If you're GC, what should trans people actually do?

@AmaListening "I'm married to a woman. I think I assumed that people who wanted to restrict trans rights would equally want to restrict my rights. That people who don't "believe" people can transition would be of the "Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" mindset and imagine same-sex attraction to be something to "heal" too."

I think this is a narrative that has a lot of traction- and it's very hard to counter. It is very toxic to rational discussion, though.

Can I ask what you mean when you say "restrict trans rights"?

Can we ask why you had not realised that it was lesbian feminists who were amongst the very first people to raise the issues? Why did you believe that women pushing back on these issues were homophobic?

Was it just because of what you have described as the bubble? Or is it that you didn’t read any of the supposed evidence and analyse it critically? Didn’t know where to start?

I am not accusing you and if it comes across that way, I apologise. I just would like to know why you thought those things and if there was any source in particular you got that information from.

Because on threads in the past it has come up that people watched YouTube or it was just their bubble or it was both. That the material they watched and read was never discussed with a view to understanding truth, but blindly accepted. Occasionally though, they post a link to something they found very convincing and we look through it to see it was based on misrepresentation and dishonesty and fell at the very first hurdle.

Such as this ridiculous notion that acknowledging female body differences is regressive and ‘not helping’ women’s cause. Ridiculous because that is based on misrepresentation from start to finish. Hard to pick that apart without background though. And impossible too, if you don’t read very widely and read and watch content that you disagree with. (A reason I also push back on any person who tells others not to read or watch particular content)

GC women are usually anti rigid gender roles. A good solution could be to include more bandwidth on what a woman is and man, rather than the idea anyone can change sex

There’s no reason for this not to benefit gay women or men too

“Elliot Page (and I'll keep using that example because I'm reading his memoir) says he felt so very different from this. Wanting to rip his skin off. Looking in the mirror and not knowing the person he was looking at. It always feeling jarring, incongruous.”

By the way. @AmaListening I DO understand how Page feels. I have always suffered from this feeling.

The solution is not to fucking have a complete body overhaul that involves taking life limiting and usually shortening testosterone injections. You cannot escape that feeling of disassociation. I recommend that you read the stories of detransitioners and those who remain transitioned who came to that realisation after always looking to that next phase of treatment to be ‘the one’ that makes them feel better. They also describe the euphoria around transition and around progressing each stage.

There is a reason why there are no peer reviewed studies that show long term improvement to mental health. It is a mental health condition being treated in a way that is counter to other conditions like it. Why? Because one sub group out of a rather diverse grouping of people under the trans umbrella managed to convince enough medicos to detach the condition from being classified as a mental health condition.

Who benefits from forcing treatments to be affirming only? BTW this is being done via laws around conversion therapy. Who benefits when there is not one peer reviewed study showing an improvement to mental health with these treatments.

One study tried to conclude there was an improvement, albeit small, but they were forced to rescind that conclusion because the reality was it was a false conclusion. And that was a Yale study so not an unreputiable University.

I recommend you keeping asking ‘who benefits’ OP. I predict that when you find the answers at the end of the chain of benefitees, it is not usually the majority of trans people. And it rarely is female trans people.

This is a really good answer.

I suppose I'd want them to accept that their sex will never change but that they are free to choose whatever name they want and wear whatever clothes they want. As an adult, change your appearance as you wish.

But don't force other people to lie about facts.

If you're a big hairy bloke don't try to use your male privilege and testosterone to force other people to pretend that they think you're a woman. Absolutely nobody really thinks that. They see you as male. Even if they're woke and try to convince themselves that you are a woman, their inner senses will still know that you are not. Accept this.

If a woman asks to be examined by a female nurse or security officer, don't create a fuss. Accept this and refer a female colleague. Don't stamp your size 9s and insist that you are a female, because everyone knows that you're not. Be sensitive to the fact that 90% of sexual assaults are by males so women have good reason to exclude you.

Go about your business quietly. Like with the religion analogy, believe what you want but understand that many will not agree with you. Don't try to inflict on others.

OP, you might be interested in a new thread that has just been started

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4870071-gym-swimming-changing-issue?page=1

I pointed out to the dad that his young daughters 11/13 simply accepted that a male in their 40s is naked in their open changing room. What the actual fuck! Where is this messaging coming from? It seems most certainly not from these girl’s dad, so where?

We now have a generation of children who have such low privacy boundaries that these girls never mentioned to their father that this male individual was using the female changing room. Obviously enough times that they described this male’s bum and ‘huge’ boobs.

I appreciate your tweaked question as it shows you really have been reading. But I think it is really important also for people to understand how we got here and the harm that teaching children and women to push down their discomfort to prioritise any male who people feel is vulnerable is doing.

There is no need for us to not give people respect, however ‘giving respect’ should never have been to simply give into demands the way that has been done. Acknowledging this is then portrayed as ‘transphobic’ and hateful. We see those accusations all the time. Any thread about women’s rights conflicting with perceived trans rights on AIBU gets the same slew of posters making just those accusations.

However, something needs to change and it needs to change fast. There is a generation of children being told to accept behaviour that is potentially harmful meaning that they are then much more open to harm. All under the guise of ‘kindness’ and ‘tolerance’. And I put those words carefully because they have now started to mean just the opposite.

Why is gender dysphoria the only dysphoria treated by affirmation?

Really, OP? I dont think that's the experience of most women. It is far more common for women to feel some or all of these - resent being told that they could not do things because they were a girl, to have been told they were inferior because they were a girl, to hate periods, to feel their breasts are too small or too big. Some are same sex attracted and made to feel bad about that. It is only with adulthood that many women accept their bodies.

I have not read Elliot Page's memoir. I understand from comments on here that there was a lot of trauma in Elliot's life. Does changing your body remove that trauma or is it just the attention/ approval you receive from people with an agenda? People who undergo extreme surgery and have to take medication for life pay a very high price. I have a trans relative and they have a trans partner. Both have poor health, one is unable to work full time. Both could have been happy and healthy with their same sex partner without transition if they had not been told they were "in the wrong body".

Transition is now an epidemic in young women, often autistic and/or with other problems. Those problems are rarely worked through before the rush to affirm. It is even said to be "transphobic" and "conversion therapy" to explore why someone is unhappy with their body and whether they can learn to be happy without lifelong medication and permanently damaged health. Transition shortens lives and no-one is sure what it does to the brain.

What gender critical women want is for young people to be supported to work through their problems, to have a healthy life, to not experience homophobia. We want a world where children learn they can be who they want, have sex with anyone who will have them while still having a healthy body. We dont want a world where anyone in a dress can attack women, a world where women are told they have no rights, that they exist solely to satisfy the desires of males.

When does Page say they felt this? This feeling of ripping their skin off. Was this before Page realised how much women were objectified or after? Was it before or after their first trauma event ?

When you read this account, do you give this account more credibility than a person with anorexia who declares they are ‘fat’ when their body is so reduced that there is so little ‘fat’ on their body that their skeleton is so clearly delineated? If so, why?

I only wish that any thread such as that would get honest and well thought out answers. The issue for me is that no one, except a few who then get ostracized, will come out and say the truth.

It has to be all hidden in obfuscation and when it is pointed out what the end result is, then people are told they are imagining things. Yet, much of the change in policies in government and in other organisations is planned. The discussion tactics have been strategized.

The original stored Denton’s report has been deleted. This blog post has links to active stored PDFs.

https://gendercriticalwoman.blog/2020/07/23/that-dentons-document/

This document is worth the read. It is horrifying though that one Trans strategist, James Morton iirc, has been recorded as saying that when policy has been changed to place males who are trans in female prisons in the UK then all access to female single sexual spaces will fall into place. The focus was to get that access of males into female prisons. And that was a female person who said this! I think there really is a certain amount of females adopting misogynistic actions to ‘pass’.

Here is also a communications guide issued by another law organisation setting out their strategy for manipulating public view.

Messaging Guide : Transgender Youth and the Freedom to Be Ourselves

From December 2021

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

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4439659-Ryan-Grim-results-of-latest-trans-activism-poll-A-tweaked-playbook-for-the-US?reply=113763453

This document is honest at least. It calls the public ‘persuadables’!

It recommends to emotionally manipulate communications and answer questions by intertwining trans issues with race issues. And to never mention sport and to redirect all conversations away from sport. This was released just after Lia Thomas started to make headlines and after Laurel Hubbard’s Olympic appearance.

I don’t know how you feel about seeing deliberate manipulation such as this @AmaListening , but it certainly doesn’t sit well with me.

Wanting to rip his skin off. Looking in the mirror and not knowing the person he was looking at. It always feeling jarring, incongruous.

So I take from that he wasn't a girl/woman in the same way that I was. That there was a mismatch between his body and inner sense of self.

But someone who has such a dislike of their body doesn't know how they'd actually feel if they had a different body. They might feel just as repelled by any other body they might have had.

Someone who feels repelled by their own body needs psychological support to help them to accept their body, not cosmetic surgery to aid them to have a body thar looks the way they think they want their body to look. Especially when such surgery impacts on the normal functioning of their body.

We shouldn't lie to these people. We shouldn't accommodate their imagined reality. Children need a framework of facts to understand how the world works. We tell them right from the beginning that it is fine to dress how they want, do hobbies that they like etc... but materially they are this sex, or that sex. We should provide them with strong gender non-confirming role models so they understand that they are not wrong in how they present themselves - but we should NEVER lie to them.

I say this as a parent of a non-conforming child. She is a very healthy and happy tomboy. She is growing breast buds and understands that she will soon get periods but as she has known this from the beginning this is not a huge problem. Of course she doesn't like the idea - but who of us did???

So I take from that he wasn't a girl/woman in the same way that I was.

A girl who doesn’t like or feel comfortable being a girl is still a girl. (And many girls don’t like or feel comfortable being girls, for very obvious reasons.)

I don’t know why this isn’t obvious to you (can guess), but try substituting any other aspect of the human condition in there. Race, disability, height, sex… whether we appreciate these aspects of ourselves or not doesn’t change the reality of them.

THIS.

I'm with you on that. I have read about the case once and was absolutely sickened. That poor wee lassie.

And to expand on optics, the Scottish Prison Service's policy of placing males in the female prison estate(including males who are convicted sex offenders) has been in place since 2014. The policy was heavily influenced by the Scottish Trans Alliance who have been quite open about the fact that they have pushed so strongly for prisons to be mixed sex so that this can more easily be implemented in other provisions. The Scottish Prison Service didn't bother to speak to women's groups or female prisoners when developing such policies. Their viewpoints just weren't considered at all.

So, since 2014. And the policy in Scotland still hasn't been changed in any material respect. But 'Isla' Bryson's pink leggings has certainly sharpened the general public's opinion.

I won't reiterate pp's explanations of the true facts of the case referred to here but will just point out that the falsehood that the legal action is to reduce services rather than add one is being desperately pushed by various individuals and groups because they realise that saying, out loud, that they believe that women should not be allowed any single sex services at all is bad optics.

Take as an example Edinburgh Rape Crisis. Even putting aside the 'reframe your bigotry' viewpoint of the CEO, before the introduction of Beira's Place, there were no single sex female rape crisis services in the Edinburgh and Lothians at all. JKR set up the service with her own money meaning that the organisation wouldn't be taking any of the funding available to such services from the Scottish Government. No other services would be reduced. So the backlash against Beira's Place has focused on how a single sex service (which is entirely legal as a provision under the single sex exemptions of the EQA2010) can be 'policed' because those leading the backlash know that saying 'women should not be allowed to have just one provision for themselves' will be rightly viewed by general members of the public as unacceptable, and if those members of the public have been previously unaware of the discussions around this subject, it will focus their attention quite sharply.

😲 I shouldn't have read those articles just before bed!

A world in which s transwoman who has a child is a mother, but a woman is a 'birthing parent '

Just listened to a science journalist report on the new drug just approved by the FDA for post-partum depression (it is a potential game changer and great news for women and mothers). The entire segment was about how PPD differs from other depressions, how it manifests, what this treatment might mean. All without saying the words "woman" or "mother" once.

So a discussion of post partum depression and how it affects fucking "People".

This article has more coverage of the case. Again, extreme content warnings.

https://reduxx.info/violent-transgender-killer-completes-sentence-for-1996-torture-murder-of-13-year-old-child/

'In 2015, Jezebel published an article condemning Blast’s treatment while in prison, noting that he had been in involuntary protective custody (IPO), or solitary confinement, for almost two decades. The article followed a petition launched by the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SLRP), a trans activist legal organization, which sought to pressure New York State into releasing Blast from IPO. The SLRP had, at one point, used Orange is the New Black actor Laverne Cox to speak on Blast’s behalf.
The Jezebel article slammed “trans-exclusionary” feminist Cathy Brennan for calling Blast a “man who now identifies as a woman,” and glossed over the details of Blast’s crime in favor of giving him a platform to claim innocence.'

Blast is reported in glowing, admirous terms in this article in the New Yorker: 'with her tweezed eyebrows and her handmade dresses'

https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/crimelaw/features/n_10181/

'Synthia, ... was convicted in 1996 for a gangland murder she says she didn’t commit'

And is now out of prison and threatening women, specifically 'terfs'. Again, content warning.

https://twitter.com/WomenReadWomen/status/1601267936345620481

I feel sympathy for any women in prison who face being locked up with someone like Blast.

JK Rowling was attacked on Twitter for 'misgendering' Blast.

In this kind of case, I think we can find a suitable alternative to prison...

As if ‘restorative justice’ can ever be adequate for the
murder of a child.

Shoplifting? Sure, sounds good.

Child rape, murder, desecration of the child’s corpse? Not enough hours in a day or days in a murderers life to repay that debt with community service.

Ebony 💐