What broader issues has the trans (lack of) debate opened your eyes to?

That makes zero sense - surely if you meet the definition of transgender and you are as you say a woman, then that'd make you a trans man? Nothing to do with men have claimed the woman label.

If a woman identifies as transgender, using normal rules of language, that would make her a transgender woman or trans woman. But men who want to be women have decided that if they identify as women, that makes them trans women. So men have claimed a label which should belong to women, because no man is actually a woman of any sort.

If you read comments about this topic in newspapers it's quite clear that many people think that a 'trans woman' is a woman who identifies as trans, that is, a female person who is transgender. Some of them might actually think that 'transwomen are women' means that women who identify as trans are still women, and wonder why anyone would say otherwise.

I meet the definition of transgender, I am a woman, yet I may not call myself a trans woman, because men have claimed that label.

Sorry, but what? That makes zero sense - surely if you meet the definition of transgender and you are as you say a woman, then that'd make you a trans man? Nothing to do with men have claimed the woman label.
I'm a biological woman - I identify as a woman, I am a woman, how would that suddenly mean I'm not a woman as the men won't let me be?
If you're trans, you identify as the opposite sex - you don't identify as the sex you already are.

Ariela their rules are inherently sexist, and you're female, so you don't get to identify as you please.

Annoys me too. I meet the definition of transgender, I am a woman, yet I may not call myself a trans woman, because men have claimed that label. There's no place for me in their ideology, even though I've been struggling with this shit since before a lot of these kids were even born.

Most are kids mucking about playing at ‘grown up activism’ with strings being pulled by very sinister individuals (bullies) and organisations.

How two-faced these campaigners can be.

Why should I respect the right of someone to call them by their new prefered pronouns if they will insist on calling me a 'cis-woman' not my prefered choice 'woman' which I have been for almost 60 years when I have not made any changes to how I am perceived by the public.

I do call them what they wish but calling me out on what I want to be called is unfair and not following their rules.

People will parrot anything. Especially if it’s catchy and has a little visual attached to it.

I used to think that the blue/pink thing was people just being a bit pathetic and old fashioned.

I now know that it's all based on an extreme hatred of homosexuality.

Floral’s earlier point about women’s use to men is observed well. I’m in my 50’s and therefore invisible. Until someone wants something, that is. Then I’m seemingly of use.

There’s been a couple of recent threads about Karen’s, which seems to me to be the flip side of “use”. How dare a woman over the age of forty have an opinion/expect anything?

Another thing I've learned is that people learn buzzwords and and accept slogans without thinking critically about them; and that without a decent analysis of structural oppression people are doomed to repeat it.

I mostly notice this in terms of the wisdom of previous generations of feminists, but it's a widespread issue.

If nothing else, this has shown me how reluctant people are to relinquish their insane ideology even when it's clearly damaging them.

It will be fascinating to see over time which ones try to pivot, what prompts them to do so, and how ridiculous the attempt is.

I realised that I have no acquaintances, friends, colleagues or loved ones who have not been tinged by the stains of misogyny and patriarchy. Everywhere I look, I see the by-products of entrenched male privilege.

My DP bristles at the idea that men as a sex class are dangerous to women as a sex class - though he himself acknowledges that he has never known an adult woman without an experience of physical or sexual violence.

I have lost beloved friends, because they could not or would not believe I was raped - despite having been similarly victimised. And the deafening indifference to my requests for women only spaces from the Police, the NHS and our letting agent (so that not even my home was in violate).

In more than one workplace there was no PPE of a suitable size for me, because at exactly average UK female height for my generation (5'6"), I am still not a default person. Even my phone is too big to truly be comfortable while typing this.

I think it's been happening for years TBH -since Blair made it clear that he wasn't interested in re establishing jobs which pay wages you can actually live on, in the Labour heartlands. You can coast along for years on goodwill, history and tradition but eventually that capital will be spent.

They're so stupid, they learn nothing.

They've been shitting on women for years and they think our goodwill will never run out, that they're entitled to it and our votes, just like they thought they were entitled to the red wall.

If nothing else, this has shown me how reluctant people are to relinquish their insane ideology even when it's clearly damaging them.

I suspect that idiots like Little OJ actually know they've gone too far down the batshit road, but they have no idea how the hell they can turn back and so all they can do is dig in. It's been an education to witness this behavior.

Crumbling of the red wall. Sort of already happened when Jo Swinson lost spectacularly the GE when she refused to say what is a woman.

Everything everyone else has said and how easy it is for a highly motivated, well funded tiny group of people to manipulate the media, the legal system and the political system to impose their agenda on the public. How pitifully few defenses our democracy has against these tiny lobby groups. How easy it is to marginalise the views of ordinary people and define those views as outside the Overton window of what is acceptable discourse.

And how utterly shit the Guardian and the BBC are. Those bastions I once believed could be trusted to report news and issues with integrity, have really failed and shown themselves to be as easily manipulated and untrustworthy as the Boogeyman Murdoch empire. I agree with whoever said the media outlet is irrelevant, it's the journalist that matters.

I see a lot of parallels in how women are being treated re the trans issue, with the marginalisation of working class voices which eventually led to Brexit and the crumbling of the red wall.

When challenged, the City of London Corp said this group (a two man band made up of ‘mates’ of Edward Lord) had won the survey review work by competitive tender. Lord claimed privately that he had the City Corp CEO and Solicitor protecting him.

Edward Lord and many prominant TRAs were very open about how they were creating and influencing public policies at the September 2018 conference 'We're Still Here' organised by Jane Fae. Dawn Butler MP (former Shadow Women's & Equalities) was the key note speaker.
The report is important reading:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3398737-We-re-Still-Here-Conference-8th-September-A-report-from-the-inside

Oh and that the Freemasons still exist and protect each other.

The thing with this is that if you get too deep into it you start to feel like you are part of an alien pyramid television documentary.

Adding to the list - that it only needs a small number of people in strategic positions to get guidelines and laws changed to suit them. Those who want those changes to happen will tend to be highly motivated to get into those positions.

Oh and that the Freemasons still exist and protect each other. Edward Lord’s dodgy survey about whether to let TW into all women spaces - carried out for the City of London Corp was met with derision by all who saw it. So biased and amateur was it that it had to be reviewed by a third party firm to check its validity. The firm that won that tender was an ‘impartial’ firm who had never before been involved with analysing survey data and whose only qualification for the gig was membership of a statistical analysis organisation - which you can buy over the internet for 30 quid without having any qualifications or experience in the field at all. Somehow a survey that discarded 50pc of the responses was still found to be valid by this firm with no expertise.

When challenged, the City of London Corp said this group (a two man band made up of ‘mates’ of Edward Lord) had won the survey review work by competitive tender. Lord claimed privately that he had the City Corp CEO and Solicitor protecting him.

All this was reported on Mumsnet and nowhere else. Where the fuck are the journalists on this ?

yet I still sometimes stumble over moments where my subconscious sees men as the default! I find it shocking

I do this too. It's just that so much of public life is male. It's really hard not to follow how society thinks in general. And I am very much an independent thinker, but still a product of the society in which I live.

That adults can lie in the way that your 3 year old can look you in the eye, chocolate around their mouth, their hand in the biscuit barrel and swear they didn’t eat the chocolate hobnobs (it was actually the cat who did it- and you don’t have a cat).

The lie was possibly the true statement that feminism benefits society. Probably heard by men as benefits them because they see themselves as society. Plus as mentioned further up, every piece of legislation that stopped women being treated as non-people had to be passed by men to exist.

I think that in each period after a gain feminism has been diluted by younger generations as a natural consequence of their own experiences in a world where change had already happened. Meanwhile the larger scale impacts are rolling on.

A very small subset of important dates
1975 - Sex Discrimination Act
1993 - 50/50 sex split in higher education
2009 - women outperform men in higher education
2014 - the years maternity leave women fought for has been generously changed so it can be shared with men or female partners. Not extra leave for the non-birth parent, zero government cost, an option which creates a new problem for women with abusive partners.

Meanwhile in the background of this time period men are losing out for every woman’s gain, the pornification of society is out of control, women are being deemed as having consented to sexual violence that killed them, and apparently we missed a memo that gave away the word woman that has resulted in regulatory capture and the systemic destruction of every single thing that was only for women. The very things that were supporting the slow progression of equality.

www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=45a5a7f5-ffbd-4078-b0b7-4bfcccab159d

Yes that’s a great post 2ndStar I’d never thought of it like that, thank you.

They're losing advantages that they never ought to have had in the first place, but it's not surprising many of them don't see it that way given that part of what male socialization instills is selfishness.

Good post 2ndstar. I used to buy into the naive idea that "feminism benefits everyone" but it really doesn't benefit men. What we gain they lose. I don't know where that particular lie came from - perhaps fear at angering men too much and needing to sugar coat it? Perhaps it helped lead us down this toxic road of "feminism is for everyone" so it's stripped of its core purpose and becomes meaningless.

@TheProdigalKittensReturn

I'm thinking that if you do see men as the default subconsciously, even if consciously you know that's wrong, then your perspective on a lot of issues would be quite different and you'd probably find yourself bristling a lot when talking to radfems.
Perhaps I didn't explain myself very well. I actually consider myself to be a radical feminist and yet I still sometimes stumble over moments where my subconscious sees men as the default! I find it shocking that that can still be the case, even after years of being a feminist. (And as a child I always noticed inequalities too - I guess I am trying to say we all have blind spots, so how many more must men have if even feminists have them?) I don't think I really understood the first part of the post, what do you mean by being woman centred?