Reflections on Trans Arguments

It's like the whole 'wheesht for Indy' bullshite.

No.

@StandFirm It does mean that by default you're supporting the opposition.

Then someone better get on with persuading the Left to see sense because I am not going to be a turkey voting for Christmas just because of the threat that the Turkeys Voting for Thanksgiving party will get in instead.

Well who do you think can prevent that?

So many people seem to think that it is women's responsibility to take one for the team. The thinking seems to be "look you are fucked either way so do the decent thing and don't take the rest of us down with you", as if the poor Left just has no choice except to sign up for anti-women regressive policies.

If the risk that anti-women policies leading left-voting women to switch sides or abstain creates a tipping point that lets Reform or whoever in, surely the group who actually have the most power to prevent that is the Left parties who can at any point say "the cost of driving women away is too high, women have rights to an we need to protect them and (crucially) this is how we will do that and we put it in our manifesto to show women we are in good faith".

Until that happens, forgive me if I don't feel it's my duty as a woman to throw myself on the fucking fire to protect the rights of people who won't even consider protecting mine.

Well then the left need to get their shit together and remember that women actually have the right to vote.

It is down to each individual voter to look at all the options and choose the one that suits them personally. Just because you vote one way for a set of policies doent make you evil, it makes you exactly the same as every other voters that makes their own mind up.

Painting people who choose to vote a different way to you as the devil is why Trump's they/them ad hit home and won him the election.

It’s entirely down to the parties to choose to develop policies which don’t discriminate against women. If a woman chooses to take her vote elsewhere that’s her prerogative.

I've just read that several times. I'm a bit tired, so it's possible I'm misreading, but -

Firstly, transwomen and other women implies that transwomen are a type of woman, does it not? I don't accept that.

Secondly, I do believe that transwomen have different DNA to women, almost by definition. The 'almost' is because of DSDs and me not being a biologist with a complete understanding of genetics, so it would be overconfident for me personally to make that claim for all transwomen. But, at least, the vast majority of transwomen have the same DNA (at least in terms of which sex they are) as the vast majority of men. And all transwomen are of the class of human which doesn't provide large gametes, but does produce small gametes if their testicles are in working order.

It does mean that by default you're supporting the opposition. And the opposition may no longer be the Tories (and anyway, Tories/Reform same difference)

I have only ever voted Labour but spoiled by ballot at the last election. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for my sitting MP who is rabidly TWAW and anyone who doesn’t agree is a nasty bigot.

I will never vote for this particular Labour MP again and any future candidate would need to be supportive of women’s rights but that doesn’t mean I’m about to vote for Reform.

Labour and the unions have been a huge let down but hen again the unions have very often let women down. They are happy to be funded through our subs but are often staffed at the highest levels by misogynists.

So I’m not currently a fan of the idea that the Left is by default supportive of women.

TRA's - 'transwomen are women. In all circumstances. No debate'
Women - 'hang on, there are certain things which need to be single sex for women's safety and dignity. Rape crisis services, prisons etc. Surely these things are single sex, meaning biological women'
TRA's - 'no, bigot. To exclude them from such services is literally genocide. Die in a grease fire'.
Women - 'can we compromise? Third spaces, open categories etc?'
TRA's - 'nope. That's the epitome of transphobia. Capitulation or nothing. And if you choose to avoid such services while we are using them, that is also transphobia'.
Women - winning a supreme court judgment which clarifies that women were right all along and having a wee glass of champagne to celebrate a years long legal battle
TRA's - 'literally genocide. You just want us not to exist!!!'

All the political parties have strong supporters of trans rights - it cuts across political lines, though the underlying reason for it may come from a different place.

Ignoring personal connections to the LGBT+ community i would suggest the following:

Labour
part of universal, progtressive social policies which look to include marginalised groups

Conservatives
Free market, free personal choice, do whatever you like and the state shouldn't be involved

Lib Dem
Bit of both of the above, with links to big pharmacy and wanting to appeal to people with liberal views

SNP
Trying to model Scotland on Eire to attract investment from US tech and financial services companies for whom LGBT+ culture really matters. Differentiating Scotland from England.

Greens
Wanting to reshape society and patriarchal structures have to be toppled to create a new, better society

Reform
Not interested. Harking back to a more conservative world where woke isn't a thing.

Your posts seem to suggest that you think women here are proposing to start voting reform or similar en masse? Is that what you’re trying to express?
I agree the right wing of politics isn’t great for women, and what many of us are saying is that neither is the left wing.

No, I don't think women will vote en masse for Reform but the ones that do might give them the edge they need. I'd just hate to see them win by default.

Your posts seem to suggest that you think women here are proposing to start voting reform or similar en masse? Is that what you’re trying to express?

I agree the right wing of politics isn’t great for women, and what many of us are saying is that neither is the left wing. Both sides have shown themselves to be incredibly uncaring and thoughtless when it comes to having consideration for women, and cowards when they should have stood up for us. This has caused many women, often lifelong Labour/ Green/LD voters, to find ourselves to be politically homeless because of our parties’ stance on the issue. That does not mean we like Farage or his ilk. We certainly don’t need lectures about it!

Unfortunately, as long as the trans rights lobby continues to take the view that trans women must be considered women in all circumstances, and that actual female women must not be allowed to have any words, spaces, services or sports which exclude them, women's rights and trans "rights" are mutually exclusive, yes.

And also Alex Massie for me but he is probably a bigger draw for us in Scotland.
Looking at the comments under this article there are an awful lot who haven't quite grasped what she is saying, I think.
Matthew Syed is great, I agree.

Janice Turner and Matthew Syed were the reasons that I stuck with The Times as long as I did. Had to let it go in the end though because so many articles by other staff were so badly written or edited that I had to go to 'comments' to find out what they were really trying to say.

Those claiming that TERFs are "anti trans" conveniently "forget" we aren't suggesting removing transgender as a protected characteristic under the Equality Act (as far as I am aware).

It is illegal to discriminate against someone for being transgender: sacked from a job, denied housing - which can legal on most personal characteristics.

In fact transgender individuals actually get more rights in some respects. They have the right to have time of work for surgeries for transition etc.

Most people don't have the right to time off work for medical treatment (excluding pregnancy) and I and many others have had problems when we needed time off work for medical appointments.

Frankly I am fed up of the entitlement of TRAs. They want more and more and more and don't care about women they trample. Including the most vulnerable women, like those who want same sex domestic violence support groups. Who want to change clothes in private from the opposite biological sex.

It's not much to ask is it? Let's turn the tables over!

100% this…

• As a man, I have zero desire to be in women’s single-sex spaces
• I respect that single-sex spaces play a valuable role for many people
• I value single-sex spaces for me and other men
• I don’t want women in men’s changing rooms or toilets either
• I don’t want my wife (in the NHS) to have to share her changing space with men

All of this is normal, it is how 99+% of men (and women feel)

The very fact that any man wants access to women’s single-sex spaces or services is a concern, it is a safeguarding issue and makes their intentions obviously questionable. There never has been, never will be a genuine reason why any man needs such access…

So debates on violence stats etc are irrelevant, the simple fact that any male makes the demand to have access to what is not theirs automatically makes them a part of the issue, part of the stats.

There is no such thing as a man using female changing spaces or toilets without harm, their very presence is harm, in TRA parlance it is literal violence to women. So every person who is born male, and is therefore a man, in female spaces is enacting violence towards women, they are unwanted so have forced themselves on women - that is violence.

Janice Turner's comment in the Times feels kind of apposite to the left/right discussion. Not sure if it's been shared anywhere:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/83c7b2a1-c2f9-482f-92b7-273cd6848995?shareToken=e66560e99cacf7e489d7176bc5131adb

Of course, any bias in favour of one particular group is alienating to the rest and I think those people you refer to are doing the left a great disservice.
All I'm pointing towards though is not unconditional allegiance to a political tribe, but a clear-eyed (as much as possible), empathetic approach to women's rights and also to marginalised communities. Do they have to be mutually exclusive? Frankly the far right terrifies me. They are snaking their way into the women's vote but only to subvert it. Ok, that's my opinion and you don't need to believe it. But like I also said about Brexit back then, I'd love to be wrong (because I am sadly pretty sure we'll end up with Reform as our next government).

Grandstanding? I am talking about the left in general and I am concerned about the direction of travel here in the UK; we live in a globalised world though and what has happened culturally in America has had an influence over here. In fact I was not the one who brought up the US SC ruling. Someone else did.
I'm trying to engage into a debate on what type of politics can serve us best. I am voicing my opinion, not attacking or insulting anyone, just taking part. It is a free forum in a (for now) free country.

May I ask how long you have known that your child (I think your adult daughter?) has said she is trans? Because if the revelation that she sees herself as trans is recent, your emotions will understandably be all over the place.

I have an adult trans-identified son. It's about 3 years since he told us. My emotions veered from "oh well, he's usually sensible, I can handle this" to absolute depths of pain, and back again. On one occasion I was driving on a motorway, had some extremely dark thoughts, and had to work very hard at suppressing them until I could pull into a service station. I am so relieved that I managed to get to a safe place before causing a pile up, or perhaps just crashing my car into a barrier and 'only' endangering my passenger and me.

Since then, emotionally I have become much more stable. For me, some of my needs were to work out what I actually thought. I am a lifelong Guardian reader, noticeably left-leaning, with both a scientific and a religious background. I really struggled with the challenges to my sense of reality, and to my worldview. This board has been a lifeline to me, as it is the only place where I have come across all the arguments for and against the various worldviews and positions on trans matters. Nowhere else allows honest discussions with both sides of an argument presented.

Yes, there is a clear women's rights bias (not that there is anything wrong with that) and I have learned that I was getting a very one-sided set of information from the Guardian, which posters here have acted as a correction to. There are also sometimes things that I find uncomfortable; people here can be very blunt, often out of frustration. I sometimes also feel that all trans people, and particularly those who are male, are described as if they are all the same. I take these views with a pinch of salt. I sincerely hope that my son is not the stereotypical transwoman complete with unusual levels of misogyny and motivated by fetish; he doesn't (as far as I know!) ever present in a sexualised way. But overall, I have found a huge amount of insight on Mumsnet, reasoned arguments, scientific literacy, and a good deal of empathy. And now I know what I think about these issues of sex and gender, and why.

@StandFirm There are members of the current Labour government whose current position appears to be, "Surely we didn't intend to give sex based rights to AFAB people which exclude trans women? Trans women are the most important women of all! We must fix this!"

You do know this is a British forum right?? American political lunacy is not our problem. Im an infertile woman who has voted Labour her entire life

and for all your grandstanding my point still stands. Law depends on definition and you cannot defend what you cannot define. If the definition of women includes “and some men” then it’s not a definition of women is it

OK. But again, I think going absolutist about it is a mistake because no party is all good or all bad. You still have to look at everything in context and make a decision as to what - on balance- you can support.
The nativist agenda that will have us all turn into breeders is not my thing. Maybe it is for you but I'll stick with imperfect politics that I believe best safeguard my right to vote, my right to decide what to do with my own body, and does not discard wholesale all notions of equality and inclusion in the workplace.