Trans and losing my mind...

[bluepetergeneration]

Posting here in good faith. And I'll leave that at that.

I'm a TS. I was born male. I don't normally post on mumsnet but I started using it as I have a 1 year old DD. I won't tell my whole life story, that would be self indulgent, so I'll just say what I came here to say.

I'm sick to death of my community. I'm sick of the misogyny. I'm under no illusion that I'm a woman or ever will be. I transitioned when I was very young so I pass, but I still now only use female bathrooms when there's no other option (such as a disabled bathroom- I would feel unsafe in the mens). What I have is a disorder- it was crippling- and now I live my life so that I can actually enjoy it and not feel 'wrong'.

The idea of self-ID sickens me, and I'm tired of having to have the same conversations over and over again with other trans people who accuse me of being some kind of self hating transsexual just because I care about the safety of women. I also care about the safety of my kid. Partly because I'm worried she'll be in danger because I'm trans, and also because I don't want her to get caught up in all these weird messages that being trans isn't a disorder around dysphoria (which it is).

I guess I'm posting this to say that in this fight, trans people with genuine dysphoria who aren't delusional will be standing right beside you.

Also a plea to not paint all of us with the same brush. You can fight for the rights of trans people (like me, I should be able to present female and not get attacked, and when I was in my late teens and still looked a bit male I did get attacked) and also be gender critical

I don’t object to two women adopting, I do object to two men adopting.

Christ. Well you are entitled to your terrible views but I don't think those kind of opinions are why most people oppose self-ID.

Yes, terrible views, putting the rights and welfare of the child first. Of putting the rights of women over male entitlement.

Hard agree, with the above. Lesbian couples are okay. I know quite a few. And no surrogates aka poor women forced to rent out their bodies were involved.

I completely agree. It's a highly unsatisfactory situation.

My argument is that (for toilets) the highest risk to women, and the one that has the most traction with the public, is around cross dressers. The practical problems for transsexuals puts people off.

If we get prisons, refuges and sports to be single sex, then we can start arguing about what to do with toilets.

Yes, terrible views, putting the rights and welfare of the child first. Of putting the rights of women over male entitlement.

There are thousands of children stuck in care who need adoptive parents. Whatever your reasons for thinking gays shouldn't adopt it is not in children's best interest.

See the above post

EndlessTea · Today 09:40
Having said that, I think that children who are difficult to place would potentially be better off in a permanent home with men than in residential or foster care.

I don’t think men should be allowed to adopt babies.

I am aware of a couple like the OP. One frozen sperm and donated to someone they knew. There is a boy as the result. They have some kind of shared arrangement over parenting or access though I don't know the detail.

I have concerns over even this arrangement if I'm honest. It's framed as the child having more people who love them. But from conception they haven't been centred really. We know how hard it is for children to have multiple homes and no single home - it affects how secure they are. And parenting between households and maintaining parental consistency is hard. We know the difficulties of step parenting arrangements. Also seeing a child as a timeshare kid from conception bothers me. If circumstances end up that way and it can't be avoided then it's sad but necessary but doing it in a deliberate and planned way I find hard to support. The potential for custody battles to spring out of it is really high. I don't doubt that the child is loved, but I do think there is way too much unrealistic 'we are all going to live happily ever after' going on too that pretty unfair on the child.

I think others perhaps won't feel as strongly as me on this, and think it's essentially homophobic / extremely conservative. However I think it's about responsibility and putting a child first and making a deliberate decision to bring a child into that scenario isn't about their emotional well being and security first. It's about the desires of the parents with the child's reality as a second thought. I do understand that not everyone has an ideal family set up and things do go tits up despite best efforts in a 'normal' relationship but it's about the planning and intent of that which doesn't sit well with me

It's hard enough to do with someone you are in a relationship with and live with. Planning to do it with a third party who you then tie yourself to and perhaps their partner and your own partner in the mix and there being multiple homes etc etc adds a layer of complication that is huge.

But as I say, I get that others will feel differently to me on this one and think I'm old fashioned.

I think in terms of donation, I think it's better to have an arrangement of clear primary carers without parental rights being present but having an awareness of who your biological parent is, is important too.

Having a trans parent brings its own complications too that I think people should be honest with in terms of developing boundaries over biological sex and understanding reproduction. Stuff like the bathroom of choice, may seem trivial but if you are teaching a very young child, how much are they going to understand? This is important to their safety and well being. We know that gender ideology is leading to children having this belief they can change sex and still have children and live happy ever after - neglecting the reality of surgery and perhaps safety (personal boundaries) in the process. Saying stuff like 'people like me have to use the ladies to be safe' opens up a can of worms in terms of ability to identify risk and teaches that women are secondary and need to budge up.

I think I'd be interested to know on how you approach stuff like this. Who makes the decisions. How much planning over how you feed the child, bedtime routines, primary caring, choice of schools, conflict resolution in what may be an informal / non legally binding situation, rights of partners (who is on birth certificate and has parental rights and thoughts about what happens if relationships breakdown). The added layers of complications to put on an infant or young child boggles my mind and I simply don't believe that most would think of a lot of these issues ahead of going through with it.

It's something I've thought a lot over and think about through the lens of having had DS and his need for stability.

Im not wishing to upset anyone, with this post, but I do think there's a bag of potential issues that should be open to discussion and thought, because it's important for any children in this situation. They might be more loved but we can't afford how it affects them on a practical level and legal level either.

RedToothBrush I think you express yourself very gently and kindly. I am blunt.

I believe most people who have closely watched a child develop or witnessed how much an unstable set up screws people up, either in ourselves, our friends or intimate partners, agree with you and do not see it as old-fashioned to put the stability and welfare of the child first.

Although people who smear others for having ‘terrible views’ are usually the most confident that they speak for the majority, they are usually wrong. The silent majority are silent because they don’t want to be smeared, not because they agree with the smearer.

I think above all we need discussion of some of these delicate areas to try and make sure the worse issues are thought about carefully rather than forgotten or not considered. So if people do go ahead anyway, they have a better awareness of potential problems that might arise

Although people who smear others for having ‘terrible views’ are usually the most confident that they speak for the majority, they are usually wrong.

I don't have any issue with what redtoothbrush. I have an issue with 'gays shouldn't be parents'.

'Only when I'm out in public, need the bathroom and there's no disabled bathrooms available'

Please don't use the accessible toilets. They are for people who don't identity as anything, they are disabled and require specific facilities. To have to wait with my disabled relative whilst a trans person used them would infuriate me. Go before you leave the house then identify places to use with single sex facilities like independent cafes or small shops where one loo is all they have.

since I didn’t say that, you can’t take issue with what I said either. I was talking about men.

Unisex rather

I was responding to this - quote fail

To me, I think you simply need to think about the welfare of the child.

I know people who are so screwed up, having a demolished sense of self, being to quote “no one’s child dropped nowhere” because of novel parenting arrangements conceived in the 1970s/80s. They are still wandering through life like bloody ghosts all these years later.

If we get prisons, refuges and sports to be single sex, then we can start arguing about what to do with toilets.

I’m not arguing about what to do about toilets. I’m saying I don’t want any males in there. No argument just stating my boundaries

I don't understand the don't feel safe in the men's loo arguement. I have searched but I cannot find any statistics about attacks on TW in male loos. I asked my husband about this and he said most men are eyes to the front and get out of there asap. That aside, OP it's great that you do not appropriate being female. We only seem to hear from the very loud unhinged minority who are doing transpeople no favours whatsoever

But the issue isn't really toilets, is it? We all use them more than other facilities but they're not the real issue.
OP, with the greatest respect, may I ask you:

What hospital ward would you request to be put on?
What locked mental health ward would you be put on, or want to be put on?
Who do you want to be sectioned with and who wants to be sectioned with you?
Which rape crisis centre would you access? Men's support or women's support?
How do you think the other members of a group counselling session would react?
Which prison should you go to? How will the other prisoners react?

I'm sure you try to be a good person but there are real issues for society here, which have never been fully addressed.

Not discriminating or harassing someone is not the same as allowing them access to opposite sex provision, without explicit consent.

Very much doubt OP is coming back, this is classic plop and run when not every poster fawns over them

I'm happy for anyone to answer my questions but I think I can guess the answers most posters here would give.

I personally think that every data collection should ask Sex (observed at birth) and Gender / Legal Gender. If they're different, the system automatically asks if you have a GRC.

There should then be separate provision for transgender people, based on accurate numbers.

This can all seem very blunt and harsh, but at this point women are really, really bloody tired .

The toilets thing does matter.

When a male person walks in, some female people have to walk out. They do. They have no choice. So the male person can have their choice, some female people have to lose access altogether.

Women are being asked to empathise with a male person who is afraid to use their sex based facilities, to shelter and provide for that male person's needs, to be protective and sympathetic and facilitate their right to inclusion.

And this means not sheltering and providing for the female people who have just had to leave with no other alternative provision to choose from. They are being asked not to be equally protective and sympathetic to those female people or facilitate their right to inclusion.

They are being asked to choose, and to choose the male person. And to put the male person's plight above that of females. And that is based on the belief that male people matter more than female people, and the job of female people is to care for male people in need above themselves.

I'm sorry, but if I have to choose, I'm choosing the women. They aren't able to pick between the really scary option and the less scary option: they just don't get an option at all if I prioritise the male person. That's not right. It's not ok. I'm not prepared to break down women's loss of acccess in society caused by unmet male need into 'well those women in that situation don't matter so much' and 'yeah those women are worth fighting for'.

We have women being raped in prisons by male people who will tell you in much detail how terrifying and distressing it is to be in the men's provision and why they must have access to the female space. (And oh whoops, bit of a female body count of victims, but shhh.) We have women living in life threatening relationships because of male people in female refuges with many sad and upsetting stories about their hardships and need to be in the female space. We have marginalised, vulnerable women who are losing access to any public space or society to enable male people to be safer and happier. None of this is ok .

And when a male person says 'well what else can I do?' it is really saying, 'I am justified in costing women worse consequences because they are only women'. Third spaces are the answer, we badly need third spaces. But it's not the job of biological females to embrace their subordination and exclusion until they get here so that male humans don't have to suffer like they do.

3rd spaces sound like the answer but I doubt it would make much difference.
Women know when a TW is present- if women don't challenge, it's absolutely because the reaction maybe unpredictable. Or predictable.
Women really are tired and fed-up to the back teeth of this argument.
Men need to be more accepting and accommodating; women are not human shields.
The men in my life use loos, keep eyes forward and get out ASAP.

OP: I am trans and I struggle with self-ID, but equally disagree with some of the views expressed on this board. I’m confused and would appreciate a good faith discussion.

FWR: You shouldn’t be allowed to have kids.

slow handclap

One person said that.

The definition of bigoted is assuming something about a whole group based on the actions or views of a few.

Slow hand clap 👏