GC views not valid because the majority are "bad actors"

Interesting question

I think some countries in trying to appease the trans community by not making it sound like they are all mentally unwell have not realised the connotations

Why are the NHS paying for gender reassignment surgery for people who aren’t ill

No wonder the NHS is struggling

In the US, once you have been found to be suffering from gender dysphoria which is a mental illness then to treat it you can have hormones and surgery

@Yalta

That's interesting about the UK. If gender dysphoria isn't an illness then what were the Tavistock treating?

It depends which country you are in

In the US gender dysphoria is classified as a mental illness (hard to believe given the way things are there) but in the UK it is not

@BigTubOfLard I think inquiring why such spaces exist is a good start. Hiwever don't limit yourself to safety. There are certainly privacy and dignity reasons for single-sex facilities too. Including to benefit men.

Taking safety to one side, intimate care for men can sometimes be embarrassing and I can see why they would prefer someone of the same sex to look after them.

Same for things like councelling/ mental health sessions. Having a woman in such a session could very easily change the dynamics to the detriment of the session.

Returning to safety in changing rooms and toilets, it's not that men as a group are dangerous, it's specifically the men that would seek to gain access to female facilities that are the risk.

But it is a fact that humans can’t actually change sex. They can change their appearance so that they more resemble the typical appearance of the other sex, and take hormones to develop some of the other sex’s secondary sexual characteristics. People who do this are usually called (and call themselves) trans. But they can’t change their chromosomes / DNA, which determine their sex.

So no, realising that trans people cannot actually change their biological sex is not denying their existence in any way. The people who call themselves trans exist, and choose to change their gender (gender being a social construct) but they aren't actually changing their sex.

A male who does this may then call himself a woman, but he can never become a biological female.

"You don't think trans people should exist!" is a deliberately disingenuous and emotive argument, shaded as it is with nuances of hate and genocide.

Exactly. It's also disingenuous to pretend that's not what's being implied.

My post was a reply to yours where you said:

It would be much easier to have productive conversations if people could acknowledge where the opposing viewpoints come from as opposed to just shouting them down. In my opinion.

I said you should follow your own advice. You keep misrepresenting everyone else's clearly expressed views. Try reading other people's posts more carefully and ask for clarification if you don't understand, instead of shouting us down, telling us that we've said things that we haven't said.

I'm pretty sure I've had exactly this same discussion with you before. There's obviously no point in discussing anything with you because you're unable to read and understand other people's posts (either that or you choose to misrepresent them).

"You don't think trans people should exist!" is a deliberately disingenuous and emotive argument, shaded as it is with nuances of hate and genocide.

Do I believe that people with gender dysphoria exist? Sure I do. It's a mental illness and should be treated as such.

Do I believe that male bodied people exist in the real world as women because of a feeling? No I don't. That doesn't mean I think the man in a dress should be exterminated or mistreated. I just don't think he really exists as a woman.

TRAs have successfully (as in so many other arguments they make; they can only make their arguments sound reasonable if they're tricksy with language) elided these two very different points to make us GCs sound like genocidal and bigoted hatemongers.

I never even bother to engage with that argument because it's pointless engaging with stupidity.

His cognitive bias shows him posts he 'interprets' as being bad actors. Can we define bad actors then?

I use the term to describe predators who use the 'trans' identity as a trojan horse to access women or children, we've seen evidence of this.

It seems the equivalent of a bad actor to him, is someone who is fighting against that and points out that human beings can't change sex, that trans is a subjective belief not an objective reality. That the belief is causing a lot of harm to mentally vulnerable or immature people.

I cannot change my sex or my age, my racial inheritance, my short stature and currently my child's disability. These are biological realities.

I would rather focus on why someone self destructs by harming their physical health with surgery and drugs, and why on earth they would wish that on someone else.

I would have to challenge the sexism, if nothing else.

In these scenarios its very much not and and its very much hierachical with women expected to not speak and to defer even if it has significant negative impact on their safety and dignity.

This. Any old bloke can Have His Say, but women are expected to defer to the "trans community".

Ultimately it comes down to, you can only respect people and their opinions, if its a two way thing.

In these scenarios its very much not and and its very much hierachical with women expected to not speak and to defer even if it has significant negative impact on their safety and dignity.

I would have read ''He said, "Oh you are one of those'' as a red flag; a bad faith attempt to shame you into being silent.
He isn't interested in OP's views, only her compliance.

'Respecting his opinions and moving on', means she isn't challenging how his opinion may end up with her in a legally vulnerable position which could destroy her life, because she should defer to the hierachical superiority of 'trans needs' which might not actually reflect reality nor practical implimentation. Thats not really in her interests now is it?

She's not going to change this blokes views. She can't force it (that would be being authoritarian). But she shouldn't just roll over either. She'd better to recognise that this person, doesn't have the interests of women at heart and isn't going to listen to her, so isn't particularly worth spending time on because he disrespects her and doesn't see her worthy of respect.

She'd be better off moving on and understanding this and where her energy is better spent.

No where in this does she have to respect his opinion, btw.

You said what I meant to say much better @Beowulfa

His opinions ascribe malicious motives to people, with connotations of potential organised violence against trans identifying people. They are not worthy of respect and should be challenged.

Actually thats not what I said.

Your ability to understand anything anyone else says, gives me 'opinions'.

Ultimately, as I said before it comes down to the following point:

"Is the law fit for purpose and who does it actually protect, where may it fail and who may it leave vulnerable."

Those questions stem from: What is the purpose of the Equality Act? What is the aim of the act, to protect women from? Is it to protect women or not?

The definition of sex and the word woman are essential to establishing who is protected and from what. We need to establish this, so we understand the law as citizens, we know what our rights are and we know how the law should work.

From here we then go "hang on a second, but that isn't going to actually going to achieve the aim of the law to protect us, and therefore its not fit for purpose" and/or say "well hang on a second that undermines and destroys the aim and purpose of this other law, so what are you going to do about that"

We have a situation where 'legal fictions' are effectively destroying the purpose and intent of laws which relate to voyuerism for example. Thats kind of problematic. We have a situation where intended changes remove protections from women and homosexuals and those from certain religious backgrounds. So how the fuck is that going to be resolved. Then we have a problem with issues relating to harms to children due to failures to protect them from malpractice.

But yes, its all about how we should recognise opinions, rather than bother to acknowledge problems. 😜😳😴

It's up to her what she does, she has every right to defend herself against his misguided ideas.

Or maybe she should just respect his opinions and move on?

You can not have plurality in law because otherwise the law falls down and doesn't work in practice as you have unresolved areas which real life humans get stuck in the middle of because politicians couldn't get their head out their arses and do their job properly in the first place.

And because you can't have pluraity in law, the only feasible position is a fundamentally secular one. The only possible "right answer" for the law is has to come down and definitely say that everyone can agree to disagree - that there's no "right answer".

If the law is currently saying that there is a "right answer" - people have to believe X - then that law is wrong.

Opinions are for debate and conversation. At somepoint that ends
That's pretty authoritarian and also untrue. Democracy is permanently debating things, updating laws to keep up with society. #nodebate is never a good tactic.

As was stated yesterday... by you 😂

This is a discussion about OPs friend, not "the law". So this is a derail. And you are wrong about the law, as well. There are subjective clauses all over the place. That's why we have lawyers to interpret it.

The most obvious one I can think of is the "reasonable belief of consent" clause in the legal definition of rape.

I'm not very interested in getting into another round of intellectual snobbery so I won't respond again.