Discussing GC issues with DP.

[GreenGoblin0]

Long time lurker of this board although have been frequenting Twitter much more of late.

Have had some awful arguments with DP over the GRA consultation and over trans stuff generally. I find myself getting more and more angry about what is going on but he doesn't seem to understand. We don't really argue normally about anything.

For context we're both very left wing and usually agree on things politically. He gets some things (agrees Karen White shouldn't have been in women's prison, agrees womens sports are an issue) but I've tried to raise the GG and BG guidelines with him and he just doesn't seem to get it. He thinks it's parents that would have the issue and girls would just "accept" that trans girls are girls not boys so it's totally fine for them to share changing rooms and accommodation on overnight trips and also it's not the same as having "mixed sex" changing rooms because trans girls are girls and not boys. When i said it's a safeguarding issue he came up with the "that's what they said about gay ppl" line.

He also believes TWAW and so think I'm denying trans ppl exist when I say I don't agree with this.

Partly I think he doesn't understands the issues fully, struggling to find a way to get things across to him without it ending in an argument. Any ideas?

Can he explain in what objective sense, which doesn't require redefining the word 'woman', that TWAW?

Maybe start by asking him to define what the word 'man' is?

You might want to read Jane Claire Jones: Gay Rights and Trans Rights - A Compare and Contrast

It's well worth reading because it lays out why it's an unbelievably powerful but false equivalence to conflate gay rights and trans rights.

What I want to do here is think through why the concept of ‘discrimination-as-phobia’ worked for the gay rights movement, and why, despite superficial similarities, it doesn’t accurately capture what is at stake in the trans rights debate, and actually serves as a tool of political propaganda and obfuscation to push that agenda through. That is, I’m going to argue that accusations of ‘homophobia’ were a politically powerful and basically on-the-money part of gay rights discourse, while the use of ‘transphobia’ is an inaccurate parallel which grossly distorts public perceptions of the issues involved in the trans rights debate, and is doing so in the service of actually preventing that debate taking place.

janeclarejones.com/2018/09/09/gay-rights-and-trans-rights-a-compare-and-contrast/

Safeguarding is not about the risk from trans individuals - its because it puts vulnerable groups in a position where they can not challenge anyone. Even someone who is acting from bad faith and ill intent.

Start with biology! The 80% of trans men with no bodywork done...

I'm assuming he has a mum, gran, sister, daughter, niece... Point out the women only spaces that will be at risk - hospitals, prisons, changing rooms, women only gym sessions, refuges, rape crisis, not being able to refuse a male bodied nurse doing your smear or mamogram...

Not to mention girls competing against boys in athletics, gymnastics and Sports.

The recent Greens case - the deltails of their backgrounds is awful - and their choice to try lobby to change laws?

Follow the money, follow the motives.

Would he fuck one?

This simple question puts the issues in their ball court not ours.

I came on to suggest the Jane Clare Jones article as well. My dp gets what I’m saying but also feared so much being transphobic that he never fully accepted it. That article made a lot of sense to him.

I'm guessing you don't have daughters, it's really easy to explain when you have daughters.

He also believes TWAW
No he doesn't. Ask him about a hypothetical threesome.

Its not his place to tell women how to do feminism, or run a women only domestic violence shelter.

He thinks it's parents that would have the issue and girls would just "accept" that trans girls are girls not boys so it's totally fine for them to share changing rooms and accommodation on overnight trips

He has a point that certainly some girls will happily view trans girls as girls. But he seems to think they all will. I’d pick that apart with him. What about the ones that don’t?

Dressed the might but it's a different thing in the loos or naked in the changing rooms. Or being beaten solid in every race or competition by Lizzy who was Lance last term.

I'm a bit knackered so my suggestions are few and vague. Doubtless someone else will be along in a minute.

I appreciate that he's not gay, but perhaps ask him if gay men should have sex with women who describe themselves as men or be classed as transphobic. I know Owen Jones, a gay journalist who said lesbians should have sex with men who identify as women (or be labelled transphobic) went very quiet when women challenged him that on that basis he should be prepared to perform cunnilingus on a transman.

Or if transgirls on Guide camps get a girl pregnant how could that possibly happen, being as they're all girls together and all.

Or the statistic that although mixed sex/gender neutral changing is still quite uncommon, how come 90% of sexual assaults on happening in these spaces. Does it have anything to do with male violence?

Ask him, repeatedly if necessary, if he is familiar with the fact that men commit 90% of violent and 98% of sex crimes.

Because I think his problem is that, like far too many men, he just doesn't see - or know about - the constant risk assessment women make from puberty onwards, or the enormous lengths that men will go to access female or child victims. They will train for years, build whole careers in teaching or medicine. They'll join the priesthood. By the time the scandals had rocked the Catholic church across the world it was estimated that about 5% of priests were paedophiles. A very much larger percentage than in the general population. And why? Because paedophiles realized that joining the church gave them unrivalled access. Men will go where there's opportunity. Predators look for loopholes. And Self-ID is a lovely great big loophole.

Does he know anything about safeguarding? Because that's a very straightforward route to exploring the hazards.

He sounds like a dick, tbh.

Does he view a woman who merely puts on 'mens clothes' and says they are Mr Bill Smith is an actual man?

What if Dr Smith wants to check his prostate or lump in his testicles? Or change next to him (the worst is that he will be embarrassed).

Jesus I'm slow. There were no replies when I started writing. By the time I'd posted there were 9.

It was a long post and you are tired!

The superb Kathleen Stock tackling why trans rights are not analogous to POC rights no matter how many people, mostly with beards have got emotional at (her) online

And just why, women seeking to retain their spaces and rights are not analogous to white racists holding onto their privilege and fighting laws to give POC rights

twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1040646305805201409

Would he fuck one?

This is the question to ask IMO. Amazing how many lefty men who seem so keen to tell women to accept that TWAW don't seem to keen on this idea. It's almost as if they DON'T really believe that TWAW when it affects them.

Thanks for all your replies..have just come across the JCJ article..hoping he will commit to reading it all as it's so long but very good

We do have two daughters

I have said a lot of the things you've all suggested

He's really not a dick..he works with vulnerable groups (without saying too much) including some young ppl in a very woke environment in a liberal city.

A lot of the things posters have said I've mentioned and he does seem to agree on some things but because he thinks that the progressive thing to believe is that TWAW and the only TW he has met are very vulnerable he seems them primarily as a vulnerable minority who need to be protected.

I have asked him would he have sex with a TW yes and he said sthing like "well maybe in a different time/world" (ie I'm with you and we are in a committed relationship so I don't need to contemplate ever have sex with anyone else ever again so I can give a cop out answer. )

Okay so ask him if he will consider himself a gay man if you transition

Is he attracted to TW?
Because even if he’s in a committed relationship with you, it’s normal and acceptable to acknowledge attractiveness to other people even if one would never act on it. So does he find TW attractive? If he thinks they are women and he is straight, then the answer should be Yes. Else he’s transphobic.

Oh and i mentioned the stat on sexual violence in mixed sex changing rooms and he said "they wouldn't be totally mixed sex. (Ie it's just TW and TWAW)

*attractiveness in other people

So - he agrees that some transwomen might be a danger to vulnerable women (e.g. Karen White) but thinks not a single teenage boy who identifies as trans could possibly be any threat to girls if allowed into situations where those girls are vulnerable? Ask him to explain - how does he know all these other ones are safe?

Does he not get that girls will feel uncomfortable (to say the least) regardless of whether or not the boy is a real danger or not? Girls have a right to dignity as well as safety. Talk to him about girls having periods and not wanting males in their space.

Yes i mentioned periods tonight. I was really ranting at that point though so He may have switched off by then.

I realise he's your husband so presumably you love him very much, but god I am sick to the back teeth of lefty dude bros (or as Glinner memorably described them, "wee woke wazzocks") and their virtue signalling shite WHEN THEY HAVE NO DOG IN THIS FIGHT.

Assuming he's heterosexual, ask him if, back in the days when he was young free and single, he'd have been prepared to fellate a transwoman's penis. If the answer is no, then he's a fucking hypocrite, because he no more believes TWAW than you do.

Also, ask him whose side he would take if one of your daughters came home terribly upset because she'd been made to take a shower after PE with a transgirl with intact penis.

FermatsTheorem there have been quite a few of these threads about husbands appalling attitudes re GRA and trans issues. Like you I am heartily sick of men telling women what they have to accept, they have NO RIGHT TO DO THIS IT IS NOT UP TO THEM TO DECIDE.

I'd better shut up because I feel a rant coming on and I'm tired so it would be epic.