Peak GC Moment?

[CantUnderstandNoThing]

I've namechanged for this because I'm a bit nervous of the vitriol I have seen directed at others with a differing opinion.

I know there's been a few threads with people sharing the moments they hit "peak trans", often citing individuals (Karen, Lily etc) or moments that led them to their GC beliefs.

I've realised I've hit peak GC, or perhaps peak t--f would be more appropriate, and I was wondering if anyone else has? For me, the peaking moment was the interview with India and Posie. I felt very uncomfortable with how offensive and discriminatory Posie's argument was. And really, it just came across as hateful. I realised I didn't want to be aligned with that.

The issues of violence towards women, safe spaces and the issues in women's sport are obviously very important and absolutely need discussion but the current angle of "women don't have penises" isn't helping that at all (imo obviously).

Anyone else feel the same? Or starting to feel the same?

I’ve also seen arbitary lines drawn up on what makes a woman. Women don’t have penises - yet surgery can give trans people vaginas.

And I know the thread has moved on but this I do find deeply offensive. I find this statement extremely sexist.

And it is not a fact, it is not reality based. The vagina is an organ, part of the female reproductive system. Surgeons can not create a vagina, they create a facsimile which does not function as a vagina does. The only similarity is that a penis can be inserted into both. And “a man can stick a penis in it” is not the defining characteristic of a vagina; it is not the only thing that matters about vaginas; and it is not the primary most important function of a vagina.

There’s no “arbitrary line” being drawn here. A woman is an adult human female - of the sexual reproductive class capable of producing ova and gestating young. That is exactly what a woman is. Being a woman has nothing to do with feelings, or abilities, or talents, or preferred hobbies and manner of dress. The only thing that all women have in common is their reproductive role. That’s it.

Floral

MrsCupCake My relative is an adult human female

Absolutely no. It's not possible to change sex.

Good question. What does “living as a woman” mean? It’s different for all of is. My experience will be very different from the Queen’s, Kim Kardashian, a nun or an East European sex worker. You tell me what the definitive answer is?

Having a female body and the material reality that comes with that. That is the only thing that all women have in common. The Queen, Kim Kardashian, a nun, an Eastern European sex worker: they all have a female body. It's the only experience that all women have in common, and it's an experience that no male person will ever have.

lunamoth581

Good Post.

No-one has told me why my relative, who has a female body (apart from inside) and who looks 100% female in terms of build and features, needs to be stopped from using the ladies?

My impression is that most women used to be fine with this and transsexuals using women's changing rooms wasn't much of a problem. I also get the impression that most transsexuals were conscious that they were different and didn't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, so for e.g. if they still had a penis they wouldn't be flashing it around in a communal changing room. But with self-id, and other associated trans-ideologies there is an attempt to remove any form of legal and social gatekeeping to women's spaces.

My main concerns with the current push that's is being called trans rights are:

• Self-id and how that impacts on women's spaces
• Medicalisation of children
• Gender stereotyping
• Unfair competition in sports and on schemes/awards to help underrepresentation of women

Are you happy with the ideologies that are being put forward in the name of trans rights? Is your relative?

Why did it change to the idea that transwomen are now literally female? When I was younger the transwomen I came across had dysphoria and took steps to alleviate that but knew they were male, otherwise they wouldn't be 'trans'. Why is there now an insistence from some that TWAW? Not always from transwomen themselves I might add, but vocal so-called allies? You are doing transwomen no favours by demanding that people believe and adhere to complete falsehoods.

MrsCupCake91 Living as a woman means living with female biology. Whoever you are.

Why did it change to the idea that transwomen are now literally female?

Because no amount of concessions are ever going to be enough. This is pathological.

Funny you mention the Queen actually, because if the Queen mum had happened to have a male come out of her womb and not two females, then the Queen never would have become Queen and her experience would have been different again!

Re: identity politics, Mark Fisher's essay on Exiting the Vampire's Castle is interesting for many reasons, amongst which is his opening (published in 2013):

This summer, I seriously considered withdrawing from any involvement in politics...

‘Left-wing’ Twitter can often be a miserable, dispiriting zone. Earlier this year, there were some high-profile twitterstorms, in which particular left-identifying figures were ‘called out’ and condemned. What these figures had said was sometimes objectionable; but nevertheless, the way in which they were personally vilified and hounded left a horrible residue: the stench of bad conscience and witch-hunting moralism. The reason I didn’t speak out on any of these incidents, I’m ashamed to say, was fear. The bullies were in another part of the playground. I didn’t want to attract their attention to me.
...
The first configuration is what I came to call the Vampires’ Castle. The Vampires’ Castle specialises in propagating guilt. It is driven by a priest’s desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic-pedant’s desire to be the first to be seen to spot a mistake, and a hipster’s desire to be one of the in-crowd. The danger in attacking the Vampires’ Castle is that it can look as if – and it will do everything it can to reinforce this thought – that one is also attacking the struggles against racism, sexism, heterosexism. But, far from being the only legitimate expression of such struggles, the Vampires’ Castle is best understood as a bourgeois-liberal perversion and appropriation of the energy of these movements. The Vampires’ Castle was born the moment when the struggle not to be defined by identitarian categories became the quest to have ‘identities’ recognised by a bourgeois big Other.

The privilege I certainly enjoy as a white male consists in part in my not being aware of my ethnicity and my gender, and it is a sobering and revelatory experience to occasionally be made aware of these blind-spots. But, rather than seeking a world in which everyone achieves freedom from identitarian classification, the Vampires’ Castle seeks to corral people back into identi-camps, where they are forever defined in the terms set by dominant power, crippled by self-consciousness and isolated by a logic of solipsism which insists that we cannot understand one another unless we belong to the same identity group.

www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/mark-fisher/exiting-vampire-castle

It reminds me of a quote I saw on twitter- You only gave me the shirt off your back, I wanted your skin.

No-one has told me why my relative, who has a female body (apart from inside) and who looks 100% female in terms of build and features, needs to be stopped from using the ladies?

For the same reason my husband, who is absolutely zero threat to women or children is stopped from using them. Men are excluded en masse from such spaces - the majority of those men will be decent ones who pose no active threat to women. But they’re excluded nonetheless because we can’t do this on an individual basis.

Im a bit fat at the moment due to having a baby and eating too many biscuits. That’s reality. I don’t expect people to sit yelling ‘you fatty!’ At me, because that wouldn’t be very nice, even if it is true. However if I expected everyone around to pretend I was a slim size 8, you’d think I was very wrong. If I then started to insist that everyone said I was thin, despite reality saying otherwise, you’d think I was controlling. If I threatened anyone pointing out I’m in fact a decent size 16 with hate speech...

Nope, I've never had a "peak GC" moment. I have, however, had numerous peak-trans moments. People cannot change sex and women do not have penises.

I think I understand too, OP. I also didn't find the Posie/This Morning interview helpful, although I did agree with a lot of what she said. My two teenagers are fiercely pro-trans (understandably, as they have some trans friends) and I wouldn't have shown them that interview as a way of convincing them, it would have done the opposite. And I get the thing about women being socialised to be 'nice' but actually I think there's a difference between being 'not nice' and being just nasty. The way PP laughed at IW was mocking, sneering and made me really question the motivation of her campaign. And I know that she was outnumbered but I don't think that justifies it. What is the point of the doing interviews like this if they alienate the people on the other side of the argument?

And yes before Danielle Muscato started wearing dresses and was telling women to 'suck my dick' he wasn't 'pre-transition', he was already claiming that he was all woman.

And I see, rather sadly, that this thread about doubts and difficulties has become the arena for someone who isn't remotely GC to parade the well worn clichés of 'All women have different experiences, including 'transwomen'', and 'my trans feminine friend is an adult human female because their inverted penis is no different to a vagina' etc.

And yes, I am utterly mystified that 20 years ago everyone understood that a transsexual felt like a woman, but now suddenly 'feeling like a woman' actually transforms you into one. How in hell did that happen?

No-one has told me why my relative, who has a female body (apart from inside) and who looks 100% female in terms of build and features, needs to be stopped from using the ladies?

Nobody has told me why I, a woman who is zero threat to anyone and has worked with children for 15 years, needs a DBS check in order to get a job working with vulnerable people........

What does “living as a woman” mean?

Well that's the point isn't it? It doesn't mean anything.

The only difference between females and males is the reproductive system they have. Everything else is optional. Gender is a social construct. You can't tell me what a woman looks like, how a woman acts or any other features of "woman" that will be universal to all women.

The only universal characteristic is our reproductive biology.

I don't share anything more with a transwoman, than I do with a man.

We are not in the same subgroup of humans.

I share a reproductive system with female humans. That is what connects us all. Not length of hair, choice of clothes, liking pink, caring about our appearance, or being nice!

Similarly if we were able to legally change our age.
I could either be over 65 and start claiming my pension.
Or I could ID as under 26 and get a railcard.

Your age and your sex are immutable biological facts.

OP

If you are still reading - if you want to use bold, you have to do each paragraph separately, so a * at the beginning and end of each paragraph. It's a right pain, especially when you're quoting multiple paragraphs!

How do you know what their experience is of being a woman? Any proof? How do you know what someone born trans experiences? Or a man for that matter? The answer is none of us know anything other than our own individual experience.

I can understand that watching Posie go up against the TRAs can be uncomfortable viewing if you like things to be nice all the time but I honestly don't understand how Posie speaking the truth (you can't change sex, women don’t have penises) is worse than living with the biological reality of your sex every day if you're genuinely dysphoric (and not just a guy with an AGP fetish trying to force everyone else to participate). Because biology just is, and sometimes it's horrible. Railing against women for speaking the truth isn't going to change biology.

Also, they're not being nice to women and girls because they want men with an AGP fetish and a fully functioning penis to have the right to sleep overnight with my 8 year old daughter whilst lying and saying that space is female only, for that to be enshrined in law so she is labelied a bigot if she objects, and for that information to be kept from me as her parent. Compared to that, I think Posie is really restrained. I'm SO grateful for Posie.

**So the definition of 'woman' is 'anyone who appears to be a woman' then? What if two people met your relative and one person realised they were male and the other didn't? Would they then be simultaneously both male and female?

You’re missing the point. Which was that you would probably 100% accept my relative for 12-months not knowing her past, possibly even be friends - but at the moment you discovered she was trans, your attitude would immediately change, and she would fall into a group that are “a threat.” Regardless of your experience in her company. That’s illogical.
Someone also mentioned trans people reinforcing gender stereotypes. I can think of nothing more challenging to gender stereotypes than someone changing sex and gender. And no, she doesn’t wear pink frilly dresses all the time.

MrsCupCake91 You've just neatly answered your own question there - no one has any idea of how it is to live life as someone else - so how can someone who believes they are 'born in the wrong body' (I'm not a fan of that phrase) say that they 'feel like a woman'?

Someone who is born male can never have an experience of 'being a woman'. In the same way, if I became a trans man, I would be exactly that, a trans man, but NOT a man and NOT an adult human male, because humans cannot change their sex