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

Or, and I know this is a bit of a crazy idea, maybe we don't have to look at things from the perspective of how trans people feel. Maybe how we feel is just as valid, if not more so because there are about a hundred times as many of us and it's downright offensive and outrageous to believe that the feelings of one trans woman are more important than the feelings of a hundred women.

Gender critical feminists are not responsible for the fact that gender non conforming people don't fit into socially constructed stereotypes. We are pretty much the only ones actually fighting to combat those stereotypes themselves and getting precious little thanks for it. At some point it's actually fine to say, "OK, we understand that you are sad but it's not within our power or responsibility to fix it."

It’s not a “transwoman actor” - the actor is a man who doesn’t identify as a woman. I think he’s possibly “non binary”.

Coming back to this post, I thought of another analogy which may be relevant, which is that of unrequited love.

We are all familiar, in legend and in real life, with examples of this. The person who is broken hearted because they cannot be with the person they love. Perhaps that person is their ex partner who has decided they do not want to continue in a relationship. Perhaps they are married to someone else, or just not interested. Perhaps the object of their affections is a celebrity and the attention is entirely unwanted and considered stalking and harassment. Perhaps the person they love is dead and can never come back, or perhaps they are a figment of their imagination and never existed in the first place.

The person whose love is unrequited may be incredibly sad. They may be entirely truthful when they say they will never be happy unless they can be with the person they love. They may say they will kill themselves if they cannot be with that person. They may even do it.

But sometimes fixing someone's sadness isn't something the state can or should try to do. Sometimes it is impossible. (Parliament cannot legislate to bring a person back from the dead or a fictional character into being.)

And sometimes it is unreasonable. Hopefully we all agree that it would be wrong to compel someone (whether that person is Sally Brown who works in Sainsbury's or, I don't know, Claudia Schiffer) to be in a relationship with Harry Bloggs when she doesn't want to be. Even if that makes Harry Bloggs desperately sad. Even if Harry Bloggs does actually kill himself over it. Sometimes people's unhappiness can't be fixed, or the price of fixing it is too high, and it's not our responsibility to try.

@Pluvia
You could suggest Material Girls instead. Kathleen Stock is/was very sympathetic to trans people and the style might be more palatable to your friend.
But on the whole my impression is that she is a lost cause. She's very invested in being "a nice person".

Helen Joyce’s book is very cool and rational, but it is framed as hate. Two inoffensive middle-aged women politely challenge a hulking great bloke in the women’s toilets, and they are accused of harassment.

There is no arguing with people like this - they are beyond reason. Might as well do something more productive with your time like listen to a podcast or do a crossword.

Hi OP - I am also struggling with the idea of engaging with WIFLFAG, even though it is set in Hucknall, near where I am from. The premise sounds overwhelmingly homophobic and misogynistic to me. I can understand how troubled the main character is, but the fact that he was bullied for being gay and abused/ took part in lots of degrading sex, so sees himself as a woman (because real men aren’t gay and only women have degrading sex) feels so horrible and offensive to me… more so as it’s endorsed by the BBC. The fact is, most of the men who are trying to claim they are women are attracted to women, not men. So when they come into our spaces or claim they are lesbians, there are obvious problems for women who don’t see them that way. In that sense this series, as well as being offensive for women, seems pretty irrelevant to the main debate… if all trans women were in fact gay men, I don’t think things would be anything like as heated… there would be no male ‘lesbians’ and probably a lot less interest in men forcing their way into women’s spaces.

OP I think you’re on a hiding to nothing. This woman is unlikely to be convinced by anything you have to say. I frequently try and read stuff from the trans activist point of view. It’s extremely hard work because the arguments are all over the place and nothing makes sense. Men can become women because clown fish can change sex isn’t a convincing argument. It’s interesting that the reason given for not continuing with HJ’s book is because of the “hatred”. No comment at all on the cogency of HJ’s arguments. You can’t change this person’s mind with facts and reason if she believes TWAW.

Maybe try it from the perspective that trans people are being let down hugely and that they are victims of a society that doesn't tolerate feminine makes and masculine females.

Most men who call themselves trans don’t appear to be feminine to me. Many of them exhibit very male typical behaviour. The fact they’ve put on a dress painted their nails doesn’t make them feminine. Obviously some are effeminate from a young age but these seem to be the minority. I also doubt that men being welcoming of TW into their spaces would change anything. The type of TW who insists on barging their way into women’s spaces doesn’t want to be welcomed into male spaces, they want to be welcomed into female spaces. The fact that some men are antagonistic towards cross dressing men is useful for arguing they belong in female spaces.

No. Why is it women’s problem to “empathise with transpeople”? Where is the empathy from males with a trans identity when they are told their presence in female spaces makes women uncomfortable and anxious? If makes with a trans identity feel uncomfortable in male spaces, that’s on men to resolve.
you’re right though. We should work on society to accept thst anyone can present how they like and a man in a dress is just as much of a man as one wearing trousers and should be welcomed and accepted in all male spaces. That could be a good project for you rather than scolding women for objecting to men in their spaces don’t you think?

The law is unclear?!
😂😂😂😂😂

you mean the law that parliament themselves wrote!

the law that has been on the statute books for 15 years

the law that was clarified by the Supreme Court in April in words that can be understood by most 5 year olds

the law that Parliament’s own body has already clarified in interim guidance with clear instructions to immediately act upon

the law that the Scottish parliament understood so easily

the law that I and 90% of other adults could explain to parliament and our MPs in words of few syllables?

that law - which Parliament are deliberately breaking?!

the only harassing was a male trying to use female facilities - I would love to see a court case where they sued because they were not allowed to break the law and harass women!

You can’t transition gender - you simply expand it…

so you mean the man who illegally and deliberately tried to use single-sex bathroom provision set aside for women - and was called out for trying to deliberately break the law! You would expect a barrister to know the law 😀

but I agree with your second paragraph you do seem unable to see…

And yet you feel that others should think the way you do - despite all the evidence against that philosophy 😀

hilarious!

@EmptyPocketBlues
Trans people are not a stable, defined cohort. Any and all men could declare themselves to be women at any point. Are they trans or not? Are all men a minority?

Some people - especially young people and children - who declare an identity may do so because they are being bullied, or are social misfits or autistic or vulnerable in some way. Declaring themselves trans gains them an instant uplift in status and may enable them to bully other people.
The bad prior experiences do not equate to trans people being discriminated against or harassed for being trans. Not joining in with their subjective view is not oppressive.

Maybe try it from the perspective that trans people are being let down hugely and that they are victims of a society that doesn't tolerate feminine makes and masculine females. It's fundamentally our culture that is insisting what being a female looks like and feels like. It's regressive and ultimately it's the trans person who pays the price with their body. I find this more frustrating than the other aspects that are often cited (female spaces etc...) and while I recognise those arguments it's the damage done to these people that hits me in the stomach.

I know a couple of trans people and know they are not AGP etc... but I also know they have been hugely let down by people who should be caring for them.

@Pluvia sorry, we seem to have derailed this rather. If it's any help, some of the things that pushed me from "just be kind" to "be kind wisely or not at all" included:

No Debate and the chilling of academic and publishing freedoms; and the women hounded out of their jobs for daring to dissent.

The callous disrespect (or worse) for the needs and feelings of women in states of extreme vulnerability, like prisoners and rape victims; what sort of "woman" would think and behave like that?

The relentless malice and obsessively sexualised filth of the comments directed at JKR ( there was a spread of them shown in the New European once) and others who have dared to speak up, coupled with the steady trickle of very unpleasant cases in the news involving trans-identified perpetrators.

It showed me that however harmless some transpeople might be, transactivism was not harmless. Either there were a surprising number of unpleasant people amongst the "tiny minority" itself, or a significant number of unpleasant non trans people had spotted a handy bandwagon for misogynistic behaviour and breaches of safeguarding and women's safe spaces, and the decent trans people were unable to stop them. Either way, the "just be kind" granting of concessions to people who said they were trans was beginning to look problematic.

This transgender barristers? I believe he’s over 6 feet tall.

He apparently also entered the ladies after the two women, has used the facilities before so knows the setup and there was a mixed sex toilet really close to the ladies.

If a non trans identifying male walked in to the toilets would it be harassment if the women told him to leave?

It’s not a silly question at all

Trans people don’t even agree on this topic

We don't as there's no clear transition (change), no defined steps and it never ends. When we are all dead in the ground our remains will even show the sex we were.

No, it's not really silly. Even - or especially - amongst trans people and their allies, there are quite bitter disagreements about who actually qualifies to be trans.

Even vocal TRA India Willoughby doesn't agree with self ID. Only 'good' transwomen can be real dontcha know.

Well no, there is no definition of trans. Do you mean those who have had treatment and surgery, those who just say they are trans, non binary( who are definitely a not a minority as 99% of people don’t conform to gender norms), the other 100 genders or another definition?

🤣🤣🤣

OP I can see why you couldn't watch much of the series. I struggled to make it through the first episode. It's all a bit grim so far

Well, take my advice and don't Google "transmaxxing", it'll finish you off!

It's easy to see what India Willoughby, Pips Bunce and Isla Bryson have in common with each other.

Clue: it's something they don't have in common with women.