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!

@ReadyFreddy

To be fair, men are much more at risk of being violently assaulted, even if they’re conditioned not to be afraid (or more not to show it). But the fact remains that women need their own spaces and no bloke should be able to circumvent this need no matter what his ‘justification’.

Violence is perpetuated, in the main, by men.

To women. To children. To men. To transwomen, To transmen.

Violence to any of those groups is awful. But 98% of that violence is perpetuated by male bodies.

Women aren't the ones to need 'educating'

@ReadyFreddy

I do think these sub groups often supersede sex classes too in many cases. I think this often surprises many women - e.g. white women when WOC criticise ‘white feminism’ or use the Karen meme to describe the condescending treatment they’ve experienced. In these cases, the racial distinction often seems to trump the solidarity of sharing the same biological sex.

I wouldn't necessarily read these actions this way - I think it's misogyny rearing its ugly head. Both, but the 'Karen' stuff in particular, involve disproportionate levels of criticism towards women for small offences while often ignoring male 'wrongs' that are much bigger. Blaming women, or women's speech, for male violence is misogyny.

If you're on the 'lesser' side in any binary, then that binary is always a factor. Sex is always a factor if you're a woman - it mightn't be the most important one every time, but it's there. Race is always a factor if you're a person of colour - again, not always the most important one, but always there.

'Intersectionality' as it was originally intended is what we're talking about here, I think!

This article from the BBC shows that between 1997 and 2000 14 women were convicted of rape in London alone:

It doesn’t say anything of the sort. It states that few women have ever been convicted of rape, but that it wasn’t wholly unique, and that 14 women had been charged with rape over the period you mentioned in London.

I shan't go into everything, because, TBH, it's too much fucking nonsense for this time of the day, but I shall extrapolate on the rugby point.

At 5'9" and 75kg, I'm ever so slightly taller and heavier than the average woman, but considerably shorter and lighter than your average man.

I've been playing rugby for the better part of 20 years, normally at flanker or 8. I spend a lot of time in the gym and flatter myself that I'm pretty fit, for my age.

A couple of years ago, I was playing mixed touch with my club, when I ended up in a 'forward sandwich', caught between two younger male props - no malice intended, just going for the ball at the same time.

I went to hospital, where it was found that I had two fractured ribs and a bruised spleen - the doctor treating me said my injuries were consistent with having been in a car accident.

As I say, I have been playing full contact rugby for two decades and never suffered injuries like that, not least in a 'fun', theoretically no-contact game.

The idea of playing full contact in a competitive game with a male-bodied person horrifies me.

Article from the Guardian in relation to the concussion controversy, highlighting research showing how women are at greater risk of concussion. And that’s when playing against other women.

www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/dec/24/concussions-risks-womens-rugby-union-head-injury-dementia-mens-rugby

Why don't those women just self ID as men? I'd imagine that would sort the concussion issue right out...

@ChestnutStuffing

Yeah, I have to agree. I don't know many men that would be all that arsed about a transwoman in their changing room. I know some that might talk about it, but that's not quite the same thing.

I think you'd be surprised. There are a lot of men with a fear of being alone with a woman because they think she'll accuse them of being inappropriate towards them. And some who would just prefer not to have a female there when they're changing. Men should be entitled to spend time with other men if they wish too.

OP, do the half of the human population who are born with xx chromosomes / female reproductive biology face any particular needs or challenges, or have they collectively been (historically and currently) subjected to any forms of oppression, violence or marginalisation which are particular to, or which disproportionately impact them, due to being among the half of humanity with xx chromosomes / female reproductive biology?

If yes, do they - like any group which faces oppression on the basis of a shared characteristic - have the right to advocate for their rights, organise together, have accurate statistics to demonstrate their under-representation, etc.?

If yes, wouldn't it be useful in their struggle for liberation if this group, representing the half of humanity which is oppressed and marginalised on the basis of a shared characteristic, had a word, a collective noun, that described the half of humanity who share the characteristic?

What could that word be?

I'll address all sports related queries here - I generally think that transpeople should be able to compete as cispeople but with certain safeguards to ensure they have medically as well as socially transitioned, more to ensure fairness than anything. It is fair to say that a non-medically transitioned trans-woman would outcompete the average cisgender woman in a lot of sports, but equally it is scientifically illiterate to say that hormone therapy doesn't massively affect someone's athletic ability. It should be case by case. Incidentally on the injury point - as a big rugby fan I often make the point that Faf de Klerk, a 5'7" fly half who weighs barely anything, is allowed to play against 6'6" second rows who weigh the same as a bus. Particularly with physical sports, there is an element of mismatched size and injury risk in it anyway. Boxing and MMA make more sense to be more heavily policed in that regard.

'I generally think that transpeople should be able to compete as cispeople but with certain safeguards to ensure they have medically as well as socially transitioned'
How can you say such nonsense. You cannot medically transition the inherent muscle strength and bone size of men. You fall at the first hurdle OP.
transpeople should be able to compete as cispeople
Errr why - they are not cispeople - you called them cispeople.

Re this “two year” rule that JJ is so keen to introduce...it’s within the last couple of years that organisations like Press for Change/Trans Media Watch have had great success in compelling the media to never mention trans status. So up until recently, crime reporting would specify that a transwoman committing an offence was a transwoman, but then style guides were updated to require newspapers not to do that. So the crime will be reported as having been committed by a woman, and the only way the reader will know anything differently is if there are photos. Its now much harder to get the data that we should have, because it’s being wilfully suppressed. So the more recent the data, the more likely it is that crimes committed by transwomen are harder to detect, because that has been made to happen.

During these last five years or so, many police forces have also been recording crime data by gender not sex, or mixing the two up, so the official stats have been rendered less useful and less accurate.

The arguing over whether prison stats show that transwomen commit sex and violent crimes at male rates or not is angels dancing on the head of a pin though. It seems like it stays about the same, but the key fact is that it still looks nothing like female offending. It may be less than male offending, it may be more, but sure as dammit it’s definitely more prevalent than female sex and violent offending. And it’s irrelevant if they identified as women before or after their crimes, or if they’re just at it to try to get better treatment in jail- the result is that if we don’t manage the issue sensibly, it profoundly impacts the female estate. The numbers are statistically significant, the needs are different, the categorisation will need to be rethought.

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

I live in Ireland. In this country self-ID was introduced by stealth along with same-sex marriage and hardly anyone knew about it, much less were women asked how they felt about opening their private spaced to physical men.
Up to now, in my experience, at least away from Dublin, very few people are aware that any man can declare himself female and enter female spaces. I also know for a fact that, should a transwoman enter the female communal changing room at my local swimming pool and strip naked, every one of the 60+-year old women who change there would vacate the room and never return until men were banned.

Please be aware that it's not just about assault. It's about dignity and privacy. I do not want to get naked with males. I would not allow my three granddaughters to change in a communal room with males. But self ID allows for this.

And now, a few Irish news articles for you. Please be neutral enough to read them. I believe you are not very up to date on our situation; or else, you pamper yourself with the "no assaults reported! YAY!" delusion.

www.rebelnews.com/transgender_dangerous_offender_to_be_released_in_ireland_media_only_identifies_him_as_female

Women in Ireland aren’t being given crucial information on a dangerous offender being released from prison today – because the dangerous offender is transgender.

The teen had been charged with sexually assaulting two women and threatening to murder a third in 2019. The assaults took place at a secure holding unit, and the offender was removed and send to a facility reserved for children. Only known by the first initial G, he had expressed repeated homicidal desires, going so far as to detail how he’d like to locate and murder his mother after his release.

www.independent.ie/irish-news/prison-officers-demand-guidelines-on-transgender-inmates-39637102.html

Prison officers are demanding procedural guidelines on how to deal with transgender inmates as male staff cannot search men who identify as women while female staff cannot search prisoners who identify as women but are physically still men.

The issue came to light less than a fortnight ago when staff were directed to search a transgender inmate because there was a suspicion "she" was carrying a concealed weapon.

Just as male prison officers from the specialist Operational Support Group (OSG) were due to search the prisoner, this was halted as "she" identifies as female.

(The quotes around "she" are mine, but I have not bothered with the quote below, as I find it in a macabre way amusing just as it is.)

www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/male-born-transgender-sex-offender-20051834

A sex offender who was born male but identifies as female despite not having surgery, has been moved to a women’s prison in Limerick.

It is believed to be the first time that a transgender prisoner has been accommodated by the prison service.

..................................................................................

It is understood that she has not undergone any transgender surgery, nor is she receiving hormonal therapy.

However, she was in possession of a gender recognition certificate by the time her case came before the court last July, and is now being accommodated with other female prisoners.

It is understood that the prison has assigned a high level of monitoring and supervision of the inmate in the interests of protecting both her and her fellow detainees.

(By the way, the word "cis" is not permitted on this forum due to moderation principles. Please do not use it again, not on its own or as a prefix.)

@SophocIestheFox

Re this “two year” rule that JJ is so keen to introduce...it’s within the last couple of years that organisations like Press for Change/Trans Media Watch have had great success in compelling the media to never mention trans status. So up until recently, crime reporting would specify that a transwoman committing an offence was a transwoman, but then style guides were updated to require newspapers not to do that. So the crime will be reported as having been committed by a woman, and the only way the reader will know anything differently is if there are photos. Its now much harder to get the data that we should have, because it’s being wilfully suppressed. So the more recent the data, the more likely it is that crimes committed by transwomen are harder to detect, because that has been made to happen.

During these last five years or so, many police forces have also been recording crime data by gender not sex, or mixing the two up, so the official stats have been rendered less useful and less accurate.

The arguing over whether prison stats show that transwomen commit sex and violent crimes at male rates or not is angels dancing on the head of a pin though. It seems like it stays about the same, but the key fact is that it still looks nothing like female offending. It may be less than male offending, it may be more, but sure as dammit it’s definitely more prevalent than female sex and violent offending. And it’s irrelevant if they identified as women before or after their crimes, or if they’re just at it to try to get better treatment in jail- the result is that if we don’t manage the issue sensibly, it profoundly impacts the female estate. The numbers are statistically significant, the needs are different, the categorisation will need to be rethought.

Ahhh that makes sense. I wondered why JJ's parameters were so tight, specific and immovable. It's scary how little women's safety means to male bodied people who insist on having access to their safe spaces. If trans women were campaigning for a third safe space, or for safer access to their male spaces I would totally support and campaign alongside them. This insistence on transferring their own discomfort, fear and danger onto females makes me so angry and makes it impossible to empathise with their struggles.

So we can see that self identified trans women appear to be much less likely to be convicted of rape than men

However the important thing is that self identified trans women are much more likely to be convicted of rape than women! And therefore should not be in a woman’s prison.

I’m actually not interested in how they compare to men.

Not only did jj specify 2 years, but jj has ignored the horrific examples from the last year, focusing more on pedantry of how one example of conviction was actually 2 years and 2 months ago.

There should be no requirement from women to prove that they need to exclude males from female sex spaces. Saying no should be enough.

It says an awful lot about jj when examples of dangerous males identifying as trans are dismissed as too scant and insignificant enough to warrant maintenance of female sex spaces. I’ve often maintained that the rule seems to be the number of incidents required before people like jj show any concern or empathy is n + 1, where n = the actual number of incidents. It’s always “that’s not enough, show me one more example”.

jj gets presented with a list like this

mobile.twitter.com/historywoman/status/1191453438825181186

and says “that’s not enough to be concerned about, show me more.”

Will it ever be enough jj? Honestly? Or is your agenda always going to overtake the concerns of women, regardless of the numbers?

@Gurufloof

They weren't convicted of rape in the last 2 years When a person keeps saying the same thing over and over as a pp has I do wonder why. Could it be that if I look at further than 2 years ago I find way way more of the things that are being dismissed as not happening? Or could I maybe look at different stats for a different crime and find something very interesting? Like instead of rape, maybe child rape, or serious sexual assault or the like.

Well when I'm not sloshed I will have a cutsey look around the ONS

Also rape convictions in general plummeted in the last two years: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53588705

This is a useful thread for rational GC arguments, so thank you OP. I hope you make it up with your Mum and have a happy and healthy New Year.

All JJ’s smoke and mirror speculation re: trans prisoners is totally unnecessary btw - Bent Bars recently released a bunch of info sheets:

www.bentbarsproject.org/news/bent-bars-launch-trans-prisoner-info-sheets

The bit I found really interesting is transmen prisoners overwhelmingly wish to be housed in the female estate. Yet activists repeatedly campaign for trans people to be housed with their preferred gender.

Trans activism is shit for female people, even the ones who identify as male.

Thank you to all the women here who posted so much relevant information. Even if this was started by someone who was not prepared to engage, , as always the information is gold dust for anyone wondering why we are in this state.

I think this thread has been a good summary of the discussion. It appears that the OP couldn’t deal with factual arguments, but hopefully it will have a lot for the lurkers.

I would like to draw the attention of any lurker to two points (in addition to all the brilliant arguments presented here).

1. The OP posted something about how we all were terribly misinformed and possibly bigoted and stated that they would listen. There were numerous explanations, several answers to the questions OP asked and questions for the OP. The OP did not really engage, did not answer a single of the more important questions (“what do you consider to be a woman”) and then disappeared.

1. Another poster appeared and tried to argue that trans women were not likely to pose a threat based on (I believe) a source which list media reported trans crimes. This poster specified an exact time period to look out during which media has suppressed trans crimes and ignored several other sources of crimes.

Another note for the lurkers: not only has the op failed to answer but neither has anyone else reading this thread who may hold similar views to the op.

Surely just one of those who come here for the screenshots could take a moment out of their busy day to answer just one of the unanswered questions.

equally it is scientifically illiterate to say that hormone therapy doesn't massively affect someone's athletic ability. It should be case by case.

Just coming back to address this gem. I infer from this that you have either read Harper’s anecdotal and totally self reported study (as I mentioned upthread without even a control group) of 8 or something transwomen. (Who knew they were participating also... mmmm.. no bias at ALL). Or worse still, maybe you haven’t even read it but have just read activists hyping it up as being definitive work.

Anyone think this study is definitive is ‘scientifically illiterate’. Go and read it for yourself or if you have already, read it again. Then read the studies that have been peer reviewed and not only that, as one review of 11 studies showed consistent findings and an even more recent study using military personnel also showed similar, have proven like good research... it is repeatable. And robust as the findings are consistent.

And I think we have touched on just how ‘scientifically illiterate’ you have been in your minimising of the harm to women in allowing males to play in rugby. I guess you haven’t read that Swansea University study that I and others have posted. I might add it related directly to women’s rugby and the danger of concussive head injuries.

And since you also mentioned caster semenya, you also must know that the case here and with the other runners with DSDs is tricky due to cultural and historical aspects.

But the condition that they have are ones where they have had the benefits of androgen during puberty and it is likely that C S has a source of natural testosterone (maybe from internal testes if the reports of 5ARD are correct ) that continues to give them an unfair advantage. As seen when they have to run with that testosterone brought down.

Are we still scientifically illiterate? Or are you using social science as your scientific basis? Not, you know, biology and medical science?

I think your use of ‘intersex’ (as you have used) as a gotcha has also been called out enough.

OP. If these glaring areas of the misinformation that have formed your opinions have not caused you to take a step back and think maybe you could be wrong elsewhere too, then you are obviously here for the screenshots.