MNHQ now email posters with how to "get around" the talk guidelines.

[GoshAnneGorilla]

There is yet another thread on FWR about trans people. Like nearly every other thread on there about trans people, it's a load of transphobia dressed up as gender analysis.

Nothing new, sadly.

What is new, is that MNHQ have now sent an email to a poster whose post was deleted, telling them how their post could be within the guidelines, even including a copy of their original post to make editing all the easier. This is because "discussion is important".

So, a few questions for MNHQ.

Are GLBT rights at all important to you?

Will you be extending this " How to bend the talk guidelines" services to racist, homophobic, or disabilist posts too, or is it only trans people who deserve to be discussed in a manner which is extremely offensive?

No harm in pointing out actually that it isn't feminists who ARE hassling trans people in the streets.
So you'd have to wonder why feminists are the wicked witches of all this.

I think where we may all be going wrong is in debating this as a battle between opposing groups, rather than a battle between opposing ideologies. But them ideology is hopelessly out of fashion, and identity (politics) is not.

"I'm not against people who are transsexual and I'm not against people being transsexual. I totally believe that some individuals have body dysphoria. I'm against the idea that it is possible to change sex and that a transwoman is the same as a bio woman (idem for transmen). "

^ This. I fully agree with what Beachcomber said there.

Abbie, I agree.

"I seriously do not think that many of the FWR feminists believe that there is any kind of biochemical / biological cause to people with gender dysphoria."

I'm probably not a feminist in the strict sense that FWR regulars would define it, but fwiw, I think it is likely that there is some sort of biological reason why you feel you are a woman (adult human female) although you are a man (adult human male) with XY chromosomes and a functional penis. In fact, people with body dysmorphic disorder are known to have differences in brain structure.

What I don't understand is why you think a biological basis is such a great thing that validates a transwoman's claim that they are really women, and exactly the same thing as a woman born an XX female. Many disorders have biological basis, like schizophrenia. A person with schizophrenia says he feels the aliens abduct him on a regular basis. Do I believe that he totally feels this way? Yes. Is there a biological difference in his brain that makes him feel this way? Yes. Is he really being abducted by aliens? No.

Abbie - it also often feels to me like a battle fought over trans people rather than against them.
I've seen one too many occasions on Twitter where someone cries transphobia and the person accused of transphobia is actually trans and the person doing the accusing isn't.

Turnip - indeed. It's a topsy-turvey situation where someone who loudly and publically identifies as cis can berate someone who identifies as trans for their transphobia. There's even a special insult from trans activists and their allies for trans women who are gender-critical - "truscum". And I have seen trans activists in public call for help in their doxxing of gender-critical trans women (which could well put them in danger), and one gender-critical trans woman I was friends with on twitter was hounded off social media altogether.

Actual violence and harassment against transpeople is overwhelmingly perpetuated by men.

And yet oppressed minorities such as lesbians, and women in general, attract so much attention and accusations of transphobia for daring to say that we think biological females exist as a population distinct from transwomen.

Funny that.

Kim, it feels like these threads go around in circles as people make the points over and over again.

Of course it is possible that there is a biological (neurological?) reason why trans women who want surgery feel that they should have a female body.

But that doesn't mean they have anything neurological in common with female bodied people. There's no evidence at all that all, or even most, female bodied people have something in their brain that tells them they should be in a female body.

Female bodied people just are in female bodies.

I don't keep up to date with vocal trans activism - so I'm only aware of it through the posts on FWR.

And yet you feel able to say that women on FWR are akin to homophobes because they won't capitulate to trans ideology? We don't need to look to vocal trans activists to see appropriation of issues faced by homosexuals or intersec people. kim does it right here. The irony is that the very people who were among the first to stand against homophobia (feminists) are the ones being abused by trans activists. It is such typical male behaviour to rage against women because the attention / acceptance given to one or some men (gay) is not given to them. This is male entitlement.

There are plenty of sexual behaviours that we used to consider wrong and we still consider wrong (eg incest). There are things that we now consider more wrong than we used to (eg paedophilia). Why do trans activists always use homosexuality when trying to gain acceptance for their ideology? Is it because they are trying to shame feminists into accepting their anti-feminist ideology? Is it because there is no rational basis for their position so they can only try to cling to another civil rights movement for validation? Is it gas lighting?

Genuinely asking: why is the belief that transsexuality is down to society and not down to the body attracting such aggressive opprobium?

Radfems in particular are being consistent in critiquing trans theory in line with what the radfems have always believed about gender, and that suggests that what they say about trans people is not motivated by hatred of them. It is clear that it comes from feminist thinking that existed before the current trans theory developed.

It doesn't appear to be a school of thought that is actually contributing to the active oppression of trans people-any oppression is more likely to come from more conservative people, mostly men.

The numbers of people who are active in this debate as radfems or transactivists are minute, frankly. I often see posters pose the question of why feminists are so exercised by this obscure topic, but one could and should ask the same of transactivists. Why does it matter so much what radfems think (no one else seems to care about that, after all)?

And since power lies with men, why aren't they the focus of debate?

Kim, I don't think people of any particular sexual orientation, transsexuals and paedophiles have anything in common with each other.

I don't know whether any of them are caused by biology or society or a combination of the two.

I don't know whether my own sexual orientation is a result of society or biology. Whether a feeling is created by society or biology doesn't make it more or less 'real' than another feeling. It also makes no difference to it being comparable to material reality.

I love my children. I am certain of the reality of that feeling. I don't know if it is biological or social or both.

The feeling may be real but the belief is not.

I agree with almond that no aspect of sexual behaviour is like any other and I would like trans activists to stop appropriating the struggles of the LG community and using those struggles to gaslight women.

The feeling is real - I believe you.

Unless I've misunderstood it, the debate is not about the feeling. It's about the reality - of whether an XY man with a penis can realistically be called a 'woman' and allowed into women's spaces etc.

What is sad is that no mainstream feminist site could run that campaign anymore, because any issue of the female body gets closed down for transphobia.

this is so shocking. Reading through the threads has been a revelation to me.

The trans activist response to that was that the girls should be referred to as menstruators, because calling them girls was transphobic.

being called a menstruator by anyone including a trans activist enrages me. I can completely see how this type of response has served to radicalise some feminists. It most definitely feels like an attack to me.

re "ideology":

I feel like a woman - not ideology

It's enough to feel like a woman to be a woman - ideology

being called a menstruator by anyone including a trans activist enrages me

Yup, lets start referring to biological women by the attribute that most cultures find dirty and shameful (including our own to a degree). Why not choose "gestator"? It's still insulting to be boiled down to that one thing as a sex but at least it doesn't have the same connotations.