The Telegraph: Column on the Journey to Womanhood ("60 year old dad")

[theOtherPamAyres]

It's a Premium Article in the Telegraph's family section.

The children are gone, the career was spectacular and now David Thomas is going to tell Telegraph readers about the journey to womanhood - without having experienced all the milestones and rites of passage that female children go through.

It would be marvellous if the Telegraph could also locate a woman in her 60s, with an empty nest and contemplating retirement, and with the same compulsion.

It would be fascinating to compare their journeys. There must be loads and loads of women lining up to change their circumstances so radically, surely? Unless, of course, the phenomenon is a male thing?

For completeness, it would be great to have a column from the spouses of late transitioning, formally heterosexual, men and women.

www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/decided-become-woman-60-year-old-dad/

I think this journey series will provide quite an interesting read.

Even more interesting if parallel to it the Telegraph were to run a series about a woman’s journey to create beneficial material change in the world or even to create a piece of art.

I agree to both those paragraphs. The suggestion in the second would be absolutely awesome.

And yes. Judging by other men who have AGP, his utter self obsession, delusion and blindness will negatively impact his written communication.

Sunlight.

Plonker.

Some choice quotations from the article:

I remember lying in the bath at the age of 15 or 16 and looking between my legs, and coming up with fantasies in which it would all be somehow got rid of – I’d have a disease, or some terrible accident. The very thing that most boys would fear the most… I was thinking, “Is there some way of getting rid of all this?”

A woman isn’t defined by not having a penis, ffs. Trite, sexist nonsense.

I was denounced as this terrible woman hater,’ he remembers with a laugh. ‘Such a woman hater that I want to be one

Why would the two be mutually exclusive? They both stem from misogyny, they’re both founded on sexist assumptions.

Five years ago, he and his wife separated, and they are now divorced. He says it is difficult to talk about this. ‘I’m entitled to describe my experiences, but I don’t have the right to speak for other people. That’s their business and their privacy.’ But there comes a moment, he says, when you have to be true to yourself

‘I just wish I’d been able to cope with it all much better. That failure, and its consequences, are by far the greatest regrets of my life. But there’s no point sitting around feeling self-pity. So then the next thing is, what do I do about it?’

Could be lifted directly from the trans widows threads. Bet his wife has a lot to say on the topic too, but I don’t see her weekly broadsheet column on it...

Nb, for MNHQ and whoever is on Witch Monitoring Duty this afternoon, the article uses masculine pronouns, so I have followed suit.

Witch monitoring duty 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Actually I'd buy the paper every week for the Ex-wife column alongside his. Now that would be worth reading.

That’s an idea SpeakUp. Like Bryony Gordon and her mother (sorry I’ve forgotten her name) in the back of the Saturday magazine.

Using public loos, just like periods are not something women tend to enjoy, a blessed relief when desperate to pee or not be pregnant but not look forward to.

The deeply held fantasy that women's toilets are some sort of mythical Shangri La where we all go to commune with one another and swap our experiences of womanhood with one another does seem to pop up in a lot of these accounts, doesn't it? Sometimes in pretty benign form (wanting to have a woman admire your nice new handbag, as in this article), sometimes in creepy-beyond-belief form (the person who may not be named or even alluded to with initials, who posted on twitter about wondering if they should carry tampons in their handbag to offer round fellow women's loo users, and whether they were likely to be approached by young teens wanting help inserting their first tampon...)

Whereas in fact the only difference between male and female loo usage is that in addition to peeing and shitting, we also change sanitary products - on our own, without assistance from other people, thank you very much.

I was denounced as this terrible woman hater,’ he remembers with a laugh. ‘Such a woman hater that I want to be one

Hate born of envy of something you know you’ll never be.

Not sure what’s funny about that, matey.

The deeply held fantasy that women's toilets are some sort of mythical Shangri La

Tipping the nightclub loo attendant and being given a Chupa Chups is as good as it’s ever got, tbh.

Chupa Chups? Well bugger me backwards with a wet banana (as my sister used to say). Shangri La is real!

I see his book was mentioned in this thread - apparently this is his:

www.amazon.com/Not-Guilty-Case-Defense-Men/dp/068811024X?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Product description
A rebuttal of feminist charges against men discusses such issues as child sexual abuse, the sexual harassment of males, husband battering, and the presupposition of men's guilt

^From Library Journal
Thomas tries to promote equality and set the record straight for the now much-maligned male. Many of his comments and topics may not be politically correct, but he uses facts, figures, and logic to make his points. Some of the topics Thomas considers are battered husbands, date rape, aggression, the female abuser, the nonassertive male, inequalities in death rates and divorce laws, and male stereotypes. He questions the duplicity in considering the discussion of the positive qualities of males and masculinity sexist when the discussion of the positive qualities of females and femininity is not. He concludes that neither sex has a monopoly on aggression, brains, harmful behavior, or any other attribute. Appropriate for libraries with men's movement collections, but only after having acquired Robert Bly's Iron John ( LJ 11/15/90), Michael Gurian's The Prince and the King ( LJ 7/92), Sam Keen's Fire in the Belly ( LJ 2/15/91), and Warren Farrell's The Myth of Male Power ( LJ 7/93).^

neither sex has a monopoly on aggression, brains, harmful behavior,

Just a quick reminder for anyone interested in this sort of claim by MRAs: officially produced prison stats indicate that 90% of those incarcerated for violent crimes and 99% of those incarcerated for sexual crimes in this country are male.

So, not a monopoly, but an overwhelming preponderance. (I do not know why: nature, nurture. However the fact that those stats are out there mean that I want to maintain women only spaces where they are necessary for women's safety.)

I always knew I was a woman.

It evidenced early when I had to help my mother prepare vegetables and wash dishes and fold socks, while my father and brothers watched television and we brought them cups of tea.

At school I realised I was different from boys when I had to do domestic science while they played with power tools. My science teacher said girls couldn’t do chemistry and the boys took over the experiments anyway, so I stopped doing science as soon as I could.

I shared a house with friends at university and you could tell I was really a girl because I was the only one who ever cleaned the toilet or the kitchen sink.

Whenever I went out, my womanhood was confirmed because I had to keep a close eye on my drinks. Although I only lived 20 minutes from the pub, I was afraid to walk home alone after I was followed by a group of men in a car one night, yelling sexual things.

After I got married, I could tell I was the woman because I was still the only one cleaning the toilet and cooking dinner, although we both worked full time. I said to my husband once that I was working and doing most of the housework and school pickups and taking days off for sick children. He said it was because women are better at those things than men, so I knew I was really a woman.

My dad has been diagnosed with dementia, so I’ve been going around every day after work to help my mum look after him. I asked my brother to help, but he said he has a very stressful and demanding job and hadn’t got the time.

It’s the little things that tell you, you’re really a woman I think. You know, like sitting in meetings about to pass out from hot flushes but having to pretend nothing is happening. Or being the only person in office who washes their coffee cup and doesn’t leave it to the (female) cleaner. Or being asked by the 20 year old IT support if you realise you have to double-click on an email to open it.

I think my daughter is going to be the same way; a man in the supermarket the other day told her to smile.

That woman feeling. It never goes away.

Indeed, DanceLike: funny how the real world has a unique way of reminding us biological females exactly where our place in life is, without us ever needing to state our pronouns even once. It truly is amazing!

As for this plonker, again all we hear about is the toilets and handbags... sigh. I’ll buy into the ‘60-year old dude becomes a woman’ story when they write about how they realised they were female when they took on caregiving role for family or found themselves dumped with wifework / shitwork in a relationship and / or getting paid less than ‘cis’ male counterparts. Then I’ll buy it.

As long as it continues being about using ‘the ladies’ and make up and handbags, then no I don’t buy it. Not for a second.

A critical look at David Thomas' book "Not Guilty" from a review in 1993.

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/book-review-now-who-started-it-she-did-not-guilty-in-defence-of-the-modern-man-by-david-thomas-1471605.html

Extract

IT'S HARD to know what to say about this book. Despite its ostensibly chatty tone, I felt harangued by it, and moaned at. Its polemical language and lack of intellectual rigour make for thin, weak ideas. I've learned far more about men from looking at their paintings or reading their poems, which, unlike this book, can investigate layered, subtle truths and doubts, and which do not need to preach or affect matey common-sensicalness.

After criticising women for not fancying men who want to wear frocks (well, it took a while for men to come round to the idea of women wearing trousers - a few hundred years or so), and after suggesting that masculinity is culturally imposed on men, Thomas urges us not to forget the positive values associated with masculinity: 'It is possible to be strong without being oppressive. It is possible to be assertive without being domineering. And it is possible to possess energy, determination and even aggression without being violent or bullying.' Yes, but the qualities spoken of here can be associated with women just as much as with men.

There is an interesting bit on David Thomas, amongst others, in this article. Nice photograph too.

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1312690/It-wasnt-just-fondues-flares-know--Fern-Britton-recalls-best-Seventies.htm

DancelikeEmmaGoldman: spot on and still, unfortunately, too true.

Are there late transitioning trans men?

I’ll buy into the ‘60-year old dude becomes a woman’ story when they write about how they realised they were female when they took on caregiving role for family or found themselves dumped with wifework / shitwork in a relationship and / or getting paid less than ‘cis’ male counterparts. Then I’ll buy it.
I was just about to post something similar. In addition, I'm looking forward to David Thomas writing about trying to hang on to their job long enough to collect a pension, about their fears for their kids, about their health scares, about their money worries. This are the things that preoccupy all the 60+ women I know.

there late transitioning trans men?

This is a very moving interview with Debbie, a late transitioning female who after full medical and surgical interventions was later diagnosed with severe ptsd caused by being sexually abused as a child (this had been repressed). She explains that she has given the interview in order that other people are better supported prior to having life-changing interventions. Debbie is now seeking medical interventions to 'detransition'

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/im-still-debbie-man-reveals-13532989

I can only access two articles a week in The Telegraph and I've just spent one of them to read this, which I will present without comment:
‘And by the way, and I think this is telling, I am far more worried about a surgeon messing with my face than with my genitalia.’

This bit however is perhaps more astute than he may realise:
'I was denounced as this terrible woman hater,’ he remembers with a laugh. ‘Such a woman hater that I want to be one!’

Sorry I missed a page and didn't notice someone had already raised both those points. Although I don't think they can be repeated too often.