Where are all the middle aged women who should be transitioning

[IcakethereforeIam]

I'm new here, I'm sorry if this has been covered or if I've got the wrong end of the stick.

I don't understand the apparent lack of curiosity in some quarters at the massive increase in girls wanting to transition. I went to school in the 80s, while my friends and I knew vaguely about sex change it was not something we thought about applying to ourselves. Perhaps we just kept it inside.

Advocates for allowing children to transition (affirmation only? ), think they don't grow out of the desire. Others say over 80% desist (watchful waiting?). I believe the first cohort believe the uptick is down to an increase in awareness of the possibility of treatment. Surely, if that is correct, there should be hundreds or thousands of closeted women around my age wanting to change their sex. Where are they? Has anyone looked for them?

If they aren't there, then why the disconnect.

Sorry still catching up.

Barley

This is an utterly crass, and presumably deliberate thing to say to a bunch of women.

You KNOW the constant threat of violence women and girls are pushed to internalise day in day out. You KNOW the levels of street harrassment, intimidation, coercion, grooming, sexual assault, sexual harrassment, aggression, violence and rape that women experience, and often starting as soon as breasts start growing.

You know the recent press about sexual harrassment, sexualised insults, sexual assault and rape in schools. Vastly boys doing to girls. And that there's STILL a brush under carpet attitude. You KNOW the recent news had a period of murder after murder in the most appalling circs.

Do you think you're being clever? Does it make you feel good? To call that PRIVILEGE?

Or do all those things just not matter at all to you. And telling women (and girls) that they have NO clue what it feels like to be targeted and hurt just because of who they are. Is just a throw away, zero thought given, obvious fact to you?

Nice one. Definitely a comment to show that you care about oppression, discrimination and prejudice for sure.

'Of course I suspect you've never had to worry about someone kicking your head in becase they decided you were a 'fag' and don't know many LGBT people so perhaps it's something you are unaware of. That's called privilege.'

Come on, you’re talking rubbish here. Of course it’s true. I went to school in a region of the north west where nearly every school in the entire county - including all the private schools and the vast majority of state schools - was single sex.

It's too late to look up stats and I'm sure the majority of private schools back then might have been single sex but comps weren't, I don't know anyone who went to a single sex comprehensive school, certainly no-one in my family or any of my friends.

As for boys with long hair and girls wearing trousers being dangerous in the 80s - are you kidding me?!

Yes, trousers were banned for girls in my schools and boys were only allowed long hair if it was in a ponytail. It was certainly an impact on whether a boy would be able to get a job or not. Men with long hair in offices or customer facing roles didn't exist outside of nightclubs and record shops. And the boys at my school with long hair regulaly got beaten up and the various subcultures - goths, punks, heavy metal people, were pretty much confined to two bars and one club on the edge of the city centre and would get beaten up if they walked through town alone on a Saturday night - as would visibly gay men or lesbians. Rose tinted specs are great but it's not how things were.

Historically there were more trans women who presented for treatment than trans men. Why that is is really unknown,

It’s not “unknown” as such. Since early sexologists like Krafft-Ebing and Havock Ellis invented “inversion theory”, there have been many theories around gender “inversion” - which was until relatively late in the century about homosexuality rather than the current construction of “transgender”, which is very historically recent, and has only taken on its current shape within the last 25 years. Before then, most psychologists postulated that “transsexualism” (as it was constructed between the decline of inversion theory and the invention of “Transgenderism”) was a form of fetish paraphilia - and more common in men because men’s psychosexual development was theorised to be more prone to developing fetish or paraphiliac tendencies.

@foxgoosefinch

Haven't looked at this in details but it seems to show almost 90% of comprehensive schools were co-ed by 1977: sesc.hist.cam.ac.uk/2018/05/29/counting-co-education/

Do you think you're being clever? Does it make you feel good? To call that PRIVILEGE?

Yes, it is (straight) privilege not to have to worry about being beaten up because someone thinks you're gay or you showed affection for your partner in public. That has no bearing on the horrific violence that women, including trans women, also face from men. Are you denying straight people possess privilege compared to LGB people?

' It suggests theres a lot of trans kids out there still closeted, no doubt frightened and not getting any support.'

DD girls school. Her group of about 7 girls. ALL have trans IDs (and some have sexuality descriptions outside the 'old' LGB terms).

Most have adopted male or unisex names and pronouns other than she/her within their group. One has changed name at school to one that's more usual girls in full but with shortening considered male.

And so what? Hostility? Scared? Come off it.

What WAS scary was when DD showed me a watsapp from a friend forwarded saying on this date transphobes are going to take to the street and murder trans kids.

WTF? Obv had chat with DD about well obviously ridiculous. Her friend had said it was terrifying.

So who is causing fear for children with trans IDs? Their MUMS???? Or could it be those who constantly push the idea they are hated, in danger, pretty much certain to be suicidal, that their parents will do so sorts of awful things if they tell them?

Fucking hell.

@barleybadminton

Come on, you’re talking rubbish here. Of course it’s true. I went to school in a region of the north west where nearly every school in the entire county - including all the private schools and the vast majority of state schools - was single sex.

It's too late to look up stats and I'm sure the majority of private schools back then might have been single sex but comps weren't, I don't know anyone who went to a single sex comprehensive school, certainly no-one in my family or any of my friends.

As for boys with long hair and girls wearing trousers being dangerous in the 80s - are you kidding me?!

Yes, trousers were banned for girls in my schools and boys were only allowed long hair if it was in a ponytail. It was certainly an impact on whether a boy would be able to get a job or not. Men with long hair in offices or customer facing roles didn't exist outside of nightclubs and record shops. And the boys at my school with long hair regulaly got beaten up and the various subcultures - goths, punks, heavy metal people, were pretty much confined to two bars and one club on the edge of the city centre and would get beaten up if they walked through town alone on a Saturday night - as would visibly gay men or lesbians. Rose tinted specs are great but it's not how things were.

You realise that we were also there? And that you are massively misrepresenting the past? Just because girls didn’t wear trousers for school uniform did not mean that women in trousers were considered dangerous!

That’s a very bizarre fallacy. All the girls at our local secondary school nearby wear trousers to school. Does this mean that the girls are living in a brave new non sexist world? If anything the culture they live in is more sexist in many ways than in the 80s and 90s. Did you grow up putting fake eyelashes on and waxing your pubic hair off? Or wearing bodycon outfits to copy the Kardashians? Or being shown hardcore porn with tiny young girls being choked by “built” men with shaved heads and tattoos as if this is what is expected from sex?

Men with long hair in offices or customer facing roles didn't exist outside of nightclubs and record shops.

Also just…not true in the slightest!

As a fifty plus women who has become invisible over the last few years (except when it comes to caring for elderly relatives) I’m very tempted to transition. Will I be noticed more, will my menopause go, will I get promoted and equal pay? Sounds promising.

Just popped back in to check on this thread - I knew the basis of the argument was going to do a 180. Amazing how that happens with some posters, isn't it?

@foxgoosefinch

Men with long hair in offices or customer facing roles didn't exist outside of nightclubs and record shops.

Also just…not true in the slightest!

Absolutely right. Back when I was still attempting (very unconvincingly) to conform to what my working class catholic family expected of me I even went out with, offhand, at least four of them.

I have to say I have occasionally been tempted to tell my boss I’m transitioning and make everyone call me by male pronouns. I somehow suspect my pay would still not rocket upwards to close the gap with male colleagues, and nor would I be called on more often in meetings.

It might be worth a try though….seems to me like a failsafe way to get a lot of extra attentiveness to and for my feelings, for one thing. Being a lesbian woman is no good in the identity top trumps these days….

When were we ever? Was I asleep that day...?

Was it, sorry..

Poster-

'It's almost as if there are many reasons why a teenage girl would like to cease being a teenage girl...'

Barley

'But that's not happenong anymore, it's a historical phenomena, the reasons for which are no doubt complex given the nature of society at the time. '

Straight up, in your face, bollocks. Utter drivel.

The insistence that women who were girls, have ZERO understanding of, insight into, no comprehension at all. Women on a feminist board. Women on a site dominated by female posters who have children. Yes including girls. Women who care about girls and pay attention to anything in the news or from charities etc etc about how girls feel, what problems they have etc...

It's basic fundamental rank misogyny. To dismiss anything that women say.

In particular if they are about 45+,

Or Feminists of the despised type

Or say things that men don't like hearing

Or insist they know better about women/girls than women/girls do

Or who just won't STFU and do as they're told...

It's so BORING. Tedious. Heard it all my life.

Regurgitating what men have expressed for.. ever? Nice look.

All this stuff shows to any lurkers is it's same old male supremacist shit repackaged in a shiny new box.

Absolutely, Cheese.

@barleybadminton

In the 80s and 90s makeup and dressing up were for older people - not teenagers - and you only dressed up in “feminine” clothes occasionally - the rest of the time you wore jeans and grungy checked shirts or tops. There were many more single sex schools (most in the U.K. state sector went co-ed around 2010).

This just isn't true, there were hardly any single sex state schools in the 80s and 90s, I grew up in a large city and there was just one very small girl's comprehensive school and no boy's school except the local private school.

The 80s and 90s were the age of Rambo, Madonna dancing round in a leotard, shoulder pads, big hair, conspicuous consumption and then lad's mags and girl power into the 90s. And casual sexual harassment, page 3 on workplace walls, queer bashing and section 28. Action films were full of butch men rescuing pretty helpless women and the city centres were full of lairy casual blokes and young women in stillettos and miniskirts dancing round handbags. Perhaps it wasn't like that in your social circle, but let's not rewrite history - being visibly gay or gender nonconforming was incredibly dangerous back then, far more than now and things are still a long long way from ideal. Even boys having long hair and girls wearing trousers was controversial in the 80s, its little wonder trans kids felt unable to come out. There were 1500 kids at my upper school and not one came out as LGBT because it wasn't safe to do so, homophobic bullying was rampant, and not just from the kids but teachers and other adults as well.

Single sex schools were never much of a thing in Scotland or Wales outside the private sector. England went largely mixed in the 70s.

[quote barleybadminton]@foxgoosefinch

Haven't looked at this in details but it seems to show almost 90% of comprehensive schools were co-ed by 1977: sesc.hist.cam.ac.uk/2018/05/29/counting-co-education/[/quote]
I think you're right Barely. That also confirms what I thought would be the case and the reason for Scotland and Wales being over whelmingly co-ed in the state sector, and not just because of the rural demographics.

I would put money on there never having been single sex state schools in Aberdeen or Inverness, don't know about the other cities, beyond husband was at a co-ed state school in Glasgow.

Fair few single sex schools in this part of London, plenty of mixed sex too.

What's that got to do with anything though?

That stuff about 80s surely v area dependent In little village somewhere or v macho area.. sure maybe. But...80s? Really? Generally? I can think of bands grew up in those years v small traditional areas and... Did their thing appearance wise!

And women girls in trousers outrageous I mean lol really that's so incredibly ludicrous. Just NOT TRUE. That it pretty much renders everything said on whole thread as questionable.

@foxgoosefinch

Men with long hair in offices or customer facing roles didn't exist outside of nightclubs and record shops.

Also just…not true in the slightest!

Sorry, I was born in 1959. I was therefore a teenager 1972 to 1978, at university 1977- 1981 and first office job in 1981.

I agree with Barley, male office workers, teachers, lecturers, bank managers, shop workers did not routinely have long hair. It might have been collar length and longer than is the norm , but the rosy- tinted glasses are on full strength to insist it was common place.

Missed a word out. It might have been collar length and slightly longer than is the norm now , but the rosy- tinted glasses are on full strength to insist long hair was common place.

Did anyone say men routinely had long hair in 80s?

No. Why?

Because the entire male population of the UK were not young people/older teens who felt the need to copy the look of their fave bands.

And looking back. Long hair was more into 90s surely?

80s hair for men generally (biggest looks) was new romantic style. Still some punks about. Rude boy style 2 tone revival. Skinheads around, remember the NF big then we had NF pub in town. Metal/rock really big long hair bands obv. The hazey fantazie/dexy look. Mod revival.... And more.

So why would men of all ages across the country have routinely had long hair?

Are you thinking of the 70s flare suits and male fashion loads men longer hair than before and seen as shocking (Beatles etc)?

Terence t'tent darby fans, Marilyn fans, boy George...

Lol just got memory in gear!

80s popular men's hairstyles that I recall...

*Mullets

*Perms

*The Bouffant (exemplified by George Michael... Still sad he died so young)

*Flat top (hello vanilla ice! Lol he did think ice rink a couple years back... Wait for it... Vanilla ice on ice! 🤣🤣🍸

*OMG rats tails!!!

*Remember limahl?

I concede that unlikely many 50yo bank managers had hair like limahl.
But then. Not many did. Limahl was limahl. No one else going to be able to carry it off.

Sorry, I’m still laughing at this and want to reiterate this point.

barleybadminton thinks older males who have, shall we say, a particular presentation will soon be a thing of the past because the age of these males when they present is coming down to match the females presenting.😆😆