Middle ground

[HDDD]

I've been trying to follow conversations online in regard to gender critical thought, pronouns, selfID, transrights, lesbian erasure etc. And all I can find is extreme views on both sides. Is there a middle ground? Is it here? Is Twitter too toxic? I want to be informed not screamed at.

I plan on reading it later OldCrone, I'm just trying to leave the thread now tbh. I'm not telling people here to repost anything, my point was only ever that a link to that thread when a beginner posts would be more helpful than a snarky comment. I have received both, so yeah I'll have a read, but there are many more of the snarky comments so I'd just like to leave now and leave the subject to all you people.

Just to add, I don't think there could be one "join the dots" thread that would cover everything better than the BIDFM or some of the articles linked therein.
Everyone's entry point, or dots, could be different. The tedious Sam Smith thing seems to have interested people who are questioning what it means. Others hear about Guides becoming mixed sex. On the surface the two issues don't have much in common.

That's why I think posters would help themselves by reading up and working out what it is they really want to ask, but sometimes it's all a bit fuzzy.

Tentacle I don't make a post because I don't feel like I know enough. Like I said, I don't post on threads made by regulars to tell them what they should be doing, I stay out of it. I posted on here to agree with OP, I really don't see why you're acting like I've sought anyone out to tell them what to do. I agreed with OP, lots of people replied to me to disagree with me. That's really all there is to it.

Re. gender identity - I don't for a moment doubt the sincerity of belief of someone who asserts they have a gender identity opposed to their biological sex. Likewise, I don't for a moment doubt the sincerity of belief of someone who asserts that Christ is the risen son of God who died for our sins, and that during the Eucharist the bread and wine turns into the body and blood of Christ.

I just don't accept that their sincerely held beliefs correspond to anything in the real world. Nor that I should be forced, on pain of trial for heresy, to assent to those beliefs myself.

It may be that there is a neurological basis for dysphoria. I wouldn't be surprised, given the prevalence of such beliefs across cultures and historical time periods, if this were the case. (Given the variability of the occurrence of third genders etc, however, I suspect it's a multifactorial phenomenon and environment and upbringing also play a massive role). However, even if such a brain structure were found, it still wouldn't mean transwomen literally were women - it would simply identify a part of the brain responsible for the feelings of dysphoria.

(There was actually a paper about 10 years ago that claimed to identify a "god region" of the brain - a part of the brain which lit up in MRI scans in some people when they reported having religious feelings. It turned out to work both ways - you could induce religious feelings by stimulating this part of the brain. It wasn't however taken as evidence of the existence of god, merely as a neurological explanation of the feelings religious people were experiencing.)

Magdalen if I hadn't been on this thread, I would never have heard of that thread, or found it buried in the archives. Sometimes you have to ask to get directed towards something others have heard of and you haven't. I had to go through pages and pages of comments like yours before anyone who was not angered too much by someone who isn't a "regular" asking the question to link it, though, which many wouldn't have bothered to do, and is rather my point. Not anyone's problem, no, but certainly a reason why a large amount of people don't engage with this cause.

If you don't want to answer someone's question, fine, but why engage at all unless it was directed at you?

Whatever, not my ball game

a link to that thread when a beginner posts would be more helpful than a snarky comment

This is 100% true, but it's not what actually happened, is it?

To be a helpful or useful suggestion, you kind of have to leave out the part where you convey the fact that you're already invested in externalising your own emotional discomfort onto other posters.

It turned out to work both ways - you could induce religious feelings by stimulating this part of the brain.

Also 100% true in my experience. You can consciously control the process. The apparent contradiction comes in the assumption that "religious" associates with something external/higher/supernatural/woo/bollocks. It's a mind-function. All of it. And once you spot the trick you can exploit the everliving shit out of it.

If you don't want to answer someone's question, fine, but why engage at all unless it was directed at you?

My first engagement was to ask what the extreme views were. As the OP mentioned they had found extreme views on either side.

Still none the wiser. I'd love it if those telling us about these extreme views could break it down for me.

A link to the "break it all down for me" thread was posted before you ever joined the thread, Novembersbean. Don't blame other posters for you failing to notice that.

I do believe that dysmorphia exists in many forms and if an adult person deeply struggles with that and it would go away by allowing them to present themselves as they (whether wrongly or rightly) see themselves, then it is the kindest thing to do to let them get on with it without cruelty or mockery.

In the Scandinavian study, suicide rates increased from 40% pre-transition to 46% post-transition, so it is demonstrably not kind to indulge a dysphoric delusion.

I dunno, Tentacle, I reckon I could break down the views that are in extreme opposition to mine on this thread, but it would be a massive derail.

(All this talk of real reality, you're all just conjuring pretty pictures out of the string...)

It's been an excellent educational opportunity if you're interested in how people work, though.

Novembersbean

What question do you have? I'll answer it. As many as you like. Very patiently, I promise.

Shoot.

November, my first post on the thread mentioned the Break it down thread. In fact I think I might have been the first to mention it. If you don't want to put people's backs up, then claiming to have RTFT and been overwhelmed by the awful people like me who ...checks notes... have shared helpful information and explained why this kind of thread is a bit contentious, is probably not the best plan. Go well.

Right. Is it just me who's seeing this? This attitude is the reason we still have rape and paedophilia and sexual assault and domestic violence. We care too much about their potential future happiness so we let them get away with it, with nary a thought for the happiness they'll destroy in others.

Not just you. I think it's highly unlikely that AGP is just part of how anyone's brain is built, I think there will most likely always have been something in childhood or adolescence that started it, and it couldn't exist at all in a society without rampant sexism. But let's say we did think it was built in. So what? Expressing it is harmful to every woman the individual who has it interacts with. There is no harmless way to express it, because the desire to push boundaries is baked into the condition. So, if we take the "well some people are just built that way and there's nothing that can be done about it" approach, and from there move on to pity and attempts to accommodate.

There's probably no way to express AGP without harming others. Given that, it doesn't matter where it comes from or what causes it, the end result is that it's harmful to others and therefore its expression must be constrained no matter how negatively that impacts the happiness of the man who has it. His happiness isn't more important than the happiness of the women and girls around him.

Right, question.
Someone very early on asked if I wanted answers/debate from TRAs or women. It threw me. Other comments, here, and in the Break it down thread tell me TRAs are all men. But they're not are they? Aren't the 'trans ally' women also TRAs? Aren't they part of the problem as they are shouting from the rooftops that everything is OK - we women are fine with selfID and transwomen in our spaces (cos not all men) etc. I haven't (yet) seen any mention of these women on here. I'm seeing them and us but SOME women are in the them. Surely getting more women, and these women in particular, onside and understanding in order to effect change is the key? And please, if this has been discussed at length (or in short) anywhere and I've missed it please let me have a link as I did search.

Magdalen

I didn't say people haven't linked it, I said the useful responses get buried underneath the many more snarky ones which gets in the way of people learning. I'm not saying anything controversial it's just a basic fact of human communication that people will learn things faster if only the people willing to answer to question respond. You really don't need to twist it into anything more than that.

On the "but why don't other women do things differently from how they're doing them now, why can't they do things the way I want them to" question - because they're not you. They have different personalities, different goals, different things they're focused on achieving. You can't control other people's way of speaking/writing, and it's especially silly to try to do so rather than instead doing the things you keep saying they should do instead. If you think change is needed, be that change. Don't try to deputize randoms to do the work for you (unless you're offering them a regular paycheck and promotional opportunities, and even then they're allowed to turn the job down).

OP - yes, trans allies who are women are TRAs. One doesn't have to be trans to be a TRA, and indeed many of the people creating the most trouble on Twitter and even more so on Tumblr are coming from the "I will save the poor helpless trans from the evil public and thus prove that I myself am good" perspective.

HDDD, they're often termed 'handmaidens' which is a touch controversial, and some prefer quislings or traitors, but it amounts to the same thing. Aunt Lydias too, which is reference to Atwood, though 'handmaidens' isn't, it stems from female servants of patriarchal religions etc.

A search for that term might give you some insight.

Multiple tiers though - some people who call themselves trans allies do nothing other than virtue signal occasionally, others dedicate pretty much their entire online presence to being TRAs. It's unlikely that the latter will change their minds. The former might and some have as it begins to occur to them exactly what's being asked of them and of society as a whole. Individuals such as Jonathan/Jessica Yaniv tend to be illuminating for some who're in the "but I should be a ally because that's what everyone says you need to do to be good" camp.

Thank you both.

November, as politely as I can muster, because I am genuinely very tired after a long day at work, let it go. I've really had my fill of being told to be more patient, less snarky, etc. I really do have a life full of that shit and I've made helpful suggestions on this thread and frankly this is Mumsnet and every single long thread in the history of Mumsnet is a mix of straight forward answers and broader conversation.

I'm still laughing at Lang the Evil. Lang is lovely, but very direct, and with horrible taste in breakfasts. Anyone who finds directness distressing would be well advised to stay away from AIBU, and to pretend Brexit isn't happening.

For those new to FWR and looking for the key stuff fast, please take a look on the thread about the individual born male who is currently sharing social media pictures and posts about him walking around naked sporting an erection in the women's refuge individual has been granted a place in amongst vulnerable, traumatised women. Oh and discussing how to poison the water supply and how individual wants axes and other weapons, has been given a place in, and how staff are protecting said individual while reproaching women for calling this out.

In particular, please note the posts on that thread from the MNetter regular, who fled domestic violence and is currently homeless and living rough because she was unable to find any shelter in 3 states in the USA who do not have either male residents and/or male members of staff and do not provide for women who need women only spaces. Take that in. Males who's needs could be met in the male shelters or third spaces. It's better that those males have choice and support in their pick of identity and are pandered to in their choice of setting amongst women in a facility designed specially for women's refuge - than a woman risks freezing to death or starving on the street.

That's a MNetter's reality today.

TheProdigalKittensReturn
The balls waxing case revealed a surprisingly unpalatable view from a friend of mine - another reason I needed a safe space to debate

Magdalen trust me I let the whole subject go a long time ago on this thread. I respond to comments directed at me like most people, that's all.

Michelleoftheresistance
I'm only new to Mumsnet, not the debate. I've seen the Vancouver stuff. I'm also a DV survivor, which may be driving some of my views - we all have a bias.

Apologies for incoherence, I was toddlered.