Can you all just lay off trans people

Pencils neither of us knows what the other does all day.

It's a religious obligation, ie pretty much mandatory if you want to remain a member in good standing of your religious group. What I suspect will happen based on having lived in places where that was the mainstream religious expectation is that if we start seeing more obviously male people using women's spaces some women's male family members will refuse to let them go to the swimming pool etc. Obviously I think this is bullshit, because I'm a feminist and object strongly to men being the boss of their female relatives, but it is in fact what will most likely happen.

I'm not dodging the point Angry, we're talking at cross purposes, clearly. I'm making my point but you want to talk about your point but you expressed it as interrogating my point - or maybe it was my interpretation. Either way this is classic cross purposes.

So, are you willing to admit that the preferences of those women matter and that they have a right to say no to male people in those spaces?

You're trying to turn this discussion into something that it did not start out as for me, and I'm afraid I'm not prepared to digress at this point. If you think a refusal to reduce this whole conundrum to a one word answer is a statement of my views well that's your look-out, but you'd come away with an inaccurate impression of my stance.

Because that's the key issue here, not the specific language that people use when rejecting the presence of those male people in those spaces.

The key issue with which I engaged on this thread was that of the language, the tone and a single, specific basic principle of this debate.

I'm all up for pushing the government and the TRAs to compromise on the aspirations because they DO unduly impact on women

Go on then.

Don't dodge the point, Rat. Again, you know that there are many women who unequivocally reject the idea of sharing intimate spaces with trans women, especially under the current, anything goes definition of trans women. It's less often discussed here but for women in some religious groups there's even less choice involved, if male people are allowed in those spaces then they simply can't use them any more. So, are you willing to admit that the preferences of those women matter and that they have a right to say no to male people in those spaces? Because that's the key issue here, not the specific language that people use when rejecting the presence of those male people in those spaces.

Angry, I don't universally disagree with those women, I don't even mostly disagree with those women, but there are points on any specific circumstance that I might debate.

However I think a starting point of "transwomen are men, we should in no way be enabling their delusion to continue" - which I have seen expressed here - has got no hope of achieving an acceptable end-point in my eyes.

I'm all up for pushing the government and the TRAs to compromise on the aspirations because they DO unduly impact on women, but I'm not up for proclaiming transgenderism a delusion in order to do so. Not even if I get a load of stick for it.

Nope, we just have to try to find a way to allow them to live within their own reality that doesn't impose that unduly on people who don't share it.

This board is full of women stating unequivocally that being forced to share spaces involving nudity with male people who believe themselves to be women is an unacceptable imposition that they're deeply uncomfortable with. So, unless you think that those women's feelings about the situation don't matter, your test has already been failed and an alternative solution is needed.

This isn't lack of self-awareness

I will absolutely accept that, but I was saying it struck me as odd; it struck me as un-self-aware (which I will happily now say I see it is not; and clearly it did the OP too. And it would seem it we're not the only ones. I'm not saying all the women who were responding were wrong, I'm saying I accept they are correct about their own experiences. I'm also saying the same for people who have the opposite experience.

I can see the "un-self-aware" comment cause people to become defensive and in that case I will completely retract it; I simply meant it as my observation at the time which i will now fully retract. That is genuinely their experience. It is not the only experience that I believe is being genuinely expressed.

Clearly this whole trans thing was already an issue because it was page after page of people banging on about their vaginas. It immediately struck me as odd and completely un-self-aware. Page after page of people actively denying any personal, internal EXPERIENCE of their womanhood that wasn't either the reality of their bodies or their treatment by other people.

This isn't lack of self-awareness, this is them telling you/the world that they don't actually have an internal experience of womanhood that's unconnected to their bodies and their treatment by other people. Not sure how many women need to tell you that they have no such experience before you'll consider that they may possibly be correct.

You are just fucking at it and your contempt for lesbians is in plain sight

Assigned I'm not inviting a conversation on this (although I know I can't stop you) but where on earth you're getting that from "the cotton ceiling thing is total bull" in the context of my whole comment, which was "Also the cotton ceiling thing is total bull. I can't remember the exact question but I don't want to be accused of not unequivocally condemning it."; is beyond me.

I'll leave that open to personal interpretation, quite happily. You can take my expressed unequivocal condemnation any which way you like.

Rat

"Also the cotton ceiling thing is total bull"

You are just fucking at it and your contempt for lesbians is in plain sight

Yes to the 4 lights (he’s the best of all Star Trek Captains).

Or should we boycott the programme beacuse there was no transgender people there? They had one non-gender race (they were of one sex but still looked largely like women) but that’s not trans.

"THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!"
Yes there are.

drops mic (cringe)

Don't pick it up again.

Nothing you've said makes me embrace the notion of self-ID. The potential for disaster is huge. In fact you've reinforced my views. You've blatantly not read the boards.

When wider society becomes aware of all this you'll be blown way out of the water. Hetero male privilege will see to that as they won't en masse admire, gaze at, accept, love, have sex with men who think a dress and lippy = 'I am a woman', and are using male-born privilege to pursue a cis (stupid term) woman replacement agenda.

I can't wait for this to be all over the news. See how far you get then.

@thebewilderness

Or the Star Trek version.

Can you mandate belief?
Can you codify into law the idea that some people can mind over matter themselves out of material reality and into the opposite sex and must be treated accordingly?
It is like transubstantiation. A belief that no one actually believes.
Will you allow people to drug and mutilate children based on this belief that no one believes?
The elephant in the room is that trans identified males, transwomen, are a subset of category male, not female. The powers that be have already codified a Big Lie into law and now wish to expand the Big Lie. Including punishments for women who refuse to submit to the Big Lie. "How many fingers am I holding up, Winston"

A disabled person is a person with a disability or a person without a disability who identifies as having a disability.

A black person is a person who is black, or a person who is not black who identiies as a person who is black

A homosexual person is a person who is homosexual, or a heterosexual person who identifies as being homosexual

An adult female human and/or one who identifies as such.

So an adult female human or someone who is not an adult female human but identifies as an adult female human?

This is your defintion of woman?!

This is basically, human.

It's tough, there are no easy answers. The idea of the legislation was, I think, to allow people to live within their reality and not be challenged in instances when it really isn't anybody's business.

No, it wasn't. It was a technicality to allow same-sex marriage and pension rights.

Neither of which is now an issue.

A section of it is certainly that, but all over the globe, in every single country whose high court has ruled to recognise transgenderism?

I hear you. You're ok with it. I'm emphatically not. Many women are emphatically not.

Meanwhile please excuse the rest of us while we carry on doing what we can to mitigate the damage from this clusterfuck on the real, material lives of women, children and transsexuals.

Very very much this. ^^

It's not either/or though is it

But it is, when whats being asked for is womens rights. This is the issue. Male people (or men, as an adult human male is a man) are asking for womens (or adult human females') rights.

I am sure many (even all) feminists would be totally up for fighting for rights based on gender expression, or gender non-conformity. I have seen it suggested on these very boards before. What has also been suggested is joining in a fight for a third space unisex option to be added to the existing female/male spaces. The third space option is totally unacceptable apparently, despite being an obvious compromise, no?

What noone should be exepecting feminists/women to do, is given up their own rights/spaces, rights/spaces that are based on their sex. And that is whats being asked.

So carry on with your 6th-form-esque navel-gazing irrelevant cartesian wank. Meanwhile please excuse the rest of us while we carry on doing what we can to mitigate the damage from this clusterfuck on the real, material lives of women, children and transsexuals.

I love you, pencils.

"Woman" and "man" are social constructs in the way that "black" and "disabled" are social constructs.

Physical body + societal beliefs = social construct

Social constructs like this are applied extremely crudely. Simple markers - the colour of your skin, the presence of a penis, any obvious physical disabilities - are all that's needed to pigeon-hole you and determine which social construct is applied to you from birth. Many people in the group concerned will not feel the rules of the social construct should apply to them. Social constructs are often the home of bigotry, and, as a reaction to that, they are also a form of group membership.

Then there are other social constructs that form on the basis of less obvious markers. These markers are not physical but take the form of behaviours:- ASD, gay, etc. This group of social constructs includes the trans social construct.

Then there is a further set of social constructs that apply to choices you make about group membership: Christian, Tory, vegetarian, etc.

The trans movement is trying to redefine "woman" as a social construct that originates from (innate) behaviour, not from the (non-innate) pigeon-holing of a person on the basis of their physical body. This is problematic because the feminist quest for equality has proceeded like this:

Misogynistic view of women: women are weak and inferior because they have inferior bodies and brains. Their feeble minds mean they should only do "nice" things or "caring" things or "family" things (which often includes an awful lot of mentally and physically demanding work, ironically).

Feminist counter-argument: our bodies may be different, but our brains are absolutely not different from men's, at least not different enough to justify being treated as inferior. More than that - the differences in minds are not innate, but come from the social constructs that are placed upon us from birth. We're your mental equals, we are as smart as you and as tough as you and perfectly capable of being grown-ups.

Then along come TRAs and argue from the misogynistic side of the debate. The whole "lady penis" is a red herring. The real subtext of the TRA position is this: women's minds are innately different after all. All those years of women arguing that women's minds are (sans stereotyping) no different from men's minds? Gone. Burned away in a moment for the sake of trans "equality". If women like sparkly stuff, high-heels, make-up etc and men don't? Well, that's not because of how they were raised but is because of how they feel (with their lady brains) - men really, truly are just more grown-up.

When you recognise that simple fact, it doesn't take a genius to spot the reason why many feminists have a problem with TRAs.

The only way forward is for the TRAs to recognise that they do not have "lady brains". Instead, they have a genetic or developmental difference that means the social construct they feel should apply to them has not been applied to them. This means that their understanding of the social construct of being a woman is that of an outsider. They have not lived the social construct from birth, and will never be "real" women.

They are gender immigrants.

And here's the thing with immigrants. There are two types.

The first type is the type that wants to integrate, to be sensitive to local customs and traditions, and to be respectful of the community they want to be part of.

The second type comes in all guns blazing (often literally) and attempts to impose its will upon the original group, redefining what the group is and what it should hold as important.

TRAs are acting a lot more like the latter than the former.