Any body who aligns themselves with women and women's issues is a sister of mine. Transpeople just want to exist and be accepted like everyone else.
Pippa, if this was always true you might have a point, but the problem that many women on here have recognised is that now, far more so than in the past, a great many transwomen don’t align themselves with women at all. 90% keep their penis, many are aggressive towards women, threaten them, hate them or are jealous of them, as you can find them openly stating on Twitter, tik tok and many other online sources, and clearly see at pro-genderism demonstrations. Some coerce lesbians into straight sex because it’s bigoted not to see a TW as a “lesbian”. Some threaten women with rape and murder. For many, dressing as a (highly sexualised, pornified) stereotype of a woman is a fetish that turns them on, and so does being treated as a woman. This type of TW often does not just want to exist and be accepted, they want to use women and women’s spaces for validation, they want to film themselves masturbating in women’s toilets and changing rooms and in some cases, they are sex offenders who use those spaces to attack women and girls. And has been observed many times, they tend to dominate women’s groups they join.
Or perhaps these TW are not trans, but just predatory or fetishist men who are pretending to be trans. But we can’t know can we, because now anyone who says they are trans instantly must be accepted as trans, which is a fantastic opportunity for predatory men isn’t it?
That is one of several problems, not with trans people, but with this new ideology. Others include the transing of children leading to irreversible and often harmful medical treatment, which some come to painfully regret, and the obliteration of the concept of women as a sex class, meaning we can’t define ourselves or fight for our rights, and punishing people for “misgendering” (correctly recognising the sex of) someone else, even if they have learning difficulties, and even if they have been raped by a man who then suddenly decides to identify as a woman.
None of these concerns are about a lack of kindness. They are about a new situation that is really dangerous for women and children, but not for men, which is undoing gains made by feminism. I am fine with trans people existing and being accepted, and protected from persecution and discrimination, but the kindness should be mutual and they too should be accepting - of the reality that you can’t change sex, of the reality that women (and men) need some single sex spaces and services, and that the sexes are different in some important ways that particularly affect female health and safety.
Many trans people themselves share these concerns too.