I really would ask everyone here to take on board the fact that it's really not the words in themselves. The problem is that those words are being weaponised on this thread, which implicitly calls on posters to repeat them to the point where the volume cannot but feel hostile to a trans person who came across it in Active. Not a TRA, just any individual trans person trying to live their life.
Words weaponised and inflammatory?! WTF?
This thread is soothing to many women, the repetition is grounding and solidarity in the face of being redfined and losing sex protections under the law.. the repetition also allows women who are tired and ill etc to join in with the solidarity without having to find new words to say what has been said so well already. It is the #metoo of women who have been gaslighted and mentally and physically beaten with sexism and misogyny, or had dealings with people with personality disorders/ MH disorders etc.
oh.. wait, you mean inflammatory to some trans people because it reminds them that they don't accept the sex of the body they were born in, or feel strongly that they want to behave like the gender stereotypes of the opposite sex, or feel like something else that is trans in some way.
Well, that is the problem with granting some people access to a legal category that they don't naturally or materially qualify for solely in the hopes that it will appease their mental anguish.
Although perceived as a 'kindness' it is a sham and legal fudge and it was cruel to give vulnerable and anguished trans people they impresion that they could change sex and have the endoremsnent of all others, and wrong and abusive for judges and legislators to give away access to something that was not theirs to give. And simultaneously place limitations to any females who want to be men, because "it would deprive male heirs of their rightful expectation to inherit" and the Queen can control hereditary titles because the she is the Queen and it is in her gift. This is not democratically motivated and liberal does not always mean good and kind.
Woman has a reality and a definition that is in use and has necessarily specific meaning. We are entitled to defend keeping that word when we need it. We have not fallen out of fashion like other words and been co-opted by later generation - oh well, maybe with womb transplants from men (coming from the transmen?) the actual plan is to have the sex class of women fall out of use.
Trans people should (and do) have their human rights protected and no one should be discriminated against for being gender non-conforming. We don't need to say transwomen are women to give them compassion and understanding and safety, but women shouldn't be forced to lie and to step aside to always put other people's feelings first.
I thought we were all against fake news? This is like the Truman Show where some trans people must be protected from the truth at all costs and we have to run around in front of them changing the props and re-writing the internet to maintain the lie. That is absurd and abusive.
And you @MNHQ are complicit with abusers and their enablers when you see women having boundaries, showing solidarity and being reassured by truth and mistake it for inciting hatred or being mean. It is gaslighting to even hint at such a thing. I don't spend time on the pregnancy boards, because I am stuggling with infertility but god damm I would pay for that boards to exist to support other women.
And actually I do actively read about experiences like conceiving and giving birth or toddler tantrums that remind me painfully of my own grief and loss, because it makes me a better and more compassionate human to try to understand what others are going through and to learn about their lives and difficulties and needs even if I am often reminded of things I will never have. My pain is not the only pain in the world.
I am more and more horrified by the day.