Continuously willing to discuss in good faith: part 3

I agree. And I do thank posters for not posting the denigrating negative generalisations. That is my socialisation coming through right there.

Where there is a conflict of interests between natal women and trans women, I will side with the natal women every time

Absolutely.

But this seems to be a core issue.

It feels like we've living in an era with this mental list of 'most to least oppressed' and people feel our sympathies and activism should be doled out accordingly.

And society has decided that Trans are the most oppressed (Christ knows why) and therefore everything needs to succumb to their needs.

Where women sit on that hierarchy is anyone's guess. Possibly nowhere at all - as the continued difficulties women face, outside of places like Afghanistan (which is at least acknowledged), seems to be generally ignored.

There's no room for nuance, no room for complexity, no room for balancing of rights. So standing up for our own (natal women) is like an act of aggression.

The "obsequious fawning" is a sign that we are a group of people who have no expectation of being spoken to by the other group with basic respect and courtesy, to the point where if someone is not abusive towards us, we thank them.

Not a good look for either group really.

And we are adults who still seem to be able to perform our lives dealing with clients, customers, children and talk in ways that engage with politicians, and stakeholders in our lives.

Yet our written clear and direct responses are portrayed as unreasonable (not directed at anyone), uninformed, abrupt and what ever because an adult cannot engage without feeling they have to be spoken to only soothingly. I think sometimes posters think their suggested approach to the issue is somehow different because obviously no one has ever tried that before. Yet, of course it has. Usually many times! And by the very same people being told they should approach things differently.

@frenchnoodle "Or you want what we have now companies just need to understand sex segregation is fine in law and wanted by the majority."

Sorry yes missed this question, where sex matters, sex must be used (the boring kind not the fun kind).

Where and when sex matters and which rules are perhaps sexist nonsense we'd be better off without is I think a thing people will need to continue to talk and think about.

That sex and sexual orientation are also protected characteristics is an important point to keep emphasising I think.

@SpookyFBI

I think there's quite an obvious distinction here to be made between the gender critical feminists and the traditionalists on the clothing.

Personally, I love Harry Styles and David Bowie. Not problematic - more flamboyant the better. Couldn't give less of a shit about David Beckham in his sarong. Men enjoying being masculine bodies in feminine clothes = brilliant. This somewhat sets me apart from the Little House on the Prairie traditionalists that we are often claimed to be aligned with. Clothes are just clothes. I think most GC women would say the same.

Men claiming that wearing feminine clothes makes them female and embodies them with some sort of female essence not so much - it's hugely regressive stereotyping (and usually fetish based, with man trying to coerce others into pretending they are female - this is where "dressing as a woman" is more objectionable). Women have fought hard to have the right to wear less gendered clothes and not to be seen as lesser based on what they wear. Wearing gendered clothing is irrelevant to what sex you are and most of the discrimination women suffer cannot be shrugged off by putting on different clothes.

Obviously, the above doesn't cover trans people (in the sense of someone who genuinely has dysphoria and is transitioning - the more extreme TRA/genderists now claim you now don't need either to be trans, and I do think if you have neither but still want to be seen as a woman rather than a Bowie style non confirming man it's quite hard to claim you're not a fetishist really). I'd never not use pronouns and chosen names or to hurt feelings, but I won't pretend that dressing "as a woman" makes someone actually female where sex matters. It's an act of politeness and kindness on my part, in the same way as I wouldn't do other things to cause others discomfort unnecessarily.

Basically, sex is important, clothes not important. I like non conformity. It's dressing in a non conforming way and claiming it magically changes your sex that I have an issue with.

Particularly given the obsequious fawning which made one of the threads utterly unreadable as opposed to the 'if you don't like it, off you pop' reaction to someone objecting to tone policing.

But I still think a bit of feather-smoothing all round goes a long way towards promoting meaningful discussion.

This right here. This is key. It goes a long way towards explaining the double standards.

There is a reason why women, when defending our own right to have our own single sex spaces and sports, feel the need to smooth the feathers of those on the other side of the debate. Because we want to have a meaningful discussion.

Trans activists feel absolutely no need to smooth women's feathers because they don't want to have a meaningful discussion, as far as they are concerned there is no debate and they have already won. What do they have to gain by trying to placate us or being sensitive to our feelings?

Nothing.

If anything, the reverse is true. If they were in any way sensitive to our feelings, if they treated us as humans with our own needs and experiences, rather than terrible Nazi monsters, they would have to admit that we too have a point, we too have rights, and it is not actually just as simple as "trans women are women".

The fact that women can't just say, "trans women are not women because women are female people, you need to stay out of women's spaces, we will not debate our right to exist independently of you" just goes to show which group actually has the political power and which group does not.

”I accept that not everyone shares the view that measured comments are the best/only way to have a conversation, particularly when feelings and emotions are also important. “

I see this as tone policing. Adults who enter such a discussion on a public forum should not expect to have their feathers smoothed so they continue to engage. That, to me, is manipulative at some level.

I have found some people who try to frame other people’s posts as being ‘unmeasured’ in tone often have missed the manipulative cues or shaming aspects being deployed by posters that the ‘unmeasured’ tones are responding to.

Popping back in as I have been tagged - I was under the impression that we were all adults and capable of having a robust discussion/debate. As @BonfireLady is the OP and wants to direct the thread in a feather smoothing way then that is her choice, I am not inclined to blow smoke up someone's arse and I won't be tone or speech policed.

But why smooth some people's feathers and not others?

This is a very good question.

Yes.

But I also don’t understand why adults need to have their ‘feathers’ smoothed on a public and anonymous forum.

debate involves some "feather smoothing" from everyone.

Okay. But why smooth some people's feathers and not others? Seems you're singling out Gail here to admonish for her tone, while 'feather smoothing' other people.

Really enjoying this thread!I'm afraid that I am a bit lazy and I do tend to outsource my critical thinking to others until they say something that makes me think "oi! that's bollocks!" and then I have to re-evaluate everything else too. I've done a lot of re-evaluating in the last couple of years

On a more serious note, one thing that has been a bit lost when people talk about "gender identity" is the difference between "who you identify with"" and who (or what) you identify as". Margaret Thatcher identified as a woman but her political choices often went against womens' interests and she seemed to identify more with men than with other women. She didn't show much respect for other women and the issues they dealt with as women.

Who we identify with matters. The groups we think we're part of, the people we respect, the people whose struggles inspire us. And identifying with other people doesn't have to be total. I can identify with some aspects of gay men's struggles for recognition and I can also recognise that there are bound to be aspects that I can't and wont identify with at all, because I am female.

And there's something about role models. Sane people do not identify as their role models, I don't go round claiming to be them or to be the same as them, but we identify with what they have been through and what they are trying to achieve and feel inspired to copy them, or in a more everyday way simply aspire to a life like theirs.

There's an element of trans that is not so much about identifying as the other sex, it's more about not being able to identify with your own sex. The Genspect panel on men and boys argued that lack of adult male role models to identify with was a big factor for young men.

And when a man claims that by identifying as a woman he is making himself a role model to women or "expanding what it means to be a woman", then he is showing a profund inability or refusal to identify with women.

At it's heart, it's very simple.

Sex matters. You can't change sex. In certain situations, sex specific spaces and services are important and must be protected. Legalising falsehoods about sex is madness.

All this stuff about gender is irrelevant to those facts. Gender is a different discussion.

Absolutely.

And this is the problem. Because if all single sex spaces are replaced by mixed sex spaces then, as you say, this will exclude a lot of women who will no longer feel able to use them. And if there is a clamp down on trans people using spaces for the opposite sex then I wouldn't put it past trans activists to campaign for the abolition of single sex spaces on the basis that "if I can't have it then you shouldn't be able to have it either".

But as long as women's spaces continue to exist, some trans women will insist on using them even if they know they are not allowed.

I cannot see what the solution is, other than additional third spaces and a law making it a criminal offence to use spaces for the opposite sex when an additional mixed sex space is available. But obviously that would go down like a bucket of cold sick with the trans activists, and the UK would no doubt be the subject of loud condemnation from the rest of the woke western world for persecuting trans people.

Never mind women, eh?

And we need to bear in mind that if spaces are all mixed sex this will exclude various people.

Yes, Margot. Either we have sex segregation or everything is mixed sex - it's one or the other. And it needs to be made very clear which.

Sorry, one last point on the safety angle. Because I appreciate there is an argument that women's spaces exist to protect the more vulnerable, i.e. women and children, from men, and that by that logic trans women should benefit from that protection too.

I do have some limited sympathy with that viewpoint.

But the reality is that if trans women are allowed into women's spaces in order to protect them from men, nobody has any protection from men. Not women, not children, not even the trans women themselves.

Because there is no way of telling the difference between a trans woman and a man who has just put on some lipstick - or not, even - and there are no bouncers on the door checking people's genitals or gender recognition certificates. Even if there were, many "genuine trans women" have male genitals and no gender recognition certificate.

The unfortunate reality is that by allowing trans women into these spaces, you lose the ability to keep ANY men out, because all a man has to do to gain access to them is say he is a trans woman. If he needs to say anything at all, in this day and age when we are told that questioning someone's right to use a particular single sex space is bigoted.

So even if you believe that trans women are women, you have to accept that allowing trans women into women's spaces means that these are no longer women's spaces because men can enter them.

Absolutely, @AlisonDonut. That's why it's so very aggravating - and frankly bizarre - seeing gender non conforming second wave feminist lesbians being dismissed as not accepting gender non conformity.

What?

Make it make sense.

Catching up with some of the latter parts of the thread, although I still haven't read the middle.

I like @Catiette's shell shock analogy.

We wouldn't tell a war veteran that they were wrong for having a trauma response to fireworks or a backfiring car, so why is a rape survivor wrong for having a trauma response to a male bodied stranger in her women only group therapy?

Where I think the analogy falls short is that in the former case, the war veteran should be offered support and counselling to help them learn to live in a world with fireworks and backfiring cars in it, without having that trauma response. Literally, we hope that they would in time learn to "reframe their trauma", as Mridul Wadhwa put it.

I do not think that female rape survivors, or female prisoners who have suffered male violence, or female athletes, or practising Muslim women, should have to reprogramme themselves to not have a problem with trans women in their spaces.

In that sense, I do not actually think it matters whether you don't want to share a changing room with a trans woman because you have been sexually assaulted by a man and find their presence traumatic, or because you are Muslim and it is against your religious beliefs, or because you are just a bit of a bigot and find trans women "icky".

The reality is that this is not like wanting to segregate people on the basis of race, or sexuality. It is not equivalent to believing Rosa Parks should sit at the back of the bus. Society has, by common consent, decided that there are some limited situations where it is appropriate to segregate men and women for reasons of safety, dignity and/or fairness. It should not be up to women to justify why trans women should be excluded. It should be up to trans people to justify why trans women should be included in these spaces when no other males are. It is up to them to explain what trans women have in common with women that makes them like women and unlike men, and why that common feature makes it appropriate for them to be in women's spaces. And that common feature needs to have some objective characteristics. It has to be something that everyone agrees actually exists, for a start. It cannot be something you believe you have in common with that group, but they do not believe they have in common with you.

If you can't do that, by all means campaign for the abolition of single sex spaces altogether. Either sex matters or it doesn't. If you believe the fact that you have a penis isn't a good reason for keeping you out of women's spaces, the fact that men have penises isn't a good reason for keeping them out of women's spaces either. Alternatively, if women aren't justified in not wanting to share spaces with you on the basis of your sex, you aren't justified in not wanting to share spaces with men on the basis of their sex. And it is on that basis, because you have no way of telling what gender identity, if any, any other person has.

Of course, the public abolition of single sex spaces will not happen, for two reasons. Firstly, the vast majority of people don't want it to happen. And secondly, many trans women do not want to be in mixed sex spaces. They want to be in women's spaces. A women's toilet without any women in it is just a toilet. And a unisex toilet is just a toilet.

And this is where we come full circle. If there is a justification for single sex spaces existing, they should be single sex, with no exceptions. By believing that only you and a few other special people like you should be able to use single sex spaces for the opposite sex undermines the case for those spaces existing in the first place.

Women's toilets have never existed to validate trans women's gender identities. So in order to justify their continued existence, they need to be used for the purpose originally intended. And that means no members of the opposite sex allowed, other than, perhaps, little boys accompanied by their mothers.

I do think that there are probably a lot of people out there (and this doesn’t apply to anyone I talked to in the other thread) who call themselves gender critical but are just uncomfortable with trans people because they’re uncomfortable with gender non conformity.

Actually I think the exact opposite is the case.

The vast, vast majority of GC people I've come across are very comfortable with gender non conformity and as has been pointed out, often fit this description themselves.

But they don't think that makes the Gender NCing person the opposite sex (or gender) in any way shape or form. They feel that the acceptable range of being male or female should be wide enough to encompass all.

PS - I posted that before I realised quite how long this thread already is and now I need to go and RTFT. Sorry if I'm going back over ground that has already been covered many times.

*I do think that there are probably a lot of people out there (and this doesn’t apply to anyone I talked to in the other thread) who call themselves gender critical but are just uncomfortable with trans people because they’re uncomfortable with gender non conformity."

Now I'm more than happy to stand corrected if anyone has evidence to the contrary, but I have not seen anyone who is just uncomfortable with trans people or uncomfortable with gender non conformity refer to themselves as gender critical.

The irony is many of us who get called Gender Critical are ourselves...non conforming and have been all our lives. No, it isn't irony, it is the very reason we see people who are non conforming as being completely normal and object to them being told they have to remove body parts to conform to the OPPOSITE gender whatever that is, rather than just be happy in themselves.