Not the ally I once was. Sad or liberated?

[Lwrenagain]

How did you journey into your feelings and beliefs on the great trans issues?
I'd love to hear your thoughts/opinions and stories on how your thoughts all came together because mine have been jumbled for a long time now.

So I've lurked and occasionally joined in with some threads. Sadly my first one I posted was deleted by the AI I believe MN told me.

I've grown up with kids who had gender dysmorphia from VERY young. I've met kids with it at work also, who've not got the stereotype parents raising non binary kids, I'm talking parents who were actually mortified at the start of their child's journey with their identity.

I have 3 trans pals, the TWomen both struggled since childhood with feeling born into the wrong body. The Tman has the usual story around why a woman, possibly undiagnosed asd would want to change, so I'm not sure about gender dysmorphia, I've never asked if I'm honest.

I have always supported the trans community within reason, I'm not blind to dodgy people or things involving children that make my heckles go up.
My last deleted post was actually regarding the vulnerability of trans kids and predators. (Local paedophile started harassing transgirls who were almost delighted for the attention, in a nutshell)

Anyway, I'm chatting to my friend TW, and she has no desire to encroach the spaces of biological women, she's in awe of women, loves and respects us. Appreciates she's not biologically a woman, but feels more at home in her body after surgery to be in a category of woman, even if its prefaced with "trans".
She won't ever demand to use a changing room with women, or children, she'll often use a disabled toilet as she doesn't want to use the women's, unisex toilets work for her, because they are inclusive of everybody.

Anyway I judged the trans community largely on my personal experiences and now I'm struggling with more and more batshit behaviour each day.
Forcing lesbians to date TW. Erm, fuck off. Very obviously intact males dressing in women's clothes wanting access to changing areas, no. Piss off, my friends who've had the surgery won't even go into these spaces, wtf is wrong with these people? There is no compromise.
We can support people to dress as they wish, tbh if Barry wants me to call him Brenda it's no skin off my nose, but he doesn't need to be left alone with women in a changing area, just no.

My TW friends are devastated that they're being lumped into the category of these (my friends words, not mine) "creepy chancers" and this behaviour is really going to bite transfolk with only good intentions to live their lives with peace, in a body they can relate too, in the arse.

I feel angry, not just because of the way women are being treated. In equal measure, the way there is going to be a huge amount of violence and anger directed to people with legitimate reasons for living in a body different to their bio sex, because predatory males have jumped on a bandwagon to allow access to women, vulnerable ones especially and even more vulnerable, kids.

I hate the lack of compromise from this new wave of trans activism, society needs to adjust to this and provisions made to ensure safety and comfort of everyone, not a single group. Just calm your new tits and accept you can be accepted and live how you wish, but let everyone else catch up, let us build more unisex bathrooms, let us sort out specialist prison wings, sport divisions etc, because it's women taking the knock each time. Not good enough for them though is it? Which makes me think they don't want to be included, they're simply just wanting access to our spaces. Why? Why is that something you feel entitled too? At least meet us half way, ffs.

I've supported in work (back in the old days) men who crossed dressed as it was known back in the day, all struggling to accept sexuality and with intellectual disabilities. But even then, these men had zero interest in using the bathrooms of women etc, it's just terribly sad at a time we could be inclusive of men wearing what they liked, women wearing what they wanted, for sexuality to be as open as free without judgement, society finds a way to reject that, give uncertain people life altering surgery and still quash the rights and safety of women.

Completely agree with this. It's a brilliant wedge issue to undermine liberal democracy, I bet Putin can't believe his luck.

They should stay out of womens toilets and disabled toilets. The sheer number of them means that disabled people will have to start forming a queue behind the ‘most vulnerable’. I have radar key because I cannot queue .

Also disabled loos are more conveniently located to enable easy and quick access. It’s not hard to use the appropriate facilities for your sex. And leave disabled facilities alone.

I started to get into trouble at work despite knowing a lot about the topic as I studied forensic psychology and this area / sexual abuse etc was my specialist area. I was quite surprised at the speed of the takeover in schools and the lack of understanding of the power / abuse / paraphernalia side on the part of social institutions. Luckily I moved to a saner school and the direction now is getting better
Still had some awful edi training, good on disability, sweet young girls doing it but they were just clueless on the actual law. Heads of year sucking it up!

If we accept that "true" trans people (i.e. people with clinically significant gender dysphoria) have a serious mental illness that causes them genuine extreme distress using toilets designated for their sex, then I'm happy for them to use disabled toilets. Disabled toilets don't exist solely for particular "types" of disability. I'm not convinced there are enough disabled people or trans people for this to cause a problem in most places (and if it is a problem, more disabled toilets can be built).

Of course this isn't going to happen anytime soon as we're not allowed to acknowledge that any trans people are mentally ill or allow any sort of medical gatekeeping whatsoever.

I know my DP would be absolutely gutted using the same toilet as a TW, not embarrassed, just sad they've gone to all the effort of painful surgery, hormone treatment etc to still be stood in a toilet full of blokes. It's quite humiliating, degrading and TW deserve protection also.

I'm sure DP means well but it's only too easy to feel gutted for someone else when it's no skin off your own nose.

Your DP feels sorry for an unhappy person so he would collude in the unsustainable fiction that maybe right now, maybe if they wear the right clothes and talk the right way, maybe after hormones or surgery, other people will really see them as the opposite sex and will treat them as the opposite sex in any way they want. Or at least like your DP they'll pretend out of pity. Nowadays trans people believe they have a right to that fiction, our society has turned around and told them it is their human right. Not just to have rights as trans people, but rights as the opposite sex. And that's how a lot of young people have been led to transition. They make a small change or two and build up a huge head of anxiety about whether society in general and other people individually really do accept them now as the other sex. And of course many people (women!) don't really and wont pretend because it does affect our safety, privacy and dignity.

Then for the internalisers there's always something more to do to themselves, more make-up, tighter tucking, more drugs, more surgery, more self-damage, in the hope of this unachievable goal. And for the externalisers there's rage and aggression and accusing people of transphobia (see TRAs) instead.

Undertanding right from the start that no they can't ever expect to be treated as the other sex whenever they like, and if they started out male then no they can't use the women's toilets and changing rooms, not now, not ever, not never ( * ), can actually save people from taking steps that permanently screw up their health and their fertility to no purpose.

( * ) Anyone else old enough to remember the cookie bear on the Andy Williams show?

I'm genuinely shocked at how many people are now trans. Having seen people suffer throughout their lives with what I truly believe is an extreme MH problem, to since 2020 friends dad's or uncles now just decided from nowhere they're wanting to be known as Stephanie, wear dresses and lippy, not seek any medical help, but also expect to have access to women's toilets.

I have literally watched a child as young as 2 struggle with not being the opposite sex and have violent tantrums over being allowed to wear siblings clothes etc, this is a child with parents who wouldn't ever have put this notion into their head, if anything they were devastated to lose their only son who is now (following psychiatric advice) another daughter for them. The distress these kids and families experience is the fucking worst.

But I do fully accept there are families who are manipulating their DC because they enjoy the attention of a trans child. And the worst thing is, a modicum of common sense and you just can tell them off the bat, but it's not for the public to diagnose so we have to just accept it.
I have asd kids and the amount of bellends telling me their kids have ND when they're just ordinary kids who need a bit of actual parenting wind's me up, but I can't just say, "actually Michelle, your DC is just behaving like a wild animal because you feed him red bull and smarties for lunch and barely talk to the poor fucker as you're more arsed by tiktok and tinder", you just can't do that.

And now we've got the stigma on these genuine rare cases of GD being overshadowed by creepy uncle Stephanie who wants to walk around in the knack, fully intact, women's changing rooms.

Great stuff.

I'm in a delightful mood today, I'm so sorry for the tangent 😂😂

Why not just let the tantrumming toddler wear his sibling's clothes (how different are girl 2 year olds clothes from boy 2 years olds clothes anyway?) for a few weeks or months and keep him well clear of psychiatrists.

He's still their son, whatever he's wearing.

It became quite extreme as he aged and school etc became involved.
At first they allowed him to wear dresses and tiaras etc, didn't stop him.
I think quite alot of him now being a her pronoun is down to school and NHS intervention.

Yessssssss! 💪💪💪💪💪

It may be a little too early...and hopefully my posts above show that I genuinely am still trying to be an "ally" of sorts - just not one that inadvertently promotes surgery and hormones to vulnerable people or people trampling all over everyone else's boundaries in the name of inclusivity... but, caveats aside, you might find this article/story helps make sense of the journey of how someone might go from ally to baffled to frustrated/annoyed/angry:

A short play about what's been happening (up to 2018)

Someone posted it the other day and I thought it was fantastic. I hope you don't mind me saying but it feels like you've hopped on to the boat and want to PUUUUULLLLLLLLLL really hard. I certainly do.

@BonfireLady that is exactly how I feel! I feel so upset that kids, women, those with mh issues are being shat all over and the women who are trying to shine a light on the issues are just being targeted and shouted down with the terf slur.
I'm also trying to be an ally, but we've come up against a brick wall, we can't selectively champion, but we can't say "Oh we're not your ally uncle Jeff because we find you somewhat a threat, but poor Andrea who's put herself through hell over the last 20 years, now we have to abandon her".

It's shit and it's tough, but we can only always seek the more vulnerable people to support, and I guess that will always be kids and women.

I love my Trans friends so much and I was so happy at the start of the movement that people I believed hadn't led happy lives were able to seek inclusivity to lead lives of love and fulfilment, being authentic to themselves for a deeply dark movement ingrained with sinister intentions to quickly piss all over what could have been a shining light in understanding the anguish those with GD suffer through.

So yes, it's hard to not be annoyed, I'm annoyed the vulnerable in society who've never considered their sex to be an issue are now opting for medications and having operations they don't bloody need.
I'm sad kids are now a walking advertisement for their supercool parents.
I'm sick that someone's creepy dad wants to walk around cock out in women's changing areas.

And my heart breaks for the people who this will fuck over long term, just so some predatory men can have access to kids, the people this movement should benefit.

It's all grim and each day you open your eyes a bit more, it's truly worth getting angered over. X

we can only always seek the more vulnerable people to support, and I guess that will always be kids and women.

There is more we can do. We can also stay in touch with reality. It's not a vulnerability contest. Support does not mean supporting delusion, that's not helping vulnerable people either.

I have literally watched a child as young as 2 struggle with not being the opposite sex and have violent tantrums over being allowed to wear siblings clothes etc, this is a child with parents who wouldn't ever have put this notion into their head,

What, exactly, do you think a two year old is struggling with here? Especially if you think parents “wouldn’t ever have put this notion into their head”? Two year olds don’t understand sex so can only be a reaction to a desire to wear the sparkly clothes he sees his sister wear. And why not? And why should he grow out of liking those clothes when he is four? That just means he likes those clothes. I know plenty of two to four/five/six year old boys who loved wearing the same as their sister - and this was often affirmed by adults making a fuss of them just like they saw them making a fuss of their sisters when dressed up. It does not mean they are <really> the opposite sex.

Let us not forget in times past satin, frills, long hair, heels, pink, bows, and makeup were very much part of being a man

I've seen plenty of toddlers wearing very unusual clothes when out and about. It's normal. If they want to wear a princess dress and wellies on a dry summer day, why not. It doesn't mean that they think they are a princess or they think it's raining. Toddlers are quirky. That's it. Let them be.

@IWillNoLie @WallaceinAnderland

Hello, thanks for replies.

The parents did exactly that.
Allowed their ds to wear whatever he wanted. However once at school age and it continued, child will be almost 10 now, but around 7-8 they displayed other MH issues and it was the advice of NHS psychiatrist they were suggested to give their DS the chance to change pronouns and rename himself to a female name.

People in general don't ignore the advice of psychiatrists, especially not those completely out of depth looking for answers.

'It's a movement of confusing children, attention seeking and predators which is backfiring on almost everyone and once it loses its popularity transfolk who want to live peacefully will be vilified as perverts as opposed to perverts who infiltrated a movement of vulnerable people.'

😳😳

Yes, I was thinking the same. How can a child of two even know what being a girl is? They're just attracted by the clothes and toys, because as a society we insist on ridiculous gender stereotyping.

I was very be kind and hurrah for LGB. Then the T got added on and I thought ok. Good on people for being themselves. I heard about some Feminists being de-platformed...

This was me. Except that when I heard about Greer being no-platformed for saying that people couldn't change sex, my first reaction was that she was being unkind. Why couldn't she just accept that people wanted to live as the opposite sex, and not insensitively hammer home the truth they didn't want to acknowledge?

Then I found the MN Feminism section It's amazing how often MN threads come up in a Google search and I just sort of stayed. I remember reading a thread about posters on Twitter saying they "owned womanhood" and I went to find them. Hair-raising stuff, but I thought it was just a random corner of Twitter. But I kept coming back to it and realising slowly just how big and all encompassing an issue it was. Before long I was a full-blown TERF

I didn't think that much about trans for a long time but was broadly supportive. In my head, it was like what I saw on American TV shows - men who really really wanted to be women, and who put the work and effort in to be that eg surgery etc. Men who genuinely looked like women. I assumed that all trans people were like that and I just didn't really think any further than that.

and then three things happened that made me think more carefully about this.

The first was that there were all these people shining lights on trans people who, if anything, I felt were making a mockery of women. Men who were obviously men dressing in dresses and heels and make up and all the rest but who looked to me like what I used to think were transexuals. Who I always just thought were gay men who liked to wear women's clothes. Fine. A bit of fun and no harm no foul. But these people were insisting that they WERE in fact women. Because they wore dresses and make up? And considering that, as a teenager and a young women, I'd spent a lot of time and effort trying to distance myself from this idea that to be a women meant you had to wear dresses and make up. I campaigned at school for girls to be allowed to wear trousers (unsuccessfully), I wanted to wear trousers when I started working etc and while I could, it was harder to find clothes that fit and were smart for me as a women in those days so the "I wear a dress so I must be a woman" infuriated me.

And then, there was Pip Bunce winning the FT's most influential women award or being ranked or whatever. This is a man who, a few times a week, chooses to wear dresses and make up. I thought it was great that at his bank they were okay with that and it didn't affect his career, but for fuck's sake, he's not a woman> he's a man who likes to play with gender stereotypes but now he's winning an award that could have gone to an actual woman? I mean, we get so little bloody recognition in finance as it is, and this man is now taking away one of our few opportunities?!

And then I came across Rachel McKinnon. And I just couldn't get my head around how this man, who was a man for a long time, could suddenly decide he was a woman and compete against female cyclists. And win. Which was convenient for him because when he was a male cyclist, he was just average. And I quickly realised he was not the only one and that it was becoming more and more common.

I still have sympathy for what I consider to be "genuine" trans people. But I think it's sad that as far as I can see, for every "genuine" trans person, there's at least another fake one. One who is using being trans as an opportunity to abuse women or children, to get their own way, to win things they couldn't otherwise win, to get into places they wouldn't otherwise be able to go.

The Lia Thomas thing was such a good example of that. I remember watching a TV show years and years ago. The trans woman in that show was desperate, could pass as a woman and part of the narrative was her efforts to become a woman, including removing her penis. One of the story lines at one point addresses this issue of how she didn't want to use female change rooms because then people would see her penis. But she didn't want to use the men's for obvious reasons either. And that sort of made sense to me. And then you get Lia Thomas who, as far as I can tell from the stories being told, thinks he should be allowed to walk around stark naked with his penis on show in the changing room and it just screams, "I am doing this so that I can take things away from women - their sporting success, their comfort, their safety. Because I hate women."

And I am so tired of being told, as a woman, that I must be nice to people and polite to people. even as they trample over my boundaries. Man in shop asking rude and inappropriate questions - but I am the rude one if I refuse to answer or walk away? Trans woman in my change room making ME uncomfortable, but I am rude if I don't accept that?

Get stuffed.

And I am dreading high school for DD. DS is already at the school and while the trans thing is still quite low key, it feels like it's going in that direction. What am I going to do when DD comes home and tells me that there's a boy changing with her and the other girls in PE?!

Sorry, that was insanely long. Cathartic though. Thanks.

I'm inching towards the Helen Joyce position of there not being 'genuinely trans people'. There are people suffering from psychiatric illness, either acute or chronic, who need psychiatric support, not crippling hormones or actual bodily mutilation, and there are attention seeking chancers, and there are sexual predators.

None of them are a different sort of human. All of them are the same sex as their physical body. Gender is a function of language, not of human existence.

Back to the stone of madness - removing healthy body parts was not an appropriate treatment for mental distress half a millennium ago, and it still isn't.

@DeanElderberry yes, I'm also moving towards that too. But more because Im' starting to think the people I think of as "genuine trans" don't actually exist, and never did and all the rest are, at best, struggling with serious mental health issues or, at worst, are attention seeking wankers.

But I like to think that maybe there really are some of those ones I saw on tv back in the day. I think. Not sure.

Re the young lad I know, just to explain his parents needed help with other issues and it was the psychiatrist who pushed for changing of name/pronouns.
Prior to that they did just allow him to wear whatever.
To be completely honest, he, now she, seems much happier and isn't displaying the awful behaviour he was.
But, long term, I do dread to think about puberty for the kiddo and the idea of surgeries. Horrid to think of.

Other side of the coin and I'm sure I sound judgemental and that's okay I think here, many of you I hope will understand why I'm saying this.
I have friends who I'm not close with, but have known many many years now who have had the most tumultuous relationship. They're surrounded by filth, chaos, addiction and those poor kids have been raised by apple products.
Now their DD has come out as trans, (no signs of GD, just a new thing as a teenager) and they're supporting her to go ahead with surgery. I asked why are they jumping to this and their reply is all about suicide rates in trans teens.

I asked would they consider counselling or therapy etc, maybe work on other ways to help her feel seen/heard/have her sexuality be more open.

They've asked her fuck all about her life, where she wants to go, do, accomplish.
Shes no pals and if I was to guess, this transitioning is because she's talking to other miserable people online and is desperately wanting to fit in with some community.

Very much a personal opinion but I've been a parent a long time, I've had lots of traumatised kids stay with me over the years as a foster carer etc and this behaviour is a child who needs love and intensively so, not her body mutilated on a fucking whim.

When you read the parents on here in turmoil trying every last thing to do correct by their kids and then you have parents such as this simply saying, "Oh she'll kill herself if we don't go along with it" without exploring any avenues to help, it breaks my heart.

If one of my DC displayed signs of wanting to transition I'd be broken and I'd do everything I could to support them to feel they can be their own person without owing anyone surgery or their fertility. If it wasn't enough and they were hell bent on surgery etc, I'd support them best I could, but I'd not lie to them, nor blow smoke up their arse. But to simply just say, "sure let's lop your body to pieces on a quick whim" really unsettles me.

But I like to think that maybe there really are some of those ones I saw on tv back in the day. I think. Not sure.

Hayley Cropper was played by a woman

That breaks my heart thinking about the pathway your friends' daughter is on, owing to her parents' superficial (and distracted) "assessment" that this is what she needs to "avoid suicide" 😞😞😞😞

I can completely understand why you can't step in with any advice that would be well received, given how you don't know them well. I'm watching a similar scenario play out from a distance. Different circumstances but likely to be the same inevitable outcome 😞😞😞😞

I had mentioned in an autism parenting group about my thoughts on the overlap between gender identity and autism - I've put this in several threads, so won't repost here. Someone reached out to me privately and we spoke for an hour.
It took about 20 mins for the penny to drop that his 16 year old daughter was actually his son. His (autistic) son has been self-harming and depressed for a long time and had been completely uncommunicative about gender identity until last week, when he asked for money for hormones. I had to tread very carefully. The dad is divorced from the mum, and lives (as a girl) mostly with the mum. The dad had not heard about the Cass Review, so we discussed that for a bit. We also touched on Richie Heron and his desire to extend the Cass Review to support under 25s. The only "fact" the dad knew was that detransition is 1%, so if someone says that they are trans, they basically are..... Eek. That is a completely unevidenced "fact", based on a mid-high level bias that even the authors of the research admit. There is no evidence base to support "gender affirming care", let alone any possible estimate of the current number of detransitioners. They disappear from the stats and are silenced by the majority of the mainstream press and medical profession (although Andrew Neil seems to be making inroads there this week🤞). So we did talk about detransitioners a little but the dad was getting really emotional and I overwhelmed, so I had to row back.
As I said, I suspect I know exactly how this will play out: his 16 year old autistic son, who hasn't been to school for 9 months due to anxiety and self-harming is already using a girl's name and pronouns and is going to circumvent the NHS waiting list and go private... straight in to the arms of the GenderGP gang.

He's gone off to read the Cass Review and I also recommended the therapy book that Sue and Marcus Evans wrote for adolescent children with gender dysphoria. It certainly helped me get my head around how to talk to my daughter. Meanwhile, I have no idea what his wife's views are or whether they co-parent effectively. I came off the call feeling very sad about it all.