Feminism/ trans debate for beginners

[Merchfach]

Last night I was out with some lesbian friends who asked me to go to a Pride event. I said I wasn't sure I could because of the trans situation: while I was fully in support of the LGB element, I had my doubts about the T.

This sparked an open debate. It turns out that my lesbian friends, who both work for a right-on organisation where the majority of staff are women and they have unisex loos (though female staff continue to use one set of loos and the male staff the others, interestingly) have absolutely no idea of the self ID issue or, wait for it — the basic tenets of feminism. I used the phrase 'male privilege' and they looked blank and asked me why I thought men were privileged. When I pointed out to them that men control the world — business, politics, power, religion, the structures that we all live and work under — they said 'But our prime minister is a woman and in our organisation women earn the same as men doing the same job!' When I mentioned the difference between sex and gender they were confused. They think the two words mean the same.

Where would you start? What would you send them?

Yeah I totally agree. I mean when the tras have gained parity with regular men ie there is little or no prejudice against men who wear dresses (a goodgoal) then when we find there are 300 male mps 50 transmtfs mps and 250 female mps they'll claim equality. Then we'll need an entire new women's lib movement

I'd like to take issue briefly with the phrase 'was involved in a minor scuffle' to describe the actions of an individual who was convicted of assault.

I also don't think it's transphobic to note that the individual who committed the assault was a trans woman who tweeted about her intention to commit violence against 'TERFs' and who took issue with being 'misgendered' in court by the woman she assaulted.

Having been involved in the occasional 'minor scuffle' myself, there's quite a difference between being assaulted by a woman and being assaulted by a man. Just wanted to get that off my chest.