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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Why DO people 'believe' transwomen are women?

413 replies

AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth · 26/01/2018 12:36

Actually why?

Because the act of 'believing' without evidence or logic is cult like ideology to me.

The repetition of 'transwomen ARE women' on twitter, facebook etc is like a mantra of a cult. Like repeating the rosary or something, and the more that it repeated, the more people double down in their thinking.

I really feel bewildered half the time now.

It feels like a cult

Like a cult or religion, I guess people are free to believe what they want.

But we are not forced to believe other people's religious beliefs; why are we being forced to believe that 'transwomen are women' and 'transmen are men', when there is no objective, material truth in that statement

It's the new Reformation, but logical thinkers, not Catholics, are being hounded out and targetted.

It's mind blowing

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RatRolyPoly · 27/01/2018 10:29

Oh sorry, I just meant they haven't had to fight as hard as women did for certain recognitions and accommodations because women put in a lot of legwork in the past to make society more open to these things. You were saying transpeople haven't been as oppressed and marginalised as one would expect if they were indeed akin to women.

LangCleg · 27/01/2018 10:29

We are trying to train girls to ignore their instincts.

And that consent doesn't actually matter at all. Adolescent boy identifies as trans, wants to share communal changing rooms with self-conscious pubescent girls? No consent required. They must put up or shut up. Head teacher says so.

Datun · 27/01/2018 10:32

They must put up or shut up. Head teacher says so.

And, the parents are not to be informed.

RatRolyPoly · 27/01/2018 10:32

Well, cross dressing is the most common paraphilia in sex offenders, so...

Cross dressing isn't trans though.

Well, 50% of trans-identified males currently in prison are sex offenders, so...

And if 50% of child offenders were thieves would that mean I would be as or more likely to be stolen from by a child than an adult?

Ereshkigal · 27/01/2018 10:33

And that consent doesn't actually matter at all.

YY.

In fact I think this would be a good angle to challenge it. "I don't consent. Respect my consent." We've just had MeToo, FFS don't people see what this is?

Datun · 27/01/2018 10:34

Cross dressing isn't trans though.

Yes it is. This might be where your disconnect is coming from. Transvestitism is officially recognised as transgender, according to Stonewalls own website.

We segregate on the basis of sex, for very good reasons. Segregating the basis of gender does not take any notice of those reasons.

Do you think that we should stop sex segregation altogether?

Ereshkigal · 27/01/2018 10:34

Cross dressing isn't trans though.

Are you sure about that? I think you'll find all major trans orgs might disagree with you there. Ask Stonewall.

AngryAttackKittens · 27/01/2018 10:35

Think of that school where one kid declared himself trans and demanded access to the girls locker room and over 100 girls walked out in protest, risking suspension to do so. It was a small US town, many of them would have been in school with that kid since they were all kindergarten age. This was not a stranger, they knew him. Do we not think that maybe there was a reason they were so alarmed by the idea of having to get undressed in front of him that they were willing to risk punishment by the school to avoid doing so?

Handwaving the concerns of those girls away as bigotry teaches them that their feelings and boundaries don't matter and they shouldn't trust their own instincts. I'm not OK with that.

BertrandRussell · 27/01/2018 10:36

“Oh sorry, I just meant they haven't had to fight as hard as women did for certain recognitions and accommodations because women put in a lot of legwork in the past to make society more open to these things.”

So somehow feminists should be pleased that, for example, transwomen can now compete, and invariably win in women’s sport, that they can take places in programmers specifically designed to redress the historical bias against women in many areas of public life, that we will soon not be able to assess crime data by the sex of the offender, and women will no longer be able to request that intimate examinations and care not be carried out by a male bodied person. These things should be hailed as a triumph for feminism?

AngryAttackKittens · 27/01/2018 10:38

And also not mind that the second wave feminists who fought for those changes are routinely denigrated by trans people and their allies.

Datun · 27/01/2018 10:40

The person AngryAttackKittens referring to is Lila Perry.

Who insisted they were a girl, like all the other girls and that it was Transphobic to say otherwise. That's the girls' objections were wrong.

These two photographs show Lila during an interview where she said the girls were bigoted for not wanting her in their locker room whilst they were naked. And one subsequently.

Why DO people 'believe' transwomen are women?
Why DO people 'believe' transwomen are women?
RatRolyPoly · 27/01/2018 10:40

No, not at all Bertrand, and all those examples are undeniably problematic. But equally we can't be too pissed off that transpeople aren't suitably persecuted and haven't "tried hard enough".

Datun · 27/01/2018 10:42

But equally we can't be too pissed off that transpeople aren't suitably persecuted and haven't "tried hard enough".

Eh?

Onecutefox · 27/01/2018 10:43

I remember many years ago someone showed me a girl who I thought was a boy. She looked like a boy and she didn't dress as girl. I also heard she felt more like a boy inside. For some reason I am completely fine with it but men or women who clearly look their gender but want to be the opposite just make me feel a bit creapy. It's like fashion now and not a necessity.

BertrandRussell · 27/01/2018 10:43

And that there are still plenty of feminist battles to be fought.

I wish TRA would apply their mysterious powers to the fight for equal pay, or against the trafficking and exploitation of their sisters in prostitution and pornography, or to eliminate FGM. It’d all be sorted out by tomorrow lunchtime if they did.

RatRolyPoly · 27/01/2018 10:43

Datun i'm referring back to something Bertrand said. Perhaps I misunderstood her post in the first instance.

RatRolyPoly · 27/01/2018 10:44

Referring not quoting I should say.

BertrandRussell · 27/01/2018 10:46

I was just expressing my surprise that a persecuted and marginalized minority can also have such extraordinary political power.

BertrandRussell · 27/01/2018 10:47

“No, not at all Bertrand, and all those examples are undeniably problematic”

Out of interest, how do you think the problems in the examples I give should be sorted out? And do you think they should be sorted out “before” self identification becomes law, rather than after?

Ereshkigal · 27/01/2018 10:55

So far I'm imagining the response to the point about cross dressers to be "well of course Stonewall mean the nice ones, the ones just trying to live their lives! They don't mean sex offenders!"

Elsie2791 · 27/01/2018 10:56

Here's my view, which is similar to what strawberriesaregood said.

Transwomen, obviously, aren't female at birth. But assuming that a transwoman 'passes' socially as a female post transition then they will be treated exactly the same as any other woman. Yes they've had different experiences prior to their transition, but for social purposes they are women. Transwomen who don't pass will get a lot of abuse and often (wrongly) be assumed to be gay men.

I used to have very short hair and it was amazing how often I got called 'sir' as a result (though it was usually from the back). I'm short with obviously female body fat distribution, and pretty feminine features but my hair plus jeans and trainers was enough to get me 'read' as a man. Now I don't have very short hair and it never happens. I don't get all the homophobic abuse I used to either.

I'm gender critical as well, but that means for me that I believe gender is a)entirely a social construct and as a result b)apart from the obvious biological differences, females and males are not in any way fundamentally different. We're all human being basically.

I'd like to move to an entirely gender neutral society, but that has to mean a society that isn't separated on sex as well as currently the gender you are assigned socially as depends on whether you're seen as male or female. It isn't dependent on whether you actually ARE male or female, because most of us don't walk the streets with our genitals showing, and you can't read someone's chromosomes by looking at them.

The problem is at the moment we've got a lot of institutions in society that are separated on sex. There may be some justification in terms of prisons and hospital wards - I'm not so gender critical that I don't see there can be pragmatic reasons for segregation on grounds of sex, but why not have unisex loos? It would make taking young children of the opposite sex to you to the loo a lot easier. I can think of a few cases when young boys have been raped by men in male loos. Mothers of sons and dads of daughters are currently faced with sending their child into a loo on their own after a certain age, which personally I find hugely anxiety making, unless you misuse the disabled loo.

Why does the labour party even have all women shortlists? If they want to encourage more women to become MPs there are other ways of doing it. Starting by looking at why women may not be coming forward, and how local parties are choosing candidates. If they dropped the shortlists and women's sections the issue would probably go away because there was nothing to argue about. I'm not a Tory but given they've had two female leaders and PMs, they seem to be doing better than labour without all the hoo ha. Labour's misogyny is a big problem but it goes further than trans issues - look at Corbyn's stance on Iran.

I've known a number of post transition trans women and I did see them as women, I certainly didn't view them as men. I can see problems with self definition, but they're related to single sex facilities. But I think at the moment the debate has become so heated that neither side is being particularly rational to be honest.

There IS a big issue of transitioning teenage girls it seems, and that is a concern, but again my concern there would be actual medical treatment. If a daughter of mine wanted to present as male and call herself a different name, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. I'd be concerned about hormones and so on, but that's why we need to be clear that gender and sex are entirely separate things. At the moment we're equating presenting socially as men or women with actually being male or female. What is the problem with social transition?

This will probably all be a stretch for large swathes of society, but if you consider yourself a gender critical feminist, then in my view you do need to think about what that means. And it means being very clear about the divide between gender (social construct) and sex (biology).

I agree there are problems with the proposed changes to the GRA, but from what I've read, now Justine Greening has gone the tories are likely to quietly drop it because it was Greening's idea. They've seen how unpopular it is with the media who influence the population at large (very few people take notice of the Guardian, and they're never going to vote Tory anyway) and their position is so fragile, they can't afford to piss the media off. That's why May keeps condemning every single thing the media gets upset about.

AngryAttackKittens · 27/01/2018 10:56

Let's go back to the Lila Perry case. One trans girl who wants access to the girls locker rooms versus over 100 female classmates who don't want that and felt strongly enough about it to risk suspension. Explain to me why Lila's wishes are more important then those of the girls.

BertrandRussell · 27/01/2018 11:00

"I'd like to move to an entirely gender neutral society"
Why?

RatRolyPoly · 27/01/2018 11:00

Explain to me why Lila's wishes are more important then those of the girls.

I don't know anything about this case but you have to look at whether those 100 girls were being reasonable. What I do know is that hundreds of school kids wanted segregated drinking fountains along racial lines back in the day, but they were wrong. Please don't jump on this as a direct comparison, I'm just stating it's in my frame of reference when looking at these things. The majority in a situation aren't always reasonable or correct. However they will always believe they are.

LangCleg · 27/01/2018 11:00

Cross dressing isn't trans though.

Oh yes it is. The whole bloody point of the self-ID claim is that one shouldn't need to be dysphoric to change gender officially. The whole bloody point of opposing self-ID is to stop the trans juggernaut including cross dressers into trans and into women's spaces and protections legally.

Do catch up.

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