It’s great that your nephews girlfriend is so understanding. It goes to show that relationships can be about much more than the usual stereotypes.
Sarah always liked women as Lee and as Sarah, and she has (or had) a long term girlfriend.
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I would never stand in the way of a person who wants to join the army, wants to climb mountains, take part in sports or judge their sexuality on that basis. I cant stand misogyny. Quite what someone really knows and undestands of the world around them at such a young age I find a bit of a mystery.
Technically I dress “as a man” - eg jeans shirt jersey boots biker jacket, I think many women do. But I’m not dressing “as a man” I am wearing clothes I find comfortable, I don’t think clothing should be gendered or define us.
I am not a man, don’t want to be a man (I want the same salary etc), would never be mistaken for a man, and nobody bats an eyelid, wearing the stereotypical clothing of the dominant group is no longer seen as subversive.
People should wear what they like, whatever it is, but thinking about whateverhername was, a transwoman on woman’s hour a couple of years ago, I don’t need lessons in performative femininity from anyone. (She was bitching about women who don’t shave their legs).
I am very suspicious of people who claim to have a ‘woman’s brain in a man’s body’ etc, because what is a ‘woman’s brain’? It doesn’t mean liking pink glitter high heels and nail varnish, it doesn’t mean automatic desire for a caring profession, it doesn’t mean dressing like a barbie doll. I have a lot more time for eg Jan Morris.
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Er excuse me I have done all of those as a heterosexual mother of 5, those are hardly defining examples.
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So he likes wearing dresses and makeup, that doesn’t make him a woman, it makes him a young man who likes wearing dresses and makeup and it is FINE to do that.
What drives me MAD is the notion that if you want to wear a dress or makeup you MUST be a woman, and it is a problem - god knows enough of my friends when I was an undergraduate liked wearing dresses and makeup, how much narrower and more intolerant and stereotyped society seems to be now than it was then.
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Strangely yes - social media maybe / PCness (while we’re at it - every family these days in TV ads seems to have to be mixed race)
Maybe it’s about having tolerant parents who encourage non-gender specific play - I loved dolls and also played with my brother’s meccano and his fortress. I wrote plays - one about Robert the Bruce - I of course, played Robert the Bruce and my younger brother played the woman whose cakes I burnt. My father happily took photos.
Maybe in an ideal world I would have got the meccano for Christmas, but I had the next best thing.
Surely John that is the point. Seems to be often someone who is truly trans knows pretty early on.
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No problem and good on you! It was an example used to loosely illustrate that apparently someone aged 2-3 new they were in the wrong body. I dont see the relevance myself anymore than their are blokes who are top hairdressers or clothing designers.
I don’t think so (though if you have evidence to back this up, please give it so we all benefit). As a pre-pubescent child, you can know only what you’re told. A boy wanting to wear a dress – or to play with dolls – isn’t an indication of “true gender”. And many adolescents go through some sort of questioning – before settling on their birth sex (obviously).
I think the idea that “children know” is a lie some of us are telling ourselves as comfort about what medicine – surgery and endocrinology – is making possible.
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Maybe, maybe not. 2 examples in my family and and a very long term friend wouldn’t exactly back that up.
The latter was a motor racing mans man, was transitioning and intended to then live with his girlfriend??? Had a run in with cancer, changed mind again (could be a women then 
) and is remaining a bloke.
All I can offer you is what Jan Morris wrote about his/her own experience.
I loved her travel books - there was never any secret about her transition, as I recall - thanks for the reminder (I made a mental note when you mentioned it earlier but it evaporated!)
I think it is a reflection of the fear people (frequently parents) have of unstereotypical boys or men and often very deep rooted but un-articulated fears about homosexuality (again particularly wrt boys): some cultures eg Iran are mad keen on gender reassignment because it is so socially and religiously terrible to be gay and ‘being a woman’ is seen as much more acceptable.
So reductive. Everything is a spectrum really, the number of friends of mine who were one thing as students and are now another is - I was going to say amazing but actually it’s probably fairly representative.
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Interesting if she did “go the whole hog”, as you put it, with the surgery. Perhaps she was, as Eddie Izzard identifies: “a lesbian trapped in a man’s body”.
All this goes to prove that as far as relationships and sexuality goes there really is “nowt so queer as folk”.
The main thing is that I don’t have any time at all for is anyone who thinks someone is not a complete human being, or deserves less from life because of their preferences re: dress, sex, gender of preferred partner or anything else for that matter.
Sometimes the world needs to change much more than the individual.
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Yes I find that really disturbing too…kids are kids are kids and when you have both sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters they interchangeably play with whatever toys and dress in whatever costumes are in the play box and have fun doing so…
One particularly disturbing evening that sticks in my mind was when I was researching intimate cancer operations and a potential brutal surgery that one of my daughters was facing at the time…goodness knows how but I came across surgeons showcasing their male to female surgery and vice versa…
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And when they age, can’t say grow up 
they call it Theatre
Fortunately I was one of the grownups looking after them and keeping them safe
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Utterly ridiculous comments here, mostly. If you’ve got a willey,…
.
Then you are probably a gardener, of either sex.
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PMSL here 
.
That is one of the problems, boys who are born with a micropenis and internal testicles which stay internal are categorised as girls: which they emphatically are not. People like Caster Semanya, and look at the hoo ha there (CS is not intersex as has been claimed but a man).
Sex is one thing, gender is another.
I think it takes more than just absence of recognisably male external genitalia to be a woman. (Just as it takes more than wearing dresses and makeup). Women aren’t just imperfect men.
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