I'm a young feminist; I cannot understand your Gender Critical positions

[borandukht]

Hello all, I'm writing this because I'm at the end of my tether with my mother, who has become engulfed in the gender critical discourse mainly thanks to this website (cheer or weep for that depending on your view). She had originally been very comfortable with transgender rights, and given we have a closeish relative who is transgender too, I've never felt put out or uncomforted by what the trans-rights movement was all about.

After absorbing what you lot have to say about the matter (in general, I know there are some pro-trans feminists on here) she's completely changed her tune and frankly it's becoming exhausting and absurd. I had never really listened to the arguments of GC feminists before the last year or so, and frankly after listening to them I have become ever more convinced that you are unfortunately gravely misinformed on a variety of topics regarding transgender individuals, the goals of the rights movement, and the resultant society that values trans-lives. Some of the repugnant transphobia I've seen online further makes it hard for me to value this movement's "genuine concerns" as truly genuine. What made me snap was yesterday seeing a comment on here stating that the Daily Mail was more feminist than the Guardian. I read neither, because they're both toilet paper, but anyone who says anything so blatantly obtuse to reality clearly has a very specific, narrow view of feminism predicated entirely on not liking GNC people - I don't see how anyone who's read any Daily Mail article ever could say that without laughing.

So, I'm here to listen. GC people always say they just want an open discussion, and I am happy to oblige. There will be no hate, nothing like that. I will try and engage you directly, and respond to why you have these positions as fairly and equitably as I can. Hitherto the arguments I have read/heard from GC's online and in print have been unconvincing, but here at least I can respond directly and try and start this discussion that is so desirable.

If you want specific starter questions (god I sound like my lecturers), think about stuff like:

1. Why do transwomen represent such a threat to you in women's spaces, in your mind?
2. Where do intersex women fit into your feminism?
3. What makes a woman? If it is genitals, does a transwoman with bottom surgery count in your mind? If it's chromosomes is Caster Semenya a man?

I hope to read your answers soon. In the meantime, merry post-Christmas!

jj1968

Until you can prove that the subset of the male sex who identify as women are less of a risk to women than other males, they should have no place in female only spaces , where males are excluded as they may present a danger to women. As there is only evidence which highlights the similarities in criminal behaviour of transwomen andother members of the male sex this should mean that transwomen do not belong in female prisons,refuges etc .

@borandukht so what’s the point in single sex spaces if you want to allow biological men into women’s only spaces?

So boys should be allowed into girls only schools?

Teen boys and girls should share toilets and changing rooms at school?

6’2” broad shouldered men identifying as women should be allowed to compete in sports and athletics against slender petite women?

Men identifying as women should be allowed to win awards in women categories?

Should we just eradicate women full stop seeing as you think being a woman simply means liking feminine things?

@HermioneWeasley

The OP is a spectacular example of confirmation bias - nothing that disproves her belief, even MOJ statistics, actual crimes, experience of women working in the DV sector, is accurate or requires always at least one more source. Anything she believes can be asserted without evidence or fact, even if it’s weapons grade bollocks.

I think anyone who doubts that criminals are using trans status to gain access to women’s prisons , and incidentally confuse the recording system of male criminal activity and female criminal activity should spend time watching the you tube video entitled “These are not our crimes”.

The culture around trans issues here is toxic. Hope it's gone well

Lol. You must have somehow missed the behaviour of TRAs these last few years. You think here is toxic? You'd be out cold for days on your fainting couch if you saw what some of those lovely tra ''women'' have to say to women who disagree with them.

🙄 Do me a fucking favour.

And Pip Bunce really winds me up. He won some sort of award for best woman in finance. All that male privilege and he puts on “being a woman” like a costume he can take on and off when it suits him.

Somewhere is an actual woman who will actually have achieved more than he has who did not win that award. Instead it was given to him for no other reason than pandering to wokeness and celebrating he’d been brave by wearing a dress twice a week.

What about the actual women who have fought their way through discrimination to actually achieve stuff.

I’ve no idea how important this award is/if it’s something you can put on a CV, get you promotions, etc. But a woman has missed out.

Like so may sportswomen who have lost sporting records, titles, places on national teams, sponsorship and funding. Many sports will only fund an athlete if they’re in the top 8 in the world. If a man is actually taking the top position that means a woman down the ranking is now 9, when she should be 8. So she loses her funding, can’t train full time, has to get a job, her training and performance suffer. It’s not right!

As I've said on a previous thread...

We aren't assuming a trans woman is more likely to attack someone because they're trans. We are acknowledging that it's a greater possibility because they're men.

I've never seen a single poster here voice their disagreement with trans people having human rights (the exact same as every other human being). We are, however, concerned about the erosion of the concepts of womanhood and femaleness.

Following your logic, I'm curious if you would agree that someone should be entitled to disability rights for no other reason (i.e no physical, cognitive or mental condition) than feeling disabled?
And I say that as a disabled, mixed race female so am somewhat familiar with the impact of such things.

It is really notable how the OP is cherry picking what to answer and what stats to look at. They are refusing to define 'woman' which I think tells us all we need to know. It's very hard to have conversations with people who are not really interesting in anything anyone else has to say or in doing anything other than virtue signaling. And it is very dangerous if such people get into positions of power as they are basically happy to piss on people's (women's rights) in order to stoke their own ego.

I suspect that the sexuality of trans people may vary depending on the culture they live in . In homophobic societies gay people may identify, or be forced to identity,as transgender

I'm another who would like to know what 'transitioned' means in this context - what are the objective, agreed upon criteria for 'transition'?

@jj1968 at what point of 'transition' does a man who identifies as a woman come out of the high risk category of male and into the low risk category of female? And how are females in vulnerable spaces meant to tell who has actually 'transitioned' and is a genuine transwoman and who is just a man trying cross dressing or trying to take advantage of a loophole?

We aren't assuming a trans woman is more likely to attack someone because they're trans. We are acknowledging that it's a greater possibility because they're men

ThiS. 💯

Lol. You must have somehow missed the behaviour of TRAs these last few years. You think here is toxic? You'd be out cold for days on your fainting couch if you saw what some of those lovely tra ''women'' have to say to women who disagree with them

Interesting that the first thought of many trans women, when JK Rowling made her opinions clear, was to threaten to silence her by violently shoving their great big lady dicks in her mouth.

I have never known a woman threaten sexual violence to silence someone she didn’t agree with...

How are women meant to know who they are 'allowed' to challenge and who they absolutely mustnt challenged because that would be soooooooo bigoted?

However even if you include those convicted of historic offences who later transitioned it's still nowhere near the number required to establish an equivalence of offending patterns with men.

Surely the proper comparison is how much a of risk is posed to women by mtf transitioners as opposed to other women.

Mtf transitioners may well pose less of a risk than men who identify as men. Chances are they pose more of a risk to women than other women, though. Why should women have to face increased risk?

And also, risk aside, there are privacy and dignity issues. I wouldn't want to share a communal changing room with my friend's husband or sleep next to him on a hospital ward, even though I am quite sure he poses no risk to me, because I wouldn't feel comfortable.

If trans women represent just 0.3% of those born physically male then you would expect 36 convictions over five years. So from the figures we have it appears that a man is around 36 times more likely to be convicted of raping a woman than a trans woman is.

And yet there are about 60 transwomen in prison who are sex offenders. Which is nearly half of all transwomen in prison.

So either transwomen are particularly likely to be sex offenders, or there are a lot of male sex offenders who are pretending to be transwomen. Which is it jj?

fairplayforwomen.com/transgender-prisoners/

Hello, poppet.
Welcome to MN.

How easy do you think it is for women in prison to report sexual assault?

Sorry not read the full thread, just had a look at the OPs replies.

Yes actually! Self-ID has been legally recognized in I believe five or so countries and has been de-facto applied in several other municipalities (to my knowledge). None of these countries has recorded any rise in sexual assaults, rapes, or anything like that. Ireland's is the most well studied as far as I know, but none have recorded any issues from the self-ID aside from an increase in govt paperwork smile

Can you tell me what checks and balances will stop the Barbie Kardashians of this world legally changing sex under self ID? The current system of obtaining a GRC has checks and balances in place to stop violent male offenders legally becoming women but self ID has nothing like that.

This violent male offender is a serious danger to all women so placing them in a female prison is a recipe for disaster.

Haven't read the thread but I am a gender non-conforming autistic and bisexual woman who is gender critical.

I grew up from as tiny as I remember thinking that boys were better than girls and totally rejecting anything pink and 'girly', wearing 'boys clothes', having short hair and being a tom boy.

It wasn't until well into my twenties that my sexuality emerged and I found a way to be a woman, same sex attracted and start to accept and embrace that being female isn't 'lesser'.

It bothers me hugely how much internalised misogyny young girls grow up with and how vulnerable I would have been to trans ideology. I can almost guarantee that if I'd been born 20 or 30 years later then I would have been totally convinced I was trans.

That is why I am gender critical. Gender stereotypes are a total heap of shit. Girls are programmed to believe all sorts of negative things about themselves. My feminism is about girls and women being able to embrace who they are without identifying out of being a woman.

For this to be a meaningful conversation at all, the OP needs to define 'woman'. If they can't do it without talking in old-fashioned stereotypes or waffly impossible to pin down feelings, then this can never be a helpful conversation.

Hope it's gone well

Id say no to be honest

well said @bitheby

what are we thinking are the chances of OP returning?

I'm kind of hoping her mother has sat her down and explained how rude and deliberately hurtful to her mother her behaviour has been, and the OP is now having a period of quiet reflection in her bedroom

@borandukht

Hello all, I'm writing this because I'm at the end of my tether with my mother, who has become engulfed in the gender critical discourse mainly thanks to this website (cheer or weep for that depending on your view). She had originally been very comfortable with transgender rights, and given we have a closeish relative who is transgender too, I've never felt put out or uncomforted by what the trans-rights movement was all about.

After absorbing what you lot have to say about the matter (in general, I know there are some pro-trans feminists on here) she's completely changed her tune and frankly it's becoming exhausting and absurd. I had never really listened to the arguments of GC feminists before the last year or so, and frankly after listening to them I have become ever more convinced that you are unfortunately gravely misinformed on a variety of topics regarding transgender individuals, the goals of the rights movement, and the resultant society that values trans-lives. Some of the repugnant transphobia I've seen online further makes it hard for me to value this movement's "genuine concerns" as truly genuine. What made me snap was yesterday seeing a comment on here stating that the Daily Mail was more feminist than the Guardian. I read neither, because they're both toilet paper, but anyone who says anything so blatantly obtuse to reality clearly has a very specific, narrow view of feminism predicated entirely on not liking GNC people - I don't see how anyone who's read any Daily Mail article ever could say that without laughing.

So, I'm here to listen. GC people always say they just want an open discussion, and I am happy to oblige. There will be no hate, nothing like that. I will try and engage you directly, and respond to why you have these positions as fairly and equitably as I can. Hitherto the arguments I have read/heard from GC's online and in print have been unconvincing, but here at least I can respond directly and try and start this discussion that is so desirable.

If you want specific starter questions (god I sound like my lecturers), think about stuff like:

1. Why do transwomen represent such a threat to you in women's spaces, in your mind?
2. Where do intersex women fit into your feminism?
3. What makes a woman? If it is genitals, does a transwoman with bottom surgery count in your mind? If it's chromosomes is Caster Semenya a man?

I hope to read your answers soon. In the meantime, merry post-Christmas!

I wasn’t going to engage however your racist comment has riled me enough. You are lying that an FOI shows no reported sex attacks on cisgendered inmates. www.thetimes.co.uk/article/seven-sex-attacks-in-womens-jails-by-transgender-convicts-cx9m8zqpg

The treatment of JK Rowling was abhorrent and I noticed not one transgender person came out and said while I don’t agree with her views the threats of violence are not in my name. The threats against women are real, a Brighton business owner was hounded because she refused to put up a sign begging for money for gender reassignment surgery. How many men do you see hounded for their views?

@RufustheSniggeringReindeer

Hope it's gone well

Id say no to be honest

OP made a handful of posts and seems to have disappeared.

I thought she had come to listen and discuss and enlighten us all, so I'm really rather disappointed.

Oh, TRAs won't accept anything from FPFW.

In fact, anyone who focuses solely on women and lesbians instead of worshipping trans people is instantly a biased, bigoted hate group, so tras can just stick their fingers in their ears screaming 'la la la' at the mention of these cruel monstrous groups. They don't count.

I wonder if that works for things like HMRC? If I brand them a bigoted hate group, can I discard all their evidence that I owe them? Happy days!