Reconciling competing rights

[GaspingShark]

Let me start by saying I do know what it's like to have my experience disbelieved, invalidated and gaslighted on an large scale, though not as a trans person or a victim of sexual assault. I don't have PTSD but I do know what it's like to have triggerable sources of distress, again, not as a trans person or a victim of sexual assault.

For me, equal rights must include the right to define your own experience, without gatekeepers, and to be very hesitant to consider people delusional.

So I am unsure about this. I would be ashamed of trans friends seeing me saying stuff such as "I err on the side of including them as much as possible", because I don't think that kind of recognition is mine to confer.

OTOH, I don't know if therefore that means I'm not recognising sexual assault survivors distressed by the fear of male people in women-only contexts.

Is this reconcilable, or does it mean one side just has to grin and bear it? I'll read this thread carefully but due to my bad management of a health condition I can't promise to tend it beyond the OP atm.

Hey @gaspingshark did you say whether you think third gender spaces should be sex segregated yet? Or what sex segregation is actually for?

I've lost track of which questions you've evaded answering :/

The bottom line is that I don't believe we're reordering society to benefit a minority of people while disadvantaging another protected group. I believe there's a net and indeed overall benefit.

The attempt is to reorder society back to the 1850s where the male half of the population was at a clear and distinct advantage over the female half.
This is not the first time in history that a concerted effort was made by men to erase women from the historical record.
When men finally stopped arguing that women were sub human animals that men planted their seed in and acknowledged women might be human not much changed for women. Aristotle has a lot to answer for.
Currently organizations are arguing that it is men's right to buy and sell women. Amnesty International, if you can believe it.
This discussion is not happening in a vacuum. This is part of the ongoing war on women.

I hope we will then find that it's fine and inch towards more integration in the same way as they did with the gays and our biologically nonsensical unprocreative fucking.

I thought you didn't see yourself as gay but just "partaking". Make your mind up.

Clearly we have a situation where I think my approach is less harmful and you think yours is.

It would seem so, yes

So you are comparing the Inquisition to trans rights.

Without hyperbole, point out why that indirect comparison isn't relevant? It's an analogy of the pitfalls of faith based beliefs, and I think if you were genuinely exploring this, you'd think about it.

I certainly know that the "Transwomen are women #nodebate Burn the witch!" approach is problematic to me, as an ordinary woman who got born with a cunt and was raised and socialised accordingly.

Why are there people putting great effort into telling me that I am wrong, and that women and girls include people born with a penis?!

No!

I am a woman, because of my biology, and just No - people with a penis are men!

No. End of conversation - NOT an opener for a discussion.

I thought you didn't see yourself as gay but just "partaking". Make your mind up.

I don't have to make my mind up. Not everyone experiences life in such fixed terms as you seem to require. "Partaking" doesn't necessarily imply dilettanteism, and the lesbian community as a whole has never expected me to pass a test or disclose exactly what degree of interest I maintain in the devil's sausage before they let me in. I'm a little fazed at your continuing attempts to get me to account for my sexuality, it's none of your business but you can add yourself to the list of people who have made me feel uncomfortable by pushing at it, it includes plenty of entitled men and no trans people.

The Inquisition, well, no, really, if you're asking me to differentiate transgender people from the power and reach of the Inquisition while warning against hyperbole, I'll have work out where on earth to start because I just wasn't expecting it.

Christ you're hard work. I didn't make a direct comparison between the Inquisition and trans issues. You did. I said it was an example of something which aimed to reorder society for a "net benefit" as certain people believed it to be based on their subjective personal faith position. And that justified "disadvantaging" others.

I don't give a fuck about your yoonique identity, btw. Just that you keep redefining yourself in an obfuscatory way.

But do keep avoiding every question or point made. I don't think you're capable of a good faith argument.

I don't think the MN posse is capable of recognising a good faith argument. You consistently mistake doubt for obfuscation. And I'm pulling the disability card here but it's just not possible for me to address every single question or concern everybody on this thread offers me.

The Inquisition, as I understand it, spent hundreds of years torturing and murdering people in the pursuit of totalitarian conformity and the maintenance of existing power structures. I can see why you think that the insistence that everybody believe exactly the same intangible thing parallels trans people, but IME the science is undecided, they are more scared of us than we are of them and I know myself that constant disbelief of one's experience drives people crazy. I think right now most trans people would settle just fine for you privately disbelieving them.

think right now most trans people would settle just fine for you privately disbelieving them.

Sorry that doesn't work for me. I will continue to advocate for women's rights to speak about our sex based oppression without having to silence ourselves or walk on eggshells around male feelings. Because you know what, expecting to control that with emotional blackmail is abusive.

Gaspingshark

I think you may be underestimating/minimizing the degree of concern among those of us who are gender critical with, "they are more scared of us than we are of them". We aren't going on about this for shiggles you know!

And tbh, I do think the way things are going is totalitarian. And I think a lot of people who call themselves gender rights activists are appropriating the experiences of those with gender dysphoria (who I don't disbelieve) for their own purposes. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not suggesting you belong to the appropriating group.

And your description of "trans people" is disingenuous because from previous convos you're not including cross dressing sexual fetishists. Unlike Stonewall.

Of course @GaspingShark is the only person with a disability here, it's not like they've been wasting the time of anyone else with disabilities or carers work to do..

Ereshkigal, they don't know what they're talking about and seem to be here to waste people's time for shits and giggles. Their behaviour on this thread has been demanding, obnoxious, and disingenuous.

If they hadn't identified themselves as female I'd assume they were a clueless chronic mansplainer tbh.

Their behaviour on this thread has been demanding, obnoxious, and disingenuous.

Agree. I don't know what they were hoping to achieve apart from wind people up.

[Latest: Kettle accuses Pot of cultural appropriation!] :

"expecting to control that with emotional blackmail "
"demanding, obnoxious, and disingenuous"
"appropriating the experiences"
"I don't know what they were hoping to achieve apart from wind people up"

:) My chronic mansplaining services are not required. Any 'time wasted' was yours to waste or not. Speaking of which...

[paid work]

My chronic mansplaining services are not required

Well, no!

@GaspingShark it feels a bit tense on this thread so if I ask a question , please only reply of you wish to.

And please see it as a genuine attempt to find some common ground.

In your opening post you spoke about some sort of 'good' and I wondered about the issues around 'gender' being prescriptive. How that is, I feel, not good.

To me gender feels like it is boxing people in, giving expectations and then further tying those expectations to physical sex.

If you or I want to wear certain clothes it does not to me mean anyone should assume which biological sex we are. So I'd like to see a wider freedom around clothes etc and if that were possible I feel it would be good. It doesn't mean a male wearing a dress becomes female.

I think many women, especially women, were supportive of trans people right up to the push for self id and the speaking on behalf of women and speaking 'as women'.

If I spoke on behalf of trans people I expect I'd get pretty short shrift because I am not trans!

So getting back to the idea of increased good, I don't think the current suspicion between women and trans women is good or helps either 'side'.

Your opening post felt like a desire for common ground. Was I misreading that or is that what you think would help?

Sorry, it was not your opening post it was at the top of page 8! And you did not sat 'good' you said 'benefit' but the comment of mine above was directed towards this comment from you OP and not your opening post.

"The bottom line is that I don't believe we're reordering society to benefit a minority of people while disadvantaging another protected group. I believe there's a net and indeed overall benefit"

-Dutch society offers drug addicts unjudgemental access to 'shooting galleries' without needing to understand or normalise Heroin. Safety for all is not taken for granted or dismissed as 'needless concerns'. Harm reduction is the aim, not surrender.

-Epileptics walk unseen amongst our children, but no-one freaked out when the guy on my train home started turning blue once. They just loosened his tie and stuck a pencil in his mouth. The guy could have been more careful with his meds, but who cares?

It is not Feminism's job to destroy 'entitlement' or 'demands' in society in favour of requests and courtesy, but that's what needs to happen to fix this without us hating each other forever. Trans people are powerless if not oblivious compared to 1000's of FWR experts. Blaming us for TRA is like blaming the bullets that come out of a gun.

Trans people are horrifically suitable ammunition if "womens's empathy" or some other strain of maternal instinct is the target of whoever is holding the gun.

Parlez-vous Anglais?

Mae'r byd hwn i bawb, gan gynnwys pobl Cymru

y ddadl orau erio!

Gish Gallop

"a technique used during debating that focuses on overwhelming one's opponent with as many arguments as possible, without regard for accuracy or strength of the arguments."

Very apt for this thread, and also my phrase-de-jour.