Could someone genuinely please explain this to me...

[DanglySpider]

Ok, so this might be a horrendous question, but I think that's what anonymous forums are supposed to be for, yes? So, (and this may be a stupid question, but I just honestly don't get it) - why are things like blackface, wearing other cultural hairstyles and clothes, and living your life as a black person when you're white, all considered to be heinous, but people of one gender choosing to wear the clothes, behave, and live their lives as another gender is ok? I'm probably completely misconstruing the differences, but it just seems a bit two-faced that one is wrong, but the other is totally acceptable. I've always thought of myself as someone who embraces diversity and people's rights of expression, but I'm really struggling to feel empathy with a lot of trans arguments that I've been seeing recently - the whole 'transwomen are women' and the 'they're women biologically' nonsense. Or am I just completely misunderstanding the whole thing and one is nothing like the other?

Ok - so if people are genuinely. miserable in the body they were born with, it seems fair enough that they get to transition into the gender they want to be, and I don't even feel it ought to be a 'condition' as such - they're not ill, and need curing, they genuinely want to be something they're not, and if science allows them to change their body to make them feel more comfortable, surely they should have the right to do that? I loved watching 'Pose' for many reasons, but one reason was that it highlighted how needlessly trans people have been often villified, ostracised and denied rights - all fair points. But there's a massive difference between that and someone who just wants to choose to be a man one day and a woman the next, and ok, fair enough, gender is a social construct, and therefore theoretically, is fluid and a choice - you get masculine women and feminine men etc. but I just fail to see how anyone can wake up and say 'Oh, I'm going to be 67% male today and tomorrow I'll be 73% female'. It. just. seems. like. horseshit. What am I not seeing?

What's AGP, @ColleaguefromMars?

We aren't allowed to say. But google knows.

It. just. seems. like. horseshit. What am I not seeing?

Probably just not the full depth of the horseshit.

It doesn’t make sense, dangly, that’s the maddening thing. There’s no coherence or logic. It’s absolutely not a medical condition, but it absolutely must be medically treated as a priority, wherever that is desired, even in children. It’s not in any way a mental health condition, but trans people are particularly vulnerable to suicide, self harm and mental ill health, so we have to be specially kind and understanding. A non binary person is trans, even though by declaring themselves non binary, they’re by definition not transitioning to or from anything, as they’re outside the binary.

All quite baffling.

We aren't allowed to say. But google knows.

Google does know, but they'd prefer that you didn't, so searching for AGP requires a great deal of patience and tenacity before it turns up anything useful.

This article is a better place to start. medium.com/@sue.donym1984/the-elephant-in-the-room-dc822144a81b

@sith789

The former ie the blacking up is done to poke fun at one category of ppl ie reducing a whole bunch of people to a few stereotypical exaggerated traits and the other is called gender dysphoria, it is a condition.

Gender dysphoria is a condition of some trans people, but by no means all, and to say someone needs to have gender dysphoria to be transgender is apparently transphobic - that was what the self-id GRA reformers were arguing.

If you don't want to get your posts removed for transphobia it's worth bearing in mind, as you shouldn't generalise.

Oh, just realised sophocles made the same point!

I have often asked myself this question too OP - and here is an article by another woman who has too: standpointmag.co.uk/issues/november-2019/blackface-is-evil-why-isnt-drag/

DeaconBoo
"Gender dysphoria is a condition of some trans people, but by no means all, and to say someone needs to have gender dysphoria to be transgender is apparently transphobic - that was what the self-id GRA reformers were arguing.
If you don't want to get your posts removed for transphobia it's worth bearing in mind, as you shouldn't generalise."

Oops, many thanks for telling me !

Whoah - mindblown! I struggle to understand a lot of what DD's generation just completely accept, and it makes me feel very old and very conservative - which, as a liberal 45 year old woman working in the creative industries, I don't really consider myself to be, but I could be wrong! Nevertheless, I struggle to understand why or how her friend wants to transition from f to m, with binding, meds and waiting for surgery, even though they still fancy men, or her friend who self-ids as male, even though they still look exactly like a female, and I sometimes think that maybe I'm just old-fashioned, or just 'don't get it', but then I see the twitterati condemning JK for saying what seems to just be common sense - but I'm too afraid to pipe up in case it comes back to bite me ten years later in my career, or in case I get branded a TERF. But then I wonder - am I a TERF? I've always thought I was inclusive, and completely for equality and equal rights, and I support the equal marriage rights, but I'm just so confused by it all now - and it feels wrong, somehow - like we're being confused into accepting law changes so that men can erase women's rights, bit by bit. And it does all make me rather sad.

Expressing common sense views will get you branded as such, yes. Welcome to the dark side.

Break the word TERF down. If you think feminism is the fight for the rights of natal women, you're a TERF. Is that such a bad thing? No, in my opinion. It's another smoke and mirrors job to claim that it is awful to want feminism to be for women.