"Trans people have always been here!"

[GoldenBracelet]

God I'm tired of reading "Trans people have always been here!", like it's some kind of unarguable gotcha 🙄

Yes, there have always been men who think they are women.
No, they have never been women.

See also women who think they're men.

And the thing about Hayley Cropper is that if we were all accepting of old school transsexuals, why did we need educating via corrie, and why was the characters played by a woman?

As I said, it definitely happened in my country (France) as late as 13 years ago. It's the reason I paid for a lot of my mastectomy's cost: because I didn't want to go through the "official teams", and have to wait one or two years while already presenting as a man, and jump through whatever additional hoops they might have in mind, before accessing hormones and surgeries. That doesn't mean I didn't get therapy, mind you: I just didn't get it through them.

You arent a man who has been told to use the womens toilets.

Everyone is forgetting that if a therapist tells a man to use womens toilets, hes telling a man to follow girls into toilets. Remember the men are saying this happens before surgery or drug and before any diagnosis? How would that get through NHS guidance?

Well you may believe what you choose, of course. I'm simply repeating an anecdote involving one TIM I knew 30 years ago who had nothing to gain from lying to me, as back then I'd have not challenged his use of the women's toilets anyway, as I had not thought through the repercussions or known where we'd end up.
Neither would the therapists for that matter, as the risk you're referring to, that with our current awareness we take as read, had not been recognised. Its taken a long time for those women who saw it to be heard and taken seriously.

You really need to stop applying contemporary understanding to a time before that understanding existed. No one would have thought in terms of 'following girls into toilets' apart from some wise women who may have seen this happening, but would have been ignored. Men carrying out 'sex changes' on men would be thinking of those men. The impact on women and girls wouldn't have crossed their minds. Women have had to fight very hard for the awareness you take for granted and are erroneously believing existing 30 odd years ago.

Control of the past is a well known propaganda technique used to rewrite and reframe history with a view to controlling the future.

This isn't some kind of revolutionary concept. Perhaps the best known example invokes Godwin and is about drawing a link between ancient Roman and a form of (then) 'modern' thinking to legitimise a particular regime.

It is however, it's very much not alone in this, and if you go through history you can find examples all over the place. It's how you create a 'legitimate claim to the throne' so to speak.

Do we learn nothing in history any more?!

Just to add, it shouldn't be too hard to believe given until the SC clarified things, TIM were happily using the facilities 'they felt most comfortable with' with the full backing of most major institutions, the NHS included. I didn't notice the NHS issuing guidelines about not following women and girls into toilets to TIM then, and they've not been exactly rushing to do it now. The difference between 'use the toilets (or changing room) you're most comfortable with' and 'use the women's toilets' is no difference at all when they mean one and the same space.

Actually, it sounds quite a nice way to live. You're saying 'I am so special that anyone who argues or upsets me should be ostracised, hounded and demonised. I must be given everything I want and I don't have to care about anyone else's feelings.'

The only problem is that you'd either need to have an empathy and conscience bypass or never have had them in the first place.

You arent a man who has been told to use the womens toilets.

True, but I read the official protocol in place at the time. It definitely talked of "an observation in real life" during which the person (male or female) had to "live in the desired sex" before there was any consideration of medical treatment.

Everyone is forgetting that if a therapist tells a man to use womens toilets, hes telling a man to follow girls into toilets.

Yes. That's exactly what trans women were told to do if they wanted to get hormones and surgeries: they had to "live as women", which meant being accepted by women in their spaces.

And it's not just therapists who said it: it's judges too, since you had to justify, again, that you were "living in the desired sex" to obtain a sex change on your papers.

Nobody had a problem with that, because nobody cared about women and what they might want or not want. They still don't, for that matter. I'm encouraged by official statements to use the toilets corresponding to my "gender", and so are trans women.

We are expected to believe that in the dark ages of the 1980s and 1990s, there was no awareness of safeguarding. Or therapists ensuring that they arent in the firing line if a man attacks a women in a toilet.

Also that every women knew about the difference between a transsexual and a transvestite, and we welcomed the transsexuals into toilets and into the WI. We felt sorry for them and protective of them.

But we had to be educated via corrie and an actress about trans people?

And the story of eddie izzard being bullied by girls in a public toilet was feasible, too.

Whats going on?

We are expected to believe that in the dark ages of the 1980s and 1990s, there was no awareness of safeguarding. Or therapists ensuring that they arent in the firing line if a man attacks a women in a toilet.

I don't get it. Those things don't happen now, so why would it be surprising that they didn't happen back then either??

Why dont you think it happens now?

What do you think single sex spaces written into law means?

A therapist hasn't the authority to overwrite that.

Yes. That's exactly what trans women were told to do if they wanted to get hormones and surgeries: they had to "live as women", which meant being accepted by women in their spaces.

How did the therapist ensure this vital part of the process happened?

The very fact that it had to be written into law demonstrates that safeguarding wasn't happening "naturally". If it had been happening, there would have been no need for a judgement to restate it.

And yes, a therapist has no authority to overwrite that now - but they totally did under Stonewall law.

I thnik you two are talking at cross-purposes.

He asked questions as to how they "lived as women": did they use the women's toilets? Did they wear "feminine" clothing in public? Did they introduce themselves under a female identity? All that stuff. Of course, the therapist couldn't check that the trans women weren't lying, but that's not the point here. The point is that they were expected to "live as women" in order to get hormones and surgeries.

Could very well be! I do feel like I'm missing something here.

I think all of this is TRA trying to bargin with women using an imagined time when we all got along.

Remember the time when we knew instinctively when a man was a transsexual and was only using the ladies because he needed to to get healthcare? And he was lovely anyway.

Dave Hayton is one of those lovely transsexuals. If he is so lovely and only doing it because he had to, and we accepted him, why did he have to rewrite the rules to make his colleagues accept him?

Men were never accepted, we dont know the difference between a transsexual, a transvestite and a transgender, because there isnt a difference. And if we wanted them in our spaces, we would allow all men in, making single sex redundant.

Its just men retconning.

I think if someone said this to me, my first response would be "please define "trans".

I am yet to hear a coherent definition.

I don't believe men when they say they had to use the womens spaces to get the treatment they wanted.

Why would the NHS impose a condition that they couldn't check? Its the same with clothes, too.

All it could ever be is a name change and thats why name changes (along with the therapist diagnosis) are all thats required for a GRC.

If its vital that men have to use womens spaces to get the treatment they need, why would it be secret? Wouldnt the government have mentioned it in the last ten years?

The confusion with single sex spaces was always men with a GRC, not those waiting for diagnosis and treatment.

Shakespeare was very good at this; he did a pretty good job of legitimizing the claim of Queen Elizabeth (the first) to the throne of England by making Richard III into a monster tyrant who was "properly" overthrown by Henry of Richmond (Henry VII, Elizabeth's grandfather) - and various other ways too.

Shakespeare knew well which way his bread was buttered!

Im sure there was a bbc documentary quite a few years ago now about 'sex change operations' where the participant talked to his doctor about about he could prove he should be treated which included using women's facilities 🤔 Ill see if I can find it

This one www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04frl4h/a-change-of-sex-3-julia-my-body-my-choice

Of course, a lot of them don't actually think they are changing sex (or so they say). They think they are correcting a wrong body 🙄and that they are biological women.

This was totally standard, I don't really understand why you are doubting it. Many people, patients and doctors, have been open about this.