Help me argue that What it Feels Like For a Girl doesn't prove terfs are wrong

You could also share this excellent article in the New York Times with her https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5359014-new-york-times-how-the-transgender-rights-movement-bet-on-the-supreme-court-and-lost?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

Are you not?

while I recognise those arguments [womens rights and needs] it's the damage done to these [trans] people that hits me in the stomach.

@NoBinturongsHereMate I am not hit harder by the plight of one group. The OP asked for ways to structure an argument. I was thinking that coming at it from this perspective might be more effective at getting the person the OP is trying to persuade to listen

Or Transwidows?

I found that film particularly powerful.

Honestly I was just making a point that generally we know who we are talking about when we say trans people. I mean you could have a whole thread or several just about who exactly is trans but it's not the subject of this thread. It didn't seem to have a point in the context of the conversation but that's just my view.

What about getting her to watch the film Adult Human Female?

The problem is suspect though is she needs to believe in the cult of trans as she will see being "progressive" as part of her identity and deviating from one of their core beliefs is probably too much for her atm. Like the Democrats in the USA.

But the film might get her thinking.

Stonewall has just (once again) adapted and reduced their list of trans.

So if they can't get it right (and they never could) how are the rest of us supposed too?

Agree

Well there's no shortage of those for women.

Such as Dina Ali Lasloom, to pick just one of the ones I've read about in the past 24 hours.

The entire point of discussion is not to convert another person to your thinking but to achieve together, through reasonable argument, a higher understanding of the concept. If you go into a discussion completely closed to the idea of your opinion being altered then it's a pointless discourse and better not to have it.

The friend has clearly felt this way for some time, and the series has only just come out. Therefore the series cannot be the reason for her view. It's a sidetrack.

Finding out her actual reasoning would be more useful.

Do we though? Because my mum would tell you that her friend's adult child who had a penectomy and vaginoplasty at the age of 19 and has a gender recognition certificate is a trans person, but that my pregnant friend's adult spouse who impregnated her after coming out as a trans woman isn't.

I mean as a group, yes a large umbrella, of people that when discussed on this board most people generally know what is meant by the word trans.

People always find it easier to see and relate to direct harm to a single person than more abstract harm to a group - human nature

Societies that enforce rigid ideas of gender are harmful to everyone, not just trans people. And the ones who suffer most from it are women.

Why are you hit harder by the plight of those who choose to harm themselves, rather than those who are harmed by others? [Edited to add an acknowledgement that transed children may fall into the latter category But that is harm caused to some boys and all girls, with double harm to some girls..]

So that she try to understand why her friend thinks as she does and then try and show her why her point of view is more valid. Surely that makes sense?

@AidaP
RMW is a male bodied person who wants ‘to pee’ in the loo clearly marked as reserved for female persons aka women. The Supreme Court has told him ‘that’s not on, mate’.

For a ‘barrister’ that’s an interesting disregard/ ignorance for legality.

BTW, there were all comers loos available….

I haven't said how I feel nor have I watched the series. It just seems to me that if OP refuses to watch some of it when her friend has read some of the book then they're not going to be able to have a proper discussion. You can't just expect someone to adopt your point of view without finding out why the other person thinks as they do.

If you've given her something to read that's tough for her to digest, then you really need to do her the decent of watching at least some of About A Girl, as a starting point for conversation, and to model the behaviour you want her to reciprocate.

It's a bit hypocritical IMO to expect her to read something she doesn't agree with but refuse to do the same yourself.

FWIW, I used to give people Helem Joyce's book, but unfortunately, Helen is on record saying some things that are very off putting it you're on the left, and I suspect I may have lost a 40 year friendship after giving that book to the wrong person :(

Now, I give people Hannah Barnes's Time To Think about the scandal at the Tavistock as it's written with compassion, details proper investigative journalism and the facts speak for themselves.

Your ‘intelligent’ group member holds similar views to my intelligent feminist colleagues who I dearly value. So I just never speak about this topic with them anymore.

A few have challenged my suggestion of arguing that trans people have been let down. I do think they have and I do think that homophobia is at the heart of a lot of trans procedures. That doesn't mean I don't agree with the position that women are the victims in terms of female spaces being taken over etc....

I am thinking how to be persuasive with an individual who sounds like they won't easily be persuaded and so I thought maybe the argument focusing on trans people being let down might be more effective at getting the individual to think a bit broader.

NOPE.

No one is above the law, not even parliament.

Parliament has to respect the laws it previously made, and if it no longer agrees with those laws it has to change them through the correct legislative process.

If parliament made a law which says that female only spaces are for female people only, it cannot simply decide to disapply that law because it no longer agrees with that principle.

They need to stand up in the House of Commons and say in public that they want to change the law to make your rights as a trans woman trump my rights as a woman, and take the risk that the electorate tells them to fuck off to the far side of fuck at the next election.

Everyone is either male or female. RMW and PL are both male. 'Trans' is the term used to describe those who, for whatever reason ( and there are many) choose to present as the opposite sex, often going as far as to have radical surgeries.

'Trans' is simply a framing device....people with trans identities are not a totally different category of human being, and 'being trans' is not a fixed condition, either ( unlike 'Sex') and we know that because of the large numbers of people who adopt 'trans' identities and then either desist or detransition.

It is interesting to listen to the stories of people who have adopted trans identities: the story of PL included. But the background the the ' transition' of PL proves nothing, other than that severe abuse and distress can lead people into adopting a cross sex identity; and it certainly doesn't counter the essential objections and concerns of people who understand that sex is real and who have profound concerns over the protections afforded to female people and to children.