care' in the community as a replacement, which of course was very badly funded and has left a lot of people with minimal care. The relevance to this case is that someone going to a GP back then and saying 'I am [male/female] but I feel a lot happier if I dress like a [female/male], what's wrong with me?' or similar, would be highly unlikely to have been sectioned. Far more likely that the GP would either have fobbed the patient off or perhaps arranged a referral to a psychiatrist.

Original poster
CuriousaboutSamphire · 08/02/2019 13:35

So none have had any surgery, only Ann has taken hormones. They all wear 'women's clothes'.

And?? It ended... what? What was that supposed to be? WHat was the point of that?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

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turnaroundbrighteyes · 08/02/2019 13:38

Agree with Bittermints about the 80's...

walkingtheplank · 08/02/2019 13:39

I'm afraid I turned off pretty soon after he said he was born a girl. Sounds like a fondness of dresses = being born a girl. He's just a transvestite. By his reckoning, my son who dressed up in princess outfits occasionally must be a girl too.

Original poster
CuriousaboutSamphire · 08/02/2019 13:40

I was thinking about it as it went on. It did strike me as he was conflating the 80s with the 50s. But he clearly said "It was a time when anyone 'coming out' [as trans] would have been locked up"

Another Pity Me lie that is utterly unecessary and only serves to undermine any point he was trying to make.

Not that I think there was one.. it just sort of limped to a close!

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TransposersArePosers · 08/02/2019 13:46

JV was fawning over the guest and callers, I was shouting at the radio. So frustrating!

I would still like to know what 'living as a woman' means

Original poster
CuriousaboutSamphire · 08/02/2019 13:50

Ach! I can at least say I tried. I listened!

But it was just a weird, limp, waste of air time!

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VickyEadie · 08/02/2019 13:54

This person thinks nobody came out as trans in or before the 80s? That'll be shocking news to all the people who DID, then.

FFS!

Mrskeats · 08/02/2019 13:57

I cannot stand JV. He never challenges anyone on anything. Born a girl. What rubbish.

steppemum · 08/02/2019 14:05

I was at school in 1980s.

Bloody rubbish about being locked up. There was TV programmes and articles even then.
There was a really well know book by a fab lady whose names escapes me - journalist - Jan Morris I think. She transitioned (m to f). She has said loads of very sensible and wise things in the current debate too. I have a lot of time for her.

So, no, no-one would have been locked up, that is just scare mongering

Original poster
CuriousaboutSamphire · 08/02/2019 14:33

And Fay Presto, trans magician

Julia Grant, died a couple of weeks ago! Documentary in the 70s, all about her transition.

So yes, just another pointless lie!

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MenstruatorExtraordinaire · 08/02/2019 14:39

JV comes across as a simmering idiot. What a waste of time that was.

QualitySoHigh · 08/02/2019 14:40

Men wore makeup and had long hair in the 1980s. These trans people know that. Rewriting history may work with the young, gaslighting people old enough to remember just peaks even more people.

lassupthebrew · 08/02/2019 14:50

I do not post much here lately, but do still read.

I can confirm you would not be locked up in the 1980s. I was a decade post GRS by then and so were at least 300 others via the clinic I attended. So the NHS protocol was quite well established. It was not walk in and say 'I am a lady so take these pills and go - but it was proportionate and fair.

I first saw a doctor in the 60s. True nobody understood then or had defined a protocol (the only UK clinic was created in the late 60s and remained the only one for many years). But that was the right thing to do when you were a child. Today's speedway to transition and hope they are doing the right thing is dangerously reckless by comparison with the supposedly bad old days.

Also true (in the 70s at least - not sure by the 80s) you did have a few weeks as an in patient in a psychiatric unit so they could thoroughly assess you. Before forwarded to the only clinic let alone given medication.

But you were not locked up and free to leave any time. Those who really had what they now call dysphoria stayed because they wanted help to find a way out of a crippling condition.

Those who did not really need that help walked and were deterred - and I suspect rightly. That was the majority from what I saw.

In my view this process where proof of medical need and willingness to do whatever it took to be assessed and helped was far superior to the do as they say or its a crime approach we have now.

So even if the 80s was more like the 70s than now if you were actually transsexual you would have done what it took. And if you thought it was too imposing or hard then you were almost certainly not transsexual in the first place - just one of the many varieties of transgender people that seem to be emerging today now what was once good practice is ridiculously seen as repressive transphobia.

FloatingthroughSpace · 08/02/2019 14:52

There was also a very famous model who was trans, back in the 70s I think she advertised vodka...Caroline Coffey?

MillytantForceit · 08/02/2019 14:56

I'm sure Marylin, Pete Burns and Boy George were all locked up in the 80s.

I have got that right, haven't I?

lassupthebrew · 08/02/2019 14:57

Most transsexuals in the 70s/80s/90s just got on with their lives and never made a big deal out of it. Something sadly quite unlike todays transgender generation who never seem to shut up about it.

Datun · 08/02/2019 15:03

So a late transitioning man who has been married, but left his wife and family and insists he's always been a 'girl'. That has all the characteristics of AGP, or transvestism.

I wish JV, or any of these radio shows, would just ask some basic questions.

Why did you think you were a girl?

What do you mean by living as a woman?

littlbrowndog · 08/02/2019 15:05

Hamster said that datun in the other thread

Bittermints · 08/02/2019 15:08

I've now listened to the interview and phone in - that's half an hour of my life I won't get back. I think Ann might have meant that in the 80s the police were locking up transvestites for offences against public decency. That seems like baloney to me too, but marginally less than when I thought the reference was to being sectioned.

Datun · 08/02/2019 15:10

Did they littlbrowndog? Which bit? The bit about AGP, or the bit about asking questions?

Hamster00 · 08/02/2019 15:12

The bit about AGP, or the bit about asking questions?

The AGP bit Datun, where 'Nikki' said, "...everyone tells me I look better as a woman".

TowelNumber42 · 08/02/2019 15:14

I had a sheltered / religious childhood in the 70s/80s. People were well aware of transvestites, transsexuals, "sex change". It wasn't a big deal. Nobody was getting locked up Confused

Mind you, nobody tried to say their penis was a female organ.