Is it actually possible to be a feminist and completely embrace trans rights?

No worries, Annie. Yes, me too, I very much value this female space that doesn't "centre" trans women. Their problems are different to ours. I say this as not a mother, but a woman who experiences the biological and social reality of being a woman every day. And any squeamishness about natural female biological processes is obviously not ideal here.

Buffy - you said this earlier: "If gender is an innate identity, then people who are transgender are the most oppressed. If gender is a hierarchy, then women are the oppressed group, however they identify in terms of gender."

And that's the crux of the problem I think. I don't know how we resolve the fact that we're approaching gender from opposite ends of the telescope

venusinscorpio ah, yes, totally misunderstood, sorry.

For all the recent brou-ha-ha, I still do deeply appreciate that for the most part MN hasn't shut this discussion down, when it has been shut down (or nobody has dared to start it, because they'd be risking too much) everywhere else.

Agree it's a siege mentality.

How do you suggest we move forward Blistory? By abandoning any fight or protest about women's spaces and women's identity? The "bathroom threat" is also about privacy and dignity. I'm sorry if you feel it's counterproductive to what you personally feel should be the focus and I agree that endless discussion on MN is not the most fruitful thing to do, but I think it's got people to think, and that's a good thing. I'm not really sure what you expect people to do. And with all due respect I think you're actually being quite patronising yourself.

blistory I agree. However I do think should Maria Millers recommendations be implemented we will see a closer alignment between trans activists demands and trans rights, because essentially womanhood = a feeling will be enshrined in law.

I also think there is no discussion about how to move forward because we are being "done to". The IOC, Maria Miller and others are all consulting trans people without also consulting womens groups and so we are getting a recommendations just focussed on one side of the debate and a siege mentality.
Add on top all the policing that goes on when attempts are made to discuss this online or in the media (like the #ifmenhadperiods craziness) and it's not surprising people get very emotionally engaged when they put their points across.

I actually think some open recognition of concerns by those in power would go a long way. What we can do to enable that, o don't know.

I think you misunderstand me, Annie. I'm talking about people, both male or female, who don't really care about that and just want to shut the discussion down. Either because they haven't really thought about and don't want to, or they have an agenda, for whatever reason.

venusinscorpio so who else is the problem? How else should a discriminated-against group (women) act when all the gains they have fought so hard for over the years are being taken away?

And I'm sorry, but I don't think it's only transactivists that are the problem.

There isn't a solution. People are always going to disagree with others about what the focus should be and where lines should be drawn. Even when they agree on other things.

Hairy is spot on. If all mtts wanted to do was live a quiet life without infringing on anyone else's rights we either wouldn't be having this conversation or with a very different emphasis.

However this isn't what's happening. Because trans activism directly damages women's interests, women are impelled to confront and combat the agenda, regardless of the fact that many women know and are friends with trans people in real life.

The deeply troubling issue of transing children is, of course, always going to receive a lot of attention on MN, where so many of us are parents.

I think a lot of the uncritical acceptance of all things trans is common among the young, who see it as cool. They're easily bamboozled by waffle about innate gender identity and brain sex. However posters here, where nearly everyone is adult and most are parents, or would like to be, can't fail to notice how dishonest the claims of trans activists are.

I think part of what we're seeing in these debates is a bit of a disconnect with what's actually being asked. If trans rights are about the right to live free from violence, entitled to work, live and participate in society then it's compatible with feminism. I don't think feminists need to actively campaign for those rights but can be fully supportive.

What some posters are doing is conflating transactivist demands with transrights and people are answering a very different question from the one asked.

I know transactivists are making a noise online, so are a lot of feminists. It's not new, just more accessible given how social media is nowadays. Some of the most vicious, woman hating rhetoric I have ever heard has been from certain sectors of the gay community. They had to learn to moderate their voices and demands in order to make progress. So will the transactivists.

There's also a horrible tendency in some of these debates to attack other women and feminists for their positions and that is hugely damaging to anything credible that's being said. If I, as a feminist, am rearing back and feeling attacked, patronised and am stepping back from engaging, I can sympathise with how others are perceiving it. Posters aren't talking to transactivists on here, they are talking to other MN posters and being dismissive of the rights of others to hold differing views that are just as feminist, just as gender critical and just as valid.

And frankly the accusations that these threads always come back to the same points that focus on vilifying two or three particular transwomen, the bathroom threat, the superiority of being a real woman ( which is rammed home unnecessarily), the animosity towards 'funfems' aren't entirely inaccurate. There is no real discussion about how to move forward. On here we can debate all day long about theoretical rights and wrongs but in the real world we need to find a way to co-exist with individuals who are transgender and even those transactivists.

How nice for them to be able to mind their own business and turn a blind eye to what is happening to women in their name.

Well, that's what males always do, isn't it? There never were more than a handful of males who campaigned for women's rights. So, big surprise. Shows that even the claims by trans to not have had male socialisation are a lot of bullshit, they behave exactly as one would expect from males.

Very true, Bertrand, but while I am pretty anguished about girls and young women who damage their own bodies and quite often shit on women, especially gender nonconforming women and lesbians, on their journey out of femaleness, I don't see them as a threat in quite the same way. The threats to women's spaces, safety, resources, etc are led by men.

There have always been gender nonconforming males, some of whom live and present as women. In the past, both the language was different and the identity politics were different - I cannot recall any of the people I knew who had male bodies but used female pronouns, etc, who would have dreamed of insisting that they were identical to biological women, or that should have priority access to women's space, or lesbian bodies. If this was still the story, and the whole story, there would be no issue. If all trans women respected both their own identities and women's identities in the way a very small number of trans women now publicly do, at great risk to themselves (hi, Miranda, hi, Helen, and thank you both!) there would be no issue at all.

The issue has changed in recent years, and now is anyone with a male body can steal women's space, women's privacy, women's safety, women's energy and women's resources, just by claiming they are women, and not just women, and identical to biological women, but better than women, and more oppressed than women (I don't know how that works, but apparently it does), despite having male bodies, male socialisation, and every scrap of male privilege they have ever acquired. Some of these people are setting the laws so that women are prevented from doing anything about this, and thus decades of women's liberation work is set back.

This is why in the last decade I have changed my mind on trans issues, and while I do consider some trans women my political comrades and siblings (hi, Miranda, hi, Helen!) because they seek rights and safety for all gender nonconforming people without treading women into the ground, I now cannot consider the mainstream trans movement as anything other than a sexist and homophobic threat to a lot of the successes and hard-won freedoms I hold dear.

Yes hairy that's so true, well put

"How nice for them to be able to mind their own business and turn a blind eye to what is happening to women in their name."

Yup, this exactly.

That was to Vashta.

Also I've been reading debates here for a while and I don't like to see the sympathetic and serious nature of discussion dismissed so scornfully. The women here have nailed it without being abusive at all. When I look at the trans stuff online it's really incomparable with the level of debate here.

Or, as I suspect, would you just rather we shut the fuck up and let them get on with it?

YY Hairylittlepoet. I was just about to post something similar but you've put it so much better.

If it's their problem too, perhaps they'd better do something about it. And people like Vashta. I hope she's going around telling these transactivists exactly how mean and prejudiced she thinks they are and writing letters to the government telling them that they shouldn't erase women's rights and status as a protected group.

Hi , no not transphobic, what a shame it came across that way. The reason for my comment wasn't 'because they're trans'. It's because they're not women. I really, really don't want men in women's bathrooms but I wouldn't challenge one directly for the reasons outlined by prawn. Good to you for being ok with men in the loos, that's fine, we are all different, but I'm just not and I think a lot of people would be similar. Part of it is wariness but a big part would be not wanting to embarrass them and show them up. Well look where being nice has got us