Oh dear

Oh this shite pisses me off no end - I've heard it a few times, and my mind boggles at the cognitive dissonance required. TWAW is the foundational lie on which all these other things are based. None of them (men in women's sports/ prisons/ changing rooms/ rape crisis centres) would have happened was it not for this basic lie, you cannot have one without the other.

Like others I also think it's something to do with men being uncomfortable seeing TW as men, so they just cast them into the only other category available. Maybe they think they are all hyper effeminate gay men really.
Also, I think there is something in many men feeling a bit sorry for them - imagine voluntarily opting out of the privilege of being male, and opting into the lower status category. It must mean they are disturbed and need lots of sympathy blah blah...

DH thinks he is firmly in the TWAW camp but also agrees that he:

• doesn't think female prisoners should have to share a cell with a TW
• doesn't think females should be forced to have TW deliver intimate care
• thinks it's wrong if a TW doesn't declare that they have a penis when becoming intimate with a partner
• thinks TW competing against females in sport is unfair

When I point out that this means that in some cases he does not in fact believe that TWAW he gets flustered and moves onto another subject.

It's so incredibly frustrating.

Or is it because you feel uncomfortable defining people who wear dresses and makeup as men? Is it that you don't want them in men's spaces, and feel more comfortable with them being elsewhere, even if that means they end up in women's spaces?

I think that a lot of the men who claim to believe that TWAW are probably just 'thinking' (so to speak) that women are not the same as them and TW are also not like them - therefore, TW must be women.

It's a very basic syllogism, that makes it much easier to 'rationalise' without going to the trouble of actually using your mind and thinking.

There are plenty of men who don't buy into this at all - and as has been said, they tend to have less to lose in being open about their belief in biological fact than women do - but sadly a lot of men do go along with it, for the exact same reason that they also have very little to lose in doing so.

This kept me awake for quite a long time last night; I couldn’t quite imagine how two men could actually deny their own biological experience to the face of the prime provider of that experience. Never mind his sexual preferences (male, female or any permutation thererof) , your son couldn’t have been conceived by or born from a trans woman. He is denying the gift of life which you gave him, and that is base.

The ideology redefined Woman as something mental. So attempting to bring clarity by pointing out biological differences fails because "ugh mum is so old fashioned, she still thinks a woman is something to do with bejng female, that's sooooo sexist!" They know TW aren't female, they just don't admit see the relevance.

So the tack for me is to double down on that and focus first on the fact that female people do still exist, and the social and physical consequences of being female haven't gone away, and that by splitting sex and gender to acknowledge trans women we now need to co sider female needs independently of "women's" needs, which leads naturally into how TW being labelled "women" is taking away the ability of female people to have theor own political and social voice and appropriating resources that were set up to meet female challenges not "women's" challenges.

Er, no. since some men are perverts, and they dont walk around with a neon sign on their heads saying so, then all men are excluded to keep the bad guys out. There, that wasn't difficult now was it?

Exactly this!!

@MissScarletInTheBallroom thank you for your rant suggestion(s). I particularly appreciate this:

You don't need to attempt to gaslight your own mother, or treat her like something you stepped in for refusing to join in the pretence.

I would very much like to say this to my son, but I’m afraid of the consequences. It wouldn’t take much more though for me to say “to hell with consequences, this has to be said”.

My DC’S both female 27 and 23 are totally GC, probably because as a lesbian I’ve been banging on about this shit for years, when the youngest was pregnant with our first grandchild I refused to pay for a private ‘gender’ scan unless it was agreed it was a scan to determine the SEX of the baby and no mention of bloody gender would appear on social media! My partner although agreed TWANW was always a bit more ‘be kind’ than me, but over the last 10yrs of this shitshow, she gradually realised that what I said was happening and would happen actually happened. Now she sends me screenshots and links to the TRA madness with ‘FFS have you seen this or WTAF’ comments. I honestly don’t know how I’d deal with a TRA child but I do know I wouldn’t be the one backing down and they’d always be free to go live in the shed or somewhere else if my belief and facts upset them so much.

and @MissScarletInTheBallroom
"Or is it because you feel uncomfortable defining people who wear dresses and makeup as men? Is it that you don't want them in men's spaces, and feel more comfortable with them being elsewhere, even if that means they end up in women's spaces? "

There are many good points mentioned in this thread; this one also leads me back to the thought that it’s men who are excluding feminine-looking men from their spaces for some unspecified reason (fear?) and do not want anyone who does not conform to current stereotypes around them. That could explain some of the zealousness and religious-like fervour. I agree with your points about that, just thought the same while reading this topic.

Anyone can wear dresses and that’s perfectly ok. It is not required to go through a transition to wear a dress, either, you can just do it because you like it. But if you’d get a lot of weird looks from other men, speculations about your orientation or your thoughts, you might not like to do that in men’s spaces.

These are social barriers that tend to change through the centuries. Many paintings of royalty from the past centuries show men dressed in elaborate and often richly decorated and colourful clothing, a lot of which resembles dresses (especially the grand overcoats).
They wear shoes with heels and decorations. They painted their faces and yet no-one questioned their masculinity.
Besides, as there is an 80s revival every couple of years: Anyone seen old photos of Duran Duran?

Well done you. The more we shout about this, the more others will gather the courage to do so💪

Man alive, I would lose a lot of respect for both of them.

Good point.

So I might add another paragraph to my rant suggestion above:

"Is it because you believe you will be a social outcast if you refuse to pretend? On some level I can understand that, although if that's the case I'm sorry I didn't teach you to withstand peer pressure better than that. The thing is though, you don't need to pretend at home. You don't need to pretend in front of me. You don't need to attempt to gaslight your own mother, or treat her like something you stepped in for refusing to join in the pretence. You could say, privately, at home, of course trans women are not women but if I ever said that at school it would be social suicide. But if no one dares to say otherwise at school, if you're all too shit scared of the potential consequences of stating the bloody obvious, nothing will change. Because not only do you not actually believe trans women are women, neither do any of your friends. They are all just pretending. And some of them might well be relieved if one brave person stops pretending and tells the truth for once. And as a boy, I can guarantee that you will get less flack for stating the truth than any of the girls will. Don't believe me? Just look at how the consequences of saying humans can't change sex have been different for JK Rowling compared to Richard Dawkins."

They “believe” it because it is social death amongst late teens early twenties to say otherwise, they feel virtuous and on some level (subconscious or otherwise), they get to stick it to the Karens.

You know what, @Cauliflowery, maybe that is the approach we should be adopting now, when people say trans women are women and we should be more kind.

Because nobody actually believes that this is true. The whole concept of "preferred pronouns" demonstrates this perfectly. We can see with our own eyes what sex you are, so the only reason for needing to tell someone what your pronouns are is if you are asking them to pretend that you are something other than what you quite clearly are, or if you wish to demonstrate that you are an "ally" who is happy to go along with this pretence. If any of us believed that trans women are women, we would naturally refer to them as "she/her" without needing to be asked to.

So @GnomeDePlume, if you're really fed up with the gaslighting and want to be a bit more ballsy about it, you could also try this sort of approach:

"You don't believe trans women are women. Nobody believes this. If they were women, you would be just as open to having sex with one as you are to having sex with a woman. If they were women, there would be no controversy about whether they should be allowed to use women's single sex spaces or compete in women's sports, because we would all be able to see that there is no difference between trans women and women. The question literally only arises because we all know perfectly well that they are not women, but we are being told - not asked - to pretend that they are.

So my question is this. Why are you pretending? What is your motivation?

Is it because you have internalised this idea that it is kind and progressive to do so? Because in that case, you need to ask yourself why, in order to be kind to trans women, we have to be unkind to women. Women have been raped in prison because of this. Women have been denied the single sex rape crisis support that they need because of this. Female rape survivors and Muslim and Jewish women can no longer use women's changing rooms because of this. Female athletes have been beaten by male athletes in their own sporting categories because of this.

Or is it because you feel uncomfortable defining people who wear dresses and makeup as men? Is it that you don't want them in men's spaces, and feel more comfortable with them being elsewhere, even if that means they end up in women's spaces? Because if that's the case, I think you need to examine your own feelings about gender stereotypes and even whether there is some internalised homophobia at play here. Do you feel uncomfortable with the presence of a male bodied person in a dress in men's spaces? And if you do, for whatever reason, why are you calling me a bigot for feeling uncomfortable with the presence of a male bodied person in a dress in women's spaces? Can you really not see the hypocrisy here?

Ultimately, whether you are pretending that trans women are women because you believe that it is kind to them to do so, or because you do not feel comfortable with them in men's spaces and wish to pretend that they are not men, you are prioritising the feelings of people born with penises over the rights and needs of the female sex. Over me, your wife/mother who birthed you/your children. Over your grandmother/mother. Over your sister. Over your daughter. Over your female friends. Over vulnerable women who have been raped. This is not kind and it is not progressive, and frankly I am very disappointed in you for peddling this misogynistic BULLSHIT."

Oh and I did flip the conversation to transmen. We live near Hampstead Ponds, and were talking about identifying as men and going to the men's pond. They thought that was ridiculous.

my dcs think I'm a massive terf too. I don't get how people who are supposedly intelligent can believe TWAW. They don't think trans people should be in women's sport though

We can't discuss it as they just call me transphobic. They care so deeply about these poor victimised trans people. They don't give a shit about discrimination against disabled people though and think it's fine to be casually ageist all the time (I have had to ban the term Karen in my house). I wonder how I have raised them to be like this!

It is, and always has been, about who you are choosing to be kind to.

Imagine if this had been known for what it is right from the beginning - a male supremacist movement. MRAs by another name. It wouldn't have got the sympathy it has from the naive and gullible (I used to be one of those).

Though considering the worldwide pushback against women's rights, and against LGB rights, I suspect there would still be governments happy to go along with it.

Remember the language around trans ideology has been designed to obfuscate, shape shift and confuse.

I'd be tempted to cut out some of the linguistic dancing around and make it clear that I knew perfectly well that DS and DH know what a woman is (I promise you they do know. Otherwise how do they know their mother/ wife isn't a transwoman? Have they ever asked you?)

I might try starting at the point of "why do you feel it necessary to go along with this particular faith based belief / untruth? What are the potential implications of doing this, and of not doing this, for you? And for me?"

I don't think men who say TWAW think of TW as women at all. TW have very much been treated as special men. Trans ideology has used "old boys" networks and influence to change policies and capture all institutions of power largely behind closed doors. Trans ideology doesn't trouble the patriarchal status quo one bit, and men are often very sympathetic to the plight of other men. A recipe for success!!

If men thought of TW as W, we'd hear fuck all about them.

My guess is that many men faced with the plight of a transwoman are thinking one of the following:

"This could easily have been me, let's give him what he wants" or

"This could NEVER be me, hence he must be really serious, let's give him what he wants" or

"I don't really get it, but I'm told it's progressive and I'm sick of people telling me I have white middle class male privilege so I'll take the brownie points for going along with this" or even

"On some level I'm attracted to this man but I'm straight; this makes me uncomfortable. I'd be happier if he was in the ladies"

I know, it's an interesting read. There is a sports science researcher called Ross Tucker who did a lot of work on this issue, and thankfully they acknowledged it would be a liability to put men in women's games.
Still, it's annoying to read the ideological language scattered throughout - it's like they almost get it, but still have to pretend they done...weird. At least they are doing better than the IOC, who are shit on this.

Actually OP, you could talk to your son about it in a sense of 'these men can be seen as women in some circumstances, but there are important time when we need to keep them out' - and use Rugby as an example, not sure if that would work.

As for your husband, could you speak to him privately away from your son and say you are disappointed that he doesn't acknowledge sex differences, given that they affect women far more than men.
Maybe ask him a few leading questions and see where he goes with it - Would he have sex with a TW? If not, why not? Does he think you should have to share a changing room with a fully grown male in a dress? If not, why not? Does he know that most of these men keep their genitalia? Why is he so uncomfortable with men who chose to present in this way in men's spaces?

That rugby document is absolutely fascinating!

yes my 14 year old and 12 year old DSs say the same. There is a trans child in DS1's class and older DS just says 'She's confused and likes wearing the boys uniform'. With a shrug. Younger DS told me that there was a 'craze' among the girls to pretend to be boys because it gets them noticed. As far as I am aware there are no male-to-female trans.

Women have done their duty by being kind to everyone. It's time for men to step up and be kind to women. Excluding trans women from women's spaces isn't because they're all perverts, its' because they're all men. Going into women's spaces shouldn't be a reward for not being a pervert if you're a man.