Who do the transgender activists actually represent?

[FrustratinglyIrrational]

From my interactions with transgender women in normal life, I get the impression that many are just trying to get on with their lives quietly, and have no desire to make women uncomfortable. They feel unrepresented and embarrassed by the activist movement, and are nothing like the entitled bullies screaming all over social media. So who are all these people pushing the "trans agenda"? I don't believe they have the best interests of gender dysphoric people at heart, because their actions are doing a huge amount of damage to the public perception of that group, and they must be aware of that. They are giving very tolerant people good reasons to become less tolerant. And then claiming that tolerance for transgender people is at an all-time low, and that we should therefore acquiesce to their every demand. Are these activists not ultimately the biggest oppressors of the people they claim to represent?

The Christian Right? In the UK? That's not a thing, Disgusted.

On social media today I saw

You'll never guess what I saw on social media! Not going to go onto Mumsnet and lambast the women there for it, though, because that would be a wee bit odd.

And lastly, yes, we are all keen to hear your thoughts on WiSpa's problem with a sex offender. Any comment?

It's been very noticeable the lack of comment about the Wi Spa incident from our regular TRA's once it was revealed that it was a sex offender taking advantage of the chilling effect of self ID. They just ignore the comments. It's quite telling.

I can’t speak for the 80s, but certainly by the 90s many schools and LEAs ignored Section 28 in practice in any case. As a young LB teenager I went to an extremely high church religious girls’ school - so high church the school policy was against the consecration of female vicars! - and there were plenty of PSE lessons and debates on gay rights and mentions of same-sex relationships, and several teachers were gay. There were sermons (from the male chaplains!) on accepting gay people within the church!

This probably varied from LEA to LEA and school to school and many others may have had a different experience; but the Section 28 phrasing of not “promoting” still didn’t necessarily mean “no discussion at all”, or indeed an anti-gay atmosphere in schools. My experience in the 90s was that schools were much less homophobic then, than in the 2000s when “gay” became a widespread pejorative term in schools.

Ah the Christian Right.

Again - we are not in America. Although there there does seem to be a pattern of religious types in the state happy to trans kids (whereas they would beat their little boys for liking ‘girl’ things but accept the trans option with open arms).

The times I see U.K. based people spouting American laws and history as ‘evidence’.

Kitty yes definitely - in the U.K. the established (Anglican) church is as likely to represent a weak centrist/leftist liberalism as anything else. Even amongst the more traditionalist churches, lots of Anglican vicars (and indeed Catholic priests!) are gay themselves.

So called “right wing” Christians in the U.K. tend to be of the old fashioned Tory type who are usually largely socially liberal in practice - Cameron-style Tories who are economically right wing but socially libertarian, and in fact rather pro LGBT, especially LGBT men.

The whole “Christian right” thing doesn’t make any sense in a U.K. context at all.

In the same way that a not-inconsiderable number of MNers post quite cruel / cutting / sarcastic comments behind the anonymity of a username but wouldn't say boo to a goose IRL, I suspect more 'quiet, just-get-on-with-it-IRL' TW than their friends suspect are shouty misogynistic TRAs online.

On social media today, I saw Nicola Spurling, transwoman, say this, and I will lambast our trans activist contingent for it. Sorry, Arabella

I reject the idea that a persons sex assigned at birth is an observable trait which factors into physical attraction.

So they've just denied the existence of sexuality. Looks non-discriminatory, but as a belief, that will impact the marginalised LGB, particularly the L, because female sexuality is always seen as malleable. It won't impact straight people, particularly not men. So in practice, it denies the existence of same-sex attraction.

Very 80s!

twitter.com/NicESpurling/status/1437620508527185921?s=19

Whatever Nicola would like to reject personally is not likely to persuade a female homosexual to engage in straight sex. And it's rather worrying that anyone would try to encourage this.

It might be nice if Nicola would consider rejecting instead the idea that other people's sexuality is something that should be politically controlled to fit their personal view.

This Nicola Spurling?

www.tiktok.com/@nicespurling/video/7007525178066357509?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1

Some truly fabulous replies on that Twitter thread though

Are these activists not ultimately the biggest oppressors of the people they claim to represent?

They are the biggest oppressors of themselves half the time. Why does Spurling go round and round in circles writing all that rubbish to people they know will never believe it.

Spend five minutes reading the SRS thread on Kiwi Farms and you can see how much damage this all does.

mobile.twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie

Replying to
@NicESpurling
and
@DutchDykes
The reason they're piling on here is because with this wording there's room for their intentional misrepresentation. I'd say:

"No one is attracted to chromosomes, gametes or what genitals you had as a baby"

Which is the same point but less room for their bad faith!

Montgomery I'd now coaching Spurling in what to say. That really helps doesn't it!

You couldn't make it up!

@irresistibleoverwhelm

I worked a while ago with a transwoman who had surgically transitioned in the 1980s, very old school, just wore jeans and a jumper and no makeup and got on with her job. She passed, pretty much, as a middle aged woman with no makeup, jeans and a jumper. She was very keen on being treated as a woman in every respect.

I liked her and she was easy to get on with. You’d have expected her not to have any truck with the current TRA stuff, but last time I looked her up she was doing a bit of online crusading in the wokesphere, and fully signed up to the whole agenda. So I don’t think that there is necessarily a clear distinction between groups. I think one shouldn’t underestimate a tribal adherence to the ideology even from people who you’d think would not believe in some or all of it.

I would say that you can't draw a line. Some people in these situations are quite happy to advance their own advantage, others aren't, and some can be sucked in for the same reason other people are, they don't really see the implications, they assume what is progressive is good, they assume the people they have associated with are acting in good faith, that those who aren't are outliers. It's true of non-trans people on this issue so I wouldn't expect those who are trans to be any different.

@anaily

How is it not the same? In the 80s they didn't want kids learning about gay people, in 2020 they don't want kids learning about trans people. It's the same censorship and suppression.

This isn't even an argument. Look what happens if you change the terms:

In the 80s they didn't want kids to play Dungeon's and Dragons, and in 2020 they don't want kids watching porn online.

It's the same argument, clearly false since Dungeon's and Dragons is a game that doesn't show any real evidence of being harmful or inappropriate for kids, whereas porn is in fact bad for them in all kinds of ways. That is - the two things are materially different. The attempts to stop kids doing them were not the same, because one is well founded and appropriate, and the other isn't.

Your argument only works if you make a prior, unstated assumption that they are in fact equivalent. Which is to say, you assumption is the thing you are trying to claim your argument shows. That is, you are arguing in a circle.

There are quite a lot of differences between homosexuality and gender ideology. Whatever your opinion of either, it has to address the specific nature of each.

Nicola's efforts continue.

Please tell us how you identify someone’s sex when medical professionals require tests to accomplish that, and then tell us how that results in a physical attraction? Or, is it a person’s physical traits you’re attracted to?

twitter.com/NicESpurling/status/1437891679650934785?s=19

The don’t represent DD, that’s for sure. She hates how gender ideology is pushed at school, how it’s constantly in her face, constantly reminding her and making her dysphoria worse. She hates being asked what her pronouns are and the new trend of people announcing theirs. She wants proper neutral therapy to figure out where her dysphoria comes from and whether it can be managed without transitioning but the activists conflate this with “conversion therapy”. She considers herself to be “true trans” and yet somehow she finds many of her views to be considered transphobic by activists. It’s madness. don’t know who they think they represent, but it certainly isn’t my daughter. I’m actually incredibly proud of her for not falling down the ideology rabbit hole despite all the adults around her doing their best to drag her down it.

for your DD, rogd.

I attended the rally outside the Welsh Senedd yesterday and tried to talk to some of the protesters. They all seemed very young, though it was difficult to be sure because they wore masks and some had hats too, even though they were outdoors and none of us GC crowd (who outnumbered them at least 5 to 1) did.

They just kept shouting that transwomen are women and that women does not equal vagina. It was the same old tropes over and over: men can be women, women can be men, and all the Lesbian Labour and LGB Alliance supporters and the Labour women's declarations supporters were the homophobes and misogynists. One of the young women who classified herself as a non-binary lesbian accused me and my lesbian friends of being misogynists. I pointed out that my friends had been at Greenham and we'd fought for women's and LGB rights all our lives, including their right to abortion — but no, she just kept calling us misogynists.

How do you even begin a conversation from that basis? We ended up laughing. It reminded me of trying to deal with toddlers who insist on ridiculous things.

It's like dealing with the Jehovah's Witnesses when they call round. There is nothing to say because they believe in something that doesn't exist and we don't.

[quote PurgatoryOfPotholes]Nicola's efforts continue.

Please tell us how you identify someone’s sex when medical professionals require tests to accomplish that, and then tell us how that results in a physical attraction? Or, is it a person’s physical traits you’re attracted to?

twitter.com/NicESpurling/status/1437891679650934785?s=19[/quote]
Gah. Nicola I don't care .

You identify sex any complicated way you want, you have fun with that.

I'll be over here being a female homosexual with no issues whatsoever in knowing who I'm physically attracted to and really not needing your help with it thanks.

@KittenKong

When I worked for the church - of the 3 of us in the Office, 3 of us had gay siblings (1 married and two with a long term partner). When one of the 2 announced their impending marriage, the vicar offered to come along and do a blessing (this was before you could get ‘properly’ married in the church).

The most homophobic nonsense my sister has had recently (pre lockdown obv) was from a bunch of cackling idiot straight women in a flipping lesbian bar... yeah, hissing ‘lezza’ at a passing lesbian (she hadn’t event clocked them as she was going to the loo) in a lesbian bar is so ‘be kiiiiiind’...

Where was this lesbian bar? I'm a lesbian and I had no idea there was a proper lesbian bar still in business!

It was a couple of years back now - aren’t the all closed now anyway (we can’t be having that sort of thin now can we)? I remember there was one or two proper ones soho/Oxford at end - I remember there was one that had a ‘no unaccompanied men’ rule (that would be a nightmare to inforce now)