Can we find a good historical analogy to the trans debate

Myunicorn, if you fancied it....

ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/xsp/.ibmmodres/domino/OpenAttachment/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/4825657B0C7E6BF0C12563CD002D6B0B/FULLTEXT/GC-I-EN.pdf
Penis = no results

ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/xsp/.ibmmodres/domino/OpenAttachment/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/2F5AA9B07AB61934C12563CD002D6B25/FULLTEXT/GC-II-EN.pdf
Penis = no results

ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/xsp/.ibmmodres/domino/OpenAttachment/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/77CB9983BE01D004C12563CD002D6B3E/FULLTEXT/GC-III-EN.pdf
Penis = no results

ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/xsp/.ibmmodres/domino/OpenAttachment/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/AE2D398352C5B028C12563CD002D6B5C/FULLTEXT/ATTXSYRB.pdf
Penis = no results

"I guess that means we are at war and live in a conflict zone"

See, delusions of persecution...

Thanks for the new name, red

I can't be buggered to search the Geneva Convention, I know damn well it has no mention in it about women having penises. It's like the constant 'it's about human rights' - no it isn't. Human Rights are specific, drawn up, set things, and there is NOTHING in there about the right to force others to validate your refusal to accept biological fact.

There is no point trying to engage rationally with arguments and people so disconnected from reality and fact, this is extreme mental instability and delusional thinking running rampant. Paranoia is in here, narcissism is in here, it's pathological.

Red

Also interesting to look at the social context of the salem witch trials.

Supposedly sensible people in authority drawn into believing unquestioningly that someone was a witch on the flimsiest of irrational claims. Boundaries of behaviour and social standards were pushed to extremes within the context of the panic: some appalling things done to people, particularly to women.

Led by teenagers within a specific social context, with unmet mental health needs/ anger against adults/ issues with relationships, who fed off each other with social contagion involved.

Appeared quickly, became overwhelming, huge price paid by ordinary people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Faded away almost as quickly as it appeared, now looked back on with disbelief as to how rational adults got so sucked in so quickly and appeared temporarily to believe the most stupid, irrational things because of het up teenagers and the social climate of the time.

Bloody norah, there is no end to the stupid, is there, Red (not to mention the hideously inappropriate nature of that particular tweet).

I don't think women don't have penises. I know women don't have penises.

Can anyone add to it?

How's this?

Veronica Martian‏ @ProudTransWoman
People, there are actually women out there who think that women don't have penises. This is against the Geneva Convention. What next? Trans prison camps?

War Time Prisoners both military and civilian. The Geneva Convention is specifically about all war and conflict zones. I guess that means we are at war and live in a conflict zone (Does this then imply that this individual thinks this is an armed struggle?)

Musn't forget

Female gymnasts who were victims of sexual abuse

This is a list of groups I've seen TRAs appropriate in recent months in their quest to prove biological sex is not a thing.

Women
Children
Intersex
Gay
Lesbian
Bi
Disabled
WOC
Native Indian
Thai Ladyboys
Jewish
Various animals and amphibians

Can anyone add to it?

Or the rise of fascism in Italy.

Cassandra is a good one.

I often think of stories in Terry Pratchet books where no one can see the obvious, because it is not what they want to see.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra

We are all Cassandras.

Instead of 'I, Spartacus' we should use 'I, Cassandra'.

Sometimes I feel like this is a bit like the rise of Nazi Germany. Watching your rights being taken away bit by bit and laws being passed and then it’s too late to do anything about them. And most pp not seeing what’s going on in front of their very eyes!

"Can anyone help me with a way to explain to ds how opposition to the the transwomen are women narrative isn’t using all the same arguments that were previously used against homosexuals?"

As a lesbian myself, when I was younger, it was common to hear people (mostly males) thinking it was unnatural for women to not want to have sex with someone with a penis.
Nowadays, TRAs are saying exactly the same thing...........

Old days (from lesbians to all and sundry) 'I'm attracted to who I'm attracted, and that is fine'.
Nowadays (to lesbians, from TRAs) 'You're attracted to who you are attracted to and it is wrong' (you nasty vagina fetishists you!).

Gay people weren't saying they were the same as straight people, they were saying they were different, but of equal worth (and might want to hang out amongst others of their own kind). Whereas TRAs are trying to stomp into someone elses spaces and demanding to be let in. It's the difference, in effect, between demanding to get into someone elses straight wedding, and asking to be allowed to have your own specifically gay and far more fabulous one! My lesbian marriage doesn't effect your straight wedding in the least, it takes away nothing from you (apart from meaning a bit more competition for bookings of wedding venues!). Whereas TRAs, again, don't want to organise their own specific trans spaces set up for their own particular needs, but instead want to invade existing women-only spaces.

(as regards 'invasion' BTW, it was always straight folks and particularly hen nights trying to invade gay spaces, or straight men trying to invade lesbian nights. Now TRAs are trying to do the same thing.).

Best argument though is perhaps the many lesbians and gay men who are against the current TRA narrative. How did they supposedly go from oppressed minority, to being the bad guys? Why would drag queens, fags, and dykes have an issue with TRAs (and many of them do).
Plus, TRAs are being naughty co-opting someone elses struggle to try and support their own. As they also do trying to co-opt the issues that intersex people have (who have repeatedly asked to be left out of that argument please, since intersex organisations campaign to refuse surgery on infants and children unless absolutely necessary, whereas TRAs seem to be arguing for the opposite, with surgical/medical intervention as soon as possible.).

It would be like gay men forcing straight men to see male homosexuality as the only acceptable sexual orientation and demanding to sleep with them. It's a boundary transgression that only one party is ok with.

It's similar with gender... TIMs are seeking to force women to self define by gender rather than sex. This then means that spaces (public toilets, leisure centre showers, prisons, refuges etc) are allocated on a gender basis, which I repudiate.

They are saying "I am the same class as you, I am coming in" (gender).

I do not have the same right to say back "I am not the same class as you, get out of my space" (sex)

It's assymetric boundary transgression.

The power differential reflects existing structural imbalances between the respective classes.

Women have never been allowed to say no to men.

Boundaries are considered bigoted in this brave new world of identity politics, neoliberalism in disguise, but actually they are essential in civil rights to protect the oppressed groups from their oppressors.

Can anyone help me with a way to explain to ds how opposition to the the transwomen are women narrative isn’t using all the same arguments that were previously used against homosexuals?

They're not identical, obviously, but it's hard for a rational, compassionate person not to see the parallels.

Aftershock - the answer to that (although this is highly simplified) is that the gay and lesbian movement wanted to have equal rights to other people - ie the ability to marry the person they love.

There was no attempt to take rights from another group or to have the rights of another protected group changed to accommodate them.

They, rightly, wanted their own set of laws and legal rights that made them equal to all others.

The trans community also have the right to be equal - but not at the expense of another protected group.

Reminds me a lot of factions against the gay community up to the 90s and Section 28. We hear very different views looking back.

Can anyone help me with a way to explain to ds how opposition to the the transwomen are women narrative isn’t using all the same arguments that were previously used against homosexuals?

Throw the argument back to him and start with the basics. Ask DS to define 'woman'.
I do lots of things that used to be men-only (I have a degree, I vote, my profession). I sometimes wear trousers. But I don't claim to be a man. What exactly is it that a trans claims to be?

Can anyone help me with a way to explain to ds how opposition to the the transwomen are women narrative isn’t using all the same arguments that were previously used against homosexuals?

The problem as I see it is that here we have two opposing factions that each see each other as the victim.

The problem, as I see it, is that we have a faction claiming to be something it is not. The analogy is Emperor's New Clothes.

I think it's more like dystopia than anything in history. A situation in which language gets changed to mean the opposite of what it means, where the thing that oppresses you turns out to be your privilege, where if you do not accept the rules and the language you're cast out...
Yes. This is scary.

As said up thread the plantations in Ireland would be a good analogy.

RE the refugee thing though, that would be like fleeing the UK, turning up in Syria, and expecting that the much poorer country with far more challenges than the one you're fleeing offer you shelter and assistance. The power analogy is going in the wrong direction.