The Gender Critical Manifesto

[venusinscorpio]

Let's put a list of salient points together about what the issues are with the trans agenda. It will be a useful resource.

People should not be able to change their name or gender if they are a violent offender.

People should only be able to legally change their gender if they have sex reassignment surgery. The majority of anti TERF men I speak to online believe this is already the case

Trans identifying people who have a penis are legally men, and should should not be given legal access to spaces or resources designed for women, or for the safety of women. A third space is appropriate if they refuse to use mens services.

I think we need a starting point - a list of the usual TRA arguments that we can then debunk. I'll have a look and see if there are any knocking around already (please let's not use that ridiculous 17 point essay - there must be something more succinct out there....)

Might be Friday before I can give this much thought, but initial ideas:

• what is a woman?
• what are the implications of having no workable definition of woman?
• what are women's safe spaces for? / why do we segregate on grounds of sex?
• what are the implications of self-identification?
• what are the implications of losing sex segregation exemptions under the equality act?
• what are the implications of changing 'gender reassignment' to 'gender identity' as a protected characteristic?
• what harm is being done to children?
• what harm is being done to lesbians?
• what harm is being done to GNC women?
• what harm is being done to wives/partners of MTT?
• what are the implications of AGP and how widespread is it among MTT?
• sport
• scholarships and awards
• sex education
• no platforming
• freedom of association - women's ability to organise politically and culturally without men

...

Sorry to dump a load of unexplored points on the thread, I'll be back to flesh them out and I'm sure others can too, probably better than me. I just wanted to park my arse on the thread and jot down a few salient points that should be in there so I don't forget. Thank you for starting the thread

Good stuff! I will have a think and be back. Agree we don't need to base it on the Tabasco list, but we do need to cover off all the main points IMO.

Trends in eg employment, health and crime stats would be easier to follow if sex and gender identity were captured and reported separately. It would provide accurate data to allow monitoring of sex-based discrimination and, likewise, provide an evidence base for eg any employment discrimination against trans individuals. I'm not sure how you would anonymise data and ensure individuals' privacy but it would address the right buggers muddle we have at the moment, which is of no use to anyone, least of all the people who most need protection under equality legislation.

Why are women being asked to 'expand the bandwidth' of what it means to be a women? Surely it would be more appropriate for men to budge up and make room for feminine men within their own ranks.

Murder rates, that's a bugbear of mine. I can explain that, I just did on the other thread in fact!

If anyone can explain the suicide risk well and that it is not as simple or high as claimed that would be good. Also that transing doesn't necessarily improve mental health outcomes, iirc there is a study that shows this?

How many people (% of population) are trans?
How many of those individuals have full surgery (or even partial)? (I think there is a huge assumption amongst the general population that ALL do and that this is incorrect needs to be pointed out). I'll see if I can find figures unless someone else has them to hand.

It is tricky because the way it is used now is so vague, and I think used inconsistently so figures may be covering different groups of population,

The term "trans" I mean.

Yes, we need to include statistics and hard evidence to back our claims up!

The suicide statistics were disseminated by the charity Mermaids. They lied outright by saying the sample size was of 2000 young trans when in fact it was 27.

Furthermore, although the statistics for self harming and thoughts of suicide are high in trans kids, they are no higher than kids in general (according to the NHS). A worrying trend in and of its self, but not confined to trans.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/fairplayforwomen.com/mermaids-lying-unprofessional-teli16/amp

What sort of tone do you want this thread to have venus? Because, honestly, I have just seen something that will make your eyes bleed.

Transmen can buy 'packers' - like a silicone dildo to give the appearance of a 'natural bulge'. But there is a successful American company selling these for children of four years old.

I was looking for studies into gender dysphoria in children and came across this company.

I guess it would come under the heading of 'abuse to children', and counter those arguments that insist there is no real transing of children going on.

But if you want this thread to be 'stats and studies', I won't link it cos it's a bit grim.

That sounds truly grim, Datun.

I would include the problem[s] with 'cis', most importantly (for me) the way that it puts women into a category of "identifying" with the restrictive, oppressive gender expectations associated with girlhood/womanhood, when in fact refusing to submit to or limit oneself or other girls and women to those expectations is the essence of feminism itself.

I think it's important to demonstrate to well meaning liberals all the ways in which trans ideology is hyper-individualistic and destructive to solidarity among female people as a class. It's about reinforcing the gender prison and reframing it as "privilege," while attempting to identify yourself out of it - whether as a transman or as a man appropriating womanhood but without the stain of 'cis-privilege' - on the basis of not being like all those lesser females who identify with being second class.

Thinking critically, does it make sense to say that women can live, dress, think and behave any way they wish to, (and this is precisely what our grandmothers and mothers struggled and sacrificed to make possible for us and for our daughters), and also, to say that there is such a thing as "thinking like a woman," "feeling like a woman," "living as a woman"? Are these helpful concepts to perpetuate? If these two ideas of womanhood (a biological state of being which will have a significant bearing on a person's life experience, but need not be the determining factor in one's personality traits, interests or aptitudes? Or a set of gendered behaviours and performative femininity which render the reproductive system irrelevant to the experience of womanhood and turn a penis into a 'ladystick'?) If these two understandings of what womanhood is, are incompatible, (and they are), which one do you think is the fallacy?

Great post GoldStars3

I don't think I have the right terminology to contribute meaningfully to this thread but a key issue for me is the wilful denial of biological facts. Oh, and the tendency of younger women to consider any views of anyone over, say, 40 to be reactionary: without those reactionaries and their predecessors there would be a lot more to complain about.

That gender is an oppressive hierarchy is very important. That by splitting us into cisgender and transgender, all you've done is piled on another oppression - now if you're declared a cisgender woman you're both at the bottom of the standard gender heap, and the cis/trans heap.

Suddenly you're not supposed to talk about or advocate for yourself at all - because transwomen have declared themselves even more oppressed (which in some ways they are - but sex isn't one of those ways).

Opposing this externally imposed labelling based on a definition (anyone not happy with the gender role imposed upon them) that is so broad as to include almost everyone, and just used as a stick to beat women.

Thinking critically, does it make sense to say that women can live, dress, think and behave any way they wish to, (and this is precisely what our grandmothers and mothers struggled and sacrificed to make possible for us and for our daughters), and also, to say that there is such a thing as "thinking like a woman," "feeling like a woman," "living as a woman"?

Although most people understand that cis-gender does indeed mean this, actually spelling it out is very powerful Gold. Especially the grandmothers and mothers part. People need reminding.

Attitudes have changed in the last 20 to 30 years. For me, and anyone not in the first flush of youth, ridiculous sexism is living memory.

Young women, although they know about it, don't always grasp how recent and fragile our new rights are.

Forgive me but doesn't such a thing as "thinking like a woman," "feeling like a woman," "living as a woman"? prove their point?

Sorry i don't understand.

I've added my 'packer' link to the thread in chat.

How do you mean BMacklin?

Women have campaigned for centuries to refute that there is any way of 'living like a woman'. Traditionally meaning the child raiser, sandwich maker, etc.

But now the premise 'living like a woman' is being reinforced by the ideology. I.e., having long hair, and heels and make up and being girly is 'living like a woman'. It's double underlining an historically damaging opinion of what women are for.

Mmm yes Datun that's what I mean. So I must be misunderstanding Gold post. Sorry. As you were.

Perhaps because she phrased it as a question it looked slightly ambiguous on first reading.

Sorry yes, that end paragraph was confusingly phrased! I meant it as though posing the question to a libfem: explain to me how you can see these two positions as compatible enough to hold both to be true, and if you can't, is the idea that women should be free to live / present / think as individuals, and not in some way that's prescriptive or specific to women as a class, really the one you're willing to dispose of?

This is the most authoritiative study on suicide that I have found (though I will keep looking). Its main conclusion is:

^Overall, the most striking finding of our analysis was
the exceptionally high prevalence of lifetime suicide
attempts reported by NTDS respondents across
all demographics and experiences. Based on prior
research and the findings of this report, we find that
mental health factors and experiences of harassment,
discrimination, violence and rejection may interact to
produce a marked vulnerability to suicidal behavior in
transgender and gender non-conforming individuals.
More research on suicidal behavior among transgender
and gender non-conforming people is needed.^

In answer to your question Datun I think it should be persuasive. So not just dry stats and links to papers. I think we need to make a forceful emotive case why "gender" (sex role stereotypes) is a problem, that we don't hate transgender people and that we support them to be free of discrimination but there are major issues with the political agenda both for women and for children.

So your link might come into this somewhere. We've got to counter the shock value of the misleading murder and suicide statistics. Both by calmly refuting them but also showing up the problems with gender id in an impactful way.

Just my thoughts while on lunch break! Sorry I'm being a bit useless, I didn't expect to be so busy today. First day back after long easter break.