transgender supportive, TRA unsupportive

[polarpig]

Am I the only feminist who supports people who are transgender who are living their life as a woman and getting on with it with the minimum amount of fuss, with the support of their partner and not creating TRA style controversy?

I know a lovely transgender woman who I consider to be family and she is just getting on with her life with the minimum of fuss. She is transgender at home and work and is accepted by all and doesn't shout from the rooftops about it.

I nodded agreement with EluphNaugeMeop's excellent post.
I just wanted to say something about this:
There is no need to describe a transwoman as a man though

If you're having tea and gingernuts with them I'd agree. No need.

But when literally billions of women worldwide are being legally corralled into identity groups and out of sex-based rights, and the key weapon for doing this is the redefinition and obfuscation of language, it has never been more important to be unequivocally clear about terms. At a public level of dialogue we must support others in speaking the truth, even if we feel unable or unwilling to speak it ourselves.

I cannot say the truth on this forum, one of the bravest and most resilient public forums left in existence. All I can say is that I fundamentally disagree about whether there is no need to describe a transwoman as either a transwoman or a man. It has never been more urgent to be able to say an unpalatable truth, or at the very least, not make it harder for others to say what we ourselves cannot or will not.

Truly, hurting the feelings of any man has to be inconsequential when measured against the absolute shackles that linguistic concessions are putting on women's abilities to distinguish ourselves.

I've never demanded another woman call transwomen men, and I never would.

But the truth is becoming unsayable without compelled euphemisms, and none of us should contribute to making the truth unsayable for others.

The bravest women are the ones being the most truthful. I don't count myself in their number. I make concessions on Mumsnet not to spare the feelings of male people who want to blur linguistic distinctions, but because I am forced to in order to remain. But each time someone says how unnecessary it is to use bluntness it becomes much harder for someone else to call any man a man if he forbids it.

Everyone should be able to call any man a man, without this being condemnable.

Please, please allow room for the consideration of this.

Barracker 👏

I’m just going to leave this here... transpecies (couldn’t do a link but a screenshot is just as good)

Hadn't heard about AWA before - sounds like a useful way of being clear one is not against trans rights, I've always been a bit uneasy about the perjorative use of TRAs, as obviously it's generally fine for people to be trans rights activitists

As for views of people on these boards - I'm sure no one here suddenly started thinking 'Urgh, trans people are gross and yucky weirdos' after reading a bit about some of the issues. My mind has been shifted to a more critical position not through developing some hatred of trans people (I have trans friends and family), but through listening to other women and realising that even if I feel OK about some access issues, there are other women with sound, non-bigoted reasons why 'trans women are women' is a problem.

At the same time, I get why it must be very hard, very heartbreaking for trans women after all they go through to hear people saying 'Sorry, I can't say you are woman' and I honestly can't say I know what the answer is. But I also do understand that it's a bit of a slap in the face for women to hear than they should open up their spaces, rather than men changing their attitudes and fear of the feminine and to give in a bit rather than women having to do it. If trans women can't have 'the nice things' of being a woman, sadly it's because of the patriarchy and the harm it causes to women growing up in it and living in it, not women not being nice enough to trans women.

Can I point out there, echobelly, that even your thoughtful and considerately worded post, would be enough to have you hung from the rafters as a raging, hateful, bigoted transphobe who would indeed be one of those people McKinnon et al wishes to "die in a grease fire".

There is no "reasonable" POV any more. It is either 100% capitulation or NOTHING.

(As indeed would any trans people you know unless they also agree fully and entirely with the AWA position)

I just think it’s a small linguistic concession we can make that doesn’t really hurt

No. It isn't a small concession. It does really hurt.

But each time someone says how unnecessary it is to use bluntness it becomes much harder for someone else to call any man a man if he forbids it.

Everyone should be able to call any man a man, without this being condemnable.

This is at the heart of it.

I keep coming back to the analogy with freedom of religious belief.

I write "Reverend Bloggs" on my friend's Christmas cards, even though I don't believe there's any god by whom she's revered (she is of course revered by me as a friend, but then so are my friends who aren't ministers!) But that doesn't mean that I can't say "I personally don't believe, on a philosophical level, that there is a god", and even say it to her face (in fact, we do have conversations about the problem of evil, and problem of suffering, where me being able to say this is an integral part of the debate).

Likewise, I'd call a transwoman I knew "she" - but I would still want to reserve the right (self-censoring here because of MN's terms and conditions) to discuss the general philosophical, scientific and political principle that trans people remain biologically speaking members of their birth sex, and that accepting/wanting to retain the right not to accept them into the social category associated with the opposite birth sex has political implications - specifically when it comes to single sex spaces segregated for dignity, safety or fairness, or the collation of accurate statistics, whether of epidemiological risk for illness, or offending statistics.

Biological sex matters, and it has political implications (not because "essentialism" - the stupidly woke come back, but because throughout history our biology has been weaponised against us, and to tackle oppression you have to be able to name and talk about its root causes).

As a woman who has had to fight tooth and nail through the education system and into employment to get into a male-dominated field, who has had to bring a court case for equal pay, who spent the first 10 years of her adult life in a society where rape within marriage was still legal - I need to be able to talk about my biological category and its existence in order to fight for my rights. Language matters.

Barracker I totally agree with your reservations about surgery.

There is no difference in mental health outcomes post op. The suicide rate does not change, they do not suddenly find peace with thier body, the perfect partner, the perfect job, endless happiness now that they have been surgically altered to match their dreams.

People have multiple ops because the aesthetic is not exactly what they envisaged, they've had a long time to dream up their new genitalia and it's quite difficult to create a neo-vagina or a penis from an arm flap. The reality is always going to be unsatisfactory compared to their hopes.

30% of people are left with peeing difficulties from surgery. THat's really, really poor.

Neo-vaginas are made from scrotal skin and can regrow public hair. They smell and they have to be looked after very carefully in order to keep them open. Dilating is time consuming and painful.

All treatment options seem to have poor outcomes - the hormones that people buy online give them liver failure. FTMs get horrendous vaginal atrophy and we're waiting to see what putting a teenager into menopause will do for their cardiac and bone health. It's not good medicine.

The trans boards are full of advice on how to beat the gatekeepers and scripts of what to say so you can get your prescription. It's quite eye opening.

I'd really like to see a more critical thinking approach to treatment for this group. The parallel with how we treat anorexia or other body dysmorphia is worth reflecting on, I reckon.

These people deserve better from their care. First, do no harm.

The trans boards are full of advice on how to beat the gatekeepers and scripts of what to say so you can get your prescription

The whole current movement is hinged on how to "beat the system" at every level - a time-tested, evidence-based and experience-proven multi layer system of gatekeeping, safeguarding, double checking and care based on the principles of do no harm and personal safety and wellbeing etc. As society, we are morally and legally obligated to protect vulnerable members (children being one of the largest groups), but this is all about circumventing that.

The fact that these societal obligations are considered "undesirable" by those pushing the trans agenda should give anyone pause for thought as to why.

It's almost like a culture of gaming the system has arisen from a gaming culture.

Nauticant.
Thank you. The gaming analogy is always in my head when I think about this, and I have to think abut it because I have a gendercurious troubled teen who I don’t want to go to the next level. I think the whole trans and children thing is essentially unconnected to the real world.