Horrifying Republican response to Bishop's sermon

FWIW I had a mate banned from mumsnet many years ago for posting the text of a breastfeeding leaflet produced by the Royal College of Midwives. It was framed as an attack on formula feeding mums. 😂 Sometimes it doesn't take much.

That said, I've seen a vast number of really cruel and contemptuous posts about transgender people, so if there's a lot of censorship going on here, it doesn't extend to stopping hateful messaging about that particular minority group.

Did they?

Like the people who got prison sentences following the recent race riots were 'banged up for nothing more than criticising illegals on social media'. 🤔

Those .3% of the population managed to get women banned from mn for talking about safeguarding.

Thing is, I don't think this is kind to the very people she thinks she's helping. It's not kind to reinforce completely invalid, overblown fears, to stoke irrational anxiety and promote division.

Neither trans people nor immigrants are at risk of state genocide in the US. It's ludicrous to suggest they are. In fact, Trump's plans will stop children being experimented on and almost certainly increase the life expectancy of this cohort overall - puberty blocking drugs and genital surgeries carry enormous risks and have terrible side effects and yes, some have died as a result. Including in the 'Dutch protocol' that started the whole thing. A previously healthy child died from complications after genital surgery. These are easily checkable facts.

It's easy to say 'ahhh, everything is terrible and Trump is evil' but you do need to have some factual basis for this or you just end up pissing people off. Stopping men from entering women's single sex spaces does not risk their lives.

She's legitimising fears which are ridiculous and by suggesting Trump wishes to actually kill people, she's also suggesting by extension the majority of US voters wish to do so, which is going to divide not unite. He has a democratic mandate, and this sort of overblown speech is likely why. Normal people having to work hard to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table are sick of elites labelling them as 'privileged' and 'bigots' whilst enacting laws that punch down and make their lives more difficult (e.g by having boys beating up their daughters in state sanctioned mixed sex sports and assaulting or flashing them in mixed sex toilets). If she'd said 'people are scared, but they need not be...' then that would have been entirely different.

Yep, Trump uses hateful rhetoric, but this is just as bad, though a bit more manipulative and less obvious. Any threats against her are reprehensible of course.

And ILLEGAL immigrants are technically criminals - the hint is in the name. It's a crime to enter a country without the correct documentation. She might not agree with that law, but it exists. I don't know any country that has completely open borders, is that what she's suggesting? I wonder how well that would go.

How can she - without laughing - talk about 'truth' and 'transgender children' in the same sermon? 'Transgender' children are lied and lied and lied to - it's all recorded on film in the case of Jazz Jennings. Parents and child not forewarned of the obvious effect puberty blockers would have on Jazz's penis and the implications for genital surgery. I'd recommend watching the bit where Jazz's parents are in shock that the surgeons are having an argument mid-surgery and the bit to camera afterwards where they said they thought the doctors knew what they were doing (but obviously from the video it was all experimental ).

Overall, it's designed to manipulate, stoke groundless anxiety and divide the nation. So not really very Christian.

For everyone suggesting Trump = armageddon - are they forgetting that Trump was president for a term and the world didn't end? At some point wandering around shouting 'the end is nigh' gets old.

• It would if transgender women made up 50% of the population.

However they only make up at most 0.3% of the population.*

The number of transwomen in a given population is irrelevant to my point.

Whether single sex provision is in place is a binary issue. It is either single sex or it isn't. There could be 1 or 1 million women using the single sex provision, it only takes I male to use it (with or without a trans identity)or be entitled to use it, to render it mixed sex.

A single sex provision exists because it is deemed a proportionate means for delivering a legitimate aim. It isn't a single gender service for those who identify as women, it would be wrong to exclude transwomen if this were the case.

The case for single sex provision is widely accepted. The case for turning them in to single gender identity services isn't. Instead of trying to illegitimise well reasoned arguments for keeping single sex provision single sex, you would more likely further your cause by working on arguments that support your case for replacing single sex provision with single gender. I don't fancy your chances but they would be greatly enhanced if you deal with the actualities of what you want, rather than focus on what you perceive to be the motivations of those who oppose you.

Every woman is impacted because they lose all their rights when laws are enacted using this nonsense, whether they know it or not. They will only find out when it matters. Or too late.

If 5 million women were negatively impacted, it could be dismissed as 'just a statistic'.

If every woman was negatively impacted, it could be dismissed as normal.

The truth is that biological women just don't matter as much as transwomen to gender identity believers.

Do you want to tell that to Katie Dolatowski's victims? Or Karen White's?

If toilets and prisons were both kept truly single-sex, neither of those cases would have happened.

It would if transgender women made up 50% of the population.
However they only make up at most 0.3% of the population.

And this is where maths isn’t the strong point of trans activists.

Take that number from my post above about there being 1487 men in federal women’s prisons.

Take a conservative estimate that those 1487 men negatively impact 10 women around them during the length of their incarceration. That’s 14870 women negatively affected by these men. And given the nature of prisons, 10 is a very conservative estimate.

0.3% of the population of the USA is 1 million trans people. For argument’s sake let’s say that’s 500,000 males.

If 500,000 males each have a negative impact on just one woman over the course of their lives through anything from loss of privacy in sharing spaces, sport, enforced pronouns, violence, threats of rape online - that’s 500,000 women.

2 = one million
5 = 2.5 million
10 = 5 million

Lia Thomas: how many women? All the women he raced. All the women he watched get changed. 20? 30 possibly?

As someone said on a thread, when people claim “it’s only a small number so it’s not a problem” it suggests that there’s a number where they might consider it a problem.

Currently millions of women being negatively affected isn’t considered “enough”.

So @izimbra how many is “enough” for you?

Republicans have used people's fear of transgender people as a political tool.

Let me fix that for you: "Republicans have used the Democrats' failure to protect women's rights as a political tool."

Which is why most terfs have had no meaningful engagement with transgender people outside of the social media space - something that feeds into the hatred and contempt they have towards them

I've known men who say they are women since the 80s. And any man who says he is a woman and who demands entry into female spaces, is a threat as much as any other man. And I don't have hatred, I simply know they are men.

It isn't our fault that the USA had to go to the lengths of electing a man who was prepared to stand up and say that these men are not women. The Democrats could have done it, although they couldn't because they are funded by the men who have been pushing this for decades. Which is the major issue here.

'Terfs' shows where you are with this.

Women haven't consented. If you want to look to a sex class that can be more accommodating there is another one.

No. And the Bishop didn't either.

"The idea that transwomen should be classified as female does present an enormous problem and threat to the provision of single sex services"

It would if transgender women made up 50% of the population.

However they only make up at most 0.3% of the population.

Which is why most terfs have had no meaningful engagement with transgender people outside of the social media space - something that feeds into the hatred and contempt they have towards them.

Terfs seem very comfortable with the idea of throwing the baby out with the bath water, in the sense that they'll support a far right party whose agenda is predicated on rolling back women's rights to education & healthcare, as long as that party is promising to legislate transgender women out of existence.

It’s all been done before, hasn’t it? With puberty blockers being banned in the UK. People like Jolyon Maugham claiming “kids are terrified” and “they’re going to kill themselves”, such ridiculous statements that an expert in suicide had to correct his bollocks

It wasn't that long ago that most psychologists approached issues like this with exploration of facts - to test out the evidence people have for their thoughts and explored how well this way of thinking was serving them. This worked well in alleviating elements of distress that can be managed internally. I am constantly amazed at how quickly things shifted.

I think the shift is attributable, to a large extent, to critical theory and using a lens of power and oppression. Much of this thinking doesn't stand up to the scrutiny when the above approach is applied and, in my experience, it is causing considerably more harm than good to the people it is designed to 'liberate' and doing nothing to dismantle structural inequality!

Electricity pylons. Those 1980s warning ads were terrifying.

It’s all been done before, hasn’t it? With puberty blockers being banned in the UK. People like Jolyon Maugham claiming “kids are terrified” and “they’re going to kill themselves”, such ridiculous statements that an expert in suicide had to correct his bollocks.

Meanwhile life has gone on. The catastrophic threats of imminent danger haven’t eventuated.

Republicans have used people's fear of transgender people as a political tool. They've poured vast energy (and money) into putting out messages framing the simple existence of transgender people as an enormous problem and threat to women

The idea that transwomen should be classified as female does present an enormous problem and threat to the provision of single sex services. The problem and threat exists independently of whether an individual transwomen is good, bad, or ugly.

Many people with trans identities are very vulnerable. They need protections. Much wider support for these protections will be found once efforts to piggy back on to the protections in place for females is dropped.

The constant dismissal of the efforts of feminists in the USA is rather eye opening as you say.

That and the seeming inability to acknowledge how the majority of people are now impacted by the policy and law changes under the Biden administration. It has been years of work for feminists, children’s rights compaigners to get even governments to listen to them.

But it cannot be forgotten that changes under Biden harmed female people. And feminists were ignored and demonised when they raised the alarms about the harms that were happening.

Even the very act of dismissing the impact of feminist voices is happening on this thread. And the demonisation of feminists by categorising them as being far right aligned. Or even as somehow full on supporters of Trump. I don’t know how some people imagine policies get made if anyone who works with a government to influence policy must be ‘aligned’ to that government. If people really are believing that then it is a rather narrow and simplistic view.

That's an incredibly selective take (to put it mildly).
I'm not moved in any case to argue the point, because ultimately my opinion is that religious faith should play NO part whatsoever in politics. The UK and the US are very different beasts in that respect; faith and politics mixing isn't tolerated at all well in the UK (fortunately!).

When I was a child I was 'scared for my life' of the black panthers, Bible John and volcanoes. Oh and the nasty PIE men.

At least my parents and the media weren't telling me that any of the above were literally out to kill me.

This was not the time nor the place for her lecture.

She should have spoken about peace, and having god in their hearts to guide the decision makers to make good choices etc etc etc. Not give the new president a telling off and push an agenda which is crumbling because it has been pushed so far it's causing serious problems.

America is becoming very polarised - Nazis Va Goodies. It's just bananas and continuing to push this won't get anything done. People will become more entrenched in their ideas and less likely to work together.

This. Women have been talking about this for years. Finally people listened.

Republicans have used people's fear of transgender people as a political tool. They've poured vast energy (and money) into putting out messages framing the simple existence of transgender people as an enormous problem and threat to women.

What utter bollocks. What's actually happened is that many ordinary people, mainly women, have seen the dangers of allowing men to identify as women, and have campaigned, sometimes at great personal cost, to alert the rest of the population to this danger. The Democrats told us we were bigots, but it seems the Republicans were listening and have taken this on board.

All these things can be true:

• Trump is going to be bad for America.
• This executive order is good news for women.
• This executive order is bad news for transwomen.

Following on from this:

• There isn't much we can do about Trumps presidency.
• The issues that the executive order presents for transwomen need addressing, but the solution doesn't lay in seeking to overturn what the order delivers from women.

Many posters, since as far back at 2017, have been raising concerns about a backlash on trans people as a result of TRAs actions. TRAs have insisted that there is an oppression hierarchy and the needs of those at the top (trans people) override the needs of others. It was always going to fail and the 'wins' over turned.

Removing 'rights' that are not 'rights' and should never have been granted in the first place is bound to feel awful and, if not properly understood, misconstrued as 'hate'. The best thing TRAs can do is focus on ensuring trans people's actual human rights are met and stop considering it a 'right' to demand people think, or pretend to think, that males are females. They need to drop the authoritarianism and accept that gender identity isn't something everyone believes in and whilst that's upsetting for some, this alone doesn't present a danger or unsafe conditions for trans people.

I have no doubt that people with trans identities are discriminated against across the globe. They shouldn't be. They should be treated with dignity and respect, the same as all humans. They should be able to get jobs, housing, education like everyone else. Where there are single sex services, they should access the service that aligns with their natal sex, just like everybody else. Where this is an issue, alternative solutions are needed, but these solutions must not involve removing the single sex status of female only services. Essentially, TRAs must stop propagating the idea that this is hateful and/or denying trans people's existence. Arguably, viewing the world in this way causes as much damage/distress to trans people as genuine hate.