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.

You completely lost me with this: "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."

It's nonsense. besides which, services, facilities, sports, etc are segregated because we have different bodies - not brains.

This sums it up perfectly 👌
Different Bodies not Brains!!!

Moderate ?

insults me with the female brain lie and you call that moderate ?

how many lying insults must I accept under the guise of moderate ?

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.

Well, apart from the statistics and charts posted on this very thread, of course. "Sharing" appears to mean "making entirely unevidenced claims, which are contradicted by those able to provide evidence."

The evidence for trans people is that large numbers of people are out there transitioning to members of the opposite sex.

But that is not evidence for 'gender identity'. Logically, you need to make explicit the evidence that people are transitioning because of their gender identity, then go on to explain precisely what gender identity is.

Otherwise the argument could be made that people are transitioning because of mental illness, and that gender identity does not exist.
(Ignoring all the ones doing it for other reasons such as social pressure, rebelliousness, fetishism, experimentation, fashion, or whatever else)

Do you have an answer to this?

Littlebutloud · Today 11:08

There has also been intense threat of violence to trans community on opposition protests.

No there hasn't.

The evidence for gay people can be observed independently through unconscious “tells” like eye dilation

there is no such independent observation for transgender

there is an observation that the rates of gay/ lesbian are consistent across time, space and culture

the rates of transitioning however are notably higher in highly sexist or homophobic societies

these points both point to homosexuality being innate and transgender not being innate

the trick here is that women like evidence and men saying “ I say so “ isn’t actually worth the time to write it

out of the prison population 16% of men were convicted of sexual offences and 52% of transwomen were convicted of sexual offenses

how does that show that transwomen arr no threat to women? Did transgender women sexualky assault only males?

Ah, glad it is going well. Dipping my toe in the murky pre-teen waters at the moment!

I honestly believe that when we say “trans women don’t present the same level of risk as men,” it’s based in the reality most of us have experienced.

When we think of sexual harassment, abuse, violence or sexism that we’ve encountered, it was men, identifying as men. I have genuinely never had any of that treatment from trans women, either in women’s spaces or in the general community.

It may not be based in data, but it is based for some in real world experience.

I’m aware that makes it anecdotal, but that’s where my belief that some men present risk to me personally, and trans women don’t, comes from.

So you accept it’s wrong to say transwomen don’t pose a risk? Because otherwise it’s also rather nasty to the women who have suffered at the hands of transwomen. Comes across “Oh I haven’t had trouble so I don’t care if you have “

like the poor lady who was disbelieved about being raped because it was only women - and transowmen - present ?

But surely that's just because trans women represent such a small proportion of the population?

You could just as easily say you don't believe red haired men are dangerous because you have never personally experienced that sort of behaviour from a red haired man. But there wouldn't be any logic to that either.

We know that trans identifying men have harmed women and girls in single sex spaces. So despite their small population size, the risk is not zero. And we know that some dangerous men claim a transgender identity in order to access women only spaces ("Isla" Bryson, for example).

How many women or girls need to be harmed before we decide this is an unacceptable risk?

Accidentally convenient analogy there; my ex husband is a red head.

So following that logic, would it be reasonable to say that ginger men are dangerous, because my ex is a redhead narcissist?

Thanks for making this post, I agree that both sides have gone really extreme. Personally I didn't really mind any of this before people started self identifying and everyone including cross dressers came under the trans umbrella. Scotland was trying to pass a law where all you had to do was say you were a woman and you could go in any female space, and telling women we were all crazy for trying to tell people that creepy men would definitely take advantage of this. So when you are getting harsh answers on here, it's maybe because we have taken so much shit from men and society over the years we've just had enough of it all. But people are forgetting you are a human with feelings and you are entitled to those feelings.

I don't really agree with you about being born with a female brain, and I have read research to the contrary, but for whatever reason, your brain is telling you that you are a woman and is causing you massive distress, to the extent that transitioning was the only outcome for you. I don't really think people minded using the she pronouns as a kind and considerate thing to do, then suddenly all and sundry could declare themselves she, and convicted perverts could do it too. Then it got crazy, with the news showing a report about a female rapist on the run, and put people in danger by not saying they were actually a man. It all went too far so that's why lots stopped with the pronouns. What's wrong with 'trans woman'? I always though that was fine because it show you were women, but with a different lived experience to us. But that was considered hateful and not validating enough either. I'm not sure how we can move on from here. Most people want everyone to live in peace and happiness, but not at the expense of someone else's peace and happiness.

I think red haired men are just as likely to be dangerous as any other men.

And trans women are just as likely to be dangerous as any other men.

But statistically you have a lower chance of being harmed by either a red haired man or a trans woman, because both these groups only represent a small percentage of men.

You're overwhelmingly more likely to be harmed by a man with dark hair. But that's because there are many more dark haired men, not because dark haired men are more dangerous.

People wouldn’t claim that ginger men aren’t dangerous just because they know a nice one, would they? As @MissScarletInTheBallroom said. It’s exactly the same principle. One anecdote either way does not data make.

That makes sense.

I don’t believe there’s an acceptable level of risk, or that there’s a minimum threshold of violence etc that is okay.

I also don’t believe, however, that we should make assumptions about how someone might behave based on how others do behave.

If OP, for example, isn’t a trans woman who has ever egged someone for not agreeing with her, or threatened violence to someone for the same - how fair is it to lump her in with those who do, and respond to her as if she has?

Without the benefit of knowledge, to a woman any individual man is statistically a much greater risk than a woman is. It doesn’t matter whether he’s a lovely friend of someone else’s, or their arsehole ex. Quite a lot of men are both.

I haven’t been assaulted or harassed by any male red-haired stamp collectors, but that doesn’t mean they are less of a risk than other men, or should be allowed into women-only spaces.

Edited to say sorry, I was beaten to it!

It's not a question of lumping the OP in with anyone.

We exclude all males from female only spaces, which makes sense otherwise they wouldn't be female only spaces. It's not just for safety reasons but for other reasons too, such as privacy, dignity and comfort.

The reasons why single sex spaces exist and why we exclude all males from female only spaces are just as valid for trans women as they are for other men.

Their only justification for being included in such spaces boils down to "because it's what we want".

So you are saying that we should what? Abandon all sex differentiated spaces because most men are not criminals ?

we treat all men as a class because as a class their behaviour has repercussions- and since the behaviour of the group transwomen is like that if men and not women we have no reason to treat the transwomen group any different to the men group

This. It is ill-informed and illogical. Unless you have a “no true trans woman” view where if a male who identifies as a woman is bad, they automatically lose their “trans” status?

They are. I’m sure some people like said ginger chap, I happen to not be one of them.

I personally see accusing all ginger men (at this point I’m just following the analogy) as a risk as equally as unjust as assuming that all men are a risk, or that all trans women are because some behave poorly. I see that the same way as suggesting all Muslims are terrorists.

I don’t know how we guess which ones are a risk, but assuming that they all are just isn’t an idea I can get behind.

The first few pages (I was genuinely reading along from around 4 this morning) seemed to me that OP was just trying to have a discussion and present the trans “side.” Later on this morning every time I looked a new page had been added, and it seemed to have spiralled.

One side of that conversation was about how some trans women behave and how that’s shaped the response to them from some women. The issue for me is that I don’t believe that’s OP’s responsibility unless she’s the one doing it. I’m not responsible for all women either, for example.

(I would make clear that the only reason I’ve replied to you specifically is that yours was the post directly beneath mine answering me!)

@FairAdvocate I used to believe that we were making a polite pretence that we thought that men dressed as women were women. That was until I heard the term TWAW and I wrestled with trying to believe it for a long time.

I couldn't make myself believe it, however. No matter how much I tried to pretend, I still saw the transwomen I knew as men who wanted to be women.

This was highlighted to me in that I once bought one of these transwomen a gift that I felt demonstrated to them that I saw them as a women BUT then I realised I'd just have got one of my female mates a box of chocs or a bottle of wine. So what I'd actually done is overcompensated for the fact that I didn't see this person as woman.

I felt compassion for them, I could pretend to them that I thought they were women, but they literally aren't women and I couldn't drag myself through the mental hoops to make myself believe they are actual women.

I'm never going to be able to brainwash myself into that, no matter how kind I want to be.
If we could go back to it being a polite pretence that some people are prepared to make and some just aren't, them we might find more common ground.

May I ask op if you believe in God?