Are we arguing about the wrong thing?

Sidetrack, but I hate mental health related slurs like crazy, delusional, nuts being used in political debate, really bugs me.
Use your words. If you think someone is not arguing in good faith, disingenuous, manipulative, or if you think they are mistaken, say that. It's better debate anyway, trading insults isn't debate.

Oops. Missed a page of Sartre and Hitler...

Loving the Sartre though. We should put that after every post made by a certain someone who lives in Brighton because that is EXACTLY what she does.

I was always in detention at school for skiving PE; so much so that eventually I was put in with the boys.

Maybe they had just recognised your innate gender identity?

Agree OP many are just liars. Not much going on in their lives and love messing with people's heads and sticking the boot in on women. Others are not giving this thing enough thought or if they suspect they might be wrong about twaw they seek out information that helps them double down on their position.

Agree we need to keep dragging the arguments back to those around material reality. No point playing their games.

Psychopaths excel in mind control. People are not lying but are being subjected to undue influence, mostly through social media.

Youngsters have been recruited into cult sex change because they believe in people treated equally. They have been drawn in on that premise.

Then they have been duped on a massive scale by very callous and calculating tactics. They know not what they do.

Don't blame the cult members but the forces behind it - who will duck and weave behind the mob they have incited.

Engage the critical thinking of the mob. The only way to get people to exit a cult is to keep the communication open and not condemn them. Keep the truth simple. Engage their critical thinking faculty- that has been severely compromised but not by them but by the psychopaths who know how to mind control. Do this bit by bit. So out go long detailed arguments and in come sound bites.

Not because the research isn't necessary nor valid - it is and needs to be done. But compromised minds can't go there. Expose the lies by asking questions and stating simple truths, but all the time reassuring them and keeping the communication channel open.

I do love this argument DonkeySkin, not only because it is clear and sensible, but because it has the simplicity of truth. "We are women. These are our sexed bodies. Because if these bodies we experience oppression and have requirements for places which afford us safety and dignity."

I suppose the plus side of this debate is that I'm brushing up on biology. Clown fish do not change sex - they are hemaphrodites, containing both male and female reproductive organs. When the (only one in the fish community) female fish dies, a gene switch is triggered and the most aggressive male fish brings his female reproductive organs online (pescatorially speaking) and takes over the female role.

If we're taking life lessons from the sea, about now I'm thinking a lot of women might be more interested in the example of sharks,

"Parthenogenesis occurs in the hammerhead shark and the blacktip shark. In both cases, the sharks had reached sexual maturity in captivity in the absence of males, and in both cases the offspring were shown to be genetically identical to the mothers."

It's probably telling that transactivists and allies have chosen the clown fish to argue their case ...

I am aware of that, and I'm sure that the Trust in question already treats trans patients as their preferred gender in accordance with the EA (which I find questionable in a way that I suspect you don't); however, as recently as April this year they were only at the stage of having drafted a specific "Policy on Supporting Transgender Patients" according to details from a meeting of the Board of Directors. The above policy might be more to do with staff being courteous and polite towards patients, though, having just looked at the document again.

I am a big fan of Sartre's quote on anti-Semites, written in 1944, which applies just as well to any kind of gaslighting fascist and also I think applies well to the kind of TRAs who the OP refers to:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

Lastgirl you say: I used to wish I was as kind as the women who used preferred pronouns, but I could never bring myself to do that - to lie. I have a serious issue with lying...it is like my mouth can not speak words that aren't truth.

I have the same problem. However you usually use pronouns in the person's absence and I find that a great help.

For example, everyone uses male pronouns for both of the two TW I know if they're not listening. The first is transsexual, well liked, had surgery about 10 years ago, and doesn't bat an eyelid if old friends forget and use his male name (his female name is jokey rather than porny). The second is, I'm sure, an AGP, who caused massive distress to his whole family, though things have improved in recent years.

Not entirely sure what point I'm trying to make. I suppose that you rarely have to use pronouns and can usually come up with a fudge if you have to.

flourella if that ccg is only just developing a policy then it is well behind other ccgs in having a policy because most have had them for years, I helped write one for the trust I worked in nearly 10 years ago, nothing radical as changed in. these policys for quite a bit.

DonkeySkin sent you a PM :)

Errol they most certainly are trying it, though. I've even seen some recently say that sex is different from not only gender, but also from reproductive role. Good if this extreme level of batshittery is doing their cause harm.

Nice name, by the way. Almost went with the Discworld theme myself.

I think when they say TWAW they mean, 'the definition of women has changed you poor fool!! Did no-one tell you?' So in that sense they both believe and don't believe.

As in 'transwomen are now the real women and you are nobody.'?

Trans ideology denies that the sexed body has any social significance; all that matters is one's internal sense of one's 'gender'. In fact all the language of the 'gender identity' movement is intent on erasing the reality of the sexed body

I was planning on saying pretty much exactly this in my previous post that I sent way too early. I don't disagree with anything you are saying; I'm just on a bit of a downer about the whole issue at the minute.

When challenging the institution of this stuff at the legal and policy level, we need to remind lawmakers and policy makers of the importance of sexed bodies

One NHS Trust, in which I have a personal interest, currently has no policy on the treatment of trans patients but is hoping to have something ratified soon. From the tone of a recent meeting (whose content I found online) their policy will almost certainly involve treating trans people as the gender with which they identify, regardless of what alterations they have or have not made to their bodies. These are policies that are being drawn up right now, so what can we say to convince policymakers to go back on them in the near future? If the NHS doesn't already know the significance of our sexed bodies, what hope do we have? I fear there's nothing we can say at this point and it will take an absolute scandal, likely of a criminal nature, to put the brakes on this.

But, like I said, I am being negative about things and I'm sorry for saying nothing constructive.

We need to convince people that it is indefensible to wave away material reality and its consequences for political purposes.

So much this.

Instead of challenging people who say 'trans women are women', we need instead to talk about the reality of sexed bodies

Yes absolutely this, I couldn't agree more. If we engage on the level of terminology and definition then we are fighting on ground they have chosen and fortified and lending credibility to their incredible arguments by treating them as worthy of debate in the first place.

You are right: we don't need to convince anyone that a man is not a woman. We need to convince people that it is indefensible to wave away material reality and its consequences for political purposes.

As soon as we say what makes a female, they'll opt into it.

But they can't, because it's a biological term. It's a sexed body word. I don't think the ones who try it are aiding their cause, rather the opposite.

continually dragging the conversation back to the reality of sexed bodies

I don't think it's any coincidence that we're having this discussion on a parenting website. The reality of sexed bodies is an inescapable part of it.

This denial of the reality and social significance of sexed bodies that is at the heart of the matter.
Absolutely agree. Sorry not sure how to put your quote in bold.
IMs really shattered and going to bed but will return to this tomorrow as it is expressing so beautifully so many things I’ve been flailing around trying to put into clear language.

There seems to be a lot of lying about at the moment. We can see that with Trump, clearly, most recently, obviously, with the Helsinki press conference. His whole use of the concept of fake news, as part of his campaign and his presidency. Which also uses darvo. And also with Assad and Putin,

Obviously, many politicians use lying as their modus operandi, but these days it's taken to a whole new level. And with the advent of social media etc it's easy to propagate.

“Women are getting shafted from both sides, men from neither “ yes yes this.

YY Fermats. But I think the reason that the TRAs can weaponise the conditions and the system here is structural misogyny.

But I think it's here where the FTMs come in as their secret weapon. Women are getting shafted from both sides, men from neither. I think this is mostly calculated.

The whole essay is worth a read -edited version here
history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165havel.html

There's a really chilling bit at the end where he says "what would happen if one day the greengrocer just didn't go along with it?"

"The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as manager of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay will be reduced. His hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate. His children's access to higher education will be threatened. His superiors will harass him and his fellow workers will wonder about him. Most of those who apply these sanctions, however, will not do so from any authentic inner conviction but simply under pressure from conditions, the same conditions that once pressured the greengrocer to display the official slogans. They will persecute the greengrocer either because it is expected of them, or to demonstrate their loyalty, or simply as part of the general panorama, to which belongs an awareness that this is how situations of this sort are dealt with, that this, in fact, is how things are always done, particularly if one is not to become suspect oneself. The executors, therefore, behave essentially like everyone else, to a greater or lesser degree: as components of the post-totalitarian system, as agents of its automatism, as petty instruments of the social auto-totality.

{16}Thus the power structure, through the agency of those who carry out the sanctions, those anonymous components of the system, will spew the greengrocer from its mouth. The system, through its alienating presence in people, will punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the logic of its automatism and self-defense dictate it. The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety. . . . "

need instead to talk about the reality of sexed bodies, and the needs and rights of people with female-sexed bodies, and make them acknowledge out loud that 'TWAW' means that people with vaginas have no right to a separate legal and ontological existence at all.

Agree with this though.