I'm in danger of alienating people with my outrage in discussions. Any tips?

[floppyflappy]

I need to be able to talk with people in a way that encourages engagement with the material, rather than screams of 'BIGOT!!' at me.

What are your best questions or talking points to achieve this? For example, I've seen here that a good starting point is always, 'what is the definition of a woman?'

I particularly want to be able to talk with my lib fem friends who I know are just trying to be nice and supportive of everyone.

Watching with interest. It's so difficult to try and be calm, and polite and sensitive, when people have no clue at all about the debate that's raging, or the tactics of transactivists, or the implications for women.

Watching with interest, too. I think it's important to remain calm and point to fairly clear-cut cases. Sport is a good one. And pointing out that being inclusive of transwomen in some cases will mean women lose out. (Pips Bunce took the place on the 'women in finance' list away from a woman who might have deserved it.)

Don't say "trans women are not women," get outraged if people use the word "cis", or imply that trans women are rapists and sexual predators, or that they are swarming into public toilets for sexual kicks.

Get their buy-in on the reality of sex (this is generally pretty easy) then talk about the necessity of sex-based protections. Move on from there. Sex segregation in sport is a good place to begin.

I've attempted before to find language which is neutral on the reality (or not) of gender identity and trans women being women, but have not found anything which does not outrage or offend one side or the other.

It's very difficult for this not to be heated and for friends who aren't involved in any way to look on in absolute bemusement. We had a discussion over wine recently where my sister-in-law who is very wishy-washy libfem was frantically getting out her phone and Googling every time I came up with my statistics which are clearly correct for example about how many sex offenders were presenting as identifying as women and wanting to be transferred to women's prisons.

Now I've done a lot of work with fairplayforwomen and we actually compiled those statistics so I know I'm right and yet she wouldn't have it. Even though she knew that I was affiliated with them she was still doubting what I was saying and trying to come up with contrary information.

She couldn't do so of course all she could manage to come up with was one poor trans woman who had committed suicide in prison which is very sad but isn't a reason for putting all men who say they identify as women into women's prisons.

I'm just very calm and try to say look this is all about women's rights this cannot be fair that women who are vulnerable and who are in prison where they cannot escape are then forced against their wishes to take showers with male bodied sex offenders for example. I make it all about the rights of vulnerable women.

I have used (for parents) the importance of sex education and keeping it simple for children in order to keep children safe.

Teenage pregnancy was a real problem before sex education was simplified and made more of an open topic before puberty. Confusing the facts will inevitably do the same. Ditto safeguarding and teaching children to recognise and be able to report abuse.

The more complex a system becomes the easier it is for mistakes to happen. Most people understand the basic sense behind that.

I don't tend to have these conversations in real life. Online, it's quite hard because one's instinct is always to go in all guns blazing. What I do online is compose the angry response in my head, then step away for a few minutes before writing the calm response. The biggest difficulty for me is to what extent I should go along with the rules that TRAs have developed for so-called polite discourse. I don't like referring to people like Steph Hayden or Karen White as "she", for example, but if you refer to them as "he", there are people who will call you bigoted before you've even started your argument. But by calling them "she" you are already conceding a lot of ground.

Watching with interest I just seem to piss people off

I so agree - I get so easily angry about it, and feel how can other people not just see how unfair it is!

With many groups just talking about sport and prisons has really opened their eyes....so those who don't know, I do think there is lots of scope for peaking

But for the lib ones who subscribe to the feel like a women concept, I haven't managed it yet!

I have more of them in real life than online! Avoid with too much wine. Listen and stick to the key issues - the problem many women (and men) have with some of the current demands and expectations are situations that will result in women and girls being at more risk from predatory men.

I'm probably not helpful because my idea is "they are not your friends, alienate them, you will be better off" but then I'm a hypocrite because I just don't discuss it at all. they have drunk the koolaid and nothing I say will convince them, so I say nothing at all.

I talk about damage & threats to Safeguarding & Women's Rights (bcause IMO that's what it is about)
I try to just focus on a couple of things rather than bombarding people with too much (this has become easier over time!)
People need to be given a little space and encouragement to find out more.
I signpost to Fairplay for Women, James Kirkup articles, Magdalen Berns YouTube etc depending on the conversation.

I keep it really simple. My concern is the dismantling of women's hard-won sex-based rights. I ask how those rights can be protected if the definition of woman is changed to include men. They can't. End of.

And you can't change your biological sex, no matter what you do. Surgery, cross-sex hormones, the way you dress and present - every cell in your body will remain male or female, from the day you are born until the day you die.

Trans people have the same human rights as everybody else. Women have certain specified sex-based rights to protect them from men.

I have had a couple of conversations in real life, with women in my relatively woke crowd, and we have signalled to each other that we haven't drunk the koolaid. Stories in the news help: Martina for example. Beyond that, start with scenarios they could imagine: prisons or domestic refuges or and this hasn't been in the public discussion much lately hospital wards. When you or an elderly relative are feeling at your weakest, do you want someone with a penis in the next bed? Oh, and do make the point that no surgical or medical treatment is required to "count" as trans, either officially or in self-identification. Most people have no idea about this.

I basically avoid the wider political implications (sport, prison) and talk about how I myself am affected. I am a 67 year old woman. I say that I would not like to walk into a communal shower and find a naked man there, even if he "identifies as female"; I mention my two granddaughters and I ask people if they would allow their fourteen year old daughter to shower with a transwoman, basically an intact man, or share a room with them. I don't know of any normal person, male or female, who would agree to that if they have daughters.

I say that I cannot look into a person's mind and know if they really feel female, and I don't even know what that is.

I have also said on occasion (but I don't have these conversations often, and almost always online) that I don't like using public toilets men have been using because there is usually urine splatter on the seats or the floor and they always leave the seats up and I don't like touching those seats. I make myself out to be a pernickety old lady!

Although actually that was a conversation about gender-neutral toilets and I clearly said "I don't know the solution for transwomen"; I said that I don't want to share with MEN, which is the case with unisex toilets. But the implication is there that transwomen should not use women's lavatories.

I'd not worry about it and just continue to speak as you want, when you want. Nothing wrong with a bit of anger at having your rights removed.

1. You'll never persuade the truly devout Woke. So don't even bother to try.

2. The people who haven't thought deeply about it and are just virtue signalling out of a desire to be kind will change their minds only when a tipping point is reached and the virtue signalling received wisdom changes.

3. A tipping point resulting in the virtue signalling received wisdom changing will never happen if everybody pussyfoots around not saying clearly what they mean for fear of offence.

Softly softly.
Don't be confrontational
Befriend
Find common points of mutual agreement first
Say when you think they have a reasonable point
Always be polite
Known when to walk away from the conservation
Remember you are not there to 'win' the argument. The mentality of winning and losing will get you no where.
Remember your argument is often NOT with the person you are talking to, but to present a case to any lurkers who are reading.
Know when you are flogging a dead horse and save your breathe.
Realise when they are trying to wind you up
NEVER resort to insults or personal attacks. The moment you do, you've screwed it up.
Patience is a virtue. As is knowing when to bite your tongue.

Oh, and you are never obliged to respond to someone even if they demand it. Talk on your own terms and respond to the points you want to (set your own agenda).

If the aim and object of your conversation is to tell people you are right and they should think what you think then they will see that and find it domineering and tedious. If you are interested in others points of view and how they formed them they will feel heard and are more inclined to hear your POV and think about it.

These are my golden rules for social media on the whole.

I've been around since the early days of forums and learnt how to deal with trolls and troublemakers.

NOTHING wind's them up more than being incredibly reasonable. I can be fun to watch people implode at it and over people around see it and go 'wtf was that all about'. It can also be very intimidating and frightening at the same time too.

I try to go with questioning rather than bludgeoning.

TWAW - Why? What makes someone a woman then?

TW should be allowed in women's facilities - OK, but what about other vulnerable men? How dangerous are men's facilities then?

Basically the same technique I use when the 5 year old comes home telling me that blue is for boys and pink is a girls colour (and I subtly point to my blue t-shirt and trousers, and set his little cogs turning)

Do you mean "talk" or "write" as different approaches are needed for each?

Questioning is a good approach. You are looking to make people think to break the spell of a cult. You are giving them power with questions.

I read somewhere, unfortunately I forget where, that you do not convince anyone to change their minds by logic, reason and evidence.

That would only get them to double down on their views, be ause the alternative would be admitting to being naive or stupid.

What does work, is to explain we now have new information, -information that they could not have been expected to know about- which suggest that the views previously held, are wrong.

For example, we nowhave new information from the Tavistock that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are very harmful.
Until we knew this, it was thought blockers were a pause-button, causing no harm. We now knowotherwise.

It helps to remember that
"You cannot reason people out of a position which they did not reason themselves into."
So if their position is just a libfem be-nice one, then it might take some unpicking.

Lots of sources for that line, back to Jonathan Swift, but most recently Ben Goldacre. Where oh where is Ben Goldacre these days? You would have thought he's be all over the "transwoo man" anti-science stuff.

quoteinvestigator.com/2015/07/10/reason-out/

yes where's bloody BEN GOLDACRE he surely has some system for flagging up when he's mentioned on line, come on mate, what's the point of science that doesn't defend our basic rights???

we had a stall the day after IWD and for 2 hours tried to engage with the public on this, I have to say it was exhausting

I started off thinking that 'what is a woman' would be a question that enabled the discussion, but people often didn't seem to get that we were talking about the definition- what describes all women and excludes all non women
so people responded as if it was a riddle or the first line of a poem, eg men would roll their eyes and say 'i dunno, a mystery that's what'
I was very surprised how many people agreed with 'a woman is anyone who says they are a woman'
it was very frustrating