Transgenderism not a modish fad because: Jan Morris

[Igneococcus]

Says the outgoing head of one of Edinburgh's private schools.

“I often use the experience of Jan Morris, whose testimony about trans status, having gone up Everest as a man, had children as a man, married and been in the army, all the time feeling like a woman, means [trans issues] cannot be dismissed as a modish oddity.
“Once you have accepted that, you accept that in the population there will be children experiencing that, we have to try and understand that, not to judge either way but make sure their experience in society and in school is as supportive and caring as it possibly can be.”
You'd think someone who runs (ran) a school that charges almost £16K/a is a bit more clued on.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/865440df-a0ed-41f4-96a8-165616cdcf2e?shareToken=817b15d10d03786417a5d224fbac72da

This.

Jan Morris was a bad example.

But, I have followed racing driver Charlie Morris long before trans was a hot topic, long before I read the feminist angle on MN. She (MtF) has has all the surgery, yet still competes in a male dominated sport, she is on the TRA bandwagon now I think, but for a long time was just someone battling for acceptance, who hadn't been comfortable living as male since childhood. It's people like her who I don't feel fit the MN narrative.

What is the 'MN narrative'?

“I often use the experience of Jan Morris, whose testimony about trans status, having gone up Everest as a man, had children as a man, married and been in the army, all the time feeling like a woman, means [trans issues] cannot be dismissed as a modish oddity.
“Once you have accepted that, you accept that in the population there will be children experiencing that, we have to try and understand that..."

So he thinks that a teenage girl who is anxious about her changing body is exactly the same as a middle-aged man (with a wife and children) who likes to pretend he's a woman? Has he ever actually stopped to think about what he's saying?

And what makes him think any rational person would accept that?

What do you mean by 'living as a male'? Surely anyone who is male is living as a male by definition.

So let's embed the idea that internalised homophobia is OK because trans.

Let's embed it's irrational that girls be aware of male posed danger because trans.

Let's embed women to accept AGP's behaviour because trans.

Let's love the Curriculum for Excellence because trans is health & well being.

That all males who want to transition are AGP. That it's a fetish. That they havent felt that way since childhood. That most don't have surgery - obviously that is true, but I feel transwomen who do go that far are in a different category.

I probably agree with 99% of Terfism, but there's 1% of what I read here makes me uncomfortable. I can't quote twice, but the pp who says what do you mean by living as a male, you know very well what I mean as living as a male, you can't campaign for single sex spaces and then say there's no such thing as living as a male.

What is the difference between living as a male and being a male?

I am a woman and I have no idea what living as a woman means. I just am a woman. And alive.

sjngle sex spaces are just spaces for adult human males and adult human females

living as a male is just acting out the perception of what a woman believes male behaviour to be

There’s another thread at the moment where Debbie Hayton who is a transwoman who has had the surgery talks about having AGP so I don’t think it’s always as clear cut as having the surgery = not AGP.

Nobody here says all males who want to transition are AGP. Although it seems likely that all or nearly all heterosexual males who transition later in life are. We're not allowed to say that it's a fetish. Posts saying that get deleted pretty quickly. We don't know if they've felt like that since childhood. They always say they have though. A male without a penis is not in a different category, he's just a male without a penis.

you can't campaign for single sex spaces and then say there's no such thing as living as a male.

Single sex spaces are nothing to do with 'living as a male'. Single sex spaces are for people of one sex only. Nothing to do with the way they live. Unless you think that 'living as a male' means using men's spaces. So are you saying that a male who isn't comfortable living as male is uncomfortable simply because they want to use women's spaces?

you can't campaign for single sex spaces and then say there's no such thing as living as a male.

Really? Have a think about that again.

Are people campaigning for single sex spaces for people who live as a sex, or people.who are a sex?

The former is the TRA argument - a single sex space for people who 'live as' one sex includes people who actually are both sexes. And is therefore not a single sex space.

you know very well what I mean as living as a male

It's either doing literally anything while having a male body

Or

Conforming to masculine stereotypes or being perceived or judged against these stereotypes.

Which did you mean?

Because being unhappy to be judged against sex role stereotypes is extremely common and doesn't change what sex you are.

In many countries there is such a thing as living "as a woman". It means repression in clothing and social role and status, and in many cases lack of control of one's life.

We don't mean that when we talk of living "as a woman" in the UK. We mean presentation and perhaps social expectation. It may be that some men want to opt out of the male presentation and social expectation. We should be supporting that. But it does not mean they are "living as women".

Because many women want to opt out of typical female presentation and social expectation too. It doesn't mean they are not women. Women can and should come together in solidarity when it is helpful due to the many issues we face because we are women.

But in the UK many of us women have fought against the idea of "living as women" for a long time. We are women living as people for whom sex is at times important and to be celebrated.

The "narrative" or rather the factual reality is that no men can be women, no matter what body mods they undertake, how "genuine" we believe them to be, how much we like them, how sorry we feel towards them, how vulnerable we believe them to be.

There can be no exceptions, and it's not possible to make them even if we wanted to.

I’ll post more later, but Melvyn is the Principal at Watson’s, my daughter’s former school. This article was a very distressing read for me this morning given our experience both with the school and him personally.

I met Jan Morris a couple of times and I agree. My father had met him as James and thought he was arrogant and pompous - and upper class Englishman who had discovered his inner Welshness and with the zealotry of a convert was reinventing himself. I only knew about this after the transition, so I thought it was my father being a bit old-fashioned because he was uncomfortable with transsexualism (a term JM used). But maybe the reinvention as a Welsh nationalist and the transition to 'womanhood' were similar.

It was noticeable at an event I was at well over 20yrs later that all the men were gathered around Jan, hanging onto every word, and Jan was loving it. It was a strange combination of male confidence and privilege accompanied by almost coquettish mannerisms. The men had so much more respect and admiration for Jan than I'd ever seen them express for their female colleagues. It felt like I was watching something from a film.

So many aspects of Jan's story are an illustration of how different trans women are from women. Even if a woman had been born into the same wealth and privilege as James Morris, they would not have had the opportunities he had. The children's, and even Jan's own, accounts of family life sound as if Jan remained in the male gender role regardless of the change in name and appearance. And the women in the family were expected to remain firmly in theirs as support humans.

@Properhoolietoday I don’t agree about the MN narrative- though I can see how you arrived there. People on MN generally accept that not all men who trans are AGP

Blanchard hypothesised two kinds of transwomen. Older men transitioning, generally straight and AGP. Much younger men, generally gay.

As it’s become so, so much more common and ‘accepted’, the boundaries are a bit less clear- sissy men seemingly wanting to be used by men as part of the degradation, for example. Younger straight men are transitioning, too.

But even young gay men who fully transition are not female, and do not belong in women’s spaces.

Rogdmum I imagine it was :-( it seems he has great deal to answer for. If he is indeed moving to Bristol, I hope any parents who encounter his particular educational approach are very much on their guard

I’ve felt ill much of today.

This isn’t the first time Melvyn has pushed (choosing my words carefully here) men who have transitioned in middle age. He was responsible for platforming former Mermaids trustee, Bobbi Pickard, at HMC’s spring conference last year:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4796022-hmc-independent-schools-heads-conference-showcasing-bobbi-pickard-in-gift-of-trans-talk

God knows we tried to impress upon him and the school that there is a new cohort of (mostly) adolescent girls who have all sorts of co-morbidities and that the school’s approach to social transition (which includes keeping it secret from parents where the child from 12+ wishes) is not evidence based and goes against everything we know about child development.

He completely dismissed us and at one point even said we thought our daughter’s gender distress was “frivolous” so I find the headline for today’s interview “cannot be dismissed as a modish oddity” very telling. He intentionally brushes aside very serious safeguarding concerns by effectively painting those with concerns as not taking it seriously. DARVO at its most extreme.

The school’s new draft policy was put to parents for consultation last summer. The deadline for comments was the end of September. 4 months on and my understanding is that there’s been silence about it - no final guidance has been published and parents are no longer able to view any internal guidance (ie the previous one or the draft one) on the parent portal.

Clifton College is a very “interesting” place for him to move to.

This quote from Suki Morys' article stood out for me. Haven't we heard Jordan Gray describe Jordan's self as a better woman than a natal woman?

I believe she wanted to be someone totally different from anyone else, a woman who was the centre of attention because of her difference. She was no ordinary woman, as she believed the rest of us were. She was always talked about, always put on some pedestal. Her ego was massive, with people constantly rubbing it. She was a woman who enjoyed being in a man’s world because she stood out. I can’t blame her for that, but Jan certainly did absolutely nothing for womankind.

😂 Comedy Gold!

That's comedy gold alright!

Needs a few tweaks though.

He was a man in a man's world who stood out because he looked ridiculous in his twinsets and pearls, and this seems to be exciting to quite a lot of men, who like rubbing it for him!

I can only imagine how it must feel to know that men like this hold your child's safety in their hands rogdmum. There is something dreadfully wrong in certain schools when senior staff openly fetishise transwomen and use them to excuse ignoring the need to safeguard children.

We all know this is a monumental scandal that will eventually implode but the number of child casualties that it's already creating defy belief.

That’s a good way of putting it, MrsOvertonsWindow . I still feel ill. We were unable to protect our daughter from this man due to our naivety. We had no idea this particular issue existed for certain middle age men, let alone that there would be other men like Melvyn in positions of power who use it as justification to push social transition and self ID in schools. If I’d known at the time, we would have immediately pulled her out instead of naively thinking it was all a big misunderstanding, that we just had to explain, that the school would work with us.

And now he’s off to Clifton College in August - an example of what DfE is going to come up against when they try to roll out their school guidance. I would say good riddance, but it is sickening.