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.....

Yes we need to fix the issue, and in the meantime not open the female single sex spaces to any male who wants access.

How do you fix an issue of male sex crimes by lowering the boundaries of access to female single sex spaces for any male who wants access?

That logic doesn’t make sense.

And by the way, female people don’t just use the toilet to ‘pee’. I spent considerable time having to have the toilet door jammed open with a stroller laden with groceries and a crying toddler while dealing with flooding periods. This is humiliating, absolutely humiliating to deal with amongst other female toilet users.

I have had to assist my wheelchair bound mother toilet by myself (do not able to move the wheelchair to close the door) when no accessible toilet was available.

I have washed and dried clothes due to spills, baby vomit and badly leaking breasts.

This is just a fraction of things I have used the toilet for. I do not want a male person in the toilet with me. I don’t care they all YOU do in the toilet is pee. How fucking lucky are you that you don’t care if a male is in the toilet with you. You don’t get to give away my right to have a single sex space based on your toilet usage or how comfortable you feel.

But seriously, crack on shaming women for using the toilet differently to you and having different needs to you.

I don’t have a history of sexual assault. I do however listen to those that do and listen when they say ‘no’ to sharing any facility with a male where they need it to be single sex.

And yes, as a society sex crimes need urgent attention to be reduced. Allowing male people to enter female spaces without question is not ever going to start addressing that issue.

Vaginal atrophy. Infertility. Sexual disfunction. Lifetime medical patient. Reduced life span.

OP hopefully your daughter doesn't turn around to you at 24, when her brain is fully developed and ask you 'why did you let me do this'. Because to live with the aforementioned list of health problems AND regret it....

@thefempirestrikesback

Take a moment to realise that you write exactly the same things as everyone that comes here to declare they want men to be able to do whatever they want.

It's a feminist board. That's not the general gist of feminism.

We should listen to scientists about what should happen with sports because self-ID doesn't work in that context for obvious reasons, but trans people who have been on hormones since early adulthood will have a disadvantage competing against their sex assigned at birth. It needs to be fair for everyone.”

TW who have been on hormones since early adulthood - how early? The advantages of male puberty will never be removed, so that makes it unfair for them to compete against females so that knocks your fairness argument straight out of the park.

TW on hormones who have a disadvantage against their own sex is a result of their own actions and does not give them the right to disadvantage the opposite sex.

By the way no-one is 'assigned' a sex at birth - what a ridiculous statement.

How many trans people do this board need to hear saying 'I've said since I could talk I was a girl, and it's got nothing to do with liking pink' to start believing that being trans is actually a thing. The answer is an infinite number, because they will just never believe it.

Personally I don't deny that suffering long term gender dysphoria is a real thing, and that it may be best for some people to transition.

The issue with young people is that you need more than just anecdotal evidence. (Or the quality of scientific evidence that exists today, as far as I'm aware of what is available.)

This is a serious ethical issue to carry out the interventions you are talking about.

You would ideally want long term (over decades) controlled, randomised studies, and the results could make the whole thing look unethical.

The 'I'm not transphobic, I don't have a fear of trans people, I'm just against the ideology' is parroting almost exactly what the likes of Tommy Robinson said about Muslim people.

OK this looks like a guilt by association fallacy to me. You aren't arguing that it's always wrong to object to an ideology, you are just picking on one disliked person and trying to associate the position with them.

How about, Tommy Robinson is indeed a bigot, and completely wrong about Islam / Islamism, but there are plenty of other cases where you can correctly object to an ideology?

You can't argue by, "well that sounds a bit like what Tommy Robinson was saying about Islam"... who cares? A position can "sound similar" but be wrong in one case and yet correct in another. Probably depends on an examination of the ideology in question. Or whether people cross the line into an unacceptable prejudice against people.

Are you trying to argue that some people are against more than just the trans-activist ideology, and have a personal bigotry against trans people?

Even if that's correct, and some people are unfortunately hostile towards trans people, it doesn't take away that there may be real issues with the ideology and some people can quite correctly say, "my issue is with the ideology and not trans people themselves".

It's also worth pointing out that political Islam is a genuinely dangerous ideology. So it's actually a good example of where we should be "against the ideology" but not against all Muslims, because not all Muslims are signed up to that kind of oppressive worldview.

So it's "indoctrination" but they let pretty much any woman speak?

Whereas trans-activists want to heavily censor discussion and probably have their ideology taught to children in schools, and that's all fine?

As for merchandising, she has to cover the costs of what she does.

I don't know, is she making more money personally than the chief executive of Stonewall?

Or has she gone on a "Marxist" BLM property buying spree?

https://nypost.com/2021/04/10/inside-blm-co-founder-patrisse-khan-cullors-real-estate-buying-binge/

How can they be explored at all if it's "no debate" and the other side doesn't want to discuss it?

Is the trans-activist side going to stop their own vilification of opponents any time soon?

Do I agree with everything said on the GC side? No of course not. But when you're being called "Nazis" etc. then the discussion probably isn't going to be perfectly polite.

As usual the OP has marched on full of bravado to scold the heretics then done a runner when she can't muster a decent argument in response to any on here.

Same old.

MsRosley yes quite. Interesting isn’t it that OP never felt able to defend her position.
Also interesting that nobody supporting gender identity will either recognise the impact on tween girls who can no longer use single-sex spaces and therefore no longer have the freedom to go swimming or go to their local sports centre without an adult; but they also don’t feel bold enough to say we should just let them go alone (and deal with the consequences afterwards) because everyone knows that would be stupid

But for trans people, their friends and family- this is their lives. It's not a hypothetical. How many trans people do this board need to hear saying 'I've said since I could talk I was a girl, and it's got nothing to do with liking pink' to start believing that being trans is actually a thing. The answer is an infinite number, because they will just never believe it.

I'm happy to believe gender identity is a thing. But it's not the same thing as biological sex so why should it be treated as biological sex?

Maybe the same way we stop all sexual assaults- by keeping them illegal and punishing the men who commit these evil crimes and not a trans person trying to pee? As a society we need to fix the root of the problem.

Great! Once we've fixed that we can start letting males into female toilets.

The most recent one?

You mean the one where a large group of yelling and sometimes screaming, mostly young people pushed their way past one line of the huge police presence, to overwhelm a small group of female stewards trying to protect two women on mobility scooters? Where they wrapped stewards in their banners and punched and kicked them and dragged them along. Where police had to also then forcibly drag the female steward out of the grips of the protesters knocking her over with no care that she might get trampled. Whereas those same stewards did everything they could to successfully avoid stepping on a protestor who fell over?

You mean the group of trans people who couldn’t respect women’s right to speak about women’s rights and sought to silence them?

You mean the group of trans people who couldn’t respect the police boundary ?

You mean the group of trans people who violently assaulted women saying ‘stop’, women clearly marking a safety buffer created by police?

You mean those trans people who then seek to ignore other boundaries women have for their safety?

I think that is a great example!

Have you ever listened to the other Speakers Corners events? There are so many different women coming to speak and about all aspects of the life of women and children.

I think your own prejudice has got in the way of understanding what happens there.

So please, link us up to the speakers you are talking about? The ones who hate trans people.

Are you speaking about the women who spoke about needing same sex disabled care? Who has since been targeted by a male who is trans online with death threats? That male who has now been suspended from their job in the ambulance service because of those threats?

You know threats from a males against a women stating her need for female only care?

Is that the person you are speaking about? Or have I got the event and the woman in question wrong ?

Er, you didn't answer the question. Would you like to try again?

How do we tell the difference between a genuine trans woman and a "cis male pervert" (or, for that matter, a genuine trans woman who is actually dangerous to women), and even if we have a foolproof way of knowing the difference, how do we legislate for that?

Because a law that says, "If you have a penis but you really really identify as a woman you can use women's toilets but if you have a penis and are just a pervert you must stay out" isn't really workable, is it?

Your solution is essentially that we allow all males into women's spaces and then prosecute the ones who harm women after the event,

They've never been in a bathroom knowingly with a trans woman and felt threatened

On behalf of my 17 year old self, and on behalf of the girls assaulted by Katie Dolatowski, wheesht.

Thank you for sharing your experience @Redbird87 I really wish more parents were listening and reading accounts like yours.

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 :)

I can't imagine how difficult it is to have been through your experience and then have to accept the pace at which someone that you love slowly absorbs the information about the harms that are currently being done. Harms that are being done both medically to people who believe that they needed to change their body (this may be the best outcome for an incredibly small population of an incredibly small population of gender dysphoric people, but only after a therapeutic exploration of why that person is unable to accept the reality of their physical body) and also harms that are being done across society by the conflation of sex and gender in laws, policies, education, health care, sports etc etc.
I'm slowly drip-feeding my gender-questioning daughter some facts that will (I hope) help her realise that she doesn't need to change her body (she initially requested puberty blockers etc). I'm going for the slow approach because I want it to all come from her own free will, so that it not only stops her making medical choices now that will impact her future, but so that she understands all the nuances and carries them forward in to her adult life, where my chances of protecting her from the harm that she could do to herself go down. It's taking a lot of effort to stop myself from screaming all the facts at her, but that will just push her away and won't build a foundation from which she can build a resilience towards all the influences that pull vulnerable people towards a medical pathway. I appreciate I'm not coming from a place of emotional pain like you are but just wanted to send some thoughts your way about how much I respect and admire your patience for the slow drip-feed approach. But yes, everything is getting better as more sunlight pours in.

@Helleofabore
So little of this is actually discussed in the glamourisation of these treatments. It is so hugely concerning.

Indeed. And I'm assuming the OP isn't coming back to read accounts like Redbird's or all the information that people have shared in response to their request to be hit with lots of examples.

Parroting and prancing, eh?

I haven't been to any of the LWS events but I've seen lots of video footage where women are sharing different viewpoints about the impact of the conflation of sex and gender identity. They cover various subjects: sport, children being drawn towards a need to medicalise their bodies.. and much more.
I don't see that as "a group of people all hating one group" or indoctrination. There is a lot of compassion for people who have been harmed by changing their bodies because of their gender identity belief and then (many) regretting that decision. I don't see how that can be described as hate.
And any woman can speak about any subject relating to women and/or feminism from any viewpoint, just as they can on this board. I don't see how that can be described as indoctrination. Indoctrination in to what?

Apologies, it was this wonderfully brave and articulate woman speaking about Henrietta Freeman at around the 1 hour mark. Not Henrietta herself at the event.

Henrietta has been targeted by this male ambulance person. Not the woman discussing her at the rally.

https://www.youtube.com/live/7JWzLxrixbM?feature=share

Same here. I wouldn't want to see anyone discriminated against for their gender identity belief. It doesn't matter that I don't have that belief myself. I'd feel exactly the same about anyone else being discriminated against for their belief (e.g. religion).

But what definitely does matter is the difference between sex and gender when it comes to laws and policies etc. Laws and policies should be based on facts, like biology and all the facts that underpin the need for safeguarding in relation to biological fact. Laws and policies should not be based on a belief, be that in gender identity or anything else (e.g. religion).

The paragraph that bothered me most from the OP was

"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."

Because

'He' is actually a 'she'. She has spent her teenage years believing she is a boy.

She is only just an adult, not mature yet, but is about to start taking drugs that with permanently change her body.

The disingenuousness of the statement "if you met him today you wouldn't know he was trans". This either means that as she hasn't started testosterone yet she is still obviously a woman so you wouldn't know she thinks she's a man. Or she is androgynous looking so can pass as a teenage male.

Either way, this young adult is not old enough to have started understanding adult relationships, how to be independent as an adult, what the long term impact spending their life pretending to be the opposite sex will have on them.

For these reasons I shudder whenever I read foolish posts like the OPs.

I must thank Fempire though. They reminded me I hadn’t seen the video of the recent meeting.

so far I have seen (not in any order)

An 11 year old talking about how neither girls nor boys at her school wanting to use the gender neutral toilets and how both sexes are avoiding them. And her petition to get them changed back.

A wonderful poem to Kier Starmer about why that woman will not vote for him.

A discussion piece about an awesome woman from the USA who wrote a hugely insightful quote about how there will come a time when it is will be the anti-fascists that will be the fascists. How true that is! So a discussion on the authoritarianism and totalitarianism of the protests silencing women.

A socialist Austrian woman who is worried about self ID from what she has seen in Germany and how she has started to discuss her concerns within her socialist democrat party and government.

A traumatic account of rape by a very brave and very calm survivor who explained why she wants her spaces to be maintained as single sex.

The remarkable woman who is working with her daughter to address her needs in sixth form for single sex toilets after they were changed to gender neutral. And who read an email from her MP (an ex magistrate with a focus on justice for domestic abuse) about the current changes to the EA to tighten the language for better protection of women and girls.

The woman who spoke about lesbian visibility and how same sex attracted women and men felt that the TQ ++ don’t work with the political needs of the LGB.

The young woman who spoke about ageism and misogyny, who also spoke about how Dylan Mulvaney’s content about ‘girlhood’ is in no way recognisable as womanhood in her reality as a young woman.

And don’t forget the great lyrics of Aja.

Plus plenty of other women speaking.

How amazing were those women! Many of which haven’t spoken at events before. I didn’t see any ‘prancing’ either (how much do you have to hate someone to use that language?).

Probably the same amount of hatred of women who disagree to evoke using this language too. ”A group of people sitting around all parroting the same messages about hating one group and how this will solve all their problems”

So I saw a diverse group of women speaking about very different topics. And rather than expecting ‘parroting’ messages solving their problems, they are out there telling us what they are doing themselves! And inviting women to add to their efforts.

How dare you dismiss their own campaigns and their own efforts that they report back with updates on!

Fuck. The ignorant disdain dripping from writing :

“A group of people sitting around all parroting the same messages about hating one group and how this will solve all their problems, whilst doing a call and response led by one person prancing around the middle plugging her merch sounds like indoctrination to me.”

It is a sure sign only of an entrenched prejudice either about women discussing these issues, or the people organising them. It comes across as misogyny though because it seems aimed at women in general out there working to find solutions for their needs. So dismissive. So derisive.

Here is the petition started by that young girl.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/4801173-petition-for-single-sex-toilets-in-schools-uk

Hardly her “parroting the same messages about hating one group and how this will solve all their problems, whilst doing a call and response led by one person prancing around the middle plugging her merch”.

More like her trying to resolve an issue forced on a student body where the needs of a small group were prioritised above everyone else’s. An alternative solution was available, but this school decided no student deserved privacy and no female students deserved to have their safety needs considered as just as high a priority as those who demanded inclusion.

By the way, I have seen that this girl’s mother has received abusive tweets about her and her daughter from males who demand access to female single sex spaces.

How remarkable that boundaries simply cannot be respected and that women and girls have any right to disagree that males should access female toilets and change rooms, prisons and shelters. Yet there are posters on this thread denigrating women and girls stating their boundaries while working towards reestablishing them. Framing their efforts as hate and phobia.

Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

Not sure if this was posted for the OP or not. But here is an article about the growing number of medicos in the UK concerned about ‘affirming only’ treatment.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bde6beee-ec3b-11ed-bf13-ef78badfc41f?shareToken=bdc575b65c457cbccb44ca90dcf53a45

Again, I question that three years of care already received. If it wasn’t exploratory therapy and then treatment for comorbid issues, I hope OP convinces their child to receive some truly unbiased exploratory therapy first.

I suspect the OP will not be honest with themselves or us about this, but maybe I am wrong. I hope I am.

But for trans people, their friends and family- this is their lives. It's not a hypothetical. How many trans people do this board need to hear saying 'I've said since I could talk I was a girl, and it's got nothing to do with liking pink' to start believing that being trans is actually a thing. The answer is an infinite number, because they will just never believe it.

I assume the person you're referring to here, who says that they are a girl, is male.

So you're asking us how many males we need to hear declaring that they are 'girls', before we will believe that trans is 'a thing'.

What sort of 'thing' do you want us to believe that 'trans' is? You have made it sound as though it is an erroneous belief about their sex held by some males.

Thanks for posting that article Helleofabore. Hadley Freeman is such a sane and strong voice on this issue. I strong;y recommend her book 'Good Girls' to anyone interested in teenage girls' mental health.