To find media discussion about trans issues far overstated compared to the actual seriousness of the issue?

[BarmyBrunhilde]

Full disclosure, I happily accept most trans people I've met as their transitioned gender which I know puts me at odds with most people on MN. But as a feminist and a lefty, even if one views trans women as men which I don't, in terms of political priorities it ranks so list on my list of concerns. I assume that applies to most people too (trans people included!).

What someone has listed on their birth certificate has no impact on my life, and surely minimal impact on most women's lives? Imo we should be focusing on cost of living crisis, housing, properly funding women's services including rape crisis services, funding childcare, sorting out the health service and bloody schools! Gender recognition comes way below those for me (even though I'm broadly supportive with some checks in place).

I know gender criticals won't agree with me, and maybe some trans people who feel very strongly, but I do feel there's a silent majority of us who just aren't that fussed?

It's the same sentiment. I'm just getting pretty fed up of being targeted.

Back to the subject at hand.

For lurkers. This is an hour long, but truly worth your while.

It's not surprising people are confused when you are making things up.

I said neither of these things happened meaning your two accusations towards me earlier in the thread.

Agreeing with someone does not mean there's a bandwagon and does not mean you're being victimised.

sex-matters.org/your-rights-at-work/

Are you allowed to say sex is binary, immutable and important, at work? To state that a male is a male is a male? Yes, yes you are.

YANBU OP. I'm another feminist, lefty woman who agrees with you and it is very refreshing to see your responses to posters.

If you're not raging at what's been happening in the name of "trans rights" over the last few years, you really haven't been paying attention.

Either you don't care about women or you don't think it's actually doing any harm. I think probably the latter. How do you marry that up with the incidents of men assaulting women in prison, the women being excluded from health care, sports and rape crisis centres? As well as those being fired for not believing a TW is W?

It seems clear that some posters simply like to throw around terminology that they don’t seem to understand as well.

Thanks to other posters, I realize I am not the only one having trouble with the inconsistent posting style and the lack of coherence in some posts.

And here is the projection. And the lack of even attempting to read the actual post.

Yes, you clearly have no capacity for critical analysis. You still haven’t said why it was transphobic.

I've answered this previously, of course it does.

Perhaps my question is more, how much does it matter to you? We now know in Scotland that a GRC entitles transwomen to be treated exactly like biological women for the Equalities Act.

As I understand it, that's the result of Lady Haldane's recent decision. It was seemingly about something quite different, but it covers everything in the Act. Including access to women-only services. It's now direct discrimination
(at least in Scotland) if a group is for biological women and not also for transwomen with a GRC. And if the GRR also goes through then anyone can get a GRC, including a fetishist who wants to hear stories about harm to women.

I'd be more than happy for any one to show that I'm wrong about that!

Also, I honestly don't understand why anyone who thinks of themselves as a feminist isn't horrified even by the existing loss of women-only rape crisis groups, never mind adding self-id to the mix. And why a feminist isn't more bothered by that than by transwomen not being able to self-id for GRRs,. @Zephirine perhaps you could explain?

At the end of the day, a progressive society is supposed to be looking to put less people at risk not more. This drives a bus through all and any safeguarding and allows actual criminals and paedophiles to run star shaped right through any barriers to kids and vulnerable people. It is so backward it is frightening how many people have fallen for the spin.

The narrative, both online and in the traditional media, has been so firmly controlled in one direction for such a long time. The stories looking the other way have been relatively rare and, sadly, relayed in a dramatic "look at this horror show of a bloke claiming to be a woman" way. It's easy to dismiss when it's along the lines of the "Freddie Starr ate my hamster" style of journalism. The tabloids have done a job, I suppose but they've gone for the low hanging fruit. Only a few of the broadsheets have covered this with anything beyond total supplication to the church of Stonewall, so I don't feel any surprise that there are those who haven't yet seen the full story. Some will see it, and not care. Some will deliberately avoid it. Everyone has their own reasons for their position on the current situation.

The law, however...the law has to be clear, and truthful and honest and just plain RIGHT for the majority of the population. Otherwise, what's the fucking point of the law?

Gender, the idea that women and men have innately different personalities, has negatively impacted all women in all cultures for millennia. Aside from all the specific examples of how gender reform legislation will negatively impact women that have already been mentioned on this thread, the idea of enshrining in law that gender, the concept that causes misery for women, as the thing that actually makes us women is horrific. Anyone who thinks that gender identity is real is just a massive, old-school sexist.

The retort that "you don't see people's birth certificates in the toilets" is obtuse. At the moment, if a massive beardy bloke was in the women's toilets you don't need to see his birth certificate to know he doesn't belong in there, and you can get staff to chuck him out.

In England, someone with a GRC is allowed access to women's toilets, but the current requirement is that they have diagnosed gender dysphoria and live as a woman for two years. What does OP, and other supporters, think of the massive change to the definition of what trans even means? On the Scottish law, being trans doens't require gender dysphoria or living as a woman for any length of time (and in any case, 'living as a woman' isn't defined. There is no oversight as to what this means. No pschologists signing off on anything). This means that in effect anyone can identify as trans and change their legal sex for any reason. I could pinky swear right now to live as a man for the rest of my life...a trivial requirement when living as a man has no conditions!

So this now means that it becomes remarkably easy for any male to legally become a woman. So now we can't chuck the beardy bloke out because he may very well legally be a woman.

Imagine there was a law which allowed anyone to self ID as a child. The age on their birth certiicate was changed, and they would be legally entitled to be treated as a child for all intents and purposes. It's not a good argument to say that at the moment we don't verify children's ages by looking at their birth certificates, so how do we know that all the kids in soft play are really kids? If a legal child becomes someone of any age, it means you can no longer object to the beardy guy sitting in the ball pit declaring himself to be 5 years old.

Absolutely this ^^

I don't know who said or wrote it but this stuck with me. I'm paraphrasing but the meaning was along these lines.

Woman is any personality in a female body.
Man is any personality in a male body.

Gender would have you believe woman is a "feminine personality" in a body of either sex, and a man is a "masculine personality" in a body of either sex.

Then you of course have to try to define "feminine personality" and things like liking pink, and flowers, and barbies, and painted nails, head tilts, girlie tinklie laughs etc come up.

Try to define "masculine personality" and it's sports, being assertive and aggressive, dynamic, ambitious, etc.

Yeah, mightily progressive.

Transage is already a thing.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/transgender-father-stefonknee-wolscht-who-left-family-to-be-a-sixyearold-girl-uses-child-s-play-to-escape-adult-life-a6775051.html

We'd be horrified if we read that, say, in the 1950s children who failed to conform to sexist cultural stereotypes were being sterilised, operated on to prevent them from fulfilling sexual function, and given medicines and hormone treatments that will lead to premature ageing. But this is happening now and people think it's wonderful because they'd rather society didn't adapt to boys who aren't masculine and girls who aren't feminine. We're regressing.

I have read this thread, & I think @findmybalance is struggling with enormous cognitive dissonance.

There's a lot of 'well yes OBVIOUSLY x is wrong & I'm totally agin that, but you're still all big meanies.'

I'm an elderly goth. We have always had space in our clubs & our festivals & our spaces for the non gender conforming.

It took me quite a while to see that this was a new & threatening male supremacy movement. It was not about Terry/Teri who'd been rocking up to club nights in a pvc skirt & a stripey black & purple wig forever, & was a generally good egg who just wanted to dance.

These days, I've frankly got my doubts about sweet, funny Teri & his motives. Which is sad.

But I do wonder if findmybalance is in a similar place. It takes a while to lose the blinkers, & see that what passes for trans activism now is NOT about defending people who want to dress unconventionally &/or have dysphoria, from abuse.

It's about blokes wanting access to female spaces because they hate us & like that we cannot say no. Or, at best, they don't think our 'no' matters.

Once you've seen it, you cannot unsee it.

If being transgender is nothing to do with gender dysphoria and is all about men wanting access to “women only” spaces, how do you explain existence of transmen?

If being transgender is nothing to do with gender dysphoria and is all about men wanting access to “women only” spaces, how do you explain existence of transmen?

she literally just said about protecting those with gender dysphoria

where?

Sorry orchid i posted too soon

corvus was saying that trans activism wasn’t protecting those with gender dysphoria anymore, not that she didnt believe in it