We act from deep and well-thought-out conviction. But...

how long before women (not real, not cis, just women) feel obliged to cover up for self-preservation? If self-serving, self-aggrandising TIMs, with no true interest in sisterhood with women, get to define 'woman', how long before such dress codes become obligatory?

Well, In America, TRAs protested about women wearing pink pussy hats on a women's March ( a symbol of women's resistance to Trump ) as they felt it excluded them. How fucking dare they?
If they are so upset and offended by knitted hats, what's not to say that they will start to claim that seeing the outline of a woman's breasts etc is too triggering for them and we all have to cover up...?

www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/01/22/the-womens-march-was-made-unsafe-by-anti-trans-signs-and-pussy-hats/

Oh I think that was me with the link to the Scottish football forum. It was a good thread and men discussing the Emperor's New Clothes does seem to carry more weight. As I said at the time, when this issue starts to affect straight men there'll be recognition.

Eugenics was viewed as progressive and a solution to social problems at one point last century. (If you are Toby Young, it still is).

Medical ethics arose out of the idea 'do not harm' which forced doctors to stop and think about whether their intervention was actually in the best interest of the patient.

None intervention, is the default position, in the absence of evidence.

Given we are not properly studying the outcomes of trans patients and the possibility of de-transitioning, this should set off alarms.

Why?

Because in effect everyone going through this is being experimented on by its very nature. Not explicitly stating this, and not recording the long term effects on those who undergo intervention is both immoral and irresponsible.

We also know that allowing people to self-medicate is a bad idea. Yet this is actively encouraged by trans activists.

Add to this, children in particular are being encouraged to be sterilised. How can you say that a child is making an informed decision without being under duress when the science isn't there to support it, because the research has never been done?

Coerced or compulsory sterilisation has a very murky history.

So for me, if this was about rights and being progressive, then it wouldn't merely be about 'feelings'. It would be about trying to show the medical benefits in an impartial and unemotional way. It would be honest that, there is rarely a one size fits all solution here.

Not to mention that if you self ID and don't have surgery then that does put you into a different category simply because of the physical differences between the sexes and how that puts women at risk of abuse or attack. Which is why, accurate and detailed reporting and recording of crime along sex not gender lines is so important.

All that makes it wildly different to women getting the vote and decriminalising homosexuality.

Its also without looking at a whole range of other issues relating to the subject, which are harmful to women.

To answer this straight and without getting into particular debates:

I am not appalled that in different times people worked from a different set of assumptions.

My ancestors are thought to have been cannibals according to reports I read about Cheddar Man. I'm not appalled at this thought.

I do detest shaming. So using lines on people like "you're on the wrong side of history".
That's manipulation in the present and leaves me feeling appalled!

Oh, and Pink News is just a bunch of blokes who hate women. Nobody takes them seriously as "representing the community".

SomeRandomBird I was part of Stonewall when it first began. I've since broken with them over this issue, as they are throwing lesbians (and indeed all women) under the bus. They also have a "trans inclusion officer" who claims never to have met anyone who has detransitioned, which - since there are plenty, and it's an important issue in our community - means either they are lying, or that they are really shit at their job.

Personally, I welcome and embrace any trans person as long as they don't expect me to go along and submit to a belief system that erases lesbians, bisexuality and gay men, and as long as they don't attempt to steal women's privacy, resources and safety from them.

Stonewall, Mind Out, Pink News, Pride, Kaleidoscope ... all the leading LGB organisations positively embrace the T. In fact can you point me to one that doesn't?

the majority of LGBs welcome and embrace

I don't know how you can say that with a straight face.

The trans ideology contradicts homosexuality on the most profound level.

Gay men are now expected to have sex with people who have female anatomy, and lesbians with people who have male anatomy.

Of course, gay men are not being put under any kind of pressure, by transmen, because transmen have no power, and aren't socialised to dominate.

Lesbians on the other hand, are subjected to the same old, same old narrative of lesbian men demanding sex. See cotton ceiling. See the thread on here from lesbians who are being persecuted.

The T has colonised the LGB, just as much as it has everywhere else.

It's the opposite. We are the suffragettes. All the women chanting TW ARE WOMEN are the ones who'd have said 'it's fine I don't want to vote anyway'

There's nothing good about this movement. It's promoting medicalisation and surgical alteration of healthy bodies. It's very pornified. It promotes restrictive gender stereotypes. It advocates removing yourself from those who know you and love you most if they express any concerns. It advocates lying to your family, doctors etc to get what you want. It feels like a cult to me.

Particularly WRT transing children!

Exactly. History is rarely on the side of people who mutilate healthy bodies and sterilise children.

Comparing paedophiles piggy backing on the gay movement to trans people piggy backing on the gay movement had one big difference - the majority of LGBs welcome and embrace trans people while paedophilia was never accepted or mainstream.

I also haven't heard of any parents, white or black, who seek out hormone blockers for their children lightly.

Nope.

Head... desk...

The hijab is illustrative of the point that history doesn't always go forwards towards greater liberalism. Of course we all know it's more complicated than just the hijab alone, don't be bloody daft (or deliberately disingenuous). It's symbolic, okay? Women in Afghanistan used to be able to have careers, go out without a male chaperone, practice medicine, go to school... and go around unveiled. Now they can't. Human rights they used to have have now been removed from them.

The point Upstart and I are making with this example is that just because a group of people at a certain later time look back on how things used to be and say "they were different back then" doesn't mean things are automatically better at the later time - because there are concrete examples of things getting worse. Hence "being on the right side of history" is a painfully naive thing to say about history.

The second point though is that that the analogies transactivists make with women getting the vote, or with overcoming homophobia, should not be taken at face value. Women getting the vote did not take anything from men. Transactivism does take things from women (the right to ask for a medical practitioner of the same sex, the right not to be housed in prison with people of the opposite sex, the right of free association, the right to play sports against people of the same sex... the list is fucking endless). Also transactivism should not be compared to the fight for gay rights because a huge amount of transactivism is deeply homophobic (the cotton ceiling rape culture, the "trans-away-the-gay" approach to children who are non gender conforming).

I think transgender advocacy will be viewed by history the way we view prefrontal lobotomy and Dr Mengele's experiments.

Afghanistan and Iran are infinitely more complicated than just a protest against a hijab, and I also don't really see what the hijab has to do with your recognition of a person's gender status.

I think there are two points here.

One is that it is equally likely people will look back in 40 years time on the transing of children on the back of a transactivist movement trying to piggy-back on gay rights, and see it as akin to the moment in the 1970s when PIE (the Paedophile Information Exchange) tried to piggy-back on gay rights.

The second thing is this naive Whiggish view of history which sees history as going somewhere and always progressing. It doesn't. (See Upstart's excellent point about women in Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the 1970s wearing miniskirts and no headscarves.) In the words of Alan Bennett's working-class character in The History Boys it's just one fucking thing after another (actually a very clever joke about historiography!)

I think it's incredibly important we look at this and consider our place in history and question whether we are right or wrong, bulldozing over everything and shouting No Debate is unhelpful to either side. I was going to say a good scientist always questions and is ready for new evidence and willing to change their opinion but a good scientist also knows their biology.

From that piece "the cultural fear at the time, that if women got the vote, they may then ask to be allowed to stand for Parliament and this is going to upset the whole gender order" is as relevant now as it was then, we got the vote, we became politicians and lawyers and members of the board and surgeons and upset the patriarchies idea of the whole gender order and they've been trying to push us back down ever since. This is just another manifestation of that, nothing has changed.

Oh, the number of times a day I peak trans at the moment, never, ever, thought I'd use the words 'the patriarchies'. I don't even know if I spelt it correctly.

southboundagain SomeRandomBird

What do women in Iran and Afghanistan think? They protested against the hijab and they lost.

I have wondered that. I think that while the majority of women (globally) are treated as leas than second class citizens the trans thing is just not an issue that feminists need to engage with other than demonstrate its idiocy.

Also biology is a big factor to why I think we are on the right side of the debate.

I agree with SomeRandomBird.