Radio 4. Right now. Is freaking me out.

No worries! Easily happens in the heat of discussion, I've done the same before.

Yes, apologies - I realised that after I posted.

@Bingbangbongbash I've no first-hand knowledge of this situation and wasn't doing a "drip feed", my comments were considered only on the info from @Fiftyisthenewsixty 's original post:

But that's not going to happen is it? In the meantime, where do we change? In my daughter's athletics club a 50 year old TW has decided to change in the communal female changing room. There are no cubicles, not even in the showers. The girls/women are forgoing the showers and changing in their cars or going straight home. TW has complained! Do you honestly think this is fair?

I don’t remember reading before this post that the TW had complained about the girls not using the changing room. If I missed it in an earlier post, I’m sorry.

I have no understanding of the situation except for what you give me, so as you drip feed more info, my stance has changed. If this is a man who has recently socially transitioned by outwardly expressing a female gender, then I would refer you to my earlier post on TW in prisons - there should be a careful evaluation of each case to determine the suitability of that person to be in a space aligned with their birth sex or their expressed gender. From what you have revealed - over the course of several posts, so a MN ‘drip feed’ - it seems this is not a case where this person should be allowed to use the female changing space.

Had this person been living as a woman for a significant time (how significant, I don’t know - gender experts would need to flesh out the protocols), then I am open to them being allowed to use gender neutral or female changing rooms that have appropriate privacy in place.

But again, in the hypothetical situation where I join your club, my vote is only worth one, so if the majority wanted to keep changing rooms segregated by sex, then that what I would want.

It is always the same. You don’t want to discuss anything - you haven’t engaged with anything I’ve asked of you. Why should I continue to engage with you? (I don’t expect you to answer, obviously. You haven’t answered any of my questions).

You did. There is no exchange of ideas or willingness to replicate my engagement, there is just an endless barrage of questions and, in the case of some posters, increasing ad hominem attacks towards me. I was accused of ad hominem arguments earlier in the thread (around page 11?) and since then have studiously avoided engaging with anything other than the questions and arguments posed to me; the same cannot be said for other posters.

As it seems that these posters won’t answer any of my questions and have sought to personally attack me, dismiss anything I say as woke or uninformed. None of them are willing to accept that I may have read the same information they have and come to a different set of conclusions. There is no sense continuing to engage with such closed-minded people. I was warned, of course, and my experience on these threads has always been the same, but I foolishly thought this time perhaps women would want to embrace the power of idea exchange.

Of course my reticence to engage further is positioned as ‘because I have nothing to say’ or ‘I refuse to answer’ - weirdly the same standard is not applied to the posters on the other side of the debate.

I appreciate your measured tone, but the idea that you ‘eye roll’ at your OH is a little patronising, no? Like someone who reads the Guardian can’t possibly have anything worth listening to because they are blinded by the need to be kind or zeitgeist.

I do read the Guardian and the BBC, as well as the Telegraph, less often the Times, plus additional specific articles in publications like the New Yorker, New York Times, Spectator, Fin Times. I also read scientific source material fully whenever I can get hold of full copies, abstracts when I can’t. I do not bother with the Mail or the tabloids because I don’t trust their editorial or journalistic standards. I rarely trust blogs or opinion pieces especially those in publications with obvious bias, but I will use them to find source material I can engage with.

So dismissing me as a ‘lefty Guardian reader’ is both inaccurate and patronising.

And so we move from the refusal to explain our position to flinging insults and accusations of hate.
it’s always the same bloody pattern isn’t it. Too boring.

One thing that has stuck with me a bit is this idea a male person’s trauma is to be recognised over a female’s
Yes, this is perplexing to me. I think for a lot of people there is a hierarchy of worth/vulnerability that is very rigid. Thus in the example I gave, the girls would have a right to privacy if a 50 year old man wanted to shower with them, but they are "less vulnerable" than a 50 year old tw - who was a man last year and hasn't changed anything except hair length. I don't really understand the mental gymnastics one must do to make this make sense but many people seem to be able to. I guess a deep-seated deference to males lies at the heart of it.

They are male by definition though, every single one of them. That's just plain fact.

As for deviancy - that he complained about the women and girls not using the changing room with him indicates a desire to violate boundaries, don't you think? That he wants the women and girls to be included in his changing room intrusion, regardless of what any of them feel.

Oh. Did I speak too soon?

Wow, the fact that he complained is very telling. Shows his motive clear as day.

None of you have answered the questions I’ve asked, or engaged with any of the counter arguments I have given. You pick on one aspect of anything I post and ignore the rest and have resorted to the very ad hominem attacks others accused me of. That is the sole reason I will no longer engage in the sealioning, not because I don’t have a position, or can’t think of anything to say.

I have an understanding of what I deem transitioning. I have read (most) of the Cass report, plus quite a lot around the American model, including those opposed eg Cantor.

But you have no interest in engaging with me and sharing opinions - you are the epitome of a closed-minded group existing in an echo chamber of hate.

This is a good post

One thing that has stuck with me a bit is this idea a male person’s trauma is to be recognised over a female’s

Where does that come from?

Why does a minority male get the priority

You won’t answer. Quelle surprise.

Again, the total lack of awareness of what other medical authorities are doing, or of the lack of clarity and evidence in this area. And for some reason, total unwillingness to engage with this reality. Knee jerk assumption that because your political enemies are doing something, it must be wrong. It’s so frivolous.
I can only suggest you read the reports produced by Dr Cass, which will give you an appreciation of how weak the evidence base is to support any of the interventions you mention.

Very interesting to read this thread through this morning, on the whole it was very well argued on all sides. Main takeaways?

It seems everyone knows you can't change your biological sex (therefore a transwoman is male/a man and a transman remains female/a woman).

It seems no-one can explain what it means to transition. If there is no universally agreed and understood 'standard' for a transitioned person, how can ANYTHING be designed/legislated/imposed on both sexes?

Bish wrote very well in a liberal 'Guardian readerish' way and remained polite. I don't mean to insult Bish by mentioning the Guardian reader thing, but my OH is exactly this liberal/be kind/look after the poor suicidal minority folk (ex)Guardian reader and I hear him speak in exactly the same way as Bish does. OH gets eyerolls and frosty silences as debate is pointlessly circular.

People quoting the North American response to trans issues are wasting their breath. They are an outlier as much as Iran or certain African countries; neither are good examples of how to do trans...

Radio 4 has definitely IMO become too one sided in this debate and reflects a general exasperating trend across the BBC to appeal to younger generations in order to stay alive. Other broadcasters are available.

Thanks OP/all for an interesting thread. Perhaps @BoiledBeetle can do the book thing here?

Sorry ...

Good exploration of the many, multiple, complex issues with trans 'healthcare' today. Anyone who thinks their support for this is setting them up on the 'right side of history' would do well to read it.

https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/a-pediatricians-manifesto-for-the

This is a really good ex

The right side of history, apparently. A violent man, convicted of kidnapping and torture, exhorting a crowd of angry, entitled males and their idiotic female supporters to punch women who tell them no in the face, like most of the women on this thread, but I'm sure it's all fine as he has a lovely skirt on:

twitter.com/unpopulargenz/status/1677790606561628160?s=46&t=SPorwN-mokktL467rcZ57g

Not something that tends to happen when people are "debating in good faith". Anyone can ask me what I mean by anything and I will tell them. I don't hide behind semantics and sophistry.

It's always very telling when people won't define their terms.

YANBU. R4 has been ruined by the new generation of woke producers, like the rest of the BBC. I now no longer engage with any of it. Very sad.

They’ve lost a great deal.

Isn’t it? Someone called me sweetheart on this thread. I mean, honestly.

Kiddo?? Rude.

Sorry, kiddo, I’m done with the 20 questions. I tried debating in good faith but now the ad hominem attacks have started and someone once told me that only those with nothing to add use those.