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?

“People like” = people who believe in gender identity ideology. Nothing more than that.

Exactly.

Precisely, I’m not going to bother refuting being in some imaginary group you’ve decided people “like me” are in, or you thinking people who believe that you’re wrong just “don’t get it.”

If you could return the favour by not bitching about people, by name, behind their back, that would be awesome.

It’s not “behind your back”, this is a public thread.

Let’s all pretend that referring to me by name isn’t some attempt to start the “everyone tell this woman off” thing (again).

There is nobody here idiot enough to not see through that.

How am I wrong precisely? What have I gone wrong on as I move through the world in my female body? I’d welcome an understanding of the shortcomings of my opinions. Very happy for you to make a coherent case for gender identity ideology, but we all know there isn’t one.

Yes he is your brother in law now, my sister in law is transgender she transitioned 28 years ago, if you have any questions please ask me.

Excellent diversion from the facts.

We don’t “all know” anything. You’ll never believe this, we don’t “all” have to think the same or believe the same things.

You believe that sex is the only thing that matters, other people don’t have to agree, and they don’t have to constantly beg you to agree with them either.

Other people are allowed to not define themselves based exclusively on their biology, and they’re allowed to move through their life as a female with the understanding that they have of their identity.

And they’re allowed to do that without being patronised, ganged up on, or spoken to/about in the way you see here.

You don’t make the rules, and you don’t get to decide or to be honest question how someone else sees themselves.

Gender identity ideology makes zero sense. It’s absurd. Your gender identity belief is a fringe belief, which you’re entitled to, obviously, but no one else is obliged to go along with it any more than they are obliged to adopt someone else’s religion. Thankfully sense appears to be returning to law and policy in our secular society, hopefully the social contagion will die down in future and children will stop ruining their lives over this nonsense.

I'm free to identify as a banana if I want, with pronouns Chiquita/Fyffes/Del Monte, I don't think anyone here would deny me that pleasure.

But you'd have to be batshit crazy to agree with me, and I'd be unreasonable to expect you to do so.

To be honest, I’d call you a purple unicorn if that’s what you asked for.

Firstly, because it’s no skin off my nose whether you’re a banana or a fridge, and secondly because I’m not intentionally rude to people.

What I wouldn’t do is start a million and one debates about who you are, and your life.

If it was “just someone’s life” and they stayed out of the spaces that aren’t meant for them, and we weren’t required to validate their personal self image, no one would have a problem.

Other people are allowed to not define themselves based exclusively on their biology, and they’re allowed to move through their life as a female with the understanding that they have of their identity

I’m genuinely curious: if you don’t see “female” here as biological, what do you think it is? What constitutes a non-biological meaning of female, and in particular, a meaning that is not male?

Also, why would you? It’s not some kind of virtue to validate absurd requests. I think that’s where the disconnect lies between your approach and that of others on the thread.

Female is biological. Because there’s a difference between sex and gender. Which i honestly think we’ve covered?

You’ve used “their life as a female” in the passage I quoted above. So do you mean “other biological women are allowed to move through their life as biological women with their own understanding of their identity” ? But isn’t that just saying they’re biological women anyway, whatever they subjectively believe their “identity” to be? In which case aren’t you saying exactly what we’re saying?

Quite possibly - I don’t believe it’s right to question (incessantly, I’d add) how someone else sees themselves in a body, brain and environment that I don’t live in.

You can be whatever you want as far as I’m concerned, what’s it got to do with me, and why would I intentionally hurt your feelings by telling you otherwise.

I also think that generally speaking we could do a lot more minding our own business.

Theres more to life, certainly my life, than bothering myself with what someone else wants to do or be called. I’d probably just call them it and get on with it.

OP’s sister in law could just be my new BIL as far as I’m concerned. I don’t see it as a big deal, and I wouldn’t go out of my way to do anything about it.

My brother could tell me tomorrow that his name is Sandra, and nothing would change in our relationship beyond the fact he’s got a new name.

Banana please, not unicorn.

If there was a wave of social contagion of other like-minded wannabe-bananas, who all demanded that every other fruit give way to our special yellow fruitiness, and it became very clear that there was a lot of skin off your nose - a huge amount, in fact, then you'd put aside your womanly feelings about being rude and get to the point: you would certainly have a lot of debates about where this social contagion came from, and why.

At the root of which would be a discussion about how I'm not really a banana at all. And you'd find my and my peers' pressure to prevent you from talking about us in anything but very banana-y terms quite improper, and you'd push back against it pretty hard.

Which is where we are.

As I say, you see validating whatever people think about their “identity” as a virtue, and I don’t 🤷‍♀️ sometimes the truth, and upholding it, matters more.

Seems a tad long winded 😂

There is absolutely no way I can have not been born female. That has already happened. I am, an adult human female.

I personally don’t believe that’s where that ends, because I don’t see that fact as the whole picture of how/why I’m a woman. Which in my view, is different. Because sex and gender aren’t the same.

And at this point I really don’t think there’s any value in going back over why I think that.

Okay; so what is the essence/definition/meaning of woman, if it’s not biological (female)? Why are you a woman and not a man? (In non-biological terms.)

The thing is, I wouldn’t. I know that because I haven’t, and that isn’t where I sit in the debate we’re really referring to.

I would instead let you live your life as a banana, with all of your yellow friends, and I would continue my life. Which isn’t yours.

I would continue going to the grocers, knowing you’d be there, and if I wanted apples I’d just get apples.

Again, if we’re following that analogy, that’s exactly what I’ve done. I carried on using the spaces, didn’t make anything out of who was in them, and haven’t told a single trans person/banana that they can’t be fruit.

Be whatever, I’m not bothered. Zero skin off my nose, even in the real life equivalent of our fruity analogy.

I’ve never once heard a coherent, good faith answer to this type of question from any believer in gender identity ideology in nearly a decade, just out of interest. A lot of deflection, flouncing and insults, because it’s clearly unanswerable without reifying sexist stereotypes. It’s all useful for lurkers to see, so I continue to ask.

It ain’t the posters of Mumsnet that are against you, it’s reality.

I suppose the heart of the disagreement is that while it's zero skin off your nose, many many real bananas are profoundly disadvantaged by my identifying as a banana.