I fucking despair

Also a younger generation of men have been brought up with the feeling that women are equal and " don't need protection"...that it is patronising to suggest they do. I'm always very disappointed when younger men are so clearly misogynistic, or totally dead to women's issues.

Anecdotally my feeing is actually that men are more likely to get it

That's my observation too....certainly when it comes to sport.

Also, many heterosexual men are aware of the reasons why women need and require single sex spaces. I've felt really let down by many gay men, and their attitudes, in recent times ( not all, though!)

Also, as Goosefoot says, I think it is largely an age and experience issue...... Ideals are all well and good, but life and reality teaches you something otherwise.

Show him these videos from Blaire White. A trans woman who completely understands why sport should be segregated on biological sex.

Ask him whether he thinks it's ok for women who shoplift to be locked up in prison with convicted rapists.

Ask him whether he thinks a woman remanded pending trial, who is innocent until proved guilty, should be locked up in prison with convicted rapists.

Ask him who can be forcibly made pregnant and who has the rape weapons. Ask him how he'd feel if you were raped.

I agree with Barracker and others about that- it’s a way of misogynistically specifically prying into women’s politics too to make them either side with the man pleasers - or not to do so and then have to face the consequences.

This sort of thing is frustrating, but I'd keep two things in mind.

The first is it probably has nothing to do with him being a man. As many women don't get it. Anecdotally my feeing is actually that men are more likely to get it, but it's pretty close. If anything I think age is the bigger factor. So I would try not to think of it as a man not caring about women, there is a whoe sector of society that cannot see the problem.

The second is that to a large degree people are responding this way because all the programming in their environment points them in that direction. To see this as individual rather than group based differences. To be very wary - even deeply reactionary - of anything that looks like ethnic or sex based or race profiling which is a type of class analysis. To see women and men as interchangeable and with no important differences. To believe women are as strong as men. To see the desire for privacy as prudish. To see the desire for privacy from one sex as related to homophobia. to see reproductive role as a minor and unnecessary addendum to womanhood. To see feelings as defining our identity and the nature of our relation to others rather than our physical body.

These habits of thought, and starting places for thinking, are difficult to overcome. The one thing that seems to give many a second thought is some sort of personal experience. The reason some younger men seem to get it is awareness of their greater physical strength, but some don't have a real sense of that.

Presumably he's equally as contemptful of the Paralympics?
Perhaps people with physical disabilities should just accept they're not as fast/strong/whatever and leave all sports to able bodied men?

I bet he wouldn't advocate that down the pub with his mates.

As others have said, some people are thrilled to be able to vent their previously hidden misogyny and see this as their great chance.

OP sorry you’re having a tough time with this. it is upsetting when those close to you can’t or won’t see the issues.

That’s a silly question from your brother though. if we can visually determine the sex of skeletal human remains correctly, why would we not be able to do so at one look with living humans? Humans- especially if in interaction with others- offer us loads of other visual, audible, other physical information as to what their sex is. As PP have said, we have evolved to know the difference.

It’s all part of the validation game to have to pretend that we (as women) would be uncertain about this, or to have to pretend that women in general believe men in general ‘pass’ as women, when we meet them. They don’t pass as women. That’s fine. It’s inescapable fact after all- because humans can’t actually change sex. Sex markers are permanent, real and they are inherent to our physical selves, for so long as our physical selves persist.

You could ask your brother if he agrees that in any healthy relationship or situation, nobody should be forced to validate other people at a cost of their own detriment.
If he agrees with that, then doesn’t it follow that those people looking to obligate or enforce such personal validation under such circumstances from others, should be seen as presenting some serious red flags?

I think some men like to see women wound up by this.
Also a male friend likes to tease me about it, though they’ve shut up recently with some of the news reports in the papers.

Don't despair. I'm a bloke. I completely get it. All my friends get it. Sorry your brother is a knob.

Tbh I'm not having the conversation with him anymore. Partly because I just don't get on with him particularly well and my opinion of him has changed so atm I just want to go low on contact really.

That sounds wise. Some people are simply not worth effort. I'm so sorry that you and @RuffleCrow have had to contend with such awfulness.

We need to focus our energy on where we can make a difference I think. Be strategic. I'd stick to conversations with people who are at least interested in issues of fairness and equity. Love the idea of focusing on your DS. That's the way to go.

It's the most effective Men's Rights Movement in modern history.

When it comes to sport I always think a picture tells a thousand words.

I've given up having honest conversations on this issue tbh. Last straw was when my 50-something, woke, professor sil told me I was commiting "literal violence" by saying transwomen were not women (every fucking cliche going always appears). I walked out. She did apologise. There is no benefit in these types of arguments imo. I agree with the polite factual chipping away. Her dh is a friend of a quite well known transwoman (written books etc) and I know that while he uses the pronouns etc (as do I - no problem with that) there is no way he thinks she is a woman like me and SIL are women. No way would he consider her as a sexual partner. It is such hypocrisy.

I sometimes wonder if people have a need to believe impossible things - so now religion is on the decline (these 2 would laugh at the idea of believing in the transubstantiation), there needs to be some other impossible thing requiting blind faith. Pity it is a thing that erodes women's rights and spaces - oh wait, most religion did that too.

Does he have daughters? Would he want his little girl playing rugby and changing in mixed teams?

Ask if he'd tackle a woman or competitively box a woman without holding back.

Try playing on his chauvinism.

My father said he wasn't interested and it was all just nonsense until I pointed out who his daughters and granddaughters would be expected to get changed next to, toilet beside and have smear tests from. He got that. He was outraged by that.

I think a lot of people of both sexes hate women and have been waiting for something like this to happen to show their contempt. In my case, it took being a dv victim to find out how much hatred my family of origin had for me. I'd always suspected.

Sadly, this is also true.

It's extremely obvious in Labour right now, how many men resented having to perform feminism, and how much delight they take in the ability to attack, demean and frankly hate women who step out of line. And how many women are so worried about being liked, and kind, and nice to men that they haven't stopped to think whether they are being kind at all to women. I'm sure many male sex offenders do want to be in women's prisons. Where's Nandy's kindness and compassion for the women thus afflicted?

Have you asked him how he would feel if it was his mother or daughter or wife affected. Using real world examples that have actually taken place?
I also think some people just don’t want to face it head on

I’ve talked to women who are not far off these views.

It’s awful, isn’t it?