I don't really have a horse in this race or care in general but as someone on the very fringe of the alphabet soup crowd here's what I've seen and the impressions I've gotten from people.
I gave this a thumbs up because I agreed with, I'd say 65% of this. I don't agree with your bathroom / changeroom stance, and I do think the science is a bit more complicated than merely stripping a person naked. The only reason I veer cautiously here is because already there is a lack of universality in the singular sex of a person. i.e: not all dicks are the same size. So if there is variation in the signifier of sex as an indicative determinant of what is 'male' and what is 'female' it gets into sticky waters. Kinda like saying bodily modifications are not authentic to sex. When we have all kinds of body modifications to accentuate, enhance, and reaffirm gender presentation, or plain old aesthetic presentation. Breast implants, penile augmentations, steroids to grow your musculature, diets and cardio exercises to create a more 'thin' 'feminized' look. Squats in order to grow a more voluptuous glutes, which until recently was only valued in women, but now it's expanded to include men.
Having said that, I do agree with this:
The problem with the trans movement is you have to do some Trump level fact bending to accept their "truth". Because the truth is, biology and anatomy are real. Transmen do not have testicles, and already we see that the
phalloplasty is a very difficult procedure which doesn't have 100% guaranteed results. There are so many complications that come with it, and it might not be successful. They also won't be creating semen. Trans women do not have periods. Cannot get pregnant. Now, there will be those that will come in and say: Not all women can get pregnant, are they less of women? No. Bareness is a reality for many. So are miscarriages. Some periods are delayed. Nonethless there is a intricate relationship to biology here. And barrenness causes psychological stress to women. This is where social construct comes in, and if we're going by social construct and not biology, then yeah: transwomen are women. Which bring it back to the transmen. If we are going by the social construct, then yeah transmen are men. They are men who may or may not have a penis that's been constructed. But if you're on the metro and exposure to gentials is not integral in the setting, then you're with men. Now, because I don't sleep with women, and I have no want or use for children as I find them insufferable and revolting, I really don't care about the biology of a woman. I care about women in so far as I believe in ending the wage gap, ending rape culture and violence against women, allowing them to fully stablish themselves as equal to men and to end their oppression. This naturally extends to transwomen because those same issues affect them. Violence against transwomen is rooted in misogyny and transphobia.
I get annoyed when I am told that as a gay man are told that if I don't find transmen sexually arousing then that makes me transphobic. This drives as equally nuts as do the gay men that salivate over straight men and are convinced they can turn them. This is the queer version of peak incel thought. That somehow someone is entitled to my sexually? And it reeks of sexual conversion. Anything that forces that person to conform their sexually is conversion therapy. Straight men do it when they coerce women into sex, when gay men play these silly little game of turning straight men, and now when trans activists start crying transphobia because a gay man doesn't want to sleep with them. This is not denying housing, employment, human rights, or those things to live a satisfied and peaceful life. There are people out there who find the transmale body attractive, hot, arousing, what have you. I'm not one of them, vaginas don't do it for me. A lot of my attraction to cismen entails their genitals. And maybe to transmen genitals don't matter, but to me and many gay men, they do. Starting with the fact that we're obsessed with big dicks.
Another thing that I don't agree with in your write up, is that the T is different than the LGB. Yes and no. Being Queer -and here I am using the umbrella identifier term, not the ideological political leaning- has always been about existing outside gender norms. The first ways societies understood homosexuality and sex that didn't fall within the heterosexual norm was a third gender of sorts. In Ancient Greece, Rome, the Muslim world, etc. where as Queer Theorists love to claim sex was defined by the role as opposed to the act, nonethless men who were penetrated were not seen as 'men'. But they weren't women either. And this tradition of the passive being akin to the feminine is still with us today. In these forums, here on JUB you will read post, after post after post from Bottoms who describe their role in sex as a feminized one. I may not agree with that. I as a bottom may not agree that that's how I see myself. But it doesn't matter, because for the most part 'Bottoms' are 'feminized' men. So already we see the existance of a sex / gender that doesn't 'fit' the binary of 'male' / 'female'. But beyond the homosexual sex roles of Bottoms / Tops, already GAY MEN talk about straight men as being 'True Men'. Again, you don't have to go far. Here on JUB itself post, after post, after post, after post going back to the very beginnings of this forum about how much more authentically real men straight men are. Working Class men. I think I read a post here which I thought was beyond ridiculous which said that all gay men are Ru Paul, lamenting that where are all the real men amongst the gays?
So LGB does exist in a complicated zone and relationship to sex and gender. And yes, in a social constructed, but nonetheless... this is why trans-politic matters to the LGB, because we don't exist in the norm. You could have the burliest, whitest, lumberjack, electrician, plumer, solidier -name your most manly job here- but if this archetype of manhood gets his ass tickled by another man, all that Manly Musky Construct comes tumbling down, and not just by a homophobic society either, but by the very gays themselves. Think about all these puritanical Bottoms, or even these weird homos that pine away for a pure top, and said top gets fucked in the ass once and suddenly these deluded homos drop him in value. That's gender. That's all social construct. And yet, to many that is the law of the land. Think about how STUPID 'straight' men are when they claim to be straight because they're not the ones penetrating. That's gender affirmation in full force and effect. The same
The problem with the trans movement is you have to do some Trump level fact bending to accept their "truth" is what we also do with 'straight' men who have sex with men. We are in a post-modernist world afterall.
So much more to say on this topic. So much more to engage with your post, because as I said, I agree with 65% of it. On the children level, again, I agree with you wholeheartedly and we also see a discrepancy of Queer ideology there. On the one hands Queers LOVE to spout off about 'Fluidity' and yet on the topic of transness, they affirm an absolute to a child. Or a teenager. These are the people that will say: Sucking dick doesn't make you gay, it's fluid' and then turn to a human that has not finished developing and is figuring themselves out and says: you're trans. That's it, that's all, you're trans.
Anyway, I enjoyed reading your post. If you're made it all the way down here, thanks for reading. I should get on with my life, instead of pontificating on that of others. I'm gonna have some coffee and head into the gym for some gender affirming exercises. Can't grow my dick, I may as well grow my arms.
