Trans Park Run Deletion

[TheUterati]

Poorly played, MN, very poorly played.

The perspective that when male athletes identify as female athletes and on the basis of that are eligible to compete against women, they are cheating is an absolutely valid one that is deserving of discussion.

Points in its favour are:

1. The context of cheating in sports as a whole - those self-harming activities that athletes willingly participate in to give themselves a competitive edge.
2. The evidence that mediocre male athletes who identify as female manage to then carve out glittering careers where those would not be available to them had they continued to compete as males.

It is an absolutely valid perspective.

Accusations of cheating against specific individuals may well be against talk guidelines, in the absence of supporting evidence, but those individual posts can be deleted and a friendly warning from MNHQ posted on the thread.

Males identifying as females and competing in female sports is a key issue in GRA, whether it occurs at the 'social, fun' end of things or at at Olympic level. To silence this debate is an appallingly heavy-handed.

I honestly can't believe you can't articulate one aspect of your feeling that you would attribute to being a woman. How did you ever figure out you feel like a woman?

people did start talking about the article that parkrun Australia did about me

Only after you mentioned it.

Ada locate the feeling you have about women participating in a parkrun who don't want males participating in their categories. That will approximate to the feeling spont is articulating.

Let's not have a go at Ada because of the other nonsense going on.

When I was young I wanted to be a boy because I equated boys with positive things that girls weren't supposed to do. My preferences were also considered to align more with the stereotypes associated with boys and not girls. I probably would've said that I felt like a boy if (repeatedly) questioned because I didn't really feel like a girl - or what I considered girls were meant to feel like.

Now I'm an adult, I realise that the stereotypes and society were skewiff and not me. I don't know what being a woman feels like and I am one. I just am. I don't suppose I ever felt like a boy either.

It saddens me that we seem to be in trench warfare at the moment.

Other events - lots of them - are available to people who want the competition rules to apply.

Park Run is actually pretty unique in its ethos and its ubiquity.

I'm here because people were literally talking about me in the initial thread.

You thought they were. They said they were not but you continue to say they were.
That is not participating in good faith.

cistersofterfy No, I'm angry. I was accused earlier in this thread of (paraphrasing) bubbling with anger. I wasn't then, I am now. Few things in this world annoy me, I'm too damn old to care about most things, this is different. I am now at the point where I see all to well what happens to my daughters and granddaughters if this all goes through. I'll be damned if I'm now going to be the little woman and nod in agreement. Anyone who doesn't like it doesn't have to read my posts. I care about Dax and her baby, I don't care about Ada who wants to be able to strut into woman's spaces where my DGD's may well be. Bugger that for a lark!

cister I think that's the thing of it though. We all believe that the feeling of trans is wanting to do things stereotypically associated with the other sex because a lot of us have experienced something similar or can see it in little boys or girls who don't like to do "boy things" or "girl things".

That's why it doesn't ring true when someone says the feeling is can't be described or is like feeling left handed when you are right handed.

I think it's ironic that trans people don't realise how much they have in common with gender critical feminists. Lots of us have probably been through similar processes about our own identities. We've just chosen a very different solution to the problem.

I feel(z) that the answer lies in more open sharing and finding of common ground but that seems to be the opposite of what's happening.

Women's rights have been declared to be anti trans, just as women's rights were declared to be anti men in the days of the Suffragists.
There is no common cause between women who want to protect women's rights and males who want to strip women of their rights.

cistersofterfy In all the time I have been reading then posting about this, one thing sticks out in my mind. Feminists have said time and time and time again, they have the know how and ability to help trans people fight for their own spaces. Every feminist has said (me included) they would support this and campaign for this. Go out of our way to help trans people gain their own safe spaces too. It's been thrown in our faces time and time again, especially by trans woman because they want our spaces because it's validating to enter a sex segregated womans space.

Do they care how we feel? Do they shite!

I feel(z) that the answer lies in more open sharing and finding of common ground but that seems to be the opposite of what's happening.

cister I wish that was true and I used to think that too but I have come to believe, as I said in a pp, that TIMs are so invested in maintaining their belief that they are a woman that they can't examine or reflect on what women are telling them in any way that challenges that belief. I've almost cried with frustration sometimes after reading some amazing posts from women trying to reach a common ground only to be rebuffed with some facile comment about not being able to describe it but always knowing they were women and they are women. How can you find common ground when there only quick sand?

I honestly can't believe you can't articulate one aspect of your feeling that you would attribute to being a woman.

@FloraFox Well, I mean I can point to a ton of socalisation and gender role stuff that we all learn to associate with being a woman, some of which is meaingful to me, and some of which isn't. But that's all learnt stuff, and it's not what actually makes someone a woman.

I wish I could explain it, but I can't. The best I can do is flawed analogies, which I'm sure everyone has heard before.

Only after you mentioned it.

I only joined in the initial conversation once it was 300 replies long or something, just before it was deleted, and someone had already linked the article on me way back in the first page.

When I was young I wanted to be a boy because I equated boys with positive things that girls weren't supposed to do.

@cistersofterfy My experience wasn't like that. I'm not masculine and never have been, but neither am I particularly feminine. I was never experimented with clothing or makeup, I never felt like women had it better than men, even then in my childish naivety, it was obvious that women get a raw deal. I'm not drawn to the gender roles that society attaches to women, and I'll join you in tearing those roles down. All I knew was that I was uncomfortable with my male physicality, and that it felt wrong every time I got grouped with the boys instead of the girls.

And that has never gone away. It never will go away. It's a part of my identity. And I look forward to a day where my gender identity is about as relevant as whether I'm left or right handed. But we're not there yet.

I've almost cried with frustration sometimes after reading some amazing posts from women trying to reach a common ground only to be rebuffed with some facile comment about not being able to describe it but always knowing they were women and they are women. How can you find common ground when there only quick sand?

Believe it or not, I genuinely empathise with this frustration. If you don't see me as a woman, of course you're not going to acknowledge me as a woman. And if that is your perspective, the kindest, fairest approach is to find a way of letting me live my life as safely as possible, but without encroaching on the issues of the people you do acknowledge as women, who genuinely do have issues that need attention and effort.

But the problem is of course, from my perspective, I am a woman. I can't find a middle ground that involves me pretending I'm not. That's literally the reason I transitioned, because I couldn't pretend anymore. I tried it for decades, and it was destroying my life. And that disparity in is a gap we probably can't cross.

Anyway, things are starting to get a bit heated, so I'll take a step back.

But the problem is of course, from my perspective, I am a woman. I can't find a middle ground that involves me pretending I'm not. That's literally the reason I transitioned, because I couldn't pretend anymore. I tried it for decades, and it was destroying my life. And that disparity in is a gap we probably can't cross.

That's fine. You are committed to your delusion as most delusional people are. That is one of the reasons most of the women here want transgender identified people to get proper treatment, rather than affirmation, which simply locks you in to performing your delusions.

Things do tend to get a bit heated when in one thread you have a pregnant women being threatened with murder and wishes for the death of her child being expressed, and in another you have someone having that pointed out to them and handwaving it away in favor of explaining once again why their feelings should matter more than anything else.

AdaRuns

You're not the first transwoman on here to claim they cannot describe the way they feel, they just know they're a woman.

I would like to know what was running through your head the day before you decided to transition? You must have had a billion thoughts running through your head about what it would be like, how it would feel, what it would look like. I do, sincerely, believe that the reason you won't say is because it will be all about stereotypes.

That's not to say that those thoughts and feelings don't have any credibility, though.

I just wish you could understand that the reason you cannot possibly describe how you know you're a woman, is because being a woman simply isn't a feeling.

It's a description. Of biological reproductive function. That's why you can't feel it. You just know that presenting as woman makes you feel better. Because gender dysphoria.

We had a transsexual on here recently who transitioned decades ago. They said that part of the treatment was to make sure that the person understood that they were biologically male and could not, would not, change sex.

I'm sure you know you can't change sex, but you feel as though your sex is determined by the way you think, not your anatomy.

I understand why you would want to think that, but really, honestly, the definition of sex just isn't that complicated. It has a very simple meaning.

And none of this would matter, and nobody would care, if the category of females weren't relentlessly disadvantaged by the category of males.

Thank you Datun

I think that last post deserves to be printed in bold. It's the crux of it for me

Exactly Datun.

Most women could tell you exactly how they know they are a woman. For some of them, it's periods, PMT, endo, childbirth, breastfeeding. For some of them it's having the burden of always having to be the one responsible for contraception, because if it goes tits up then they will be the one who ends up pregnant. For some of them it's having to try and terminate their own pregnancy by any means possible because they cannot access a safe abortion. For some of them it's their (as my lovely friend friend who has just resigned herself to the fact that she will never have a child of her own) 'ovaries not fucking working'. For some of them it's menopause and all that entails. For some of them it's getting the news that their smear test has shown cancerous cells in their cervix. For some of them its not being allowed to go to school because they have a vagina. For some of them it's not being allowed to watch sporting events. For some of them it's being trafficked into prostitution as children. For some of them it's being harassed in the street, at work, on a night out. For some of them it's being discriminated at work.

Most transwomen cannot tell you how they know they are a woman: they 'just know'.

#womanisnotafeelinginamanshead

And I just wanted to add, that although I have plenty of ways I could tell you I know I'm a woman, I can't tell you how I know I am a transwoman. Because I'm not a transwoman.

Trans people have their own set of unique experiences, which are valid, important and absolutely need to be listened to. But they are not the experiences of a woman.

Not to dearail, who is being threatened, having people want her to have to give birth to a dead baby? And to have her killed?

I can't see the tweets of the person mentioned.

Thanks for replies Ada.

“Believe it or not, I genuinely empathise with this frustration. If you don't see me as a woman, of course you're not going to acknowledge me as a woman. And if that is your perspective, the kindest, fairest approach is to find a way of letting me live my life as safely as possible, but without encroaching on the issues of the people you do acknowledge as women, who genuinely do have issues that need attention and effort.”