Just despair - HOW do some women just not get it!

The thing is actually this whole 'let's make trans people a sacred caste and above scrutiny' is having the absolutely obvious effect of getting paedophiles / abusers who aren't trans flocking to 'transness' as a cover for their activities.

I mean look at Breslow and the other Mermaids dude who had contact with children with porn on his social media. All the rapists magically discovering they're trans once convicted so they can get into a women's prison.

Do some people really need a massive neon sign saying 'paedophiles and abusers WILL exploit any loophole you create in safeguarding'?

It's making life much more difficult for all the non predatory normal transpeople. I honestly think transactivism is making life harder for normal transpeople now. Some of them are speaking out and saying 'not in my name' but receive the same level of hate and vitriol for doing so as women so I can understand why it's difficult for them, plus of course it doesn't fit the media narrative.

So, do you think that it's fine to put Katie Dolatowski in a women's prison?

Right.

So you admit there are predatory trans people.

How confident are you about the % of non-predatory trans people that you know. That is point about making blanket statements the way you have. It is exactly the same statement I have seen used to dismiss the % of males in the general population that are abusers.

I know very well that my own domestic violence abuser was well loved and well regarded in the community. He didn't appear to be a 'threat' to anyone either. And in his older years seemed very vulnerable too.

This is the whole fucking point!

And that is why using blanket statements such as you did is dismissing the reality to keep your own ideal reality alive.

Yes, except writers/authors are public figures, to a greater or lesser degree (if your occupation is 'writer/author' you may find it a bit harder to get home insurance) so the repercussions extend a bit wider than the workplace.

I was chatting to someone who wholeheartedly believes TWAW. Turns out she is non binary (no pronouns given - don't delete me!) I spoke about prisons etc but she just feels that more harm is done to trans people by not letting them in. I am very fond of her so couldn't really argue much and although it didn't surprise me that was her position, it did that she believed it so wholehearted. And saddened me I suspect when she is older and has experience more of life that will change.

Her answer to everything was that "they are women". She just can't see past it so thinks they should be included. I also mentioned people physical reaction to males, even if they are not aware of it, and she said that noone should be excluded because of someone's past trauma. Really saddened me.

What people are like as individuals should have no bearing on whether they are treated as male or female in the few situations where sex is important.

How does this keep getting brought up? I think it's because people in general find it hard to conceptualise risk. It is hard, that's why we had so many people not wearing masks at the height of the pandemic etc.

Disclaimer - I respect the feelings of people who are TERF-identified, because those feelings are real and come from a real place. I'm hoping to answer your question honestly because I think that you asked the question in good faith.

I support trans women and not because I fear being cancelled. As a woman (I'm 32, female, typically female at birth, in case anyone's interested) I have plenty of other things people want to hassle me for, and they can if they want.

I work for a charity which deals with transgender people from other countries where their gender identity puts them in direct danger of death and torture, so I've seen first hand that people don't do this for shits and giggles. I've also known plenty of them, and seen how they're not one conglomerate of identical threats, the way they're made out to be in many 'enlightened' texts. I also tend to go to places where I'm the only non-trans person IN the ladies' bathroom, and the experience has been nothing short of dull and uneventful.

At the same time, I "don't get the trans thing" myself. I don't think I ever will, but I don't think it's super important that I do.

I DO get why people see the whole business as a "movement" and a "threat" because I get what it's like to live as a woman since birth and experience everything that comes with that. I really do get that. But the "facts" that I'm presented with just don't match up to my frequent professional experiences.

I also strongly suspect that external actors are, in bad faith, using "the trans issue" deliberately to distract, destabilise, and disenfranchise women's rights movements from the inside. Because it's certainly working, and things that work this effectively are unlikely to be accidental in my experience. I do not trust that anti-trans movements are genuinely set up with the wellbeing of women like me in mind. It helps nobody, and I refuse to be taken in by it.

Also this: Fuck off and take the word feminism out if your mouths, all of you. Right, because there have never been factions in feminism and you don't get to care about women's rights unless you have the exact same definition of 'woman' as the OP?

Feminism is a reaction to the historic and ongoing disempowerment of female people because they are female.

If you want to change the meaning of Woman into a mixed sex group that's great. However, it's no longer the group for whom feminism arose.

I'm not saying that group of "people of either sex who align to cultural constructions of womanhood" is not valid. I'm not saying it doesn't have a big overlap with the concerns of feminists. I'm not saying we can't be allies.

I am however saying find your own words, because ours already meant something and when you take our words and make them mean something different, you appropriate a history that was never yours and in doing that you take away our power to tell our own stories and name what we need.

To be clear there are predatory Trans people. But people tend to develop their views based on what they know. So if all the Trans people they know are nice, then they judge based on that.
And I have met Trans people, women and men, who seem very anxious, shy and with low self esteem. They do not appear a threat to anyone. They seem instead very vulnerable.

Fucking intolerable situation. I hope we come out the other side soon. I can't countenance much more of this shit.

You know this will never end right?, the tide will go in and out slightly but there is no 'coming out the other side'.

I don't understand what is confusing. She sees misogyny because she is a woman who has grown up a woman. She doesn't think that trans folk pose a danger to women because... they don't, really? Whether or not they ARE women is a totally different question to whether they are dangerous and to whether they are particualrly misogynistic when compared to the rest of the popualtion. Some of the extreme activist stuff, sure - but to think that accepting trans folk is inherently misogynistic is out there in my opinion.

Also this: Fuck off and take the word feminism out if your mouths, all of you. Right, because there have never been factions in feminism and you don't get to care about women's rights unless you have the exact same definition of 'woman' as the OP?

However, let's put statements like: Many people know trans people and know they are not predatory into context.

This is actually a good example of the blind spots that people have.

Let's extrapolate it to other subsets of males.

Many people know male scout leaders and know they are not predatory.
Many people know priests and know they are not predatory.
Many people know male teachers and know they are not predatory.
Many people know fathers and know they are not predatory.

Shall I go on....

Maybe I was just unlucky to actually have female children in my family raped by male family members to know that statements like 'Many people know trans people and know they are not predatory' are not to be trusted.

I don't believe that many people actually know enough about people in their lives to know the truth if the victims keep quiet.

And if the victims keep quiet, does that mean that those males are not predatory?

Maybe I have just been overexposed to the prevalence of this to ever take statements like that at face value.

Absolutely agree Helleofabore and this is exactly the sort of thinking that gave us such scandals as Savile, child abuse among priests and in children's homes.

'This category of people aren't abusive'.

The whole point of safeguarding is that it applies equally to everyone and everyone has to be under scrutiny. No, it's not fun for anyone, but we've seen the consequences of the children harmed too many times to be in any doubt about where the 'these people aren't a risk' line of thinking ends up.

Anyone who objects to normal safeguarding applying to them or to any group of people or individual is demonstrating a very serious red flag.

It's social death for some young people to not conform to trans ideology. I got a lecture from my DS telling me he's embarrassed for me. So there's the problem, he would be the embarrassing one. I said in response that he's supporting male rapists being placed in women's prisons and he told me not to be so ridiculous, that would never be allowed to happen.

I've come to the conclusion that they need an outlet for anger and hate and it's socially acceptable to hate people that don't believe the madness, so they can enjoy being nasty with no consequences and group approval.

You've had a number of posters defending the GC position against his argument. Your argument is a trap intended to consume other people's energy defending themselves against irrelevant bollocks.

Either anyone can self ID or there needs to be safeguards (disingenuously called gatekeeping by TRA's FFS) to prevent predators from exploiting loopholes in the law. If you agree with self ID then you have to accept some predators will claim to be trans and you can't disavow them because they make the community look bad.

Approximately 15 - 20% of the male prison population have been convicted of sex offences, 60% of trans prisoners have been convicted of sex offences; either self ID encourages sexual predators to claim a trans identity for nefarious reasons, in which case self ID is a very bad idea or trans people are much more likely to be sexual predators. Which is it? You can't demand self ID and then claim any trans person who commits sexual offences isn't really trans.

I’m not brave enough to speak up in my work place. I guess the same applies to authors 😢.

‘Most violence against women is conducted by heterosexual Cis men….’

well, of course it is. Because there are many, many more heterosexual cis men than TW or even gay men, so if you are counting heads, you are going to end up with a big majority.

What would be more interesting is what in market research used to be called rather appositely ‘penetration’, that is, what is the percentage of a particular group who have a particular characteristic or activity. If you include psychological abuse of the sort experienced by women in some of these sorts of relationship, as well as the straightforward wanking, exhibitionism, threatened physical and sexual assault and actual assault, I think you you might end up with a different result.

This lacks any nuance at all.

Such a blanket statement is either attempting absolutism or it is avoiding mention of the small subset that is just as predatory as the subset of males as a whole who are predatory, so it could be said to be false.

Or antelope are you making a bold claim that all the transitioned males you know are not abusive because you know every single thing about them?

From personal experience, predatory/abusive males are often the ones who people who socially know them as being 'non-predatory or non-abusive'.

So, excuse me if I don't believe such blanket statements.

If you’re looking to get a novel published, or keep the deal you already have, it’s best not to be openly GC. Especially if you’re writing in the teen/YA market, it would be career suicide! You either keep your mouth shut or pay lip-service to the Gender Gods.

I don’t get it either. I have so many female acquaintances who have the cheek to call themselves “feminists” happily throwing women under the bus to appease men, including lesbians which I find particularly baffling. In the circle I’m talking about, I think a lot have been bullied by people with “trans kids” who basically weaponise their kids to bully and guilt trip people into agreeing with them.

And also the same percentage of TW are as predatory as the general male population.

Holly, until recently, wrote young adult romance (with a mental health leaning) books for Usborne, a children's book publisher who is fully and painfully woke.

My money goes on her actually believing twaw though as given the subject matter of her books she lives in a middle class lefty woke bubble.

(Speaking as someone who was in one of them until quite recently, somehow turning 38 and having a child opened my eyes to the nonsense of blindly following a political stance without applying critical thinking)

No one is saying that trans people are predatory. They're saying that self-ID means predatory males can override what should be safeguards by saying they're trans.

Many people know men who are not predatory too. Totally irrelevant regarding the few who are. As with trans people.

Is Katie Dolatowski a transwoman?