We've never believed in silencing debate....

[truthisarevolutionaryact]

says the Scottish trans alliance ... in an article explaining why Meghan Murphy should not have been allowed to speak to the Scottish parliament. Apparently they believe in "honest constructive discussions" - as long as people use their allowed language, adhere to their beliefs and accept their false views of history and reality.

It's frightening how little self awareness they have.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-people-and-feminists-should-be-working-together-thdfslkz3?shareToken=734ba5639a43cba8820da78716b8ad76

" But it won’t be respectful if, when speaking or writing about me, you call me, as a trans woman, ‘he’ or deny my right to use the facilities society has decided I should have, such as my right to use the bathroom of my affirmed gender should I visit premises under your control?"

Yet, it won't be respectful toward me to compel me, against my consent, to lie about what I know to be true.

But it won’t be respectful if, when speaking or writing about me, you call me, as a trans woman, ‘he’ or deny my right to use the facilities society has decided I should have, such as my right to use the bathroom of my affirmed gender should I visit premises under your control?

If a condition of engaging with you is that we are compelled to lie or deny reality or else be accused of being disrespectful, then I think it’s yourself and those like you being disrespectful and actually, insulting. You’re Male. I am not obliged to validate your personal beliefs.

Secondly, society has NOT decided you can use the facilities of the sex you do not belong to. You have decided that. Society has single sex exemptions, in law. The majority of the population do not think you should use female facilities, every survey shows that. It is not a human right to force everyone else to accept your subjective feelings as fact.

How would that be different to the position adopted by a certain regime in Germany in the 1930’s that black athletes were held to be sub-human and should not be competing against white athletes?

The line about 'black women, disabled women, lesbian & bi women, trans women' keeps coming up and it's frankly offensive. It's racist, ableist and homophobic.

It implies that white, straight, able-bodied women are the default and it seems completely unable to comprehend that maybe BAME, lesbian / bi and disabled women don't want males in their spaces either.

But it won’t be respectful if, when speaking or writing about me, you call me, as a trans woman, ‘he’

This is past simply being kind and politely accepting someone's choice of pronoun. This has become the thin end of the wedge to women being forced to accept that a man is a woman in every way if he says so and that women may have no boundaries against this. This makes me concerned enough re the assault on women's rights to be increasingly unwilling to play along and enable it, even at this most basic level. The fact is that TW are male. I understand this is a sad and unwanted fact for many TW but it is a fact and a neutral fact. When you begin to make it wrong for people to speak the truth is this a good thing? What about freedom of belief?

or deny my right to use the facilities society has decided I should have, such as my right to use the bathroom of my affirmed gender should I visit premises under your control?

Sigh. Ok. What are you going to do about the women with disabilities, races, cultures, religious faiths, traumas and other reasons why they cannot share facilities with a male regardless of how that male chooses to affirm their gender? What about their rights? Because when you have the right to choose to commandeer women's facilities to affirm your gender, (having choice of two different facilities), those women lose access to any facilities. Is your 'right' to choice really a right? Why is your choice more important than women having access to facilities? Is commandeering women's facilities the only possible way to provide you with choice while at the same time ensuring the needs of everyone is met and not just yours?

How would that be different to the position adopted by a certain regime in Germany in the 1930’s that black athletes were held to be sub-human and should not be competing against white athletes?

Well we got to that card quickly. You're representing a political ideology here that is openly, rampantly sexist, disablist, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, classist and anti freedom of belief and freedom of speech, and anti safeguarding. It believes in forced belief, with punishment for those who speak out against it, and believes in threatening violence to intimidate and prevent people expressing anything but the orthodoxy or meeting to discuss it. It also believes that people who do not conform to the political orthodoxy being presented deserve to lose services, the right to speech and safety, and it is ok to treat them in ways that it is never ok to treat others normally - in other words they become less than human.

If you want to look at the values of a certain regime in the 1930s and you do actually know what you're talking about, then the trans ideology has one hell of a lot more in common with them than GC women do.

How would that be different to the position adopted by a certain regime in Germany in the 1930’s that black athletes were held to be sub-human and should not be competing against white athletes?

It's actually more like black people saying that no, Rachel Dolezal is white, and she will never be accepted as black no matter how much she wants to be black, how much fake tan she uses and how she does her hair.

RobinMoiraWhite
Please have a look at this useful recent article by Sophie Allen, Jane Clare Jones, Holly Lawford-Smith, Mary Leng, Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, and Kathleen Stock. It answers many of the points you have made/claimed point by point.

'Doing better in arguments about sex, gender, and trans rights'

Radical feminist and gender-critical philosophers challenge their opponents to avoid some obviously bad argumentative moves

(extract)
We’re a group of gender-critical and radical feminist academic philosophers. In our work, some of us argue that women, by definition, are adult human females. On this view, since no trans woman is an adult human female, no trans woman is correctly categorised as a woman. The rest of us are currently agnostic between i) exclusively taking the former position, and ii) also taking a position that says that there is an additional, meaningful sense of ‘woman’, understood as applying to those who occupy a certain feminine social role, on the basis of perceived membership of the female sex category. Unlike i), ii) entails that a limited number of trans women count as women, in at least one sense. Still, ii) entails that many trans women aren’t correctly categorised as women, since many trans women don’t occupy a feminine social role on the basis of perceived membership of the female sex category.

Either way, we are all sceptical of the political value of accounts of womanhood that identify it as essentially involving possession of a feminine ‘gender identity’. We also all insist that it’s politically essential to retain a clear conceptual differentiation between males and females, in order to continue to be able to name and refer to sex-based patterns of oppression, and harmful sociocultural stereotypes about the ‘right’ ways for males and females respectively to be.

Our aim here is not to summarise our positive arguments for these conclusions. We do this in work elsewhere (see the links from our names, above). Rather, we wish to highlight various fallacies and misrepresentations that we’ve noticed frequently occurring in discussions of our views. While there have been a number of comment pieces in national media by philosophers challenging gender-critical and radical feminism, we have yet to see in these a compelling argument against our position. Rather than respond to these pieces individually, we would like to highlight some of the common misunderstandings and fallacious arguments that we take to be problematic in these responses. We hope that this will be helpful in laying the ground for more fruitful discussion from now on." (continues)
medium.com/@kathleenstock/doing-better-in-arguments-about-sex-and-gender-3bec3fc4bdb6

How would that be different to the position adopted by a certain regime in Germany in the 1930’s that black athletes were held to be sub-human and should not be competing against white athletes?

this for example is covered in the article linked above:

(extract)

1. ‘Excluding trans women from women-only spaces is like excluding black people from whites-only spaces’.

First, black people were historically subject to segregation because white people denied their full and equal humanity. Trans women do not have their full and equal humanity denied, or at least not by gender-critical feminists. The question is not whether they are human, but whether they are female, and on the basis of being female should be able to access spaces designed to protect the comparatively greater vulnerability of female people. Trans men are female, and so belong in these spaces (if they want them); trans women are male and do not, we argue. No one thinks a man is denied his full and equal humanity merely because women-only spaces exist, and the same reasoning applies to trans women. Not giving people everything that they desire is not a denial of their humanity.

Second, racial segregation was an exercise of power by a culturally dominant group against a culturally subordinated group. The dominant used their power to keep the subordinate out. Women are not a culturally dominant group; rather, they are a culturally subordinated group. When they act to maintain women-only spaces, we judge that they act to maintain protections that are important in light of their status. At best, trans women are a distinct subordinated group; at worst, trans women are members of the dominant group. At best, exclusion is a lateral move; at worst, it is an ‘upwards’ move. In neither case is it a ‘downwards’ move, and so in neither case is it comparable to racial segregation." (continues)

The line about 'black women, disabled women, lesbian & bi women, trans women' keeps coming up and it's frankly offensive. It's racist, ableist and homophobic.

Yes it is.

that excerpt you posted at 13:00 is great R0wantrees, especially this part

No one thinks a man is denied his full and equal humanity merely because women-only spaces exist

BernardBlacksWineIcelolly

Its a great article and very useful document.
Well worth a look and deserves saving as each of the common fallacies are dealt with brilliantly.

Huge thanks to the authors

But it won’t be respectful if, when speaking or writing about me, you call me, as a trans woman, ‘he’ or deny my right to use the facilities society has decided I should have, such as my right to use the bathroom of my affirmed gender should I visit premises under your control?

Correct.

People are respectful to views they respect.

Thanks for posting that link R0, its a lovely well reasoned and calm take down.

my right to use the facilities society has decided I should have, such as my right to use the bathroom of my affirmed gender should I visit premises under your control?

The law in the UK doesn't give you this right, and society hasn't been consulted (and has no authority to do this, without laws being passed).

If respecting trans women who live permanently as women really destroys women’s rights then there would have been disaster 20 years ago when UK law first affirmed trans women as women. In reality, it hasn’t harmed progress in tackling sexism. The proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act do not introduce any new rights of access to services for trans people.

Yet again trying to make out that this is all about transsexuals, rather than the fact that self ID will be abused by..well abusive men. I hate when they do this, when they understand the issues perfectly well.

So we can have a respectful debate, as long as we start by agreeing that TWAW?

Doesn’t sound like much of a debate to me.

People are respectful to views they respect.

My thoughts precisely.

Quite frankly, couldn't give a single solitary shit if RobinMoiraWhite thinks I am not respectful. I think RobinMoiraWhite and the accompanying imperious demands RobinMoiraWhite are disrespectful. Perfectly happy with us each continuing to regard the other as disrespectful.

I'm in this for women's rights and child protection. If that's disrespectful, then I regard being disrespectful as a primary virtue.

The proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act do not introduce any new rights of access to services for trans people.

But it does broaden the definition of trans people to 'anyone who says they are', rather than restricting it to the much smaller number of people who have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. I think the estimated numbers are something like 500,000+ people in the UK who 'identify as trans', compared with the 5,000 or so who currently have a GRC. Does she really not see the problem with this?

The proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act do not introduce any new rights of access to services for trans people.

Yes, I believe they do.

Without a GRC if a transwoman is discriminated against, the cohort 'men' is the comparator. Since their legal sex is male.

If they are discriminated against whilst they are legally women, ie with a GRC, the comparator is women.

I believe this has been clarified by the EHRC (or is it the ECHR?).

Either way, they have clarified.

20 years ago when UK law first affirmed trans women as women.

The GRA 2004 is explicit that male transitioners are not women and female transitioners are not men.

See
section 12 Parenthood
section 15 Succession
section 16 Peerages
section 19 Sport
section 20 Gender specific offences

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/contents

can I just say how much I love your thorough understanding of the GRA Jacky ?

It's always about me and my rights!
Like Lang, I'm in this because of the relentless attacks on the safeguarding of children and grooming them to make life changing decisions before they are of an age to comprehend the implications of the drugs, breast binding and surgery. If that's considered disrespectful, then tough shit. I will not shut up until children are fully protected from those currently targeting them.

Further, see section 9 of GRA 2004:

9 General

(1) Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman).

(2) Subsection (1) does not affect things done, or events occurring, before the certificate is issued; but it does operate for the interpretation of enactments passed, and instruments and other documents made, before the certificate is issued (as well as those passed or made afterwards).

(3) Subsection (1) is subject to provision made by this Act or any other enactment or any subordinate legislation.

Subsection 2 says that a person's history prior to issue of GRC cannot be rewritten or ignored / erased.

Subsection 3 says that the "change of sex" is confined to the matters described within this Act.

So the reference "for all purposes" does not mean all purposes outside of this Act, but is subject to provisions made in future law, such as Equality Act 2010.

Thank you Bernard !

can I just say how much I love your thorough understanding of the GRA Jacky ?

Me too.

Like Lang, I'm in this because of the relentless attacks on the safeguarding of children and grooming them to make life changing decisions before they are of an age to comprehend the implications of the drugs, breast binding and surgery. If that's considered disrespectful, then tough shit. I will not shut up until children are fully protected from those currently targeting them.

This ^^