"Let trans men be fem" what does this mean?

[TheMessyCleaner]

Ok so I wouldn't put myself firmly in either camp, I'm pretty sure some of my friends would say I'm transphobic' but honestly I'm just curious about why we need labels.
One of my daughter's friends mums identifies as 'non binary' yet I've never seen her without a skirt on or make up or long hair worn in a traditionally feminine style. She's in a long term relationship with a man, her daughter is very 'girly' in terms of dress and is not old enough to dress herself so I presume this is the mum's choice of clothes etc.
We are friends on Facebook and she constantly posts memes from a group named 'let trans men be fem.' I thought this was first about m-f trans women but no it appears to be aimed at women who identify as male who want to still be feminine. I try to be accepting but honestly wtf.
If we just got rid of all those silly labels (cis, terf, non binary) then we could all just be hot girls who want to wear eyelashes and nails and also want to fuck other hot girls or guys from time to time or wear a suit to a wedding or have short hair or do whatever the hell we wanted!
Yes no one understands trans men who want to be feminine because it's a stupid idea that biological sex has anything to do with what we wear or want to rub bits with. Can't we just be us?

This reminds me of the individual I read about ages ago who identified as straight. Surely that literally is actually the same as being straight. 🤔

Well, no.

The problem here, or part of it, is that language that evolved to be useful has been bastardised.

I had a job years ago around hiv. The initiatives were aimed at men who had sex with men, rather than gay men, as its not uncommon for men who sometimes have sex with men to identify as straight.

It's also useful (or used to be) when thinking about disability, not all people with a disability identify as disabled, so that impacts on how you ask questions.

There are other examples.

Issue comes when people id into the minority group, when the language developed it was because people didn't, when maybe they should, and they were not captured in stats.

The idea that people who were not disabled, or gay, or whatever, would want to identify into those groups was never even thought of.

It's really interesting in a way, but of course, distracts from those who are genuinely in those groups. Whether they id that way or not. And the people iding in have not actually experienced the issues, often seem v loud, and mop up attention and funding.

I think there are a lot of people wanting labels now, and yes, that includes all kinds of medical diagnosis that they may or may not have.

It's a feature of a society where making claims against the state requires that you do so on an idenitarian basis. You have to show that you are disadvantaged or oppressed, but not as an individual, on the basis of an identity, and then the state has an obligation to help you, to correct the problem.

Of course then everyone needs to claim an identity and we learn to think of ourselves in those terms. We all feel, are, oppressed sometimes, less well off than the "norm" we are meant to be comparing ourselves to (is that a person or group with no identity? The middle-class white straight person with perfect health and no problems?) So people grasp at those identities that are recognised as conferring help or benefit, or that at the least will give them a sense of visibility, an existence, in a society that only recognises you on that basis. I think this is where the language of denying identity means denying existence comes from.

The point about identifying as disabled is interesting. I completely accept it as a valid form of the question as people may not want to label themselves as disabled but would a company or organisation have to accommodate someone who identified as disabled by making the legally required reasonable adjustments even if they were in reality not actually disabled? I'm assuming not.

Goosefoot interesting points, ime it's not necessarily linked to state benefits, if that was the thing you were thinking. Lots of people are id'ing into groups not seemingly with the intention of gaining anything from the state.
And of course the funding etc for eg people with disabilites was always pretty shit and hard to get state support etc.

I think this is to do with perception to an extent. I've got a moderate physical disability from birth. I've worked in lots of tall buildings and if there's an emergency evac i go in the lift. I have genuinely had, over the years, quite a lot of colleagues say how lucky i am to go in the lift rather than get the stairs.

They don't seem to think past the immediate 'benefit' that they see, and consider whether they would really like to not be able to do sports, lots of surgery etc.

I really think this is a major driver. People who have not really experienced difficulty, or subtle or overt discrimination, only see the 'perks', the stuff put in to help, and feel, well, jealous. Put out. Why are they getting this stuff?

The people who have said it have all been white able bodied men who ime really do have quiet simmerimg resentment about a lot of equality type stuff.

So it's not about the state but wider than that, accessing all of this stuff they see as perks. When they really aren't.

Sorry if not coherent, been pub !

"I had a job years ago around hiv. The initiatives were aimed at men who had sex with men, rather than gay men, as its not uncommon for men who sometimes have sex with men to identify as straight."

I agree totally here. Back then, the 'identify as' language was used to understand a very real phenomenon, and make sure that your message did not miss this group of men. Because the relevant fact was that they had sex with men, however they identified or did not identify. So, the biology and the facts trumped whatever they thought about it themselves. But now we seem to have overturned this completely, and the way people feel about a thing /themselves trumps the actual facts, even to the extent of harming people. Hence all the chestfeeding, and people with uteruses nonsense, even if the change of language damages the actual majority group you were aiming your message at. So, for example, some women don't get smear tests, because they found the description of themselves as people with uteruses confusing. Total opposite of why the language was introduced in the first place. I recall how earnest we were in the day, we knew that how you presented the messages meant that if some people didn't get the message they were directly at higher risk of contracting HIV. And we have gone from that and the courageous way the lesbian and gay community responded to the Aids Crisis, to the current Stonewall nonsense. Makes me feel quite cross.

It is common for ASD to be diagnosed before the age of 5.

ADHD is harder to diagnose before 5 as it is harder to differentiate the behaviours at that age.

Agree with Fraggling. My DH has MS which means he can't work, can barely walk some days and is always in pain. As a result he gets disabled benefits, a motability car and we are lucky to have been allocated a suitable council property. Some of the comments weve had over the yrs some people actually consider us lucky! DH had a promising engineering career cut short in his 20s and can vary leave the house on his own. Our life is just peachy🙄

Goosefoot interesting points, ime it's not necessarily linked to state benefits, if that was the thing you were thinking. Lots of people are id'ing into groups not seemingly with the intention of gaining anything from the state.

No, that's not quite what I was thinking, although sometimes that happens, particularly with parents wanting to get services for children or accommodation in schools. Even f there is clearly a problem, without a diagnosis there is no basis to ask for certain programs or resources.

My thought here is more on a conceptual level. Because of the way we've understood discrimination, or disadvantage, it's become very difficult to make claims of being disadvantaged, which the state must address in some way, unless you can make it some form of identity claim. For example as a woman, I can point to my class being most at risk of sexual assault, or differences in lifetime earnings, as examples of disadvantage to my identity group, and demand policy actions, or programs, to address these problems. I may or may not get what I want but the claim is understood on both sides to be a valid form - women should be equal to the comparison group (men, in this case) and where they aren't, the state has a responsibility to address the gap.

It's quite different than my personal disadvantage through luck, or my particular family history, or whatever, even if as a result I am much worse off than the average woman compared to the average man. As an individual with individual circumstances I have no claim to the state's intervention into those circumstances.

We could divide people up into hundreds of possible identity groupings of course, that have long term effects on people's circumstances, but ultimately the ones that count are the ones the state recognises, or the ones groups can convince them to recognise.

I think there are a lot of fall-our effects of this. People have significant motivation to see themselves as part of a state recognised grouping, or convince the state to recognise it, and to show somehow that they are disadvantaged as a group so they can make claims to programs, policies etc. (This gets into interesting questions about who they compare themselves to.) And that tends to spin-off to other forms of intervention as well from non-state groups. The state potentially has a lot of power here, as well as those best able to make their case for their group - it's in their interest to support the power of the state rather than to challenge it.

I think it's become increasingly difficult for anyone to claim that the state should look at their problems without putting it in terms of an identity group that's been disadvantaged compared to the norm.

I'd be much more impressed by a woman who defies stereotypes but doesn't feel the need to add a new label to themselves as some sort of woke apology mechanism. "I know I'm not 100% girly and won't meet your girly expectations but I have an excuse you see" oh fuck off. You're just a female, doing your thing. That should be okay. Women like the one mentioned in the OP drive me nuts.

According to the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, "Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder that affects communication and behavior. Although autism can be diagnosed at any age, it is said to be a “developmental disorder” because symptoms generally appear in the first two years of life." www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disorders-asd/index.shtml

Well, no.

^The problem here, or part of it, is that language that evolved to be useful has been bastardised.

I had a job years ago around hiv. The initiatives were aimed at men who had sex with men, rather than gay men, as its not uncommon for men who sometimes have sex with men to identify as straight.^

I take your point, but the individual I'm talking about was in a monogamous relationship with a man (her husband). I know not everything can be put into boxes, but if I man sleeps with other men of argue that he's not 100% 'straight', regardless of how he identifies. Just like how a man who identifies as a woman isn't automatically female.

But if he identifies as straight he will not get the info about hiv.

That is what the language was invented for. As I say, it's been bastardised.

If you are a femme trans man, surely that is being a woman? I have to say, I find it very difficult to see some of these new 'genders' as more than attention seeking or mental illness.

I mean that and disability and race, that sort of thing.

It's evolved/ being misused though, to mean something quite different.

And yes, it's idiotic for women to pretend they are men and then dress in stereotypically female ways and then pretend to be gender bending. Also, to have babies and pretend it's a scientific miracle.

But it's still better than pretending to be a Non fucking binary. Which is a hot mess of fly infested bullshit.

I thought for a second that we might have a mutual friend OP, but then I remembered my friend is a non-binary transmasc pansexual. Pronouns he/they.

i.e. a woman married to a man who sometimes fancies other people. And dyes her hair crazy colours and rants about terfs online a lot. But still wears women’s clothes and doesn’t seem to be taking hormones or making any actual changes to their body.

(Yes I muted them because they make my head hurt and the constant asspats they get are annoying.)

It's almost like we're all non-binary, even those who swear blind that they are transmasculine or transfeminine.

My next three points are made best by people who are far cleverer than me:

Lysander Spooner: "A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years."

"Gender fluidity" means jumping from restrictive gender category to restrictive gender category. You are still restricted by your category du jour. You are still caged.

Audre Lord: "For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

Gender roles are some of the "master's tools" and transitioning, aka begging for a personal exemption from the role usually forced upon your sex, is still maintaining the master's house because you are using the master's tools.

Malcolm X: "[D]uring slavery you had two Negroes. You had the house Negro and the field Negro.

The house Negro usually lived close to his master. He dressed like his master. [...]

So whenever that house Negro identified himself, he always identified himself in the same sense that his master identified himself."

The handmaids and transmen are the "house Negros" of patriarchy. They identify with or even as male oppressors in the hope of better treatment from men. Radical feminists are the "field Negros" and we see the punishment for resisting patriarchy in the abuse meted out to Get The L Out, WPUK, and others.

I came across the profile of a woman on a dating app last night. She categorised herself as straight and pansexual. I don't think she's quite got the hang of this gender identity malarky yet.

Fraggling - spot on about the original purpose of language about "identifying" and how the meaning has become distorted:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3688624-let-trans-men-be-fem-what-does-this-mean?msgid=89981466

For example, the question "Do you identify as disabled?" rather than *Are you disabled?" on a job application form.

The question is framed that way in order to give the candidate the choice of whether or not to disclose that that they meet specific criteria, ie. not to invite people to claim that they have a disability according to their personal definition of "disability".

In the UK, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) replaced the quota scheme, the designated employment scheme, and registration as a disabled person under the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1944 (the "Green Card" scheme).

Nowadays, you don’t register as disabled in order to get rights under the DDA or Equality Act 2010; you just look at whether you meet the Equality Act definition of ‘disability’.

If you do meet those criteria, whether at the time of application or at some later date, you choose whether or not to disclose that to the employer. I do not know the latest stats but in the past many people only chose to disclose if they needed and wanted to ask the employer about "reasonable adjustments".

In relation to the OP, if someone "identifies as non-binary" that is irrelevant in terms of protection as an employee under the EA 2010 - unless they choose to disclose it as a disability, ie. as evidence that they have a mental health problem.

That contrast illustrates the importance of not including protection for "self defined" characteristics under the EA 2010.

However . . . I find it very worrying that EA 2010 protection for "Gender Reassignment" of transsexual persons, with its odd mixture of references to both "gender" and "sex", is open to abuse by someone claiming that all it takes to change "attributes of sex" is to wear a skirt a la Alex Drummond or the name on a driving licence from Stan to Tiffany. Little wonder that the world over the transgender lobby are trying to erase the term "transsexual":

7 Gender reassignment

(1) A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person’s sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.

(2) A reference to a transsexual person is a reference to a person who has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

(3) In relation to the protected characteristic of gender reassignment

• (a) a reference to a person who has a particular protected characteristic is a reference to a transsexual person;

• (b) a reference to persons who share a protected characteristic is a reference to transsexual persons.

So I know that some profoundly deaf people choose not to define deafness as a disability and do not identify as disabled.

Does that mean that they are not covered against discrimination under the equalities act on the characteristic of disability? I understand that they identify as members of a cultural and language minority but I don't think that is protected against in the act - race is protected but is perfectly legal to "discriminate" against employing someone who doesn't speak English.

Does that mean that they are not covered against discrimination under the equalities act on the characteristic of disability?

They are still covered. Whether you are disabled isn't a matter of self-identification, but whether you have an impairment that has a "substantial" and "long-term" negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities.

Something that all nine EA protected characteristics have in common is that you cannot self-identify into them: there's some kind of testable criteria to decide whether you have that characteristic. GRA change proposals threaten that very sensible status quo.