Is any one just a little bit gleeful right now?

[Appalonia]

After so many years seemingly howling in the wind, FINALLY the MSM are taking the issues , seriously, it's on front page news, discussed in Westminster, BBC, ITV, C4,it's all over Twitter, even the bloody GUARDIAN is reporting on it, and, by the outrage over Adam Graham, the convicted rapist being put in a women's jail, it looks like we are on the right side of history after all...

Well, Dr Az Hakeem has said that in his long clinical experience, the trans people who are least likely to regret transition are the males who have high scores on autistic traits, who are largely impervious to the stares and whispers of others and who really do seem content with a sort of ‘I’ve got boobs and a blouse so I’m literally a woman’ interpretation of gender.

But the EHRC guidance does seem plausible in terms of what the politicians who voted on the GRA and the EQ10 thought they were voting for, which was for transsexuals who really, genuinely, did look like the opposite sex to be treated like the opposite sex and for those transsexuals to not be harassed or victimised while part way through that ‘sex change’.

Of course, humans can’t change sex and the ‘passing transsexual’ was long ago far outnumbered by the ‘blouse and boobs = woman’ type, so it’s all built on a nonsense, but it was still a somewhat plausible nonsense 15-20 years ago.

The earliest transsexuals were all diagnosed on the basis that their aesthetic starting point was conducive to an eventual successful ‘pass’, it was an inbuilt part of the process.
Anyone who was too big, too manly, too low voiced was weeded out by ‘gate keepers’.

I guess that lulled normie politicians into a false sense of security as to what a transsexual was and what a transsexual looked like? As the gatekeeping fell away transitioners looked less and less like the opposite sex, but by then it was too late, because the laws and guidelines were drawn up with the gate-kept ‘passing’ fashion model types in mind, a la a young April Ashley.

The whole thing started out as a nightmarish experiment on a handful of (probably quite vulnerable) feminine homosexual males (in an era when male homosexuality was literally a criminal act) and grew and grew until it was a nightmarish experiment on society as a whole.

Welcome to 2023!

And a truly intersectional approach should deffo consider the experiences of visually impaired women!

The earliest transsexuals were all diagnosed on the basis that their aesthetic starting point was conducive to an eventual successful ‘pass’, it was an inbuilt part of the process.

Anyone who was too big, too manly, too low voiced was weeded out by ‘gate keepers’.

I don't think that's true. Did Jan Morris pass? Look at the size of those hands.

scribepublications.co.uk/books-authors/books/jan-morris-9781911617440

The first TW I knew was a friend's boyfriend back in the 90s. Well over 6ft tall, very masculine facial structure, very deep voice, serious male-pattern baldness. He went through full transition at Charing Cross hospital. In his head he looked like a movie star. In real life no one with decent vision would have had any doubt he was a man.

Jan Morris wouldn’t have passed the original gatekeepers, due to being heterosexual - Jan seems to be a very early example of the later life transitioners described by the acronym that we sometimes get banned for using and sometimes don’t. I expect Morris wielded enough social clout to get whatever Morris wanted despite an atypical clinical presentation for the period - likely helped open the doors for more of the same.

Morris was older than Ashley but Ashley transitioned a decade earlier.

The earliest of TS went to Casablanca for surgery, but the first TS I personally met was the American singer Jayne County, who wasn’t pretty enough to get through the US assessment (which might’ve been at John Hopkins) and (iirc) so went to Berlin for a op instead 😬
I didn’t meet County until much later on though (90s).
I knew a woman who transitioned in the 90s too but she had always been extremely masculine and it did sort of make sense to me at the time for her to go from Nicola to Nicholas (not her real name!) because she’d always been mocked and bullied for her extremely butch presentation and transition minimised that significantly (with hindsight I now recognise her transition as likely largely driven by societal lesbophobia. I don’t know where she is now, she’d be 51/52 ish. My sister might know... anyway, I hope she has peace and happiness now, whichever letter is on her driving licence)

I do think woman ARE much better at recognising sex than men, regardless of attempts to conceal it. I’m always struck at how short the arms of transmen are compared to a man of the same height and width! I expect there is a biological imperative for women to be better at spotting potential predators than men are, (and females of other mammalian species are likely the same).

Just found this article, Ashley and Morris used the same surgeon in Casablanca but 12 years apart:

archive.is/J65d9

Now I’m wondering when the NHS started routinely offering genital surgeries…

Need to suppress the urge to go down the rabbit hole and do some sodding housework!

Argh! Caught in the archive link autonet.

Found an article stating that Ashley and Morris went to the same Casablanca based French surgeon 12 years apart.

It’s not behind a paywall, just an email sign up, but it’s available without registering via archive .is

www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/long-reads/georges-burou-gender-reassignment-surgery-b1760402.html

The bag is pretty well shredded, it’s only held together by some imaginary sellotape stuck on by kind people who claim imaginary sellotape is fair .

Maybe we can start by reclaiming language. No more chest feeding, cervix owners, people who menstruate, pregnant people etc…….. it should be an easy enough step and is important in re establishing that womens biology is the biology of adult female humans and not changeable to or from the biology of adult male humans.

Yes I’m up for this

We need to reverse all the language back to making women central - the adult female kind

Yes. And we need to name people for what they are. It's shouldn't be in the least controversial to say a man is a man.

www.thefreelibrary.com/Viva+!%3A+She+gives+new+life+to+wheelchair-bound+kids%2C+helps...-a0100915515

Routine surgeries carried out here in North Wales who was a legend at the time. And much admired, if feared

The Independent lauding the 'late, great Jan Morris' I see. We know better now.

Or that an adult human who has given birth is, in fact a woman, and any feeding she will be doing with her own body parts is by definition breastfeeding.

Even if she wants to deny this, she is biologically a woman and a mother and the process of feeding human milk to an infant via your nipples is breastfeeding. No matter how much you are in denial about it.

@pattihews if you want the long version you can have it. I thought it was obvious that by using speech marks I was distancing myself from that term a little.

It's true that I think gender exists. I'm a feminist and I think gender stereotypes are separate from sex, are imposed on all of us and they differ culturally. I also believe, perhaps differently from others on here, that they are also used by all of us, not always negatively, and that it can be very difficult to separate gender from sex. We use gender as a heuristic - if we come across someone who presents with familiar gender signals that are culturally related to a particular sex, we are more likely to see them as that sex. Of course we are - that's what heuristics are for. I personally find when I meet trans people I know, I experience more androgyny than passing. But I do think in self policed settings like toilets, a truly neutral option is not a bad one.

"It's true that I think gender exists. I'm a feminist and I think gender stereotypes are separate from sex, are imposed on all of us and they differ culturally. I also believe, perhaps differently from others on here, that they are also used by all of us, not always negatively, and that it can be very difficult to separate gender from sex. We use gender as a heuristic - if we come across someone who presents with familiar gender signals that are culturally related to a particular sex, we are more likely to see them as that sex. Of course we are - that's what heuristics are for. I personally find when I meet trans people I know, I experience more androgyny than passing. But I do think in self policed settings like toilets, a truly neutral option is not a bad one"

Im sure you will receive much more articulate replies than mine but I'll have a go anyway..

It really really isn't "very difficult to separate gender from sex". Sex exists (basic biology) and gender is simply stereotyping. I fail to see how any^^ sexist stereotyping is "not always negative" for women I'd rather fight against sexist stereotyping for my DDs and not accept it let alone teach them that it can be a positive. Fuck that.

You've also lost me at "self policed settings". Why do you think single sex spaces were required and introduced in the first place? To protect women. Self ID, self policing etc - they put women at risk. It really doesn't need to be a complicated essay about heuristics and cultural norms etc.

As an example of how simple it is - do you genuinely think Isla Bryson is a woman? Yes or no? If yes, then that's whole other conversation. Somehow I think (well, hope!) you will say no. If you agree that Isla Bryson is not a woman, then why the fuck should he be allowed unrestricted access to women's spaces?

IB isn't a one off or a special case just because he's already been convicted. We can't judge someone's worthiness to be a woman based on whether they've already been convicted, or whether they "pass" etc. It doesn't need an assessment of each Individual case. IB can present or self identify all he wants but he is a risk to women because he is a man. I don't want men like him in single sex spaces - from rape crisis support groups, to my gym's showers, to "self policed toilets" etc. There are plenty of men out there just like IB and I don't want them able to gain access to women and their safe spaces by using their get out of jail card of but I feel like a women.

Do you yourself genuinely and automatically believe IB is a woman because he says he is? Would you genuinely and automatically believe every single man who says he is a woman, actually is a woman? Really?!

There are no grey areas here. It's simple. Sex exists and is the final deciding criteria. Two sexes. Men and women. We segregate by sex for very good reasons. Just keep men out of women's spaces and protect women and girls.

I worry that people aren’t getting angry enough now that these stories are in the mainstream news. It’s still like basic normal safeguarding is ‘being mean’ for a lot of people. They think that Isla the double rapist being in prison with women was an exceptional case, not the logical consequence of this misogynistic homophobic politics.

Love your user name @WeBuiltCisCityOnSexistRoles! Thank you for saying it so I didn't have to.

People can think of themselves however they wish, but when it comes to using loos and changing rooms and situations where women feel vulnerable sex is what matters to the vast, vast majority of people.

I don't have a gender. I can't relate to what you write about. None of the people I've asked over the years has had a gender. What I do have is a sex and it's immutable and unchangeable. It's beyond question which of the two sexes is the one that most regularly preys on the other. Women need protection on the basis of their sex and keeping men out of women's loos is the 101 of safeguarding.

@WeBuiltCisCityOnSexistRoles I have no idea how you got the idea from what I wrote that I might ever think that man is a woman. Of course I bloody don't. I can't believe that this case is finally getting traction in the wider world when none of the others- the 2009 case, woukd-be murderer Lauren Jeska (who is in a women's prison), Tiffany Scott's repeated applications, Barbie Kardashian, absolutely none of them caused a single politician to show the slightest concern for women. Maybe I mixed up my threads and posted on the wrong one?? Sex and gender are hard to separate in reality at times but they are NOT the same thing. That's what I wrote.

Of course toilets are self policed - who else is policing them? Nobody is checking, entry to public toilets is governed by social convention alone. Women need to know that there won't be male people in a single sex space. But yes it is difficult for some transmen, who do pass better than transwomen, and for transwomen who've experienced what I'd call homophobic abuse. So a 'gender neutral' stall, as in a space that is open to any gender presentation but safe, is a good idea to me.

I've realised now that I've argued myself round to a third space anyway. I guess I mean a third space that isn't labelled 'trans' but is unisex, without affecting provision for women.

India Willoughby tweeted that there were '5 trans prisoners in 88000' today. 88000 is i think the total population of all prisoners in the UK, of which 95% are male. What India didn't say was that must be 5 known men among 284 people in Scottish women's prisons (possibly more if males with a GRC aren't counted). That's 2%. Compare that to the 0.4% trans population in the census.

That led me to this…. 😂

twitter.com/MattIsGay8/status/1620674713017262080

"Autogynephilia??! Men having fetishes?!!?!! Pfft pure pseudoscience, it's far more likely that some males are actually female-sexed souls installed into a het males body and that female soul just happens to get off on the most fetishized male perspective of womanhood imaginable"

His bio reads:
single-issue acct so I can sometimes rant abt gender till I get banned idc

This type of push back, without being deleted, and the amount of likes it receives etc is what helps me feel like normal people are seeing this whole shit show for what it is.

So not gleeful but a little hopeful.