Can you all just lay off trans people

[cjferg]

There is a difference between sex and gender. Some people's align, other people's don't. Some people are biologically female, and their gender doesn't match that and vies versa. Some people don't have a gender. Why do you care so much?

One of my best friends in school was biologically a female. When he 'came out' to me as trans and explained how he had never felt comfortable in his body all I thought (and anyone who knew him) was that I wasn't surprised and that it made a lot of sense and we all got on with our lives. This was about age 17 and he said he had known this since he was a kid (not saying that any kid who says they want to should be able to willy nilly block their hormones, etc, btw)
It wasn't just about 'presenting as a male'. He was actually a male in a female body.
Yes, when he started presenting as male he felt a lot better. I remember he didn't want to go to our prom because of all the dressing up, etc. until we suggested he wear a tux, and it was amazing to see him so comfortable.
But still he hated having tits and having to wear a binder (can be done safely if you get a proper binder and don't just use bandages or w/e so don't even start)
It wasn't enough to just stuff the front of the trousers.
I repeat, he was a man trapped in a woman's body. Not just a cross dressing woman, not just in an experimental phase.

I have another friend who is biologically a female but they don't have a gender. They are known as 'they' not 'he'or 'she' and knowing them you would in no way think that they are either male or female, again not just about looking a certain way.

I also see a lot of people on here ranting about trans people and they literally only care about transwomen. Genuinely, what has happend to you that you feel so threatened at the thought of someone with a penis being the same gender as you?

Stop ranting about how men are going to use it as an excuse to perv on your kid in a changing room. I'd bet quite a lot that more women will perv on your kid in a changing room than men pretending to be trans will.

Gender is evolving all the time there are no definitive rules to being a man or a woman.

For every thing that you think being a woman is, there will be a woman who disagrees with you.
You say that being a woman means having a uterus - does that make people who've had theirs removed for medical reasons not women?

If being a woman means the ability to have babies then does that mean infertile women aren't women?

If you think being a man is the ability to grow facial hair does that mean that men who can't aren't men?

I read about a woman who had poly cystic ovaries and had a luxurious, thick beard and moustache as a result. Does that mean she is a man or less of a woman? Or should she have continued to try and shave and wax it off and be ashamed of it rather than accept herself the way she was and rock the beard?

Seriously, we've come a long way from being a woman meaning you're your husband's property and having to squirt out babies and clean your whole life. Why are you so determined to go backwards?

Stop using the teeny possibility of a man pretending to be trans to invade women's spaces as a vehicle for your hatred and open your mind enough to at least try and understand the issue, because it might be your kid. It might be your dad. It might be your bff 4eva. If that were the case would you ostracise them from your life and declare them a fraud, or have a little empathy and try and support them through something potentially life changing.

drops mic

@thebewilderness

Or the Star Trek version.

drops mic (cringe)

Don't pick it up again.

Nothing you've said makes me embrace the notion of self-ID. The potential for disaster is huge. In fact you've reinforced my views. You've blatantly not read the boards.

When wider society becomes aware of all this you'll be blown way out of the water. Hetero male privilege will see to that as they won't en masse admire, gaze at, accept, love, have sex with men who think a dress and lippy = 'I am a woman', and are using male-born privilege to pursue a cis (stupid term) woman replacement agenda.

I can't wait for this to be all over the news. See how far you get then.

"THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!"
Yes there are.

Yes to the 4 lights (he’s the best of all Star Trek Captains).

Or should we boycott the programme beacuse there was no transgender people there? They had one non-gender race (they were of one sex but still looked largely like women) but that’s not trans.

Rat

"Also the cotton ceiling thing is total bull"

You are just fucking at it and your contempt for lesbians is in plain sight

You are just fucking at it and your contempt for lesbians is in plain sight

Assigned I'm not inviting a conversation on this (although I know I can't stop you) but where on earth you're getting that from "the cotton ceiling thing is total bull" in the context of my whole comment, which was "Also the cotton ceiling thing is total bull. I can't remember the exact question but I don't want to be accused of not unequivocally condemning it."; is beyond me.

I'll leave that open to personal interpretation, quite happily. You can take my expressed unequivocal condemnation any which way you like.

Clearly this whole trans thing was already an issue because it was page after page of people banging on about their vaginas. It immediately struck me as odd and completely un-self-aware. Page after page of people actively denying any personal, internal EXPERIENCE of their womanhood that wasn't either the reality of their bodies or their treatment by other people.

This isn't lack of self-awareness, this is them telling you/the world that they don't actually have an internal experience of womanhood that's unconnected to their bodies and their treatment by other people. Not sure how many women need to tell you that they have no such experience before you'll consider that they may possibly be correct.

This isn't lack of self-awareness

I will absolutely accept that, but I was saying it struck me as odd; it struck me as un-self-aware (which I will happily now say I see it is not; and clearly it did the OP too. And it would seem it we're not the only ones. I'm not saying all the women who were responding were wrong, I'm saying I accept they are correct about their own experiences. I'm also saying the same for people who have the opposite experience.

I can see the "un-self-aware" comment cause people to become defensive and in that case I will completely retract it; I simply meant it as my observation at the time which i will now fully retract. That is genuinely their experience. It is not the only experience that I believe is being genuinely expressed.

Nope, we just have to try to find a way to allow them to live within their own reality that doesn't impose that unduly on people who don't share it.

This board is full of women stating unequivocally that being forced to share spaces involving nudity with male people who believe themselves to be women is an unacceptable imposition that they're deeply uncomfortable with. So, unless you think that those women's feelings about the situation don't matter, your test has already been failed and an alternative solution is needed.

Angry, I don't universally disagree with those women, I don't even mostly disagree with those women, but there are points on any specific circumstance that I might debate.

However I think a starting point of "transwomen are men, we should in no way be enabling their delusion to continue" - which I have seen expressed here - has got no hope of achieving an acceptable end-point in my eyes.

I'm all up for pushing the government and the TRAs to compromise on the aspirations because they DO unduly impact on women, but I'm not up for proclaiming transgenderism a delusion in order to do so. Not even if I get a load of stick for it.

Don't dodge the point, Rat. Again, you know that there are many women who unequivocally reject the idea of sharing intimate spaces with trans women, especially under the current, anything goes definition of trans women. It's less often discussed here but for women in some religious groups there's even less choice involved, if male people are allowed in those spaces then they simply can't use them any more. So, are you willing to admit that the preferences of those women matter and that they have a right to say no to male people in those spaces? Because that's the key issue here, not the specific language that people use when rejecting the presence of those male people in those spaces.

I'm all up for pushing the government and the TRAs to compromise on the aspirations because they DO unduly impact on women

Go on then.

I'm not dodging the point Angry, we're talking at cross purposes, clearly. I'm making my point but you want to talk about your point but you expressed it as interrogating my point - or maybe it was my interpretation. Either way this is classic cross purposes.

So, are you willing to admit that the preferences of those women matter and that they have a right to say no to male people in those spaces?

You're trying to turn this discussion into something that it did not start out as for me, and I'm afraid I'm not prepared to digress at this point. If you think a refusal to reduce this whole conundrum to a one word answer is a statement of my views well that's your look-out, but you'd come away with an inaccurate impression of my stance.

Because that's the key issue here, not the specific language that people use when rejecting the presence of those male people in those spaces.

The key issue with which I engaged on this thread was that of the language, the tone and a single, specific basic principle of this debate.

It's a religious obligation, ie pretty much mandatory if you want to remain a member in good standing of your religious group. What I suspect will happen based on having lived in places where that was the mainstream religious expectation is that if we start seeing more obviously male people using women's spaces some women's male family members will refuse to let them go to the swimming pool etc. Obviously I think this is bullshit, because I'm a feminist and object strongly to men being the boss of their female relatives, but it is in fact what will most likely happen.

Pencils neither of us knows what the other does all day.

Enough with the sealioning, Rat. I'm not interested in playing a game of dancing goalposts with you. Shit or get off the pot, as it were. Many women are saying that they find the presence of male people in spaces where nudity is involved unacceptable. Do you support or oppose their right to refuse to share those spaces with male people?

rat

I can't be the only one who reads your posts and still left wondering what on earth you do think.

Because you seem to have an underlying conviction, that you can't back up, or only refer to obliquely.

These are what I think might be your answers, without trawling through the posts again.

Does rat believe men are women?

I'm not sure.

Does Rat think we should call them women?

I think so.

Does rat think they should be able to compete against women?

Yes.

How about prisons?

I'm not sure.

AWS?

Also not sure.

Medicalising children?

I don't think so.

You've made zillion posts, and I'm still not sure what your stance is. Because you post less about your stance, and more about the words people are using to communicate within you.

You keep saying you don't have certain information, and then when you're given it, either don't read it, or don't comment on it because you disagree.

No-one's making you "play" with me Angry, but in return I won't engage with you on your over-simplistic reductionist terms. Only a complete moron would hang themselves on a one word answer to question which encompasses so many circumstances. But you know that. Which is why you want me to do it.

I'll stick to addressing the issues on an ad hoc basis on threads specific to those issues and I will do so from my own personal perspective or defending women's rights and human rights for all.

You will undoubtedly call this sealioning.

I could call it trolling instead if you'd prefer.

You've made zillion posts, and I'm still not sure what your stance is. Because you post less about your stance, and more about the words people are using to communicate within you.

I have certainly engaged in various discussions, and said right at the start when we first came across one another that I did not have clearly defined view point on many of the issues. However I do have clearly defined principles from which I'm working, and I'm engaging with the debates both to express the second and inform the first. I didn't come here with an agenda, I said that at the start. Perhaps you will remember. It was heavily questioned at the time.

You keep saying you don't have certain information, and then when you're given it, either don't read it, or don't comment on it because you disagree.

I don't recognise this to be something I do, although when on my phone I find it hard to refer back to previous pages if I am quoting posters to reply to, so I can't guarantee I don't miss things. I am happy for you to provide me with examples. Or I will simply try to be more aware of this. Whichever.

You are right Rat, I did misread your post. Apologies.

So if you fully condemn the cotton ceiling, how can you justify allowing trans identified males into prisons and other places where females will be vulnerable. I don't get your position at all

You could Angry, but then you would be misreading my integrity. I have quite clearly given a fair amount of time to explaining my reasoning and taken on board a very great deal in return. I hope my input has had at least some benefit to some debate I've engaged in - I've been told in some small way it has - and frankly I've mostly taken great pains not to stoke inflamed responses. But we do not agree, not in perspective and not in style. That's okay with me.

No worries Assigned, I hope I didn't bite your head off. I'm still looking at prisons really, I don't really know how the whole system works as it is right now and for me I'd like to understand it. Perhaps there will be an informative thread on the subject soon.