Am I naive in thinking that in a couple of years, if not sooner, this will all be behind us? A few court cases, people clear about the law, women's rights protected again??

[loveyouradvice]

And yes the noisy TRA far fewer in number and sidelined as the sad fringe that are left as others move on.....

Or do others think it will pan out differently??

"I am a woman, who is trans. Not the other way around."

No. To be a trans woman, you need to be a man first. Literally.

See, that's why I don't like the terms trans wo/man: because it's another lie. I'm not a man who happens to be trans. I'm a woman who thinks she's a man for whatever reason. In the book "Transmania", the authors use the term "transmasculine woman", and that is something that feels right to me! I would use it if it didn't risk adding to the confusion.

It doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t need to. It’s an ideological faith position, not a rational one.

"Previously trans-hostile newspapers are now having to come to terms with the fact that the anti-trans lobby isn't going to stop; that this was never about safeguarding or reasonable concerns, and they've been sold a pack of lies."

By the way, this has been posted a few times now. Has anyone asked what it refers to or knows what it refers to, please?

Are you referring to exploratory therapy as conversion therapy? Or do you mean the conversion therapy that is already illegal?

You are not born with such a thing... If you wish to unpick it - every child has a time at which they learn what a woman / girl is - often small children in the bath chatting with their parents will comment on body difference, in most families there will be a male and female parent as examples, or extended family members, and so a child starts to understand the difference...

When a child doesn't want to accept that, and thinks they are the opposite - it can be for a number of reasons - it might be play-acting and imagination being their way of exploring who they are / are not (much as they might claim to be a cat or dog at that stage) - or it could be as a reaction to negative orle models around them (e.g. abuse situations) - and many other causes. But there is no such thing as a child being born believing that they are in the wrong body, because until those external influences have played a role in helping the child define for themselves what it means to be man / woman - they have no idea...

That is why it is a mental health issue, and why understanding the background and route to that belief is so important in helping them develop a healthy understanding of who they are and the body / sex into which they were born.

"But there is no such thing as a child being born believing that they are in the wrong body,"

Heh. I don't know about born (and in my specific case, it might well be, because of factors during the pregnancy or at birth), but I know for sure that at 6 years of age, I already had my self-conception of myself as a boy. And it (apparently, anyway) had nothing to do with social gender roles, and everything to do with how I mentally viewed my body.

I don't think anyone believes trans people when they say they were born with it.

We've seen enough retconning through the eyes of spouses, siblings and parents, to know that it's a necessary part of the ideology in order to impose it on others.

I can't tell you the number of men we've had on here claiming crippling gender dysphoria from birth, or toddlerhood, who aren't interested in a cure. Even a hypothetical, miracle cure.

Just sounds like the usual incoherent bluster to me.

I guess what I'm asking is:
If it's bad and wrong to believe that a woman is female to the extent that you, say, wear an "Adult Human Female" tshirt (which were a thing before KJK, so for the sake of argument, assume unrelated to any particular person) -

why is it not even worse to believe that a woman is female to the extent that you change your body to demonstrate this conviction and display it every day of your life?

'Accept for who I am'

This doesn't mean they see you as female either though.

And I do take issue with parents who affirm without question with the threat, which you covertly imply, that if you don't then you will have a bad relationship.

Healthy relationship between parents and their children are not relationships where there are threats or ultimatums.

A healthy relationship INCLUDES the ability to disagree on some subjects and must have the ESSENTIAL ability to have difficult and sensitive conversations where appropriate.

Ultimately 'accepting for who you are' may mean tolerance but that doesn't mean they think you are ever female. It means they aren't arsed about the way you present.

Here's the thing, my mum accepted my brother without question. And in doing so destroyed her relationship with me. Because no matter what I did it was never good enough - I was actively almost targeted out of jealousy. We were always told as kids that we looked alike and ultimately I represented everything he wanted to be. My mother even admitted his and admitted that my brother's partner at the time was absolutely toxic and difficult. And expected me and my then fiancée to put up with this behaviour without ever once challenging absolutely outrageous behaviour and demands.

And the thing is, you can't erase history. "Accepting someone for who they are" can just being civil and accepting them as a human in terms of 'oh you are you, you are ok' but you still see sex. You can't unsee it. You cant remove the shared history you have (and every relevant point in that relationship which references sex). Parents see you as their child, but they have the experience of their own identity and relating to others as the parents of a son. You cant change that. You cant change how your parents try and protect you from different things as you grow up. They just won't tell you.

And this is what I find amazing. The crushing silences and the subjects that become suddenly off limits to immediate family and very close friends as soon as trans comes up.

The conversation I had on the weekend with a transwoman was about exactly this - identifying and breaking those walls that arise over subjects where people don't want to upset you.

If a parent raises a difficult subject, if you take the attitude that they are unaccepting of you, you are fucked in the head or have a terrible relationship with them to begin with. It's not because you are trans. Good parents who care MUST ask the difficult questions on this. Equally a child who values the relationship with their parent will ALSO tolerate those conversations, because they are important to the wellbeing of their parents in terms of understanding and important to their own well being. GOOD PARENTS ASK DIFFICULT QUESTIONS NOT BECAUSE THEY DISAPPROVE AND HATE YOU. THEY ASK YOU BECAUSE THEY LOVE YOU AND THEY WANT TO MAKE SURE THEY ARE DOING EVERYTHING THEY CAN TO PROTECT YOU.

This may be to make sure you are making informed decisions, this may be to ensure you are not being unduly influenced, this may be to ensure you have good sources of support and information which are in your best interests (and not a third party seeking to exploit), this may be to explore other issues you had not considered.

There are many transpeople who are unwilling to understand or address their own behaviour and their lack of respect for their parents. They dismiss parents as bigotted rather than caring. And that's all sorts of fucked up.

My mum in particular did everything my brother wanted. In the end they rarely speak, and that's not because of a lack of effort on the part of my mother. The trouble is parents are always a reminder of the past and if you are trying to disassociate with a male past, family are the starkest thing that connects you to that past.

My father never ever speaks about any of it. To anyone.

The transwoman I spoke to at the weekend knows of the issues with my brother. We talked about why that happened and why it's important to have difficult conversations that hurt and no one really wants to have because they are the biggest ones and the ones that really really matter. It raised a few points he hadn't considered and I hope he'll go away and think about it. And talk. It was productive, friendly, non confrontational and the point about liking someone wasn't dependent on sex was stress.

My basic point is about communication, openness and honesty. If you have a situation where any party feels that they can't be 100% honest about any point, then your relationship isn't anywhere near as good as you think. It's unbalanced, one sided and lacking in mutual respect somewhere along the lines. It's grounded not in love but absolute fear and terror. That's an emotionally abusive and toxic dynamic.

NO ONE sees someone who they gave birth to, and raised from a baby as the opposite sex. They just don't. They are just remaining silent on the matter. That doesn't mean they don't love you.

Sometimes talking about the elephant on the room rather than trying to avoid it, is the single best thing you can do.

Appalling attitudes, manipulative behaviour and unacceptable demands remain appalling attitudes, manipulative behaviour and unacceptable demands regardless of how you identify. Once I realised this, I no longer felt 'the guilt' and 'the shame' of the Law of Never Questioning. It freed me. It's an abusive dynamic.

And that's what women are starting to see. There are some pretty damn perfect illustrations on this thread of that. And also some of mutual respect where someone who is trans but is also seeing and identifying abusive behaviour within the trans community.

We should be focusing on relationship dynamics, toxic behaviours and coercive control techniques wherever we see them. We should not be blinded by identity politics which stop us from having difficult conversations because we are held hostage to fear of actions of any description.

I have said this many times over the years: if I truly treat you equally to anyone else and I accept you as the person you are then I should hold you to the same standards and I shouldnt make excuses where you fail to respect and make the effort to understand the motivations of others.

If you are busy saying anyone who doesn't agree with your every word is a neo nazi, because some neo Nazis have also said things you don't like you are exceeding dim. If you can't tell the difference between a bunch of mothers concerned for their children's wellbeing and their own safety and a bunch of actual Neo Nazis you are exceeding manipulative or exceedingly tone deaf and blind to the very concept of intent or exceedingly unwell. If you using the accusation of being a neo nazi against an easily definable separate group who clearly don't have a toxic agenda to try and get your own way, you are demonstrating toxic and abusive behaviour. If you don't like it being pointed out and spiral as a direct result, then you have a whole pile of antisocial issues going on.

You don't get to hide behind being trans at that point.

As I say, human relationships are complex. People can be manipulated and controlled by various forces. We should talk about this. Nothing should be off limits. And if it's not taken seriously as a safeguarding concern, then we just have to keep talking, even if it's not liked. Because we don't have a choice.

None of this is about erasing anything. Ultimately it's grounded in wanting the best for vulnerable people - yes, that very much means those who identify as trans.

As parents we very much understand a tantruming toddler and the value of the word no. When we see grown adults doing it, our reaction is the same. And adults doing it HATE nothing more than mothers precisely because they KNOW they mean it.

I think there's far too many trans people who think they are the only people with any knowledge or experience on the subject. The comment that makes me laugh more than any other on here is "you don't even know any trans people". I'm here after nearly twenty years of dealing with this shit. There are Reddit Ploppers to MN who are younger than that. They haven't a clue. Maybe recognise that wisdom comes from strange quarters you don't always expect sometimes. Be open to those words of wisdom. Old people are not all 'stuck in the dark ages', some might actually be very very enlightened in ways you hadn't considered.

Well, since the whole post is nothing but an exercise in projection, this is obviously about the way previously pro-trans newspapers are now having to come to terms with the fact that the trans lobby isn't going to stop; that this was never about just wanting to live in peace, and they've been sold a pack of lies.

Really, it's remarkable how much sense Butterfly's post makes, if you just reverse the roles!

It's literally part of the script. Dr Az Hakeem speaks of it in his books, how every trans person would start by delivering the same pre-packaged speech, and they would only relax and tell their individual truths once he explained to them that he had no power to prescribe or veto a transition.

The problem with that comes when the sufferer decides that "transition" requires not just a private relationship between them, their body and whatever medical interventions they need to feel reconciled to it, but that they live their public life fully immersed as a "woman" and being accepted as a "woman" in roles and spaces that would normally be closed to men.

Because that is no longer just about an individual's medical/emotional relief, it becomes a demand that everyone else has to buy into that "transition" by either:

1. Not truly believing the trans woman is a woman, only a man with a disorder relived by medical intervention, but agreeing nevertheless to be utilised as a theraputic aid in his support up to and including sharing woman-only spaces with him, giving him woman-only opportunities and even allowing him to touch her in roles so sensitive that they have been reserved for women.

1. Truly believing the trans woman is woman who has needed medical intervention to align her truly female mind with her body, which means signing up to a whole load of sexist bollocks about what there being fundamental mental differences between men and women, and that the shit womendeal with isn't because of how society treats people with our bodies but because of some difference in our minds..

Understandably I think, many women, myself included, do not accept either of those options as reasonable to impose on us no matter how genuinely transitioning may help the mental health of individual males.

Does this mean you can't "transition" then? Of course not! Your relationship with your own body is your own business and if seeing it in a mirror as "female" as you can get it to become relieves your distress that should be open to you. What it should not be is treated as a key that unlocks the public life of women to you because that is no longer just about what is good for you, but has to consider what is good for women as well.

That made me laugh. Because I have sometimes done this to work out what is being said.

Thank you for that - if curious it is worth doing more digging into how children develop and when and how they build awareness of self / external influences etc. - I spent four years studying it... and it is fascinating and makes sense of a lot!

That you mention 6 means that you had 6+ years of development able to influence you and how you perceive yourself... there will be reasons in there as to why you think and feel why you do.

We know that people aren't born feeling that they re in the opposite body because this is a generational issue we are seeing in recent years - I am in my 50s and the concept almost never occurred to those of my generation back in the 1970s that they were born into the wrong body. So what has changed / what is influencing this generation etc.? Because, ultimately something must be behind such thoughts...

Yes. It's an especially daft position for them to take on here.

Most people here are parents, we see child development in real time, in real life.

And the depth of knowledge on here is extraordinary. You have psychiatrists, surgeons, child development experts, biologists, physicists, chemists - specialists in every field imaginable.

Persuading them to believe ideology over reality simply doesn't work.

Believe me I am aware I'm not going to become a cis woman. I know that, and that sucks.
It is refreshing to see you admit that you are still a man (albeit trying to imitate a woman), and acknowledge that you can never be a woman (no such thing as cis woman - that implies subsets of woman - it is binary, you are either man or woman).

I empathise with your discontent an hope that you find ways to settle that in your mind...

But being a trans woman is the closest I will ever reasonably get, and that's more than worth it.

It is sad that you feel that body changes are needed to deal with the mental health issues - but I do understand that you are the product of a time and system that has lied to you in that way.

One thing I can say as a male is that men have no issue with those of our sex exploring what it means to be a man - we might not agree with the approach for ourselves, but that doesn't mean that we don't accept that you wish to portray yourself as a different type of man - and that is great - so embrace being more 'feminine' / challenge male stereotypes / take on and beat down misogyny / be yourself, but be proud to be that form of a man.

The biggest issue (for you) with claiming to be a woman when you admit you can never be one is that you are continuing to damage yourself by living a lie and continuing to let that lie fester in your mind.

The issue for women is that it denies them the rights they have - to be women in whatever shape or form they wish - you want that for yourself, but by insisting that your changed body equates to woman, you constrain how women can define themselves - every time you claim to be a woman because you have 'grown breasts' you define a woman as a person with breasts - denying womanhood to those who have had breast cancer and a mastectomy.. etc. that alongside access to women's spaces is incredibly damaging to women...

So, embrace who you are - as a man, look for help with the mental health, and step back from claiming to be a woman which you admit you can never be - there is no reason why your self-absorption should damage other people.

@akkakk

"That you mention 6 means that you had 6+ years of development able to influence you and how you perceive yourself... there will be reasons in there as to why you think and feel why you do."

No doubt! If anything, I'm frustrated that I can't explore this past, try to figure out what happened.

"We know that people aren't born feeling that they re in the opposite body because this is a generational issue we are seeing in recent years - I am in my 50s and the concept almost never occurred to those of my generation back in the 1970s that they were born into the wrong body."

I'm precisely one of those "almost", down to the decade 😅

"So what has changed / what is influencing this generation etc.? Because, ultimately something must be behind such thoughts..."

What happened is that being trans has been sold as the universal cure for any discomfort a child or teen may feel or present, especially if it relates to gender roles, puberty, or sexuality - which is a whole lot of kids!

I would like to add that I was given the link to the side effects of testosterone from the Nottingham Gender Clinic some time ago (not more than one year ago). Among the different things I read, I discovered that testosterone is prescribed off-label for the treatment of gender dysphoria. It means that it was never fully validated as an effective treatment and it is not licenced for prescription.
It is similarly stated here and seems to apply to all cross-sex hormones:
Gender-dysphoria-and-Transgender-Care-Summary-of-Prescribing-and-Monitoring-2024-MS-update-April-2025.pdf
Licencing of medicine:
Before granting a licence the MHRA will want to know:

• What impact a medicine will have on patients’ quality and length of life
• If the evidence backs up how the product is used
• If all the information about the known and expected side effects has been made available.

When the MHRA is satisfied that the medicine meets high standards of safety and quality, and that it works for the condition it is supposed to treat, the licence is granted. In the UK a product licence is shown as a PL number (PL XXXXX/YYYY) – you can find this on the medicine box.

I very much understand and see the script.

Having grown up with someone who's now trans I have a unique perspective of that. I think there's are key points and key events that stand out to me and reverberate. But I'm older than my brother so processed them differently.

When your mother tells you repeatedly through childhood that you and your brother were born 'the wrong way round' and you should have been the boy and he should have been the girl you do wonder...

There's one particular occasion she said this, that I remember particularly vividly. I remember exactly what we were doing.

My brothers memory developed much later than mine. Growing up he always said he couldn't remember anything before the age of about 6/7 and he certainly couldn't recall events before then. I can remember lots from when I was just 2/3. (DH is the same as my brother. I find it very odd. DS is like me). So when he started saying I've always known I was the opposite sex from when I was a toddler, it just doesn't ring true.

My mother started to say you were born the wrong way from when I was about 8 or 9. My brother is three years younger. So it's probably just as his memory was starting to kick in. So potentially on the cusp of a key development point.

I struggled with what my mum said when I hit 16-19. Again just at the point lots of teen girls now struggle with their identity. I hated being a girl. I remember talking to a much older friend about wishing I was a bloke. This is long before trans began to be 'a thing' in the late 1990s.

At this point my parents decided they needed to change things at home, because they were worried that my brother didn't have 'enough of a male role model' around. They never had any concerns about me having a lack of male role model. I do think this is code for him being not masculine enough, a bit wet and possibly gay. They certainly weren't discreet about this as they talked to me about it at the time!

On top of that, my brother had a classmate whose parents were deeply religious and homophobic (threw out their daughter). He later came out as trans. In around 2004. Then my brother was a couple of years later. This is very early. Both were heavily into the very early internet communities - unusually so.

They fit later profiles that now are common perfectly. That's not a spontaneously occuring thing. If it's spontaneous you don't have clusters of very similar people with very similar profiles - they come from all quarters and are very different. They have a wide range of political beliefs and interests. We don't see this in the trans communities. It's very much the opposite.

With the climate now it doesn't surprise me where we are. The innate thing I just don't buy. It's just nonsense. It's a perfect storm of various issues coming together in a moment in time.

The script is real.

@RedToothBrush
NO ONE sees someone who they gave birth to, and raised from a baby as the opposite sex. They just don't. They are just remaining silent on the matter. That doesn't mean they don't love you.
This is 100% true, as I know from events with my own relations. Mouths kept zipped to preserve a relationship of sorts. Avoidance of family by the trans individual because, I assume, it 'triggers my anxiety'. The person in question is also autistic so WTF the NHS was doing prescribing them hormones at 19 or whatever it was, fuck knows.

DH said to me recently that he wasn't as 'militant' as me about this topic. I told him if he'd read half of what I've read on MN about it he'd see my point. This is one of those threads that further convinces me that I'm not wrong about this.

Well done, Butters: one already GC woman now pushed even further down that path by your utter self obsession, your use of the Nazis and the Holocaust to try to further your argument, your hyperbole, your nastiness to Seethlaw.

Very well done.
Operation Let Them Speak indeed.

And having spent my lunchbreak on this, back to work.

@RedToothBrush

"My brothers memory developed much later than mine. Growing up he always said he couldn't remember anything before the age of about 6/7 and he certainly couldn't recall events before then. I can remember lots from when I was just 2/3. (DH is the same as my brother. I find it very odd. DS is like me)."

I'm like your DH and brother: those memories at about 6 are among the earliest I have. My sister is more like you, but unfortunately, she's younger than me, so she can't inform me on how I was as a toddler.

"They never had any concerns about me having a lack of male role model."

Same here. We were girls, we had a mother, who cared about a father, or at least a male role model??

"They fit later profiles that now are common perfectly. That's not a spontaneously occuring thing. If it's spontaneous you don't have clusters of very similar people with very similar profiles - they come from all quarters and are very different. They have a wide range of political beliefs and interests. We don't see this in the trans communities. It's very much the opposite."

Mostly agreed. I would argue that it's possible to have spontaneous clusters - but in that case, you definitely want to know why! You want to do research into what's happening, try to find out if there's a common cause, see if there's a way to deal with that primary cause. That this is not happening speaks very loudly to the non-scientific, instead ideological nature of the current strand of trans care.

Seethlaw

Do you not have any photos that jog your memory of when you were under six? Or maybe very first school friends?

A few cases where larger organisations are sued for not following the law will concentrate the minds of everyone. We have not seen any cases yet that proceed with the support of JKR. When those happen and the publicity surrounding them most HR departments will catch on.
All the false claims by weird lawyers and politicians that the recent Supreme Court Case decision was complicated will soon vanish.
The wording was very clear and in simple English. Live with it pal!

Spontaneous clusters reminded me of the utterly tragic spate of young person suicides in Bridgend in 2007/8. I think there were attempts to look into why it happened and social media wasn't quite what it is now, but it was all very distressing. I think there were environmental factors re lack of opportunity, but no coherent answer ever emerged. And it stopped. Very sad.