I have more stupid questions

I think the trans lobby has made the inroads it has for a number of reasons. A lot of TRAs are in well paid jobs, often in IT. Some are extremely wealthy. So there's no shortage of campaign money.

Then there's their timing. With the achievement of gay marriage, the big LGB organizations needed a new focus. People working at the top of such organizations didn't want to lose their high profile, well paid jobs. Trans rights neatly filled that gap. The trans lobby picked up on key tools of the gay rights movement, particularly the "born this way" mantra.

Transgender children are vital to the trans agenda. They can be used to suggest that being trans is innate and to distract from the far less savoury truth that many men transition as a result of sexual fetish.

I hope that what we see happening with so-called transgender children will finally explode the bullshit that is trans activism. What is happening to teenagers is grossly irresponsible. It's medically dangerous and it's also a form of gay reparative therapy. Online it's easy to find trans discussion groups where underage kids are being encouraged to transition and directed to sources of illegal cross sex hormones.

Then there's Tumblr and other social media, where kids are egging each other on to be the very specialist snowflake. A recent post described a school year group in the UK in which there were five FtMs. These kids aren't trans, they're part of a vogue, but it's a fashion that puts them far more risk than being an emo or a goth ever did. I hope that like the common pose of bisexuality in my teens it's something that fades like Scotch mist in adult life.

Albadross, the answer to your question is that TRA don't have robust, factual replies to these questions. This is why their main responses to challenge are first to waffle and invent facts then, if the questioner persists, to shut down debate, to silence and to claims of transphobia. If blocking, silencing and insults don't do the trick, TRAs typically move on to rape threats and instructions to "Die in a fire, cis scum."

There are no cohesive, logical answers to your questions, so you will never get them. Watch out for debates between transwomen and gender critical feminists. You won't see one because every time one is promoted the transwoman drops out at the last minute. Transwomen will never expose themselves to factual scrutiny.

You're absolutely right. A man can no more know what being a woman is like than I can know what being a man feels like. The difference is that I wouldn't dream of being so presumptuous as to think I could know anything about being a man. It seems to me the very nature of being trans objectifies the other sex. It exhibits arrogance and lack of respect.

OP, I assumed that you were relatively new and wanted wanted a real and accurate answer to your question. It appears I was wrong.

*they, not I

'A guy called Helen' and Miranda Yardley I what I would call genuine transwomen. They know they are not women, but they feel more comfortable living as one. They have no interest in eroding women's rights. Far from it.

Helen said on her blog to TRAs - 'if you want women to stop seeing you as in entitled, abusive men, stop acting like it' (or words to that effect).

PS more reasonable transwomen will tell you they have gender dysphoria and they feel more comfortable performing the role of a woman. They don't say they are actually women and I have no interest in accessing women's spaces.

Albadross

The answer you will get is that they have always felt female inside. They gravitated towards female childhood friends, liked wearing girls clothes and felt happier playing with dolls. When you point out that many women don't do this, and therefore it's not a definition of women, they will then perhaps move on to gender dysphoria, how they hated their developing bodies. This also doesn't bear scrutiny, as many trans people do not have gender dysphoria.

It is impossible to get an answer about why they feel like a woman. It is just a feeling. Of course they can't feel like something they have never experienced, nor will they ever, ever experience what it is like to actually be a woman as they don't have the biology. So you're left with stereotyped behaviour and a feeling.

This is one of the reasons why many people think it is a mental illness.

And of course a lot of people who now call themselves trans, in old money would be called transvestite fetishists.

If you ask a transwoman what is a woman, they will say a woman is anyone who says they are. You could also try asking them, if they are women, what are the similarities between them and you. That's simply not answered and you will get blocked.

If you ever get a proper answer, please let me know.

Of course you can ask questions OP! I have found that most people are happy to answer such questions. And sometimes you don't even have to ask. TRA forums already have threads where transpeople discuss their thoughts, feelings and experiences.

is there really nobody trans who has a decent argument?

There probably are trans people who have very good arguments, but they are not here. The majority of the answers that you will get here are from an ideologically opposite pov to TRAs.

I'm sorry, but I think this encouragement of MTF trans is so fucking damaging.
Ok, I mean, people are people, do what makes you happy or whatever, but it just enforces gender stereotypes, I though as a society we were supposed to be moving away from gender stereotypes, but apparently all it takes to be a woman is fancying wearing make up, high heels and a dress

Trans Activists don't umderstand the difference between sex and gender. You can be a man who prefers 'female gendered' activity, thpughts, behaviours etc , and vice versa whilst still being the biological sex you are.

Trans people confuse having behaviour, thoughts, feeling that are gendered the other sex's also wamt that to be regarded as changing sex, which is bollocks.

The problem i have with this, is it limits the growth of say men to become more emotional, or women more analytical say, because it fights to pigeonhole gendered behaviour thoughts and feelings and align them with sex..and then reject it.. which actually reinforces and polarises gendered behaviour and ties it to sex.

We jave progressed an awful long way to allow men to have previously female gendered thoughts, behaviours, feelings, and women to exhibit and use male thoughts, behaviours, feelings without it de sexing, or changing sex. Now, because of a feeling that men had advantages that women deserved, we see many negative behaviours gendered as male behaviours, and condemned, and many positive behavious as female gendered behaviours, and celebrated...ostensibly in an attempt to equalise the balance, but in fact this means thing like a man who doesnt feel like he is a violent abusive thug starts to feel he isnt a 'man' and a woman who doesnt feel smart beautiful sassy and collaborative starts to reject not just feminine gendered behaviours but actually being a woman.

hth

Yes but Dione if you ask transactivists and you get the form of words slightly wrong you will be told you are a bigot and roundly abused. I would stay well away personally. There are plenty of nice reasonable transwomen around but most of them give social media a wide berth for exactly that reason.

It's a tricky one to answer because the transactivist argument bears up to no scrutiny at all, but I think it's along these lines

• there are innate sex based brain differences between men and women. MTT have ladybrain and are born in the wrong body
• but sex and biology and just social constructs anyway and feelings and gender identity are the thins which are real. So whatever you feel is what you are. As long as this is limited to sex. It's doesn't apply to race or species
• if you identify as female you are what a female is and have always been female (hence some men insisting they are lesbians with a "female penis" with an utterly straight face). Any lesbian refusing to have sex with this ladystick is a transphobic bigot
• anyone who disagrees with any of this is also a transphobic bigot, responsible for all violence against trans people and indeed genocide. This then justifies issuing rape and death threats because knowing that men aren't women is the same as violence, literally.

I don't think it's a stupid question OP. I think that if you want a question answered from a TRA perspective, asking it on a TRA site would be a good place to start. Asking it here is a bit like asking a Tory forum what a Corbinista thinks.

I think that's a very valid question to ask OP. I have no idea as I've never felt like that. I do genuinely think that there are certain pp who feel like they've been born in the wrong body and for them it's a source of great distress. I've personally known a few trans people ( NOT transactivists ) and I have the utmost compassion and respect for them. I have a friend who has spent £15k on facial feminisation surgery as she just wants to ' pass' as a woman in her daily life. Many pp take decades to come to terms with how they feel which is why you see many pp transitioning in their 40s as they feel they can no longer live a lie.

I could tell you how I answer the question, from my personal feminist position. No idea what a TRA would say.