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?

The judgement removed absolutely no rights from trans people, as they never had those rights in the first place.

You are under the mistaken belief that transmen have penises. Almost none do. They sit down to pee the same as other women.

Your ignorance of this issue is concerning.

Only if you choose to. You can opt out of notification altogether, you know. I don't receive any notifications at all, unless someone directly tags me.

Me too, I turned them all off. So no I don’t have the same experience.

I was reflecting about this the other day. There is an argument in the TG community along the lines of "it only effects a small % of the population". I think this is where people get annoyed because it effects them. This is a good example.

On a basic level people have call other people by different names, they also have to re-route their thinking when saying pro-nouns because the person opposite them is clearly not the sex they want to be. Then you get into the stuff about single sex spaces, sports etc.. Unlike same-sex attraction which genuinely only effects the people who are SSA, being trans/non-binary requires everyone else to participate, and therefore effects everyone.

Exactly, it’s a huge power trip. I think anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that is either naive or disingenuous.

When gender clinics first sprung up in the 70s and 80s, a requirement for treatment was the acceptance that you were male and that medical intervention would not transform you into a female. This was not done out of some ethical deference to gender critical belief, it was because it was strongly in the patient's best interest -- there was a noted tendency for patients with dysphoria to delude themselves into thinking that they were in some true way really female or could become female, and a tendency toward narcissism that made that delusion extremely difficult to dislodge. It was understood that transition under that circumstance was not beneficial to the patient.

Even though times have changed (due to ideology driven 'gender medicine'), there remains a strong case for the position that even if you believe that 'affirming care' can be beneficial, and your sole motive is the patient's welfare, you should still only affirm identities of people who you know to gone have through a rigorous, supervised process of transition. So, you can be confident that they understand that you're affirming them out of politeness and to smooth their ability to operate in the world, but in no real sense are you suggesting they are actually female. Operating out of that maximally compassionate and deferential motivation, you should (especially) never validate absurd requests for identity affirmation.

It's not my place to speak for anyone else but you're right, I don't agree with you.

Almost as if many of the ideas and rhetoric taken here as gospel are hateful keyboard-warrior nonsense and deeply unpopular with the community at large.

Not by all polls taken they are not. Feminists are in the overwhelming majority. It's an 80/20 or 90/10 thing.

What, you think believing that people can't change sex is 'hateful keyboard warrior nonsense' and 'deeply unpopular'? 🫠

Since when is commenting on anything said on MN a day or two previously and following the last point in that conversation 'bullying'???!!! Get a grip.

Does this mean that if a thread in AIBU is seen by someone a couple of days later, they no longer can reply if they wish to comment or disagree with a previous point?

Come on now! Disagreeing is and having objections to the content of someone's posts is and giving a full explanation of why it's problematic is not bullying. It's continuing the thread where it left off.

Otherwise perhaps you should ask MN to lock all threads that haven't been posted on within the last 12 hours and see how that goes down across the site.

What gets me is the use of any argument possible to avoid being accountable for what you've actually said. It's deflect, deflect, deflect.

Gender is a sexism. Biology doesn't define us, but it's an inescapable reality in our lives that we can't pretend doesn't exist.

This doesn't change because it's been intellectualised by word salad. We all can see straight through it because of our own lived experiences.

I think that we are guilty of thread derailing, but that most of the discussion has been about women's rights.

You think the idea that penises don't belong in women only spaces is deeply unpopular "among the community at large"?

Aye, right you are.

Unless you are talking about the TQ+ community and ignoring ordinary people, as usual.

I suspect the latter rather than the former, @MissScarletInTheBallroom.

I cannot and will not accept that it is bigoted or hateful or unacceptable to say that women and girls should not have to see naked penises in their intimate spaces (changing rooms etc), and that to force them to do so unconsensually is not just unacceptable - it is sexual abuse!

👏

It makes no difference to you, but it does make a difference to the women's Sunday football (or rugby) team he then swaps to from his current men's team, and to the teams they play against.

It was targeted and you all know it.

There is a huge difference between engaging in a back and forth with someone, when they’re actually present to debate with, and reigniting it a day later with a very specific naming of that one person, talking about them and not to them.

You can dress it up however you like, at least I speak directly to you and not post things like “people like RedToothBrush..” when your back is metaphorically turned.

You have made your views quite clear, repeatedly, I don’t know what purpose there was in repeating them yet again.

My lived experiences don’t involve group efforts to vilify people on the internet, that is not a shared experience of all women, whether they share biology or not.

I’m sorry you feel victimised by your biology, however despite losing absolutely no sleep about it, that’s not an excuse to victimise other people.

This is just nonsense - for example, I don’t know anyone else on this thread and there’s no “group” and no “targeted” anything. I have been trying to engage with the actual posts you’ve posted - and it’s YOU who have sought to “group” people together, explicitly writing about “the GC community” (what community?)

Coming on to a thread on an internet forum specifically designed for debate then accusing posters who debate with your posts of targeting and attacking you is a victim mentality of the highest order. It’s also you, not us, who keeps taking about being “victimised” by biology: no-one else has said that, rather the complete opposite!

I asked you a specific question in good faith last night (which you ignored): that isn’t targeting you. Neither are other posters: they don’t know you! They are engaging with your posts that you posted! What did you post them on an internet forum debate thread for, if you didn’t want them to be questioned and debated?

Some do post in good faith as you put it, others don’t.

I saw a different thread last night where a regular poster here said “go to this thread where we debated (took the piss out of) this exact thing.” Admitted that sometimes that’s the motive.

There are posters here who will ask the same question, that has been answered, repeatedly and then say they’re in good faith. They’re not, are they.

I also genuinely believe that there are some who are so incensed by a view that isn’t either GC or the just not the same as theirs, that they react passionately, and then with irritation.

The same groups of people respond in quick succession, making the exact same points, and then back pat each other about how intentionally “piss taking” they’ve been toward someone. “We’ve been collectively rude, aren’t we hilarious, good one fellow feminist 😂👏🏻” And then have the audacity to talk about cults?

So transparent.

Whatever the reason (and back in the day a lot of straightforward men’s right’s activists used to frequent this board) if you suggest on the feminist board that women’s rights don’t need protection, you are going to get strong push back,

Similarly suggesting ‘dogs should never be off lead’ on the dog owner’s board and ‘women shouldn’t breastfeed in public’. On the breast feeding board.

I also asked you a couple of questions, in good faith, and you ignored those.

I saw you engage only with people who I think you thought you could outsmart, or you thought were "attacking" you. Haven't seen you answer any genuine questions.

If you want a proper debate, ignore those you think are "attacking" and engage with those who are asking questions and trying to understand.

Genuinely, I’m not sure I saw them.

I think honestly that when so many people respond, you’re always going to see and reply to the most “offensive.” Of which there are unfortunately many.

But you have a choice to engage with them, or to look through the people who quoted it mentioned you and engage in an actual debate that might mean something.

You chose to feel victimised.

That’s fair enough, however I’d point out that doesn’t excuse the outward attempt of some to victimise someone.

Whether it works or not doesn’t excuse the behaviour to begin with.