Am I going to lose friends over the trans/TERf etc debate?

[Maria53]

I am 28 and I feel the vast majority of my peers disagree with me.

I believe in equal rights for everyone. However I have become increasingly concerned about the threat of single sex spaces being taken away. The vast majority of my friends shrug their shoulders and say 'what's the big deal?' and I am incredulous.

One of my best friends of over a decade was banned from Twitter for using the word 'Terf' - we then got into a debate where we clearly disagreed. So I have never posted about it again since to avoid arguing with her and we have remained good friends.

Tonight another friend posted against JK Rowling and I disagreed with her because I am tired of staying silent. Well no sooner had I done this my close friend jumped in to disagree with me as well. Both said I am in the wrong.

I now feel sad because I know they are judging me but I stand by my convictions. Am I going to have to accept I may lose friends over our polarised opinions? Has anyone experienced this?

@Ereshkigalangcleg

I'm not sure if FalseImage is being obtuse, deliberately or otherwise, or whether he/she/they simply misunderstands what women want. This is not about trans people. It's about male people. All male people.

I bet I know which it is.

I'm not sure if FalseImage is being obtuse, deliberately or otherwise, or whether he/she/they simply misunderstands what women want. This is not about trans people. It's about male people. All male people.

Unfortunately FalseImage (among others) seems to be incapable of acknowledging that transwomen are, to use the terminology of the terminally-woke, AMAB.

That is to say, male.

And if you can't accept that transwomen are male, then you can't possibly begin to accept that our issue is with their maleness, not their transness.

So what you're campaigning for is additional discrimination to completely ban trans people

Sigh.

This really isn't hard to understand. What is being campaigned against is the removal of the right of female humans to have female only spaces. Any female only spaces at all. Regardless of the impact upon those female humans. Because it benefits males.

(women in particular)

Transwomen, who are male. You are free to believe whatever you like about this, but so am I and so is every other female human. Female humans should not have mixed sex spaces forced upon them for the happiness and better freedom of choice for people born male. The specific needs of those people should be able to met in other ways than destroying female provision for many female people and preventing female people having access to any provision if they will not tolerate mixed sex spaces. Which benefit males, not females. Starting to see the sexism here?

To achieve this aim you systematically associate transgender women with all kinds of negativity to convince others to follow the GC agenda.

Or seen through a slightly less distorted lens, female humans have tried to talk about their experiences and reasons why mixed sex spaces are not tolerable or accessible for all females. And why the happiness and choice/validation of male humans is not a sufficient reason to deprive female humans of female only spaces, including reasons of privacy and dignity. And why safety is for many of those females a very, very relevant reason. The pointless denial that this risk exists, or that no sex offender has ever taken advantage of the trans agenda, or that someone who is trans may also be an offender, is patently untrue. Denying it and trying to shame and silence female people saying it, is just yet more pushing of a male supremacist agenda that suppresses, silences and disadvantages females for male benefit.

That's not for me.

Its a free country. If you want to be a male supremacist, crack on. But be honest about what you stand for, and why.

The pointless denial that this risk exists, or that no sex offender has ever taken advantage of the trans agenda, or that someone who is trans may also be an offender, is patently untrue.

And denying it instantly calls into question one's motivation.

Always good to keep an eye on the practical consequences.

Is it lawful for a group of women to set up a rape crisis centre for only female service users, and exclude male service users and volunteers, regardless of how those male individuals identify? (And to do so while happy to acknowledge the right of another group to identify a need for mixed sex rape support and set up a second support centre to meet that need?)

At the moment, as the Equalities Act currently stands, yes.

And that seems to me sensible. One group identifies one set of people in need and sets up a group to cater to them, another set caters to a slightly different group.

All fine.

What certain posters on this thread appear to want to create (whether deliberately or simply because they haven't thought through the consequences properly) is a situation where it would be illegal for a group of women to say "some women - not all, but some - have suffered such severe male violence that they are triggered by the mere presence of males, regardless of what those males say is their gender identity, and we wish to set up a service for those women. If you want to set up and fund raise for a different sort of service, that's fine. We support you in doing that. But that is not the need we are trying to meet."

In short, the changes FalseImage wants to see in the way the Equalities Act is currently set up do remove rights from women which they currently have. If False gets his/her/their way, no woman would be allowed to set up a single sex crisis centre or shelter, even though its existence would be additional to and would not take away from existing provision for both sexes

Note that the situation is not symmetric - the law as currently constituted does not prevent anyone setting up a mixed sex/gender rape crisis centre - they can do that if they want, in fact most, I believe, currently are mixed sex/gender.

to convince others to follow the GC agenda.

To try and get female human voices heard to raise the issues and problems for female humans when all their spaces are forced to be mixed sex for the benefit of male humans. And laws are changed that disadvantage and subordinate female humans to benefit male humans.

If the needs of female humans had been respected, or even considered, there would never have been a need for women to gather and talk about these issues or have to campaign against them.

What you're implying here is that females are doing wrong by speaking out about this or standing up for themselves. Largely because your belief is that male needs should be the central and only consideration, and that no female need or right or disadvantage should ever take precedent over a male's freedoms and wellbeing.

There's a word for it when you see male people as intrinsically more valuable, important, superior to, female people. It also makes it very clear that you have no difficulty at all in separating out the sex of two groups of people you insist are both women, because you treat those two groups very differently in every post.

So what you're campaigning for is additional discrimination to completely ban trans people (women in particular) from these spaces.

They are not women. They are men. Males.
It bears repeating, again and again.
It is impossible for a male to become a woman. Women have a right to their own spaces for safety, privacy and dignity. If this right is threatened we will fight for it. Do not underestimate us. You are not going to have our word, "woman", and you are not going to have our spaces. It's just not going to happen.

So what you're campaigning for is additional discrimination to completely ban trans people

Hmm. What I 'campaign' against is the removal of current protections and provisions for female people. Which is what some male people are trying to do.

Possibly it would be easier for certain people to grasp things if we were to use their language.

Round these parts we're in favour of AFAB-only spaces. NO AMABs permitted. That's what our campaigning focuses on.

@Kit19

I fully support TW right to dress as they want, not to be fired because they are TW or refused housing in fact to enjoy the same human rights as everyone

What they don’t get to enjoy are rights designed for women

This

Here is a Twitter thread that kind of says it all.
A be-penised TW decided it was his good right to walk about naked in the women's locker room (This is in Manhatten) among the naked ladies. He got some "disapproving looks" but he didn't care.
There is a poll, in which as of now 83 people voted: His right, or My right, yes or no. Surprise yourself at the response.
According to our friend on this thread, this person was a woman.

mobile.twitter.com/ForeverMagdalen/status/1267482050761838592

OP, sorry to contribute to the derailment yet again, but I think it is relevant .What do you think your friend would vote in this poll? What would she say if she was one of the women in that changing room?

While I have been called a man hater on a fairly regular basis for being a Feminist I have never lost a friend over it.
I have ended many internet acquaintances over the years because of irreconcilable differences but never a friend.

My daughter's sister in law is very woke. She's from a close-knit Irish family and everyone else, including her brother, think her ideas are ridiculous. And yet they all seem to get along fabulously. The only one she ever quarrels with about it is her brother, my daughter's dh, but it seems to be forgotten the next day and they still get on.

She normally lives a rather bohemian life doing gigs etc but she recently gave up her flat and moved back in with her parents, in their village, and they are all neighbours.

She doesn't seem to make it her religion but just gets on with her own thing, which is art and music. When they do argue (she and db), it's apparently quite hefty (I've never witnessed it!) but it's forgotten the next day.
I get on with her fine. I never mention it, and neither does she.

The whole subject seems quite obscure in Ireland. I know they officially have self-id here, but it just never seems to come up. Even in Dublin, all the public loos I've been to have been single sex.
The only mixed sex loos/changing rooms I've ever seen are in Northern Ireland, at an M&S store!

If someone voted for the male in Manhattan to be able to take their cock and balls into the women's changing rooms at the gym I think I might regard their dropping me as a friend as being a good thing in that it would save me the trouble of being the one to break things off. There's a difference between not quite getting why some women are concerned about this and wanting to actively rub women's noses in the idea that we're not allowed to have boundaries. Anyone doing the latter is a terrible human being.

Can we get her on for a chat? Can we can we can we?

Oh YES!

Yes please!

She could set an exciting new standard in actually answering the questions people ask her even when they're not about biscuits!

(I bet she'd answer the ones from angry TRAs too.)

I would love angry TRAs to ask her questions ☀️

In all seriousness though, she seems to be in the process of taking this issue to all the relevant authorities and not everyone is on Twitter so a MN chat could potentially bring some issues to her attention that haven't been mentioned to her yet.

I would love her to come here for a Q&A session. Her philosophy, clarity & humour are an inspiration. She’s hit the ground running and I am grateful, not just to her but to all the fabulous women who have been researching, logging & providing her with the evidence. I stand with you all.

She has shown though that she will answer questions about clotted cream and scones though. Biscuits will be a doddle.

I have confidence in her ability to rise above any clotted cream related disagreements.

(I'm firmly on the nope team.)

Is she up to Weetabix, though?

Nope to clotted cream?