I think I'm becoming transphobic

We've just heard an actual doctor in a tribunal describe how he is biologically female.

There are only two possibilities, here.

Either he is deluded, and grossly ignorant of very basic reality, or he is lying and using sophistry to try to pretend that he has the right to insist that women in a state of undress in a changing room do not leave the room when he enters.

I don't understand it. I am a girl and can't change that or want to.

I was told by a trans activist that I was transphobic because even if I used the (in)correct pronouns, if I didn’t believe it in my heart, I was still transphobic.

These extremists are very dangerous. And they don't even realise it themselves. Once you get to the stage of trying to control people's thoughts and mind control, you've really gone off the deep end, and are very deeply unwell. These people really need to be committed to an asylum. And I don't say that lightly. They are deeply, deeply ill. And they wonder why they are losing the war. Normal run of the mill fair-minded trans activists must cringe when they hear or read these unstable nutjobs speak. It sets their cause back enormously.

To be fair to Fiona Bruce, I should imagine Professor Winston would also say that it's impossible for a human child to be conceived without sperm and then born to a virgin mother. However, approximately 2.3 billion people would likely disagree with that (if you ask Google how many Christians there are in the world).

My view is similar to the PPs who have commented above about belief: I accept that people believe different things to me and that's OK. What's not OK is it being imposed on me as if it's true. Sure, some people might call it blasphemy (me not agreeing that Jesus is the son of god) or transphobia (me not agreeing that (transwo)men are women if they say they are) but if that's supposed to make me feel bad, it won't because I do hold either of these beliefs. What it would make me feel is sad, if it was someone I cared about whose reciprocal respect/friendship/care/love was predicated on me accepting their belief as if it were true.

OP, I think this is a great thread. I should imagine there are many people who are feeling similarly discombobulated by what the Peggie case is highlighting in the public discourse and for whom your posts resonate. I hope your step-daughter and you can navigate a path through it.

As a mum of a previously (I hope**) gender questioning adolescent daughter, I wanted to send a 💪 and some 💐 too. Hopefully your husband will start to recognise the issues that you're now seeing and can apply these to how he supports his daughter.

** Unfortunately this isn't guaranteed. There are tons of influences online, in school and in all sorts of other places telling her that it's possible/liberating to be the opposite sex/gender and that anyone saying otherwise might be harmful to her.

I am done with it all. Pronouns, stubble on women, men in clown face. I've just completed scout Diversity training - it's full of Pride and pronouns. I've tried to direct my energies into things more positive than X doom scrolling - I joined a women's group. But all it did was bring it all up constantly. I am DONE. I no longer care: if mispronouning is transphobic, I am a transphobe. Pride should not be part of secular organisation like scouts. It should not be in hospitals, anywhere.

As sometimes happens on some threads, first reply nails it! You're not transphobic @MyGhastIsFlabbered

OP you’re just basing yourself in reality instead of fantasy

My brother...

...you've been mansplained womanhood by a man.

Surprise surprise.

The fact that we're constantly informed by our great all powerful government , that we are in an epidemic of MVAW ... (no shit Sherlock)... but, they've proved that they refuse to put their head above the parapet to say that men- however they identify, in women's spaces, is a potential danger.

My business was targeted by a bunch of TRAs for daring to say that young girls in school need safe spaces away from teenage boys for their safety and dignity... common sense you think... but no, it was deemed the absolute worst assault on 'gender non conforming' boys and I should be publicly flogged and have my business blacklisted for this terrible transphobic slur.

Nah ... you're not transphobic ... you are a realist who understands the threat some men pose to women and girls.

I quite literally do not give a stuff if people want to call me something as illogical, stupid and fucking meaningless as "transphobic" because I understand facts and reality. It's a non-word.

It has absolutely no power. Not over me, not over you, not over anyone.

Dear @MyGhastIsFlabbered

Some time ago I was where you are now. I needed to know more about the topic, so I read around it and found some problems (data integrity, freedom of speech, teaching unfalsifiable assertions to children as facts, medical ethics, balancing the protected characteristic of gender reassignment with those of sex and belief).

I raised the issue with trans friends and was told that noticing the problems is transphobic. I realised that my previous TWAW stance had been a polite fiction that I hadn't even believed at the time. But I still hoped that reasonable people on all sides would eventually hammer out solutions. I expect you know how that's going.

Upton's testimony has been the last straw (yes, I am slow on the uptake, since you ask).

I now think we should raze the whole thing to the ground. The GRA should be repealed. By making trans people's medical history, and GRC status, personal private information, this law has turned every person's sex into ppi, not even discoverable with a birth certificate.

This is antisocial, dangerous, and makes it impossible to balance protected characteristics under the Equality Act. Concealing your sex should be a crime.

I don't hate trans people and I dont agree with discrimination against them, but I want to remove the legal basis for transness, so they become just people who make themselves look like the opposite sex, for their own reasons, but don't pretend to be the opposite sex.

More Miranda Yardley/Debbie Hayton (yes, I know, sorry not sorry), less RMW.

Is this transphobia? Possibly. (Awaits deletion.)

You might as well disagree with gravity.

Professor Robert Winston, recognised as an expert on human reproduction said on Question Time that ‘I can categorically state that people cannot change sex, it is there in every cell of their body’, to which Fiona Bruce replied ‘but there are some people who would disagree with that’!! You can’t ‘disagree’ with facts, it’s laughable 😂

Had a conversation with a relative about this. Said relative embarrassingly refers to herself as, "very woke"...She's not. I tried to explain to her how a person cannot change their biological sex. Her response? She replied, "I disagree". Huh? What??

Are you not all bored with agreeing with each other that transgender people are all mentally ill

The elephant in the room there is the enormous generation of and consumption of sissy porn.

Exactly @theilltemperedqueenofspacetime

Hence also - women's sports, prisons, single sex spaces in medicine, refuges etc

(Love the name btw)

Is this an attempt at satire? Are you not bored and/or embarrassed by behaving like a five year old in the playground calling people the equivalent of ‘poo poo head’?

It would be better if people did stop being transgender because it’s harmful for everyone, especially those who have been told that they can change sex, because we all know that they can’t, and as we also all know, colluding with someone’s delusions is particularly damaging. Genuine sufferers of body dysmorphia need therapy, not validation. How anyone can support an ideology that sanctions young women, who are mostly autistic or neurodivergent, having healthy breasts removed is beyond my comprehension. The supporters of this ideology are the ones who need help, not women who understand basic biology.

Also, women are really puny compared to men, but this is glossed over because it's a population-level trend, rather than a binary attribute. Any woman who's been attacked by a man (or even a teenaged boy) knows this.

The strongest woman in the world has a grip strength less than that of the average eighty year old man.

Quote fail! That concern was for izimbra.

U ok hun?

It really isn’t. Calling someone transphobic at the drop of a hat just means you don’t have a sound argument for supporting this ideology, it runs alongside Stonewall’s ridiculous ‘no debate’. It really does show up people’s inability to engage in factual, intellectual debate.

Exactly. I don’t think anybody really believed this. Even those who claim to do so, pretty quickly make it clear that it’s just a mantra to them as they do actually differentiate between trans women and women in many situations.

And isn’t it remarkable that because some posters insisted that they couldn’t possibly bear to have these matters discussed under general feminism, and they personally couldn’t scroll past threads they were not interested in due to lack of impulse control, some other posters feel it is somehow worthy of derision that most of the posts on this particular board express the same opinions as the majority of the the UK population on this issue.

Fuck. Who would have thought it? And who the fuck would have thought siloing off this board would lead to posters abusing others in this way?

I think a lot of people struggle to understand that you can respect a person and NOT agree with them or their ideology. These people have a very narrow worldview. I have lots of catholic friends who really believe in transubstantiation. I don’t believe in it but I still respect them. The problem (or at least one of the problems!) of trans ideology is that you are not allowed to have your own thoughts. I was told by a trans activist that I was transphobic because even if I used the (in)correct pronouns, if I didn’t believe it in my heart, I was still transphobic. Maybe I am particularly contrarian but there is no way on earth I could believe that men can become women even if I am told that I am the worst person on earth to not do so. And being told I have to believe it just makes me dig my heels in more!

The word transphobic is overused so much it means "you are saying something I don't like".