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.

I support this. Tell me what to do and I will do it!

fakenamefornow

ghostlyghoulie linked to it at 11.27 today.

Fake - take a look at the link upthread on ghostlygoulie's post

These links might be useful:

Parliamentary procedure for Private Members Bills

More on Parliamentary procedure

Bill page for the Gender Identity (Protected Characteristic) Bill

I don't have much spare time at the moment and can't do anything under my real name unfortunately but I have a couple of ideas from totally unrelated campaigning I've been involved in:

• If people can actually get to see their MP - i.e. go to their surgery and talk face to face, rather than just write, they can't ignore you, are far less able to fob you off and, IME, are more likely to take the time to listen and try to understand your concerns. Take a couple of shortish printed articles to give them (nothing too ranty!) and follow up with an email. I'm pretty sure whatever you discuss will be confidential but if someone who knows can confirm this it would be good.

• we need a better petition. The citizen go one starts by saying the whole idea of protected characteristics is PC gorn mad. I couldn't sign it. Ideally, we'd have one on the government petition site, but the person who started it would become very publicly visible under their real name. Maybe we need to find someone whose views are already well known on this who might be willing to start it - Julie Bindel? Magdalene Burns? Rebecca Reilley Cooper?

The other thing with government petitions is they will reject it if there is already a similar petition open. This means it's important to get the wording right the first time. If a petition gets posted that is full of factual inaccuracies or has a nasty cruel tone we'll be stuck with it and won't be able to post another better one that people would be more willing to sign.

• coordinated action on Twitter. I had to come off there a while ago after stupidly outing myself to colleagues and I've been meaning to make a new account for gender critical stuff - I'll do it on Monday. The beauty of twitter is you can be anonymous unless you're a pillock like me We need to follow and retweet the fuck out of each other. We need to @ anybody who can make a difference - media, politicians, scientists, parenting orgs, anybody relevant with lots of followers. We need to organise around specific events, e.g. this LSE event. They'll be live tweeting throughout and using a hashtag (which they've helpfully published ahead of time). We could do a twitter storm to coincide with their event. We could do a thunderclap. We could tweet the fuck out of their hashtag.

Here's the link again for those that missed it earlier (am thinking now it might be better in its own thread):
www.transgendertrend.com/cps-schools-project-the-erasure-of-sex-and-the-silencing-of-girls/

Great advice pencils

One other thing, we need to look after ourselves. We will get a lot of nasty shit thrown at us. Try not to take it personally, the people who throw shit do not see you as a person. Be very careful about putting any RL data out there and take whatever breaks you need to recover and preserve your wellbeing. You don't have to read everything that comes back at you. I think this will be a long battle but I'm up for it!

Brilliant posts, pencilsinspace

I do post on social media in my own name, including lots of gender and trans ideology critical stuff and tbh I don't receive much flak. I try to stay factual and polite and ask gender identity supporters questions which, oddly, they never seem to be able to answer.

dorade you asked for somebody who knows the workings of Parliament. I do, and have name changed for this. You're right that a Friday sitting is not likely to be well attended. Looking at the business for that day, I would make an educated guess that they won't get to this Bill. It's quite far down. It won't become law at the moment. However, there was a related debate sometime in the last few months, so the issue is on the radar. I've only skim read it, but there appeared to be zero mention of trans rights potentially affecting the rights of biological women.

I've never really been interested in feminist issues, or done much reading. This issue has got me though. I don't know quite what to make of the current trans debate. I've always been very much of the mindset of live and let live, but I can't reconcile some of the things I've read with that world I want my daughter growing up in.

I've lurked on lots of these threads but just posting now. I want to find out more about the gender identity bill and then contact my MP. Thanks all of you for helping to raise awareness of this issue.

In the meantime I noticed Janice Turner (The Times columnist) wrote in support of Jenni Murray in her Times opinion piece today, in case that's helpful?

The problem is that even without the Gender Identity bill getting near being made law, there are already some significant and harmful consequences of current teaching and trends. Misleading reporting is one -- particularly the description of an absconding rapist as a 'vulnerable woman'. Persuading girls to ignore their own feelings and boundaries is another. Allowing or encouraging children to use 'puberty blockers' when neither the child nor the parents understand the effects is another.

Would a legal challenge get anywhere? After all sex IS a protected characteristic - so to remove it's protection should be against the law in some way?

Nottheprimeminister thank you for your post.

I watched the last debate and it was painful. Caroline Flint was a lone voice questioning how any changes would affect women and was shut down very quickly. Apparently gender neutral facilities are all fine because of aeroplane toilets and sex is a very old-fashioned concept anyway (of course it is! Your ancestors have been doing the sex since we were slime).

Do you happen to know -

• If you go and talk face to face with your MP in a surgery, is it confidential? I assume it is because I know people go to see them with personal issues that could land them in a lot of trouble if it wasn't.

• What is the status of 'policy' and 'guidance' documents that are developed or taken up by public sector orgs (schools, hospitals, prisons etc.) and how do we raise objections about these, when they are based on government committee reports, rather than laws that have been debated in parliament?

And even aside from the bill on the 24th - surely it should be legal to teach pink/blue brain tosh at school.

Pencils yes the aeroplane toilets analogy got me too. An aeroplane toilet is a one out, one in single cubicle. In a regular public toilet, who know who's hiding behind doors?

As for confidentiality, an MP might sometimes disclose personal details in the course of responding to a constituent or helping them, but it would only be to personnel whose position dictates that they would also have to keep things confidential and any identifying details would not be broadcast or even stored. Sorry for being vague, I'm trying to be helpful without blatantly saying what I do and how I know this! You could of course give a false name or use an email address that doesn't give your name. Any MP would ask your address (or at least postcode) in order to ensure that you are their constituent.

I'm afraid I don't know much about policy documents.

Thanks, that is very helpful, Not. It sounds like people are safe to go and talk about their concerns, face to face with their MP, without being outed as a big old nasty terf to all their neighbours.

Placemarking

In my current state I want to put my pussy hat on and storm the Houses of Parliament.

I'm keen to be part of something. I've felt furious but powerless these past few weeks. I'm in awe of the forthright women who publicly advance this cause on Twitter and in the media. I need to remain anonymous but I'm happy to make a second twitter account and have name changed here.

I think it is important to stay on the right side of the law and agree with defining our aims. What can still be fought for? Reading the Equality Act 2010, it's difficult to see what remains. I'd like some clarity on what the difference is, legally, in having a grc.

The trans umbrella is big and all have protected characteristic status without the need for a grc or any physical transition. Anyone who claims they are trans can be discriminated against. But there remain some exceptions e.g sports, accommodation, single sex services. If someone has a grc do those exceptions no longer apply?

There's an organisation called sense about science who are pushing the government to base their policy on evidence. Perhaps they'd be willing to pick apart the cps hate crime lesson plan.

Could someone (perhaps the OP) please write a template letter to send to MPs?

Thanks for starting this thread OP. I'm in.