Three-day ban on Reddit for “hate”

This has nothing to do with men pretending to be trans to victimise women. Men can do these things without needing to pretend to be trans.

I suppose we’d have to first establish whether it is a concern that has a significant risk , or just a fear/ projection / fantasy that comes from fear of change.

As fine an example as I have ever seen of ignorance, wilful or otherwise, of the lived experience of women and girls.

Some stats.

97% of women aged 18-24 have experienced sexual harassment at some point. (UN survey)

25% of women have been victims of sexual violence since the age of 16. 94%
of survivors of rape or attempted rape are women. (Rape Crisis figures)

98% of sexual assaults are committed by men.

They're all men who want into women's spaces against their will, and to their great detriment. Why should their motivation matter? They're all directly and indirectly harming women.

Well said @NecessaryScene

The problem is it’s not an ideology. It’s a real human experience . Trans experience is real. Whether you choose to accept it and believe it or not won’t change that.

Exactly.

Because being trans is just another axis of human diversity, like disability, ethnicity, sexuality. It’s a fundamental characteristic of a person over which someone has no control. It’s extremely painful, violent and oppressive to require a person to hide/ suppress the fact that they are trans - (eg just like sexuality).

Being a transmaxxer (which btw is hardly a thing) is none of these things

As I said, metaphysical hand-waving.

Are able-bodied people who believe they require a wheelchair, or anyone else who identifies into an oppressed/disadvantaged class to which they do not belong, simply to be believed and accommodated, to the detriment of the people actually in that class?

The more this group of posters write, the clearer it is that they are people who claim to have expertise and qualifications in the topic, but are not transgender themselves, who arbitrates who is transgender and who is not. It really is not just one poster who does this, there are more (and that is not because one or two posters changes user names regularly)

What is remarkable is the authority in which they present it all.

What is consistent though is that they do follow roughly the same script as those who have come to educate feminists who say they are transgender.

The ideology that they can sense a sex they weren't born as is an ideology. Not one I subscribe to.

Me neither. Some people are convinced they can sense the presence of God in their lives. I can’t, so I don’t believe that ideology either.

Gender essence/subconscious sex is an article of Faith.

This feels like progress- if we can at least come to an understanding that there is a real and legitimate difference in these things, and that actually these two groups of people really have nothing to do with each other at all.

They're all men who want into women's spaces against their will, and to their great detriment. Why should their motivation matter? They're all directly and indirectly harming women.

What they do have control over is whether they attempt to impose their beliefs on the rest of society by using womens spaces and describing themselves as women.

They aren’t using any “measures”, it’s not an experience / characteristic over which they have any control. It’s not a conscious “idea” , “belief” or “ideology” that they have acquired from something external. That’s why the term “subconscious sex” is sometimes used

The ideology that they can sense a sex they weren't born as is an ideology. Not one I subscribe to.

Of course there’s a risk.

You cannot surely be unaware of men claiming to be transwomen (or possibly actually being transwomen, who knows) using a trans identity as cover to gain access to women and girls?

You cannot be unaware of women and girls with reasons (religion, PTSD etc) who are not able to be in the vicinity of male bodied people while ina vulnerable state (changing rooms, healthcare, prisons, rape crisis centres).

@Lostcat can you have a stab at explaining why the mental states of trans women should be relevant to the way we organise society, but the mental states of trans-maxxers can largely be ignored and there's no need to reorganise society around them?

I know I am a woman and was a girl because I am female. I don't have an inner woman essence.

so how do they “know” they are female? What measures are they using?

They aren’t using any “measures”, it’s not an experience / characteristic over which they have any control. It’s not a conscious “idea” , “belief” or “ideology” that they have acquired from something external. That’s why the term “subconscious sex” is sometimes used, they don’t know “how” or “why” they “know” this, they just do.

This feels like progress- if we can at least come to an understanding that there is a real and legitimate difference in these things, and that actually these two groups of people really have nothing to do with each other at all.

Well of course, everyone has always known that there is a difference between the males with dysphoric thoughts about their bodies - regardless of what the cause of that may be - and those who might claim it for predatory reasons. But they are all male.

So how do you tell the difference, as Cher asks? And if you can tell the difference, how does that justify allowing the nice males who aren’t predatory into female spaces when women don’t want any males in their spaces, regardless of how genuine their intentions might be?

The progression of the logic in this debate has just gone like all the others go. Eventually it ties itself in knots.

"Non-trans people assume that this “knowing” (knowing of sex, which is what some people call gender) comes simply/ logically / directly from being born female, and for most people these things are aligned."

"But for trans people, these things - natal sex- and “knowing” what sex they are (eg gender) , are not aligned. We don’t know why, but it is very possible that there is a durable biological/ development underpinning to this."

No. People who describe themselves as transgender can believe that what they are 'knowing' is that they are female if they are a male person. But that belief is not based on anything other than their own conceptualisation of what a female person is. Just because they might believe it is not how a 'male person' feels, does not mean that it is how a 'female person' feels.

This theory relies on people believing that the impossible is not just potentially possible but absolutely materially real.

And the constant plea to authority of 'but it is very possible that there is a durable biological/ development underpinning to this" is leveraging a miniscule chance that in the future that some transgender people will be discovered to have something materially identifiable to diagnose their categorisations.

However, that will be highly unlikely to apply to the vast majority of people who currently claim to be transgender.

So, again this plea to authority lacks credibility and has the very potential to unravel a very fragile web of falsehoods. But, I do hope that this discovery is found and found very quickly because it will then start a reasonable discussion about what that specific group of people need.

Fine, let's agree that some people really believe they are the opposite sex and some are just pretending.

What does that change, from our point of view?

Let's also agree that the risk of letting men into women's spaces is less than zero. What number would be a "significant risk", in your opinion?

in the same way that I know I’m a woman, and (I’m guessing you’re female)- you know that you are a woman.

What? I know I’m a woman because I have female anatomy that at puberty, and then at conception and birth of my DS and then at menopause, behaved exactly as a female body does. A small number of women with DSDs don’t have any of those experiences, but medical investigations can confirm sex, if needed.

Someone who has a functioning male reproductive tract has none of those experiences, and is not female by any empirical test or observation, so how do they “know” they are female? What measures are they using?

I expect you’ll just reply with some hand-waving “lived experience” metaphysical quasi-religious explanation and try to conflate this with knowing one’s sexual orientation (which can, of course, be determined empirically).

How do we then stop men who do not have a "subconscious sex" of female from doing so? Men who absolutely think of themselves as men but merely wish to perve on women, assault them and win in fields where they could not win against male competitors.

This feels like progress- if we can at least come to an understanding that there is a real and legitimate difference in these things, and that actually these two groups of people really have nothing to do with each other at all.

It we can agree on that, then we can have the conversation about your concern. I suppose we’d have to first establish whether it is a concern that has a significant risk , or just a fear/ projection / fantasy that comes from fear of change. Then once we have established if it is a risk, we can have a conversation about what sort of safeguards might need to be in place to identify one group from the other.

Right, so we follow Lostcat's thinking and allow men with a "subconscious sex" of female in to prisons, changing rooms and showers, toilets, healthcare facilities and sleeping accommodation designated for women and girls, and into women's sports, competitions and awards.

How do we then stop men who do not have a "subconscious sex" of female from doing so? Men who absolutely think of themselves as men but merely wish to perve on women, assault them and win in fields where they could not win against male competitors.

How do we tell the difference?

Or do people like Lostcat think we don't have to? That if it happens, it happens, and the women objectified, degraded, frightened, assaulted and robbed are just collateral damage and not important?

It’s not just the men who say they’re women because of how they are on the receiving end of sex from forced feminisation/sissy porn.

According to Lostcat, males who say they’re women are experiencing everything as women/female, even rapists like Isla Bryson while raping.

I don’t know how Lostcat reconciles sissy porn fetishists claiming to be experiencing womanhood, and rapists experiencing womanhood while raping. They seem diametrically opposed to me.

I suspect the answer has something to do with the subconscious, or maybe just “because”.

Of course it is bollocks. It cannot even stand a hint of scrutiny.

Which is why there is usually a follow on such as 'there’s nothing I can say if you won’t open your mind to the possibility of someone else’s experience.'

The follow on is meant to convey that just because 'you' don't believe doesn't make it not universally true. Which is, of course, a falsity. Because this theory is incoherent from the very start and relies on a web of falsities to not only support it but to explain it.

This thread is a great example of how some people string that web together. But unlike established scientific reasoning about sex and its importance in law and policy, if a section of the web disintegrates under scrutiny, the rest of that web also crumbles.

Hey to be clear I’m here to focus on discussing the topic with people who are interested in engaging in a productive exchange of ideas about the subject matter and are willing to at least consider the information being shared and discussing aspects of it.

I won’t be responding to certain posters who are only interested in arguing/ weaponising (and attacking) my person/ swearing/ being rude.

I know well who these posters are, so while I can’t stop you from directing comments at me, don’t expect any acknowledgment or response.