Why is misgendering a big deal?

[FortunateCookie]

Hope someone can help because I’m really trying to understand why not affirming someone’s identity is that big of a deal.
I understand that it’s polite to go along with whatever someone’s chosen gender identity is, but I can’t believe that it’s actually a big problem if you don’t?
Surely if your friends and family accept your identity, it doesn’t matter if someone at work doesn’t?
Would it really make someone suicidal?
Do any of the trans organisations say why it is so important?
I just don’t get it.

I agree with Fortunate. And I think that some of the questions Gibberty has been asked were intrusive - I wouldn't have answered them in a public forum.

On the other hand, there are some important, less personal questions, that I desperately want answers to, because I am a fence-sitter and want to be as inclusive as possible. And it's frustrating that those questions are often ignored or deemed irrelevant by trans women and their supporters. No one has to answer questions. But I really really wish they would.

Crikey! That got me thinking about how I rethought RadFeminism after thinking it was far too militant.

How I changed from being a SocFem, having decided that Womens Lib didn't suit me and how I am now very much a Gender Critical Feminist.

Oddly, whilst I can't really explain why I made my choices in my teens I can really clearly explain why I am now very gender critical:

I was quite liberal, didn't see the point of getting angry about a few men wanting to be women, or vice versa. I have always had 'gender bending' friends, helped a transman through his surgeries and have never ever had any reason to be in anyway perturbed by them.

But now I have been accosted in my real life, as well as on line, for refusing to fall in line with the new Emperor's New Clothes. The aggression TRAs and their allies insist that women must lay down their own values and beliefs in order to accommodate a group of men who want to re-write any and all ideas of female = XX out of existence at first bewildered me.

Over time I have become more and more angry with the lack of listening skills shown by TRAs. I have come to find their repetition of the deliberate mis interpretations and outright lies to be so blatant that I wonder why nobody in large organisations, government/political bodies etc see it.

ALL possible answers to that are really fucking scary!

So now I am moving from Gender Critical to Angry Rad Fem! And the TRAs and their Handmaids have only themselves to blame for the thousands of women like me who are starting to wake up and be more active in real life.

So Gibb if you are still not talking to me, I don't care. You've done me a favour, helped me to formalise whay I think that your perspective is dangerous to women - that's the women with the chromosomes, not the ones with the Feelz.

Thanks!

If Gibb’s partner was the one ‘I’m a lady’ing and looking for cut price female hygiene products because of daily bleeding, they have a lot more problems than a board full of disobedient women. Their attention would be best focused elsewhere.

And I think that some of the questions Gibberty has been asked were intrusive

They were in response to items that they themselves brought to the table, in order to demonstrate how their partner was being discriminated against. We didn't bring them up, but wanted the other half of the story clarified because it is likely that the story will be read differently if the actual facts were clarified. Which they know, and that is why they are refusing to answer.

Samphire, I too was totally live and let live until TRAs started bullying lesbians and denying women's rights.

Then I started investigating why non dysphoric men transition. And it was A) all about porn and B) gross misogyny

Now I am unequivocally opposed to the whole ideology.

"Gibberty has explained that she is here to take revenge on women. The male partner came here beforehand to advise us we were all bad people."

Totally false and inaccurate.

I am here to protect women and feminism.

And as we have both told you, my partner is female.

SuperMatchGame: You said: "Gender identity is part of human identity. If you are alive and conscious you have a gender identity - it is the sex you feel you are. The concept of yourself as a man or a woman."

Well, that's pretty transphobic towards people with non-binary, gender-fluid, and agender identities.

Your definition of gender identity is inconsistent. You say that to have a gender identity is to have a concept of being a certain sex - and that you can 'feel' you are a certain sex. And you then say that it is the concept of yourself as a man or a woman. Well, which is it? The first definition relates to sex, and the second relates to gender. It can't be both, surely? Is gender identity 'feeling' you are a male or female, or is it 'feeling' that you are a man or woman?

If gender identity really is just having a concept of oneself as a male or female, why is this not called sex identity? It's also strange to me that your definition mentions 'feeling' like one sex or the other. How does one, internally, 'feel' like a female? I don't know that I"m female, for instance, because I 'feel' female. I know I'm female because I perceive and observe that I am literally female. If someone 'feels' they are female when they are not this doesn't actually mean that they are female!

I am here to protect women and feminism.

You need to make up your mind. Are we an echo chamber out if step with the world, or a large group of women exchanging experiences of our lives and how men are harming us?

If you were really interested in protecting feminism, you would not be trying to stop us talking

I am here to protect women and feminism.

Who from? There is a lot of difference between protecting one particular woman (i.e. your partner), and the particular brand of feminism that lets you do that, and 'protecting' the women and feminists on here who seem to have a very different idea of what protection they need and want and what sort of feminism enables that!

We don't need your idea of protection, or your idea of feminism.

Are we making your style of 'feminism' look bad by being naughty and saying no (and being a bit sweary?).

As others have said, trying to stop women talking (or even refusing to talk to them when they insist on saying things you really don't like) is doing a lot more damage than anything we are saying.

I like the attempting to convert the heathens by pointedly not talking to them line though..................

Feminism is about equality. As soon as we move from that, it is no longer feminism. Trans women are women.

Yes, I started out struggling with trans people who don't get surgery but then I talked to them. I also realised that a woman should never be expected to have surgery to give her a body to conform to what men - or women - think should look like. So again, complaining about women who decide not to have surgery is for me the antithesis of feminism.

Those who say that someone isn't a proper woman because her body is this or not that are doing what the patriarchy has been doing for centuries. Even more so if they criticise her for something she can't change like not having ovaries . A woman's body is her own affair.

I am here to protect women and feminism

what??!! so there we have it again - we're the wrong type of women because we won't comply - oh dear /s

We don't need any of your protection or your version of feminism - why would you think that? Sounds very much like excessive control & male entitlement to me

Feminism is about equality.

That's MRA talk. Feminism is about the liberation of women and girls.

Feminism isn't about equality Gibberty, it's about liberation from men.

You are clearly very much under the control of a narcissistic man. I do feel sorry for you.

A woman's body is her own affair.

Here's where I have a question. I'm inclined to agree with you in general. But I want to know whether it's safe for women who haven't experienced male puberty to play contact sport against women who have experienced male puberty. How would we determine whether it can be both safe and competitive?

Feminism is about equality. As soon as we move from that, it is no longer feminism. Trans women are women

Feminism is not about equality. And trans women are men. And as such, have no skin in the game of feminism. You don't even understand feminism enough to pretend that you are here, trying to promote it.

You are clearly very much under the control of a narcissistic man. I do feel sorry for you.

100%.

Gibb, yet again showing that you know nothing about feminism - nor give a shit. Feminism is based on the fact that women are oppressed because of our sex. Gender is one of the tools the patriarchy use to enforce female disadvantage.

TIM are from the privileged male sex class. Feminism centres women and girls.

This is what is so weird Gib. You sound so completely right on. Of course no woman should be forced to modify her body to comply with patriarchal values. But once you realise that the ‘woman’ you are talking about is a dude, your argument goes to ratshit. Dudes mimicking women is literally the embodiment of patriarchal compliance. Not masculine? Must be a woman then. NO. You aren’t progressive. Your partner is narrowing the limits of acceptable masculinity. To the detriment of society. But you are so convinced that you are the vanguard of greater freedoms for all. NO. You are the one restricting freedoms.

Gibberty: "Those who say that someone isn't a proper woman because her body is this or not that are doing what the patriarchy has been doing for centuries. Even more so if they criticise her for something she can't change like not having ovaries . A woman's body is her own affair."

The problem is that you are twisting a decent feminist idea - that women should own and control their own bodies, that women aren't meant to look a certain way - and applying it to biological males. You are actually implying that a male person, with a male body, is being unfairly judged as not a 'proper' woman. Well...quite. That's because he's a male.You are essentially saying that there's no normative standards whatsoever as to what constitutes a female body, to the extent that males can be classified as females as well.

GibbertyFlibbert

Feminism Isn't about equality, it never has been. That is the MRA way of looking at it.

If it was about equality, then we would be recommending that two men a week are killed by their female partners, advocating that 117 million boy babies are aborted before they are born, or encouraging pre pubescent boys into marriage with middle aged women, and killing other boys for not complying. Not forgetting that it would be unfair that a quarter of all boys/men are not sexually assaulted by women during their life.

That is equality. If, on the other hand, you want to liberate women from that, that would be feminism.

It liberates women from a misogynistic and sexist society (patriarchy). It centres women, and only women, because that is whom it is about and for.

Transgenderism reinforces gender stereotypes, so does the opposite. And seeks to undermine all the protections that have been doggedly won by feminists in order to liberate them.

Do you understand?

Furthermore, men relentlessly try and discredit feminism, or deny the need for it. It's necessary to maintain their power.

They may not see it with such clarity, but comments like feminism has gone too far, it's about equality, not just women, bloody feminazis, all women shortlist are discriminatory, women choose to work in the home, etc, show that sexism is alive and well and beneficial to men.

And as toilets are such a hot topic, the very first female toilets to be built, so women could partake in public life, instead of having to go home every few hours to use the toilet, or change a menstual product, were burnt to the ground.

By men.

Men do not like feminism. Which is why they try pretend it's not just for women. So they can control it.

Yes Super Almost all of us! Or rather we were until the recent tidal wave of Trans Activists took it upon themselves to change all of that.

You see, like others, you have just posted on of those lies that has so drastically changed my perspective. I am not anti trans people at all. The 'trenchant' aka unfeminine, views here are not aimed at the trans people but at the TRAs who are working on dismantling the 'pleasant' society we have lived in for decades. Many trans people, probably including some of your close friends, are horrified at having had their identity stolen, warped and nigh on wiped out by this TRA invasion!

Stop lying, stop twisting what is actually being said and start listening

Curious I don't think the word trenchant has anything at all to do with being feminine or otherwise. No idea where you've got that idea from.

I've asked for my post to be removed because I used the a phrase that usually gets me piled onto and accused of being a TRA infiltrator and I don't have time today to fight that corner.

For what it's worth, you know exactly nothing about my close friends, but I'm very glad to hear that you are not anti-trans.

@TERFragetteCity I used to think that, it's a gender expression but the feminist community on YouTube has made misgendering into an abusive thing and if you question someone's gender expression you are a bad person. It's difficult to get out of that mindset. I do feel that it's went too far but you know the backlash that comes from not agreeing with that on certain social media platforms.