Jeez, some trans women can be extremely hateful to opponents

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So you don't think that people who haven't done anything to transition or aren't going to have surgery or take hormones should be considered to be the gender that they say they are?

That would mean that my daughter's friend who is biologically a female but dresses and acts as a male and likes to be referred to as a male, is not someone who you would consider to be a male because he hasn't taken hormones or started surgery? The kid is 17 years old. He doesn't need to have other people who are trans tell him he's not male when he's doing everything in his power to be one. Telling him that because he's not taking meds for it or going for surgery for it then he's not male is just as mean and horrible as his mother telling him that because God made him born with a vagina and boobs that he's not male.

He had enough trouble with the school trying to make him wear the drape for his senior picture instead of the tux top. He doesn't need frustrated trans people adding to that you know.

Hell, nobody needs that.

Considering that two people have misunderstood me on this point, let me give clarification. By transition, I don't only mean medical transition. There are social transition (which is what the boy you discuss has definitely done), legal transition (changing name and sex on forms and IDs), and medical transition.

The trans boy you discuss has definitely undergone social transition, so he does not fall under the heading of not having transitioned at all.

Once he can get a breast reduction he will look much better this way. This child who doesn't want boobs has a rack that I would kill to have lol. A binder won't work. DD's. He's gained a bunch of weight and that covers them when he wears baggy clothes. He's black and also has the black girl's butt which is great and I would also kill for, so the weight and wearing baggy jeans has helped cover that too. I'm straight as a board, tall and thin. I had C boobs until I nursed my first baby and after that I'm a small B. It usually works the opposite way, but not with me. I have no butt to speak of and so i had to go to the Chinese store and buy one of those padded underwear butts that I wear under my jeans. Really, I'm absolutely flat back there otherwise. I have the worst case of gone-ass that i've ever seen.

He can't do any of that though, until he's older and has the money. He's 17 and a senior in high school right now, and living at home with a fundie mother who doesn't like this one bit. His mother lets him come here and hang out with my daughter though. She thinks that because my daughter is straight (she's bi but they don't like each other like that) that my daughter might somehow make her daughter straight. My daughter, nor anyone in my house, is interested in making anybdy straight or gay. People are what they are, and thats not something that people can change.

I think I know the source of that claim. In fact, I wrote a blog article explaining how Gallus Mag and others essentially quote-mined a major study to make that claim. Please pardon my French in this post:

http://beneficii.blogspot.com/2015/01/f ... quote.html

EDIT: MathIm commented on the post.

So, Beneficii, if a transwoman hasn't done any transition - say, because she's not in a situation where she could, being reliant upon other people to survive - she is a man? Or, a transman who is made to wear a dress by his parents is a woman, but as soon as he changes his presentation he becomes a man?

Concept, I sent you a PM the other day. I don't know if the new forum notified you or not, because it sometimes notifies me and sometimes doesn't. It's still in my outbox, so I thought I'd give you a heads up. If you are just busy or don't care to read PM's then no worries. I just wanted to say something in case it was a forum glitch that caused it, it's done that to me a few times.

I am hoping I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot here. I have a rich education in radical feminist theory, and I also understand (and subscribe to) critique of gender as a social construct. I believe one can be 'gender critical'* and also Cathy Brennan critical. Brennan is not someone I would suggest others read when talking about critique of gender and the structural oppression of women. Brennan is not someone I would suggest others read, ever, really, for a number of reasons (some already stated here, others I'd prefer not to share).

I understand structural oppression and co-optation of the subjugation of women. I get that. I believe it's imperative to respect the differences in social experiences between those of us born/raised/assigned female at birth and transwomen. We all experience subjugation and have struggled because of society, but in different ways. I believe it's equally imperative to respect trans* folk as they actively living trying to buck the oppressive systems they have been subjected to.

I believe it's possible to have nuanced discussions about gender and how the social construct 'gender' negatively affects us all, how we should address it, whether or not we should be 'reifying' it, etc., without being hateful and bigoted. I do have 'some radical feminist friends', but they are few and tend to be older, more compassionate, and more self-aware than the majority, unfortunately.

I don't like the term TERF as it doesn't really explain to a person what your problem is with them. It's a slur, like it would be considered if a radical feminist called a trans* activist a tranny. These are slurs that mean a lot of different things to different people. Could I suggest instead of saying 'TERF posts' or similar, that people try to spell out what the problem is. I get that there's a problem in this thread but 'TERF' isn't an argument. I also totally get it if people are exhausted by arguing this topic, especially when there are bigoted views present.

I have seen both radical feminists and trans* activists be incredibly hateful, bigoted, abusive and violent towards one another. They are not nice people and not the kind of people I would develop my own personal theories through. Transwomen wouldn't sign up to be objectified and oppressed if they didn't sincerely believe that they couldn't survive living as men. I don't think it's a fun little game for trans* folk so they can invade "our" toilets, either. The vapid hysteria on either 'side' is tiring. Both sides make up lies about the other, post them online, dox each other,
threaten, etc. They seem to feed off of each other's hatred, which doesn't strike me as a terribly healthy environment for anybody. It's certainly not an environment that advances any of us. I found my exploration of that environment to be toxic and a very difficult period of my life.

I do believe there are ways to have nuanced critiques of gender without being frightened, hateful, violent, and bigoted. I disagree theoretically with the reification of gender. I don't believe it serves any of us to reify a social construct, especially when it's been a construct that has historically oppressed women. That doesn't serve any of us.

*gender critical = a term I no longer feel comfortable using to describe myself, because it has been taken over by bigots

Eh, I'm with Vinay Gupta when it comes to matters such as intersectionality - the concept is it's own refutation, because taking it to it's logical conclusion requires accepting that everyone's experiences are unique, and thus you can't really put people into groups.

Take two cis-women, for example, one born and raised in a fundamentalist complementarian household to get married early and be a dutiful housewife, the other raised by a radfem lesbian couple. Both of those will have different experiences of girlhood. If you want, add in other women who have grown up that way.

Then you add in those trans-women who transitioned very young, and who grew up as girls, and compare those with girls who had a fairly gender neutral childhood.

Welcome to the real world, which is far, far too complex for your puny primate brain to model accurately.

For the former, he is still a man. For the latter, he becomes a man.

Let me amend my views:

If a person comes across naturally as a man, then a man he is. If a person comes across naturally as a woman, than a woman she is.

By naturally, I mean the way others around the person perceive them instinctively without even trying; this manifests in the pronouns that come out naturally and instinctively, at least in English.

If you're a trans woman, but consistently find that people slip up and use male pronouns around you, whether or not they immediately correct themselves afterward, then you should accept that you are a man. The same is true for trans men, though trans men tend to come across most naturally.

I'm starting to really believe that the trans women who come across in such a manly way likely have sexual fantasies that are autogynephilic and not at all characteristic of women; of course, all trans women, as all people, have sexual fantasies. But if you are looking for a test as to whether your sexual fantasies are autogynephilic and more characteristic of men versus those more characteristic of women, then transition and see what pronouns seem to come most naturally to others around you as they interact with you.

To further clarify this view, I do not refer to pronouns used when you see a person for the first time. For example, a butch woman may come across as a man or a boy at first, until she opens her mouth. What's important is the pronouns you naturally use once you get to know the person some.

By this standard, it is clear that I remain a man. Attempting to wear push-up bras or skirts or anything like that would only confirm my sister's naming of me as a "man-woman," as no one would use feminine pronouns naturally once they get to know me.

I'd post something about Cathy Brennan and suggest you switch gender crit teams to E. Hungerford but Brennan would probably dox me and sue me if I did that, just like she does plenty of other women who don't have the wealth she does when they don't agree with her behaviour. She's the worst thing that ever happened to radical feminism and you sound almost exactly like her. There are ways to be gender critical without being hateful towards trans* folk.