Would you ever consider a transwoman a woman?

[ZeldaFighter]

If a person had transitioned from male to female early in life and had lived quietly and unobtrusively as a woman for say 20 or 30 years, would you consider offering that person the status of "womanhood"?

Would you go on a girls night in a group with them?

Would you think differently if the person had had gender reassignment surgery?

What if they did actually pass?

What if they had a husband and kids?

This isn't a gotcha and I don't know the answers. I am instinctively annoyed by the taking away of women's things but I am also dismayed by the hurt and harm potentially caused to trans people. I'm trying to decide my own position and wondering if there are compromise positions. Apologies if this has been asked before and thank you for your thoughts.

I’d respect them, have nights out, maybe even share a room with them if a trusted good friend.
However they are still male, not female. It’s to do with chromosomes and nobody can take away that no matter how hard they try.

No, because they’re not.

I’ve yet to meet a TW who passes, so from that point of view, no.

The scenario in the op - puberty blocked TW akin to Jazz Jennings - without going through puberty it’s unlikely that there will be the level of maturity necessary to be married with children (based on puberty being vital to brain development and maturation), so whilst I suppose there’s a theoretical possibility that a TW could go under the radar and pass, I really don’t think it’s likely.

Was Mumsnet not set up primarily for mothers, for pregnant women, for women who wanted to be pregnant. For women to have discussions about our bodies, about how we feel as women, about what it's like to be a mother, sister, daughter. Why would you expect here to set about 'validating' some mens feelings. It's also one of the few places us women can discuss men who want to encroach on all that makes us women. And you want to knock us for that. Most of us couldn't care less if a man is trans, we just don't want them taking over our language and spaces. Is that so awful.

So funny when the pot calls the kettle sooty 😂

Ferret, can you explain how redefining womanhood as a type of mind and using that unevidenced assertion to justify reassigning the resources intended to help female people thrive within a structurally sexist society over to anyone who claims they have that type of mind is a good thing? Or indeed how believing women and men have different minds is anything but prejudiced?

You can kid yourself that it's MN that is "any-trans" (pro women), but actually, and increasingly, it's women and society as a whole. Women on MN have just been talking about it for longer.

How would they have kids though?

I can imagine a girls night working if your trans friend (s) had been effeminate gay men pre transition. But if they were 'transbian ' if might make for an awkward social dynamic.

To address the thread's title - can they ever be real women. No. It's nobody's fault ; it's just biology.

What makes the OPs person in question a woman? Please do enlighten us all.

Explain why it's 'anti-trans'. You and other posters pop up with this statement all the time but can never back it up with examples.

Someone, somewhere, please have a go!

I could certainly envisage having a friendship with such a transwoman as you describe, but honestly would have to say that 'no' they are not a woman - they would be a male person who feels more comfortable presenting the way they do.

There are plenty of balanced responses; but the truth is the truth.

No I wouldn’t consider them a woman. Why should I? They’re not and never will be.if they were my friend I’d accept them for what they were. That’s what friends do. I’ve had friends who desperately wanted to change aspects of their lives. I have really wanted to change things myself around some things.

Is it kind or healthy for s friend to treat them as if they had made that change already? When reality and the world will always remind them it hasn’t happened? When it’s a change that would never ever come? When it’s a change that objectively is always an impossible wish in the first place? It’s not a friend’s job to counsel people but I would hope that my friend would seek professional help if they were extremely preoccupied with making a change that would never ever be possible. That is it’s own struggle and needs support.

Male and female are different.

We are different because of biology.

If a person who looks like a man but is actually female experiences chest pain and is hooked up to an ECG it may not pick up a heart attack because women typically have lower heart rates and present different results on an ECG.

If a person who looks like a woman but is actually a man presents at hospital with trouble urinating and pain they could have prostate cancer.

Babies in some countries are discarded or killed because they are born with vaginas and therefore have less worth than those born with a penis.

Females in this country are still paid less than their male counterpart.

Females are more likely to be imprisoned for not paying their tv license than males.

Females are more likely to be subject to long term poverty because it's still acceptable for males to walk out on their kids and leave the female to find a way to feed, clothe and house them.

Males are well able to identify females when it comes to finding someone to sexually abuse.

Sex matters.

I would be polite and friendly but a pretend woman is a man. End of.

We don’t want men in any of our spaces and we don’t want to be compelled to alter the language we use to describe other people or to describe our female bodies or female bodily processes. We also don’t want our children to be brainwashed by schools or other institutions into thinking that a regressive ideology based on narrow stereotypes is fact.

How is this “anti trans”?

No.

No

Perfectly put. I wouldn't be hostile, but I wouldn't consider them a woman, and I defo wouldn't be calling them her/she.

What does the balanced viewpoint look like?

Do we pretend that humans can change sex?

Do we accept some men in women's spaces?

How do we decide which men should be allowed?

Do we ignore the women who would then self exclude from those spaces for a variety of very legitimate reasons?

Do we ignore the data about the rates of sexual offending among the group of men who say they are women?

Would you be happy with a naked man in the changing rooms with your teenage daughter?

Do you think it's kind to tell young women that a man's feelings are more important than her boundaries?

How do you think prioritising men's feelings over women's needs helps equality?

Are you more interested in being kind than being fair?

I know this is just another plop and run attempt to insult women but these are valid questions, if you don't have answers then maybe you haven't thought about this issue enough or attempted to inform yourself.

No

And there’s nothing wrong with being a man who doesn’t conform to gender stereotypes. I think there is something wrong about being a man who spends his time deeply actively enforcing gender stereotypes onto other people, but I will argue against that because it’s a free country. I don’t believe in gender identity beliefs as having any transformative powers on the body or other people’s perceptions. That wouldn’t be possible. It’s just a belief system. Otherwise humans would be able to do much more exciting things than change sex!

I’m also not going to ever need to support this hypothetical friend after experiences that are centred around them being a woman. like their experiences as a woman dating and having relationships, as a woman in the workplace, as a woman experiencing racism, as a woman experiencing discrimination about her disabilities, as a woman experiencing homophobia or biphobia, as a woman experiencing unemployment, low pay, poverty, social pressure around her money or lack of, things like period struggles, fertility struggles, sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape, unwanted pregnancy, abortion, wanted pregnancy struggles, pregnancy and baby loss, adopter struggles, early motherhood struggles, parenting alone or in a couple as a woman, social expectations and employment judgement on them as mothers, the social expectations and employment judgements on them if they don’t or can’t have kids, with peri menopause, menopause, female cancers, a woman who has struggles with housing, has struggles with trauma, with being parented, with siblings, with caring for elderly parents. The list is endless because women’s bodies are specific to women and society often treats women in s specific way because of patriarchy being built on misogyny and homophobia, specifically lesbophobia. So they’re not my friend who’s a woman. They’re a male friend with his own struggles. Fine.

No, and I don't think I would be able to be friends with a trans-identifying male who insisted that they were the same as a woman - the friendship would be built on the expectation that I take part in a lie.

No

The thorny issue of power imbalances in patriarchal society often leads to women using male pen names to publish their work. People perceive and respond to work differently based on whether they think the author was a man or a woman. It makes perfect sense to try to avoid being covered in pink, given a fluffy title, edited away from any of the content you want to write, and even dismissed to the YA section (which happens all the bloody time) because you are a woman daring to write books.

Women using male pseudonyms to try to mitigate this sexist crap is in no way ‘cosplaying’.

It’s depressing but unsurprising how the men’s/trans rights crowd simply imagine that women are not systematically disadvantaged, excluded and dismissed as standard in society. So we get all sorts of ridiculous false equivalences drawn as if men are not a privileged group.