Thoughts on this tweet?

If they are quietly going about their lives, never concealing their sex, never using women single sex spaces and opportunities, never claiming be women, I agree they probably arent upsetting anyone.

Id question what was trans about them. Arent they just men who claim to be men?

“because the thing they really find unacceptable is the word "No".”

This is true.

Almost every time we have a male person who comes to this board with a transgender identity and they hear the word ‘no’, they get upset. Sometimes they get abusive on the thread and get deleted / banned. I can think of less than 4 who have not in over 6-7 years.

It is similar to what happens in other social media platforms.

If ‘no’ is not acceptable to them, then we cannot frame it in any way that will convey the message. It is the ‘no’ that moderate posters so often declare is just as extreme as using accurate sex based language.

All of that. And it's always in the same predictable style.

The emotive bids for sympathy
The insistance that no woman who cares about the interests of women can possibly have ever met one of these men who totally outweigh them
Followed by insults, derision, it being very plain how much they loathe women
Followed by the behaviour making it clear that their entire concept of women is based on 'tool/resource I'm entitled to'
Followed by escalating to banning.

One exception - several long threads without being rude or abusive, giving the appearance of listening while women patiently explained, for hours, over several threads, that women existed, were people like him, equal to him, had needs and experiences and inclusion issues that only single sex spaces could meet, etc etc - basically he permitted women to plead their case. They explained their abuse, their disabilities, their barriers, their own identities. And at the end, he patted them metaphorically on the head and explained in the manner of a managing director having listened nicely to the delegation of floor workers, that he'd heard everything women had to say and his executive decision was that he'd heard nothing that outweighed his wish to perform in women's spaces using women. And women who were excluded by not serving his ego did not matter.

He at least didn't threaten to sexually murder anyone, but he gave himself away pretty thoroughly all the same.

it is unkind to call them men

It is unkind to fuck over women.

if you aren’t comfortable using someone’s preferred pronouns the medium ground is to use they/them as it doesn’t validate anything but it also remains neutral and respectful

worrying about being neutral and respectful to someone abusing you, who is not remotely interested in being reciprocally respectful to you, is not a sign of healthy emotional/relational function.

“if you aren’t comfortable using someone’s preferred pronouns the medium ground is to use they/them as it doesn’t validate anything but it also remains neutral and respectful

I have been wondering about this statement today. The thing is, it DOES validate something by using they/them.

It validates that the speaker will not treat them as if they are male people. It validates that they are no longer male through linguistic devices.

So what that it doesn’t refer to them as female people. It validates those male people’s demand to not be treated as if they fit in the wide range of experiences male people can experience… as a male person.

This statement is another that doesn’t work.

Yes that's where I am. Any agreement that it is ones mind that makes one (or makes one not) a "man" or a "woman" rather than ones body does not simply validate the trans person's identity, it fundamentally redefines every single person on the planet.

Now personally, I don't think that is something to be done lightly, and certainly not something to be done simply because that is how the trans person feels about everyone else's sex/gender without first double checking that everyone else does indeed feel about themselves the way the trans person assumes they do.

Indeed, I think that redefining the basis on which 8.3 billion people understand themselves and how they relate to their state and society simply to avoid upsetting trans people is rather an extreme position to take. But hey, what does an extremist like me know, eh?

Incidentally, I'm 100% ok with the idea of coining a new language for different personality types that cut across sex and potentially even a world where ones identity as a floofle or a xtretierk or an ickickick is considered far more significant than ones mere sex.

It's just the undefining or redefining of language pertaining to sex to use it to label personalities instead I have issue with, because as we have seen this then gets leveraged to appropriate rights, protections, history, analysis, activism and so on based on the name being the same without ever making the case for why the need should be the same, and this is to the detriment of women (and at times men) who will continue to have sex-based needs and challenges that are nothing to do with gender in the gender identity sense and everything to do with being the sex we actually are.

Effective safeguard needs accurate sex and age information. We need to know who are adults and who is male and female.

Not calling a man a man is as odd as not calling him an adult because it makes him upset. Would we create a new phrase to hide the fact he is an adult, in the same way people use 'they/them' to conceal a man's sex?

This. There's nothing in the concept of gender identity/personality type per se that requires the invasion of opposite-sex spaces and the appropriation of sex-based language.

In fact, cut loose from the type of body you are born with, there's no reason to limit the variety of it to masculine and feminine (with or without the addition of "not-really-either"). The existing lists of things like "cake-gender" are fairly absurd, not least in the arbitrarily limited numbers of genders recognised, but the people who made them were on to something about the nature of that form of classification.

It's the decision to treat gender identity as a kind of pseudo-sex that is the root of the conflict with women's rights and the drive to medicate and mutilate healthy bodies.

@walkthedino The TRAs and their bellicose bullshit have generated mountains of resentment, which glares right through the comments insisting "Not one step back!"

I mean, yes, we shouldn't go a single step back, the truth is the truth. But when people are looking for genuine understanding, I don't think it's a bad thing to start the discussion from what they already understand and then to expand on it. It's not essential to be vigourously in-yer-face all the time.

So anyway, long way of saying, don't get too discouraged. You're on the right track, and I'm certainly glad there's people like you around!

https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/2094595155584057798?s=46

Here is a good example of the obfuscation of language. Ben Ryan has insisted that he should use preferred language in his journalism. As an investigative journalist, he is usually focused on accuracy.

this tweet removes context that becomes more apparent once you understand that Reed is male not female. That additional information shines a light on the bias that is at the foundation of Reed’s views.

“Zero Tolerance

Transgender activist-Substacker Erin Reed asserts that Rob Sand, the Dem nominee for gov in Iowa, has crossed her red line for coming out against cross-sex participation in sports. She calls such a position “a cancer” and said it’s better that Republican wins than a Democrat espouses such a philosophy. She has absolutely zero tolerance, she insists.”

And ‘cross sex participation’? WTAF?

The issue has not even been described correctly. The issue is male people competing in female protected sports categories.

If female people wish to participate in male sports categories, if they consent to the higher risk, that is their decision. Particularly if they choose to take testosterone. ‘Participation’ could also mean coaching etc, in my opinion.

‘transgender-activitist’ is not a description that gives any indication of the sex class of that person so there is no help there either.

This is an investigative journalist who also tells people how ‘unkind’, ‘disrespectful’ and ‘unreasonable’ they are to not use accurate sex language.

Mind you, he was accurate when he described Reed as a substacker. We have had several extreme transgender rights activists, those who demand male people are not excluded from female single sex provisions, describe him as an investigative journalist. One barrister came to MN FWR and described him as such.

Now imagine :

“Zero Tolerance

”Transgender activist-Substacker Erin Reed asserts that Rob Sand, the Dem nominee for gov in Iowa, has crossed her his red line for coming out against cross-sex participation male people participating in the protected female sports categories in sports. She He calls such a position “a cancer” and said it’s better that Republican wins than a Democrat espouses such a philosophy. She He has absolutely zero tolerance, she he insists.”

Immediately, there is a different story in the paragraph. At first glance, the reader already knows that a man is making statements about allowing boys and men compete in a protected sports category that they are excluded from. And that the man is so insistent that this should happen that he would prefer the Republican candidate win over the candidate of the political party he supports.

Just to add, it is good to see some Democratic Party candidates are now supporting the reinstatement of the protections for the female protected sports category. Considering the % of democrats who support that protection is growing it is good to see and good that the Democratic Party allows candidates to voice their support.

Not just unkind but "hateful", yet calling us "cocaine-fueled extremists" in an opening post and quoting a well-known misogynist and calling him reasonable is fine 🙂.
Why is it that facts = hate yet actual hate= middle ground (but only when coming from the be kind brigade otherwise its genocide)

For some reason, calling a man a man prompts a lot of angst, while calling women hateful extremists is, you know, shrug. Fine.

Ive never had cocaine to be honest, more than one coffee a day and I'm buzzing.

Saying ‘no’ to a man is always the most transgressive thing you can do.

I'll never get over how faceless women are assumed to just absorb everything - insults, abuse, judgement.

While imagined men have their imagined feelings cosseted and pandered to like they're fine china.

I think for some women there is a subconscious comfort in believing these men are vulnerable and need women to support/protect/save them. It puts them in a position of power and the man in the position of needing them.

Also comfort in believing that women-only protections are some sort of self actualising consumer preference rather than necessary balance to the unfair physical and social trespassing of men over women's boundaries.

Yep

the asymmetry continues

I wonder if its because of the idea that they are a protected characteristic and they are included in hate crime statistics?

They are seen a vulnerable by default, therefore we are responsible for protecting them, and we dont want to be accused of hate crimes?

there is a lot to what you say Flirts.

Denial is a very strong psychic mechanism, imo.

Women who disagree that male people can ever be female and can see with clarity all the negative impacts are often dehumanised.

Once they have been labelled as ‘extreme’ or ‘bigots’, they are comfortably dismissed.

And their perceived victims are given privileges that go beyond human rights in return. This is again the assymetry that comes from considering female people stating that no male can be female and that we should not be even using female language for any male person as ‘extreme’.

Agreed...

I was thinking recently - I have posted on here in support of women's rights / against the trans muddling of waters etc. for many years now and in all that time I have had pretty much zero aggression or push back from men - yet have seen women being aggressively attacked sometimes in the same discussions...

the difference - I am male.

it is yet another supporting plank in the argument that a lot of the 'trans' argument is simply anti-women.

I think many 'progressives' also just fundamentally have a rather old fashioned understanding of human rights.

Equality legislation protects people from unlawful discrimination and also creates a more level playing field by recognising that e.g. buildings should be accessible and women need sex specific rights like maternity leave. The more uncomfortable part of this is that some people will have to give some things up, people will need to tolerate things that they don't like, there will need to be difficult conversations, there will always be ongoing tensions and different people will have different opinions on where lines should be drawn.

However, there is an easier, older model to follow where the lord of the manor doles out 'kindness' to 'the marginalised' (to the extent that they are not a threat), and there is a clear hierarchy and nobody questions the established order. I think that is the model that many self described progressives are actually following.