How do you introduce the concept of self-id to people who've never heard of it?

[Flimp]

I need to talk about this with my friends and family, but I'm in danger of ranting and going off on tangents. (And actually I have, many times!)

I think most people have just never thought about it. They want to be inclusive and kind and have not encountered any personal difficulties with the concept of gender or self-id.

So how do you approach the subject in a way that is relatable for people? I think a lot of my friends will wonder why I'm bothered about someone using women’s loos at the same time as me.

I really thought about it and described it in a way that was personal to me. I truly feel this is against trans people, gay people, women and children because it does not allow people to be who they are but instead seems to be about endless rules and labels. The need for sex segregation due to the treatment of women the denial of gay sexuality in being attracted to the opposite sex. That all people are not a Homogenised mass of grey instead of individuals who do not want or need to be labelled. The narcissism of it all dressed as liberalism.

I think it’s tricky, because one of the reasons that feminists are on the back foot with this is that the crux of the problem is very nuanced and fairly academic / intellectual, features which do not play as well as unfocused emotion on social media (which sadly is the main conduit for ideas at the moment).

On the one hand you’ve got trendy, woke, performative liberalism, and on the other a bunch of people questioning such things as whether the concept of trans can even exist, in boringly intellectual terms.

I had never even heard the term “social construct” until the first year of my anthropology degree, and I think the subtleties of the feminist position on trans vs the TRA / lib fem position are difficult to realise without understanding some of these concepts. You can slip a fag paper between the idea that gender is a set of social constructs that should be dismantled and the idea that there are 75+ different gender identities, in terms of the real life understanding of these concepts by their advocates.

The sad thing about all this is that I think we’re all almost on the same page, but that a wedge has been driven between the two ideologies (largely due to the unthinking extremism and misogyny of the TRAs) that is making the gap ever wider.

Unless you understand the subtleties though, there doesn’t (superficially) appear to be much of a difference between being gender critical and “non-binary”. I think this is a fundamental problem for us - the other side is framing the debate in simplistic, social media-friendly terms and making it all too easy to perpetuate the idea that gender critical = bigoted TERF.

To really “get” the rad fem position, you have to have some understanding of the patriarchy and how it oppresses, the Male Gaze, structuralism, Marxism etc etc. That’s a pretty tough sell on twitter.

I'm not as educated as some people on here so I keep it fairly simple e.g.

"What do you think about the guidance last week from swim england saying that men who say they're women can go in the women's changing rooms"?

Most people say something along the lines of "well, yes, but if they've had the surgery and been living as a woman....."

I point out it's self id. Any man can say it. The response is usually horror and the acknowledgement that it's open to abuse. If I feel brave i ask them what they meant regarding living as a woman.

Keep it simple. Tell them you are worried about the law that is under review. Men are already crowding women out and the changes will create more problems than it is trying to solve.
Lupron will be this generations thalidomide.
These are both issues that will have long term damaging effects on women and children.

People are often shocked that only ten to twenty percent of trans identified males have genital surgery.
The vast majority of transgender identified males are heterosexual AGPs who do not want to give up their sex life. They spend their money on breasts and facial feminization surgery.