@Falcor
I am an non-British raging feminist. I honestly don't understand the anger against trans women and I think it is misplaced. It is men we should be angry with
@Falcor, when I first visited the Feminist boards, I went to read what they said, research it, and prove those horrible, mean, transphobic women wrong, using evidence and data!
The problem was, they weren't wrong. The evidence and data was all on their side. I just hadn't ever seen it, before, because I'd not read their claims anywhere else. Yet they were founded, on evidence and data, in a way the opposing claims just... aren't. Not when you really start to investigate.
I have no animus against anyone trans. Life is painful for every human, and I support anyone in living in a way that makes them happier, and better able to feel worthwhile and at peace with who they are. I don't care how that's achieved, as long as it harms nobody else. But biology doesn't cease to exist based on someone's personal, unknowable, subjective thought. That's magical thinking. Trans people have bodies, and those bodies remain sexed, and therefore, if that body is male, a statistical risk to those with female bodies.
Can I ask you to read this.
And then this.
And then this.
And then have a think about how feminist women like us were somehow sold the idea that prioritising the needs of people of male biology, ahead of people of female biology - even when it comes to the support of women raped by men! - is feminist. How can a movement that puts women at increased risk (because statistically, people's likelihood to commit violent crime is based on sex, and gender identity doesn't affect it in either direction)... how in the world can this movement be a feminist one?
What sort of feminism allows a woman to face hundreds of pornographic images of erect penises, declaring she will be raped by them, and then in the next breath graphically hateful descriptions of her genitalia as too old for anyone to bother with, as happened to JK Rowling? What sort of feminism can justify any woman deserving this, and not defending her against it? And in her case, it was solely for the crime of asking that women not be dehumanised by reduction to 'menstruators'... and then for writing an essay, where she talked about her own experience of rape and domestic violence, and how it informed her concerns for women, in erasing sex in favour of self-declared gender - and that was met by an avalanche of rape threats. Yet the general response seemed to vary from, "she had it coming," to "I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and whistle."
I repeat: a woman writes a careful, thoughtful essay about women's rights, as a rape survivor; is met by an avalanche of rape threats - and almost everyone is either too fucking scared to say anything, or launches into a sanctimonious condemnation of her. And the latter group additionally insist that the perpetrators are feminists, while Rowling isn't. This is utter madness. People making vilely sexist, explicit threats of sexual violence to a woman, for voicing the view that women matter, are not feminists. Not in any universe. We are well and truly through the fucking looking glass with that one. Yet a load of blue ticks earnestly backed that standpoint up. Is anyone here for that? Seriously? Because that level of open misogyny is beyond the wildest dreams of any previous Men's Rights Activist - and here, it's framed as feminism. Because while it's pretty degrading for the boring old women with vaginas, it supports the infinitely more urgent rights of women with penises.
Maybe it's just me, but that looks awfully familiar, somehow.
We are allowing male people access to women's communal changing rooms at their request. We are housing male sex offenders in women's prisons at their request. We are housing male sex offenders in women's hospital wards at their request. Women survivors of rape who ask for female medical staff to perform intimate exams have had their letters used in training staff on unacceptable bigotry, without their knowledge. Intimate exams being performed by same-sex clinicians is specifically cited in the Equality Act as a protected, and acceptable, exception to gender reassignment rights. Yet it's been used, in training, as an example of bigotry. Most women have no idea any of this is happening. And that's quite deliberate.
Personally, I think that's incredibly good evidence that it desperately, and urgently, needs discussion, and for us to think about it, and read up on the side you aren't being told - even if just to disagree with that side! At least know what you are disagreeing with. At least know what the two sides of the discussion are. And this book, and this one, are exceptionally good places to start. Because sex matters. We are through the looking glass here, in trying to deny that fact.