No more #nodebate

[DailyWTFMoments]

If you told me a week ago that Andrew Marr would ask Senior political figures "is a trans woman a woman?" on his show this morning, I'd have scoffed.

The #nodebate mantra has been well and truly blown out of the water - a consequence of LM abusing her position - but, more importantly, that acted as a catalyst, and the result is that women everywhere, including here on MN, are refusing to be silenced, and are willing to step forward and tell their story to the world.

Thank you to all those women

Me too. Also very very angry. And determined to do something about it.

It is this culture of fear that needs to shift. Transactivists arguments won't stand up in daylight. Not to say by any means that all transwomen are like this.

This is the same man that thought he had won the election last year though. #deluded.

Myunicornfliessideways totally agree with you.

I wish one of them would say "I can't believe we are even having this conversation. We all know what a woman is and it isn't anything other than an adult human female."

I can guarantee that many of those listening will have thought he was saying ‘yes, transwomen are biological women who present as men, so that’s fine, they can still be on the shortlist.’

Relatively few people actually understand the terminology. Lots of people think, no, it can’t mean that, doesn’t make sense, that can’t be happening.

#whyareyouafraidofdebate?#

Actually, I think the OP had it perfectly right from the off with #nomorenodebate. It's reasonable, sensible, and it's quite suggestive of how the other side have been shutting down debate.

I wasn't convinced Corbyn understood what's meant by self-id when he described it as involving 'a process ... with trauma'

I like #useyourwords and #deluded! I will not have politics dictated by a group of 12 year olds who have en masse died their hair blue in an effort to be individual! It's fucking ridiculous. Actually I like #fuckingridiculous I have been using #labourlosingwomen and any other trending hashtag I can use to draw attention to the cause. They want our votes they can bid for them!

I like #useyourwords.

As a Reception teacher I used to say it a lot to 4 and 5 year olds if they were having a tantrum.

So it seems very apt in this context

#Letstalkaboutsex

#Sexnotgender

#Debateisfreedom

I was shocked that a BBC employee asked the question tbh considering the social engineering being attempted at the moment. Not a day goes by without me screaming at their breakfast program that it is sex discrimination / equality / paygap etc not gender. Frankly I'm surprised I've not been blocked by them as I email daily pointing this out.

@ChemistryGeek,

On another other extreme, I could never in a million years say “transwomen are women” and mean “an individual who was born a man can decide on a week to week basis whether he’s changing in the women’s (open plan) changing room at my rugby club and turning out for the women’s first team or changing in the men’s and running out with the men’s fourth team”.

I agree absolutely, but think of this in terms of trans men as well, and reverse those examples. How can a trans man be denied access to female changing rooms/toilets -- they'll need to be able to pick and choose, because otherwise their safety will be compromised. And essentially they'll also have their chances of ever taking part in sport being utterly destroyed. Not allowed on the women's team and good luck ever getting into the men's.

So if you allow trans men to retain the rights of their former sex, then can denying that to trans women be justified on the grounds that women are at greater risk due to their biology? But 'trans women are women' so.....

It's not about 'Trans women = women': it's about 'Trans women > women'. All the rights of men, plus those of women. Frankly any man NOT signing up to self-ID would be a total fuckwit, whether he identifies or not? What are the downsides, exactly?

It's not complicated really: to benefit from protections designed for female people you (should) have to be female. Being female should not mean that you are constrained to make use of those protections, but not being female should mean you cannot appropriate them.

Similarly, if protections existed that were specifically designed for male people (e.g., limiting a prostate cancer survivors' group to male attendees / facilitator or whatever) the same should apply.

#Iamwomanhearmeroar?

It's not complicated really: to benefit from protections designed for female people you (should) have to be female. Being female should not mean that you are constrained to make use of those protections, but not being female should mean you cannot appropriate them.

Well, yes, I agree. My point is that the 'trans women are women' ideology is making it complicated (poorly worded, perhaps).

These linguistic complications only arise if we use the very confusing terms 'transwoman' & 'transman'

These terms don't just confuse the debate with respect to the question of what male / female mean, it's also extremely unclear what category or categories of person they refer to, particularly in the context of self id. I think we need to stop using them altogether.

I was wondering what other languages do about it, so I had a look at the French translation.

This dictionary page is... interesting, both for the fact that it seems to use transsexuelle or transgenre for both sexes (or maybe it just ignores the natal female, which wouldn't surprise me) and also for the not-very-neutral examples of sentences chosen as illustrations.

dictionary.reverso.net/english-french/transgender

Agreed. We need to be able to distinguish between transsexuals, gnc people and people with a sexual fetish. We also need to keep these definitions completely independent from terms signifying (immutable) sex.

I'm nervous of relying too much on possession of a grc to define who's who since making grcs readily available is the next step in the transactivist plan.

@ChemistryGeek, nah, I agree with you, just not so great at putting forward my arguments coherently. Let me have another go...

I just can't help thinking that in all the furore over the rights of TIMs, that what self-ID will mean for TIFs has been forgotten and overlooked.

In sport you compete with/against your physiological “peers”. So for the purposes of the “transwomen are women” phrase, for sport, in my head, “are” means “ are physiologically” and transwomen are not for those purposes women and transmen are not men. You compete with/against your physiological peers (which is likely to be your (natal) sex).

Yup, cannot disagree with any of this. (actually, what is the legal situation with men's teams? Are people who are legally women automatically barred from joining a men's team even if they're able to compete at the same level? Does anyone happen to know?)

Finally, I’m very uncomfortable with saying “use the changing rooms/toilets you as an individual feel safest in whatever your sex” is appropriate tbh; surely that just means we’ll end up with one for the lairy big blokes and one for everyone else - the transmen, the trans women, the gnc, the “weedy” sensitive blokes, the gay blokes and finally...if there’s space... the women!

That isn't what I was saying (trying to say?). I was talking very specifically about biological women, who, while they might use the men's toilets most of the time, might find themselves in a situation where to do so would render them unsafe. If they are legally men, does that mean their rights to access female toilets will have been revoked? How about women's prisons? And will they be able to stand on AWS?

Right now, I suspect the number of biologically born women with a GRC is tiny, so the issue may just never have arisen, but since most of the referrals for dysmorphia are female, if self-ID does come in, that looks set to change.

Eh, maybe I'm waffling incoherently. I agree with you. I'm just not that great at translating my thoughts into words.

I was talking very specifically about biological women, who, while they might use the men's toilets most of the time, might find themselves in a situation where to do so would render them unsafe. If they are legally men, does that mean their rights to access female toilets will have been revoked? How about women's prisons? And will they be able to stand on AWS?

These are all good points, and a good argument for trans-only spaces, shortlists etc. It's often overlooked that the 'transwomen should benefit from women's protections' argument is exclusionary of TIF, despite their presumably comparable lack of 'cis privilege'