How can we work towards a constructive debate about all things transgender?

[TruthIsNotHate]

It's absolutely needed, but I just can't see how we can get to a position where it's possible.

Campaign for gender something to be a protected characteristic

I am bringing together a few peoples point in my point here - but perhaps if we don't want to use the word 'gender' but we do want protections for gender non-conformity

How about the rather clunky:

'sex-role stereotype' for gender ie

Campaign for the right to not conform to 'sex stereotypes' as a protected characteristic....

Ah nearly there..

The council public male toilets here are basically meeting rooms for sex. The kids can't use the male toilet next to the park because men are sucking each other off next to the sinks. The male changing area in the gyms are where men signal for people to join them in the shower cubicle. When gumtree had the dating section men advertised to meet other men in these places & public parks for sex. I've never come across anything like that in a women's toilet or any adverts like that in a woman's dating section. I don't want men to have access to women's toilets or spaces. Not every man acts like that but I don't want a 14 year old girl going to a public toilet knowing there could be a large guy in there waiting for his opportunity. It's not everyone but like everything else in life it's the minority that spoils it for everyone else.

Campaign for the right to not conform to 'sex stereotypes' as a protected characteristic....

The right to not be required to conform to sex -role stereotypes, and not be discriminated against for not conforming to sex-role stereotypes.

Even clunkier but would mean companies could not have vile dress codes like at that charity event...

So I am wondering if therapists are completely wised up to fetishists trying to game the system.

So they either refuse the certificate, or the fetishists just just don't bother trying to go through the whole charade.

This would definitely explain the aggressive campaigning by transactivists to make it self certification only. If therapists had started denying a diagnosis/certificate to AGP individuals.

Definitely feeling it getting teased out ItsAll

This would definitely explain the aggressive campaigning by transactivists to make it self certification only. If therapists had started denying a diagnosis/certificate to AGP individuals

I think this is actually well-documented - by Alice Dreger..

would feel a bit lost at sea because they would not be understood as having a powerful sense of being the opposite sex, and be seen as just 'expressing' something.

How can having a certificate really make that much difference though? I would have thought sex dysphoria was alleviated by whatever treatments they may be having, not by a piece of paper that states a lie

I think there needs to be more clarity about what gender dysphoria actually is. I think the general narrative has been that it is like being gay: normal but different. Not a mental disorder. Hence surgery and the GRA rather than mental health treatment.

The NHS website lists Body Dysmorphic Disorder as a mental health issue and gender dysphoria as not, but do these two issues not have strong similarities?

I think this is actually well-documented - by Alice Dreger..

I read a page a while back by an intersex campaigner explaining how transactivists first started infiltrating intersex workshops and co-opting intersex struggles, it was very eye opening.

From there, I ended up on a page called transsexual road map. Which appeared to be an absolutely huge site full of utter lies about Dreger, and Blanchard, and Bailey...the Anne Lawrence part of this site stated that Lawrence was sacked for sexually assaulting a patient, and that Lawrence had sexually assaulted the person who owned the site...and on and on and on. It was so strange. So much work had clearly been put into these elaborate lies.

The NHS website lists Body Dysmorphic Disorder as a mental health issue and gender dysphoria as not, but do these two issues not have strong similarities?

Whatever deranged narcissists want, deranged narcissists get

• including taking on the NHS to reclassify mental illnesses

So much work had clearly been put into these elaborate lies.

Deranged narcissists are obsessive, determined and they do not GAF about law, rules, fairness.

The NHS website lists Body Dysmorphic Disorder as a mental health issue and gender dysphoria as not, but do these two issues not have strong similarities?

I would like to know how body dysphoria and sex dysphoria are any different. How one can be classed as a mental illness and not the other..makes absolutely no sense.

Having said that, 'gender dysphoria' seems to be about stereotypes and not much else. So I wouldn't say it was a mental illness to not be a feminine woman or a masculine guy. I came across the diagnostic reasons for gender dysphoria a few weeks ago and I was utterly shocked that even with the tightened criteria, it can still be diagnosed based on just stereotypes if its anything like the diagnosing in children criteria. I was arguing with someone on twitter who was saying its nearly impossible to get a gender dysphoria diagnosis for a transkid (the stats say otherwise oddly enough ) and they showed me the criteria expecting me to then agree with them, and it made me worse.

The bit where you only need 5 of 7...can all be about stereotypes, where to me, the only ones that actually mean anything are the dislike of own sexual anatomy (though I would argue that a LOT of girls approaching puberty will feel this) and desire for characteristics of opposite sex. The other 5 are absolute bullshit and totally 'normal' anyway

I read of lot of threads on women's right but don't often comment because a) it takes me ages to read them and by the time i've thought of something the discussion has moved on or someone else has already made the point and b) because I sometimes feel a bit dim compared to people on here.

Anyway, that said I think one thing that helps is speaking out. It used to be that I never mentioned anything on this topic irl or online but I'm gradually getting a bit braver and I will (sometimes) speak up and I comment or retweet interesting blogs/articles on twitter.

I'm not the sort who usually posts anything vaguely political so I think if more and more people like me join in then our 'side' becomes stronger and maybe more people will start to feel brave too.

There is a TIM on twitter who is fighting to have it classified as a mental illness twitter.com/Jenn_pansexual/status/953380648722432001

We need a mass protest that garners a lot of attention. A good current one would be for all Labour members to end their memberships. Be even better if every female MP resigned.

And all female sports persons who are forced to compete against men.

Etc etc.

ApocalypseNowt, yes, it does really help. I think a lot of people, especially women, have an uncomfortable feeling that something is not quite right about all this, but they wouldn't say it aloud or even let themselves think deeply about it, because the pro-trans cheerleading is so intense. When you push back against it, you give someone permission to think about their own doubts, to realise there is another way of looking at this. Even if they don't say anything at the time, you have planted a seed.

I wonder - if Maria MacLaughlan didn't mind - if it would be worth standing outside the court hearing with placards to capitalise on the publicity?

YourVagesty if we get all the female MPs on side they get the vote on what happens to the GRA and GRCs. One on side would be a start.

ItsAllGoing

That's not incoherent at all. Really useful. I'm meeting a friend who is a "nicer" feminist than I am next week. I will use some of your suggestions.

I can’t help feeling that perhaps there is a difference between what we (some of us) really believe and what would be useful as tactics.

I mean, I wholeheartedly support what Materialist and DonkeySkin have said about the whole GRC and sex change stuff being a fiction, and that we should be campaigning for these things to be abolished - and ideally replaced with support for non#conformity to sex-stereotypes.

However, I also think that in the short term, if what we want to do is prevent self-ID changes to the GRA, then perhaps we need to campaign more tactically and more conservatively, to try to bring on board a wider range of more mainstream voices. Like the Rod Liddell piece this morning - I deplore the man's views, but I think it might be useful to have this stuff published in The Spectator and brought to the attention of those who would not normally engage with radical feminism at all, if we want to have any hope at all of preventing self-ID.

But then a small part of me says that this is being intellectually dishonest - so I genuinely don’t know what is the right way forward.

GRC and sex change stuff being a fiction, and that we should be campaigning for these things to be abolished

We should, but there is more than one way to skin a cat, and I still feel that the above can be achieved purely by really focusing on women's rights.

*Liddle, obviously (autocorrect!)

Then again - it has just occurred to me - maybe there are also strategic reasons to be more radical in our demands: as a PP pointed out, it helps to shift the Overton window. But only if enough people hear us, and I’m not sure they will unless we can find a way to make what we want seem more appealing to the mainstream.

I don't like the idea of compromising. It undermined every argument when JJ conceded that TIMs with a GRC should be allowed onto AWS.

I felt my support wither a bit at that point.

There are so many mainstream ways to tackle this without lying.

In essence my beef is this:

'Sex change' is a lie that is hurting people

It hurts gender dysphoric people by reinforcing delusional thinking.
It hurts children and young people who damage their bodies, their relationships and their fertility.
It hurts women and girls by taking away their sex-based rights.
It hurts homosexuals by making them question their sex and orientation.

This lie should not be enshrined in law

A couple of little bits of light this week

Secretary at work says when everyone else is out of office, "So what do you make of open plan and gender neutral (shared) toilets? I just don't get it. I wouldn't use them and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to as a girl dealing with heavy periods, not with boys in there, not now people have phones."

My teen DC had transformation street on. One of them offered, "Gender is a social construct." It might have been to save me the bother though.

One of them asked, "So there are more trans women than trans men?" I said well most referrals to the Tavistock clinic are girls actually...

Later I said it's sad as they think that this surgery will solve their problems. The teens nodded and didn't argue.

Their online and school lives have a lot of gender queer/non binary/anime ideas so trying to drip drip an alternative perspective.

If a burglar broke into your house and stole your TV, then claimed it was his too, I'm not sure people would think it was reasonable to suggest a compromise of sharing your TV with the thief.

What TiMs have stolen isn't just a word. They've stolen the means with with women can distinguish ourselves from them. They've stolen our rights to represent ourselves. They've claimed the right to define both themselves AND US, and dishonestly at that, and ensured we are prevented from our say about the matter.

I'm not feeling much like compromise.

The legal fiction that was created when the law allowed men to become women on paper was created without thought for impact on women, and with, I suspect, the proviso that this 'wrong' was on such an infinitesimally small scale that the wrong could be dismissed.

That scale is no longer infinitesimally small. The impact is now enormous. The hole in the dam can't be plugged by the finger of a small child any more and the dam wall is breaking.

I think we need to start over. I think we need a watertight legal definition of females that can never be opted in to by males, ever. Enforceable boundaries for women that can be applied against all men. And strong protections against discrimination and abuse for men who wish they were women, but are not.