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?

I don’t know if you being deliberately hard of understanding, I really can’t tell. Perhaps you are determined not to try and understand anything said to you on this board as a matter of principle?

There are differences between and women which sometimes need accommodation.

Both men and women might or might not want to become parents. We all have that choice. But for women, the choice is more loaded, less free perhaps, because it will cost us in terms of physical strain, having to take maternity leave, losing out in terms of career. Men can become parents without such a high personal cost. So women need accommodation of some sort to allow for us to retain our job and try and even the playing field.

Much of the physical world is designed for men (read “Invisible Women”, it is an incredibly interesting book). We are on average smaller and weaker than men, especially in upper body strength.

This is real; it doesn’t mean we are worth less, or are not as clever, or not as valuable. It is just a fact.

So I am delighted you have never felt the need for any accommodation whatsoever, that is marvellous for you.

However, that doesn’t detract from the fact that women can be disadvantaged by our biology in a world designed for the default human being male. Same as being left-handed in a world designed where the default human is right-handed. Sometimes it is a bloody nuisance.

I hope you didn’t spend any money on that degree, because if this is what you’ve learned you wasted your time.

My eldest son had a doll in a cot, a hoover, a play kitchen, Lego and a rugby ball (amongst other things) he also wore a pink shirt to a wedding this weekend. He’s very successful in his career, as is my lovely DIL, who is senior to him, and he does all the cooking. I have clearly failed miserably as a parent because I’m buggered if I know what his GI is.

Love this 😂

To whom?

The whole gender id nonsense, is as many civil wars are, designed and funded by the government to distract from their policies. Literally no elected man or women thinks trans women are not men. Same with the importation of third world men on their watch, We argue amongst each other while they plan and document their plan to build a digital prison. We are building it for them.

Please explain how when a man puts on a dress and make up, how he stops being a man? What is it that has changed? How is he now a woman?

The thing that cracks me up is that she "struggled to understand why Butler had to write in such unnecessarily convoluted ways".

I think most people on this board could explain that one.

Ah but donchakno a transwoman is still a transwoman even when wearing jeans and a tshirt. Lots of women wear jeans and a tshirt and no makeup so a transwoman has no need to perform femininity to be trans, and it'snot about clothes. It's just somethings they know they are in their souls. What I don't get is how they know that the internal feeling they have is the thing that should be labelled "being a woman" rather than just "being a man who doesn't fit with idiotic male stereotypes". I've never had a satisfactory answer to that which doesn't boil down to "because they are deeply sexist and believe all the sexist propaganda that feminists have been fighting against for many decades" - it is not possible to compare the subjective perception-of-self that any individual has and categorise it in any way because each individual can only ever perceive their own and no one else's.

But I can't choose, or not, to bear children. No man can; it's another example of sex mattering - it does constrain what we can and cannot do. Gender doesn't though, does it? There is no reason why a feminine-presenting man with the right physique and talent couldn't play international men's rugby.

Butler wrote utter bollocks but was trying to sound intellectual. The people who buy it are those who identify as intellectual and because Butler speaks in a particular way they believe she must be right.

Its the polar opposite of how Trump supporters like how he speaks and believe him because he's 'no nonsense'.

What either says is irrelevant. It's about identity and belonging to a club.

This is a great point.

It's not just women who are "limited" by their sex. Men cannot "choose" to have children, they require someone else to provide them with children. If everyone else refuses to provide a man with a child, they are limited in making their life what they want it to be.

We are all humans. Some are adults, some are child. Some are male, some are female. The rest of it is down to the individual human.

That's not reductive. It's just a fact.

I think Butler always knew she was writing utter bollocks but deliberately couched it in impenetrable language so that most people would not understand it, relying on the fact that most people would not want to admit that they do not understand it.

It's a cunning strategy alright

Exactly this! Which is what TRAs do when they fling around their accusations of essentialism and 'reducing women to their anatomy'. Try asking them how defining a physical, chromosomal, anatomical, biological adult human female is reducing women to their anatomy, and it all starts to unravel.

Ask why biology translates to essentialism (it doesn't) and see how competent they generally are at explaining what that means. I'd also be interested to hear any cogent explanation as to how defining women's oppression in terms of the bodies we inhabit, or understanding gender as an instrument of that physical and social oppression, is a bad thing.

This is the very definition of 'reductive'. I'm not buying that half these people even believe, much less claim to understand, half the garbage they spout. As for Russell Group degrees, UK Higher Education sure ain't what it was.

Defining womanhood as biological is the absolute diametric opposite of "reducing us to our biology". If biology is the unifying factor that women share, that liberates us for ever other possible facet of our lives to be anything at all, without constraint. There is no feeling or preference or personality trait or set of priorities of any kind that is intrinsic to "woman". We are that subcategory of human which has female biology. Everything else about us can be whatever we choose.

@RareGoalsVerge this simply does not compute with people like Sleepless. She doesn’t get it. She thinks that because we acknowledge sex stereotypes exist, we “believe in gender identity” but she is failing to recognise or consider the sleight of hand here, when we’re moving from talking about actual women in all our variety to talking about men who adopt female “gender” stereotypes.

More than 24hrs later, and you’re still name dropping me. I mean really; are you well?

Either bored or a bully, one of the two.

There’s really not a lot of variety here. If there was, you wouldn’t all be able to conduct the mega pile ons that you do.

A variety of back patting and applause for the 20 or so women being outwardly unkind to one, is it? What a miserable way to live, I’m almost glad I don’t belong in that group.

You obviously popped in to read “more than 24 hours later”, didn’t you? I didn’t tag you. Are you bored then?

The comment was directed at things you have said, and I responded with my take on it. Hope that helps.

You’re a smart woman - when you post on a thread, you get a notification when others do. You know that.

I appreciate that makes it difficult to bemoan somebody behind their back because you’re just not quite finished, but there we have it.

Try actually engaging with what I said in my comment that you’re so irritated by. Refute it, maybe? If you can.

@SleeplessInWherever

You think that because we acknowledge sex stereotypes exist, we “believe in gender identity” but you are failing to recognise or consider the sleight of hand here, when we’re moving from talking about actual women in all our variety to talking about men who adopt female “gender” stereotypes.

Engage with being referred to as “people like” whatever it was you meant, and then ties in some more condescending “doesn’t get it”?

No thanks, I’m good.

You’re not going to refute it? Imagine my surprise.