Follow on thread III - Feeling sad and weary that feminists and trans-women are constantly pitted against one another.

Caveat - TIFs who have hormone treatment and 'pass' should not be working with the vulnerable as a female, because this might cause distress.

My feeling is that the law needs to be changed around 'gender recogniton' and for it to be legally understood that 'sex change' is impossible.

For clarity I believe before the law a person should remain their birth sex. It is confusing to have humans legally recognised to be metamorphosising butterflies who can completely 'become an entirely new person' leaving their old personality, entire lived life and the 'dead' name (and possible criminal record) that belonged to them behind like a coocoon -and to be viewed and treated that way.

Regarding sport, I think this is something trans people have to forgo competing in unless TIMs compete as their birth sex and TIFs who have not had hormone treatment compete in theirs.

Regarding working with vulnerable people , transpeople should disclose and be recognised as their birth sex. I think it is cruel and abusive for people in positions of power (such as working with the vulnerable) to gaslight those who they have power over.

Perfectly-so you have "no idea" about crime statistics-does that mean you haven't thought about it?

Sport-what does "transitioned" mean in this context?

Care homes- so long as a DBS check has been done, vulnerable should submit to intimate care from male bodies people?

Bertand - Crime stats - I have no idea and I see the point that a MTF trans woman could be recorded as female in a sexual crime.

Sport - I'm with the olympics committee and a person should have transitioned.

Care homes etc - keep the law as it is now. Any trans woman is subject to the same DRB checks as any other woman if they have access to vulnerable people.

Perfectly-what are your thoughts about the gathering of crime statistics, transwomen competing in sport and the issue of intimate care in hospitals and care homes?

iamawoman we might know each other in RL, that would be weird

Just to add that i have posted to facebook to share the sages information and like other posters not one like or comment - that is what scares me the most is that people are too fearful of being accused of being a transphobe to publicly engage in any debate - however i do live in the brighton bubble so .

There seems to be a determination to have an ‘us and them’ mentality on here. You’re either TRA or Rad Fem - nothing in between will do.

There is also a weird determination to back one another up, even if one of you is being unhinged. I wonder what the reaction would have been if I had accused a poster on here of being a pedophile sympathiser? There would have been an outpouring of outrage. Because I’m the ‘enemy’ and one of your gang said it to me, you pretty much all fell over yourselves to excuse it.

(Still waiting for that apology SpartonDregs and RogueBiscuit)

Of course there have been some valid points on here, why would I bother to engage otherwise? Guardian is right, I am a woman and a feminist with a lot of trans friends and genuinely want to find a place where I can be loyal to both sides without one throwing the other under a bus. And yes I do live in Brighton which probably makes me more invested than most.

If I agree with one of you, you could call it cognitive dissonance / goady fuckery or you could say it’s me going ‘okay, I see your point, what about this?’

For example, the concerns about AGP are valid. Yes some men do have a fetish for wearing women’s clothes. Someone intelligently pointed out that no decent man would insist on changing in a female changing room. I thought ‘hmmm good point’ so why not the enhanced DRB checks for MTF trans women as part of the GRC process? No decent trans woman would object to that, it would protect vulnerable women and be something concrete to propose to MPs

But because I’m not one of you, nobody will agree because it means losing face on here. I’m not one of you, I’m one of ‘them’ I’m a goady fucker, a trans ally wanting my ticket to the rubber ball. it’s a lot more comfortable for you to see me as the ‘enemy’ rather than a woman, just like you, who just wants to find a solution!

Perfectly is definitely living in a Brighton queer/ trans bubble. It’s good to see that she is venturing out of the echo chamber, even if resistant. I have similar sides retaining clear sightedness - the student bubble is very similar and weirdly fearful of critical thinking - it’s essentially a given to support the most vulnerable in any social group, and young people struggling with gender dysphoria / sexuality/ being targeted for being socially not-co forming is practically a law. And of course there is a strong ‘we are all in this together’ motif - which just doesn’t get examined critically. There are no checks as to who is being thrown under the bus, just practically an unwritten law which obliterates anyone who questions the dominant trans ideology ‘the most vulnerable, the most special, the most in need’.
For perfectly to think clearly about this will lead to internal conflict and guilt about not towing the dominant line with her friends,
But hey, perfectly, it is ‘perfectly’ possible to not believe a person can change sex and still have trans friends it really is. You just have to see what is really going on and call out the obvious emperors new clothes shit.
I don’t think she’s strong enough. Too invested in her created identity as Brighton queer. It’s hard to question your own delusion when continuing to play the game is far easier and gets you a beer with a lot of fun guys in dresses. If you behave right, they even take you along to the rubber ball as an ally. Hard to deny the AGP aspects at that point

Datun my suggestion would be trans women are given an enhanced DBS / CRB check as part of the GRC process and if anything shows up they should be banned from using female facilities or having access to vulnerable women

Holy shit! Please tell us the reactions of your Tim friends when you said this.

I admit to being gobsmacked that perfectly of all people would have the nerve to say they expect an apology for being maligned.

Am so heartened to see the replies from not just the usual suspects but also the lurkers/non regulars like boyslikepink. Makes me feel the tide really could be turning, along of course with the announcement from Justine Greening.

GuardianLions I hope you’re right in your assessment of perfectly and I think you might well be. I must say in all my time on MN (nearly a decade now) I’ve never come across anyone who contradicted themselves so much, so frequently and so bizarrely. It doesn’t make sense. It can only be extreme cognitive dissonance or extreme goady fuckery. I hope it’s the former.

I did once meet someone from Brighton who seemed to come from a similar bubble to the one perfectly perhaps inhabits. Despite being lefty and right on, a mother and a working woman, she claimed never to have experienced even the slightest HINT of sexism in her entire life, not a whisper - a phenomenon I usually associate with more right wing types. The only thing she was baffled by was the pay gap, the existence of which she couldn’t deny. But how? she seemed to be asking, how is it possible for that to be the case in this wonderful sexism-free, egalitarian world we are lucky enough to now live in?

Anyway, she was a fully paid-up member of the transwomen-are-women brigade, and was duly disgusted at my terfiness, but I was aghast at her lack of ability to reality check. God knows how much mental energy it took her to maintain the cognitive dissonance required to believe that sexism no longer exists or exerts any influence over our world. But if you can convince yourself of that I guess you can also convince yourself that biological reality is meaningless and has played no part in the oppression of women since time immemorial.

Am rambling. Many glasses have been downed tonight. Just wanted to raise another glass to you, vocal Spartacus women and silent lurkers alike. Pencils and Datun am nodding my head along to pretty much all of what you write as usual, and UpABitLate you said something I’ve been thinking for a long time and have tried to articulate myself:

It's part of this idea about "cis privilege" which puts women in the same type of group as white, and men in the same type of group as black. So women saying they don't want people with dicks doing whatever is the same a white people and segregation.

How they have the gall to say that women in the world are in an equivalent power position to white people in a racist society is beyond me buy hey-ho.

Yes!!! It’s just so outrageous, isn’t it; its so plainly and obviously bullshit and yet it’s wheeled out constantly as if it were a genuinely valid parallel, as if it were a real “gotcha!”. Those who seek to shut down debate on the grounds of “hate speech” - this is the real hate speech. This denial of women’s material reality, of our position in society, of misogyny and sexism; this is hate.

Ramble/rant over. I should probably have called in at the Bluestocking.

Pass the port, Marjorie.

Well done for sharing it boyslike and I too have had exactly the same experience on social media sharing that kind of thing - no 'likes' - but sudden phonecalls from someone desperately wanting to speak about it in private.
Well done to you.

I posted the Helen steel speech on Facebook where she talks about her experiences and how the GRA will affect women. I used the caption "if you value your mothers, daughters and granddaughters rights, please listen to this and have a think" it didn't gain many likes, it had a few 😮 But I've had at least 10 people discuss the issue with me. All of them have been in agreement and disgusted, the sad thing is most are too worried about speaking up! Somebody said to me "that woman in the vid was close to tears, made me well up, I've never thought about it that way" the general public are oblivious!

Sorry to talk about you like you aren't in the room Perfectly but I see Perfectly, as someone who is quite personally invested in the trans/queer thing, living in Brighton, drinking in the Marlborough.

I can imagine that being confronted with the coherent, clear-headed realism in FWR would trouble one's emotive experience of loyalty and solidarity in being different/queer - and some fairly wide wavering would be inevitable... So I don't necessarily think the difficulty grasping perfectly's actual position necessarily means perfectly is deliberately being slippery.

Half the women on the left have become gender critical feminists, whether they are open about it or not.

The other half are the ones who can't think critically and go along with what the powerful leaders tell them.

From the garbled confusion of perfectly's posts, her ignorance and her reticence to undertake independent research, shows she clearly lies in the latter half.

We are the real left.

Special thanks to anybody who is speaking out about what's happening with children. I find it really difficult because I get so enraged I can't argue coherently.

Thanks for delurking boyslike. That is really crap about your DC being gaslighted at school

Boyslikepinkgirlslikeblue - One by one people are waking up to what's going on and it feels like we are at last accelerating towards the tipping point at which we can have a proper debate. Thank you for being brave and starting the conversation with people. It's incredibly valuable

Just wanted to add the whole reason i began researching this subject was my autistic child came home from school and told me a girl in his class was now a boy. The teachers told him to refer to her as "they" It did not sit right with me, especially as kids with autism don't pick up on social cues/norms. Therefore will not conform to gender stereotypes. Autistic people with no learning disabilities have a life expectancy of 42. Mental health and suicide, I'm well aware of the comparison trans/autism. There is a you tuber called peachy yoghurt when I first began looking into all of this, she spoke the truth and I've ended up here, again thank you

"anyone not willing to support the status quo is called a TRA, a troll, a sea lion and a pedophile sympathiser"

You have learned nothing else?

No understanding of why women might be worried about this issue? No insight into concerns about AGP? No recognition that what you have called transphobia is genuine support for children in particular that are being negatively impacted by the trans rights movements.?

Upthread I was a tad concerned about your ability to read, considering how you misinterpreted so many posts. Now I think you can read, and you can understand, you just don't want to.

Which confuses me somewhat

Yet another lurker here who has been following these threads for over a year now. I have signed up specifically to thank all of you women who are trying their hardest to protect female people's rights, I'm very grateful. My eyes have been well and truly opened. Please keep at it! It's working slowly but surely. I've "peak transed" a lot of women and men by reminding people of reality. The public are not on board with the trans agenda at all. It's scary how laws are almost being quietly passed without sufficient information being presented to the public. The truth is important, reality is important. Women are important, children are important. I'm all for live and let live, but nobody's rights should be more important than anyone else's. If you had asked me a couple of years ago I would have told you feminism was a load of crap, we don't need it any more, we have equal rights. I've done a lot of research over the past year. The word feminism has been twisted. Radical feminism is the true type of feminism as it aims to elevate women and liberate us. It's based in logic. I just want to thank you all for sticking with this, keeping your cool and sticking up for women! Once again, thank you all. People have been draw dropping shocked when I have explained the proposed changes to the GRA and how that influences every day life. The public do not realise!

Oh right, the usual 'FWR bully anyone with an opposing view' thing.

It's weird though, I also have a strange admiration for perfectly's persistence but after all these 2000+ posts I still have no fucking clue what her view actually is

One minute she seems to broadly agree with us, the next she's suggesting restrictions none of us had thought of or would support (extra DBS checks?) then she's calling us bloody ridiculous, scaremongering and mean-spirited. Then a couple of posts later she appears to be agreeing with us again and round and round we go.

You are the master of the disingenuous bait and switch

Yes. This is the impression I have of you too, perfectly. I'm only still engaging because your posts are useful to bounce ideas off.