Trying to understand the hate trans people get on here.

[Kelcat9494]

Hello,

Firstly I want to say I am not attacking anyone on this forum and I expect the same respect as we are all entitled to an opinion and I am genuinely interested in the reasons why transgender people get so much hate on here:

Firstly I see a lot about not wanting to share bathrooms with trans women as it's a women's safe space - I don't really understand this because to be honest when I'm sat in the cubicle doing my business, I don't think about the persons genitals next to me, it's all very private as you know. The only thing we'd share is the sinks and I don't see a problem with that really. I did read a post about a abuse survivor not wanting to the share the bathroom with someone with a penis (I'm really sorry that the person went through the abuse but that isn't trans people's fault, the fault is with the abuser alone) but in reality a trans person is more at risk in the bathroom and you have no idea whether they are pre op or post op as again in the bathrooms I've been in we don't show each other our genitalia. They are genuinely just doing their human business in the same room as you so don't understand the problem, actually I suppose people are afraid some odd men would use being transgender as an excuse to use the woman's bathroom but that's not trans women's fault also by this logic if we don't want trans women in the bathroom then we should have transmen in there (either pre op or post op), I've posted some pictures below of transmen and woman, would you really want the trans women in men's bathroom and the transmen in the womens?? (I can only post three but you get my point).

I know JKRowling posted about periods and a lot of people jumped on it to say only women have periods and whatever, this isn't true though is it? Some biological women aren't able to have periods or carry a pregnancy or be able to give birth so if we don't see that as a problem as we recognise it's a biological issue then why is trans-men having a period a problem and trans women not having one an issue? And who actually cares? There's enough tampax to go around, maybe let's focus on making them free for women and transmen as I for one is sick of paying for a "luxury item" I need every month due to no fault of my own.

I can't think of anymore off the top of my head that's been posted but anything in the comments I'm happy to reply to but I genuinely think this forum needs to consider what transgender people actually go through, imagine not feeling like you're in the right body, being attacked and hated for who you are and it's obviously not for fun and games because transgender people actually commit suicide over the issues they face remember #bekind and really think how sharing a bathroom or sharing a tampax would affect you? I don't think you'd kill yourself over it.

Women are not human shields. HTH.

This is why Germaine Greer's views annoy me. But she is right to raise the question!

The answer is, as you go on to say, what is important to understand.

I think that's one of the chasms between GG and a younger audience, or a feminism that isn't exactly as hers is. She isn't blaming the individual woman for not acting more aggressively. She is rudely and aggressively questioning the society that mould us that way!

A lot of what she says delves far deeper into the layers of oppression than most of us care to think. Like when she said that the trauma women who have been raped suffer is like her fear of a type of spider. She wasn't ridiculing women, far from it. Had anyone listened past that they would have heard her say that patriarchal society encourages women to be very frightened, usually of the wrong things.

She said something like post rape trauma is something that is dictated by the sufferer. And that is shaped by societal expectations of a woman raped. That we be ashamed, feel dirty, despoiled. Women are socialised into believing that and it deepens their trauma. We should choose not to internalise the stereotypical version of a woman raped.

I know I didn't. I didn't weep, hide myself away pretend it had not happened. I was angry, told people who he was, where he worked. I have no idea why but I refused to be traumatised by it... well, after the shock, the bruises and the immediate feelings of collapse, numbness. Maybe my age (a young Greenham Common era), we were an angry lot of young women!

But I know I have tried to epxlain that before, it doesn't seem to come out well!

@TheAdventuresoftheWishingChair, I completely agree about my experience with one trans woman being just that - my experience with one amongst many and agree that my friend is likely to be perceived differently by other women. Those women might be intimidated because my friend looked like a large, muscular man wearing women’s clothes.
That is why I believe we need separate spaces for changing rooms, toilets and beds in hospitals.
As an ex-midwife, I handed the baby to Mum to discover the sex of her baby. Yes, I still observed myself and I take your point over my terminology/language.

@CuriousaboutSamphire You have a right to react to trauma your own way of course (I wasn't commenting on that). I have listened to extensive interviews with her. I was addressing more the expectation that some people have that women, who are physically weaker than men, should hit out at stronger, male aggressors. She made that expectation clear once on a panel at which she was speaking. My issue with that is that it's not that simple and having that expectation is unreasonable given the imbalance of strength that exists in that dynamic.

@Wondersense I understand and do agree that is really isn't that simple. I've heard her say the same words, but don't take it quite as literally. I hear her say we should hit out... and would if it were not for all sorts of societal expectations, over and above the biological imbalances.

As I said, I don't think I can explain how I hear it any more clearly than she says it. And there always seems to be a wide polemic in how she is heard! There's a thread or two about her at Hay on Wye. That got quite heated!

Regardless of how we each hear her, she does start quite invlved discussions - which can only be good!

Ramblingwords

Abolutely fantastic post at 14:18:44

@Milotic

Can I point out regarding suicide figures.

There arent actually official numbers. The kind of surveys that have been done have been based on information taken at face value.

My ex will tell them hes made several suicide attempts. Hes never made a single one.

We dont have the figures to even guess at what the suicide rate is compared to the rest of the population.

In "Irreversible Damage", Abigail Shrier states that studies "seem to corroborate" high levels of suicide ideation among transgender kids, but also argues, among other things, that (a) there's no evidence the suicide ideation is caused by the dysphoria: kids who are gender-dysphoric also tend to suffer from other mental health conditions, (b) there's no evidence that positive affirmation reduces suicidal tendencies, (c) the threat of suicide is used unprofessionally by those therapists who believe in positive affirmation in order to coerce parents, (d) the cultural association between being transgender and being suicidal has become so strong in the popular mind that kids trying to get diagnosed as transgender may think, unconsciously, that suicidal thoughts are one more symptom that they have to emulate in order to get diagnosed or to fit in with the rest of the community.

I know I didn't. I didn't weep, hide myself away pretend it had not happened. I was angry, told people who he was, where he worked

I think that's amazing and more power to you.

It's an interesting area to have a discussion about and possibly one for another thread. Germaine Greer's views certainly stimulate a lot of discussion don't they? And very useful ones at that.

What should have happened, when self ID was first suggested, was that women’s groups should’ve been consulted and listened to and a compromise should have been come to that protects women and trans people. That would have allied feminists, non feminists and trans people and their supporters.

Because safeguarding looks at worse case scenarios and works out what can be done to that happening.

What happened was women pointed out there was a massive loophole that would be very open to exploitation and the cries of “bigot” “transphobe” and the rest began.

Why did no one want to listen to women then? Same reason as no one listens now.

If the government suggested we do away with DBS checks in schools and replaces them with nothing but the applicants word, would anyone expect parents to be ok with that? And if they did say “well, hang on, what stops someone with a conviction for CSA applying?” And school staff replied “oh shut up! That wouldn’t happen. No one would go to work in a school for anything other than pure reasons with the children’s best interests at heart! What’s wrong with you bigots?” would anyone think that an acceptable response? And if not, why not?

There arent actually official numbers. The kind of surveys that have been done have been based on information taken at face value.

I actually think you could look at all sorts of different populations and find high rates of suicidal ideation to be honest, if you really looked for them. I mean vets and dentists kill themselves in quite high numbers, don't they? Where is the discussion about their vulnerabilities?

Many many teens without gender dysphoria probably have at least some experience of having moments of contemplating dying because it's a turbulent time and they're influenced by their peers and the media and suicide is glamourised. I don't think it necessarily means very much, I'm afraid, even if lots of teens with gender dysphoria do feel suicidal, although obviously any teenager who has persistent bleak thoughts and is unhappy deserves lots of support and input.

I was in hospital a lot as a child. I remember a night when 2 friends were both brought in having separately attempted suicide. Both were sitting laughing together on a bed the morning after and having been patched up were sent home with no further action deemed necessary. They no doubt both had moments of feeling pretty bad that they'd each taken an overdose but the hospital had the attitude of, we see this a lot, it's something teens do, it's a contagious thing and not necessarily reflective of the fact those teens are struggling with anything serious. Teenagers do stupid or melodramatic things, unfortunately.

It doesn't change my view that the very rare cases of severe gender dysphoria need much better treatment and compassion but you don't change society because one group is threatening suicide if they don't get their way.

To me it is also an incredibly unthinking and stigmatising approach to mental health issues, to say that suicide ideation is so utterly horrifying that almost anything should be attempted if it comes up, and that MH problems are so unusual and weird. I've always understood that Anerican mental health services arent great - I could easily be wrong and tbh in the UK they are fairly crap too due to relentless cuts and stigmatising as well. But fleeting thoughts of suicide are certainly really really common and not a reason to think that someone's entire physical being is somehow abnormal. I say this having lost my husband to suicide; I don't underestimate the issue.

Thank you for staying OP. It's made a welcome change.

You may be interested in this. It's a long read, (and from the USA), but every single point she raises is relevant to the situation in this country:

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200702034115/genderheretics.org/index.php/2020/07/01/i-hit-peaktrans-by-treating-transgender-sex-offenders/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20200702034115/genderheretics.org/index.php/2020/07/01/i-hit-peaktrans-by-treating-transgender-sex-offenders/

secondly, if someone is out to get you, having a sign on a door will not stop them.

Yes I heard you the first time, and my comment stands. You are proclaiming about other people's lived experiences of the sanctuary female only spaces sometimes provide from specific or random males. Please stop it, you don't know what you're talking about.

Hi OP, I’m sorry you perceived there to be hate here, but I think so many previous posters have made some fantastic points and I’m glad you’re examining them.
I am coming from the perspective of a woman who experienced gender dysphoria as a teen. I know well what it’s like to get aggression, disgust and confusion when you present as masculine with a woman’s body, even from family, and how much that hurts.
I know well the feeling of utter ‘wrongness’ living in a repulsive expansive female body when in my head I was an entirely different person.
I was desperate to just blend in, to pass as a boy. Of course, I didn’t.

I count myself incredibly lucky that I didn’t browse the internet or know anyone who felt similar. I didn’t know anything, really, about anything, so I didn’t even consider myself trans at the time. If I were a teen now, I would only have to take one look at my desperate-to-pass, chest-binding self and obviously come to that conclusion, but I think it would have been actively harmful for an already miserable teenager, to identify out of reality. What I needed was someone to show me clearly that femininity is not the same as womanliness.

It was only a couple of years ago, when I first read a blog about detransitioning after ROGD that I recognised myself in those young women, forever changed by the treatment they’d gone through.
I’m in my 30s now and butch as anything. Ended up bisexual, now in a relationship with a man. Dressing up in ‘female’ clothes feels like wearing drag to me, but I am 100% unequivocally a woman. I’ve now had the privilege to birth children and feed them using my once-loathed breasts. It has been one of the most precious human experiences of my life, even with all the attendant female issues of pain and bodily change. The thought of scores of young girls undergoing hysterectomies, mastectomies, never even having this choice, makes me feel sick. When I was dysphoric, I felt sure I didn’t want kids.

For anyone who feels like I did, reading this- I think the Trans umbrella can be a prison. ‘Gender’ is bollocks. You will never change your biology; if you go down the medical route you will be a lifelong medical patient, dependent on other people’s affirmation for your happiness.
I also realise now that self hatred and self involvement took precious time away from examining other vital issues, e.g. climate change and stunted my involvement in life.

It took a long time for me to overcome dysphoria, accept messy biological reality and feel at peace in my body. It’s far from perfect, but I care about it. Most importantly, I feel like I ‘am’ my body.
I want this peace and acceptance of reality for other people experiencing dysphoria, but this is deemed akin to conversion therapy. I don’t want to stop people from expressing their gender identity (cynical read: personality and fashion sense because I don’t believe in an innate gendered self) whilst keeping our society segregated on the basis of the reality of our sexed bodies, with a third space available for any whose safety and dignity is compromised by using traditionally male or female facilities.
I want to live in a society where beautiful feminine men and unapologetically unfeminine women can live their lives without being abused or laughed at, because society is hard on those who aren’t gender conforming.
I also want a society where children are not encouraged to believe that their sexed bodies are wrong because of a ‘mismatched’ personality, where we aren’t socialised into poisonous gender roles from a young age.
Sterility, lifelong medication, cutting off healthy tissue is not a sane outcome for people who feel like I did and we are now in the warped position where society tells us we are bigoted and on the wrong side of history for expressing this view.
I feel like Transgender theory is the ally of sexism, that it creates and Us vs. Them dichotomy and a whole load of new boxes to put people into, when really we should be smashing the boxes.
I don’t know what the answer is, but divisions of ‘Cis’ and ‘Trans’, affirmation and medical intervention can’t be it for the majority; they just can’t.

Women are not human shields. HTH.

This. It's also a question of privacy and dignity. People seem determined that if they personally don't think there is a good reason for it, other women shouldn't expect it. No.

kelcat, just as an additional point on deletions as you wander round the board (and please do) - you will see many threads where post deletions have taken place. Do not assume that these were transphobic hate posts by regular mn posters. We receive a large number of ‘visitors’ from twitter who post in a deliberately transphobic or goady way to harvest screenshots from ‘mumsnetters’ to prove the site is ‘transphobic’. It’s done very quickly, and often late at night when they know the moderators are not working. It’s a deliberate tactic used to silence the many ferociously intelligent protectors of women’s rights that post here, against a backdrop of trying to shut us down. They go after mn advertisers and force them to drop advertising contracts as a way of exerting financial pressure on the owners to close down the feminism chat board.
The hatred against women trying to protect sex based rights is very real. I know it sounds fantastical. Just don’t assume that deletions are proof of transphobia.
Welcome to the board

It concerns me when people blithely talk about removing someone else's rights in law, and show they don't really understand how laws are formulated.

You can't just remove 'sex' as a protected class from the Equality Act;

• it also affects numerous other pieces of legislation which have to be rewritten.
• it creates a legal precedent.
• it has real life consequenses for individuals that you don't care about.

The EA was written to protect groups of people who are vulnerable. You want to remove that protection for one group and you also want to pretend that no one will be harmed.

Well we wont let you. If you fight to remove the EA we will hold each and every one of you accountable.

@Wearywithteens

I agree.

I wish we could take the same stance as the BLM movement. It's not my job to educate you.

It's not my job to educate men on the issues of the sexism and the patriarchy when they are the perpetrators of these issues and I am busy and exhausted already fighting against them every single day.

The sad thing is that many women's issues aren't taken seriously in the way that issues of race have been recently. It took hundreds of unjust murders of black people for their issues to finally get recognition and for people to realise they need to educate themselves and it's not the job of the oppressed to educate you about their oppression. I wonder how many women will have to die for sexism to gain the same deserved mass attention?

I know it sounds fantastical. It does doesn't it?

But you only have to be on a thread where it happens overnight to realise how jolly determined they are!

Sad really. But, kelcat that is also why there are words/terms that are banned only on FWR and why there are a set of additional rules for posting here. They hurt, to be honest. You have to twist what tyou want to say until it almost loses all sense. But it is pointles to rail against it as without those additional measures MNHQ couldn't say, to anyone who asks, "Look how strict we moderate the topic" and we know Justine has to say such twaddle quite regularly, she occasionally clarifies things and it is quite scary to see just how far some TRA actions push seemingly sensible people!

My sons both cross the road if they find themselves following a lone woman down a dark or lonely street.

They know they represent zero risk to the woman. But they know she doesn't know that, and that's what matters.

Men who identify as women - if they actually had empathy for women - would surely go to great pains not to scare or intimidate them? The lovely Miranda Yardley, a tall transsexual, uses male facilities, because Miranda identifies with us. Would that more would follow his example (he goes by male pronouns, MNHQ).

I want to live in a society where beautiful feminine men and unapologetically unfeminine women can live their lives without being abused or laughed at, because society is hard on those who aren’t gender conforming.
I also want a society where children are not encouraged to believe that their sexed bodies are wrong because of a ‘mismatched’ personality, where we aren’t socialised into poisonous gender roles from a young age.*.

I love this @Igbee. This is what society should be aiming for. Gender is complete bollocks isn’t it.

NotMyTimes- we had a few years of people like Ed Miliband wearing a “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” t shirt, now we’ve moved on. There are many lovely, kind people who want to support those who need it, but have no real commitment to any single cause. So now people are tweeting #BLM and #TransRights because there’s a big focus on those right now. This isn’t to say those people are bad, but they will move on when the next cause comes in. Because they are doing it to be kind and black lives DO matter, just as trans rights are human rights. But if next year the media is all over disability rights, for example, that’s what the sloganistas will hop on over to.

Gender is TOTAL bollocks. This ideology cements stereotypes as law and erases biological reality. It’s an absolute travesty. We are all worthy of protection.
Replacing sex with ‘gender’ in legal terms cannot be allowed to happen, whatever the clearly stated aims of Stonewall and the silent back room deals of PfC.

@Wearywithteens

This is just so depressing that women have to spell it again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again to illuminate the facts to one single wokester at a time...

Fortunately it's not just one woman at a time, more will be lurking and reading and hopefully each woman who gets it will be talking to one or two people in real life.