Where to Start

Well pepe, they do call the people they are targeting with the tactics 'persuadables'. So, they absolutely will do this in real life and on any media to achieve their goal.

Sickening when you see the manipulative tactics laid bare. And they are proud of those tactics as well.

I used a couple of examples that were personal to my own life:

-I volunteer with people with learning disabilities, so am particularly concerned how those with autism are impacted by this ideology.

-I have a relative who's a butch lesbian and I want to know why a shit 90s lads mag joke "I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body!" has now become something we have to pretend is real.

Thanks for starting this thread OP, there's some brilliant advice here. I agree with the PP who did a mindmap as I found that helpful to get my head round the scale and depth of the madness.

If you talk to someone in real life about this, you may want to get your words straight that it is impossible to change sex. People really do have this vague untested belief that surgery and hormones can turn someone into the opposite sex. I don't ever use the word 'transition' for this reason, I only ever refer to drugs, surgery, or changing pronouns and dress.

Once someone concedes that humans can't change sex then I find it easier to tackle prisons, sports, hospital wards, overnight school trips and so on. If they still think sex change is real then they might not be worth arguing with!

Discussing sports and women in prison is usually a clear place to start. And once you have read the studies and sort through people’s confusion about males with DSDs that have been horrifically leveraged in the discussion, it provides clarity.

In fact, the Transgender Law Center in the USA believes that sports is where women’s arguments provide clarity too. This Messaging Guide they released states avoid sports, twist the conversation to race and the commonalities we state exist with race instead. (While calling the general public ‘persuadables’ no less!)

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5fd0f29d0d626c5fb471be74/t/61b13d00236e2f7f2dbb9a36/1639005441624/Transgender+Youth+and+the+Freedom+to+Be+Ourselves.pdf

Afterwards I thought more about it and felt annoyed I hadn’t challenged that guilt by association (if it’s even true, which I’m not sure it is) but it felt daunting enough exposing myself as an evil TERF at all and it’s always easy to think of things you should have said afterwards. Im sure there will be other opportunities!

Yes, I think it's so easy to shut women up by being judgey about how mean they're being. Men have relied on this to get what they want for centuries, and it's especially effective when they can get women to police other women using the same means.

I found that being able to recognise the different tactics misogynists use to shut women up and dismiss their views makes it easier to spot them and challenge them in the moment.

I'm still learning and practising, but I've found it takes a combination of lurking on here and reading and thinking, but also lots and lots of practice (i.e. having real-life conversations) to be able to spot the silencing techniques in the wild, as women have been socialised to comply with them and to not even notice them.

And of course, it's especially hard to recognise silencing techniques and challenge them when they're coming from a friend, family member or colleague with whom you have an ongoing relationship. Obviously, loved ones don't tend to realise that's the argument they're using, as they've just been fed these lines in inclusion training, or by reading articles or tweets by someone who's had inclusion training.

Nevertheless, when people whose opinions I care about are criticising me for being a bigot and having "extreme" views, it often takes me a minute to remember "no, hang on, if women having basic rights is an extreme view, then wtf kind of society are we living in?".

Oh yes, and that's the other thing, op. Many people don't realise how few men have 'the op'. It's something like 5%. And how many are heterosexual.

What is the difference between, say Eddie Izzard or Caitlin Jenner and any other heterosexual man? Why not let all the blokes in to change with my 13 year old niece?

Is the reason that third spaces (e.g. gender neutral loos) are rejected by TRAs as what seems to me a perfectly logical / reasonable solution to the issue of loos because there will probably be no women in them?

Exactly.

Validation that they are actually women has to be 100%. Any exceptions means they're not really women.

Which is why the most extreme women only spaces/services are so relentlessly targeted.

For example, a female rape survivors group is, by any normal standard, a place which should automatically exclude men. And always has. But now, these rape survivors are told to 're-frame their trauma', by a transwomen, so that men can attend.

What sort of man forces rape survivors into their male presence?

The feelings, needs and trauma of the women is irrelevant to the fact that their presence validates the man concerned.

It's why a 'third space' is rejected. It doesn't validate. Even the suggestion provokes anger.

India Willoughby famously boasted about how they 'walked miles' at the airport to find the out-of-the-way women only toilet, determinedly avoiding the gender neutral option. Because there was no opportunity to use women for validation in those. And was fuming about the very suggestion.

Women are the resource. Not the space. The space is meaningless without them.

"TWAW"

"Oh you think they are actually really women and should have access to women's prisons, sports and changing areas. Even when they retain all their male attributes and their penis? Gosh, I don't think I'm totally ok with that".

Pick a single point and start dropping in small bits of info about that one area. I often find some women (and I've been guilty of this too) end up trying to give too much info as Gender Identity is in everything and is everywhere. If you talk about it all, their eyes will glaze over or you'll be accused of being a bigot / obsessed etc.

I’ve found chatting about Jo Rowling is a good starting point as most people are aware of something going on with her. I begin talking about the rape crisis centres up in Scotland, why she involved herself and what she actually said and why. How vulnerable women don’t want men in their spaces. I then talk about my mum, in her 80’s, who is getting frailer and wouldn't cope well with being forced to share a hospital ward with a man. Its important to show that these ideas actually do affect all of us women, from young girls to the elderly… and to do it in a way that’s clear and allows them to go away and think about ramifications for them, their families.

But this is part of my issue, I’ve now got so many thoughts in my head about all this that I struggle to neatly articulate and explain them to people who haven’t spent so much time steeped in it.

Have you thought about sitting down and making a mindmap of the issues to clarify them in your own head?

I find mindmaps often help me to clarify the connections between various topics, and that clarification can increase my confidence in discussing them.

Also, I find a natural way to start a conversation on the topic is to talk about whatever's in the news that day (and there's always something!). You don't want to put people off by pushing the issues, and current affairs will definitely raise meaty aspects of the topic to discuss.

Discussing it with people who aren't as familiar with the issues (and without them leaving the conversation thinking you're a dreadful meanie) definitely does get easier with practice. Plus, it's actually really useful to have to explain one's position from the very basics as you're forced to strip away all the fluff and to drill down to the elements that are fundamental to your own position.

Oh yes. Nancy Kelly and her ‘sexual racism’.

I had no idea Stonewall had redefined homosexual to mean same gender identity attracted. Lesbians in the 80s did not march for the right to sleep with men with penises. It is beyond completely bonkers.

I realise my position does not address the social issues (shared spaces etc) but once someone is peaked...

I could have written your exact message a few months ago, OP! I still struggle with where to start with friends, but as most of my friends have teenage kids and/or have other exposure to teenagers through work, i find that is a good way in. The rash of trans-identified teenage girls that looks very much like a social contagion to anyone who looks at it twice; the concern that most parents/teachers have around getting things wrong with those in their charge; the depressing possibility that sporty teenage girls can never live up to trsnswomen sporting records.... these have usually provided a common ground to raise the subject.

Like you, I educated myself (using this amazing forum as a jumping off point) to the point where I have been able to open the eyes of my medical colleagues and now I bang the evidence evidence evidence drum (with colleagues and friends). If there was clear, incontrovertible evidence that the risks of medical/surgical transition were balanced by massive mental health benefits then great, let's prescribe with abandon. But that evidence does not exist. And the evidence base/precautionary principle position can be nicely (and honestly) couched as 'making sure that gender incongruent people get the best care possible'. Hard to say that is transphobic, right?

'A friend I chatted to online, said ‘ I don’t understand why women who have been discriminated against are now discriminating against another group’

i think I replied something like, ‘ why is it discriminatory for women to not want to get undressed in front of a man? Why is it discriminatory for women in prisons, who are disproportionately victims of male violence, not to want men in the prison with them? Why is it discriminatory for women survivors of make sexual violence not to want men in their survivor support groups’. He replied ‘ I never thought of it like that’ and has become gender critical since.'

Well, it is discrimination. Women do a lot of 'discriminating' every time we make a judgement about a man, avoid walking down a street late at night because there's a strange male there, turn down the offer of a lift from a man we are not sure about.

Women discriminate against males because experience and common sense tell us that men, as a group, present a potential threat.

Your friend is suggesting women abandon all their instinctive and learned responses to safety and safeguarding.

If you’re just trying to open a conversation rather than “convert” someone then I agree that sport is a good place to start. Another suggestion is to say that you read JKRs essay on this topic and couldn’t see why she was subject to so much abuse.

Oh yes. Even a LibDem council candidate found pink leggings rapey man hard to stomach. Told me he shared my concerns and didn't agree with his party on the topic.

Or I am Sarah, at the Brighton survivors group for women victims of male sexual violence. There was a men’s group, women’s group and trans group. But a man, obviously male, turned up to the women’s group. When Sarah asked after this for a female only group she was told by the organization that they could not provide a service for her anymore.

Nor could she ask on a Facebook group for survivors of sexual violence if they knew if there was a female only group as that too was considered transphobic.

PP hit the nail on the head. It’s not about the space, or the group, it’s about the other women being there to validate. And that’s why women cannot be allowed their own groups, regardless of how reasonable or vitally important it is for women to have them.

A friend I chatted to online, said ‘ I don’t understand why women who have been discriminated against are now discriminating against another group’

i think I replied something like, ‘ why is it discriminatory for women to not want to get undressed in front of a man? Why is it discriminatory for women in prisons, who are disproportionately victims of male violence, not to want men in the prison with them? Why is it discriminatory for women survivors of make sexual violence not to want men in their survivor support groups’. He replied ‘ I never thought of it like that’ and has become gender critical since.

My brother does not believe TWAW ‘ of course they are not!’ He guffawed. But he got extremely angry at me for rejecting the concept of trans lesbians. However, he was surprised when I told him that most ‘trans lesbians’ are fully intact makes with penises, and look obviously male, and that there are now sex guides aimed at lesbians instructing them how to give oral sex to penises. He is no longer angry with me for rejecting the concept of trans lesbians. Most people still think trans women, equals transsexual.

Another friend, fully TWAW ‘Be kind’, ‘my identity is tied up with thinking what the guardian tells me to think’ friend was staggered to find Stonewall have redefined homosexual to mean same gender identity attracted, not same sex attracted, and she declared that ‘absolutely crazy’ She is still ‘be kind TWAW’ as far as I am aware, but this may have given her some pause for thought. My TWAW Pomo addled boss found this so remarkable he thought I was making this up and simply refused to believe me. At this point you can say, ‘so when organizations like Stonewall say TWAW, what do you think they actually mean, if it doesn’t mean this’. Point out all the times, in sports, in prisons, in women’s refuges, in women’s survivors groups etc, that men who identify as women are to be allowed, as far as Stonewall et Al campaign for. Use this to show that they mean it as a literal truth that TWAW in all circumstances，it’s not a ‘be kind, social identity’ it’s a literal truth. And this is what the implication is for women and lesbians.

So I guess it’s listening to what they think and then explaining that the ‘on the ground’ reality of gender ideology is not what they actually think it is.

They don't want the WI. They want women to know that a man is there. It is part of it.