Can someone help me word this debate with me cousin re Trans rights/Trump?

[TornLikeNatalieImbruglia]

My cousin has shared this article on Facebook to which I commented-

I’m a bit confused... I mean this part-

“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” read the memo. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”

-seems fair enough to me? I mean you can identify however you like but it isn’t going to change what you are on a cellular level.

Below which someone else responded with this-

The problem here is that when a trans person’s identity is defined by biological sex on a form of identification, then that becomes a way for others to question or disregard their identity.

Being trans isn’t simply a matter of deciding to identify as something other than one’s assigned gender at birth; it’s an intensely personal experience that nobody chooses to go through. It’s less a case of “identifying as what you want” and more a case of “having to prove to almost everyone that this is who you are.”

Let’s say a trans person has done everything they can to get closer to the point where others treat them the same way they would treat a cisgender person. They’ve taken hormones, they’ve gone through the mandatory 2 years of psychological assessment before getting active treatment, they’ve undergone very painful and intimate surgery that takes months to recover from, they’ve gone through every legal procedure to make their status as the correct gender officiated...

then, they get told that their assigned sex is what’s actually going to define them in the eyes of the state. So this person, after having undergone every stage of their transition is going to look down at their passport – as much a method to move freely as it is a cultural symbol of absolute identity – and see that it would delegitimise all of that.

Last year’s report from stonewall reported that 45% of trans minors in the UK have attempted suicide. And that’s just the ones under 18. And they’re just the ones that lived to be able to fill in surveys. Almost all of them cited the treatment they receive as a result of transphobic abuse from other minors and adults alike as reasons for doing this. You may feel like I’m relying on emotional rhetoric here, but this issue is inherently emotional: the choice of the state to revoke the legal identities of trans people and file them with the identities that their transphobic abusers label them as is to indisputably side with the abusers. If the abusers feel supported by the government, they will feel empowered. If they feel empowered, they will act more harshly towards trans individuals. If that happens, then that suicide rate is not going to get better.

So no, it’s not about people “identifying how they want” – it’s about people being able to live a bearable life.

P.s. I somehow doubt that these mandatory legal registrations of biological sex will take intersex people into account (people with chromosomes other than xx or xy) but that’s another point for another time.

And then my cousin replied-

I have no idea how to explain in a concise way the potentially life threatening consequences this could have for an already disenfranchised demographic at high risk of violence. According to recent statistics 2 in 5 trans people have had a hate crime committed against them and 1 in 8 have been attacked by colleagues or customers at work in the last year alone. What the Trump administration is proposing is essentially the legal erasure of their very existence, revoking any protection they currently have. At the end of the day the way trans people identify barely affects the day to day life of cis people but it can be the difference between life and death for those involved.

And then linked to fucking Stonewall.

Help me form a response to this- I keep starting one and deleting it!

Just a different view on the "memo" from the Trump administration on trans people - this from a Jew. in the US .forward.com/opinion/412456/the-anti-trans-nuremberg-laws-are-upon-us/

You should ask, if you hate Trump so much, why are you doing your absolute best to get him re-elected by pushing the same insane bullshit that put people off the Democrats the last time around?

This is a good thread on why rights and respect for all groups are important and Trump is no more help than the extreme TRA view:
mobile.twitter.com/GoonerProf/status/1054813886904483841

I dont think the murder rate went down for trans people in the USA after the Obama gender memo did it?

I would point out that - in the uk at least - the term trans is increasingly used as a catchall so that while the arguments are made on the back of the poor people suffering from gender dysphoria, strongly implying it's all about transsexuals who have had/going to have surgery, a majority of that group are against the self ID legislation. In reality only 15% have had had any sort of surgical and/or hormonal/medical intervention. Most of the rest have AGP rather than gender dysphoria, the self ID legislation gives them the ability to indulge their fetish in public and worse - involve unwitting others in this.
Furthermore while people like to quote stats based on trans South American sex workers to prove how dangerous it is to be trans, actually in the UK if you’re trans you have a higher chance of being a murderer than murdered. And the suicide rate is the same as that for other individuals of the same age.

Gender-Inclusion Policies and Sexual Violence: A Longitudinal Analysis of Media Reports at Target Stores

Interesting read.

womanmeanssomething.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/A-Longitudinal-Analysis-of-Media-Reports-at-Target-Stores.pdf

Results We catalogued a total of 220 media-reported sexual incidents in Target store dating from 2003 (1 incident) to August 2017. This database is viewable at docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oju2lck3TJV FKTAm7neinY7tq1fQfS3IhPOyvqq3Kw/edit?usp=sharing. There were no media-reported incidents between 2004 and 2007. Every year saw an increase in the number of incidents (Fig. 1.); 6 in 2008, 7 in 2009, 8 in 2010, 13 in 2011, 16 in 2012, 17 in 2013, 28 in 2014, 35 in 2015, 45 in 2016, and 42 for the 8 months of 2017 (63 pro-rated). Thus 2016 and 2017 (until August) accounted for 39.5% of the total incidents.

This is a good thread on why rights and respect for all groups are important and Trump is no more help than the extreme TRA view

I read it, I am not sure it really said anything? I do not think we should allow transgender people to legally change their sex.

Well, my cousins friend is just crossing every box on the bingo sheet now-

You can have female-only spaces if you want, but should know that having that pretty much implies that trans women aren't real women. It may not be your intent and if there's anything I'm guilty of in this exchange it's not giving you the benefit of the doubt on any good intentions influencing your views, but having never met you and being presented with a response to this issue with something that seemed to directly support the actions of the memo, I don't really have a lot else to go off other than pairing your talking points with the terfy shit I've had to see my friends deal with countless times.

I understand that you are speaking from a place of conviction and passion in the beliefs of your definition of feminism, but understand that I'm coming from my own side of that too. I'm really not up for anything that remotely implies that trans peoples' identities are invalid or less important/unequal to the hardships faced by cis women, and as much as you said you respect trans peoples' identities, defining them by their biological sex as a means to exclude them from spaces is not what I would call respectful.

I'd rather not go too far into detail on the Karen White comment because the fact that someone would equate a sexual assailant who happens to be trans with the presence of trans women feels dangerously close to when people in UKIP generalise immigrants or Muslims based on a few violent examples. I do understand as a survivor of assault myself that individuals need space away from those who remind them of past assailants, but to bar trans women from women's spaces still feels like making an entire group pay for the actions of a few.

What it comes down to for me is this: you either think trans women are women, or you don't. there is no middle-ground "same but different" or "to each their own" response. We are past that. I understand that I do not know you, or your history, or that of your friends, but regardless of what circles you would prefer to socialise with, I think using that as a means to excuse the delegitimisation of trans women's identities is a low bar to set for social progression.

I've said everything I need to say and want to end this by reiterating that I've made assumptions that most likely don't reflect you as an entire person – but I stand by everything I've said with regards to the issue as a whole.

You can have female-only spaces if you want, but should know that having that pretty much implies that trans women aren't real women

Oh can we? Good, it's a relief to get that sorted. The end.

Janice Turner did the research (come to find out, it wasn't hard at all). The rate of trans suicide is only 1%

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/suicides-should-never-be-a-political-weapon-w0jlhn5v0

"Suicide is a dark trope in the trans movement. Parents who hesitate over medical intervention are told by some activists: “Better a living daughter than a dead son.” The ITV drama Butterfly, an infomercial for the trans support group Mermaids, is based upon the story of its CEO Susie Green, who took her child to Thailand for genital surgery at 16 (which was illegal in Britain and is now illegal in Thailand) and features a graphic suicide attempt. Mermaids cites high suicide rates in trans youth to push for faster, younger access to hormones and surgery. Ms Green told MPs that Gids (the NHS’s youth gender identity development service) has a suicide attempt rate of 48 per cent. This was based upon a self-selecting sample of 27 trans people aged under 26 analysed by the LGBT charity Pace.

The sane, compassionate response is more research. Let’s pull out the serious case reviews of every teen suicide to examine all possible causes, including newspaper reporting. Surely Mermaids would welcome proper, independent, methodologically-sound scientific inquiry. In the meantime, the most reliable source is Gids which says of 5,000 young patients referred between 2016 and August this year, there were three suicides and four attempts. Each death is the deepest tragedy, yet this makes a suicide rate of less than 1 per cent. Moreover, Gids director Dr Polly Carmichael has warned that suicidal discourse is “quite unhelpful”, creating a narrative around gender-diverse children “imbued with negativity and lack of resilience.”

However, trans who do get bottom surgery are 18 times more likely to kill themselves. Just my guess here, but probably because the reality after the surgery didn't meet their expectations prior to the surgery. journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885

What it comes down to for me is this: you either think trans women are women, or you don't.

Fair enough. I don't. Bye!

I understand that you are speaking from a place of conviction and passion in the beliefs of your definition of feminism, but understand that I'm coming from my own side of that too. I'm really not up for anything that remotely implies that trans peoples' identities are invalid or less important/unequal to the hardships faced by cis women, and as much as you said you respect trans peoples' identities, defining them by their biological sex as a means to exclude them from spaces is not what I would call respectful.

It's all about "being nice" to the trans person and giving them whatever they want. And plus, seeing women as non-human whose sexual boundaries do not belong to women but instead belong to men for men to give away as they see fit. When you tell these people how mean they are being to women, it doesn't even register. What does register, is that you're refusing to agree with their internalized male supremacy, and HowDareYou.

Just be sensible and keep talking sense.

It's honestly all you can do.

Repeat sense, over and over and over.

When you tell these people how mean they are being to women, it doesn't even register.

This. Time and time again I've experienced this and even now it never fails to shock me how little supposedly "decent" people give a shit about women, when they are virtue signalling about trans issues.

Not talking about TRAs of course. Many of them clearly appear to have pathological issues with empathy or seeing others as people in their own right.

Ohello My reading of that study is that trans people with surgery were three times more likely to commit suicide than their matched non-transgender control group. Not sure where you're getting the 18 times more likely from?