Reconciling competing rights

I'm a little amused at how quickly people dropped the idea that I was a transwoman once I said that I was gay and they could start on the cotton ceiling instead.

I merely took you at your word that you are a gay woman. Don't you expect to be taken at your word?

Have you read The Selfish Gene?
Dawkins? Are you effing kidding me. The Dear Muslima misogynist effing Dawkins?
Go on with you.

@BarrackerBarmer I liked your post too and found most of it straightforward. How do you imagine it would go down on a Trans-board?

IMO, I see your nice big house as suitable for 50% of the population. It's not so different from the other big house over the road, but we want to move out. So far all we've found looks like a Wendy house. And it's already full of bearded men in lipstick.

Beyond that, my feelings about these issues are rather like my feelings on the nature of consciousness: I suspect that is a definite answer one way or the other but it's not one we know as yet so I wish people would stop acting like it's all cut and dried.

What are we supposed to not know? There is gender dysphoria. There is also body dysmorphia, and believing that one is made of glass. Other than that, there are two sexes, and people with disorders of sex development. What else?

Entitlement and coercive and abusive emotional manipulation bother me wherever they are, and they are normally directed at young women, everywhere, by everyone

Er, the emotional manipulation of the cotton ceiling is quite clearly a male entitlement issue. But well done for once again avoiding the issue. I'm guessing you're quite young yourself. You seem to have a bit of an issue with empathy for other women though?

My questions remain the same as they have been since the beginning of the discussion over gender identity.
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 only the true believer actually believes.
Will you allow people to drug and mutilate children based on this belief that no one believes?
How will the non believers be punished?

no that's the thing - we do know the answer. sex is sex, that's how we can decide where to put boundaries round sex-based protections, gender is a kind of social expression - historically imposed - modern thought is that we should do whatever we want with out gender - good - we're all 'non-binary,' Gender isn't sex.. it's the conflation of the two that's the problem.

For me, equal rights must include the right to define your own experience.

This kind of statement is the problem. There are 7.6 billion people on the planet, with 7.6 billion unique experiences; and while some among them will share similar viewpoints and opinions, no two people's will ever be absolutely identical on all points. Clashes and mutually exclusive demands based on all these unique experiences are inevitable and guaranteed. In the animal world, unique experiences and viewpoints leading to conflict are usually resolved quite simply: whomever is strongest wins.

What stops human beings from using this same resolution method? Objective absolute standards to which everyone must bow. Law is an objective standard. In many places, customs and culture serve as objective standard. Another one is science.

And with regards to the cotton ceiling, doesn't that level of entitlement and coercive and abusive emotional manipulation bother you? Especially when it's normally directed at young women?

They don't need a "gender" is the point. They don't rush to define themselves as non binary because they like both cupcake baking and Formula 1. They don't reject womanhood because it's just a biological state.

I know all that's been said a million times. I'm new. I want to say it again. Pardon me (i'm a woman).

Why can't trans people define their own experiences honestly as trans people - which there's nothing at all wrong with in my view - and the MtF ones can work this hard on the MEN to be more accepting? How come all the men don't have to deal with this? The trans-identifying ones don't have to work on the attitudes of men, and the men don't have to work on their own attitudes and the women have to do all this explaining and shifting up again? And then there's something wrong with our attitudes. WTF is that actually about? It's really annoying.

No, they know woman is just a synonym for "adult human female". So they are women. But don't "feel like a woman" because it's not a feeling, it's a biological reality.

Can you really not understand the gender critical position?

And if you describe yourself as a woman yet don't believe you are a woman or a man, that's interesting. Most non binary types I've come across deny that biological sex is a thing.

no probs - not my real name I just made it up

Sorry, bottleblue!

Agree, that's a really good point, bluebottle.

yes. I sometimes feel like the physical violence/threat is focused on a lot - TRA's saying feminists are accusing them of all being rapists etc.. it's really not (all) about that. Any woman who feels uncomfortable about a man in a woman's space then has to compromise her own privacy - mental health stuff/ previous experiences/ whatever to explain why she has a problem to get it sorted - or get out of that space (not possible in prisons). That's a serious competing right in my view - women shouldn't have to make themselves vulnerable like that to get what they need. It's lose/lose - either feel vulnerable scared and shit or feel vulnerable scared and shit.

I don't think that's off point bluebottle. There are lots of good reasons for women only spaces.

Do you get why people think "non binary gender" is a bit of a redundant concept?

When you did call yourself a woman.