Transexual women face erasure - interesting thread

[pombear]

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3667526-Transsexual-women-face-erasure

Given that so many posters said what an interesting and enlightening thread this ended up turning into, with some really key issues discussed and some strong points made by lots of posters (I particularly welcomed Barracker's refresh regarding the importance of language), it seems a shame if it drops down the list due to being full and people miss out on reading it (what with it being summer holidays and all).

I'd rather see research into why some men are AGP and how to prevent that sexual fetish emerging.

Same here. AGP appears toxic and all consuming. Not to mention misogynistic. And given a large part of it is to coerce people to 'treat' you as a woman, it should not be practised in public ever.

It's unacceptable to include people as unwitting participants in your orgasm.

general 'your'

You can even “live as a women” if it’s more comfortable to.

I don't want people to be encouraged to think that it is possible for a man to 'live as a woman'.

We could be more accepting of men who want to wear dresses and makeup, though.

I'm a child of the 80s. Men in make up, or even dresses, don't trouble me.

I am not willing to be part of some random stranger's sexual fetish though.

*men, not mean

Hmm yes - good points.

It just seems that currently, society is throwing 51% of people under the bus (women) due to a condition affecting 1.5% of the population (men).

Those [ ] have access to women’s spaces, because “TWAW” is more socially acceptable than acknowledging that agp exists.

And its clear from their own words (and photos and videos 😱) that accessing women’s spaces is not just about “peeing in peace.”

If they were acknowledged as [ ], they could still be stunning and brave. But not in the female-only Refuge.

(Natwalt)

Does someone (not us - not our job) need to reduce the stigma of agp?

Not really, happy for fetishes to remain secret and out of the public thanks. I don't care whether your fetish is squidging your toes into jelly, or sniffing armpits, or pretending you're a woman - I don't need to know, I don't want to see, and you should keep that stuff private thanks. It's emphatically not my problem and not something I should be required to accept or validate.

The bit I took away from the thread was around Labours 'for the many, not for the few', after Bespin quite gleefully said that for every protest women do, the TRAs get 10 times more supports, signatures etc. And that is what is wrong with the left: they work on majority opinion, instead of looking out for the small really vulnerable minority that lacks a voice.

Like Detroit's post being deleted when she talked about her fear on sharing spaces with any male and why she is now unable to use womens services because they can't be guaranteed to be male free (as TWAW), and that she is effectively homeless. So no support, alone, in fear, says that, gets deleted....

There must be people out there shaking their heads at your contributions. You are doing your cause no favours at all!

I see each post as confirmation of male pattern behaviour, forcing women to stick to the 'rules' or else they will get what is coming to them. The same way many abusive men talk.

I see each post as confirmation of male pattern behaviour, forcing women to stick to the 'rules' or else they will get what is coming to them. The same way many abusive men talk.

I agree.

The other TRAs/MRAs probably won't recognise it then. They probably think excellent points are being made!

Does rather expose it to everyone else!

And, a woman in trouble, in need, because of transactivism is merely another female who needs shutting down. Her predicament isn't just unacknowledged, it's actually completely invisible to those who reported her. The narcissism is extraordinary to behold.

This.

I know exactly who has been disappeared in all this, thankyouverymuch.

When we talk about patterns of behaviour, it's worth reflecting on this from the Freedom Programme. It applies to male behaviour across the board: not just those males with whom an individual woman is in an intimate relationship.

They probably think excellent points are being made!

For a certain cyclist / sports people abiding by the rules means they are not cheating. The morality of their position however is bankrupt in my opinion.

And here is a brutally honest Twitter thread by a self-aware AGP person:

twitter.com/ArtemesiaJade/status/1163346936671301632

LangCleg

Yes, that cycle is very evident.

The Rules were established by TRAs and are rigorously enforced.

And look what happens when we circumnavigate them. We were furiously called idiots by the onboard rule enforcer, who makes attempt after attempt to derail and tries to get us to stop talking.

Yes, that cycle is very evident.

Yes: applies outwith intimate relationships and you see the pattern repeating all the time.

It isn't the fetishes that is the problem, I don't think anyone here cares who gets turned on by what among consenting adults in privacy. It's the creeping exhibitionism that is the issue.

It's something exclusively done by males and mtf
It's aimed at women and it's beginning to be intentionally aimed at children
Sexual thrill is in physical exposure and enacting of sexual behaviours for that person in front of women, and the thrill is particularly contained in the shock, discomfort and forcible involvement of non consenting women. Power, control, the drugs most sexual offenses revel in. Without an audience there's no buzz.

See: the transwidows thread for descriptions of many women living alongside this where it began as an enjoyment of watching that kind of porn, to the thrill of enacting it alone at home, to enacting it in front of partner, to enacting it fully in public. Also see how often in articles and posts you see the comment about how 'empowering' it is to dress and enact in public. The acknowledgement of the buzz from the power is right there.

The new and additional sexual thrill/power and control thrill is in the claims of 'just existing' and legislation that wholly supports males to carry out this sexualised behaviour while preventing women from protesting it or escaping it. Huge power buzz. Big thrills.

Basic premis: line between 'being me' and 'being free to exist how I am inside' has lost all contact with 'involving non consenting women in your personal sex experiences is unacceptable and unpleasant behaviour'.

I agree with you butter. I think fetishes should stay out of the public.

However, (1) our inability (as a society) to even acknowledge that agp exists and (2) the insistence on “TWAW” is ironically enabling it to go public as never before.

It’s also giving [ ] access to spaces they could not access before. So [ ] are photographing 10 year old girls in bathrooms and scaring women with swords.

If those persons were [ ] with agp, they could not access those spaces.

And meant to add:

How do you separate people with dysphoria from males enacting their true authentic sexual thrills by using non consenting women?

Can't be done. Not any more. That ship has sailed.

Plus as discussed on the last thread, how do you break down the lines between:

Want to use non consenting women in their space by standing presenting obviously male but wearing a frock and brandishing a sword and threatening women who get the fuck away as fast as possible for their 'transphobia' - exhibitionism and openly aggressive, threatening and intimidating behaviour, controlling women.

Want to quietly nip in and appropriate used sanitary materials to try on

Want to dress in a way personally very exciting and enter a place personally very exciting and be surrounded by women just inches away behind doors lowering pants and peeing which is really, really exciting, although won't do more than be present and possibly smirk at a woman or two in a way that makes them uncomfortable - and that's quite exciting too

Want to just be in a personally validating place surrounded by personally validating people - those people may be uncomfortable or have to self exclude because of being used in this way, but hey ho.

All involve using women. Just to varied degrees. Its the nudge nudge nudge of the line of acceptability to use women . All of this makes women nothing more than passive recipients of whatever men decide they should be used for.

Basic premis: line between 'being me' and 'being free to exist how I am inside' has lost all contact with 'involving non consenting women in your personal sex experiences is unacceptable and unpleasant behaviour'.

Look at David Thomas, mainlining his fetish in a national newspaper by getting to write a column about it once a week. Making every reader of that paper an unwitting participant in his sexual thrill. Whilst claiming it's bloody progressive!

JY using the court system to involve a room full of people while discussing his personal sexual fetish around periods and tampons. Oh the validation. And yes, a system trapped going - but this is supposed to be progressive and modern and no one was supposed to abuse it . Wtf do we do now?

With a world full of women going 'we bloody told you so'.

Making every reader of that paper an unwitting participant in his sexual thrill

This is perhaps what annoys me most about the whole sorry mess. The shear naivety of the media and political classes.

Why can they not see that every time they chant 'TWAW' a bunch of creeps are getting their jollies? Do they not have functioning creepy-weirdo-omiters?

How do you separate people with dysphoria from males enacting their true authentic sexual thrills by using non consenting women?

The "traditional" transexuals were generally all homosexual, and I think that was probably an important distinction between fetishists and non-fetishists.

Thanks for posting, OP - I hadn't realised that thread had exploded.

Just one thought before I go catch up on it, in response to those saying "so long as your fetish is private then fine" - there are a couple of big problems with this.

The first is where this fetish comes from. It's rooted in female = constructed femininity = lesser, submissive, humiliating etc etc. It's built out of objectification. And they train themselves, in the most powerful Pavlovian fashion, with orgasms, to strengthen these associations in their own minds.

This is FWR. I'm sure I don't need to explain the problem with that.

The other big problem, as others have mentioned, is the urge to draw in non-consenting participants to the public display of the fetish.

And I'm not just talking about the women and girls who find themselves intimidated in toilets or left without refuges. I'm talking about the girl who works in Primark, faced with a grown man purchasing lacy knickers and casually dropping in a reference to the fact they're for him; the girl who has to smile politely and deny all her instincts screaming at her, who has to watch his smirking face as he revels in the sexual thrill he gets from her discomfort; the girl who cannot name him as a predator (perhaps not even in her own mind) for fear of the consequences.

This fetish is not benign.

And, as I mentioned on the other thread, the family background is always a highly gendered environment. I've yet to meet a transwoman who didn't have an issue with their dad trying to enforce gender norms.

My Dad is a blokey bloke, but he didn't care enough about that type of stuff to say that or push the issue. He was generally pretty indifferent about it. He generally is a man of few words. Especially about things that bother him.

It most definitely something that was actively pushed by my Mum. I can recount numerous occasions where there were particular issues that she led and pushed about it. Whether my Dad put her up to it, I don't know, it's possible but he never said a thing nor did anything. The actions and words all came from my mother.

She wasn't too bothered about me being a tom boy, but she certainly didn't make me feel like it was OK either, saying on many occasions me and my brother were 'born the wrong way around'.

My brother now says he knew from about age 7 he had an innate sense he was a girl.

Which given that's what my Mum literally said on numerous occasions, to the point its one of my most vivid childhood memories, I have a bit of a hard time believing its 'innate'.

shrugs

I do think highly gendered backgrounds would fit my experience. But I'm not sure it fits with me that it came from my father.

It always has felt about getting my mothers approval not my father's. I'd always been closer to my Dad than my brother ever was. I was pretty close to my Mum but I found her suffocating and overbearing at times and that was one of the reasons I went travelling. I went to Australia will the intention of never coming back. It was very much a case of trying to run away from everything and everyone and wanting to almost 'reinvent myself'. You can't run away from yourself though.

I can't help but feel there's this sense of wanting to escape yourself or you past that is woven into all this, combined with rampant sexism, low self esteem and a lack of a sense of belonging. And wanting the approval or attention of a particular parent.