Excellent Sarah Ditum blog post

[TigerDrankAllTheWaterInTheTap]

sarahditum.com/2018/09/10/six-years-in-the-gender-wars/

For women, it’s the idea that being female gives women access to “cis privilege”: a particularly striking example comes up in Juliet Jacques book Trans, which claims that not having a female adolescence causes transwomen to suffer from lack of experience in negotiating sexual violence. Shout out to that guy who made dirty phone calls to me on my work experience placement, I guess.

Wow!

For trans people, it’s more complicated. They still need a political movement. There’s an opportunity to reframe it around clearly defined objectives and a will to resolve conflicts with other groups rather than simply to steamroller them. They might take the lessons of the women’s movement about building and running services that work for them, rather than trying to hijack institutions developed by women for women. Most of all, I hope they walk away from the absolutist ideology of gender identity and accept that “being trans” has an extraordinary range of causes: from traumatised female adolescents trying to control their bodies, to effeminate young boys whose parents think playing with dolls is pathologically girly, to those like Caitlyn Jenner who cheerfully concede that dressing femininely has an erotic kick (“dressing up like this is the equivalent of having sex with myself, male and female at the same time”).

those like Caitlyn Jenner who cheerfully concede that dressing femininely has an erotic kick (“dressing up like this is the equivalent of having sex with myself, male and female at the same time”).

Oh yuck, go and have a wank in whatever clothes you want, and leave the word woman alone

Bumping. Great article - thanks for flagging.

That was excellent. Thank you, Sarah Ditum.

Just finished reading it. Thank you, Sarah.

The conclusion is really powerful:

There is no such thing as gender identity.

Sex matters.

When we pretend sex doesn’t matter, women lose.

It’s an excellent article.

YY to every word of that

Great piece. I wasn't sure about bringing Israel into it, as that's a very different issue, but otherwise very good.

I was particularly struck by this passage:

There are 125 trans prisoners in England and Wales. 60 of them are sex offenders. Now, trans activists will have to decide: either being trans correlates with being a sex offender, or (and this is transparently the likelier option) sex offenders are identifying themselves as trans in the hope of gaining access to women they can victimise. What activists cannot do any longer is claim that no one would identify as trans for nefarious purposes. Clearly, they do.

Great article. Soul searching but defiant.

Excellent article

vv interesting piece

From my own arguing, I've discovered that Sarah is MAX TERF NO.1 in many people's eyes, and they will discount anything she says (and you say, if you quaite reasonably share her excellent work).

She gets a huge amount of shit and I applaud her for sticking it out. I also didn't know she was prev "on the other side", tho!

Excellent essay. Written with clarity, compassion and humanity.

Great blog. I really like Sarah Ditum's writing. I hadn't realised she was previously on the other side either but I guess we all were at some point. Or most of us anyway. I can't say I'd given it much thought at all until about 5 years ago.

Not sure about making the link to anti-semitism but apart from that I think the essay is spot on.

(aye, i used to hover approvingly on Jezebel back in the day, until the no-platforming of Germaine G woke me up)

excellent article

Very good read. Thank you, OP, for posting the link

Same as a previous poster has said - this, from the article:

There is no such thing as gender identity.

Sex matters.

When we pretend sex doesn’t matter, women lose.

This is absolutely superb, and now my go-to piece when I want a friend to know about the whole shitstorm. Well done and THANKS, Sarah Ditum!

Just reading through (and following links - ‘twill take some time!) to support the statement ‘the majority of transwomen retain their male genitalia’ she links to an article on a 2016 survey of US plastic surgeons. Does anyone know of UK figures for the same?

Based on the trans community's own figures it's less than 5%.

GIRES figures are based on trans umbrella people being 1% of population so 650k and according to the evidence they gave to the trans Inquiry 30k have "sought medical treatment" (both sexes). That would be other surgery and gender clinic support as well as SRS. It's a tiny tiny number.

These figures are a few years old but they are the ones used by government in general.

Less than 5% retain their male genitalia? So most do have surgery? Or did you mean the other way around

Less than 5% have surgery.