Hello, I'm a TRA - ask me anything

[AlphaTransWoman]

Good evening,

I'm a transgender rights advocate. I say "advocate" rather than "activist" because I believe in constructive debate and consensus building rather than the hostile, shouty kind of activism that gets us nowhere.

I am here because I am genuinely interested in seeing if there is some kind of compromise that can be reached between pro trans and gender critical views. Obviously this is difficult because we may disagree about something pretty fundamental. I feel passionately that trans women are women (at least in the psychological and social sense), so there's an obvious divide if you do not.

The question is, can we find ways to co-exist and find an acceptable way forward on some of the difficult issues that arise around trans acceptance? So I'm happy to have a go answering anything you care to ask in good faith. Who knows, we might even make some progress.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to treat a male offender like that, yes.

"You think it's OK to treat a woman like that?"

They're not women. They're men who think they are women. That's the whole point.

I notice you've highlighted one major privilege women get in prison - the right to wear their own clothing.

Are we still at "I'm a woman because I wear silky dresses", then?

"I notice you've highlighted one major privilege women get in prison - the right to wear their own clothing."

Most male prisoners wear their own clothing...

Thats not what @StarlightLime suggested...

"Thats not what @StarlightLime suggested..."

No she didn't, you're either confused or you're intentionally gaslighting.

i don’t think as time has gone on you aren’t been painted as a bad guy just a man whose childhood and vision of what they want to be as a person has meant that over time your dislike of what you consider male has become needing and wanting to be female.

and that your issue isn’t that you are in the wrong body per se just that society and gender norms that have been created and really highlighted this century don’t allow you the freedom to be the person you want.

there is nothing wrong with being the characteristics you are - only societal norms pigeonhole them into masculine and feminine rather than personality traits. The same with clothes.

no one has accepted or allowed you to be the man you want to be. The only way you feel you can get acceptance is by being a women - yet many of us are unhappy with that as well because it means you needing to come into our space.

at some point a decent therapist should have given you the toolset to try and accept and get others to accept the man, who sounds actually to be a fairly decent sensitive human being, that you are. Instead they planted the notion that you are a women and a particularly stereotypical one at that.

I a, sorry you don’t feel you fit in, the probably with acceptance is that until we can accept ourselves who we are how can we expect others

no amount of changing what is on the outside is going to help change or heal what is on the inside. Please try to heal that and hopefully give yourself the ability to accept who you are

To quote her directly:

"You'd be a male with a penis, wearing prison garb. Why would anyone need to know you consider yourself a woman? No pretty dresses in the nick."

@AlphaTransWoman

She's right, there aren't any pretty dresses in neither male or female estate. However that doesn't mean that male prisoners don't wear their own clothes.

www.insidetime.org/wp-content/uploads/resources/PSI/psi-2013-030-IEP.pdf

The whole theme that runs through this thread is that you are scared of men.

Well guess what. Women and children are also scared of men. Because we are smaller, physically weaker and a target for sexual assault. That is why we have separate SEX segregated places. It's an attempt to offer a little bit of safeguarding.

We cannot allow men to self identify into our spaces.

But where does that leave me? If some male born people have no right to be regarded as "women", can any of us?

No.

You've finally got there. You understand that there is no common goal, there is no intersection between you and all women across the globe throughout the whole of time, that puts them in the female category. It's not clothes, it's not traits, it's not behaviour. It's their sex.

Finding a space for you is something for you, your fellow men and your allies, such as Stonewall, to work towards. If Stonewall put their influence and money behind third spaces you could have them tomorrow. The same way that people with disabilities now have accessible facilities in public buildings. This happened because the people who needed them campaigned for them.

Women have worked for years to get the rights we have now. We are not going to give them away.

This is not for women to solve for you. We are not your shield and we are not your army. Our rights are for us. Our spaces are for us. The word woman is for us.

The fact that you don't fit in male spaces doesn't mean that you can jump over to female ones because you are not female and no matter how much you want to be, you are not and you never will be.

Just out of interest, would you support the idea of male born individuals uncomfortable with living in the male sex identifying as a third sex category - neither men nor women but something else?

The understanding would then be that this category, call it X for now, does not entitle a person to access female spaces but does entitle them to have third spaces (eg hospital wards, prisons etc) provided for them? X people could then wear female clothing without fear of ridicule and violence from men and live free from discrimination.

there is no third sex category

I'm gonna say it again - how the hell do you think babies are made?

men are men and women are women. it's not a value judgement, it's just a fact

Surely just removing the idea of female clothing and just having clothing would work the same way.

all that nature dictates is the biological differences between men and women. Anything else is prescribed by society. Wearing a skirt/dress/stilettos as being something women do is something society has decided upon.

wjat is it that you don’t like about living as a man - biology or what society expects you to be.

the problem is with third spaces is however prevalent it appears to be numbers are small, in a country where there is a crisis of space in both prisons and hospitals how exactly would creating a third space that wasn’t needed very often work? Creating a third space here could be harmful.

having a gender neutral toilet is fine creating wards and prison cells is not

Just out of interest, would you support the idea of male born individuals uncomfortable with living in the male sex identifying as a third sex category - neither men nor women but something else?

No because sex is binary and immutable. That's just a fact.

The understanding would then be that this category, call it X for now, does not entitle a person to access female spaces but does entitle them to have third spaces (eg hospital wards, prisons etc) provided for them?

I would support third spaces in addition to sex segregated spaces. Firstly services should be provided separately for males and females (which includes everyone) and then, if there is space and funds enough, a third designated space could be provided for those uncomfortable using correct sexed spaces.

However, you will find a lot of resistance to this from your TRA friends.

@Quartz2208

"wjat is it that you don’t like about living as a man - biology or what society expects you to be."

If you must know the truth, it's because I'm actually quite a submissive person when you get through all the layers. And society says it's shameful for a man to be like that, but OK if you are a woman.

There it is, you got to the core.

You sound ashamed OP.

What does 'submissive' mean to you? I'm not submissive to anyone.

So why not accept the person you are, that is, a submissive man? You don't need to be a woman to be submissive!

No it doesn’t - women are forced into submission for the most part by society and by men - submissive isn’t a characteristic many of us want or believe ourselves to be. Indeed I am teaching my daughter to stand up for herself and not take shit from anyone.

please don’t tell me it is ok to see women as the submissive sex because it isn’t. Read this thread do we seem submissive to you.

but we shouldn’t mistake submissive for being shy or introverted because that is different and perfectly acceptable for both sexes.

something must have made you believe that you are both submissive and it is shameful to do so.

Did your father berate you for not standing up to your bullies? Or did an adult harm you and you are carrying the shame of what they did? You don't have to answer but if that is the case you do need to go back to therapy to talk about a) what makes you think you're submissive and b) why you think that's a bad thing for a man and c) why you think it's an acceptable thing for a woman because you are all kinds of mixed up here.

And society says it's shameful for a man to be like that, but OK if you are a woman.

And you believe society, and tell everyone else men can't be like that.

And that’s the issue with the whole ‘women are this set of characteristics and men are these characteristics’

Gender stereotypes are damaging to men and women. But by you insisting that being submissive means you must be a woman, you are reenforcing these damaging stereotypes. You are accepting them not fighting them.

Being a submissive man doesn’t make you a woman. Plenty of women are not submissive and they are still women. They aren’t trans men.

It’s the opposite of fighting gender stereotypes.

As for ‘would you be ok with people identifying as a third category’, there is a third category. Trans. But it’s not a sex. There are not 3 sexes and never will be. It’s already a thing and if Trans people want a third space they need be campaigning for one. But the fact is the vast majority of trans women, just want to relive women’s rights and insert themselves into women’s spaces. It’s not really about ‘the men’s toilets are dangerous’. It’s about taking something from women.

As this thread is running out of space, I'll just reiterate where we got to in terms of OP's beliefs and why OP is so fixated on 'men being like THIS, women being like THAT' - in terms of personality and their minds. (Copied from a previous post mid-thread). I make no comment on whether this makes OP a 'good' or 'bad'. It's rather a moot point in a way because I know it to be factually incorrect.

I think it lays out what a lot of people sort of believe but very few will outright say. Gender stereotypes persist and affect people's entire lives and identities.

You acknowledge (I think) that there are male and female bodies. You believe there is an incredibly strong, almost one-to-one correlation, throughout all of humanity with having a female body and having some sort of checklist of psychological traits (and with a male body and 'male mind' traits). You have also referred to "the way they feel about themselves and wish to live" without giving any more information on what this actually means.

You haven't said on what data you have concluded this, or even given a list of these traits other than "men are more competitive and rational" and "like to be assertive and in charge of things", and women are more "cooperative, empathic and emotional, more likely to to be kind and take a supporting role" - or said how you would measure them, or what it means if someone's ability/personality changes over time, or what even it means to 'be emotional'.

Let's say you think female people are 'above average' on these traits and there is therefore a distinct gap between how male people do on these and how female people do (so you wouldn't really see any overlap, because you claim that the traits are what distinguishes a 'male mind' or 'female mind'.)

You acknowledge there are 'some outliers' - males and females whose mind doesn't 'match' your list of traits. How many, we cannot know, but presumably millions worldwide.

Those with 'woman mind' traits are women, and this includes male people with those traits.

Those with 'man mind traits' are men, and this includes female people.

The fact that millions of female people can have 'man minds' does not suggest to you that in fact psychological traits can present equally in both sexes, but you conclude instead that their bodies are the wrong sex for their mind.

Based on this alone, you believe that 'man mind' people should be treated as male in all situations bar a very few, and same for women minds being treated as female. Bear in mind you say as a woman you are less rational than 50% of the population yet think it is fine to advocate for both sexes on this.

You think that the female body is a visual cue that the person has 'woman traits' and so appearing as a female, or taking on some female physical or social factors like she/her pronouns, female names, gendered clothing etc, tells society that 'this person has a woman mind and must be treated as such', hence your linking of appearance and psychological traits.

@popebishop

Thank you. I think you've put together my feelings on all this very well. I would add my point that society considers it very shameful for men to show the traits I have identified as "feminine", thus a person with such traits may be more comfortable presenting and living as a woman.

But yet again you are forcing women into the stereotypes we have fought long and hard to get free from. This time it is ‘women are submissive’ - as @Quartz2208 so rightly said - we were forced to be submissive - and the tool of that force was our female biology, not our gender feelz - and what I am hearing from you is that you have a set of characteristics that you want to force on all women, just so you feel comfortable, @AlphaTransWoman.