Until we organise as well as the transactivists we're not going to stem the problem

[dorade]

Everyone, regardless of race, creed or sex is entitles to the same human rights.

I have three issues with much of the current trans ideology:

1. The erosion of women's spaces, sports, achievements and quotas by biological males who wish to identify as females.

1. The transing (and therefore subjection to lifelong medical treatments, invasive surgery and potential sterilisation) of children for failure to comply with societally-imposed gender norms.

1. The erasure of lesbians, either by transing of potentially lesbian girls or by transwomen claiming to be lesbians.

The trans lobby is vocal and well funded. They have found an enormously soft target in schools/government/social care, all of whom unsurprisingly associate transgender with gay and lesbian issues and don't want to repeat the bigotry that gay and lesbian people were (and are) subjected to. Identity is not the same as sexual orientation. A person's sexual orientation treads on no-one else's rights. The same cannot be said for gender identity.

When articles, such as the recent transgender rapist one, appear in the press, the vast majority of comments show that the public is not fooled. Yet people keep quiet so as not to appear bigoted, thus allowing the movement to steamroller on at the expense of women and children.

I believe that the main target for opposition should be in our schools. Organisations such as Gires and Gendered Intelligence distribute material that promotes ideas such as pink and blue brains and that any child can choose whether to be a girl or a boy to impressionable children, backed up by teachers. Opposition to this is needed and it is not happening in any concerted way. I think a backlash has every chance of succeeding as there is huge latent support for it.

The average person in the street knows little to nothing of trans issues, but is likely to believe that a transwoman will have had his penis removed. The fact that in 2 weeks' time the Government is going to be debating replacing sex with gender identity as a protected characteristic is way off the radar of 99% of the population.

Mumsnet is brilliant in debating these issues, but we need to take it to the next level.

For anyone who is planning a letter to their MP, template letters are usually ignored, especially if you use writetothem. Even if you use a template to make sure you cover all the salient points, do switch things around and use your own words if you want them to read it and respond.

Thelilywhite, your letter sounds very good, as a suggestion though I would add a short description of autogynephilia. I also would avoid links to wikipedia, I would try and provide academic sources when possible, such as this one on autogynephilia:

www.researchgate.net/profile/Ray_Blanchard/publication/20361233_The_Concept_of_Autogynephilia_and_the_Typology_of_Male_Gender_Dysphoria/links/0deec525d3322d096b000000.pdf

I agree with everything the OP says. Some things to add:

1 transgenderism, porn and prostitution are intertwined, this should never be forgotten; and
2 transgender has no one central philosophy or etiology, yet they manage to organise and are making progress in this because they have common causes and rhetoric to hide behind, e.g. 'Trans women are women'. Unity is strength.

Thanks witching I will do that

I have only ever made this work over local issues, but there is definitely leverage in making politicians realise you have numbers on your side.

We had a petition signed by over 1000 people, then a fb page liked by several 100, which the stats showed had a post reach of 1000s in a week and then a push for individuals to email the person in charge, which resulted in 1000s of emails.

These numbers were achievable on a local issue. I'm sure it would make an impact if every single person who felt strongly emailed Maria Miller cc their local MP. They won't necessarily look at fb, or twitter, accounts which don't interest them, but they can't ignore 1000s of emails landing in their inbox.

Fb and twitter are only tools for making people take the actions which change things, they don't change anything used in isolation.

I know that Maria Miller's private bill is for a UK law but I've just been looking at the situation in Scotland. Nicola Sturgeon planned radical changes to gender recognition laws after the last election but I can't see anything proposed on parliament.scot.

The only thing I found was an Equal Opportunites Committee report which has so much wrong with it I don't know where to begin! It mentions trying to change the law in Scotland first and make it more progressive to give a good example to the rest of the UK.

Does anyone have any other info on the current Scottish position?

I'll be writing to my MSP as well as my MP.

I also found this - which says there are plans to consult on reforming the Gender Recognition Act by summer 2017.

Betsy
I wrote to my (SNP) MP and also Mhairi Black, who is also a lesbian. Mhairi's position on this, but I have always been impressed with her and hope that she at least gives the issue some thought. I am going to write to Nicola Sturgeon, just drafting the letter at the mo'.

That should read "I don't know Mhairi's position on this"

Disappearing words

betsythanks for links. I had no idea that organisation existed up here.
Mercy
My letter is to my snp mp too (third time of writing!) but I hadnt thought of writing to Nicola Sturgeon. Im off out for the day now so wont be keeping up but dont want to lose the momentum so would you mind sharing your letter and I will write to her as well?

Hi, long time reader and lurker here.
I just read something on Facebook, a woman saying that she has an alternative male persona online because she can express opinions about things using the male persona without getting hate mail and rape threats.
Thought it might be an idea for those making new twitter profiles?

Perhaps another focus should be the press and their reluctance to report news involving transgender issues openly and honestly. It was this article about Lauren Jeska that was my wake up moment:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-37439875

This was a transgender woman fell-runner who stabbed a British Athletics official (and 2 others) over fears that his investigation might result in UK Athletics revoking her titles if she was found to have had an unfair advantage over women.
The BBC, Guardian and Independent completely failed to mention any of this - I picked it up from the Telegraph. When I complained to the BBC they told me 'it hadn't been mentioned in court'.
As we now know, this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of 'manipulating news'.

I found the IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation) has issued special guidance for reporting transgender issues and heavily references transgender campaigning organisations.

www.ipso.co.uk/media/1275/guidance_transgender-reporting.pdf

I had a look but couldn't find any other guidance on reporting sexual violence, children, LGBT, refugees etc etc.

Why has IPSO issued specific guidance for transgender issues but nothing for any other vulnerable group?

BetsyM00 The lily white MercyMyJewels
I complained that the Volunteer Action Fund (VAF) used the phrase "sex (gender)" when outlining the 9 protected characteristics under Equality Act. (they administer funds that I was interested in applying for). The response I got was that the Equality Unit of Scottish Government had decided on this because otherwise some people would be unhappy. Since when the law was open to interpretation by civil servants on the basis of some people's happiness? We need to organise a strong response to the consultation and make sure groups like women's and girls' sports clubs respond. Not sure how to do this. Use social media obviously. Be so good if we could have proper meetings to debate this publicly without fear of threats of disruption or being branded phobic or bigoted.

Please come back with what MPs have said, perhaps without naming names. I was accused of accusing T people of being rapists, when I raised the issue of safety in women's toilets, by my local SNP UK MP.

I hadn't even thought about it from a Scottish politics perspective. I'll write to our MP but I don't hold out much hope.

Who do we send our Twitter names to? OP or OverthinkingSpartacus?

WitchingHour666

Thanks for the explanation and the links.

The SNP seem to be doing a lot of virtue signalling on this issue. They clearly think supporting trans ideology is progressive and there are young lefty votes on it. We need to challenge their stand. If they want to make laws based on woo notions of innate gender, they should say that and not pretend that they're interested in evidence based policy.

I think the SNP (especially Nicola) want to be seen as progressive and modern thinking on the world stage. No interest in women's points of view ime.

@DrinkFeckArseGirls

Send to me please.

I agree. Labour and Greens too. We need to put women's and girls' rights at the forefront of any consultation. We need to press for public debate because most people are unaware that gender identity means any man is a woman if he says so. And girls and women can't keep them out of our spaces, it would be illegal. I do think most people recognise this for the idiocy it is once its explained. Hence why activists need to no platform feminists and shut down debate. If it's gonna be law it's got to be debated.

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-4305270/RACHEL-JOHNSON-woman-trial-rape-Really-No.html

Another journalist who will soon be getting hate from TAs and TAs' handmaidens.

runningwild do you have anything we can use as evidence of this?

We need to take things like this and then all promote it on social media in a focused way so target MPs and the like so it starts to seep into the wider social consciousness.
something like one agreed article or news story a day in the run up to the 24th which we all tweet to MPs, media etc?

Nicola sturgen did an article in a magazine (elle I think) about what feminism means to her. It might be worth trying out etc a copy, and using her wording for a letter to argue your point to her iyswim? I think it was last nov/dec. I kept the copy I had, but house is being redone so i have no clue where it is, if I come across it i will see if there anything useful in it