Has there been an influx of TRAs to Mumsnet recently?

And they won’t get answered by that poster either. I haven’t seen them answered in the 11 years I’ve been discussing this issue on social media but I am always open to being surprised.

Your side has zero decent arguments, so it’s hardly surprising TRAs don’t often engage in good faith, they’d have their arse handed to them quicker than you can say “women’s rights are human rights”.

This might be a good point to mention the Be Kind 2.0 thread, if you haven't seen it yet:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5536989-be-kind-20-and-the-persuasive-tra?page=10&reply=153000905

Just a collation of recent TRA tactics, most of which tend to pivot on a "why can't you just be kind and helpful, we're having such a hard time right now, women should help sort this out " - after more than a decade of No Debate, Terfs should be decapitated, Karens, and no LGB without the T, suddenly their road is coming to an end and they want us to fix it for them!

There's more than a little bit of emotional blackmail mixed in with all the tactics, but I'm sure we all see through it by now.

Exactly

We don't want an echo chamber. But we are so tired of ridiculous points that are trotted out over and over, such as "transwomen are no danger to women; the danger is from 'cis' men", or "you have a unisex toilet in your home (that you share with your family), why don't you want to share one with strange men." We are happy to debate, but that rarely happens - we ask questions and don't get answered.

I've never seen what is so progressive about entrenching sexist stereotypes. Sexism at work nearly broke my mother and hence my family when I was a teenager, and I'm damned if I'll put up with it from some keyboard warriors who fancy wearing a skirt and removing women's rights from trailblazers like her.

And this whole movement is sexism with bells on, with a side salad of colonisation.

Wear whatever you like, no one cares, but you cannot change sex and should stay out of spaces reserved for the opposite sex. It's quite simple really.

Nope. They just accuse us of “prejudice” whilst patting themselves on the back for being oh so “progressive”.

Ah - cross-post with Mur.

Yep. And, StonedRose, I honestly think a lot of the frustration with visitors here isn’t that they’re debating us, but the quality of argument they offer. A huge proportion come with overt or implicit insult and not much else. A similarly large number are Me, me, me! when the board wants to address a wider conflict of rights. And few to none, really, are able to engage honestly with our arguments. They’re ignored, misrepresented, condemned and dismissed, without reason or evidence. And it’s obvious to us that that’s what’s happening!

You speak of confirming our own prejudices, but a lot of posters here actually want the chance to engage more meaningfully on this issue, because we want to be heard by a society that, until very recently, has ignored and silenced us. Being heard means having our arguments acknowledged then countered. In getting neither, it does risk confirming our impression that “the other side” (in the ideological sense) is built on unicorn dust.

Nobody wants an echo chamber, just reasonable debate, and answers to some age old questions that have never been answered, such as 'what does living as a woman mean, without reference to hair, make up and spinny skirts'. And 'why does not buying into stereotypes of maleness mean you must be female'.

If someone could answer those questions, it'd be great, and a good starting point for a debate. Never happens though.

Edit: that's for @AStonedRose whose post I forgot to quote.

Considering the many, many TRAs who have come here and been debated with over the years, I cannot fathom where your idea that anyone wants this board to be an echo chamber comes from 🙃

Embarrassed epiphany sums it up perfectly. I thought by being verbose I'd sound super intelligent, but the moment where he stared at me before requesting I cut out the fluff was absolutely awful. Turned out I did have a good point, so I made it, but many of the TRAs on here have failed to do so, and just go full Butler.

I learned that lesson at 18, they seem not to have done.

I genuinely don't understand why one side of the argument wants to keep this board an echo chamber. So much for free speech.

There are no brownie points for 'winning' the FWR board on Mumsnet. It achieves precisely nothing except confirming for you your own prejudices.

Do you want to know what hurts my child? The promotion of an ideology that insists she should have no single sex provision whatsoever. And fucking right I will push back against it and anyone promoting it.

Excellent - love it!

I think I went through two phases.

An English teacher gently mocked my "purple prose" (you'll be amazed to hear I was like that, I'm sure!), and I did better for a while... but it was my first uni essay that really set me straight. I can't remember what they said, but can still remember the office and sense of embarrassed epiphany.

(I still wage editorial war on my posts here - an unhealthy fondness for adverbs endures when I'm writing about something I really - there's one of them buggers! - care about!)

Have you ever considered that some of us might have trans relatives who we love and are concerned about, and yet.... we still understand that humans can't change sex and can see the risks to women's right and the appalling sexism inherent in trans ideology?

The 'poisonous attitudes' towards women that have seen them doxxed, sacked and attacked for stating things they everyone knew to be true until about a decade ago and the erosion of women's rights (to fair competition in sport, to safety and privacy in changing rooms and prisons) have made a lot of women very, very angry. You shouldn't be surprised by this response.

Quite, I cited on another thread one of my uni profs who in a one on one supervison let me waffle on for a good 5 minutes before saying 'yes but what did you mean?' I never did it again....

This.

I'm tired today of being polite and accommodating, after a rough week dealing with other people's strategic stupidity. Honest truth? 3-year-old is perfect, in a scarily literal way. It's just toddlerish. "You hate me! You're horrid! Bad Mummies!"

But I'd compare some recent visitors with self-consciously "clever", egotistical teens, to be honest.

They're doing better than the sheer stupidity and ad homs of most... but there's a different kind of immaturity. The one where lots and lots and lots of bigly words, creative metaphors and looong (confused) sentences and paragraphs = Instant Intellectual Superiority. Where My Experience = Universal Truth.

Lot of us go through this at some point. But we find our way through it. Or we even just cut that crap overnight, as I did, in shame, the moment an early uni tutor called me out on it. And that just ain't happenin' here.

I find it interesting to understand why the shift, though. Cos I do think there's been one in tone and approach.

A failed attempt to be conciliatory (because so much of it is almost as offensive - more so, really, in total indifference and insularity being presented as not only morally superior - the usual - but intellectually superior, too)?

A new demographic as interest and awareness broaden - including that we've actually got some pretty good arguments on our side, you know, darnit, and that we share them here?

Sending us their very best fighters as ever more battles are lost and winning the war's ever more in question?

I dunno.

For now, I'm find it quite interesting, and it's given me a few new insights. But those insights include the near-constant reminder that even members of the (male) demographic for whom I retain most (cautious, curious) concern... may be almost incapable of reciprocating said concern. Helpful.

Okay, fine. You read what you want to read, even though it wasn't what I wrote. And you don't understand the meaning of DARVO.

When we speak about trans people and TRAs on here, 99% of the time we are talking about trans identifying males - and of those, 100% of the time we mean the nasty, aggressive, splintery rolling pin ones. They are the TRAs. And yes, we ARE angry when it comes to discussing them.

If your child doesn't fall into that category, then we aren't talking about your child.

Women need a space to discuss this subset of entitled men. Males, FTAOD. Why be angry at us? Be angry at the TRAs who are lumped in under the same umbrella as your child. Not at women who want to keep males out of their spaces and will fight to do so.

Have you considered it's often people who love our trans family, friends and colleagues and are upset by the tone of aggressive sarcasm directed at them on here.

That's understandable. And quite frankly, if it upsets you that much, I suggest you take a break from it.

The pseudo-anthropology, rage and dehumanisation directed at trans people on this forum is deeply upsetting.

Again: if it upsets you that much, then please take a break, for your own good! I'm a trans person myself and nothing said here by GC people upsets me at all. Some stuff said by TRAs, however...

It's having real-world effects, contributing to the extreme violence trans people (especially children) are coping with, which is destroying their lives.

This is way beyond hyperbole. Trans people as a rule do not experience "extreme violence" at all, and transphobia is not "destroying their lives". That's simply not true.

Seeing our loved ones discussed like they're some evil gang is horrible.

Trans people are not an evil gang. We are a group in which there are massively evil people, with evil intentions, and those people need to be exposed and stopped.

Calling trans people and their families 'TRAs'

TRA just means Trans Rights Activist. It's not insulting in any way.

And now, please, for your own sake, take a break from this place, because clearly it's affecting you in a very negative way. You absolutely don't have to keep coming here!

I think you'll find trans posters like Seethlaw, who speak eloquently and interestingly are very much not denigrated on MN. Transition by proxy, a bit like Munchausens by proxy is quite reasonably judged.

I feel sorry for your daughter who has been so badly let down by her school, the other pupils, and her family. Everyone around her, really.

Me me me me me

Oh and p.s.

Reporting the effects anti-trans rhetoric have had on my family isn't 'emotional blackmail'. It is the truth.

It's me who's refusing to sugarcoat.

Cheers for the DARVO, and accusing me of things I didn't actually do.

Where did I declare myself an authority, then? I simply speak from experience, replying people on here who speak about being trans like it's a disease or conspiracy.

I am a cis woman. Dehumanisation of women would affect me 🙄

And yeah fine, I am a supportive parent. I know some aren't and prefer to spend all day on here seeking justification for hurting their child instead. Baffling though that is to me.

I see a lot of posters call people who don't like open, violent bigotry 'TRAs' or 'MRAs' (again: cis woman and feminist here) as a way of shutting down debate and swerving criticism of their abusive behaviour. That's incredibly toxic.

Being aggressively sarcastic and paranoid about trans people is not debate. Online transphobia is pointless, solves none of the very real and urgent problems affecting women - and contributes directly to anti-trans violence. Much of it sexual violence.

Well, cheers for illustrating my point and fully backing up my argument, I guess.

Should've added 'ignore the point being made, accuse the poster of saying something else then argue that', because you've done that as well.