Anti trans debate

[Beedleneedle]

I’ve noticed on mumsnet there’s a strong feminist anti trans stance. That’s fine in theory, but I’m surprised these topics affect so many people. In my day to day life I never experience any push/agenda! Where is this happening?

Surely the Post Office scandal has taught us that no one is really that safe from being sent to prison?

may i be the 94th person to say it isn't an anti-trans debate it is a pro-women and women's rights debate.

(Temp name change for privacy)

@Beedleneedle at the beginning of last year I found female hormones and hormone blockers in my son’s room. He is early 20s but quite ‘young’. He had contacted a well known (not sure if I can name them) online trans specialist. After 2 (two) brief calls, one with a ‘counsellor’ (who didn’t appear to do any counselling) and one with a dr, he got his prescription and drugs. These are drugs that can cause long term problems, including infertility. We talked about all his reasons for doing this. Long story short he realised it was a mistake and he stopped taking them.

If I hadn’t have found these it could have been a very different story. What is the relevance to your question? Well. ‘Trans healthcare’ is being painted as lifesaving and vital, and the rigour with which it is delivered together with whether some of it is necessary at all cannot be questioned. Contrast the many investigations that have taken place over the past few years into variously the private prescribing of weight loss drugs, private ADHD diagnoses and the delivery of cosmetic treatments with the absolute failure of most news outlets to look at how life-changing hormones and surgeries are being used to treat our children and young people. When anyone does investigate, they are immediately branded transphobic and attempts are made to shut them down. In addition to the obvious threat to women’s rights that comes from attempting to reclassify what a woman is, I’m immensely suspicious of a movement that is so aggressively committed to shutting down any examination of what it does and how it operates.

And to reiterate what others have said. This isn’t anti trans. It’s applying the same standards to everyone. Largely the debates here are about being pro women, but there are also issues around compelled belief (that we wouldn’t accept from say religious people) and as I outline lack of critical oversight of healthcare.

@Itsholly my personal views? Sure. They aren't 100% fixed.

Transition/being trans seems to be a cultural, psychological and sometimes sexual response or coping strategy for a lot of things. It is not a cause but an effect. Trying to fix an unchanging and single legal framework round something like that is quite difficult and imo damaging. Like putting scaffolding around the front of a building when there is a problem with a leak in the basement.

However I would say that the desire either to escape your own sex or to be the other sex is a universal cultural feature for a few people. Some cultures impose it, in that the top man will require young men or gay men who may threaten his power to live as women. In our individualistic and medicine-worshipping culture it is framed as a personal, neurobiological inevitable state that must be accommodated and 'treated', though treatment is to consolidate it and now to push towards an eternally receding perfection.

I think the explosion in girls transitioning is fascinating. I of course find it really sad - I love women, enjoy seeing girls grow up and the idea in general that these kids believe they are men is just depressing and a very obvious deep response to a sexist, lesbophobic, porn-soaked culture and a much more rigid and pressured school culture. Ultimately young people will do things that look crazy to oldsters. Some are crazy, some will develop and settle in what I hope will be a less damaging way.

I will say that there are aspects of sexism that are being exposed by this. There are so many areas of life where sex really doesn't matter in the developed world. There should be a feminist response to that. Ultimately that could be positive.

I suspect that there cannot be too many people saying this.

Let’s all keep repeating: feminism is about women and girls; focusing on biologically female people is not ‘anti-trans’.

Maybe at some point enough people will say it that all the thoughtlessly #kind people might start to think a bit.

No one should be discriminated against if they choose not to follow the sexist stereotypes that are culturally linked to their birth sex. Protection from discrimination is already law and enfirced well.

The UK doesn’t have laws protecting people from discrimination for not following sexist stereotypes, so they aren’t enforced well as they don’t exist. Those laws are known as gender expression protections. The closest thing in the UK is gender reassignment in the equality act.

How very privileged are you that you have not yet been impacted by this. I can only assume you are a male poster.

we're undstanding the bold part differently.

If I'm correct what @YireosDodeAver means is that women who want to, say, join the army, can't be turned down for being a woman wanting to do a "mans" job based on their sex. Or indeed that a man wanting to be a nurse (largely stereotypically seen as a woman's job) can be turned down because he's a man.

2nd wave feminism got so bloody close, then we took our eye off the ball and assumed that subsequent waves would continue to centre women, even though many thought the sex equality war had been won. (i had it said to my face so many times by younger women - who were fine at work right up until they had a baby, for eg - that gender/sex equality had been achieved)

As we said then i say it again now: a bloke in a dress doing embroidery and watching rom coms isn't a woman. He is a bloke doing "stereotypically female gendered" things and there is nothing wrong with that. Even if other "manly blokes" say "that's girly" and other people say "oh then you are female gendered". He is a man. And that is completely fine. Likewise a female lumberjack who never wears make up, never has a child, drinks beer and burps and farts to olympic standard is still a woman. No matter what anyone says and no matter if she says "I'm not like other girls" (unspoken part: therefore I'm not a gilr)

None of that is anti-trans. It is anti-outdated-gender-stereotypes and pro woman (in that it demands women and men are treated the same in terms of opportunities)

@InnCognito thanks for sharing your story. It must have been awful for all of you. I hope your son is doing better now.
And I love your name change so much that I want to change mine to "Ink Og Nito"

The sex discrimination protections would help someone who wanted to do a ‘man’s’ job, but not necessarily protect them if they wanted to wear the man’s uniform instead of the female one, or vice versa, if they weren’t covered by the gender reassignment protection.

@Beedleneedle so this doesn't affect you in your life at all? It may be about to. So I have a question for you.

so, think about your little son, that you know is a boy, you saw him on the scans through pregnancy, you change his nappy every day, you know he is a boy.

Imagine you get him a truck and a doll for his birthday. He likes both toys, but the doll is his favourite so much he won't go anywhere without it. You also haven't taken him to get his hair cut because you think he looks really cute with his shoulder length hair.

You go to pick him up from nursery one afternoon and the manager of the nursery pulls you to one side to tell you that you don't have a little boy but a little girl because he plays with a doll and has long hair and when told by one of the other kids dolls and long hair is for girls announced that he was a girl to a staff member.

What are going to do? Do you explain that he's to young to understand, he just likes what he likes, or do you collude with the nursery staff that your son has declared he is a girl likes stereotypical girl things and therefore actually truly is a girl and change his name from John to Joan?

Because this is exactly what is happening with children even toddlers at the moment. If a girl likes short hair and climbing trees they now get asked if they think they are a boy and if a boy likes sparkly things and dolls grown ups who should know better will tell him as he likes those things he may be a girl and if that's the case then when he grows up he can really be a girl.

Well I read about the Oct 7th attacks and struggled to sleep for weeks - unlikely my own teen girls will be raped to death by a group of maniacs in front of me but damn right it affects me when it happens to other teenage girls and young women.

but why would a woman want to wear the man's uniform? Full disclosure: as an ex-soldier i am well aware of the fact that uniforms for men don't always function properly when used by women. That is why equality isn't about everything being the same. It is about giving people the same opportunity (in my case: to be able to move while wearing kevlar, and not have my breasts squashed out to the sides rendering it partly innefective)

In uniformed professions aren't the male and female uniforms almost the same apart from being cut differently for male and female bodies?

Are you a man then? Because having a large swathe of women's rights being removed affects all women.

I’m a nurse and the male and female uniforms are different even if the two staff members are on the same pay grade and in the same role.

Are you not worried if (its already happened) the ideology is imposed?

Do you not wonder how it might impact your life at some point?

Your going to say I'll never end up in a hospital ward with a TW? How do you know, what if you do? what about the women that are?
I'll never be in prison, how do you know, what if you do, what about the women that are.
I'll never play a sport at any level, how do you know, what if you do, what about the women that are?
I'll never be raped, how do you know, what if you are, what about the women that are?

Already hospitals allow TW in women only wards
Prisons allow TW in the female estate.
Sports although some are changing, allow and have allowed TW in.
Rape centres, well one is run by a TW who appears to really really like women reframing their trauma in front of him, then dismisses them, allow TW in.
Hostels formerly for women allow TW in who then expose themselves.

You quite sure you'll never again need a woman only space?
Can you guarantee that?
What about those women that cant?

Employers can set different requirements for different genders and dismiss employees for not complying, and it can be unclear whether the courts would consider it legally discriminatory. E.g. consider situations where women have lost their jobs for refusing to wear high heels, or where people of both genders have been dismissed for wearing or not wearing makeup, or men losing their jobs for not having short hair, etc. Some people want laws to explicitly protect expression (e.g. so that it’s clear women can’t be required to wear high heels and makeup), the government want employers to be able to enforce different standards on their employees. It is a factor in gender issues I think, as my feeling is it can push people towards gender reassignment, as it’s not necessarily the case that a woman, who doesn’t think she should have to adhere to female stereotypes of expression, can simply choose not to and keep her job (or vice versa). https://www.clapham-collinge.co.uk/news/dress-codes-at-work-whats-acceptable-and-whats-not

I'm not a social worker but I am angry about what Rachel Meade and two of her colleagues were put through. Does OP assume their political opinions will always be the 'acceptable' ones and being discriminated against only ever happens to someone else? Read the judgement (or the sections helpfully quoted by other posters) and think how you'd feel if you were on the end of that.

I'll be #95.

This isn't even about 'trans' people. I don't care how other people choose to identify or dress or what they care to call themselves.

I do care, as I have all my adult life, about women. I care about women's rights.

If you can't define sex, you can't combat sexism. If you can't define a woman, women's rights cannot exist.

I also care a lot about children, especially vulnerable children, who may be given bad advice based on contested ideology that may lead to them being sterilised or gaining lifelong health issues.

I also care about lesbians losing their culture and spaces and being coerced into accepting males.

I also care about predators using 'trans' as a cover - see Andrew Miller/Amy George. Or Karen White. Or David and Aimee Challenor.

I also care about the McCarthyite, Stasi like threats to freedom of speech and belief. That women have been harassed, discriminated, attacked, threatened and abused simply for raising these issues is a significant and troubling issue.

As for affecting me personally - yes, we have a local transwoman who is a fetishist and hard to avoid. I've encountered a transwoman masturbating in a ladies' toilet, when I was seventeen. Many children at our local schools are identifying as trans.

Should we be quiet and wait until it does affect you directly, then say something?

Your "theoretical" rights as a woman are being affected on a daily basis. Should you ever bump into this problem and it then directly affects you, how it is handled by the law will be determined by the case law of all the women who went before you. The result of each legal case in this area decides how society treats womens rights in the face of the challenges from Trans Rights Activists. The TRAs campaign for policies that are sometimes are in conflict with women's rights e.g. males in female sports, free speech, protected beliefs, single sex spaces.

Your entire "argument" that it doesn't affect you so why should others care seems disingenous. If you don't care, then how do you care enough to tell other people that they shouldn't care either? When I don't care about a topic, the people who do care about that topic never hear from me that I don't care because part of my not caring is not caring enough to even tell them. It feels, and I may be wrong, I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, that there is a chance that your are trying to argue that mumsnetters shouldn't care, or are wrong to care.

Your assessment that there is a strong "feminist" stance is correct. Your assessment that there is a strong "anti trans" stance is incorrect. The discussion here is mainly about the conflict between rights demanded by Trans Activists and women's rights. Where there is no inherent conflict between those rights you'll find that MN is fine with trans people having those rights. Example the right to due process in law. No MNer has ever argued against this right for trans people because everyone should have it. There is no inherent conflict in both women and trans people being protected equally by law. But try and put a convicted multiple rapist in a women's prison and now there is a conflict because women don't want to be forced to be around convicted rapists who see them as prey.

There is a difference between trans right activists/activism and trans people. A person can be part of both groups, but it is possible to be part of one group but not the other. My feelings towards ( my definition of ) trans people is that they are vulnerable people in a difficult situation, and they should get all the support and sympathy they need to help them with their lives. My feelings towards trans rights activism is that for the most part it is nasty, wilfully ignorant, virtue signalling, agressive, misogynistic, homophobic, and violent stemming from the arrogance of people who are unwaveringly sure of their righteousness despite their ignorance of the wider picture and refusal to really think for themselves about how it all fits together and affects others.

My last point is that that believe it or not that MNers care about the predominantly young and proto gay people swept up in all of this. Women give birth to all humans. Women are the primary care givers to children. It is natural that women care for and about children and young adults, and what happens to them. To expect otherwise is to go against human nature. The medical pathway for transition has many irreversable downsides and risks. Where medical transition does not alleviate the distresses of a person who believed that transition was going to be the cure for their distresses, then we have a duty to all those that come after them to figure out how we can achieve a better result for their distresses. Science is about measuring results. If we can improve the lives of people who feel these distresses and give them happier futures then we should. But to do so requires that we monitor their results and adapt our treatments. Evolve the procedure to continually improve the results. A faith based approach where we stick our heads in the sand, pray, and ignore the results because we believe the current way is perfect is just as stupid now as it was hundreds of years ago when religion believed that the sun revolved around the earth, and it stems from exactly the same arrogance.

This is a feminist board.

Most posters are feminists.

Feminism means standing up for the rights of all women.

Women we don't like, women we've never met, women who do things we have no interest in, women in situations we will never (or hope we will never) experience.

All women.

My company recently revamped its pregnancy and maternity policy, and sent round a draft for comment. I don't have children, never wanted them, and am now old enough it's very unlikely to happen by accident. So the maternity policy doesn't affect me at all. I spent an hour carefully reading it and thinking about the implications, because I care about how other women are treated.

Similarly I care about the women who take part in amateur boxing and are now at hugely increased risk of injury and death because they will be fighting men. Even though I actively dislike boxing.

I've never committed an imprisonable offence (although as the post office cases show, that's not necessarily a protection against going to prison), but care about women in prison being used as props and accessories for men who want to 'learn to be women', whonare unable to shower in privacy, who are at greatly increased risk of rape and violent assault because they're locked up with men and can't raise complaints.

I've never needed to use a rape crisis centre, and hope I never will. But I care about the women who are being denied single sex staff to carry out medical examinations, and single sex therapy groups to help them recover.

I coild go on giving examples but if you only care about yourself and your own personal experience, you will probably never understand. I hope you are never in a position where you are forced to.

@Beedleneedle

You may have encountered people on here being defensive, because when we defend women and girls against this incursion, it's called anti-trans by transactivists trying to stop us. It's not. It's about defending women and girls' rights and safety.

If you don't have children, you don't play sport, or use public toilets and changing rooms very much, then you may not have been affected by this.

But this is a parenting website, largely populated by women.

There won't be a parent here who either doesn't know a trans identifying child or teen, or who has one themself.

Thats how we know.

Puberty blockers are followed by cross sex hormones in 99% of cases. These drugs will leave a child sterile for life and unable to orgasm. (And there appears to be some new evidence that puberty blockers reduce IQ by as much as 10 points.)

That's why we're concerned.

In Scotland, they are proposing a law that will criminalise a parent for not allowing a child to do this.

And that's why we are fuming and frightened.

There is way more to it, obviously. Sport, prisons, rape refuges. The umpteen court cases involving women being fired purely for saying there are only two sexes.

The fear, the threats, the intimidation, the utter nonsense of denying that sex even exists.

And then teaching it all to little kids in school.

To the extent where the government has had to intervene to tell schools not to teach things that aren't based on scientific evidence, not to tell children they are the opposite sex because they don't follow sexist stereotypes, not to make them use mixed sex toilets and not to socially transition them without their parents knowledge, etc.

Two things I can absolutely promise you.

One, if you think any of this is exaggerated, it's actually only the tip of the iceberg. This is truly the biggest threat to women's rights since they started campaigning for them.

And two, it will affect you.

I would absolutely recommend Helen Joyce's book 'Trans'. It appears to be the definitive one. Get it on audiobook and listen to it in the car. She was the editor of the Economist, and has a PhD in maths. Her 'not yer typical feminist' cred is excellent 😃

And also...welcome.

Draw up a chair and uncork the wine, you're going to need it.

I suggest we all have an agenda. By framing women's concerns about female integrity as being 'anti trans' reveals your agenda, I suggest.

Most people function in their everyday life fairly oblivious to deeper political forces; but just because people are unaware of them, it doesn't mean they don't exist, or exert influence over our lives and the on the direction of social-political travel.

By politics - I mean the realm of human ideas/ideological systems of thought and the pursuit of certain interests. Politics is also about how you manage these aforementioned forces and conflicts of interest.

That is because for years, up until fairly recently, debate simply wasn't permitted on this topic anywhere else. That is why mumsnet has become such a focus and gathering place for those who do want to have such discussions.
It is thanks in large part to this board that the issue is now in the public realm and finally been voiced in parliament.

As I say, many people are fairly oblivious to political movements or patterns.....but some are very much tuned in to them. There can be no concerted political action without a prior exhange of ideas - which is why trans acticvist organisations have sought to silence such discussions and have sought to have women's ( & men's)voices suppressed.