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Original poster

Reframing the discussion

60 replies

NoodleEatingPoodle · 20/10/2018 15:21

Disclaimer: I'm writing this in an explanatory way to help clarify my thoughts and not to preach to the choir.

I listened to Any Questions yesterday and was heartened by the contributions of the panel (there are other threads on the content). But the question posed was: whose rights should take precedence, women's or trans people?

And that's just a bullshit misrepresentation of the issue of contention. I don't know any woman who would argue that trans people should have fewer or less important rights than any other person. Despite the histrionic hyperbole of some transactivists, nobody is actually questioning whether people who identify as trans exist, or should exist, or should have rights Hmm. As long as we allow the discussion to be framed as 'should trans people have rights?' and 'trans rights v. women's rights', we are accepting the false premises that 1. We're somehow on the side of arguing against anybody's rights. 2. There are rights that other people have but trans people lack. 3. The ability to identify into a disadvantaged group and therefore acquire the protections and services in place for that group, is a 'right'. 4. The classes involved in the power dichotomy here are the privileged "cis" and the disadvantaged "trans", as opposed to the privileged "male" and the disadvantaged "female."

The questions that feminists are raising are not about 'trans rights', but are the same questions that feminists have always raised: what does it mean to be a woman, in society and in law? Do existing and proposed policies help or hinder progress toward a just society for women?

If newspaper headlines, hashtags, radio & TV political show questions, etc., were framed in terms of "what should the legal definition of 'woman' be?" instead of "what rights should transwomen have?" the knee-jerk reactions, particularly on the part of left leaning women, may be quite different. And how galling and misogynist it is that women are being treated as if they have no stake in the issue and no right to discuss it would be made all the more apparent.

But how do we reframe the discussion?

OP posts:
GulagsMyArse · 20/10/2018 16:29

My way of thinking about it is this:

Women are protected in the Equality Act and their is clear provision for single sex spaces when changing, sleeping, DM shelters etc.

So the Law understands and accepts single sex provision is vital for women otherwise there would be no law.

What has changed? Only one thing, men now want to have access to those spaces. That's it. Have any of the reasons that we have single sex provision changed. NO!

Its simply other people demanding access.

deepwatersolo · 20/10/2018 16:04

Yeah but that needs to be done. Women need to calmly state, over and over, that a male belief in being a woman does not make them one and has nothing to do with us. Doesn‘t mean we do not support transsexuals‘ and gendernonconforming people‘s rights to be treated as equal to other humans (as opposed to demands that reflect nothing but the right to subordinate women).

FlowerpotFairyHouse · 20/10/2018 15:56

But I rarely hear anyone say " actually that's not the issue for feminists, this is."

Well they're motivated by fear or money.

Original poster
NoodleEatingPoodle · 20/10/2018 15:40

Cross posted with a few. Yes I agree that Posie on definitions and Lisa M on safeguarding are making a difference in this regard.

OP posts:
Original poster
NoodleEatingPoodle · 20/10/2018 15:36

Thanks for replying, Flowerpot. Yes I know that this is discussion we (women) are already having. That's why I included the disclaimer about preaching to the choir.

But I disagree that there's nothing we can do about how it's framed. Posie Parker has very effectively put a focus on the definition of 'woman'. Listening to Any Questions 'trans rights or women's rights?', I was willing someone to say, "I think that's a misrepresentation of the issue. For feminists, it's not about denying trans people any rights at all. It's about what ' woman' means in society and in law, and of course women have an enoemous stake in that discussion, yet they're being silenced."

One of the panelists was absolutely brilliant in her answer. I'm not criticising those who are courageous enough to put the GC position forward in public. But I rarely hear anyone say " actually that's not the issue for feminists, this is." The debate of it happens at all just happens on the terms of the false premises I outlined. I think the framing of the discussion should be challenged every time, and people might start to get it.

OP posts:
Trousered · 20/10/2018 15:34

I think the poster campaign, adult human female is reframing the debate back to that basic point.

Its clear that allowing males to legally be female in any circumstances was a massive mistake.

DebbiefromBirmingham made a great point elsewhere that the furs key people that have been interviewed haven't been bothered to get a GRC. The "rights" that are assumed as a result of the Equality Act were meant to apply to people that were on the way to getting one, not any male in the country. We are now being told that it must be any male in the country. Any male, any male at all. at any time. Whatever he does to anyone whilst he is being female.

This should not be the law, nor should it be custom and practise or case law, this is not what the general population want or would even expect to be happening.

I am going to see my Labour MP next week to ask why he thinks he is entitled to force women to accept this, why he think he is empowered to give away the consent of every single female in his constituency without our agreement, why he believes he's right to do this. Why does he think he must force me against my wishes, in the way abusers do as this makes him an abuser too.

Any MP supporting this is an abuser.

UpstartCrow · 20/10/2018 15:34

Like this;

''TRA's have reframed the discussion away from safeguarding women and children. The discussion women are trying to have about how erasing the class 'sex' in law will affect us is being derailed and reframed by trans activists.

Womens concerns about safeguarding, e.g. sharing a locked psychiatric ward with Karen white, or teachers keeping secrets from parents, is not the same as 'denying people the right to exist'.
Its not the discussion women need to have.

Datun · 20/10/2018 15:33

You've got to define trans people first.

If anyone's woman who says they are, and a paedophile rapist says they are a woman and gets to go to a female prison then who the hell is actually standing up for that 'right'. Because my guess would be no one.

Define terms, otherwise the question is meaningless.

deepwatersolo · 20/10/2018 15:30

I believe Lisa Muggeridge is spot on when she says this is now a saveguarding discussion and furthermore that nobody gets to define women’s boundaries for us. So we support any rights transpeople aspire to except the ‚right‘ to define and colonize womanhood and subordinate women in the process. Transwomen‘s feelings do not transfer actual womanhood to them, and it is ludicrous women should subordinate their own existence and biological reality to those feelings.

FlowerpotFairyHouse · 20/10/2018 15:27

We can't control how it is framed in the media. What you have described is the discussion that women are having and the debate that women want.

That is precisely why the TRAs cry "no debate and threaten and shut down discussion but they know that if it were presented as you describe they couldn't win.