Big Red Flag

Where do you sit with the trans movement and identity politics?

I got my period.

And as I lay there, rough as shit in a pitch black room with two hot water bottles, fighting off a migraine, between my legs packed out like a wound, an image came to me.

An image I’d seen a few days earlier.

Of some forty odd year old fella I used to follow on Instagram. Posting photos of packs of ‘Always Ultra’ alongside several pairs of lacy panties he’d treated himself to from Debenhams.

So he could convince himself he was ‘Meg’ on the blob.

And you know what?

It really fucking boiled my piss.

That there are men out there who not only want to own female experiences that they will never own, but also seek to glamorise what will never be glamorous.

That they want to make menstruating fun.

Turn it into some kind of vagina ‘Taco Tuesday’.

Somewhere down the line, we went from ‘period shaming’ to the opposite end of the spectrum.

Adverts showing rows of folk sat with dabs of poppy red on their pristine white undies. ‘People have periods’ says the tagline.

No.

Women have them.

And you know what? When they do, they don’t pose about like wankers in stark white underwear hoping to catch a red dot and enjoy the aesthetic.

Nor do they line their best lingerie with fairy hammocks and slink about like Patricia the Stripper.

You will find most of them just trying to get on with it in their comfiest, kindest dark knickers. Nursing tender stomachs, sometimes wincing as a sharp cramp might catch them.  Dealing with hot sweats, mood swings, tiredness and headaches.

It is as pretty as Jaws meets Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

To turn female processes into ‘up for grabs’ experiences for any Arthur who wants to be Martha is belittling and insulting to women who go through them.

Enough.

I have been on a journey with deciding what I think about the trans movement. Looking for my boundaries.

That is most definitely one of them.

I have a young son and have to be mindful that one day he may question his identity.

And I’ve come to the conclusion that the tiny number of people who have spent years feeling truly trapped in ‘the wrong’ body and those wishing to treat it like a ‘Build a Bear’ workshop or Woolies pick n mix, are not the same.

I also see a massive difference between confused teenagers searching for answers and older, often middle aged men who want to fetishise periods, breast feeding and pregnancy.

I cannot reconcile the shy, unsure adolescents hiding away in baggy clothes I personally know, with the social media images of predatory looking drag queens reading Peter Rabbit looking like Jessica Rabbit or twirling their ding dongs at sing songs.

They are not the same.

The former need our patience, love and reassurance. To explore the idea they may be gay, lesbian or bi.

They need open conversations and very possibly mental health intervention.

The latter, who are sexualising children or fetishising female processes need condemnation at the strongest level.

We have tiptoed around the issues for too long.

I ask you to consider your own lines in the sand with the issues of transgenderism and identity politics.

Everything’s so ‘fluid’ isn’t it? ‘Not set in stone’.

Until that is, you get the newspeak wrong and suddenly it’s more rigid than Dirk Diggler’s wiggler.

No! Bring it up.

I ask you.

What are you comfortable with?

What makes you feel slightly icky but you’ve possibly been going along with so as not to offend people?

Those uncomfortable feelings are alarm bells. They happen for a reason. They are instincts.

Human instincts that serve to protect children.

And when you go along with the crowd and ignore them, the slightly icky things become stomach churning evil.

So have that conversation with yourself before your child wants to have that chat with you.

Or, more worryingly with someone else.