This is why mumsnet is considered transphobic

Jay I didn’t realise you knew about MN - please do feel welcome to join!

My comment about menstruators wasn’t directly in response to your piece - bit of a tangent.

And my concern isn’t with actual trans people, who I know are just living their lives like anyone else. It’s with people like JY, who seem to use their trans status as a weapon against safeguarding and as a shied from criticism.

I think a small number of people are latching on to the genuine T and using it to erode safeguarding in a “socially acceptable” way. I think some powerful people must be involved, or the press would be reporting on (for example) JY.

Ah, Bless him.

The most persuasive gender-critical people base their viewpoint on reality and facts.

The anti-woman politics of transgenderism tries to overturn reality and facts but this cannot create another valid reality and another set of facts - it can create only fantasy and lies.

For example, gender critics provide evidence that lesbians are actually being marginalised, but in transgenderism's orwellian fake reality it is transgender people who are being "erased" by gender-critical female people. This does not match the reality that now is actually the time of greatest transgender visibility, influence and power.

Why do they think that this opposition is there?

Yes, especially since all the official statistics exist that define the explicit nature of the physical and sexual violence by males against females. The constant denial of such facts only services to harm their argument.

Frankly, it is extraordinary that it keeps being denied. There is simply far too much evidence.

And there's the problem in a nutshell. TRAs constantly deny women are at risk from sexual violence committed by men, they accuse us of lying or imagining dangers where non exist. For political and ideological reasons they claim sexual violence isn't predominantly a crime committed by men against women and girls, and would quite happily see women stripped of all single sex spaces. There's not a great deal of difference between their beliefs and those of MRAs.

It does rather begs the question of exactly why they think there are thousands upon thousands of women who are opposed to the ideology.

Do they genuinely think that educated, mostly left-wing, inclusive women, from all walks of life, including all the professions and academia, are transphobic? And if they are, why are they?

Why do they think women are spending extraordinary amounts of time and effort on this issue?

It's not because we don't understand, clearly most of us could write a bloody thesis about it. It's not because we haven't met trans people, many of us have them in our families, and friendship groups.

Why do they think that this opposition is there?

I found it very freeing to stop using the word trans and it’s derivatives-a decision taken as a direct result of the policing of language here put in place to appease the monitors currently bemoaning this thread

I just say male or female now. No prefix required. Because really the only time I’m commenting on issues around people who believe strongly in gender are when sex is relevant. If it’s a situation where sex is not relevant then why would I waste my time thinking about someone’s gender beliefs?

it wouldn't be long before transwomen would declare it triggering and transphobic.

Indeed, since use of a fictional term like "ciswoman" immediately identifies that there is also the fictional term "transwoman". And everyone knows what "transwoman" really means.

Personally, I never use either term and never will.

I knew that would piss you off Jay and I was aware you'd be watching the thread.

Do you have any poems that aren't about you being transgender?

''we are left with no choice but to compare “trans people” and “people”. It is another way of using language to erase the humanity and personhood of trans people.''

For the purposes of making a direct comparison between trans and non-trans, you could use the word 'non-trans'. Hope that helps.

''The “protect” is important, it again lies heavy with the implication that they are standing up for the status quo against some undefined danger.''

And there's the problem in a nutshell. TRAs constantly deny women are at risk from sexual violence committed by men, they accuse us of lying or imagining dangers where non exist. For political and ideological reasons they claim sexual violence isn't predominantly a crime committed by men against women and girls, and would quite happily see women stripped of all single sex spaces. There's not a great deal of difference between their beliefs and those of MRAs.

It's shocking that so many women have decided that the real evil going on isn't the attack against women and the promotion of the rape myth that women routinely lie about sex attacks, but in a male born person not being able to validate h** inner lady feels by pissing in the women's toilets.

And it's always interesting which threads she reports back on.

Oh yes, I’m looking forward to the day Helen 👋 tweets and screenshots about how transphobic we all are because we are horrified by JY taking women to court to force them to wax balls.

We will always need different words to make a distinction between men and women. You can try and change the meaning of words but you can't change reality.

Even if (god forbid!) ciswomen became the new accepted normal to describe women, it wouldn't be long before transwomen would declare it triggering and transphobic.

Waves at the Monitors

You guys are totes my faves!

Yes, the assertion that we don't explain what the risks we are talking about are, and that we haven't explained over and over, why we object to 'cis' is a very good example of the surface level engagement TRAs have with anti-Genderist ideas.

When I look at their articles, believe it or not, I'm genuinely trying to understand the thrust of their argument, trying to see what has brought them to their conclusions. This means I am not looking for gotchas, so I need to engage with the ideas. Sadly, so far, the thought processes and language used are always unevidenced assertion, a lot of quasi-religious statements and sometimes quite deliberate confusion.

What I see, time and again, when they attempt these rebuttals, is a lot of huffing and retreat into cult mantras - and corn dolly after corn dolly which betray that just haven't really understood any of these basic arguments that we apparently use for mendacious purposes...

This video supposedly looking at Magdalen Berns' YouTube is a good example of this veneer of rebuttal, without any actual engagement at all.

Basically, the most useful thing to keep in mind is that this is a neo-religion, and when you read these articles and watch these videos, you are seeing fundamentalists desperately trying to deal with their cognitive dissonance.

Come on here and debate us Jay. You won't because you can't defend any of your nonsense outside the soundbite world of twitter. No one denies you exist or are entitled to the same human rights as everyone else. But you can't redfine the meaning of the word woman and we will be happy to politely explain why.

Helen/Mimmymum spends so much time monitoring MN

And it's always interesting which threads she reports back on.

This is striking I think:

'The “protect” is important, it again lies heavy with the implication that they are standing up for the status quo against some undefined danger.'

Almost as GC feminists haven't delineated precisely what is at stake and made the case with endless data and statistics and testimony...

Helen/Mimmymum spends so much time monitoring MN it’s a wonder she has time to waste taking people to court for no good reason.

I am not saying I agree with the article. I don’t. I do worry how we will ever reach a resolution though.

I know what you mean. How can a civilized resolution be achieved if the approach of transactivists is to view very anaemic, basic statements like those mentioned in the article as suspicious, venomous manipulation?

I still believe that progress is made by rational engagement, and all that is really needed is determination and patience, but you read an article like this which can essentially be summed up as "These women are using reasonable language, and refuse to comply. This makes them untrustworthy bigots", you do find yourself wondering if rational thought is disappearing entirely.

Transphobes obsessively police the divide between “sex” and “gender” - In their circles, sex exclusively refers to someones biological sex, and gender is ridiculed as an indefinable concept

Feminists originally separated the concepts of sex and gender back in the seventies. Sex means the physical reality, gender means the social constructs associated with that physical reality. Gender as an innate feeling is something invented by TRAs (although conservatives have probably always thought that women think like women and men like men).

They will often use made up jargon such as “TiM” or “TiF”

All language is 'made up' and then generally agreed by speakers - as TRAs themselves often point out.

Some go further, and use it as a way to refuse trans people’s humanity. People, they say, are Men and Women. Transmen and Transwomen do not fit into it. It is an attempt to define us out of existence. It is a form of othering, used to remove any empathy towards trans people.

No, a transwoman is a subtype of man. No one is being defined out of existence.

They state, without explaining why, that “Cis is a slur”.

Using 'cis' means accepting that 'women' can be female (cis) or male (trans). It also implies that any woman who isn't 'trans' is signed up to social stereotypes associated with womanhood.

If you are “concerned” about trans people doing nothing more than existing in the same spaces as you or your children

Men, not trans people. And only some men, but how do we know which?

Years ago, transphobes claimed they were not transphobes, but TERFs. Then the general public came to realise TERFs were transphobic, so they called themselves Gender Critical.

Nobody ever called themselves 'TERFs'. It's always been an insult.

It’s like stumbling into an entirely different culture and causing hideous offence for having uncovered shoulders

Plus in that culture, by shoulders, they mean elbows and shoulders, but we should never mention elbows.

FFS
OT not OTT
For off topic. Should have just spelled it out.

I simply cannot believe someone could call themselves a writer and commit that drivel to paper.
By the way we're being watched

Oh, I LOVE that article. Everyone should read it. He lays out sex vs gender, some of what women want protecting and that transwomen are male.

Then he goes on a big rant about transphobic meanies as if the reader OBVIOUSLY believes that TW are literally women. Ha ha ha. Only those who have glugged a lot of Kool Aid will be on board with that!

Then he helpfully gives a list of terms to pop into a search engine to find other people who are transphobic/TERF/gender critical.

Beautiful example of having no clue of people outside your tiny wokochamber.

OTT but thank you for the John Hegley reference, whose poetry I do not know but which reminded me of that poetry collection I bought for my soon-to-be-married niece called Poems for married people which I just googled to see if it was by Hegley (it's by John Kenney) and which led me to this delightful poem by Billy Collins.

So thank you for that.

P.S. I kept the poetry collection, it's definitely not for newlyweds. Needs about a decade at least to understand the wry humour I think. Preferably two.

People who work to undermine the definitions used in the equality legislation that protects them are sawing off the tree branch that they sit on.