Right now we are stuck in a cycle of one side being wound up by the other.
Women want to discuss things, to understand things and to know that they will be safe.
TRAs take the defensive line in viewing this as aggressive even when its well meaning, trying to be sensitive and trying to engage.
Twitter makes this particularly difficult, as everyone just gets blocked for the slightest thing.
The anger and aggression and lack of respect that women are reading in return makes them feel threatened. Indeed many comments they are seeing reflect directly experiences with abusive males. The pattern of gaslighting, the shouting of abuse, the over sensitivity and explosive reaction if you don't do or say the right thing.
This is combined with an absolutionist position and denial of why biological can not be ignored. Since biology is the source of most concerns of women and how they themselves define themselves this is a line that has to be respected and understood. If it is not, then there will always be anxiety, tension and fear of trans women. It is unavoidable.
The law might say one thing, but the law is not always right and can be tyrannical. You have to also bring people along socially. You can not force people or it breeds resentment and again fear.
All political parties and institutions need to have a good hard look at this and how they defuse the situation. Putting TRAs into office and positions of responsibility within the party means they should be acteding responsibly and held to account where they over step the mark, and cause friction. They should be trained in confliction resolution and how to de-escalate situations. Instead, they seem to be the very people making the problem worse not better. They are not being held to account for defending people, who in any other situation would be deemed socially unacceptable. In aligning with people who are behaving in a way that women perceive to be confrontational and aggressive women recoil and become fearful.
That political parties are not doing this, and are engaging themselves in patterns of behaviour and repeating mantras directly from TRAs rather than understanding that the process is as important as the end goal, and that language is powerful and provokes reactions that are understandable is poor.
It is a failure of political parties to manage effective communication and to show leadership on this matter.
It is a failure of institutions not to understand when a group is a lobby group rather than a group which is taking a balanced approach which works for all concerned in all situations.
Characterising women as the bad guys for the failures of those who should be the grown ups in the room is not acceptable. Women are responding in a way which has always instinctively kept them safe. That this isn't properly understood, shows the privilege of never having been in that environment. This comes from protected middle class women (mainly white) and men. This is not a coincidence.
The entire thing smacks of a gross inability to see the wood for the trees by political leadership. Its happening not just on this particular subject but on many others, because of inadequate and poor representation of key groups or at the very least people with proper in depth experience of those groups and a good understanding of the dynamics of power.
Honestly my mind boggles at all this. Its not difficult stuff.
Instead the situation is being aggravated. You can't hold a conversation on twitter. Women have been harassed and hounded and told to shut up in a myriad of different ways. So they organise and group together to get a louder voice so they can be heard. They talk in one place that they are allowed. So the TRAs start to attack that. Under such a situation which women perceive to be as under siege, you are going to get backs up. You are going to get women being angry and at times aggressive. Because its a defensive reaction. Its not coming from nothing. Its not suddenly appeared from no where. Its not malicious.
The very concept of 'transphobia' implies irrational anxiety. There is nothing irrational here. Its all very rational.
It can be sorted and resolved with the right political will and leadership.
Where is it? Who is stepping up to the plate?
All of this comes back to TRAs refusing to debate because they think its about removing their identity. Well tough shit. If you want to move your situation forward you are going to have to work to defuse the situation. You are going to have to earn respect and trust. Women are not just going to give it blindly, because they can't. They have to trust their instincts and a lifetime of being socialised to understand situations that leave them at risk. And especially after everything that has gone on.
Refusal to engage has helped to deteriorate the situation. It has contributed to one in which no one can be civil.
These kinds of situations are never resolved by authoritarian means. Ever.
And it beggars belief that the political parties that are involved here are all supposed to be liberal but have no concept of conflict resolution.
'Because Transphobia'.
IT.IS.NOT.GOOD.ENOUGH.