Why do all trans discussions end in a bun fight?

Extremists took over and ruined it for the ones who weren't that bad. It totally undermined trust and eroded safeguarding and rights for women and homosexuals. The lunatics taking over the asylum means there can't just be a taking it without being fully conscious of this problem. This is the trouble.

Does your son know that you refer to him as your natal daughter? Bigot! Educate yourself and do better etc

/s

Well "anti-trans" is, I suppose an improvement on the usual "transphobic".

I believe in telling the truth and it's not possible to change sex.
I'm in favour of people being healthy, not harming themselves.
I'm in favour of women retaining a right to privacy.

I'm in favour of fairness in sport so a special category for those whose female bodies mean they are at a disadvantage compared to males.
I'm not in favour of people seeking to force their belief system on me.

Now explain to me what is wrong with that.

Some people would like to assault me, rape me, murder me, deny me employment for holding those views. They are full of hate.

Noe explain to me why you support hate.

I'm just intrigued as to why the OP didn't post this thread on AIBU, where the thread (non binary candidates) that the OP is presumably referring to appeared, to scold the posters on there but instead decided to post this thread (with an incendiary title almost designed to have the 'you're all anti - trans bigots!!!!!' posters flocking) on FWR instead.

Apart from, if you try to define a set of biological criteria you will fail. There are exceptions to every rule and people who don't fit into near categories.

Oh absolutely, I thought that went without saying as nearly any physical category will have edge cases.

If everyone was just seen as a person regardless of what was in their pants, would it add to peace and freedom because we wouldn't be socialised into restrictive roles, or would are those roles hard wired and we'd be putting the fox amongst the chickens?

Well, being male/female entails SO much more than "what is in your pants" - risks (by which I mean probabilities, not dangerous risks per se) are wildly different for things like strength, pregnancy, menstruating, loads of health conditions, violent crimes - so those would still come into play. Hence single-sex spaces.

But when it comes to using that to assume - and expect - what an individual person is like, what their skills are, what they want in life, what their character is... then yes I think sex should be irrelevant.

In other words, where sex matters, be honest about it and let's not hide the differences it can bring. Where it doesn't, treat people equally.

Describing women's concerns as 'a bun fight' is insulting. This is the feminist board and this issue directly affects us. We aren't the ones being discriminatory.
@Thelnebriati

Came to say exactly this. Women have 'bun fights', men have 'heated debates' or a 'passionate exchange of views'.

Any discussion that doesn't end in consensus or 'agree to disagree' or compromise is just not ladylike.

no, that’s not a logical progression. There used to be a saying ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’. Because you hold a ‘destructive and harmful’ belief , it does not mean that you cannot also be charitable, responsible , thoughtful and constructive. It is only when your belief system enables or even prescribes that you have the right to harm other people in its name that you do harm to other people ( and indeed yourself.)

The concerns of most posters on this board are that this belief system does damage other people’s opportunities, freedoms and even in extreme cases, their safety . The virulent upholders of the ideology refuse to accept others’ (overwhelming women) right to privacy, safety, opportunity and expression. but it is still their behaviour which is destructive and harmful, not themselves.

Apart from, if you try to define a set of biological criteria you will fail. There are exceptions to every rule and people who don't fit into near categories.

You could imagine a graph with characteristics like what gametes you produce, what hormones you secrete, what chromosomes you have, what physical development you display, what psychological traits in brain structure etc etc - we divide this into two categories but could theoretically have many more.

The real question is whether sex and gender are useful. In a world where there was no rape and violence against women, would it matter if there were genders? Is the division into two sexes a defensive structure that needs to be there so women can be protected from men, or does it set up expectations and behaviours that perpetuate male violence?

If everyone was just seen as a person regardless of what was in their pants, would it add to peace and freedom because we wouldn't be socialised into restrictive roles, or would are those roles hard wired and we'd be putting the fox amongst the chickens?

It comes down to: should we be frightened of men? Are they inherently a threat?

Past experience of humanity suggests yes, we should and male aggression needs to be controlled and contained. But I can't really blame people for dreaming of a world where that wasn't the case.

Is "anti-trans" the same as "transphobic"? I'm perfectly happy to admit that I'm anti-trans in terms of the ideology (because it is harmful, both to confused adolescents, and to women's rights), but I'm not "anti-trans" in the sense that I feel animosity towards a confused teenage girl who thinks she should have been born male - although I am glad there is less pressure now than there was previously to provide affirmation through using preferred pronouns, etc. My confidence in declining to use pronouns and to vocally oppose trans ideology has been reinforced by discussions on the FWR board (and of course by Maya Forstater, Helen Joyce, JKR, Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindel, and others).

Indeed. It is also emotionally manipulative.

Let's not forget that the title encouraged posters to come and attempt to shame the women who are discussing the needs of female people as a collective. Not that that requires any encouragement at all....

But yes... women discussing the negative impacts of some people's philosophical belief is worthy of the derision obviously.

Describing women's concerns as 'a bun fight' is insulting. This is the feminist board and this issue directly affects us. We aren't the ones being discriminatory.

This is how i tend to see it:
Sex - male or female, biological

Gender - society's expectations, demands etc of people based on their sex (so gendered clothing, toys, femininity, masculinity, etc)

Gender identity - assuming those expectations are correct for each sex and you determine which one you most fit into. Non-binary means you accept they're correct for everyone else who is a man or woman but you don't fit into either of the two groups.

By the way, although 'the imposition of genderist belief on non consenting members of wider society, including by adopting a gendered persona and insisting that be noticed and responded to' might be a way to describe the package being presented as 'trans' I am equally anti the imposition of pink personae on females and macho ruggedness on males.

Genderism is pernicious, inhumane and anti human. We are the sex we are, but we do not have to adopt a gender.

Dominic "I hadn't quite grasped the significance of the Port of Dover to UK-EU trade" Raab went to both Oxford and Cambridge.

The one thing that seeing all this play out on MN over the years has convinced me is that 99% of people who are trans or claim to support trans rights don't really believe a lot of the more extreme stuff the vocal ones say, that always dominate and shut down discussion elsewhere.

The "allies" would rather stay silent than ever examine or explain what they claim to mean. They must know, even the denser ones, on some level that not being able to say, for example, what they mean when they say "woman", or "gender matching sex" etc must be some indication that they haven't thought it through very well.

The few trans people that have had the goodwill to get across their point of view have largely openly said that they don't believe in the gender belief stuff, they just want to be the opposite sex. One person did set out why they thought they were really a woman and sadly - and it was a sad tale, because these beliefs are harmful and they had been harmed - it was all based on the most breathtakingly sexist worldview ever, which they had accepted from those around them.

Yet it's the unthinking mantras and "TWAW no discussion" that took the lead here and in other countries. It is taken literally and has influenced the courts, our councils, our sports, our hospitals, and our schools.

It's.... It's really really weird, is what it is.

Anyway OP I am sorry to go off on this tangent but it's always what happens and always cements my feeling that there is no opposing view that is coherent and not sexist or homophobic.

Trans identities can not exist without sex. Sex can exist without gender.

Trans people deserve sex based rights.

Here is an example of how language has been twisted to become meaningless. The word 'cis' gets used regularly by people who insist that it is a meaningful descriptor.

It never was.

For instance, a poster who claims to have academic interest in the topic assured us that 'cis women' should be used when we are referring to two male boxers who competed in the female category of boxing in the Paris Olympics. However, I think that as many people who read these threads need to understand just what that term means.

The term 'cis' is now meaningless because it also now includes any male person who has a DSD yet has a body that is **formed around the production of small gametes, ie. a male person with a difference of sex development that have testes or testes tissue. Such as Caster Semenya.

Therefore, female people have no unique words that describe just those female people who have a body ^^formed around the production of large gametes.
Because 'girl' and 'woman' both now include:

1 Male person who has been incorrectly registered as a female at birth, but has a male body **.
2 Any male person has now claimed a transgender identity using those labels.
3 And any person who has a female body ^^.

Under the label of 'girl' and 'woman', extreme transgender activists have been telling us for years that those labels break down into two types of girls or women:

Cis and Transwomen/transgirls.

These terms mean:
Cis = 1 Male person who has been incorrectly registered as a female at birth, but has a male body **
and 3 Any person who has a female body^^
Trans = 2 Any male person has now claimed a transgender identity using those labels.

I have attached my image to make it clearer.

There is no unique word to mean female people who have a body ^^formed around the production of large gametes.

Cis is now shown to be meaningless. Yet we still get posters telling us we need to use it out of respect? Respect for which people? Because to me that demand looks like absolute rank misogyny to me. Yet some people try to declare that the philosophical beliefs around gender identity are good for women and girls, indeed any female person.

By the way, since there are plenty of transwomen who also identify as 'girls' don't forget that age and maturity of the body is also now a meaningless categorisation under those who come into the 'trans' category.

I don't like the term 'anti trans' because it makes no grammatical sense. it's like saying you're anti 'non' or anti 'un' or anti 'ex'.

I'm anti genderism. If 'trans' is shorthand for 'the imposition of genderist belief on non consenting members of wider society, including by adopting a gendered persona and insisting that be noticed and responded to', then yes, I'm anti that.

Even if it's shorthand for 'a person who imposes genderist belief on non consenting members of wider society, including by adopting a gendered persona and insisting that be noticed and responded to', then I'm anti it.

But I think I'll stick to anti genderism, or even gender critical.

Was the posh person who glued themselves to a table in front of Dr Stock a Cambridge Undergrad or am I misremembering?

So you won't bully her to accept your beliefs override hers- absolutely reasonable, but it's acceptable that trans beliefs override those of everyone who don't believe male body people should be in female spaces. And that's why there will always be an argument- there isn't a middle ground. You either believe that male bodied people can be in female spaces because they 'feel' female, or you believe that women only spaces should be for women only

Even when they 'act' like a woman, they are acting as they believe a 'woman' should act. Which is fucking misogynistic!

This, for me, is of crucial importance. Thank you @Helleofabore

Fab post.

I think the experience of people navigating this issue in their real life is different from those on either side of the fence airing the issues.

It always reminds me of gymnasts with muscle memory to swing round parallel bars or something. Once the argument gets going, it's just swipe, swoop, swipe, swoop - never goes anywhere.

The issues of a. How to support someone you love who tells you they're trans b. What the law around sex and gender should be and c. How society should or should not accommodate trans rights in terms of etiquette, social boundaries etc - these things are always mushed together but they're really quite different.

Excellent post @Helleofabore, thank you