How to deal with DH response re trans issues

[Carikube]

I've read a lot of threads on FWR over the last few months and feel as though I know where I stand on things. However I am having issues bringing DH "over" to the cause as it were and don't know how to deal with it.
I've explained why I'm not happy with self-ID, shown him recent articles eg the one about Karen White etc but he keeps telling me that these are only a small percentage of things to worry about in the grand scheme of things.
We have three young DDs so I feel this is something I want him to get on board with (and I do have to say that on a more general basis, he is quite the feminist so I can't argue about that), but he keeps saying that we have bigger things to worry about, eg how Brexit will impact us as a family/country etc. His point is that the proportion of crimes committed by men who self-ID as women is far smaller than those committed by men against girls/women so I should focus my anger where it matters. I'm finding myself getting too emotional about his response to have a rational discussion to point out why I think he should care more.
Can anybody wiser come up with reasons to make him become more concerned?
[Might not be posting again until morning so please bear with me....]

He’s forgotten how (a) recent and (b) fragile women’s rights are.

Sports are what peal-transed my DH. Especially when he saw the new rules from the federation for the sport he’s into, and worked out that with little more than self-ID as a woman he could be high on the “female” ranking for the U.K. and potentially go pro - which he’s not talented enough to do as a male. It really shocked him. (Like your DH, he had sympathy with the wider concerns but it all seemed very far removed from affecting our lives, especially as the only trans person we know is a decent sort. It was when it affected an area he has expertise in - so he could see what men would potentially have to gain from self-ID - that he suddenly got it properly.)

Imagine sitting in a supermarket cafe and one of hismdaughters goes into the loos on her own. Straight behind her, a man follows her in.

What does he do? Just sit there? or race over there?

How would he know the difference between:
a man
a man who intends on doing harm
a man dressed as a woman
a man dressed as a woman who intends on doing harm?

Tell him your brain is able to worry about more than one thing. I have views on Brexit and the gender critical debate. I don't think I am particularly amazing in that capacity. However not sure how I would feel about DH wanting to 'bring me over' to a particular point of view.

Tell him it should’t really matter how he feels about it. When women, and in this case his wife, whom he ought to care about, tell him that we think it is big deal, then it is a big deal. He won’t be affected, but women will. So this is very much an issue where men should take women’s word for it.

Thank you for your responses. Each time I've tried to point these things out to him, he just says that in the grand scheme of things, these issues are just one tiny percentage of what our DDs will have to worry about in life. I just can't get any further with him (eg he says there's more chance of them getting run over by a bus or attacked by a man still presenting as a man than there is of them getting hurt by a MTF) that I'm lost as to where to go next. We've just walked home in silence as i couldn't talk to him any more and i am completely at a loss

He's right it is just one of many issues DDs will potentially face. What's pissing you off? That he doesn't seem to be taking it seriously?

Sports is a good idea. Show some examples that have been linked before. The park run thing as well. Men calling themselves women taking top spots with no transparency. So high performing women are being silently and invisibly pushed out.

No, because this gender ideology stuff is going to be taught to DDs in school.
Get him to watch some Riley J Dennis videos, and that godawful BISH thing www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3357713-BISH-proudly-supported-by.
This is the kind of shit that the kids will learn. AND if your children end up having same-sex attraction, they might get bullied for their "genital preferences."

If the 'small risk' was that your purse might get stolen, then sure. But the risk is about really serious crimes like rape. So while the risk may be small the impact is very very high. Plus we have to factor in that we don't know from looking who is a rapist and who isn't so we have to protect ourselves generally.

It is important to make sure that female women can name themselves and their biology because that is how we make sure we are protected in terms of rights.

And yes, Brexit is important but so is protecting oneself against assault and legal/social erasure.

Tell him to stop being a patronising nob mansplainer. Who is he to say you are focusing on the wrong things, overblowing things etc? You are a grown woman who knows fine well what you are worried about and why.

And yes, I agree with sports. Maybe he can listen to Joe Rogan talking about Fallon Fox.

One of the things they'll have to deal with Carikube is the concept that they are inferior as women to men.

The genderist ideology says that women are innately aligned with the gender stereotypes assigned to females. This is the oldest sexism, it doesn't matter whether men are feeling the bumps on our heads and deciding we're innately inferior, or measuring our brains and deciding we're innately inferior, or making up Aesop's Fables and calling it evolutionary psychology (women are naturally easily distracted flibbertigibbets because we had to be to spot berries easily!), or inventing "gender identity" and declaring that real women identify with being innately inferior and anyone who doesn't isn't really a woman.

It's all the same stuff and it's a lot more immediately harmful to girls than the remote risk of stranger attack, whether that stranger identifies as a man or not.

Your DH and his apathy is part of the problems they will face. He's minimising. He's able to because he doesn't feel it will affect him.

At this rate, when your DD's go to Uni, they won't have a women only dorm, or toilets. They won't have women only hospital wards. Thats about their privacy, not just the risk of being attacked.

Women and girls face harassment and abuse every day. Self ID allows those abusive men access to women in women's spaces where they are vulnerable and possibly alone. All men. Not just men IDing as women, all men. Any man who wants into the girls changing room. Now what kind of man wants into the girls changing room?

But also what are you asking him to do? Go out and campaign? Start a Twitter fight with Owen Jones? Or just acknowledge your fears? 'Cos if it's just the last one and he won't do that because it's beneath his notice then you have a bigger problem than transactivism I'd say...

You may think this a bit extreme but if my H told me there were more important things to worry about than the safely of my daughter I would tell him that he is the one who needs to get his priorities straight.

Does he understand the 85% of transgender women having a penis statistic?
If your daughter goes on a residential school trip is he OK that she shares a room with a boy who declares he's a lesbian girl?

The teaching in schools and the social contagion is what does my head in. In Scotland, choosing your gender is going on the 5-9 year olds curriculum, without the possibility of opting out.

If I were you I'd play the long game OP. You don't need to convince him all in one go. Just keep chipping away at it (by mentioning relevant news stories etc). As others have said, try to relate it to your own DDs where possible. But at the end of the day he needs to make up his own mind. It's not a requirement of marriage that you agree on everything!

Yes, I have been told exact same thing by woman and wait for it ... if its hysterical, its historical. no I kid you not. and told It won't affect me. Well it already is.

Womens sport
Crime stats ( Karen white committing sexual assault with HER penis)
Lesbians told they are transphobic if they are not open to women penis.
your daughters no longer having rights to all female spaces, does he want a man standing beside his daughter while she showers in her locker room. It will happen, anyone saying it won't, is minimising.
your daughters access to female hospital wards
and female medical professionals for smears etc
how about female police officers if ,god forbid they ever had to report assault
medical stats, how can we accurately calculate breast cancer / prostate cancer etc survival rates
does he want your daughters to have women representing them in parliament.

why don't you identify as a man. Then he will be gay and could be a LBGT advisor to Labour.

This is minimising and I know it is so hard when it happens to us. Have you looked at Fair Play for Women's site. also their is a thread with lots of resources. could someone post it, if they know where it is.

I think you have posted this so that you can have your views validated and have everyone nod and agree and say ‘oh yes, you are so right, your terrible DH and his lack of understanding’ etc etc ad nauseum. If so then you have come to absolutely the right place. This is an echo chamber of the highest order.

However, just to change it up a bit here (I know it is unusual, but I’m a feminist with a different view..) - you really need to understand this board is like being in the kkk if you are a racist. Of course everyone will agree with you here, but it doesn’t mean it’s ok. If you actually expressed your very niche ideas with the wider, more tolerant and let’s face it more realistic & less ‘oh fuck my biggest fear is that there will be a big beardy man in a dress waiting to rape me in every toilet’ world then very few people would agree with you. It’s just not true.

Ive been on MN for 12 years & I worry about this board when I come across it, despite having once been part of it, but then I remember it’s really not a thing, just a very tiny minority shouting loudly in a box in a corner of the internet that no one else can hear, or rather nobody is listening & those that are are mostly .

TBH Your DH sounds great, he’s making a perfectly valid point, maybe try & see his point of view? Most of us old school feminists who don’t hold these views have long gone from this board, I mean there is literally no point pissing in the wind.

For perspective maybe try & think instead how you would feel if your DD got in with a group of extremists & could no longer listen to both sides of an argument, even when it started to threaten relationships with people she loved and respected. Perhaps if that happened you’d encourage her to try & have a bit of perspective? See both sides?

I know this is pointless, hence the name change - I still enjoy MN despite all this & don’t want to be hunted down with the burning crosses & pointy hats. But seriously- it’s not worth the real life argument with your DH, this has no actual real impact in real life, and I’m just stepping in NOTE & I’m sorry - won’t be back, won’t come & look at the vultures trying to pick apart my words & frankly couldn’t care less...I’ve read the propoganda, I don’t agree - you do your thing, I’ll do mine, let’s see what happens eh!

Just trying to give you a bit of perspective OP. I hope you are rational enough to listen or at least accept that perhaps other people have other opinions which are valid
and maybe you’ve got in a little
deep in here & actually it’ll all be fine & there are far more important things to worry about - not least of which is actual feminism...

Always nice to hear from the "real" feMANists who are verbally abusive to women and totes have their priorities in order.

Welcome to Mumsnet yepthisisanewone

OP - it's small steps. Most of us on here started from the 'of course transwomen are women' and wanting to be inclusive and kind. It's only been as the threats, the intimidation and the nature of some of the people leading this have been revealed , that you start to question it. This is the biggest threat to women that I've ever seen in my lifetime and the rolling back of safeguarding for children that TRAs are attempting is frightening.

As MangoSplit says, play the long game. Things are starting to unravel publicly so there's much more awareness of what is happening as TRAs are no longer as successful in censoring the news as they were.

He's allowed to have a different opinion to you.

I look on it from a risk assessment pov. Yes he's right in that there's a very low likelihood of you/your dd's directly encountering risk but if you do the severity could be very high. This is enough for any decent risk assessment to trigger action to minimise that risk.

I don’t know about “quite the feminist “ to be honest. Men telling women that there “are bigger things to worry about” and instructing women on where to “focus their anger’ are not feminists.

If he can only think in terms of direct threats to his daughters then you’ll have to limit yourself to the limits of his understanding. Talk to him about safeguarding while his daughters are children; the effects if they play sports and are faced with having to compete with male bodied “women”; if they have trouble dealing with an increasingly pornified culture and are convinced that cutting their breasts off and poisoning themselves with testosterone is an escape; if they are lesbian and are denied the right to set their own sexual boundaries.

Talk to him about how defining “woman” as a bundle of stereotypes is
damaging to his daughters; show him the sexist lists of “feminine” qualities that his daughters will be expected to live by.

Explain to him that feminism is about the rights of women and girls and that there is more to it than the right not to be raped. Women’s rights are under attack - explain to him that, as a mother, you want your daughters to live in a better world for women, not one in which rights already won are lost. Maybe he thinks none of this will effect his daughters- that he will somehow be able to protect them; but he cannot protect them from the world they have to live in.

If after all this he still patronisingly dismisses your concerns then you’ll just have to accept that either he is not capable of understanding or he doesn’t care.

My DH doesn't know I'm the local 'stickerwoman' or that I've written to my MP.

He won't discuss it either...just assumes I'm having one of my ranty episodes. So taking direct, albeit somewhat cloak-and-dagger, action is making me feel so much better. Let's face it, what difference would it actually make it he did agree?