Pink News - you can't deadname a rapist

[AssignedPerfectAtBirth]

www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/09/08/the-mail-just-implied-a-transgender-rapist-made-unwanted-sexual-advances-because-she-has-a-penis/

They have finally lost the plot. It's utterly shameful

So I am a long time lurker on these types of thread... I wouldn't call myself stupid (I hope I'm not!) but there is a lot to get your head around if you're never thought about these things. I have to say I'm convinced by the feminists. Men & women can assume the stereotypical characteristics of the opposite sex as much as makes them happy & I'll go along with this to a degree (much like the religious tolerance analogy). But they're not women (or men) & should not be legally recognised as such & afforded the same rights. The natural conclusion are unthinkable situations as described in this thread - male rapist in female prison. How anyone can ascribe to an ideology that supports this situation is beyond me. I've spoken to one friend who agrees.. and spoke to my husband a month ago who woke up this morning & told me he thinks free reign for gender identity erodes women rights (clearly he'd been mulling it over!) I'm going to raise this with more friends & probably my MP. Once I fully understand the gender identity bill thing. Clearly not there yet! So these threads are useful. The (mostly!) calm reasoned arguments repeated by eloquent posters & the flouncing of those in opposition when confronting these arguments convinced me.

My 9 year old gets the MTT/bathroom thing. We strayed into a very gentle, even-handed & age appropriate discussion about gender v sex because his older brother asked about it in the car. DS2 is intensely private and body-conscious and immediately understood women's desire for privacy in changing rooms. He said he feels shy and hates it even when the (male) teachers come in the changing room to chivvy the kids along. I guess it comes down to whether you think MTT are women, though.

"I wouldn't call myself stupid (I hope I'm not!) but there is a lot to get your head around if you're never thought about these things"

You're definately not stupid! And yup, there's a lot to get your head around. And hard to find a sensible discussion, where you won't be branded a transphobe, for asking valid (if uncomfortable) questions, or for having a different opinion on this matter, than the (misinformed) majority.

Totally agree prickly

I also agree the religious analogy is bang on - tolerance and respect is important, but not at the expense of freedom of thought/belief or to the detriment of other groups' rights.

Gender identity ideology is exactly like a religious belief. It's something intangible that can't be proven and isn't experienced by everybody, or in the same way by those who experience it.

Being forced to respect the truth of people's gender identities by law is exactly the same as being forced to respect the truth of people's religious beliefs. Both are unacceptable.

Gender identity ideology is exactly like a religious belief. It's something intangible that can't be proven and isn't experienced by everybody, or in the same way by those who experience it.

I was actually wondering if this is the way to go if gender identity completely replaces sex discrimination legislation - that we have a philosophical belief that women are a biological sex and that gender is a social construct to oppress women - and that this should be protected in law and defended under the equality legislation relating to religion/belief.

Obviously it's a travesty if protection on the grounds of sex is completely eradicated but it may be one legal approach from which to challenge it - or at least draw attention to the issues.

Love that post prickly

Prickly that's a great post. Excellent way to think about it.

user sounds like you have hit peak trans!

Writing to your mp is a great start, this is the time when we need to speak out.

user1496587010

The (mostly!) calm reasoned arguments repeated by eloquent posters & the flouncing of those in opposition when confronting these arguments convinced me.

You can tell far more from what people are vehemently unwilling to discuss, than from those who are willing to debate.

You will rarely, if ever, get either a transactivist, or an ally to actually engage in any kind of discourse.

Because their argument goes against both biology and science. Despite invoking studies that will talk about a biological reason for being trans. Which there may well be. But it doesn't alter the material reality that your sex is determined by your anatomy, not what you think.

Your brain can absolutely determine what you think, but it cannot, ever, determine your biology.

And, unfortunately, it's borne out, time after time. Misogynistic men who feel entitled to violate women's boundaries should be excluded on that basis alone, irrespective of what they think, or feel.

I can't tell you the number of women who may have started out being allies, but changed their minds when they saw how the discourse pans out.

You almost don't need to point out the irrationality or the absence of logic, or indeed the lack of consistency, just listen.

Whenever I have engaged with them they have just spouted the most disgusting abuse at me. Which actually makes them look really bad. However other supporters will wade in and applaud them. They have never given one reasoned argument. Just screamed TERF!!!!!!! Apparently no more need be said........

And I absolutely do not accept and will never use the term cis. It's just a load of nonsense.

The thing that raises my hackles is the coy refusal to discuss genitalia. 80pc of transgender people do not have genitalia altered by surgery. And it's become rude to talk about it. So men can come into the women's toilets or female wards or prisons. They can share a changing room at the swimming pool with my ten year old daughter. But to ask them if they have a penis? Rude!

That's my red line right there. If you have a penis you are not a woman and I'm not sharing those spaces with you. You go and do the whole surgery and share my lower testosterone levels and be unable to rape me - then we can talk.

I've been mulling over this a bit more overnight, and an interesting anthropological observation has struck me. In most of the cultures which have "third sexes", e.g. Hijra in India, three-spirit people in some Native American cultures, bacha posh in Afghanistan, sworn virgins in Albania, there is no pretence that they actually are the opposite biological sex to the one they appear to be. There is an acknowledgement that they are something "other". Then the human rights struggle, eg. among the Hijra, becomes one for recognition of their equal humanity - right to employment, housing, freedom from harrassment and violence. It's only in the west, predominantly Canada and the USA, but increasingly here, that the transactivist movement has latched onto "literally women, any attempt to distinguish us from 'AFAB' [sic used in its correct sense] is bigotry."

Because the thing is that although I don't believe in "lady brains" and the like, I could well believe (given the ubiquity of trans type categories and presentations throughout history and across cultures) that there is some biological underpinning. I think it would be subtle and multi-factorial (nurture and culture also playing a role: third sex categories pop up more frequently in cultures with very rigid distinctions between the social roles ascribed to the two sexes; trans individuals often, though not always, seem to have parents who are particularly rigid in policing these social boundaries). But you could acknowledge all of that, and campaign for employment and housing protection, prosecute crimes of violence motivated by genuine transphobia, campaign for gender-neutral toilet and changing facilities, transgender prison facilities, without buying into the "transwomen are literally women, women can have dicks" nonsense.

PricklyBall

I agree and if autogynephiles hadn't pushed the biological thing, it could have happened. Any number of transwomen have come on here and profoundly disagreed with the I am actually a woman premise.

It's not they who are interested in violating women's boundaries. They just want to get on with it without drawing attention to themselves.

In fact wasn't it curry who said they actually want to be recognised as trans, not female? Because being trans and what it means is so important to them.

Bacha in Afghanistan are boys who are coerced into sexual slavery by men who are too homophobic and repressed to have consensual sexual relationships with adult men or women.

Sworn virgins are girls who are forced into male gender roles because girls aren't able to work or earn money.

These examples aren't 'third genders' they are are people forced into roles due to the repressive societies they are part of.

The boys forced into sexual slavery are "bacha" (no additional qualification), Adalind. And god, yes, it's utterly horrible. However "Bacha posh" are girls brought up as boys (then forced to revert to being women when they become adults - total brain fuck). Like sworn virgins, the girls are put into this role where families don't have any sons - though interviews suggest that they are, on the whole, pretty happy with the extra freedom this allows them during late childhood and adolescence. But it then becomes a nightmare when they have those freedoms snatched from them on reaching adulthood. (Sworn virgins, in contrast, "live as men" through their whole lives, but have a heavy price to pay in terms of not being allowed to form relationships).

But you're right - there are a huge number of different cultural reasons for "third genders". Some of them are probably benign recognitions of gender dysphoric individuals (Hijra are close to this, except for their practice of "adopting" intersex babies). Others, as you rightly point out, are associated with very oppressive forms of socially and culturally driven sex-stereotyping (I'd be interested to hear from an anthropologist on this one, but it seems to me that the oppressive forms typically affect women, while the more benign forms simply recognising the existence of gender dysphoric individuals are the ones open to men).

It's rather chilling how AGP has been whitewashed out of the dialogue. When I first googled it several years ago, it was quite openly talked about, but gradually it's been denied, denied, denied.

And this is gaslighting of some significance. Now I don't want to go all TMI and make people barf into their breakfasts, but I've been part of the BDSM scene on and off for the past 20 years. When I joined Fetlife, crossdressing was one of the most common fetishes on there (and if you want to take a look at Fetlife's membership that's a fair number of people). Then they were referred to as CDs, and they would talk quite openly on their profiles about how crossdressing made them feel. They had female identities on there of course, because they were role-playing a fantasy.

20 years ago, if you went to a fetish club, they were referred to as "special girls". The last time I went to a club two years ago, they had started to be referred to as trans, and at least half the people in the club were men roleplaying women. I've chatted to people at these clubs, both the CDs and the dommes, and they are very open about exactly why men immerse themselves in this fantasy. They were all, bar none, submissive men, and playing the female role made them feel humiliated and servile. They'd often volunteer to dress as maids and serve at dinner parties or clean people's houses, just as long as they were treated as women and humiliated during the process. They all loved being told they were pretty; they all loved being told they were sluts; they all loved being told they were only good for serving others and being used. That WAS the fetish.

Now that's not my scene, not in any way shape or form, in fact it sends me quite cold, but I watched it play out many many times, and this was not a small section of that population. It was HUGE. And for them to get off on it, everyone else had to play along, or at least not burst the bubble. Personally, this is all just fine and dandy in a fetish club or similar because - well, that's the point of these places, but I have to say that when I was more active in the Scene, the concept of consent was taken EXTREMELY seriously and it was frowned upon to carry out any sort of play in public (unless it was in a designated space) because you inadvertently might be involving someone who hadn't consented. The hypothetical example of humiliating your sub by making them go to a supermarket and buy nothing but a cucumber and a tube of lube would be considered a no-no, because you would be non-consensually involving the checkout person in your scene, even though they might not have twigged anything funny was going on (as if). So seeing this AGP role-play being imposed on people and denied for what it is is a massive turnaround and denying it exists altogether now looks like cognitive dissonance of the highest order.

Thanks greypaw
Useful insight.

Yes, that is useful Greypaw, thanks.

Only got 2/3 of way through and not seen yet the most obvious reason for keeping people in possession of functional cocks out of women's prisons,

And that is that no-one, but no-one, wants women who are in prison getting pregnant while they are in there.

Not the prison service - cost / organisation / safety / babies in prison etc
Not the right wing - who would see this as a "privilege" that they should be denied + cost
And not the left wing who would (hopefully) be concerned about coercion, abuse, outcomes for the women and children etc

So this here is the argument to use. Many people won't care much about women in prison being raped by men - same as they don't care about men in prison being raped by men.

But no-one wants women who are incarcerated starting to get pregnant. That is just a massive complicated can of worms and a no all round.

Back to the thread

I too think the religious analogy is a good one.

Does it mean that misbehaving TRAs can be officially defrocked?

From the little I know Greypaw (I always exist on the fringes of things) your analysis rings true for me too.

I quite like Grayson Perry's openess about getting a raging hard-on from dressing as Claire.

there is a lot to get your head around if you're never thought about these things

How true. Until a year or so ago I was definitely a trans ally. I would even go to the point of joining in with the taunting and 'terf' cries at anyone who disagreed with any aspect of the whole thing, because education is everything right? I am a moderator on another forum and one of our rules was about 'transphobia'...misgendering was an instant ban and that. The forumk I was modding was a big brother forum. When Kellie Maloney went into BB, the sheer amount of people banned for 'transphobia' was ridiculous. Everything from people pointing out the way 'she' squared up to a woman being very...manly...to putting 'she; rather than outright she, and EVEN using 'they' instead of she/he if they didn't feel comfortable using either.

Oh what disgusting transphobes. Couldn't they see that kellie had had an awful time and if she was a woman in her head then of course everyone else should agree, she knows better than them...and so on.

Then...came the Ada Wells thread on here. And everything changed in an instant. I don't know quite how but all of a sudden NONE of it made sense to me anymore and I was disgusted in myself for being so stupid basically. Over the course of a few weeks I read up a lot about trans. I did a total 180. I then started testing the wateras with friends to fin d out what they really thought...and it tur4ned out some of my lesbian friends had actually been assaulted by 'women with penises' and outcasted from friendship groups for refusing to be with men. They had never told me, or many people as they were too scared of being labelled transphobic again and losing even more friends. For being victims of disgusting mysoginistic men who reckon they should be able to shag anyone they want, even lesbians...and tried to SHAME these women into shagging them. In one case assaulted the woman who said no too...left her with a black eye.

I genuinely think that those who still defend defend defend just do not quite understand what they are defending, and have not thought it all through properly. I don't mean that to sound patronizing, though I know it does sound that way. Just can;t think of any other way to put it tbh.