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

I absolutely love Aja's poems

I think we should just use the terms male and female, man and woman and apply them to the true sex/gender. I have become clearer about this and have not intentions of using non biological pronouns, however, I will call someone by their chosen name simply because I would apply that to nicknames/ shortened versions of their name etc

Absolutely. Why should women have to explain, justify, plead or apologise for wanting single sex spaces? Why is a woman's No not deemed enough? For those who ignore it - why are you so fucking misogynistic?

Simply put, there's no such thing as a transman/woman.

It is so important to accept this simple truth. Not denying existence, just accepting sex. I used to use the T words, without thinking. Like many here I suspect, back then I didn't properly understand what was happening and what was at stake, not even when a close relative jumped on board and had all the surgeries. This was about fifteen years ago though and since then l have educated myself (ahem).

I now say "men who say they are women" rather than "transwomen". Not "men who think they are women" because that does not cover the men who are pretending to be women to go where they like; they don't think they are women but they want others to think they do.

Using the phrase "men who SAY they are women" covers both the men in gender distress who deny their true sex, and the men who claim womanhood because they can, men wanting to take advantage, be sent to a women's prison, whatever.

@AmaListening

I am sorry if I am repeating suggestions already made. But have you read any of the work published (books and articles and debates captured on YouTube) by Julie Bindel, Dr Kathleen Stock, Holly Lawford Smith, Jo Bartosch and other lesbian feminists?

There are many lesbian feminist voices out there. And some were amongst the first to raise the alarm.

Here is a lesbian poet who is so often spot on with her points

https://twitter.com/aja02537920/status/1379854492913504259?s=46&t=HTxp6zC_d4GZ2FFv4a-YeQ

@PurpleGreenandWhiteAreTheNewPrimaryColours and others.
What was so good about this thread was that people were listening to each other and not being combative. Let's hope it can go back to that. Sorry, @AmaListening

Sad you don't know how a chat forum works. I don't need to take anything from your thread but what I want to. But hey ho

To answer your question, OP -they should join with gender critical women in fighting against anyone who tries to impose rigid gender norms on society and against homophobia. If men want to wear dresses and lipstick fine by me - just stop pretending doing so makes you female or gives you a right to be in female spaces. And if you want to ask people to treat you as male carry on - but dont take hormones that will screw up your body and dont bind or remove your breasts, with all the damage that is going to do. Surgeons should be operating on people with breast cancer, not removing healthy breasts for cosmetic reasons. No-one changes sex, they simply change their appearance.

Relationships should be honest - sleep with anyone who will have you, dont practise deception and dont suggest someone who doesnt fancy you is a bigot. You are not irresistible, you are trying to coerce someone. Stop the bullying.

No-one should be discriminated against at work for their dress or any behaviour that doesnt affect the working environment. That doesnt include turning up to work in inappropriate clothing (like the Canadian with massive fake breasts) or trying to bully people into using false pronouns. Sport should be as fair as possible - that means be based on your sex.

This. What they do in their own homes no one cares about but transwomen stop trying to force their way into female spaces or transmen into male spaces because a transwomen can wear as much make up and female clothes as they want, no one cares, but we all know they are still a man. Nothing will ever change their chromosomes.

Completely agree

We can just say no. Others need to respect that.

It’s also for privacy and dignity.

I am so fucking tired of seeing women having to defend our right to single-sex spaces by producing evidence about sexual offending or anatomical differences between male and female.

Why isn’t our “no” ever enough?

If you’re the type of person who would make women justify why we want some spaces free of ALL men, just pause to think about why that is, and why you don’t afford women’s boundaries the same respect as you do men’s wants.

To add, they have also done this in an era where information is now so very very easy to find.

So they willingly allow their popular influencers to filter and supposedly regurgitate the information. But the reality is that they then have only misrepresentations and emotionally driven rhetoric.

This has become a very interesting phenomenon, hasn’t it? At least two, maybe three studies now have shown the same pattern. That people in the 18-28 age group with some spilling into the 28-38 yr age group being identified as being the least tolerant group in society.

They believe they are the most tolerant, yet cannot even have conversations with someone with a different view. And will cut people and organisations out of their lives for holding a differing view. While claiming they are wonderfully tolerant and loving.

This is authoritarian and totaliterian in nature yet these people claim to be the opposite. It really is concerning. There are a rapidly growing list of words that now mean the opposite of
their intended meanings. This is the destabilisation of language arising from queer theory.

What surprised me though was the release of the data of a short survey done by MBM recently. That one has now shown that this same age group 18-28 (might have been up to 34year olds on this survey) have the least understanding of what sex person the terms transgender woman and trans woman refer to.

My reading of this is that this group do seem to have lost the ability to think through concepts critically and are taking their information only from social influencer style content that misrepresent and play to the bias of the desired audience. Hence the arguments that are weak not only in evidence but also logic when you actually follow that argument through analysing its robustness and veracity.

(Sorry OP to use this example) For instance, that second wave feminist lesbians were not featured amongst the small group of women who first understood the ramifications of the demands being made by male people.

The inconsistencies in the movement of those seeking to silence people, mostly women, is hugely discordant. The dissonance reaches crescendo levels. When you have a group calling themselves progressive actively silencing women from discussing their needs and clearly stating their boundaries, while valorising the group of male people who violently intimidate and threaten and sometimes physically assault those women. Those women who were rationally discussing their needs and stating their boundaries.

And then you realise these ‘progressives’ don’t even know what women believe or are saying.

They have never listened because to listen would mean they would have to confess to listening or reading the blacklisted content of a person the group has denounced as bigoted. This group has deliberately and willingly kept themselves in ignorance (by not doing the research to support their belief) to maintain their social groups.

And so the cycle continues.

I think you are correct with your analysis - that this lobby group’s most successful tactic was embedding the concept of “but what about trans people?” into public discourse and making it something which is accepted without question, analysis or scrutiny. That’s why you get all the “you’re denying our existence!” melodrama.

If the question instead was “but what about people who self describe as a member of the opposite sex?”, that would generate a more thoughtful and less knee-jerk range of responses. It would force policy makers to be less intellectually lazy than they have been in their dealings with and responses to these lobbyists to date.

Which means that anyone who attempts to challenge the language capture as you suggest will be subjected to a severe backlash, as these lobbyists absolutely do understand the implications, power and importance of the language changes (and accompanying policy capture) which they have ushered in.

We’ve already seen one pushback on this thread. But…what’s sauce for the goose. If males who self-describe as a member of the opposite sex get to choose their terminology, then women get to say that the word ‘woman’ is already taken, and the same for lesbians.

What I got from your post, is maybe raise your kids to be critical thinkers, rather than progressive liberals.

True but they get to choose...

They can call themselves what they like, I don't have to go along with it, which was the point being made by @AbraKedavra

I haven't answered the OP yet. What I would like trans people to do:

1. Where sex matters*, don't be dishonest about your sex.

2. Don't be homophobic. If someone is only attracted to one sex, accept that as valid and not 'like racism' as the head of Stonewall put it.

3. stop conflating 'female' with 'feminine', and 'male' with 'masculine'. It's perfectly possible to be one and not the other.

4. be consistent about when you mean sex and when you mean gender identity, and don't conflate them.

5. stop ignoring questions you can't answer, and attempt to answer honestly.

• • e.g. risk factors for various things, medical issues, sports, privacy, sexuality.

I find the whole 'I knew I was a boy' thing baffling. If you are a girl, with certain likes, behaviours, characteristics etc - then you are living proof that those behaviours aren't limited to the opposite sex. To assume that only boys/girls like/can do/think certain things from age 3 surely shows what a gendered society they were brought up in - and they haven't managed to realise it's not actually true.

Some people want to be the opposite sex and I don't have a problem with that, outside of where sex matters. But please call it that rather than pretending there is a set of feelings that only one sex feels and because you feel them then you 'really' are that sex. (Or gender. Which is sometimes sex, and sometimes absolutely NOT because that's transphobic, but also it is the same sometimes of course.)

You don't have to invoke this totally indefinable concept of gender identity to try and get around the fact that you want a different body because people treat different bodies differently.

I should add as well I find it odd that trans people are so enthusiastic about surgery. Surely it's a very public admission that they don't believe that e.g. men can have female bodies? What's wrong with a man having breasts - if you think that any body can contain any gender? It's almost as if there's something male about being a man. But again, it's transphobic to think that. Isn't it?

Personally I'm not in favour of gender or cosmetic surgeons profiting off of people with mental health conditions whether they have gender dysphoria or are older women with OCD focused on their appearance trying to look more youthful.

I don't know the best way to reinstate medical ethics and standards into e.g. the US healthcare industry but I think we shouldn't import what's been happening over there into the NHS.

Yes adults have the freedom to make choices that they might regret in future, but we also have a public health interest in not encouraging people to do things that harm them. People don't exist in a vacuum and they may infer that because some of these medications and surgeries legally exist that they are safe and effective, well evidenced and regulated.

Certainly children shouldn't be put on this pathway being told it's the answer to their social and emotional problems.

The danger of the whole issue is the impact that it has on young people - there does seem to be a trend to switch sex/gender and that is why I do not think live and let live applies in this case. I feel normalising changing your sex is wrong - instead we should be saying biology is fact but helping people to live to live as the biological sex.

True but they get to choose...
Christians should also be godtians because they aren't worshipping just christ.
Can't force logic or sense on religions. Just respect that others don't believe what you believe. And building that boundary did take centuries and blood with the church...

There has to be a name for the followers of this religion which they've fully chosen for themselves.
Ttansmen, transwomen, enbies, furries, trans allies all seem to be different denominations of the trans religion...

A "trans man" should be a man who identifies as a woman.

I don't know. I believe in religions naming themselves.
Christians, atheists, devil worshipers all have a name they call themselves. Can't go around calling them men and women with and without god or men and women with our without the devil.... there'll be offence all over the shop and so many inaccuracies.
There has to be a name for the followers of this religion which they've fully chosen for themselves.
Ttansmen, transwomen, enbies, furries, trans allies all seem to be different denominations of the trans religion...

Great post, @AbraKedavra

As many other people have said before me, I think people are allowed to understand their identity and express masculinity/feminity however they wish (unfortunately I feel it's necessary to say that fetish wear should be reserved for consenting adult situations and not worn to the office/classroom). I don't think they should be harassed or discriminated against. But they also have a sex, however the wish it were the other and I don't think it does them or anyone else any good to pretend they don't or that it never matters.

But they don't get to demand everyone believe the same thing about gender identity or pretend that all the single sex services and groups set up over decades are really about gender identity not sex.

They don't get to redefine the meanings of all words from woman, lesbian, homosexual etc. and demand everyone obey their new definitions. Or compel pronouns. If you commit a sexual or violent crime reporting and court proceedings should correctly identify sex even if also stating a gender identity. Victims should not be forced to lie about their attackers sex.

Where sex matters - esp. hospitals, care settings, residential trips, toilets, changing rooms, refuges, rape services, sports, awards/inclusion measures for women, prisons etc. They ought to use the facilities for their sex.

Where sex doesn't matter e.g. all mixed sex settings, they are already accommodated whatever their beliefs. Add in a whole bucket load of extra acceptance for people who are gay, gender non conforming, disabled etc since this is my party.

I think people should be able to have same sex social groups and meetings or same gender identity groups and meetings. Because people should have freedom of association.

However in my fantasy future I'd like them to be upfront about which thing this is rather than pretending to be single sex and actually being mixed. So people can make an informed decision and so mixed sex organisations do not get funding specifically intended to help the inclusion of female people.

So if adopting mixed sex inclusion policies the Girl Guides were called the Child Guides, and the Women's Institute were the Feminine Feelings Institute that would make things much clearer.