I think I'm becoming transphobic

[MyGhastIsFlabbered]

I feel unpleasant writing this but I need to put it down somewhere. I know trans people, I have no problem with them and I've always said TWAW. But recently, especially in light of the Sandie Pegge, Beth Upton case my views are changing. I don't have a problem with people wearing what they want, I'm even fine with pronouns.

But I'm starting to believe that you cannot change sex. All the surgery and hormones in the world will not make you a woman. Saying 'I'm a woman' doesn't make it so.

What's worse is that my 15 year old stepdaughter is identifying as male and I just find myself getting so frustrated whenever they refer to themselves as 'a dude'.

Am I transphobic or just realistic? How can I come to terms with my feelings as they are evolving?

Please quote someone who's said anything "transphobic" here. ie really, really hates trans people for existing. NOT "I don't want men in women's toilets"

Well exactly.

I wish TRAs could stop appropriating the struggle for racial equality but if they're gonna do it they really ought to work out that transwomen are the "white person" of their analogy.

Well, that is not being transphobic, that's maturing: accepting that personal wishes don't create reality and that there is indeed something outside of our heads that is and exists regardless of our personal wishes and/perceptions.

(It always amuses me the lengths we've come when I read "I believe you cannot change sex" or "my opinion is that men are not women". Well, congratulations but your opinion really doesn't matter because we are talking about facts here. And, hey, I'm guilty of this myself! Utterly preposterous...)

If not wanting to give irreversible sterilising drugs to a child, not wanting to mis-sex a male, and not wanting a naked intact male in vulnerable female only change room is 'twwwannsphobic', I think you will find 99.99994799999% of the population is 'twwwannsphobic'.

Or, rather; just humane, stable, well-adjusted normal decent human beings with compassion for the vulnerable. And by 'vulnerable', I don't mean a male in a dress.

Quite - just like Trump for example.

Yes you have been brainwashed and what is happening to you now is that you have realised this and you're shocked that you were indeed brainwashed. Like you and like many on here we mostly have no issue with how people dress etc. But we do not believe a man can become a woman ever. No surgery or hormones changes a man into anything else.

Are you transphobic, no, you are a biological realist who knows there are only two sexes and you are a woman who would like everybody to live your best lives.

But because you are now no longer brainwashed and know a man cannot become a woman you will be labelled transphobic. So what, you know you're not. And if your brother is going to think badly of you he's an idiot. I had the same with my brother who couldn't see what all the fuss is about but he's gradually changing his opinion.

The word TERF was created as a stick to beat us up with, so to take that back I'm a very proud TERF and every day at work I have a small pin on my feminst laynard that has 'terf' written on the pin. My laynard has written on it 'woman adult human female' I'm taking back my womanhood and taking back the insult of terf. Welcome to a very cosy part of Mumsnet. Where women stand up for women, girls and boys.

For your stepdaughter, you've been directed to help for her. A lot of today's female teenagers got caught up in this ideology. But she does need help. Bests of luck.

Race is definitive. I think it is more like saying someone is Islamophobic because they don't believe any Gods. I don't believe you can change gender/sex because it is defined by your chromosomes. In the same why I don't believe in God because I think science is a better explanations.

Yes. There is no minority group or struggle that trans won't colonise or appropriate. They really are as many experts have deemed them, parasites. Termites that attach themselves to an established (and vulnerable) group and eat away at that group from the inside out. Look at how they have colonised LGB and are now eating away at the hard work and good will and acceptance LGB gained. Trans are the privileged sacred caste. They are actually the white people in any given situation. Intact males in a dress are not a 'minority', they are not 'marginalised', they are not 'vulnerable'. They are the privileged white people. They are the colonisers, the usurpers. The transgressors.

OP I have found it so much easier now that the push to declare gender identity as being based in anything even remotely biological (eg. gender dysphoria being a medical condition) as being the commonality between people with transgender identities has moved on.

Understanding that this is a personal belief, a philosophical belief, makes it much easier to evaluate and see how everything sits together.

And then from that basis, you also then understand that there is no need to comply and act as if a person’s philosophical belief is materially real.

@Beekeepingmum exactly.

I'm not Islamophobic because I don't share the belief that there is one God and Muhammed is his prophet.

I'm not Hinduphobic because I don't believe that beef is proscribed.

I'm not Christianphobic because I don't believe Jesus died to save me.

I'm not athiestphobic because I think there might be a god but there's no way to know or prove it either way.

I'm not transphobic because I don't share the belief that humans can change sex.

You're realistic

Once you start to see "it" and the associated problems and harms, it's very difficult not to.

Feminism arose purely because women's needs are entirely different to men's.

This is based in their biological make up. And no, it's not biologically essentialism. Women can become pregnant and so need specific protections and support for that.

Women can become pregnant through choice, accident or force.

The latter two require more support and safeguards.

Men aren't included in any of this.

Women who think they're men still need the above.

‘Also DSD goes into the male bathrooms when out - this makes me incredibly uncomfortable but DH doesn't seem concerned.’

He’s not concerned, because he is a man, and doesn’t understand that his daughter could be putting herself in danger from other men by going into an enclosed ‘private space’ which is clearly signed as not for her use. You have to make him understand that there are ( plenty of) men who would see this as an opportunity to demonstrate the essential reality of biological sex. There are others who would be outraged at the invasion of their privacy, and would express their outrage physically.

Please try to make him see how dangerous this is.

He's also not concerned because he isn't thinking about the other men in the single sex spaces that your DSD is using. They have just as much of a right to single sex accommodations as women do, it's just that because they're men they're less likely to be at physical risk from a female person in their single sex space. But they're just as entitled to privacy and feeling comfortable in an place where they would expect a single sex space as women are. Their right to a single sex space is not his to give away.

Hope your daughter doesn't sink too deep in the "trans" shit.

The conflation of ‘believing in biological reality’ and transphobia has been one of the aims of the TRA movement, so any rational objection to their ideology can be shouted down as bigotry.

Transwomen are not biological women. This is a fundamental truth, not a slur.

Autogynephiles (men who engage in cross dressing and performative ‘femininity’ for paraphilic thrills) are not transwomen, though are now described as such - not only legitimising fetishistic behaviour in public, but allowing those same men access to every protected female space.

The muddying of the waters around all of this and the insanity of self-ID has led to a wholesale dismantling of women’s sex-based rights and protections.

To understand this and object to it does not make you transphobic.

You’re not wrong. It’s completely ridiculous. I’m happy to play along out of social courtesy but just looks at the threads on this site. Top thread is someone suffering from endo, hundreds of women having the same.

Im currently post partum. Just had my abdomen sliced open and toddling around on morphine in agony with breasts on the verge of mastitis hoping to god my nerve damage is temporary with a vagina as dry as anything; emailing my team to tell them the good news babe has arrived and hoping to god I have a job to go back to after (contracting consultant).

Sex is real. Gender is a social construct.

The sad thing is that OP's husband doesn't seem to have any 'paternal instinct' towards his daughter. Most fathers are very protective of their daughters, and would recoil in horror at their daughter being alone in a male only space where men have their dicks out.

He really doesn't seem to have any paternal feeling or instinct for his little girl at all. Its sad. But going by a thread OP started a few years back, her husband doesn't seem to have any care or concern for women and girls in general.

Unfortunately in a way you were brainwashed, your socialisation as a female was used against you. It's why the be kind mantra when used in conjunction with acceptance without exception and no debate worked so well for so long. Then when you add in the thought ending mantras of twaw and tmam, with a liberal sprinkling of pronoun declaration it all becomes somewhat c**t like.
Then we come to the socal punishment for deviating from accepted party line at the low end you become a socal pariah and the other is the treatment hand out to Sandie Peggie and JKR(to name but a few).
It takes time to recover from such a mental battering so give yourself some time and maybe look at some of the break it down for me threads as there aimed at those who have recently come to see the problems with gender ideology.
Unfortunately many of us long-term users have been in this fight for quite some time and have seen many TRAs come on here with threads claiming to be newly gc and posting goady things to get screenshots usually with similarly titled threads with have left some of us slightly jaded please don't take it personally

@MyGhastIsFlabbered I don't have much time to post; I wish I did.

One tip is to only ever think about the word gender with the word gender stereotypes after it.

Eg: "What's your gender stereotype identity?"

"Toilet: all gender stereotypes."

It demonstrates the sexism that feminists and women's liberation tried os hard to escape

Well you may be becoming transphobic - but it's more likely you are just escaping a brainwashing cult and realising that actually women have rights too.

Most people standing up for women's rights dont hate or fear trans people but they do recognise that no-one can change sex. They also recognise that activists are trying to remove women's rights to safe spaces. Activists have also greatly harmed children like your stepdaughter.

There are people that can help your step-daughter identify why she feels distress about her body and how to deal with this in a healthy fashion. Fortunately the NHS has woken up to the damage that was being done to children. Get your husband to read the CASS report and to understand why puberty blockers are banned. Read about the harm she could do to her body if she uses binders or wants cross sex hormones.

Many young women will now desist as they grow up but seek out the good sources of advice that have been mentioned.

Human's can't change sex.

They can be operated on, fooled into thinking they can, but it's a lie. A massive, painful, foolish lie. Effectively they are being tortured under false promise.

Damn! Chocolate is transphobic?? What am I going to do?? 😭
On the bright side it's given me a decent list of films to watch

you need to reframe your feelings. Put women first, and not always centre (as Kathleen Stock put it) people with a sex mismatched gender identity.

That way you are pro women, and not transphobic.

But: why are you worried about seeming transphobic? Either you think it's ok for you to change in a room with your trans friends, or you don't. Why would that make you transphobic rather than shy or private?