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.

Agreed.

I actually think OP would have been better advised to not come here at all. But then if nobody ever comes with a different perspective, that just leaves an echo chamber.

You are not serious??

So at what point back in the dawn of human development did ‘society’ identify the group they wanted to socialise to be capable of violence and Who led this move?

“Gender based violence can be addressed, because it means it’s not a biological certainty. Which it isn’t, otherwise they’d all be doing it.”

Do you understand what a ‘predisposition’ is? Obviously not all men are violent but they have the capability to be violent. I’m sure socialisation plays a part but criminologists have stated clearly that sex ie being male is the biggest indicator of a likelihood of criminality.

@SleeplessInWherever You've posted a lot on this thread so I haven't quoted, but I wanted to respond to some of the things you've said. Just FYI, I grew up with a violent and controlling father, so I've got some degree of experience here.

You're not the first woman I have encountered who has suffered horribly at the hands of men, who has said the sort of things you're saying - that they refuse to label all men as bad, that they'd accept some men in female only spaces, that they'll happily tolerate aspects of male behaviour that other women who have experienced male violence would see as an immediate red flag. Every single one of those women told themselves this as a coping mechanism. Some of them went so far as to put themselves in risky situations with men in order to prove themselves right.

Living in a world where men are inescapable is very difficult when you've seen some of the things that men do to women. There's an unpleasant truth that you cannot run away from - that you are crossing paths, every single day, with men who go home and punch their wife and rape their daughter, who are hiding cameras in public toilets, who are masturbating to child sex abuse images online, and you've got no idea who they are until it's too late. It's just a fact of life. We all have to find our own way to deal with it.

But for some women, at some stages in their male violence journey, coping with men is simply not an option. It's one of the reasons why women are legally allowed to have same sex care in hospital, for same sex rape crisis groups, same sex changing rooms, same sex toilets. I went through a stage for about 5 years in my teens when I could not cope with men at all, to the point of having panic attacks in public. Single sex spaces were the only reason I could leave the house - because I could hide in a female toilet or changing room, because I could go to female only sessions at the local pool and be sure that I wouldn't have to deal with a man at reception or anywhere else in the building. I appreciate that I wasn't in a good or healthy place. But I was there anyway. Women like me deserve to have our needs met. It's what a kind and inclusive society does, isn't it?

FWIW men are born predisposed to being more violent than women. Socialisation adds to it, but it doesn't create violent men by itself. 85K men in prison in the UK, approx 4.5K women. Men commit almost all the violent crime, almost all the murders, almost all the sexual assaults and this hasn't changed over hundreds of years, thousands even, despite social shifts that have made it clear to men that this behaviour is unacceptable.

I don’t disagree with this. But IMO OP was on broadcast mode, as pp have said. It’s not the first time it’s happened and I very much doubt it will be the last.

I think you’d find some basic logic classes helpful here.

We are saying that our biology determines that we are women. We are also saying that we do not want to be unnecessarily limited by our biology. Therefore we don’t want to be told we can’t do certain jobs because we are women for example.

Are you suggesting there is another way of being a woman over and above biology? If you are then you’re wrong.

The OP came here with arrogance and ignorance to tell us he had well thought through answers to the conflict between women’s rights and transwomen’s demands.

These boiled down to letting him use women’s facilities but not other less worthy transwomen.

He tried to police the language of the discussion he instigated. He posted absolutely nonsense about “female brains” and how his cells were female now because of oestrogen. He misunderstood crime statistics. He told us transwomen were the ones who most suffered under the Nazis.

Oh, and that the Supreme Court was wrong.

He’s welcome to try and ‘educate’ the noncompliant feminists of Mumsnet, but if he gets his arse handed to him, that’s his own fault.

Well said, much more pithily than me @MoistVonL

At least you are prepared to put yourself forward as ‘cannon fodder’ to occupy mixed sex spaces while this seismic societal change takes place. Thanks for that 👍

You realise that this level of shift would take years and there will be many additional rapes and murders of women on the way until we get to your nirvana of a peaceful society unafflicted by male violence against women?

What if you’re wrong?

@FairAdvocate I appreciate what you're trying to do here, but you will not receive a fair or balanced response on MN. The general feeling is 'all men are sexual abusers until proved otherwise, including transwomen as they're actually men'.

I'm an ally (like to think so) but I am in the very small minority here.

If I’m wrong, males are already not able to access female spaces, according to the law. So the impact of me having the wrong view has been limited by that, I would assume.

I’m also working on the basis that you’re not implying the rape or murder of women and girls is my fault. Because if you are, there’s no sensible answer to that.

Possibly. Possibly came in to the conversation already on the defensive too.

But, as much as I’m not losing any sleep over it (I already lose enough!) if you scroll just a bit further down from your post - I don’t agree so therefore need logic classes (ie, I’m stupid). Which is exactly the point I’ve been making about toxicity.

Yes, and this poster doesn’t want us to talk about it, tells us off for giving OP and his male entitlement a hard time, tells us off for ‘arguing’ with OP (despite him being manipulative and outright offensive), and generally want this whole conversation to go away.

Some women just really want to prioritise men, especially those they (probably) pity that make them feel like they are ‘doing a good thing ’.

We had a trans man come here and they had a good reception because they actually came here in good faith and with respect. They didn't stomp in and demand we obey pronouns or set the terms of the discussion with us.

If OP came here in good faith and didn't bully and tell us not ask us, the rules of debate, and scold us when some strayed from his arbitrarily and unilaterally set rules, they would have got a much different reception.

I saw that thread. I actually “read along” fairly regularly.

I think the biological sex of that person probably also helped their cause.

Yet we had a trans man come here and they had a good reception because they actually came here in good faith and with respect. They didn't stomp in and demand we obey pronouns or set the terms of the discussion with us, @HonestAquaMember . So that proves you wrong. It's sad you cannot be an ally to women and girls.

TW in women's spaces is all about their validation.

I am not on this earth to validate men's internal feelings about themselves, nor act as a human shield for them against other men.

Strange how you are ardently against all men being categorised as posing a threat and yet that is exactly one of the excuses/justifications TW use for using women spaces. You accept TW are not women they are men and seem to think it is perfectly acceptable for them to deem men as harmful as a class but call out women for it.

I mean, I think that a male person who identifies as a woman is always going to get a tougher reception on here than a female person who identifies as a man, especially if they admit to using women's spaces. Because a male person who uses women's spaces is admitting to not respecting our boundaries from the outset, whereas a female person who identifies as a man may not be in women's spaces, but would be welcome to use them all the same.

But I do think it is more than that. There's something in the way these respective posters come across that shows that even when you only consider gender rather than sex, being socialised as male or female as a young child seems to have an indelible effect. There have been at least two long threads by trans men on here and each time I read them as unmistakeably female.

I do find it concerning how very naive many women are. Not referring to any specific person on the thread, just the general way that manipulative types are able to push their unreasonable view and make naive people think they are just speaking up for themselves as a marginalised person.

The concept of “flying monkeys” is a useful one to bear in mind.

I think a lot of women who support the “trans rights” agenda are basically nice people but “benevolent enablers”

https://www.narcissisticabuserehab.com/types-of-flying-monkeys/?amp=1

But you are arguing in support of mixed sex spaces and undermining the need for sex segregation as a protection for women against male violence so you can’t now fall back on the law. I think you have also argued for special men like OP to be allowed into female spaces.

Sleepless: “Saying that then saying “but I’m not just biology, even though I’d like you to class me as biology just for this conversation” hardly makes sense.”

This is your statement that was either a logic fail, or just a knowing misrepresentation of the point. If you were deliberately misrepresenting the point then I will take back my suggestion that you need assistance with logic. Although reading your third paragraph I think you need more help with reading comprehension as that is clearly NOT what I said.

Wow. That is ... so different to the way I think. I second guess and challenge my own cconclusions constantly. Put myself on the other side to see how the arguments look from there. That is the only way I can be confident in them.

I don't see how they've been 'stomping in' and 'demanding' things - they've always said it's their own understanding as a transwoman, and they haven't tried to tell ciswomen how to feel.

I am an ally to women and girls as I am a ciswoman. But I can also be an ally to transwomen and see that by transwomen living their lives, they aren't taking any of my rights away.

There is no such thing as a “ciswoman”.

I’ll engage with basically anything you’ve said when you stop questioning my intelligence for not sharing your views.

Trans “women” are a subset of men, women are female.

Okay, and SSS are all about women’s validation. It cuts both ways.

I’ve got no issue with women seeking validation in whatever way they need or see fit, but I don’t see understand how we can then be shocked when other people ask for it.

I personally don’t need the validation of this group, if I did I wouldn’t be here, but someone else misguidedly seeking it shouldn’t be met with surprise - what else is the legal debate and discussion if it’s not women looking for (now gained) validation of their concerns.