Are we the baddies?

[DJLippy]

Are we the baddies?

Are Terf's as bad as everybody seems to say?

Are we on the wrong side of history?

Anyone ever stop to ask themselves this or is it just me?

DisturblinglyOrangeScrambleEgg - presumably you are talking about redefining marriage to include gay people?

I think this is the opposite of that in fact. We wanted to give same sex couples the same rights as opposite sex ones, that was the intention, all the laws were checked, to make sure it would all still work as expected etc. I didn't feel strongly about the word marriage. Others did. I would have been fine with completely splitting the concepts - let churches do marriage, and the government do the legal partnership bit.

What's happening here is the silencing of people trying to say that before we rush headlong into it, let's check everything will still work as it should for the existing people defined as 'women', if we add a new law to let anyone define themselves as a woman.

I don't think that the existing laws will work under this circumstance and therefore selfid shouldn't pass until this is solved. I suspect that it is impossible to reconcile the two in a way that activists will be happy with, as it has to acknowledge the biological roots of women's oppression

(And yes, lippy, breastfeeding was the wrong example as it is covered up to 6 months under the pregnancy exemption)

Good luck with guiding your kid through, newbie. Difficult times, wishing you strength

I can't help but contrast your attitude with a friend of mine with a GNC kid who has been plastering facebook with invective about T*RFs ruining Pride and how they basically wish her kid dead. There's no way that kid can ever change his mind with his mother going to bat at every oppurtunity against the HATEFUL BIGOTS WHO ARE WRONG AND HATEFUL. Your attitude seems much, much healthier.

I would still like to know what "emotionally female" means in snappity's interpretation, because at first glance it's making me want to sound the gender stereotype klaxon.

NewbieSpartacus

when I talked about bigotry I meant both sides when I talked about violance I ment our side though I'm not one for sides but it's easy short hand on here, in reality there is no drawn line on this again something those with bigoted views want to paint it as, we are all just people.

yes there is therapy at deals with issues but if someone is trans it will jot solve that for them. the nhs pathway includes therapy for a reason as transition is not the only problem that we face, like everyone else we have to face them too. what can happen is that we get so fixed on transition that we forget to deal with the other stuff too, I like to think it's like a big rock holding stuff down and when you finally remove the rock you can deal with all the other things underneath but you will still have to deal with them. I am not a big beleiver that transition will fix everything infact I know it will not but it might just give you a chance to start sorting everything else out once you have it out the way. transition is a process to work through there should be a point when it's over but life is all about transitions so you then move onto the next one and hopefully grow as a person.

I dislike some private provision as they minimise the therapy aspect and go for treatment hormones and surgery do not make us trans or cure us of being so. that I think is why so many people are not now going that route as before I do think the only. option was that especially in the nhs. I'd suggest watching the early documentary from the 80s about Julia grant and see the way the doctor spoke to her, though he did have a bit of a god complex by all accounts talking to people who were under him.
it is not certain that your sons path will lead to transition and like you say them will need to be very certain of that and beleive me there is no one who questions this thing more than a trans person the night before surgery lol

anyway I hope some of that helps I'm not trying to score points, I have worked with parents in your position before and they are frightened and want the best. all you can do is support nothing will change who they are if that is who they are not social media or therapy. talking and working through things is the best way to help them. find the right path having a fixed view point can hinder that if you appear to not be listening to them they will stop talking to you about that thing.

Thank you fox. I'm glad I had MN, otherwise I would have thought affirmation was the only way to go.

Bespin I think most of us have a lot of common ground, and one of the things I have against self-ID is that it removes the gatekeeping which is there to help people. I don't have any beef with trans people, it's about safety and dignity for everyone.

I've changed my mind really, really drastically on this issue, and so I am constantly second-guessing myself, re-examining the evidence and my motives, and no, I don't think we're the baddies.

I've also considered what might be deep-down prejudice and conditioning, and no, it's the opposite. I was fortunate to spend my late teens and early twenties in a very gender-nonconforming, gay-friendly place (where to be gender nonconforming and/or gay was the norm, not the exception) and a lot of my deep-down default settings were established then. As a result, for most of my life when I've been anywhere and a visibly gender nonconforming man has come into the room (eg someone crossdressing) I've felt a warm fuzzy feeling of kinship, a feeling like there's someone like me in the room. No more. Now if a crossdressing man comes in (I use that term because of course I don't know how they'd identify) I feel a visceral sense of threat - physical, social, political - because all my former experiences and assumptions have been turned on their head and my more recent experiences have taught me to assume someone wearing womanface is indeed a threat to me.

It's really unsettling.

If trans is a type of deep rooted mental ( desperately searching for none offensive word ) issue which is the form of trans I find easiest to understand and sympathisie with, then it's not a choice. They do not chose how to present, they are driven to it.

Those that are reportedly trans on some days only....

So would those of you who want to relegate trans women to shared spaces be exclusively using those shared spaces yourselves too?

Exclusively is an interesting word, isn’t it? I would definitely use those shared spaces - for the day to day pee breaks and make up checks etc.

However, if I had a ‘biological woman’s’ emergency - an unexpected period, flooding, breast milk leakage, a miscarriage- then I would like an ‘exclusive’ place to go, thanks.

And I can’t see how that is ‘exclusionary’ or ‘privileged’ as trans women will never need to suffer any of this things as a ‘privilege’ of not having the same biology.

Snappitty what privilege is attached to being a woman? Please explain. Because in my mind, women have been oppressed throughout history and have only had the right to vote on an unrestricted basis for 90 years.
If I decided I was transracial, would it be fair for me to say that black people have enormous privilege? No, it would be fucking insulting and a slap in the face to black people.
Please explain- I really struggle to understand.

This is the trouble with the cis prefix. It places women in the privileged category with men, and takes men out of that category.

We are not the baddies as we are coming from a position of truth.

Sex exists, women and girls exist and are treated badly across the globe and throughout all time because of their sex.

Children should not need to alter their bodies or distort language to prop up sexist stereotypes.

That's what the "baddies" believe in.

Children should not need to alter their bodies or distort language to prop up sexist stereotypes.

Amen.

Snappity
You don't seem to understand why there are sex-segregated spaces. It's not because women are privileged, it's because we are disadvantaged when naked and vulnerable.

Men can rape, men are stronger than women, some men like to expose themselves or leer at women.

Weaker men and boys can also be vulnerable to predatory or violent men. Gay men can also be a target for violent men. Do you suggest opening female spaces to them as well?

Exactly OldCrone. Men of colour are also potential victims of racist attacks. Nobody has ever suggested they use women’s spaces instead. The fact that trans women are victims of violence and discrimination is neither here nor there when it comes to sex segregation. It is purely done on the basis of biological sex.

In reality, the issue is not one of safety. It is that trans women require absolute validation that they are as female as a natal woman. The safety argument is trotted out to make natal women look mean but in reality even if there was a 100% safe third space, many trans women would still insist on using the female space because it validates them and they resolutely refuse to consider women’s feeling or viewpoints as in any way relevant.

Pratchet

"the young ones don't realise we've seen more gender non-conformity than they can imagine and we thought it was great "

^ This. So much this.

I check in with my morality centre regularly.
Integrity matters.
Truth and fairness.

It's easy to falsely conclude popular=right, unpopular=wrong.

You have to sort out the difference between being right and being popular. And you have to keep on repeating that exercise because it's very difficult to purposefully make yourself unpopular in pursuit of a principle.

Do the 3.8 billion biological females of the world deserve recognition of their existence, and acknowledgement that they are physically different from males?
Or should we recognise every human characteristic EXCEPT sex, because in this particular tiny window of history it's become popular to deny that sex matters?

I am female.
3.8 billion people exist like me, within this sex.
The others are not like me.
We WILL be recognised for what we are.

I start there.

What makes me examine my views is when they overlap with people who I vehemently disagree with on most other things (JHB, K-Hop, Piers Morgan for example).

But I don't believe that trans women are women. I do support having gender reassignment as a protected characteristic, but transwomen are not women.

If that's enough to label me a transphobe, then so be it I guess.

I find it very distressing to be called a bigot when I've spent my life supporting progressive causes.

Then I read things like the fact that puberty blockers can cause the menopause in teenage girls ( did not know that till I read the link up thread! ), and I think, nope, this is a potentially dangerous ideology which needs to be discussed and have the truth spoken about it. #nodebate is not the answer!

Sport is the main thing that convinces me I am on the right side. I don't want all women's sporting records to be held by people with Y chromosomes in 10 years time and women and girls to give up with competitive sport. If TWAW that is how things will end up because XY phsyiology is different from XX in many ways (VO2 max, pelvic structure, fat distribution, muscle mass, maximum power output, strength, not to mention testosterone effects).
Plus the basic biological fact that people can't change sex and although I believe some folk really want to be the other sex and think of themselves in that way I still think it's delusional to believe you have actually changed sex.
It also reinforces sexual stereotypes.

If people were saying ‘transwomen are men and men can’t wear dresses so you can’t wear dresses’ it’d be ‘wrong side’ but we’re not.

We’re saying wear the dress, live as you like, play with dolls, embrace pink, just don’t think that that makes you a woman. ‘Woman’ means something, and that’s not that.

"It’s disheartening though when you see so many highly intelligent and educated people blindly state that there is no difference between trans women and biological women. "

Yes, very unsettling. Someone I know to be highly intelligent is very ANGRY with us GC-types, and quite high-profile on Twitter. We used to be mates many years ago, both of us fiercely standing up for the rights of gay people at a time when there was a lot of intolerance. I am honestly dismayed she would now consider me a vile and literally violent bigot because I speak up for the right of women to single-sex spaces and for biology. She'd definitely consider me 'one of the baddies'.

I hate that 'would you have been as bigoted about homosexuality back in the day' is trotted out as a GOTCHA. I know the two things are not remotely similar and have been conflated partly in hopes of causing confusion and guilt.

I know it's not possible to be 'born in the wrong body' or for humans to change sex. I know there are people with distressing dysphoria, and want them to have kindness and be able to express themselves the way they want to in dress and lifestyle. But this is not 'changing sex', or 'correcting the sex wrongly assigned at birth'.

We have entered a strange time with a new language and aggressive ideology pushed by very vocal people, who have managed to persuade too many that it is bigoted not to believe that 'transwomen are women', and what logically follows from that is '...so of course they are entitled to access women's spaces, just like any other woman is'... 'so if they are attracted to women, they are lesbians just like any other lesbian.'

But I firmly believe THAT's what will be seen as 'the wrong side of history' as more and more people wake up to what exactly is being allowed to happen here.

Are we the baddies?
...
Are we on the wrong side of history?

Add me to the list of those who reflect on this regularly.

Then I look at the gas lighting, at the contortions of language and science that I'm supposed to accept. And I wonder for my own sanity if I did that, and the sanity of those who would enforce it on me. I look at history for examples of cultures and society where similar things happened and if those were admirable or even vaguely destined to be robust enough to survive.

As per the generation divide that Justine cited - I'm genuinely taken aback by some of the chatter from teenagers and students and can only construe that some of them have no instinctive grasp of some fundamentals of science, biology, or even social history.

As several posters have commented, we have the preconditions for totalitarianism, but it seems that we are being told we need to accept that because good faith and people's innate goodness means that it will never happen. Because we understand politics and social history so well.

we have the preconditions for totalitarianism

This.