new (to me) trans twitter @rhysmckavanagh

I do think society should deal with it.

So do you mean that men should deal with it? If so, I agree.

Angel, so you actually agree with a rather strong GC position only you have nice-person feelings about it whereas we’re all hardened witches who don’t actually mean it when we say “sorry?”

The thing is that the position I have outlined here would earn me death threats if I said it where Owen Jones could hear. I don’t think of my position as any kind of compromise, I think of it as both uncompromising and the only thing that will work.

Anyway this thread is reminding me of Sense and Sensibility, specifically the scene where Elinor and Marianne argue about marrying for money. Marianne thinks it’s a dreadful thing to do, Elinor thinks it’s only practical, but it turns out that Marianne’s income requirement for a husband is twice Elinor’s...

I get that vibe from a lot of women who think TERFs are being too mean or something. When you boil it down to practicalities, they agree with us, they just want us to perform sentimentality better.

The thing is, the ONLY reason women have our own specific rights, spaces and services is because we have female bodies.

Like all mammals, our bodies are, in the vast majority, smaller, slower and less strong than the males of our species. Like all mammals, it’s the human females who gestate and feed the offspring, and it’s our bodies that suffer the discomfort, risks and consequences associated with being the reproductive class.

People who don’t have female bodies will receive absolutely no practical benefits by accessing women’s legal rights, but if we can’t define women as ‘adult human female’ it will significantly weaken our legal protections. The ones designed specifically for our bodies.

That might not sound like such a big deal in the privileged west but human rights laws are international and if we can’t retain our protections in the first world, the women of the developing world will never get them.

We need political representation by members of our own sex class in order to protect those rights.

I totally support trans people’s identities being similarly, but separately protected in law, but lumping transwomen in with women, despite having completely different social, legal and medical needs, will leave us all fucked in the long term.

I agree Towel, that this an issue for men to sort but I don't want to see people caught in the crossfire in the meantime and if that's a third space then so be it.

Op thanks I'll have a look at this account. another interesting account to look at is jenny randles. She's a transexual woman who transitioned decades ago and has really illuminating conversations with other trans women who are also trying to think of a way forward. Its an interesting read

If white people start to want to identify as being black, would we say there needs to be a middle ground? As opposed to pointing out reality, no, you’re just not black?

Middle grounds aren’t always appropriate. If I want to build a bridge over a river, and you don’t, building half a bridge is not a sensible middle ground. Same with biology and sex based rights. Letting men take our sex based rights isn’t a middle we should expect our daughters to live in.

OP I know what you mean about compromise but I think we have given so much already, what TRAs want is not compromise.

I agree with pp saying about GNC - let's just be okay with women and men wearing whatever they want and being whoever they want. Let's have a 3rd space if necessary but to be honest, I'm not okay with enforced medicalisation at all. This should be a last resort not as a 'look in so committed to being a woman, I've mutilated my perfectly healthy body'

And it was a massive error.

I think women did compromise - they let trans women into their spaces (who were mostly presumed to have a GRC and be making some effort to live ‘as a woman’), they quietly and politely withdrew themselves from groups when they found they weren’t actually single sex and they had empathy for people who felt unhappy in their body, particularly since as women we are encouraged to feel unhappy and wrong in ours every day.

And then the demands increased, the safeguarding disappeared, and the movement started to outlandishly claim that there was no such thing as a woman except as a feeling and that biology didn’t exist and that no trans woman ever was a threat to women.

We compromised a long time back.

How about we go back to letting people break gender norms? Short hair, no makeup, baggy trousers on women, OK. Long hair, loads of makeup and skirts on men, OK.

How about we go back to letting people be gender non-conforming homosexuals? Butch lesbian, OK. Effeminate gay man, OK.

Then on the other "side" of the middle ground we recognise that you cannot change your sex and stop messing about with lying laws and birth certificates.

The thing is, middle ground only works with reasonable people who want to live and let live. You can't find sane middle ground with delusional people, nor with abusive people. Unfortunately it is such people driving change at the moment.

What is the middle ground?
If this person is pro medicalisation of gender dysphoria (by that Rose of Dawn retweet I assume they are), are we talking about affirmative approach, hormones and surgical interventions, or treating GD as a mental health issue?

Which of my rights would you give away and why?
My right to representation by my own sex?
My right to exclude the other sex from my private spaces?
My right to compete amongst my own sex?
My right to accurate statistics and monitoring of my own sex, whether crime stats or health stats or achievements?
My right to say no to the opposite sex purely on the basis that they are the opposite sex to me?

What does middle ground look like?

Female/woman/girl can only mean sex.

All I would ask is that those who are NOT female, do not lay claim to those words, which explicitly mean female.

And that the law continues to recognise and protect those who are female, and does not degrade our rights.

That doesn't seem like a lot to ask, frankly.

It boils down to: please don't use our words, we need them to distinguish ourselves from you, because we are distinct from you.

It's the fetishists and their even worse pals who are making the biggest noise on this. And they are not welcome in women's spaces.

if something like that were ever to be implemented, the fetishists would work extremely hard to erase that distinction

We have that, and you are right they have.

They have some interesting thoughts but it seems like their idea of compromise is to draw a line between “true trans” and the fetishists.

And I don’t think that will work. Sorry to all the “true trans” but if something like that were ever to be implemented, the fetishists would work extremely hard to erase that distinction and the problem would re-emerge. The only thing that’s going to work is a clear bright line: no men in women’s spaces, no matter how they identify. No exceptions. And a third space type infrastructure to accommodate trans people.

This is a situation where compromise just isn’t possible.

Do you agree that women's rights are for women, angel?

And what rights do you believe trans people should have?

What would you see as a middle ground angel?

What do you think, angel? Are a majority supposed to give up their rights because they're a majority?

What rights do trans people not already have?