How do you stand up for what's right when the abuse you receive for it is terrifying?

Thanks TalkingintheDark. I look forward to hearing about even more amazing progress for women in the next few years - all for women with penises but that just makes it even more progressive!

Piss off.

Grow a spine.

I think if you google "Chloe Allen" you'll find the armed forces case you were looking for. I can't bear to look at it again, I just can't deal with the lies and double think. Britain's first "female" infantry solider, revealed "she" was born a boy. No shit, Sherlock. It's not like the photos would have given any clue.

Thanks - I'm trying to keep a note now of relevant articles/information so that I can refer to them as examples.

I know plenty of people do eventually change their mind on this issue so it's worth persevering (where it is safe to do so) - even if it does feel like hitting your head against a brick wall most of the time.

Rumandraisin1 I think the first article you want is this one.

Increasing number of female sex offenders; the photo is Lisa Hauxley who also uses names Lisa Lacey, Lisa Hauxwell, Craig Hauxwell
www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/truth-female-sex-offenders/

While we're discussing links to share, can anyone point me in the right direction of a couple of articles that I remember seeing (and despairing about) but can't find again because I can't remember the full details:

• a newspaper article stating that statistics showed that women were committing an increasing number of violent crimes/murders where all the examples given were MTT but with absolutely no reference to the fact that they were MTT and that this might actually explain the statistics
• the MTT who was the first 'woman' ever to achieve a certain position in the armed forces - when it was something they were only able to achieve because they were a man. (It was a big story but I can't remember the name).

OlennasWimple
This is quite good, the article is in plain English, and links to the study.

www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-no-male-female-brain-20151130-story.html
Using several criteria, they repeatedly found that consistently male or consistently female brains were rare, and brains with features related to both genders were common.

There is no sharp division between male and female brains, according to researchers who found that we are all a mixture.
www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/30/brain-sex-men-from-mars-women-venus-not-so-says-new-study

Brains are also very plastic and adaptive, this study is about recovery from strokes but there are other examples including London cab drivers.
scienmag.com/brains-are-more-plastic-than-we-thought/

Spoke about it recently to quite a few folk - everyone (bar 1) was silently and not so silently critical. Most folk don't buy the whole nonsense the TAs are pushing.

I stuck my head above the parapet recently commenting on a "pink brains" post. I wish I hadn't... (Does anyone have a good link to a scientific paper refuting that gubbins, in case I get brave again and go back there?)

Lol. You could post this, saying you are going to lobby your kids school to include this in the ciriculum to educate the kids on Trans inclusion.

You could join them and share some ridiculous examples. Like congratulate Laurel Hubbard, Gabrielle Ludwig and Fallon Fox for doing do much for TW in sport - with some pics.

Yeah, that's what I sometimes do - instead of opposing them, join them, and write things like:

"The Wonder Woman movie is transphobic! As if any woman living on an island with no men would never have seen a penis! Transwomen are women! And there's no cotton ceiling in Wonder Woman's panties! Also, she's a transwoman!"

You could join them and share some ridiculous examples. Like congratulate Laurel Hubbard, Gabrielle Ludwig and Fallon Fox for doing do much for TW in sport - with some pics.

Or ask them to start a petition in support of TW Tiffany Scott to not be misgendered and be moved to a women's prison.

www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/scottish-news/1492364/transgender-prisoner-tiffany-scott-andrew-burns-dangerous-sheriff/

An acquaintance of mine, who I thought was a sensible feminist type, posted a link on Facebook to a charity which donates sanitary products to foodbanks. She added an entirely unnecessary proviso that "not all women have periods (true enough) and not all people who have periods are women (erm...)" but this apparently wasn't enough and before long there were comments to the effect that the charity was "transphobic af" because they dared to use the word "women" on their literature. I was about to chime in on the side of the charity when the OP did this big grovelly apology for posting it in the first place and agreeing that it was "problematic". On reflection I was glad I didn't comment as I'd been planning to. I really hate all this language policing that only seems to apply to women - feminist women - but I don't feel like I have the mental strength and energy to argue the toss with people who are basically intellectually bankrupt.

How do they know who to kill.

That is the best question. This hormone wash nonsense, this pink/blue brain garbage, none of this matters when the people sex-selectively aborting choose who to kill (and I say people here, not women, because in the places where this is happening, the women don't have the free choice we do here)

Wait till it starts affecting them personally - their daughter loses out to a TW in sport or such.

A common reaction to the realisation that they don't really have a gender identity is to assign themselves "agender" or "non-binary".

It's not really funny I know but if I don't laugh I'll cry. I do think many people think that in order to support Trans people you have to buy into the TRA agenda hook, link and sinker. Let's keep chipping away at those people - show them it's not the case. It does get very tiresome.

That's what Twitter, Reddit, mumsnet (netmums is very anti terf) is for - you can stay anonymous. I don't get politicsl on FB. It's my fun friendly, pics of the kids place.

You're right of course DonkeySkin. I guess I just let exasperation get to me sometimes. The value is, I suppose, in pointing out biological facts to those who see the posts but have never given it any thought before.

I suppose I find it difficult to understand how anyone could even give any credence to such patent absurdity in the first place!

to clarify, I ask those questions of non-trans people.

I found that a number of people who did not particularly feel "like a woman" had zero problems at all siding with violent TRAs.

A common reaction to the realisation that they don't really have a gender identity is to assign themselves "agender" or "non-binary".

to clarify, I ask those questions of non-trans people.

When people talk at me about how trans people feel female and are therefore women I simply ask them "biology aside, how do you FEEL like a man?" or "biology aside, how do you FEEL like a woman?".

No one has ever given a convincing answer to this question! Simply because it is unanswerable. It certainly gets them scratching their heads and thinking a little more.

whoputthecatout, you're right that you can't debate with TRAs. But you can call them out on their obvious bullshit, and point out their lies and gaslighting for the benefit of others, especially women, who might be reading.

It's imperative that we don't allow sexist and incoherent gender identity dogma to go unchallenged in the public arena. The best way to counter it is not by getting into long and fraught arguments with TRAs, but to make short, clear statements of fact in response to the lies, and to point out the blatant sexism of gender identity ideology.

E.g, 'There is no way to 'feel' female, because it is a biological fact, not a feeling-state or a personality type.' Or, 'Sex is material reality, gender is socially constructed sex roles'. If they try to pull out the intersex argument (and they will), don't get into long debates about the intricacies of intersex. Just point out that intersex isn't trans, and the fact that a small number of people have disorders of sexual development doesn't mean that human sexual reproduction isn't binary; the analogy would be some people are born without legs, but humans are still a bipedal species. Nor does the existence of intersex people mean that men can become women via hormones, surgery or claiming to have a 'woman feeling' in their heads.

Short of not caring if you lose all your friends and have your reputation destroyed, how do you fight this bullshit?

You can't.

I am very careful about talking about it in real life, and have ceased to socialize with idiots who support transagenda (without telling them why).

Online, you use a pseudonym, because TRAs are violent and dangerous, and you don't want them to know where you live, you don't want them to know where you work.

And then you go into the fight with the mindset that all "friends" you would lose by speaking the truth are not worth keeping.

I know it hurts, but you then also know who your real friends are.

she's a libfem ally who hasn't critically thought things through

I do think feminism can be a journey of learning and awakening. Not too many of us are born "perfect" feminists. I would absolutely link to sexandgenderintro.com/

If she is in any way engaged with feminism I think she would read it at least. Plant some seeds!!