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?

The only people I have met who have been pro self Id have been ME men. One (A) a righ-on Corbynista and the other (B) a 'let it all hang out' artsy, trendy ladies man.

I might just ask A if, as a Muslim, he'd be happy for his little girls to be in changing rooms with men or compete against boys in gymnastics, and B if he would sleep with one, or be bothered if his (religious) mum and (religious) sister couldn't refuse Bernard Blessed in a female nurses outfit offering to do their smear teat.

Op how is it going? Did you manage to get him to listen?

I'm with your DP. The current attitude towards trans kids is how people treated gay youth 30 years ago.

I had this exact problem with my DH. He would cringe just hearing me question the trans activist ideology, and would shut me down every time. But I persevered with talking about it even though it would end in a row every time (very unusual for us).

Last week he amazed me by pulling someone on twitter up for their use of the word "terf" and then arguing the gender critical viewpoint. I could have wept with joy.

I've always thought of him as a feminist, so it was a real eye-opener for me to see how little he cared about this issue because, let's face it, it doesn't really affect him.

Dakanis remind me of how being gay means taking untested medication that can render you sterile, surgically removing healthy body parts etc? No? That’s because it’s not the same, not a bit, and you bloody know it.

OP, I find it concerning that your DP seems to have so little regard to safeguarding yet works with vulnerable young people.

RiverTam I never said being trans and being gay were the same, I said the negative attitudes towards trans kids is the same as gay kids were treated 30 years ago.
There was plenty of pearl clutching about poor innocent boys and girls being violated by disgusting perverts. I even remember it being debated on Radio 4.

I never said being trans and being gay were the same, I said the negative attitudes towards trans kids is the same as gay kids were treated 30 years ago.

You won't find "negative atittudes" towards trans kids on here - quite the reverse, we have their best interests and safety very much at heart.

You need also to remember that a fair number of women posting on here were those "gay kids" of 30 (more, in my case) years ago and we know perfectly well that there is a massive difference, because the two are not the same at all.

Does your DP realise that most trans women/trans girls describe themselves as lesbians, i.e. they are sexually attracted to women/girls?

I think a lot of men still have this idea that any man who presents as at all feminine must be gay, and since trans women (try to) present as totally female, they are obviously gay (along the lines of most drag queens) and therefore present no sexual threat to women.

As most of us on here now realise, this is not the case at all - the teenage trans girl who could be sharing a dormitory with any of our teenage daughters is most likely physically male, sexually attracted to girls and with all the teenage hormones making them as randy as any other teenage boy, so most definitely a potential threat.

we have their best interests and safety very much at heart.

This is exactly what my church leader used to say who was a big fan of gay conversion therapy.

It all depends on your view of 'best interests' and 'safety'

I was one of those gay kids 30 years ago. Encountered no pearl clutching or really anyone who was bothered. Belonged to an LGB group (as it was then) of teenagers and young adults who all got along, including the transsexual members, welcomed everyone and took care of everyone, especially the new and scared. Very little politicking. The actual issues were the more feminine guys who were picked on by other men (toxic masculinity), jobs where you needed to not let people find out you were gay, and no legal rights recognised with your partner. That was discrimination in law, lesser rights than others had, withheld solely due to being gay. Those thankfully have all been righted.

Its ridiculous to equate transgenderism to homosexuality and I actually find it very offensive since transgenderism is by far, in extreme, the most direct and serious homophobia I've ever experienced in my life as a lesbian.

Dakinis - you do realise that todays gay kids are being told that they have been born in wrong body but can magically 'become a girl/boy'. Let alone the heterosexual kids who dont happen to conform to society-constructed gender stereotypes? We are being told to parrot 'trans women are women' and 'women have a lady penis' (by which they dont mean someone born a wan who has had surgery to form a pseudo or is out of other body parts).

Mtf are very vocal but ftm are almost invisible - why is that? When the majority of kids at gender clinics are girls - why is this happening now?

Ask him if David Challoner (sp) had decided to be “Lucy” full time and apply to be a guide leader (which under their new guidelines he now could), would he be happy with his daughters going to guidecamp under their supervision?

I dont think Lucy would meet the age limit maybe when she grows up a little... Canadian Stephoknee is a bit older isn't she - maybe she fancies a part time job?

Medical transition means sterility and a loss of sexual function. Can't imagine many LGB people signing up for that, Dakinis. Have you heard gay men talking about how much they love dick?

Child transition is going to end up a far bigger scandal than Thalidomide or lobotomy. What is being done to these kids, particularly in America, where girls are being given double mastectomies long before they're old enough to buy a beer, is downright wicked.

I thank God for the far more cautious approach of the NHS, though even here kids too young to drive are being allowed to medically transition.

Transgender is nothing like being gay. Trans ideology is homophobia on steroids, ffs. Having to become a lifelong medical patient, having the grave side effects of years on very toxic drugs, being left with a small child's penis or losing 10 IQ points (both side effects of supposedly harmless puberty blockers): none of these spell being your true, authentic self to me.

I have a niece currently in a residential eating disorders unit. No one is pretending that her life threatening condition needs endorsing. The girls with multiple MH issues, with autism or a history of abuse don't need hormones. They need support and intensive talking therapy to come to terms with themselves.

A high degree of distress about our sex and our changing bodies is normal for teenage girls. This is a new variation on bulimia or cutting. It's important to get the girls safely through this acute distress without any permanent harm.

Evidence suggests that about 90% of "trans" kids desist and that the majority are not trans, but LGB. Medical transition is a form of conversion therapy. The tiny number who may still wish to transition can do so as adults.

"The current attitude towards trans kids is how people treated gay youth 30 years ago."

Wow, so 30 years ago society was also worried about gender stereotypes getting even more entrenched in children; gay and autistic children being sterilised and pushed towards sex-changes en-masse (increasing in girls over 4000% in just a few years), with social contagion through the internet a big factor? Amazing! History really does repeat itself!

Trans is the modern eating disorders in teenagers. God knows what it will be next.

My problem with trans issues is the way that women are so rapidly and almost gleefully excluded. Don't say this, don't ask questions, don't go into the loos if you're bothered by males being there, don't stand for election unless you say TWAW, don't say anything that could get your kids targeted, don't expect to compete on a level playing field.

It disadvantages women so quickly. And some men are so pleased about it.

Hope your DH is just unthinking rather than one of the resentful types.

Just sitting on the urge to shake people while saying 'Oh FFS talk sense and wake up!' is disadvantaging me, right now. I've just had an email with gender pronouns all over the bottom of it and the sign-off 'Mx'. I don't CARE what your gender is, ducky, I want to know if you've done the work.

Dakinis do you not see the way in which current trans ideology is harmful to women? It seeks to redefine what being a woman even means, reinforces damaging gender stereotypes and erases the right of women to have same sex spaces. It isn't remotely comparable to the fight for gay rights. In fact it is appallingly homophobic.

Dakins so you don’t think that lying to children by telling them they can change sex is a problem? Turning them into lifelong medical patients, giving them medication that is untested for this use and can render them sterile, that’s fine, is it? Encouraging the surgical removal of healthy body parts? All at an age when they can’t possibly understand the full ramifications of these decisions, that’s all tickety-boo, is it?

Gender critical feminists care a lot about gender-non-conforming children - after all, a lot of them used to be gender-non-conforming children. Luckily they weren’t sterilised or had double mastectomies - quite important when you hit your 20s and 30s and start to think about having children. Such a shame some children are having that choice ripped away from them by those who care about them so much, isn’t it?

Exactly the same situation here, OP. His brand of feminism holds that women are basically the same as men, therefore he assumes that we want to be treated the same as men. He just doesn't relate to what the lived experience of a girl/ woman is, and that we do sometimes need special treatment in order to be liberated.

He considers that sex separation is papering over the cracks in the system, rather than fixing the problems.

He did concede that noone should be pressuring lesbians into sexual relationships with transgender women, but generally is disappointed in me for displaying such bigotry, and lack of concern for an oppressed minority, when he had previously thought of me as open minded.

Dakinis "There was plenty of pearl clutching about poor innocent boys and girls being violated by disgusting perverts. "

Given revelations about child sex abuse scandals involving boys and girls, maybe that "pearl clutching" was justified, after all?

Jacky if we're talking paedophile vicars then yes you are right, but I was talking about homosexuality which is completely unrelated.

Dakinis

Your sneery picking out of my comment and response This is exactly what my church leader used to say who was a big fan of gay conversion therapy. is par for the TRA course, to be honest.

I've spent my professional life advocating for children who have suffered some of the most appalling abuse imaginable and I take great exception to your implication that my (and others') fears for the mutilation of children - from younger and younger ages - based on TRA ideology that tells them gender constructs we've spent years fighting against mean they should mutilate their bodies permanently - is NOT based purely around the safeguarding of vulnerable children.

This comment is also relevant and I endorse it:

Its ridiculous to equate transgenderism to homosexuality and I actually find it very offensive since transgenderism is by far, in extreme, the most direct and serious homophobia I've ever experienced in my life as a lesbian.

Me TOO.

The current attitude towards trans kids is how people treated gay youth 30 years ago.

Dakanis - we GC feminists agree with this statement. The way these young kids are being medicated and encouraged to have surgery so that they can conform to gender stereotypes is scarily similar to gay conversion therapy of old.