Controversial but curious.....

[JBEM4]

I'm fully aware I'm putting myself in a position whereby I'm going to be massively offended by some replies to this but I hope that they can at least be respectful.

I'm not sure what the point of my very long essay is but I do hope that I can at least make just one person be more open minded and realise that discrimination of any form is a choice and an unnecessary at that.

Here goes.....

I have a trans son (19). He started his journey aged 13. It was a natural and organic transition and I, as everyone who knows him, expected it.

He's done 3 years of counselling with a clinical psychologist (monthly), has never questioned who he is not even for a second and is finally starting testosterone this month that will (he hopes) give him facial hair, give him a more masculine appearance and deepen his voice. For context, if you met him today you wouldn't know he was trans.

Fortunately FTM individuals don't seem to attract a fraction of the hostility, outrage and offence that MTF people do - why is that?

I do try to understand others opinions but for the life of me can't fathom how/why people feel qualified and entitled enough to be so personally offended, judgemental, ignorant and vocal in their views that the trans community aren't worthy of respect let alone basic human rights.

No one chooses to be trans and those who are brave enough to transition do so because being at peace with themselves and living THEIR best life is more important to them despite the adversity, discrimination and abuse they'll receive from society.

My son is my son. His genitals do not define him. As parents we fight for our kids, for their right to have support, opportunities and advantages in life.. Parents will take on the whole damn system to get an autism diagnosis for their child because as a parent YOU know your child needs the right support and all that the health system can offer so your child can live their life and be the best they can be......

Why are trans kids/adults any different?
I've been accused of abusing my child, grooming my child, been told that he needs psychiatric help, he'll grow out of it, and that he doesn't have the right to live his life as he needs to.

These are comments that no one is brave enough to say to my face.

Not understanding what it is to be trans, not having experiences, contact or relationships with someone who's trans does not afford anyone the right to decide/debate on their existence. Being so absolute in opposition/denial/disgust of how another person lives their life while having zero impact on anyone else's.

So come at me. Please tell me how a trans person has personally offended you or negatively impacted your life and why a human beings value can't be based on their character and whether they're simply just a good person?

*not "agreeing" with being trans isn't a valid excuse.....

I work with a young transman and they are popular part of the team, and not treated differently than others, but that said I don't know exactly how the men on the team view them, a man or transman. I don't know if many men feel threatened by transmen, i think generally women don't, so I think it's easier to go under the radar as a transman, even if not passing.

So I think your child should be fine in day to day life.

Firstly, you say it came as no surprise to you that your child came out as trans. Why? What were the first signs?

My bingo card says - like wearing 'boys' clothes, played with 'boys' toys, hated having long hair, maybe she even hated pink.
All the things that many female children do every single day and yet this parent decided that her daughter was a boy because of it.

I very powerful statement, and glad your son is much better now and accepting of himself.

I feel for the effeminate boys and masculine girls who are now coerced by society to transition.

Unfortunately I don't think you'll find much sympathy for your son on MN as users only see the female detransitioners as victims and would rather demonise all MTF and see them only as the enemy. There appears to be no nuance for accepting that young impressionable males can be victims of this too.

Unfortunately I don't think you'll find much sympathy for your son on MN as users only see the female detransitioners as victims and would rather demonise all MTF and see them only as the enemy. There appears to be no nuance for accepting that young impressionable males can be victims of this too.

Give over, we have been banging on about how they 'trans away the gay' for a fair old while now. Unfortunately women who actually give a shit about the medical scandal unfolding are always demonised as unable to be 'nuanced' and I've had a guts full of disingenuous posters coming on here to have a pop at us whilst championing the sterilisation of kids to be perfectly honest.

OP I've had osteoporosis. It is a fucking nightmare. To have it in one's mid 20s or 30s is going to be an unholy clusterfuck.

But hey ho. Here's a Detransitioners panel at Genspect last week. Just one shot of testosterone will change your child forever. It is pretty dangerous to be pumping kids full of cross sex hormones because they are deluded into thinking they will change sex. It isn't discrimination to point this out.

Unfortunately I don't think you'll find much sympathy for your son on MN as users only see the female detransitioners as victims and would rather demonise all MTF and see them only as the enemy. There appears to be no nuance for accepting that young impressionable males can be victims of this too.

That's bollocks, posters on here have every sympathy for Jazz Jennings and Jackie Green both of whom are high profile victims of this, plus all the other not well known young boys who have been sold this lie and are now living with the consequences.

@ReunitedThorns The vitriol towards tw here isn't for children. I've never seen that for boys.

@Delphinium20 I'm carefully avoiding most of them tbh, covid has broken most of them and they don't have any sort of personality outside of it anymore. One of them is making stupid money scolding white collar workers for not being woke enough ofc. And my partner is an nb but slowly digesting what I'm trying to tell him. Regardless, it's still so much better out here in the sunlight :)

The OP's "son" is female, not male.

I think you are right that we are not always qualified to have an opinion on something if we have no experience of it.

Why does no one ever say that to trans women who think they're qualified to tell the rest of us what a woman is?

I think you are right that we are not always qualified to have an opinion on something if we have no experience of it.

Even when we have some experience, our experience is often partial. Partial in the sense that we are only one individual so if someone is "trans" they still only have one experience out of many possible experiences of being trans; and also partial in the sense of having a powerful vested interest in believing particular things, such as that cross-sex hormones (even anabolic steroids) are harmless because who wants to believe that by doing what they want to do they are causing themselves serious physical damage? Or worse still, who wants to believe that they have been unable to stop their child causing themselves serious physical damage, or that they have even encouraged their child to do it?

Sometimes an outsider can have a broader view and a more objective view and therefore offer a more reliable opinion.

In an ideal world we get a mix of both. It's what I like about MumsNet and this thread is a shining example - women with the facts at their fingertips, and women sharing their own individual experiences, and women linking to the experiences of others.

The sheer fucking irony of that statement.

That was in response to another poster, talking about her son.

I don’t think that’s true at all.

Primarily, this is Mumsnet, and babies are still born 50/50 m/f so plenty of us are mothers of boys and we’re just as concerned about vulnerable boys as we are girls (although actually they seem to be less negatively affected by the physical aspects of transition right up until the point of genital surgery).

But this is the Feminist section, so there are posters here who are here to discuss this topic specifically from the Feminist angle (and then mumsnet shunts non-feminist angle posts over here too) so obvs the focus of this section is always going to be on how transgender encroaches and damages female humans (including transmen).

Plenty of GC gay men & detrans me. get FWR shout outs - Menno, Clive and Dennis, Arty, Duncan & Ritchie for starters, and Ritchie (Tulip).
Loads of GC straight men worth name checking too (If only Mumsnet wouldn’t keep us silo’d on the naughty step, where the need to keep chat at least somewhat on-topic means ensuring it stays female-focused).

It’s the heterosexual late transitioning males we have little tolerance for, and that’s because it chucks a hand grenade into their families, negatively imparting their wives and children (and even then I can think of an older detrans man who got nothing but support when his story was reported, as his cross sex identity was so clearly the result of extreme disassociation due to PTSD).

My son is my son. His genitals do not define him

So why is the poor thing going to harm his health forever to change their appearance?

Once you see/read all the harm that testosterone causes a body, you cannot unsee it. All in pursuit of a beard. Couldn't your child go to a voice coach to lower their voice, instead of taking harmful hormones?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ppunWKRn5YY

bit of a tangent, but here’s the conference panel re: boys affected by gender Dysphoria

Can you tell us how we (a) tell the difference between a "perverted cis man" and a genuine trans woman, and (b) implement and enforce rules preventing the former from accessing women's spaces whilst allowing the latter in?

Oh, and while you're at it (since you care so much about Muslims) can you explain how to make a women only space inclusive of both trans women and Muslim women, who can't share such spaces with members of the opposite sex?

Or it is simply the case that the Muslim women need to believe harder that the trans woman is female, and if they can't, they shouldn't expect to be able to use women's spaces?

Thefempirestrikesback I’m guessing you haven’t actually read the thread, or you would be aware of the huge amount of compassion for children struggling with their identity.
Obviously, men using women’s single-sex spaces resulting in women feeling threatened not so much.
A male claiming to be a transwoman now uses my local pool - open changing rooms, just a few cubicles which they don’t use. Do you think I should still let my young teen dd’s continue to go alone? That person may be completely lovely, or they may not. But the potential consequences are too awful to contemplate. It’s not a risk I’m prepared to take, so sadly, the girls miss out.

what do you think of statements from organisations like CAN-SG who are doctors who are worried that the treatment protocols are not good, @JBEM4

i worry about that

They've never been in a bathroom knowingly with a trans woman and felt threatened, they've just read articles which tell them that could one day be the case

Nope. Many of us have had to endure this without our consent.

Exactly this, there are active threads about such incidents on FWR as we speak.

"They've never been in a bathroom knowingly with a trans woman and felt threatened, they've just read articles which tell them that could one day be the case"

Sorry but when you encounter a trans woman in real life, it's very obvious that they are a trans woman and not a biological one.

Sure you can probably argue it's harder to tell from pictures/social media profiles sometimes, but that's disingenuous to the fact that angles, posing, and filter's all contribute to one still image being able to "pass".
In a real world environment, it's different. It's the body language, it's the energy (presumably from having been raised as boys and socialised differently), and most obviously it's the build.
You can't hide behind filters, poses and angles in real life as much as some may wish they could, I'm sure some of us included!

Laughable. All of it.

I recently watched the livestream of Kellie-Jay Keen's 'Let Women Speak' event and I was shocked by the amount of indoctrination.

@thefempirestrikesback which one? And why do you label the event as "indoctrination" rather than an opportunity for women to speak publicly about these issues?