(Sorry my posts are really long).
It’s interesting to me that while we do need to eventually find common ground on this issue, the genderised asymmetry is everywhere and we have to all see that to move forward and act on it. It’s never been six of one and half a dozen of the other.
I also know men and women like this who have taken on the genderist cause, out of sympathy with themselves or for other men who don’t fit the gender conforming mould. I get that. I take on women’s causes in much the same way.
And I get it that some of them assume that a lot more surgical change has been made (euphemism) than actually happens when they think about transwomen. But then I immediately think, why would that matter? Doing a load of surgery or not doing any- neither makes you a woman. The men I know are not dating transwomen if they are straight or transmen if they are gay. So they do see the difference.
I’m just trying to bridge the gap in my understanding about how (understandably) any man’s male perspective, may have informed their thinking on gender- such that they could ever really believe or want to make others agree, that a man having a particular thought, or wearing particular clothes, or having particular operations.. could ever ‘make’ that man a woman.
The belief of woman as something that other people can legitimately define, is what Duncan’s writing expresses to me in my reading of his writing. But he doesn’t seem to quite explore consciously how and why he felt that way. I’m interested in what can we do with all that if it’s a commonly-held POV, and how we can use it to move forward?
Why was it that at the start of his timeline Duncan didn’t instinctively say to himself on learning of this new politics, that of course you can never become a woman, if you were born a man. (I mean, I know the answer to that ..). But what a huge experience gap it shows. To a lot of women, the idea that you can’t change into a woman is as indisputable as the sun rising and setting every day.
(And as a gay man, did Duncan really genuinely see transmen as the exact same as other men? Like at the same time he was drafting off that email to HR because a colleague said that TWANW? Tho I don’t know exactly what the colleague said, TBF- apologies if that wasn’t it)
He says the scales fell from his eyes with Marie informing him of the widening of the trans umbrella, so he began to see the category of trans as unreliable. He has not written clearly that he saw the category of sex as reliable. I think it took Marie to show him that?
So this would be an example of male privilege. Sorry- not trying to be mean and personal to Duncan- he’s obviously not the only one to wear those blinkers. I am not ignoring his great deficit of privilege in other ways- being gaybashed at school must have been horrific and I’m sure he will have encountered other homophobic incidents.
It’s just that all those years of me being told that I ‘can’t do this’ or ‘should do that‘ because I am a girl, or because I am a woman, or because I am a mother now... and because of living in my female body this long in all its positives and all its negatives.. these things have made me very very sure I am a woman. And that biological sex is real and unchanging. And that gender is stereotypes which are a trap. And that’s partly because other people have spent a lot of time policing my womaning. Which men just don’t seem to experience or appreciate in the same way.
Duncan says ‘Most people who identify as trans women do not have full sex reassignment treatment. Most are still physically male, and when I found out that cross-dressers and what we used to call “transvestites” are now “trans women”, the entire house of cards that was my gender ideology began to collapse.‘
So I guess his writing is helping me to reflect that I had assumed that everyone really believed that you can’t change sex and that they were just trying to be kind in saying otherwise. Because I mean, what is ‘full sex reassignment treatment’? a Full or part.. of what? A ‘sex reassignment operation’ doesn’t mean that you ‘become a woman’.
And, a bit like the loss of the rainbow flag’s meaning or the loss of the positive politics that Stonewall used to represent, that Duncan describes- so many women are horrified at the way that womanhood has been quietly retooled to mean something else (to some people) and that the new meaning has been adopted by the law (GRA). I find it absolutely hostile and chilling to see regulatory capture all over the public sector and now in the private sector at influential companies like Google or High street historical figures that have become read as a token of UK identity like M&S.
‘Womanhood’ whether with positive or negative connotations in how women are viewed, has been the idea that informed the creation of spaces and institutions for female-only fun, solidarity, education, care, or safety, or correction, away from men. Political groups for women, Lesbian/women’s-only club nights, lesbian bars, girls secondary schools, women’s higher education institutions, the old ‘mother and baby homes’, women’s prisons and DV shelters etc
These initiatives rely on the idea of womanhood as a separate thing from manhood. Women’s time often in face of male opposition, was crucial to build these initiatives. They all crucially acknowledge the asymmetrical power relationship between the two sexes, and often that the position of women often affects the possible outcomes for children.
Sorry this is so long. I am just seeing more clearly that all this is not about the category of trans people, it’s about the category of women.
Because patriarchy means that for a lot of people, the sexed category of men 
) is not a category that they feel they have the power to define.
That’s even though they are not a woman and the down sides of any redefinition of women won’t affect them. Or, they are a woman but have class or social capital or other resources enough not to need many ‘women’s‘ services that now let in men.
And as abstract political thought experiments none of that would matter that much, were it not that a lot of other people will unquestioningly accept that new definition of women and seek to reinforce and police it in real life. While feeling that this redefinition is all an act of soldarity with GNC men. (Like reporting a woman to HR for being gender critical..)
This isn’t anything new, it’s the logical conclusion of a sexist politics. Genderism is a product of sexism. But i found it interesting to think about the rights of redefinition and the misplaced solidarity with men as a real driver of behaviour in the way Duncan describes it in his writing, and I hope he writes more about that.
We do need to all work together to end the culture war. (it’s too one sided to be a ‘War’ - ‘culture attack’ feels more accurate?) So it’s good to feel that there are ways that friends can reach each other and talk like Marie and Duncan did. We need Parliamentary reform, repeal the GRC and rely on EqA but reflecting on this, I might also try to stick my neck out again with friends as a matter of understanding each other for the sake of our old friendships.
I find it really interesting and helpful to have insight into the drivers for other people’s politics so these Medium pieces were interesting to read. Sorry to waffle on.