Recommend me a book!

[RibenaBerry]

Right, reading these boards recently has given me a bit of a kick up the arse on my feminist principles. I've done a bit of 'light' reading in the area (think The Beauty Myth as a teenager) but think I need something a bit more serious without being so weighty I never pick it up. I'd rather have something published in, say, the last 15 years than any of the 'classics'.

Any ideas?

Funny isn't it that you have NOT answered to this, more bothered about what defines a woman?

hMillyR
I must ask. If your child came to you, with the biggest problem of their life. Self harming, drinking, running away and having suicial feelings. Would you say, it's not a medical condition, you'll be ok.

Hell no you wouldn't if you were any sort of a mum.You would go to the medics.

Why the hell do you think my child has 3 psychiatric drs and is under specialist treatment for children with GID.

earwicga

Thank you x

"Being a woman is a state of mind"

Brilliant definition!

I think the specific suggestion of abuse was regarding irreversible medical procedures being performed on children.

Sally, the reason I haven't answered that question is because I am not here to think about, or argue for, how to treat trans people. I'm not sure if your child is trans gender or intersex or any of the details. So if you are asking me about what I would do if I had a trans gender child, I don't know.

(The issue about self harm and the other problems occur to many children and there are a range of ways of dealing with them. Self harm, for example, I would deal with through counselling, a harm reduction plan, allowing the person to control their harming without intervention and without myself or other people attempting to stop it. So all the usual self harm treatments. But I doubt you really want to know my answer to the details.)

No back to the reason I don't know how I would help a person with trans gender. That is because I am not a trans gender campaigner. I'm not here to campaign for the rights of trans people. I am primarily concerned with the rights of women, and in addition to that I am concerned with gay rights, which I believe to benefit all women.

I believe that some of the rights that trans people are campaigning for damage women as a group. So I believe that the rights of trans people are sometimes at odds with the rights of women. That sometimes happens with different social justice campaigns. It can happen in may ways, including legally, which is why disability, gender, race, sexuality and religion often come into legal conflict and there have been lots of test cases around it.

So I don't believe your child is a freak or that you are an abuser. But trans issues are not my fight - they are your fight. And other people, people who do not have any trans issues, have issues of their own. And they need fighting for too. The group that I am fighting for is women, who in many ways around the world, don't have the luxury of believing their lives as women a 'state of mind.'

Thank you for being honest.

I am not a GID campaigner, but a mum that sees unfair and uneducated comments being made about
GID children and us as parents. Medically, legally and physically my child will be female in a couple of years time. Like it or not my child will be a woman. We parents are NOT abusers but try to help our children find a peaceful path to their lives.

If people do not like it then tough. As a mum my child comes first, always.

After all i thought this was a mums site not a feminist site.

wastingaway

Children cannot undergo irreversible medical procedures ( if you are talking about operations) in this country. They have to wait until they are 18 and under adult services.

The family child we were referring to was in the US I believe.

"I think the specific suggestion of abuse was regarding irreversible medical procedures being performed on children."

Reread the thread. You are wrong.

MillyR - human rights are universal, not applicable to some. And before replying to sally66 it would have been polite to have read her previous comments. She clearly stated why she was on this thread.

"By dittany Thu 08-Jul-10 08:32:48
"his parents have already planned out his hormone treatment."

That's child abuse, and people are supporting it? Please explain yourself earwigca. "

" "By dittany Thu 08-Jul-10 08:32:48
"his parents have already planned out his hormone treatment."

That's child abuse, and people are supporting it? Please explain yourself earwigca. " "

Jazz's parents aren't licenced to prescribe hormone blockers - which don't cause any permament changes - so just what the hell are you talking about? And that wasn't the only accusation.

See, if one talks from ignorance then one gets things wrong. Then when one thinks on from these false assumptions it's easy to come to inhumane conclusions.

If one comes from the angle of human rights are universal then it is very hard to see how these inhumane conclusions can be reached from somebody who claims to be a feminist and has therefore examined any privilege held and also can clearly see prejudice.

In case anyones interested in why I feel so strongly about this:
When I was 15 I was pretty flat-chested. I was mocked and ridiculed for this, and I was suicidal and anorexic for other reasons not connected to my body (child abuse etc) I used to self harm by cutting my arms with razors (which fucking hurts by the way). I had a lovely boyfriend who didn't care or notice, but as I had low self esteem anyway, I thought my life could be cured if I just had this itty bitty operation to change my chest.
Images of breasts were everywhere; any woman without them is a freak, right? Right or wrong, that's the message that entered my 15 year old brain. I watched interviews with plastic surgeons on TV who were operating on 17 year olds' breasts. Everywhere and all around was the message that if you don't look a certain way, you are a freak.
Looking back I was a normal 15 year old, but the point is that believing the problem lies with your body is a kind of self-loathing, encouraged by the obsession with body beautiful and that males and females have to look and act a certain way.
The entire society is fucked up and wrong that it can lead any kids to suicide for being outside the 'norm'.
I am pushing for boys and girls to be accepted by society.
WOman exists. For thousands of years women had their feet hobbled so that men could feel masculine. I wonder how many trans women, under those conditions, would have fessed up that they were really women. I wonder how many women, over the years, have wished with everything they had in their soul, that they were born men--and continue to do today. Trans women have a get out clause that born women do not and this is what makes us different.
Trans women are welcome to live freely, but they cannot direct the feminist movement. Trans women's problems are wrapped up with women's problems in the way they manifest in confusion and disbelief at how their defunct and defective body could have betrayed them, but that is society and that is what we have to change.
We can work together, but tell the Iranian woman about to be stoned for adultery that woman is a state of mind. It is not.

Sally if I had a child of ambiguous gender I would support the child in whichever gender they chose to belong to. That is a minority case, so I think it's disingenuous for trans women to hold up your child as proof that women don't exist. Women exist, your child exists.
Women are not yet regarded as human, which is obvious by the way they are treated over the world. Trans women have a fight on their hands, but they can't expect women to fight it for them. The goal is roughly the same...perhaps...but women are fighting for women 50% of the world. We are not about to be side-tracked by another issue that may or may not be relevant to the central tenet of feminism which is to free women from the gender role they were assigned at birth, while at the same time forcing society to acknowledge and attribute a deep respect towards women's unique reproductive role. Those are the main aims. If trans women want to help us, well, thank you. But you can't expect us to help you because we have more than enough on our plate already.

I meant a child of ambiguous sex.

Being a woman is 'a state of mind' - yeah right - try telling that to woemn all round the world...
And Sally, as Milly pointed out this is a feminist thread (it is on a parenting site, true, but its main focus is feminism first, not childcare)

You can not accuse GID parents of being abusive and not expect a reply by one.

I am not expecting anybody to help us, as unless you live through this you have no understanding of it.

For the record hormone blockers ARE reversible. You can not go on the opposite hormone until much later. The blockers give the children breathing space. By the time that the child is old enough to have the opposite hormone she may have changed her mind. Our children go through years of treatment before they are allowed any blockers or hormones. So before you throw our opinions i suggest you do your research. If you want to make opinions make them informed ones, otherwise you just look silly.

After all it was not me that changed the thread from womans rights to calling GID parents abusers.

earwicga. Good morning I understand what you are saying about irreversibly damaging children. We live in a country in fact the world now accept that mutilation of a penis through circumsision is acceptable.

There are men who spend a small fortune on trying to stretch and pull that bit of skin. THere's a whole range of contraptions to do this.

Also to tie this into the trans/ intersexed treatment path. If you are one of the male babies that get butchered and you happen to be male to female its surgically more demanding to construct a neo-vagina.

So as a society we already are accepting of butchering baby boys

@ Sally, Hi, I'm sorry but some Anti-androgens do cause lasting damage and by the time your child is 18 if they feel that genital reconstruction isn't what's need and they stop their transition then there's a very high probability if never having a children themselves

At Sakura i started cutting at 12 at 37 i still battle with my food / eating/ body image issues when i was 15 i tried to cut my penis out, not off, but out. I jabbed the blade into my inner thigh and dragged it up my leg, Thankfully my mum held me together until the ambulance arrived and i got stitched up. I'm not saying i'm any worse than you. I will say thankyou for sharing though because if you hadn't i certainly wouldn't have. I still feel weakness when i talk about it.

We live in a world were everyone is under pressure to conform and that pressure causes so many problems. Asian women who can't feel proud of their color so they lighten their skin. Women of color chemically straightening their hair to the point it falls out of their heads. Opulent ladies being told visually on covers of the glossies that they are not beautiful because of their size.

Instead of correcting those mistakes and putting a stop to the media pressure on women. The media make things equal by putting the same pressure the guys and re-enforce what a 'perfect embodyment of man is'

Sorry if this sounds transphobic to some of the readers but. I feel that there is an issue with but the male to female inter-sexed and trans community in some areas where we demand to be seen as women.

It's things like this that i find appauling

gay.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-13425.html/

Which to me illusrates the need for a third gender.

Being as physically female as i can be feels right. I started taking HRT and it was like the left hand side of my brain got turned on. I am mentally more balanced. I am emotionally more developed, open and aware. Physically while i'm still sort of pained by the way i am physically things are getting better, I'm fit and healthy. But if for some reason i couldn't undergo Genital reconstruction i firmly believe you can be a woman while being in possesion of a penis and thus yet again the need for the third

sorry for the ramble.

Sakura, can I CAT you about something unrelated to all this (you are in Japan I think?)

Morning SelaciousCrumb

I'm sorry that life has been so troubled for you, and glad that you are now in a position to be the actual you. I agree with you about circumcision, and the fight to allow intersex children to find their own way, without surgical and other interventions, is essential! But, I don't think you are entirely correct with the anti-androgens and fertility, for example:

"These drugs take a different approach to antiandrogens: they act on the pituitary, initially overstimulating it and then rapidly desensitising it to GnRH.

The effect of this is that over a period of weeks, gonadal androgen production is greatly reduced. Their principal advantages are that they are generally fully reversible in their effects, which makes them a useful treatment in adolescent subjects where it is desired to stall the changes of puberty but not desired to induce permanent feminisation until the subject is older; and that they do not carry the risks of thromboembolic disease associated with antiandrogens."
theipowa.org/?q=content/antiandrogens

"What the hell is wrong with you earwigca?"

You dittany, you. If you don't like a bigoted spade being called a bigoted spade - don't be one!

Hey Dittany. As i said i was born inter-sexed and fixed at birth to fit the male social acceptable model.

My understanding of transwomen is that they feel like a woman trapped in a mans body. I've never claimed to be a woman. I have said that i'm not male and i see myself as dual gendered. It's on a previous page somewhere.

Because i had the male model applied to me the medical profession removed took away the ovaries i did have and left me with the Penis.

Do you see what i'm trying to say? So i was born inter-sexed. Surgically 'corrected'. And now i'm changing that. I will never the denounce the male part of my life, but i'm more than willing to divest the male priv

Sorry i never was good at explaining this I'll keep trying if you like.

hey earwicga I know about GnRH . I'm on the 12 week Zoladex depo All male to female service users are recommended to consider banking sperm because of the infertility resulting from the medication.

Dittany, sorry but if you don't like medical terminology then that's your problem not mine.

As for saying i retain my penis, i guess your saying i stay part of the male institution when i've already stated that i was never part of it in the first place and making statements like that is just so outdated.

also dittany, while i see value in some of your posts, i think your slightly miss guided to the effect of hormones. Menopausal women have been using them for years.

Hormones are medically proven to have an effect on mood, if you don't like then i'm sorry but it's a medical FACT.