Radio 4. Right now. Is freaking me out.

[OnePotPolly]

Transmen who want us all to accept that they are actual men. But they are a subset of men who can give birth to babies..
Which only women can do, in fact.

And still claim that they are men. After giving birth to babies. From their wombs.

And the presenter on R4 is actually going with it. And sympathising with the person that obviously men can give birth. Or is he just presenting it so that the audience can draw their own conclusions?

Whatever it is, it is winding me up no end. I have listened to R4 for the past 50 years - 50 YEARS!! every night without fail, while I potter about in the kitchen, tidying up and popping a bit of baking in the oven. I love radio 4, it has seen me through many traumas. Divorce, death of parents, death of sibling, permanently life altering illness of my child. Radio 4 has always been there as a stalwart support. A reality check. Reassurance that the rest of the world continues as normal - ordinary, normal even if it's bad news or a war between foreign nations. Right up to 1am and "Sailing By"

I love Sailing By. I find it, at the same time, both soothing and sad (because it's a reminder of times past)

But the shite that I've just listened to has totally wrecked it for me.
What a load of utter bollocks they have just allowed on air.

Unless they're just airing it to show how ludicrous and self absorbed some people can be. . . . .

Really hope that's what it turns out to be.

And so we move from the refusal to explain our position to flinging insults and accusations of hate.
it’s always the same bloody pattern isn’t it. Too boring.

You did. There is no exchange of ideas or willingness to replicate my engagement, there is just an endless barrage of questions and, in the case of some posters, increasing ad hominem attacks towards me. I was accused of ad hominem arguments earlier in the thread (around page 11?) and since then have studiously avoided engaging with anything other than the questions and arguments posed to me; the same cannot be said for other posters.

As it seems that these posters won’t answer any of my questions and have sought to personally attack me, dismiss anything I say as woke or uninformed. None of them are willing to accept that I may have read the same information they have and come to a different set of conclusions. There is no sense continuing to engage with such closed-minded people. I was warned, of course, and my experience on these threads has always been the same, but I foolishly thought this time perhaps women would want to embrace the power of idea exchange.

Of course my reticence to engage further is positioned as ‘because I have nothing to say’ or ‘I refuse to answer’ - weirdly the same standard is not applied to the posters on the other side of the debate.

I appreciate your measured tone, but the idea that you ‘eye roll’ at your OH is a little patronising, no? Like someone who reads the Guardian can’t possibly have anything worth listening to because they are blinded by the need to be kind or zeitgeist.

I do read the Guardian and the BBC, as well as the Telegraph, less often the Times, plus additional specific articles in publications like the New Yorker, New York Times, Spectator, Fin Times. I also read scientific source material fully whenever I can get hold of full copies, abstracts when I can’t. I do not bother with the Mail or the tabloids because I don’t trust their editorial or journalistic standards. I rarely trust blogs or opinion pieces especially those in publications with obvious bias, but I will use them to find source material I can engage with.

So dismissing me as a ‘lefty Guardian reader’ is both inaccurate and patronising.

It is always the same. You don’t want to discuss anything - you haven’t engaged with anything I’ve asked of you. Why should I continue to engage with you? (I don’t expect you to answer, obviously. You haven’t answered any of my questions).

I don’t remember reading before this post that the TW had complained about the girls not using the changing room. If I missed it in an earlier post, I’m sorry.

I have no understanding of the situation except for what you give me, so as you drip feed more info, my stance has changed. If this is a man who has recently socially transitioned by outwardly expressing a female gender, then I would refer you to my earlier post on TW in prisons - there should be a careful evaluation of each case to determine the suitability of that person to be in a space aligned with their birth sex or their expressed gender. From what you have revealed - over the course of several posts, so a MN ‘drip feed’ - it seems this is not a case where this person should be allowed to use the female changing space.

Had this person been living as a woman for a significant time (how significant, I don’t know - gender experts would need to flesh out the protocols), then I am open to them being allowed to use gender neutral or female changing rooms that have appropriate privacy in place.

But again, in the hypothetical situation where I join your club, my vote is only worth one, so if the majority wanted to keep changing rooms segregated by sex, then that what I would want.

@Bingbangbongbash I've no first-hand knowledge of this situation and wasn't doing a "drip feed", my comments were considered only on the info from @Fiftyisthenewsixty 's original post:

But that's not going to happen is it? In the meantime, where do we change? In my daughter's athletics club a 50 year old TW has decided to change in the communal female changing room. There are no cubicles, not even in the showers. The girls/women are forgoing the showers and changing in their cars or going straight home. TW has complained! Do you honestly think this is fair?

Yes, apologies - I realised that after I posted.

No worries! Easily happens in the heat of discussion, I've done the same before.

Exactly. If it was that straightforward, why aren’t lots of dads doing it? Plenty of them already have weight related ‘man boobs’ so taking a few pills and helping out with the night feeds should be a doddle?

Except that it’s not that simple. Inducing lactation in a body not designed for it (being male) who endocrine system has to be completely battered by hormone suppression and cross sex hormones is not the same as doing it in a women who has all the pre-existing capacity. A male has to continue taking all the drugs whereas a woman can take a tiny dose to kick start lactation, then ‘pump and dump’ before it goes near the baby.

In any case, this is bandied around casually like it happens all the time but I know no one in my extensive mums circle that has ever used drugs to induce lactation when they haven’t given birth. I don’t believe it is common at all especially as the main drug is banned in the US.

Another sobering article from the medical profession

https://unherd.com/2023/07/doctors-have-failed-detransitioners/

Exactly. If it was that straightforward, why aren’t lots of dads doing it? Plenty of them already have weight related ‘man boobs’ so taking a few pills and helping out with the night feeds should be a doddle?

To look at it another way, if male mammals were capable of producing viable milk with the help of a few drugs, the global dairy industry would have been all over this a long time ago.

This is a very interesting read, including the comments and subsequent links below. Thank you for sharing.

Quite.

Children are not competent to make decisions that have life long repercussions… that’s why we don’t let them get married or get a tattoo!

If these ‘trans’ children had been brought up to understand they can wear, play with, work at and love whoever they want the likelihood is far far fewer of them would want to transition in the first place.

The trans lobby’s obsession with gender determinism is what is making the vast majority of those children unhappy.

Make lactation isn’t easy at all - it is generally harder than non-birthing female lactation. I spoke at length to a TW who was able to induce lactation; she struck me (in my non-expert opinion) as troubled, but she saw lactation as an ultimate statement of ‘femaleness’. I understood her position more than I understand the desire for a TM to give birth and feed an infant. That said, I’ve never had the opportunity to speak to the latter, so perhaps if I did, I would be able to understand them better. I also cast no judgment on anyone wanting to do these things - I am not transphobic, I don’t think.

There is no exchange of ideas or willingness to replicate my engagement
What do you mean? Your whole argument seems to be that you believe the experts. When people have pointed out several times that the experts are not in agreement and, in fact, many experts disagree with puberty blockers, you haven't said why you don't believe them.

When you've said that tw are a vulnerable group and people have asked you why, you haven't explained why.

When we've asked for clarification on what transitioning means you have no answer but insist that it means that everyone has to defer to it.

I don't think you can accuse us of not engaging, quite the opposite. It would be nice if you could engage with us but I know you're going to say we're in "bad faith" so you can't or some such nonsense.

Insofar as you’ve posed coherent questions, I’ve answered them. You still won’t tell us what you think transitioning is, or what the non-biological criteria for womanhood is.
we know why you won’t answer, you know.

I spoke at length to a TW who was able to induce lactation; she struck me (in my non-expert opinion) as troubled, but she saw lactation as an ultimate statement of ‘femaleness’. I understood her position more than I understand the desire for a TM to give birth and feed an infant.

Do you understand autogynephilia and the sexual thrill that around 4% of the male population get by imitating women? I notice you are not concerned about the child on the receiving end of his needs.

Are you male, BingBB? You seem to focus on the male aspect of all this. You can't understand a TM (a woman) feeling the urge to do what her body is designed around doing but you can understand a man wanting to do something completely unnatural for his own ends — not the good of the child.

...if men can lactate the nation's husbands are in trouble!

No, you haven’t. I refer you again to my question about young women being refused sterilisation.

I refer you again to my questions about the parts of the US laws that prohibit any gender affirming interventions under 26.

I refer you again to whether it is an overreach to make it illegal for school employees to use preferred pronouns without written parental consent.

You haven’t supplied me with any alternative reading or specific experts to look at - ‘just not the US model’. Yet another poster is using the fact domperidone is banned in the US as support for lactation induction being wrong. So are we ok to listen to the AMA or not? Are they only right when the agree with you?

I refer you again to my question about young women being refused sterilisation.
What's this got to do with the price of fish? 🙄

It's a tactic. Never answer direct questions: never offer your own data and refute and refuse all data offered by GC women: keep throwing up random questions that may or may not be related to PP's comments (keeps women busy going backwards and forwards checking what they wrote): accuse people of saying things they didn't say: play the outraged victim...

We know what we've got here, don't we? Many of us have been posting on MN for years, it's nothing we haven't seen a thousand times before.

I spoke at length to a TW who was able to induce lactation; she struck me (in my non-expert opinion) as troubled

Yes

but she saw lactation as an ultimate statement of ‘femaleness’.

That is AGP.

I understood her position more than I understand the desire for a TM to give birth and feed an infant.

Being more understanding of a fetishist getting his kicks at the expense of a newborn, than a (undeniably troubled) woman's desire to give birth and feed an infant tells me a lot about your thinking. I am not trying to be horrible, honestly, and if feeling this way makes me transphobic that's because it also makes me a woman who understands that sex is binary. And that's transphobic, so.

I’m heartbroken by the loss of Radio 4. In maternity leave 20 odd years ago I had a radio in every room tuned to it. Now I just don’t listen to it at all after I found myself constantly turning it off. The fact that Grace Lavery has been on Woman’s Hour and not Helen Joyce sums it up for me.

About 5 years ago my son came across me sorting laundry while listening to some programme about drill music and burst out laughing and asked why on earth was I listening to it. I just thought yes, why on earth am I and haven’t listened since. It’s a pity as I miss programs like the Moral Maze, A Good Read, The Life Scientific but it’s all off my radar now, replaced by YouTube and podcasts.

Another factor too was the weird patronising way in which so many R4 female presenters started to speak, peculiar intonations and breathiness and the worst, smiling as they speak - made my teeth itch.

I find the argument that the solution is to allow children surgery, or actions without parental consent very concerning.

What is the motivation for that?

The answer isn’t let them do it as early as possible.

Being more understanding of a fetishist getting his kicks at the expense of a newborn, than a (undeniably troubled) woman's desire to give birth and feed an infant tells me a lot about your thinking. I am not trying to be horrible, honestly, and if feeling this way makes me transphobic that's because it also makes me a woman who understands that sex is binary. And that's transphobic, so.

This.

And that thinking leads to professional people who should know better ignoring proven effects to children and women to pander to these males. To hide behind bad faith sophistry, gotchas and semantics to justify it, as I said yesterday.