Hi @ThatDoctorEM, I’m sorry I didn’t reply yesterday, it was a difficult day and I forgot to come and see if you’d replied. I think you’re right about medicine. Almost every trans person with serious dysphoria ive spoken to would love a way to not be in that kind of pain. I feel that the medical profession is abdicating its duty of care by offering an imperfect treatment, in medical transition, while failing to search for alternatives.
It’s also unethical to list any female person as Male and vice versa in
the way we are doing, so that in an emergency it may harm them. Like the transman who was listed as Male, so suffered the loss of a baby, in America.
I see it as a violation of trans people’s rights (although I don’t believe children are trans, just currently framed as such) to be giving untested, life altering medications to dysphoric minors. Any trans rights discussion ought to include ways to actually protect children who may or may not be going to grow up to transition, without medicalising them and rendering them infertile. The popular suppression of the reality that most of they will desist is such a harm.
Maybe rights are the wrong word for these sorts of issues? There are things that need to be sifted through by society though and some of which seem to fall within the remit of our ongoing discussions simply because so many of the ways they’re currently being handled impose on, or are being flagged up by, women. We are also one of the only groups trying to protect children, or trying to encourage people to recognise the harms of gender.
I think of the specific needs for trans people as things like rape and DV resources for them specifically. I spoke to a woman who ran a women’s shelter a few months ago who said that in addition to the problem that women’s needs were entirely compromised when males were in their shelters, it was actually beyond the scope of their organisation to help transwomen anyway, because the resources needed, particularly for mental health, were so incredibly different.
Separate places to go seems imperative for women and would help transwomen too (also transmen are far more likely to be abused in a variety of ways, than transwomen are, and they would need resources. They’re obviously female, but I can see why it might be distressing to both them and many women to share those kinds of services after an extreme trauma).
I agree that society should listen to radical feminists. Enshrining gender into law is such a harm. And I’d love a world in which men actually took responsibility and accepted males who transgressed gender boundaries, instead of demanding we see them as being women.
I’m so glad you’re writing on these issues on medium. A friend linked me to your series on Queer theory series recently and it was incredibly eye opening. It explained so many of the disturbing motives for the current movement, to me, that I was completely unaware of.
Hi @LangCleg I mean society. For some people in these discussions I know their focus is already on both, but neither women nor feminists should be expected to dilute the focus of fighting for women’s rights by also having to fight for the wellbeing of other groups. Unless any given individual wants to. My first concern is women and Children, but If there are ways to help trans people I’m personally in for that, too. And I’m not sure I trust men to represent the interests of women in such discussions. It definitely doesn’t make it our job though.
Hi @KatnissEverbeen I don’t think trans people are anything different to males or females, but those who take medications that give them the appearance of either being clearly trans or the secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex are in an unusual boat, really. They’re still their sex, but they can confound our physical expectations of their sex, and because men are how they are, it puts the Male trans people at certain potential risks, and it puts the female trans people in an odd spot because if we have people in our spaces who look like men, that’s another way in which our safeguarding may be compromised, by normalising that, even if they, as females, belong there.
I’ve always said I don’t mind sharing spaces with transmen because things should be segregated by sex, but seeing Harrop say he would pretend to be a transman at a gym changing room does give me pause