Continuously willing to discuss in good faith: part 3

I feel like I made a post saying that the sky is blue and I’m being drawn into a debate about which colour is the best and asked to justify why I think the sky is important.

I think I’m going to step away from the thread for now

Been following this thread when I can - haven’t read the whole thing, but I did take r0 minutes to watch the vid that Spooky posted and Bonfire talked about in OP. Couldn’t get any further than that - it is truly frustrating when someone purports to represent your pov and does it in such bad faith.
Did make me wonder whether key GC activists equally misrepresent trans views. I don’t see it, but recognise I could be wrong, curious about whether other people do?

Whatever the reason for doing it the result is the same, silencing women.

🤷

It's not your fault spooky we live at a point in time where we are all lazier and prefer to have information condence and told to us instead of fact finding.

The result of that is swallowing and regurgitating propoganda.

It's very hard to break that cycle and start thinking for yourself.

https://fistulafoundation.org/

This organisation does great work.

Interesting.

You want to categorise people on reactions to not wanting to categorise people by biology. So that you can understand 'misconceptions' to 'misconceptions' of the category of sex.

Why do your categories matter, but not the global categories of the sex binary?

What strikes me is the assumption that the 'gender critical movement' (as various pp have said, not an organised movement but an enormous disparate group who know that sex is immutable) must have unpleasant/sinister motivations when voicing concerns but that Mica, and others producing similar material must be doing it for misguided but ultimately well meaning reasons.

We had conversations a number of years ago here about "treating as a woman" and what that means.

Equality doesn't mean treating everyone ins the same way.

It means recognising differences and adjusting laws and environments to ensure that people are not discriminated against.

It's a subtle difference.

You can treat women as women in ways that are actually sexist.

You can make adjustments based on biological differences that means they're not discriminated against

The GC position or "movement" if it exists at all is more a legal one based on evidence, facts and biology. The ONLY reason women's rights exist in law and in the EA is based on evidence. Facts and biology.

The entire existence and concept of "Transgender" to me is an example that society has really failed to tackle sexism and is obsessed with aesthetics.

I second the advice about reading the transwidows threads- they add an important dimension that spooky is overlooking.

I wish I had the time to be involved in this discussion which is an important one. The questions spooky is asking are extremely pertinent and at the heart of a lot of the confusion and conflict.

I made a brief comment on one of the last threads about "GC feminism" not really being "a thing."

The term is relatively recent. Those of us who've been discussing the issues for a while see the feminist stance as purely feminist. Women's rights. Women’s lib. Same conversations have been going on for decades before the term popped up.

Gender critical come from being critical of sexist gender stereotyping. The concept of "being transgender" is entirely based on stereotypes. That's not to

Labels can do as much harm as good. I prefer not to use the term too much as it's now a distraction. As a PP have said the term as a label as been 'queered' - the actual meaning has been twisted and magnified. There's no "movement."

People have concerns about the legal ramifications and safeguarding issues, both medically and socially, due to the undeniable fact that males commit more crime and sexual assaults than females and against females and children.

People have concerns that children are making decisions based on fake sexist science that harms them for life.

Setting the term GC up as an imaginary movement means that any one with concerns has been labelled = bigot and any discussion is shot down.

Treating people the same is all well and good in many situations ( if ever truly possibly outside of a tick box formulaic procedure), but of course there are situations in which sexed differences matter and do effect the way that individuals are treated. Single sex provisions is one of example of different needs requiring different types of facility or service.

Then we can at least stop getting bogged down in the gender stereotypes discussion

But the bases of being transgender is stereotypes. The discussion will always come back to that.

Fair point. Let’s say that in this instance, all I mean by ‘treated as a woman’ is referred to by she/her pronouns rather than he/him pronouns, and nothing else. Then we can at least stop getting bogged down in the gender stereotypes discussion, because I agree that we should generally treat people the same.

In the Netflix film I mention above, one of the regretters says one of his motovations for transition was that he thought, as a woman, he would be treated with more kindness. He came to realise that women are treated with less respect.

The other transitioned said his transition was not so much about feeling like he was a woman, so much as just wanting to be loved for who he was ( a gay man wanting to be loved by a man).

I just said dress, I didn’t say dress designed for a female body. Most of the dresses available to buy do happen to be designed for a female body because they are targeted towards a female demographic, so if a man wanted to wear a dress that was designed for a male body would have to get it custom made or maybe there are specialty stores that make such dresses… I’m not really sure how that’s relevant to what I’m saying though. Whether it’s designed for a female body or a male body, they’re both dresses and I just said dress…

Off topic, slight;ly - but in the last thread a lot of discussion was had around how much time and emotional energy had been put in by women into understanding the whole trans phenomena. This was in response to a suggestion that we needed to educate ourselves, and that perhaps if we did we would understand the trans experieence.

Anyway, I watched a really good programme on Netflix yesterday ( for the second time) called 'Regretters'. Others may already have watched it, but if not it is certainly worth your while. It is a Swedish production featuring two male transsexuals ( full re-assignment surgery) who have come to regret their surgery and are back to identifying as men. Both were also seeking to have surgery to restore the semblance of a penis.

Two very different characters, with different backgrounds and motivations. One homosexual, at a time when being gay was still illegal in Sweden: he was one of the first to under-go transsexual surgery in the 1960's. The other, a troubled man, clearly still struggling with gendered expectations and roles, who I suspect was motivated by AGP - although this was not overtly stated.

Very sensitively done........and very interesting.

The fundamental issue I see here is the ‘treated as a woman’ part.

What does it mean to be treated as a woman? And how is this different to being treated as a man?

I would argue that we should be treated the same (unless some bodily difference is involved e.g. health, contraception…). And if no bodily difference is involved then why treat someone differently? Isn’t that just sexism.

While I don’t necessarily agree with you, there is of course, a difference between a boy wearing an Elsa dress and a man wearing a dress designed for a female body. But I suspect you know this.

Obviously, there is also a difference between a man wearing a ‘skirt’ and a dress. Kilts, sarongs etc.

However, I feel a men can wear whatever they want as long as they are not including others in their kink non-consensually.

You don't have to post a reply to those questions, but I've been down this road so it's a good experiment just to think about.

Here is one to get you started;
https://www.insider.com/how-my-toddler-came-out-as-trans-to-our-family-2021-9

Then explain what presenting as a trans woman / trans man is to me without using stereotypes....

Find one example if someone finding out they were trans with stereotypes.

Find one example of a parent discovering their child was trans without stereotypes.

What is said and what is actually happening are two different thing.

I would say the view that trans rights activists think gender stereotypes are important is a misconception as well. Gender identity may not be well explained but every text I’ve seen that does try to explain it makes it clear that it’s separate from gender stereotypes.

The transwidows thread also really help with shining a light in just what is that inner essence that makes a man feel like a woman? The disconnect between the public presentation and the side seen only in private by the family is so huge for many of these men. I think it’s really important to get that glimpse of the difference between what some of these transwomen choose to show us, the public, and what they reveal behind closed doors. Perhaps the most important thing for many of us on here is that we cannot simply believe what people choose to tell us about themselves, because so often, it’s simply just not true.

Trying to categorise a whole population who agree there are two human sex's will get tiring for you.

Obviously that's very simplified, you also have transMen like Scott Newgent who are not gender critical because they are trans, but recognise harm is happening to children and that they were lied to / taken advantage of.

Basically;
Feminists (and most other people) recognise gender (stereotypes are harmful) and believe they should be removed. Biology is fact and clothes don't matter. Two sexes

TRAs think gender stereotypes are very important but what ones you adear to make you that thing (IE dresses long hair ect) anyone can choose but it changes your whole person. Gender trumps any kind of biological sex.

Mens right activists and general male arseholes, homophobes and so on like the way gender stereotypes oppress and fight to constantly enforce them. (I've, Men are Men and eat a lot of stake)

I hope that helps.