Conciliatory Conversation On gender

[FairAdvocate]

Hello!

In the last few months I have been reflecting on the transgender and feminism debate and I feel I've got a few things to share with you on it from a perspective perhaps you wont maybe often hear.

To preface and explain, I am a transgender woman/female and I'm writing here today not to create any kind of argument or discord but because I am here to say that I think there are things that my side of the floor has gotten wrong.

I want to start from a position of saying that I can understand why some of you feel erased or afraid. I dont say that in a patronising way; I say that from a position of being fully periceved as female in society and I often to feel quite vunerable because of that in certain situations just like I imagine many of you do aswell.

I started down this road from hearing about how a 'A woman is person who says they are a woman'. I must admit I never quite got it. It makes no sense but yet, there are many transgender people and allies who say this like it has any kind of meaning. Just like when they also say that 'woman' is defined by a certain set of catagories etc. Its always bothered me and I didnt know why. For me, the more I have medically tranisitioned to female, the more Ive began to understand the word and defintion of female cannot be just removed from the term woman.

Now, I suspect this is where most of you reading this will be in decent agreement of. However I suspect what I say next will cause more issues. I believe myself to be female not just because of my physical aspect having been changed through medical transition (albeit its not a perfect process) but also because I believe my brain structure to have formed female in the sex differences between male and female likely at birth. There are quite numerous studies that do back this up to an okay but emerging degree and I am also aware that there also a few that dont say that exactly but say my brain formed in a kind of third way. Either way, I think it is clear from these studies that my brain developed differently to that of a male and it has manifested itself so I am quite closely alligned with being female.

To me, I feel like this makes a me kind of intersex person but perhaps in a different kind of way than we usually think of the term intersex. Though, through my medical transition obviously estrogen has, at least for me, solidified my mind to that much more towards female.

With this in mind, I find myself looking at the world as a woman but a woman who came with unique challenges and hurdles that are difficult to explain. For example, often I have been accused of saying its wrong that GRS gives me a vagina and have often been shouted at and saying im just sexualising it. However for me, the vagina isnt and wasnt the main source of my distress. The main source of my distress is that I will never have ovaries and will never have children and be a biological mother. I have never been interested in having a child as a male in anyway.

For me, it reminds me that I am not just a straight forward female and many will not accept me. After some deep reflection I think that I have also accepted that I will have to go through hurdles and I will have to remove my male form in such a succfient manner that I can be accepted by other women in certain areas. With that in mind I have also come to accept that self indentifcation shouldnlt be accepted. That tears at me because I wish I lived in that ideal world. But, as a woman who is only attracted to men, I understand frankly just how dangerous some of them can be. But ive come to the conclusion that if we keep pushing for this we are only making it harder for everyone and it will only lead to further division, more toxicity and we will just tear oursevles apart.

I do look at my rights from five years ago and I look at them now and see how they have reduced from prisons putting people such as as me in mens prisions, to the recent SC ruling, sports associations banning us. I do truly think that most women do and have historically accepted women like me but I also understand that came with agreements and understandings. Understandings which I think have been overstepped in the last ten years.

While I dont and will never accept calling me a man; I can understand why some of you that are reading this may have gotten fed up and stopped caring. I suppose what I am really trying to say is, can we all start again? If I can accept that women (including myself) need protections in some areas and I can accept the need for medicalising, the dropping of self identification, the need for due process in changing your sex legally can you accept that Im not a man? Can you accept that calling me certain things and the misgendering, using terms such as Trans identified Male is actually causing more harm than it is good?

Can we not as women actually just get our heads together and work out a decent solution? I do believe we might remain with some differences. For example I do believe a woman is a person who was born with a female gender identity by which I mean the overall average structure of the brain and therefore mind. And I do understand you will use a defintion to be defined by your anatomy. But I do believe that actually both of these can be true. While I cant be 100 percent true to your defintion I have tried to be because of where my defintion has led me and I understand how difficult that may be for someone who has all the correct anatomy to understand. But I have tried to understand how you feel so I am trying to ask for the same.

Finally, thank you for reading my long message. I am very nervous to be leaving it. Please can I ask you from refraining to calling me names and refering to me as a man, this is a request and not a demand. I have very much put myself out there with this and I hope that what is reflected back to me is the same spirit in which I wrote this.

Thank you

P.s I hovered over the 'Post' button for about five minutes before clicking it.

Respectfully disagree. In my personal experience - which of course may be completely different to yours - this issue is very far down the list of concerns of the women I know/have known (I’m a biological woman of 60).

Sorry but honeslty the only thing I asked was to avoid calling me a man thats litterally it. And 70 percent of you couldnlt help yourselves

If you want us to discuss single sex spaces and why we believe (and the law in the U.K. agrees) that you have no right to enter them, we have to be able to explain that. To describe why you are not welcome.

You are not welcome, along with 50% of the population, precisely because of that word you don’t want us to use.

You don’t want us to say man, make, trans-identifying man, TIM. Without using them, how can we possibly describe the situation and our rights?

When we say ‘male entitlement’ this is the sort of thing we mean. The audacity to say “do not describe me accurately within the legal terms because I don’t like it.” The sheer chutzpah of “I should use women’s spaces but those other transwomen can’t because they haven’t tried as hard as I have.”

The idea that you have made a concession by saying you aren’t the same as a woman born female is also the height of entitlement. Are we to appreciate that, whilst you still intend to illegally use our spaces, you at least realise we aren’t 100% the same?

You are not like us be you developed down one sex pathway and we developed down the other.

Some women used to say the same thing about women's suffrage though.

Why are you banging on about the right to vote? Don't you know there's a war on?

How many other groups are told that their right to exist is less important than all the other pressing issues of the day?

Why are you so bothered about 0.4% of the population? Are you also campaigning about the low rape prosecution rating / increase in social media content showing extreme misogynistic content to teenage boys etc / rhetoric in American around limiting women’s choices. These are statistically some of the biggest threats women are facing today - yet I don’t see 5 threads a day on it.

As posters on other threads have shared (and being largely ignored!) there is no certified evidence that trans women with GRC pose a threat to women. The OP has been very open, and also showed understanding of where the worries and concerns lay. I’ve not seen anyone respond with facts and figures - just insults and hearsay.

I would be interested to know whether the OP has a gender recognition certificate.

WOMEN make up over 50% of the population, not 0.4%.

And we deserve the right to exist in law, as well as in reality.

It is genuinely mind boggling that this is in any way controversial.

I am capable of caring about multiple matters at once.

I don't much care about what is happening in America though. I think they're pretty much fucked as a society and there is nothing we can do about that.

Only men can be trans women. Only women can't be trans women. Males are responsible for the overwhelming majority of violent and sexual offences. Females are the majority of the victims of sexual offences.

Men are also more likely to murder and be murdered.

DV is gendered crime, with male family and relatives being the perpetrators and women, the victims. Given your expertise, you'd know that coercive control is underpinned by the threat of violence? Women, being physically vulnerable, can't fight back or fear aggravating a menacing man. The common thread is the male propensity towards violence. Even post-operative trans id men retain male patterns of offending.

A trans identified female isn't putting men at risk when she trespases their spaces - she puts herself at risk. Allowing men access to areas where women are vulnerable endangers the women therein. The risks are assymetric. Women instinctively avoid confrontation with men, especially strange men. Their uncomfortable silence when a trans id man encroaches upon a female single sex space is not assent.

@Littlebutloud I’m not bothered about 0.4%. I am bothered about the 51% who now have confirmation they have the right to sex based spaces.

That’s not an argument why women should treat some men as women, is it? And I see your views as naive. You are free to disagree but the evidence falls on my side, not yours.

Because that 0.4% is demanding that we nullify sex based protections for half the population.

I agree that trans women don't pose a threat. However, dismantling sex based protections does.

Actually, no. I appreciate the trouble you took over your reply to me, but I'm afraid it didn't help much with the gender identity question. You've shared some personal experience, like when you looked at your penis and thought "That's wrong".

See, I can hugely empathise about that because of my anorexic years. I'd look at my severely underweight body and see lard. I used to wish I could just slice it off. I pulled a weird doublethink trick on myself, when I was buying size 8 clothes but still believed I was huge. In a rather sad parallel with transgenderism, people around me kept telling me I looked lovely yet never discouraged me from dieting (swap 'dieting' with 'taking hormones').

So, in essence, I do think gender dysphoria is a delusional condition but I know the strength of resistance to that idea. I've yet to see another coherent explanation, though. Moving swiftly on ...

You remarked that you're younger than many on your thread. Yes, I think that shows! So let me ask you about getting older. I have MtF friends who've had to stop taking female hormones due to the bone disease and heart problems they cause. From what you've written, you're taking high doses so your meds are likely to threaten your health sooner than my friends'. How do you think you'll deal with this?

Exactly. The gaslighting party is over.

“Neo Nazi group????” …of course you have !!! Hyperbole me thinks.

women losing their job because they didn’t want to share a safe space with a male is justified?

Yeah…you don’t want conciliation… you just want women to toe the line…the arrogance and false narrative from you is stiflingly pathetic.

Be gone and stop pretending you care what we think or say, because you so obviously don’t.

They have nothing to counter it with.

This is the whole problem with the idea that calling you a man is an attack or toxic. It’s not a value judgement, it’s a mere statement of fact and you pretending it’s an attack is purely because that simple base truth makes every other word you say fall down. And you know it.

Can I ask where this supposed evidence that “trans women with GRC don’t pose a threat to women” is? I don’t believe it exists, but feel free to post it.

The rights of disabled people immediately spring to mind. Seems to me that they are way down the list of priorities.

Arguably, stepping back from protest and participating in the war, taking on traditional men’s roles and demonstrating just how vital women were probably did just as much, if not more, more to achieve the vote for women than protest.

Also, if you’re trying to claim that if they were there would be “certified evidence” of it, that’s not accurate for many reasons. But very happy to have the conversation in full on this thread or any other @Littlebutloud

Looking at their penis and thinking, "that's wrong" is not an experience any woman has ever had. Because women don't have penises. That is a uniquely male experience. I can empathise with someone who has that feeling, but I cannot identify with it or relate to it, because I do not know what it feels like to have a penis.

Even if "not having sex dysphoria" could be described as an identity, which I dispute, in what way does a male person with sex dysphoria share the same identity as a female person without sex dysphoria?

There's not even the most cursory attempt to describe the features of this gender identity that we all supposedly share.

It really just boils down to, "I should be entitled to use these words and spaces, because of how I feel".

Please can you share the evidence here then?

if you are going to adopt you need to be prepared to hear some fairly nasty things thrown your way and suck it up, I am afraid. Adult adoptees are, as a group, a fairly angry bunch and it is important to listen to their voices if you are going to help your adopted child. You will hear a lot worse from them and possibly your own child than I have said. Have you read about the statistically fairly high incidence of child on parent violence in adoption? I mean actual violence, not the linguistic violence of being identified as your sex. Are you ready for that? Ready to be called not a real mum, not a real woman, a child trafficker? A bitch? A fucking bitch? All by your own child? Ready to be told as soon as they can your child will go back to their real family? Ready for the possibility you might pour all your love into them and then they want nothing to do with you as adults because you “stole them”
from their real family? Are you ready to deal with the reality of their biological mum- the woman who created them with her body when you could not? You have no idea how extremely fragile these children are until you are involved and it is dangerous to put them in the mix with people who want to be validated as parents because they cannot have their own children. That goes for any adopter and, trust me, I have seen it a lot. Throw into the mix someone who is insisting the world sees them in a certain way and then gets very angry and entitled when we won’t agree then I think you are potentially going down a path that will be no good for you but particularly no good for the child.

But this is all a smoke screen. If you are really interested in adoption you will have read the boards on here and seen that what I have said is basic reality. Nothing “disgusting”- the faux offence is so you can flounce and fail to engage with the point I am really making which is that your “handshake” and “conciliation” is really conceding the rights of others and demanding we accept you as something you are not and then displaying fairly male entitlement when you don’t get what you want.

There has been evidence shared on the thread. The idea that this group of men poses less risk to women than other groups of men is your extraordinary claim, and it’s for you to evidence it.

Are the trans activists marching the streets with placards threatening to kill TERFs not good enough evidence for you?

The balaclava clad thugs who turn up to every Let Women Speak event to intimidate and assault women?

How about the trans women in the prison population, who have been convicted of violent crimes against women?

I will be a great mother, no debate.
Jesus Fucking Christ.

All of the available evidence is subject to problems with defining terms.