Impact of transgender organisations - who is behind them and how have they become so influential?

[theendisnotnigh]

Looking at the Times article about the government telling the UN that the phrase pregnant people should be used instead of pregnant women . Where has the government got their mandate from from to make these massive changes?
When is some investigative journalist going to take a look behind the scenes at who these massively influential transgender groups are? (Gendered Intelligence, GIRES etc).
How have this tiny percentage of the population had such a significant response? The groups are feted by government, the Dept for Education, the NHS fund and actively promote them.
We know that they have used tactics of threats and intimidation to very successfully silence democratic debate and discussion. We know that they have gained access to politicians (Maris Miller etc) in ways that other political groups can't do. So who are they? Are they funded by the Drugs companies (who have much to gain from the lifelong medication of transgender children to adults).
We know that they are active in schools, local authorities, workplaces. What are their qualifications for changing schools? Do their staff going into schools have DBS checks? Do they work directly with children and young people? Why are the DfE , NHS promoting political activist groups to train educators and health professionals - normally schools are very careful about giving political interest groups direct access in this way?

I think we need to be asking questions of the government about what checks and balances they have made before recommending these groups and why they are getting such preferential treatment? What other massive social change in history has taken place behind closed doors and with active government involvement?

Pansies not Penises

My small print on phone really messes with my ageing sight

Yes, it is important to tease out the various strands. Like Zooey mentions above, some of them looked at individually can be quite transparent.

Zooey, that's another good point. As well as asking who gains from all this, it's also helpful to consider who doesn't stand to lose. Ironically, those who do stand to lose out most are liable to be the same people that liberal feminists rightly seek to include in their intersectional approach. Trampled under the feet of transactivists, as Briechon and colleagues are observing in their organisation.

what skin is it off your nose all this stuff about prison and rape crisis centres.

They don’t care about those anyway. Funding is being cut all over the place.

I’m sure they think what difference does it make if handful of transwomen, which must be minuscule, want to access them. It’s a question of numbers. Won’t be a problem.

Whilst being entirely blind to the fact that every woman hating fucking in the country is going to exploit this law. (Micaela64 - hence the MRA reference. We’re not talking about men who genuine advocate for men’s rights. MRAs are misogynistic men who will take every opportunity to put women down).

And I do think the trans lobby has been smart grouping the issues with gay rights because most people do think gay rights are right.

What about paedophilia?
I imagine most paedophiles feel a sexual attraction to children through no conscious mechanism of their own. They almost certainly don’t choose paedophilia (although rape culture, pornification, media articles about young beautiful M/A/Ws etc etc probably feed it) and yet we do not accept it at all and no amount of lobbying appears likely to change that. But many paedophiles do see it as a way of being, not a choose

It benefits anyone who is keen on rigid and regressive gender roles. So MRAs, various religious fundamentalists etc.

The idea that you must transition to the other ‘gender’ if you don’t fit the stereotypes generally associated with your biological sex works for them because it means that a woman’s place really is in the kitchen (etc) and anyone who acts differently isn’t really a woman.

It also means that they don’t have to open up masculinity to question and debate. If men aren’t going to fit masculine stereotypes, then they’re really women. Want to wear a dress; you must really be a woman, etc. No need to change patriarchy; you can just reclassify people so that they fit it.

For some groups (because this is a jumble of ideas rather than a coherent and singular movement) men being sexually attracted to men is viewed as deviant, but you can ignore that deviance if you recategorise gay men as women.

For others, the advantage lies in undermining the issues that women face and/or benefitting from redefining themselves as both ‘more woman’ and more disadvantaged than biological women. Some men may get a personal kick out of this (I can’t think why else those who make no changes to their appearance, lifestyles or anything other than redefining themselves as a lesbian woman, complete with full beard, would bother).

For the MRA cause this redefinition as women has several disadvantages, such as muddying the sex discrimination figures in terms of (e.g. numbers of CEOs who are women) or the crime stats (e.g. increasing the number of violent and/or sexual crimes attributed to women). This makes it much easier to claim that women aren’t discriminated against or more vulnerable to violence than men. Indeed, the figure of the violently persecuted transwomen (more so than women) so often mobilised in these debates is a gift to those inclined to this sort of agenda.

And so on. It’s complex and even within this there are actually lots of different agendas that can align.

Drawing an analogy to paedophilia in terms of lobbying is interesting. PIE found their moment in the 60s when social change created an environment in which they are able to aim for "acceptability". They got surprisingly far and gained support from many well-meaning people who seemed not to have control of their critical faculties at that time.

There does seem to be another pro-paedophilia push going on at the moment from the spiritual successors of PIE.

The problem with the trans rights = MRA = ‘anyone keen on rigid and repressive gender roles’ is that trans rights are opposed by the Catholic church, US republicans, UKIP, the alt-right, Donald Trump...

So that just doesn’t add up.

Pansies

I think we all agree something does not add it. Hence the thread.

That's rather black and white thinking Pansiesandredrosesandmarigolds. You need to think in terms of overlapping interests rather than polarised opposites. Something like this Venn diagram,

Plus, and I think this is not much talked about but hugely important factor; men's (as a class) God complex and hatred of women for being the ones who carry and birth babies. (And their desire to take that ability away from us and at least control it themselves if not have it themselves; see history, religion, gendercide, abortion and reproductive rights, the institutions of marriage, motherhood and virginity, medical reproductive interventions, etc.)

I think this is definitely part of the issue, Beachcomer. At least it explains a lot of the mainstream support (in addition to trying to appear progressive whilst actually taking us backwards).

Yes. It’s not a nice neat thing. So some aspects of the transgender issue align conveniently with some aspects of religious conservatism but not all.

Not all parts of the Catholic Church oppose transgenderism, for example. Nor do all US republicans oppose it (many republican senators oppose trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military, for example). And so on.

The thing is, none of these are singular things. We like to talk about ‘republicans’ or ‘tories’ or the ‘alt-right’ or ‘ukip’ or even ‘transgenderism’ as if they are homogenous. But they’re not. It’s much more complex than that.

The apparent success of something that we might call the transgender movement (which is not a singular thing by any means) in the last few years is because it manages to fall in the overlap between lots of different circles in various ways but not consistently or coherently. In fact, the lack of coherence is a strength because it makes it hard to challenge absolutely. You might counteract one claim but a different group will argue that it is something else entirely. I’m fact, several other groups will have several other arguments none of which add up.

"I don’t think it’s been quite as fast as some in here seem to think"

It's fast compared to the progress of any other minority group towards acceptance and legislative change.

I have a very good friend who is very intelligent and very informed who is ready to go and march in favour of trans rights. She watches Ru Paul’s Programme on tv and I think she has gone no further in her thinking than trans people deserve equality.

I think this is true of many people. A complete lack of critical thinking and considering consequences.

Fair enough nauticant - you’re right it is complicated - but all I’m saying is ‘anti-trans = feminist’ doesn’t add up and neither does ‘pro-trans = anti-women’. George Soros, FWIW, has given hundreds of millions of dollars to feminist causes.

It’s muddled thinking:

I think trans activism is bad
Others do not
Clearly they are wrong
But why can’t I convince them?
Conspiracy!

but all I’m saying is ‘anti-trans = feminist’ doesn’t add up and neither does ‘pro-trans = anti-women’.

Only if you dissect the ideology and cherry pick what bits to agree/disagree with.

The basis from which all else comes is whether you think transwomen are women.

No they’re not. And yes it is anti women.

Apologies differenteverytime - lazy of me not to quote properly.

BertrandRussell
Yes, that's the dilemma isn't it? There's nothing wrong with the progress of this group in terms of acceptance and freedom from discrimination.
It's the toxic lack of respect for the needs of other groups which is being formalised in legislation, e.g. the elimination of women as a defined group, actual harm to children and adolescents (use of puberty blocking drugs before they are able to give full informed consent) and the speed with which this is being enforced with no public debate.
The government thought it right to have a referendum about Brexit (no matter how inadequate) but no one is even asking people about these massive legal changes.

It’s also fast in terms of how quickly the movement itself has changed. Wasn’t that long ago it was about fighting for the rights of a small number of adult transsexuals. So much has changed fast: the move to transgendered instead, the disconnect with biological reality (“my penis is female if I say it is”), the massive rise in children being transitioned and teenage girls self-identifying as trans. I think a lot of the less involved supporters are not aware of these changes, and think they are supporting something very different.

Even less than ten years ago, I’d only ever heard of one person claiming they were really the opposite sex because they identified as such and therefore their sec organs were those of the opposite sex as well, and that was a sociopathic cult leader. I got quite a surprise when I learned just how much of a mainstream view that had become.

But Datun, it depends on why you think that. Your average rightwing evangelical Christian will presumably argue that transwomen are not women because God made man and woman and gave them different spheres - and for them the dividing line on which all else in history hinges is God/Devil not men/women. Like Nauticant said, complicated.

Pansies,
I don't think transactivism per se is 'bad' at all. Social justice is hugely important and acceptance of the right to define yourself as transgender is important.
The problem is the associated legislative change that will obliterate the identity of women, self ID which will increase opportunities for (some) men to actively harm women and remove women's rights to dignity and safe spaces and the active promoting of an ideology to children and adolescents that will involve long term psychological and physical harm.

Your average rightwing evangelical Christian will presumably argue that transwomen are not women because God made man and woman and gave them different spheres

Actually no - a number of right wing evangelicals line up on the other side seeing transitioning as the solution to being gay (which they regard as worse).

I was watching something on you tube that said you can't convince people with facts and facts do not win arguments. Tribal loyalty and emotion override them. You need to make connections where your interests overlap (venn diagram above is good) to begin to convince anyone.

This is certainly true of the transgender organisations. They have the backing of other lbgt organisations and their experienced pr companies - they are on their board of trustees etc. I expect a lot of the activists are older men who have already come far in their careers - they are also of the generation with generous pensions that go on holiday and buy big motor cycles that were young in the 1960s and expect to be able to change things, and want to make the most of their older years by doing what they thought they wanted when they were young. If you add into that parents and friends of young people then they are very strong advocates with a lot to lose by backing down. So a strong alliance.

The government thought it right to have a referendum about Brexit to solve a problem in the Tory party but didn't give any thought to what they were offering. This is pretty similar to their view on self-ID. They're offering something to show they're being progressive. They're not that interested in what the consequences might be.

I also expect the general public has no idea about what changing to Gender Identity entails and has no idea of the measures in the 2010 equality act. They probably think everyone is being made equal.