"transsexuals are patriarchal intruders into womanhood who reinforce traditional gender roles"

There are many transsexuals like Buck Angel for example who are very vocal about how this new transGENDER ideology is not representative of them or the views of many. Transsexuals aren’t all narcissistic, entitled jerks or perverts who think bio men should have the right to women’s spaces.

And some, like Webb maybe didn’t give it the thought they should have and when they did, accepted what women wanted. So, respect.

The fact is that transsexuals are often expected to tow the party line regarding inclusivity to female spaces or they are criticised just like the rest of us. But there are absolutely those who speak up against the cult and who are refusing to be silenced.

Really interesting article, thank you.

Looking back to a time when there were still so many paths that could have been taken.

So sad (but maybe unavoidable) that the potential for blurring sexist social structures that trans identities once promised has ended up as a demand for Gender Supremacy over female people's self definition.

How do all the Omnicausers today who worship Marx like a God square that with the man who would have no truck today with transgender ideology, viewing it most likely as a concept that divides the working class and only benefits the boss class.
Transgender Marxists and Marxists that stick up for transgender ideology? Um, no.

Bang on. Marx would have no truck with transgenderism. It's an afront to material reality.

Yes. I remember when it seemed like trans women and drag queens were going to progress Feminism by being living proof that half of the, for want of a better word, ingredients that culture told us were quintessentially female worked just as well and could be enjoyed just as much by men.

But then the story become the ingredients were the actual source of womanhood, with the sex of the body an irrelevant and negligible detail not even worth a name, and well. Here we are.

Although with a wider lens, the problem women always run into with the left (and the right actually, but since they never pretend different it matters less) is that we are too normal, too everyday, too background to really get an activists juices pumping. It's like sticking up for the sofa when you come home every day and sit on it. So mostly, we became the background to more focusable-on subjects.

Breaking: people are individuals, and have different points of views. There are narcissists, jerks and perverts in every section of society, but claiming a minority is defined by these traits is lazy bigotry.

More news as we get it.

Quickest deletion ever. Looks like I hit a nerve!

It's such a shame the possibility of a constructive dialogue and analysis of gender from our varying perspectives between feminists and trans women has been so thoroughly stymied by the absolutism of Genderists.

Isn’t it? But you can see the problem from the calibre of the genderist comments on here. There’s no possibility of constructive discussion when one side insists that the lie that men are women has to be the starting point of any discussion. You can’t negotiate with anywho is so irrational. Some people who have transitioned do actually manage to listen to women and understand, which sounds like what occurred in case described in the OP but the most vocal are incapable of reasoning, or appear so on here anyway.

I know. I'd love to hear, genuinely, how trans women experience the world and how that relates or does not relate to the way I do. But how can you have that conversation when we aren't allowed to speak honestly about how and why we are different?

From time to time I come across really insightful or thought provoking posts, blogs and articles, but they are few and far between the ones that are just focussed on asserting their identity as Woman.

Well, to an extent. We know that the vast, vast majority of sex offences are perpetrated by men. And, we know the majority of their victims are female. Also, that males have fetishes and paraphilias in a way that women don’t. These fetishes tend to escalate for the man to get the same ‘thrill’ for himself, and this can be a danger, if not fatal for their desired victims.

So males as a section of society, harbour way more dangerous individuals. And nobody ever changes sex as it is a development pathway, and is immutable. So, as long as we don’t try to pretend that men are not men. And, so long as nobody reduces safeguarding any further, and bricks back up the opened loopholes which are a detriment to women. Then at least there will be some measures in place to enable women to navigate the world, with more safety and comfort.

Fair point. There will be narcissistic jerks and perverts who think that bio men should have the right to women's spaces in lots of different parts of society.

Yes this, and if we could begin each conversation with these fundamental truths as conversation guardrails, then we could really have informative discussions and find pathways forward through this current mess.

I don't see or feel it that way FWR. It looks from my point of view that the discussion falters as soon as someone born male tells me that that they became trans because they know what it feels like to be a woman and won't listen to the rational argument that only a woman can possibly know that.

It falls apart completely when they then insist that hormones and surgery make them an actual woman (a physical impossibility) and therefore gives them all the rights of a woman (a travesty where sport, shortlists and female only spaces are concerned).

If those things could be put aside, then I would love some constructive discussions with people living trans lives, but for me to fully understand, those discussions would would also need to include (not necessarily at the same time) those who regret the transition.

It is ironic that those people who most often resort to cries of 'colonisation' and 'oppression' are fully on board when it comes to the colonisation, and subsequent domination, of womanhood and of the spaces that rightfully belong to women and girls.

I think we are saying the same thing. It's the absolutism of the TW's "I am a woman" that stops the possibility of a meaningful conversation at least from the actual woman (sex based meaning obvs) side, because really how can you talk about your own experiences being nothing like his assumptions about womanhood when he shuts it down like that?

Yes we are. I misread your post!

I had hoped that "non-binary" would lead to a rejection of restrictive gender stereotypes and was a new kind of feminism. I know lots of people who are non-binary - sporty, competitive women, nurturing, gentle men, nerd girls, arty boys - all breaking gender stereotypes.

But it seems the "get back in your box" pushback has been hard!

No, just males and females. Non-binary is one for the fantasy novels.

The problem with non-binary is that it appears to say "I'm not a woman because this" rather than "This doesn't make me less of a woman". The former really isn't any kind of feminism.

You don't need such a label to just be yourself free of stereotypes that don't fit you. This has been established since the early days of the women's movement and then the gay liberation movement. The label is merely creating a fantastical category of human being that does not really exist i.e one that is neither male nor female. All in the name of an ideology of 'self' that was constructed in the 1990s. This is not progressive; it is regressive.

But the point is surely that saying “ ooh how brave for breaking gender stereotypes” only reinforces the fact that for some people gender stereotypes are the very things that confirm or deny their sex. A little boy wants to dress as Elsa, he is a girl. A teenage girl doesn’t wear makeup and has cut her hair short, she is a boy.

If we can move past sticking gender stereotypic labels on peoples lives then they are free to accept that their biological sex does not stop them from presenting how they want and wearing what they want ,without having to tie the rest of us in knots with their ridiculous pronouns and declarations of being non binary, or two spirited, or whatever else is the label of choice this week. Everybody has a sex, male or female, and conforming to gender stereotypes, or indeed not conforming to gender stereotypes neither confirms, denies or changes a persons sex.

And if we can get to that level of honesty then perhaps we can then start to deal with the irrational people who carry on insisting that they actually have changed sex whether through surgery, hormones or just by crossing their fingers and wishing very hard.