Are we the baddies?

100% what Mogleflop said. And, indeed, most of the comments on this thread. Thank you OP for the post - like you all it's a question I seem to be asking myself on an almost daily basis. It's disheartening to be told that you're bigoted and on the wrong side of history, when, being a decent person, who most definitely does not hate people (well, a certain load of right wing politicians excepting), I really don't think I am. I just find myself getting so mad, frustrated and very afraid at the way this is going, and the fact that even questioning it and discussing this bonkers denial of biological facts, let alone the legitimate concerns of women, get's you labeled a TERF, a bigot, a transphobe etc. Feels like MN is one of the few places you can openly discuss this without getting shouted down. And because we're intelligent, rational, decent people, we do examine and analyze our positions as well as others'. Refreshing to know I am not going mad! No, I fundamentally believe we are not the baddies.

I wonder if this is why some GC women feel that there is no safe haven for them.

Authority (Mordaunt), halo organisations, assorted celebrities, self-declared progressives are all declaring GC women = bigots on this issue and skirting with being adjacent to hate crimes through wrongthink and wrongspeak.

So many GC women can't discuss the issue at work or with family & friends. #nodebate Does anybody worry about what they'd have to do if for some reason their workplace (or a new employer) asked them to sign up explicitly to honouring their various policies? I have several sets of forms to fill in for a committee (couldn't be more science or evidence-based) and I'm genuinely wondering if we're expected not to ask what some of these policies are (explicitly names trans inter alia) or if we ought to enquire so that it's known that we work in a non-science/evidence framework for some topics.

Gaslighting at a societal level and in more intimate settings such as the workplace, social areas, civic participation, and the home. I wonder if at some point we'll undergo an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers experience in which we speak to someone who we think will understand only to them point at us and hear the piercing shriek.

we have the preconditions for totalitarianism

Rose of Dawn, produced a video identifying & discussing the TRA thread which runs through Action for Trans Health, some prominant NUS officers, Antifa & the assault on Maria Machlaclan.

Rose of Dawn is transsexual and was invited to the GenderQuake debate but, like many others with in the audience with important perspectives, not given the opportunity to speak.

She writes about the video:
'What Does Co-Opting The Trans Movement Look Like?'
"Radical far-left activists often co-opt unrelated movements to enforce their ideology on others. Here, I take a look at this phenomenon taking place in the trans community.

Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/Rose_Of_Dawn "

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue3iAnSSIP4

I think we should take up Snappity's suggestion- all women's toilets to have a height restriction, like Alton Towers. Anyone over 5'8"" does not have the FEAMLE FEELS.

we have the preconditions for totalitarianism

This.

Are we the baddies?
...
Are we on the wrong side of history?

Add me to the list of those who reflect on this regularly.

Then I look at the gas lighting, at the contortions of language and science that I'm supposed to accept. And I wonder for my own sanity if I did that, and the sanity of those who would enforce it on me. I look at history for examples of cultures and society where similar things happened and if those were admirable or even vaguely destined to be robust enough to survive.

As per the generation divide that Justine cited - I'm genuinely taken aback by some of the chatter from teenagers and students and can only construe that some of them have no instinctive grasp of some fundamentals of science, biology, or even social history.

As several posters have commented, we have the preconditions for totalitarianism, but it seems that we are being told we need to accept that because good faith and people's innate goodness means that it will never happen. Because we understand politics and social history so well.

"It’s disheartening though when you see so many highly intelligent and educated people blindly state that there is no difference between trans women and biological women. "

Yes, very unsettling. Someone I know to be highly intelligent is very ANGRY with us GC-types, and quite high-profile on Twitter. We used to be mates many years ago, both of us fiercely standing up for the rights of gay people at a time when there was a lot of intolerance. I am honestly dismayed she would now consider me a vile and literally violent bigot because I speak up for the right of women to single-sex spaces and for biology. She'd definitely consider me 'one of the baddies'.

I hate that 'would you have been as bigoted about homosexuality back in the day' is trotted out as a GOTCHA. I know the two things are not remotely similar and have been conflated partly in hopes of causing confusion and guilt.

I know it's not possible to be 'born in the wrong body' or for humans to change sex. I know there are people with distressing dysphoria, and want them to have kindness and be able to express themselves the way they want to in dress and lifestyle. But this is not 'changing sex', or 'correcting the sex wrongly assigned at birth'.

We have entered a strange time with a new language and aggressive ideology pushed by very vocal people, who have managed to persuade too many that it is bigoted not to believe that 'transwomen are women', and what logically follows from that is '...so of course they are entitled to access women's spaces, just like any other woman is'... 'so if they are attracted to women, they are lesbians just like any other lesbian.'

But I firmly believe THAT's what will be seen as 'the wrong side of history' as more and more people wake up to what exactly is being allowed to happen here.

If people were saying ‘transwomen are men and men can’t wear dresses so you can’t wear dresses’ it’d be ‘wrong side’ but we’re not.

We’re saying wear the dress, live as you like, play with dolls, embrace pink, just don’t think that that makes you a woman. ‘Woman’ means something, and that’s not that.

Sport is the main thing that convinces me I am on the right side. I don't want all women's sporting records to be held by people with Y chromosomes in 10 years time and women and girls to give up with competitive sport. If TWAW that is how things will end up because XY phsyiology is different from XX in many ways (VO2 max, pelvic structure, fat distribution, muscle mass, maximum power output, strength, not to mention testosterone effects).
Plus the basic biological fact that people can't change sex and although I believe some folk really want to be the other sex and think of themselves in that way I still think it's delusional to believe you have actually changed sex.
It also reinforces sexual stereotypes.

I find it very distressing to be called a bigot when I've spent my life supporting progressive causes.

Then I read things like the fact that puberty blockers can cause the menopause in teenage girls ( did not know that till I read the link up thread! ), and I think, nope, this is a potentially dangerous ideology which needs to be discussed and have the truth spoken about it. #nodebate is not the answer!

What makes me examine my views is when they overlap with people who I vehemently disagree with on most other things (JHB, K-Hop, Piers Morgan for example).

But I don't believe that trans women are women. I do support having gender reassignment as a protected characteristic, but transwomen are not women.

If that's enough to label me a transphobe, then so be it I guess.

I check in with my morality centre regularly.
Integrity matters.
Truth and fairness.

It's easy to falsely conclude popular=right, unpopular=wrong.

You have to sort out the difference between being right and being popular. And you have to keep on repeating that exercise because it's very difficult to purposefully make yourself unpopular in pursuit of a principle.

Do the 3.8 billion biological females of the world deserve recognition of their existence, and acknowledgement that they are physically different from males?
Or should we recognise every human characteristic EXCEPT sex, because in this particular tiny window of history it's become popular to deny that sex matters?

I am female.
3.8 billion people exist like me, within this sex.
The others are not like me.
We WILL be recognised for what we are.

I start there.

Pratchet

"the young ones don't realise we've seen more gender non-conformity than they can imagine and we thought it was great "

^ This. So much this.

Exactly OldCrone. Men of colour are also potential victims of racist attacks. Nobody has ever suggested they use women’s spaces instead. The fact that trans women are victims of violence and discrimination is neither here nor there when it comes to sex segregation. It is purely done on the basis of biological sex.

In reality, the issue is not one of safety. It is that trans women require absolute validation that they are as female as a natal woman. The safety argument is trotted out to make natal women look mean but in reality even if there was a 100% safe third space, many trans women would still insist on using the female space because it validates them and they resolutely refuse to consider women’s feeling or viewpoints as in any way relevant.

Snappity
You don't seem to understand why there are sex-segregated spaces. It's not because women are privileged, it's because we are disadvantaged when naked and vulnerable.

Men can rape, men are stronger than women, some men like to expose themselves or leer at women.

Weaker men and boys can also be vulnerable to predatory or violent men. Gay men can also be a target for violent men. Do you suggest opening female spaces to them as well?

Children should not need to alter their bodies or distort language to prop up sexist stereotypes.

Amen.

We are not the baddies as we are coming from a position of truth.

Sex exists, women and girls exist and are treated badly across the globe and throughout all time because of their sex.

Children should not need to alter their bodies or distort language to prop up sexist stereotypes.

That's what the "baddies" believe in.

This is the trouble with the cis prefix. It places women in the privileged category with men, and takes men out of that category.

Snappitty what privilege is attached to being a woman? Please explain. Because in my mind, women have been oppressed throughout history and have only had the right to vote on an unrestricted basis for 90 years.
If I decided I was transracial, would it be fair for me to say that black people have enormous privilege? No, it would be fucking insulting and a slap in the face to black people.
Please explain- I really struggle to understand.

So would those of you who want to relegate trans women to shared spaces be exclusively using those shared spaces yourselves too?

Exclusively is an interesting word, isn’t it? I would definitely use those shared spaces - for the day to day pee breaks and make up checks etc.

However, if I had a ‘biological woman’s’ emergency - an unexpected period, flooding, breast milk leakage, a miscarriage- then I would like an ‘exclusive’ place to go, thanks.

And I can’t see how that is ‘exclusionary’ or ‘privileged’ as trans women will never need to suffer any of this things as a ‘privilege’ of not having the same biology.

If trans is a type of deep rooted mental ( desperately searching for none offensive word ) issue which is the form of trans I find easiest to understand and sympathisie with, then it's not a choice. They do not chose how to present, they are driven to it.

Those that are reportedly trans on some days only....

I've changed my mind really, really drastically on this issue, and so I am constantly second-guessing myself, re-examining the evidence and my motives, and no, I don't think we're the baddies.

I've also considered what might be deep-down prejudice and conditioning, and no, it's the opposite. I was fortunate to spend my late teens and early twenties in a very gender-nonconforming, gay-friendly place (where to be gender nonconforming and/or gay was the norm, not the exception) and a lot of my deep-down default settings were established then. As a result, for most of my life when I've been anywhere and a visibly gender nonconforming man has come into the room (eg someone crossdressing) I've felt a warm fuzzy feeling of kinship, a feeling like there's someone like me in the room. No more. Now if a crossdressing man comes in (I use that term because of course I don't know how they'd identify) I feel a visceral sense of threat - physical, social, political - because all my former experiences and assumptions have been turned on their head and my more recent experiences have taught me to assume someone wearing womanface is indeed a threat to me.

It's really unsettling.

Bespin I think most of us have a lot of common ground, and one of the things I have against self-ID is that it removes the gatekeeping which is there to help people. I don't have any beef with trans people, it's about safety and dignity for everyone.