First time poster - question about GC beliefs

use the pronouns that they want

People should indeed be able to choose what pronouns they use. But not what pronouns other people use about them.

And few people would vote for gender surgery being a bigger priority for the NHS than yer granny's hip replacement.

that AMA and all subsequent interactions on FWR by that person was an actual bin-fire.

A very informative bin fire, though.

money would be thrown at the nhs to reduce waiting list for trans people awaiting surgery

This assumes surgery is a good thing, and further that rapid access to it is also good. I'd say there are very serious questions over both of those assumptions.

I'm gender critical but I think those in power benefit hugely from division in the general population so I feel like a centrist approach is the best way forward.

If it was up to me, everybody could wear what they want, use the pronouns that they want and call themselves whatever they want. There'd be proper peer reviewed research into the best way to treat children who identify as trans and to gain a better understanding of the link between trans teenagers and autism, police would take harassment of trans people seriously and money would be thrown at the nhs to reduce waiting list for trans people awaiting surgery or healthcare (in this imaginary scenario we can throw money at the nhs for other things too!).

All of that would sit alongside everybody having a solid understanding of the difference between sex and gender and the knowledge that sometimes biological sex is more important than gender identity. Nobody would take offence at common sense suggestions such as single sex spaces, segregation by sex in sport, prisons being separated by sex not gender.

that AMA and all subsequent interactions on FWR by that person was an actual bin-fire.

Very true. One for the list maybe?

However, I still think it's a viable first defence in general.

Loosely related (in so far as it's about a different paraphilia) but I recently watched The Reckoning, which tells the story about Jimmy Saville. If enough people had felt confident and had been supported up the chain to shame him, he probably wouldn't have had increasing access to more senior and influencial positions (and more children 😔).

So I guess another important one for the list is that they know how to charm and manipulate the people who hold the keys to what they want. This is a more difficult one to spot though unless you see it first hand. It's more likely that it will be only obvious when it has already happened, because of the places that they have managed to navigate to.

We do unfortunately see evidence of that sometimes on FWR where a male is gaining obvious gratification by seeking recreational scolding, shall we say, by provoking women to provide it.

Lundy Bancroft and many other strategies familiar to women in dealing with abusive and dysfunctional relationships become applicable rather often in all this.

@BonfireLady Are disgust and shame effective though? Don't some people find that adds to the excitement?

A friend of mine is currently living abroad and there is a man in her apartment block who masturbates very loudly at 5am every day and wakes up the entire building. They have tried subtly asking him to keep the noise down, they have tried being direct and saying "stop waking everyone up with your early morning wanks", they have tried shaming him by saying, "what the fuck is wrong with you, you disgusting pervert?" and nothing works, if anything he seems to be enjoying himself even more.

This is why it's important to have an understanding of the patterns that might flag problematic issues to distinguish those from someone who has a debilitating feeling of gender dysphoria. There could be a crossover (where the person is confused and/or fighting their feelings to give in to a feeling of sexual excitement, particularly so in young, autistic boys who may not realise what's happening and who would benefit from psychological intervention to unpick it all) but the patterns always involve some kind of escalating need to transgress social boundaries if left unchecked i.e. it starts with one thing and then moves on to more. And by definition, they present an escalating danger to those around them as their behaviours escalate.

Some obvious main pattern markers off the top of my head:

1. Sexualised or incongruous clothing i.e. something that is deliberately out of place in a way that is likely to draw attention in relation to the occasion for which it is being worn
2. Sexualised and/or performative behaviour or conversation that is incongruous with the occasion
3. Taking on a female name and/or appearance of someone that they know/knew well ("skin walking")
4. Wearing prosthetic breasts
5. Talking about the feel of the fabric of their clothes and/or talking about how their breasts feel
6. Working in a capacity where they have gained sufficient trust to have access to vulnerable women and/or children. It's best if it's a) voluntary, because that way you get kudos points which help secure further access and or b) linked to policy making, because then you can influence the removal of the boundaries that are in your way
7. History of stealing/borrowing underwear from family members
8. Gains trust and empathy by sharing stories of how they have always felt this way (applies to those who transition in middle age)
9. Heavy use of porn/anime/female gaming avatars
10. Plays a double bluff by announcing that they have the fetish so that they can gain trust by saying that they are behaving transparently

I'm sure there are more but those are enough for a go at Malaga Airport bingo. The game has simple rules really: think of a transwoman and see how many you tick off.

One of the most recent public conversations that I've found surprising on this is the one that is still going with Sarah Phillimore. She still lands back on legislation over disgust. She's right that nobody can sensibly legislate to stop men wearing dresses. I'm also still very much on the side of the "wear what you like" angle that she supports too. However, if there are enough ticks on the bingo card, disgust and shame are the first line of defence in stopping escalating behaviour. There are different ways of displaying disgust in someone, both in real life and online, ranging from making a point of ignoring them to calling them out with insults.

Grim.

You see, this is the sort of thing is the reason why I don't yet have a fully developed view on the cross dressing issue.

In theory I would like to say wear whatever you like. We should be more accepting of gender non conformity. If that means men want to wear dresses then more power to them.

But in practice we don't seem to see many men wearing women's clothes without there being a sexual aspect to it, which gives me the ick.

There is clearly a class of men who get turned on by wearing dresses and lingerie, whereas I am not aware of an equivalent class of women who get turned on by wearing trousers and cutting their hair short. So the two things don't seem equivalent somehow.

It would be wonderful if men could just stop being gross and keep their sexual predilections to themselves, tbh.

I hadn't realised that Grayson Perry had done this....I'm disappointed. He's always been open about the fetishistic impulses behind his cross dressing, but this totally over-steps the boundaries :

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/01/03/grayson-perry-when-crossdressing-crosses-the-line/

You seem to be talking about a fourth category of people - men who know they are men but like wearing clothes which are feminine on somewhat feminine, but do not dress up as if they were the opposite sex.

I guess because I really struggle with 'dress up as if they were the opposite sex'

I wear jeans and t-shirt pretty much all the time. To a person from the 20s, I would be 'dressing up as the opposite sex' - despite that being ridiculous given my body type (no-one's mistaking me for a male). If it wasn't for trailblazers in the 40s and 50s, I wouldn't be able to wear those trousers without ridicule and abuse.

There is a group of men, a small group admittedly, who are like this in reverse (and for fun reasons rather than practical ones). They are caught up in this, because there is significant overlap with the way they present themselves, and the way transvestites(who I class as type 1)/non-binaries(type 2ish - bullies or bullied rather than predator)/confused or lied to (type 3).

I would suggest that their flamboyant and fashionable dress would read as much more feminine than my jeans and t-shirt - that if you were to, in isolation, describe the outfits or put them on a hanger, you would say that my jeans and t-shirt were the 'men's clothes' and their outfits were the 'women's clothes'

Whilst I hesitate to centre men in this, I also think that part of the way out of this current strictly enforced gender stereotyped period is to point out that it's fine for non-type 1,2,3s to dress as they please. This is a little self-serving, I have a boy who's always loved pink and glitter, but had it subtly culturally suppressed by his peers since he got older, and it's sad to see.

I think we are talking at cross purposes.

I was talking about what I believe to be the three types of men who claim to be, and present as, "transwomen". I think that it would be fair to include all cross-dressing men who do not claim to be transwomen in category (1). Whether we call these people who would once have been call transvestites "trans" or not is somewhat beside the point.

You seem to be talking about a fourth category of people - men who know they are men but like wearing clothes which are feminine on somewhat feminine, but do not dress up as if they were the opposite sex. This category of people have nothing whatsoever to do with any sort of trans debate other than to help show up "gender expression reflects some sort of underlying cross se reality" as the nonsense it is.

Very well worth reading some of the transwidows' insights and explanations here. You can find both their threads here and the website with many women's personal testimonies of their experience well worth reading and digesting. The patterns are hard to miss. And also worth considering the wry joke from the TQ+ community in the days when it still had a sense of humour, about 'what's the difference between a transvestite and a TW?' with the answer being 'about two years'.

are not at all predatory, have no mental illness or mental health issues, but simply dress up in a way that is a stereotype of the opposite sex. I have to say that I am not sure that I buy this, not least because women's fashion is fashioned designed for women's bodies, and one cannot appreciate women's fashion by exhibiting it on men.

Well, no, they wouldn't/don't wear clothes made for women (unless they get them tailored I suppose), because they wouldn't fit, and fit is part of being fashionable and put together, but plenty of men wear skirts of some sort, or long robes that may as well be dresses (OK, this one's not fashionable), some men wear clothes that are sparkly or frilly or fluffy because they like them, they look good in them, even though most people would look at them and think that it was a feminine look. Just look at the more out-there fashion shows - plenty of feminine-coded menswear.

There are 100s of male youtubers who wear makeup, because they like it and they look good, they've put in the effort - not to pretend to be a woman, but definitely to wear makeup in a way that is traditionally associated with women/femininity.

The complicating factor is that some of those men would now claim/ are encouraged to claim to be women (rather than men who live as women).

See Eddie Izzard's move from 'these aren't women's clothes, these are my clothes' to 'I am a woman'

One can like fashion and make-up without choosing to dress like a woman.

Are you saying that you believe that there are men for whom their is no erotic element, are not at all predatory, have no mental illness or mental health issues, but simply dress up in a way that is a stereotype of the opposite sex due to a love of women's fashion? I have to say that I am not sure that I buy this, not least because women's fashion is fashioned designed for women's bodies, and one cannot appreciate women's fashion by exhibiting it on men.

Yes, please read that and the bullying is rife thread for perspective.

IMHO "Brian across the road" must, by definition, fall into one of the following categories and potentially more than one)

I have also met the occasional man who just likes fashion and makeup - so there is a 4th category - you can tell them because they look 'put together' rather than 'thrown together'

Maybe he's just a David Bowie type who enjoys dressing in a gender non conforming way but now doesn't want to be tainted by association with this movement and all it stands for.

I absolutely winced when a friends tiny 17 year old Dd who has short hair and wears jeans but could never be taken for male strode into the busy men’s loos when we went to see a band in a nightclub. Sorry but it just seemed so unsafe. None of us said anything hadn’t realised she thought she actually was a boy because she had a short hair cut.

Isn't "the complicating factor" the fact that where we are now (sexualizing kids, transing kids, completely destroying all women's rights, language, spaces etc) was always the end goal, and those "fair amount of men who lived as women" were a combination of innocent victims of the ideology, and willing participants who understood the end goal?

There is someone near me who for as long as I remember has had hair a few inches below the shoulder in a style that is somewhat old fashioned in a gender neutral way. I have no idea how he defines himself, but I swear that over the last few years I see him out and about as often, but he presents male most of the time now, whereas I think it used to be cross-dressing much more than 50% of the time... is he distancing himself from the movement? Has he realized that his own behaviour, whilst relatively harmless in itself, is dangerous as it is all part of pushing the wider movement?

IMHO "Brian across the road" must, by definition, fall into one of the following categories and potentially more than one) -

(1) He might be a "doing it because it excites him" person.

(2) He might be nothing more than a dishonest predator who believes presenting as a woman will help him gain access to your house.

(3) He may have "gender dysphoria" (if indeed that is a real thing distinct from sex specific body dysmorphia), or be suffering from some sort of trauma response... whatever the specifics he may have some sort of mental illness / mental health issue and is choosing to ask you to play along with his illness / issue instead of getting mental health support and treatment.

I believe that no woman should be forced to tolerate Brian if he is a (1). If Brian is a (2) then that is much worse, and if he is a (3) then I would argue that perhaps the kindest thing you can do is refuse to speak to Brian until you can be confident he is seeking and receiving the sort of mental health support he needs.

"If you hold gender critical beliefs, do you accept that some people firmly believe they are born in the 'wrong' body, and have a right to live as the other sex (up to but not including the point where it would impinge on the rights of that other sex), possibly taking hormones and undergoing surgery? Is this a coherent position to hold?"

I agree with this, as someone in my 50s I have met a fair amount of men who lived as women.
The complicating factor is that some of those men would now claim/ are encouraged to claim to be women (rather than men who live as women). That is an ideological/ political position based on interesting social theory but, as someone said - postmodernism is an interesting view of the world but is not a set of rules to live by

Aligned to this, of course is the contemporary obsession with open borders and no boundaries. The idea that openness is a supreme virtue. Discrimination and definition are seen as prejudicial and confining and necessarily aligned to dominant power structures.

Though of course, without discrimination it is impossible to make moral judgments about worth or value; and without boundaries there can be no integrity or individual autonomy. All healthy organism require boundaries for defence and for protection from invasion and hostile forces.

Equality does not mean a big, open free for all - it implies that autonomous individuals are able to make conscious and free choices about what to permit and what not to permit; what to include and what to exclude.

Inclusion is a vacuous term - necessitating no discrimination and no autonomous moral judgement