#notalltranswomen

[BadasIwannaB]

An argument people often make when women voice their concerns about women only spaces:

‘Well hang on a second, I know quite a few trans women and they are just considerate nice people who just want to get on with their lives etc.’

Why can’t people see that this is spectacularly missing the point in just the same way as arguing ‘well NOT ALL MEN are [rapists/sexual harassers/misogynists/a danger to women]’?

I mean, I’m friends with a lot of men - they aren’t all bad. I’m even in an intimate relationship with one. But would that be a legit rebuttal to the arguments that women should have protected spaces without men? Clearly not! I’m not insulting my (or your) friends who are men, or implying men are all rapists etc. by agreeing that women should have protected spaces without men in them.

Similarly, then, why think that those who argue that these protected spaces should not be available to trans women must be assuming that all trans women are rapists/sexual harrassers etc., and must be saying something that’s terribly insulting to their (or your) friends who are trans women?

Oh to have a time machine and come up with another word to mean the feminine "gender"!

The problem garden is that your position works on handmaids up to a point, but it won't work on narcs.

But handmaids are handmaids to narcs not to you or to their own good sense.

So when the narcs start raging, screaming and threatening suicide because the handmaids have started to defect, the handmaids will immediately do whatever it takes to appease them and say that sex = gender again. You'll be back at square 1.

Gender identity is a belief, nothing more.

Furthermore if you say that the word woman can mean both womansexed and womangendered how will that work in practice?

The second you allow them to determine the terms of debate - that is to say that gender identity exists and gender is presentation, when gender is actually a tool of social oppression - you've conceded.

I wish you'd found the answer, Garden, but you have not. Most of us, as I say, have been where you are. We learned.

These people do not want acknowledgement of their gender: they want to abolish sex. Don't be fooled. And don't ask us to be fooled.

And they believe we are trying to hurt or exclude transpeople

And when the transpeople chide them for taking your 'transphobic' position that makes them suicidal they'll fall back in line. Narcs have handmaidens over a barrel.

These people do not want acknowledgement of their gender: they want to abolish sex. Don't be fooled. And don't ask us to be fooled.

Hasn't Stephen Whittle even admitted this is their ultimate aim?

Hasn't Stephen Whittle even admitted this is their ultimate aim?

Yes.

I'm still not getting it, Garden.

I'll ask again, because I understand your basic premise, but how do you think enshrining the tenets of a quasi religious belief in law is going to work out?

Because, you know, giving those kinds of intangible beliefs the backing of law has gone so well in the past, hasn't it?

It's like you're saying, in order to retain sexed based protections, we have to acknowledge and encode in law the religion of genderism. I'm not remotely convinced that is the answer, and moreover, I'm not sure you've fully thought through the possible consequences.

So garden you have a service or facility which is for women only, meaning 'womensexed' only. How do you keep 'womangendered' people out without being 'transphobic'?

Garden - seriously, you can think whatever you want. But you have fundamentally misunderstood what is happening. The aim is to abolish sex. Any enshrining of "gender" in law is a step towards that. You're playing right into their hands. You haven't found a gotcha solution: you're just on the journey to full realisation that many of us have already taken. Don't you think this has been hashed out a thousand times already? Don't you think it's been offered to the Followers of Genderism already? Because it has. Gender Identity is a Trojan horse to abolish sex. Putting it into law is just getting us closer to abolishing sex. Even this clueless government knows that and has abandoned the disastrous Miller report suggesting we do exactly that.

Floral because you have to give some recognition and acknowledgement of the rights and status of trans people. You might not agree with it but you do, especially in light of the UK’s obligations under the ECHR. You can’t just say gender identity doesn’t exist- especially eg when it comes to discrimination at work.

Garden actually thinks that we put Gender Identity into law and that what will happen is all the pomo-addled nitwits abandon their "trans sisters", all the handmaidens will go "fab, job done", all the dudebros will forget about misogyny, and all the male supremacists will play happily in their Gender Identity sandbox never stirring from it.

Seriously. Never. Going. To. Happen.

I am not saying it doesn't exist. I'm entirely aware of the existence of it. And yes, for the billionth bloody time, transgender people should be free to identify, and present as they wish without oppression. Everyone should.

How will you code that specifically into law in a meaningful way that won't have the slightest impact on sex based protections? How will you 'protect' the 'right' to gender identity in such a way that won't perpetuate the oppression inherent in it?