Trans sibling in law

[Primrose86]

DH's sibling has just come out as a man. She is 26 and autistic, lives at home with mum, spends life on the Internet, got kicked out of school at 16 etc etc She has plans to go overseas and transition in germany where apparently you can get surgeries on the public health system while living with her grandpa. Her mum is fully supportive of this.

How should I react to all this. Should I start referring to him as my brother in law? What usually happens after people come out. I assume they progress to hormones and surgery but honestly based on what I read, Germany is quite resistant to health tourists who never paid in even if they are citizens. Are people really happy identifying as another gender when they wouldn't look like the other gender?

Not sure what you mean by ‘flying rockets’, but if you mean being an astronaut, not doing that without access to contraception.

You can have a 50/50 relationship with a male partner, but he isn’t going to do the gestating and breast feeding of any babies,

On a very practical level, male mammals, whether horse or human, don’t have to stick around at all after conception. The relationships board might be enlightening

I think this poster understands very well, whether they’re attempting to be provocative or perverse I don’t know.

We all believe that.

Where we disagree is that you seem to think that because of that, women have to open their same sex spaces and services to men. The rest of us don't agree with that.

Women are entitled to achieve whatever they desire in life, but also maintain their boundaries from men where that is beneficial to their health, security, dignity, achievements, etc.

Women standing up for their rights to single sex spaces in prisons/hospitals/domestic violence centres has got absolutely nothing to do with them being rocket scientists and CEOs.

Lots have. Universities are struggling to put backsides on seats in the traditional humanities like English and History, let alone in niche topics which sprung up in the 80s and 90s boom. Social Science in general has seen a similar downturn and Philosophy has seen umpteen departmental closures over the past five years. Subjects like this were artificially inflated to meet Blair's 50% targets in the noughties, because they're cheap to teach. Now they're shrinking back to where they were.

A good many academics wouldn't touch 'gender' in today's context if you paid them to. As for bringing it into the classroom, that is simply asking for trouble.

I did a module in Women's Studies in 1998. At this point I suspect I could pass a whole degree in Gender Studies tomorrow given the standard of arguments on display in this thread.

This thread has been extremely eye opening

You would only pass if you could successfully pretend to believe in all the magical bullshit.

Even a hint of sanity would result in an instant fail and probable expulsion from your course.

Our spaces aren't relevant no. But our sons/fathers/husbands are. No, they aren't at the same risk from TM as we are from TW. But my sons don't want female bodies in their single sex spaces either. My gay son doesn't want to be told he should date TM as TMAM. My young niece doesn't need to be told that she is actually a boy because she's hates pink/dancing/gymnastics and wants to play rugby. These are things that have happened BTW.

Well it hasn’t helped you has it?

I think I can manage some creative writing. It might even get me an opinion piece in the Guardian.

They’d tell the woman prisoner to just ignore his male body, and then ignore her whilst they over intellectualised the shit out of it.

She's not a woman. She's a maggot. Ask Juno.

I have a Little Miss [insert nickname of my football team] mug in the cupboard. The picture has pigtails and a football kit. It must be a very confused mug!

Apologies for forgetting that, my bad.

Yes. Consider yourself educated.

See I'd definitely pass that gender studies course.

I still don't get why acknowledging female biology and the fact that it requires certain accommodations (especially in a world where the default assumptions for physical infrastructure and social arrangements are male-orientated), is "reducing women to their biology".

An analogy: if I was unable to walk, I would find it helpful if society recognised the existence of people with disabilities, and my existence as such a person, and helped me to obtain a wheelchair, and provided ramps and lifts in buildings etc. so that people in my position could go about their business with a degree of independence.

I would not find it helpful if they pretended I was "just the same as them" to the extent that any acknowledgement of my difficulties in negotiating a world set up for ablebodied people was shut down and no accommodations like ramps and lifts were made. Nor would it be helpful if, when disabled people banded together to campaign for the accommodations they needed, they were told that they shouldn't consider themselves as having anything in common because "it reduces you to nothing but your disability".

Being a female is not the same as being disabled, surely.

I don’t personally limited by the fact I happen to have female biology, and don’t feel I need any specific accommodations for that. Certainly not in the same way as being disabled would require adjustments and necessary accommodations.

You’ll notice before the “privileged” pile on starts, which it will, that I said personally.

Could it be gendered conditioning that discourages some women from expecting the world to accommodate them?

That it’s not a concern about restricting women to their body parts, but a concern about taking up space?

Really? You've never felt even the smallest bit disadvantaged by, for example, having really bad period cramps on a day when you need to be super productive at work, or getting caught short when your period arrives unexpectedly and you don't have any sanpro with you, or having to be the one primarily responsible for preventing pregnancy in all your sexual relationships with a man, or (the big one) having to take time out of your career to have a baby?

Or even stuff unrelated to your reproductive system, like my female colleague who sprained an ankle on a site visit recently because her feet are size five and they didn't have any boots smaller than a size nine.

I think a better example is how things like body armour is designed for male bodies so it's problematic when it comes to female police officers. Also see other things, particularly safety features Or medicine.

Gender neutral isn't gender neutral. It's default human aka men.

As a woman who is 5'2" tall I have issues with all manner of different things being designed for 'default human' rather than consideration for women. I am small for a woman but well within the range of 'normal'.

There's a whole book dedicated to this subject. It's called 'Invisible Women' by Caroline Criado Perez. It's so popular it's sold over a million copies and is highly recommended by a number of award winning authors and is a Sunday Times Best Seller. It's quoted in the Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman, which is also another exceptionally regarded book. It was in Matthew Syed's Top Five book recommendations for 2019.

It should be the top of the list on any Gender Studies reading list. It seems somehow it's passed our resident 'gender expert' by. How strange.

Instead we are being told utter utter bollocks on this thread by someone who claims to be well read and educated.

I truly despair some days.

Go. And. Read. A. Book.

The above mentioned two are a good start.

Preferably not one by Judith Butler.

Don’t. Speak. To. Me. Like. That.

There’s no wonder the rest of us don’t want to associate with your subsection of feminism when it’s so frankly rude.

Perhaps you don't.

But can't you see that perhaps other women do?

Like for example, a woman escaping a domestic violence situation might need a place away from men to feel safe and to heal?

A sick or disabled woman who needs intimate care might need that to come from a woman?

A woman who's been raped might need a counsellor/therapy group that is solely female?

Why wouldn't you facilitate these women getting what they need?

Snigger!

Seriously.

Being lectured to buy someone who isn't with it on what is supposed to be their specialist subject and they come out with the ignorance displayed on this thread is astonishing.