Billy Bragg's 'sexuality' - is 'trans' a sexuality?

[ArabellaScott]

Just thinking about Billy Bragg's song.

How is 'trans' a sexuality? I thought it was an 'identity', but it seems if LGBQ all relate to sexualities, there must be a reason the T is put in with sexualities?

If it's NOT a sexuality, then why aren't other 'identities' added into the LGBTQetc acronym?

Oh and meant to say.

Gay men > men in 'women's' clothes in their experience = gay, no threat to women, seen as particularly bad to police when gay illegal.

Natural part of their movement, the fight for rights.

Creepy men who wank at schoolgirls in parks, while wearing knickers. Perves who steal women's underwear, get a sexual kick out of sniffing, wearing. Putting knickers on and having a wank. Men who commit serious sex offences and take the victims knickers. That sort of stuff.

Those men have got to be heterosexual or the vast majority.

Men in general including gay men likely won't have that on their radar at all.

So given that I suppose the position of so many LGB+ people is more understandable for the males at least.

Their understanding is putting on a frock. Their experience tells them.Gay men. No threat to women. This is persecution again.

Women understanding. Due to experience and I suspect reading news about sex offences against women more. And things that have happened to friends. Man women's stuff esp places where men not around. Warning bells. Likely creepy perve. Danger.

That at least explains a big part of the total disagreement. For some.

@Artichokeleaves and @ArabellaScott

Just saw the article you were referencing. I thought by “male trans woman” you were saying just, well, any trans woman. Now I see that (I think?) you meant untransitioned.

Yeah that person shouldn’t have been there.

Actually on that point I am in agreement with many trans rights activists, abitof. The degree of 'transition' is meaningless.

Whatever the transwoman has done to their appearance, whether it's a bit of lipstick or surgery, a male person remains male and therefore it will still be a potentially triggering experience for a woman being in their presence in this situation.

The Equality Act is clear on this, too - a GRC has no bearing on whether a male can be excluded from a single sex space for females.

There is, as anyone who's actually thought this through has realised, absolutely no way at all to separate out a sufficient degree of transition from no transition at all, nor to gatekeep which males enter female spaces. If it's any one at all then it's all. The End. (for females)

And as Arabella says, for some women, that single one lovely wholly transitioned TW is still male and will still exclude them from women's services or indeed any services at all. Hence the issue mentioned on several threads today where male service users have access to a male group, a trans group, AND a mixed sex women's group and can take their preferred choice. Women get one option only with no choice, and any who find the mixed sex women's group inaccesible get refused any service.

It's male supremacism. I'm not up for it. I'm not supporting this total lack of ability to see female people as equally human, take the slightest interest in their lives or voices or needs, while stripping out their provision to male benefit and patting the heads of the little sillies who don't see their lives should be revolving around their betters.

Who in this position would?

Trans people are welcome to do and be and access whatever services they like, have all the services, have a lovely time, go crack on. The only interest I have is that female people get equal access, consideration and parts of the world that male people haven't ripped away from them because they feel more important and more entitled.

That's nothing to do with being trans, that's to do with being exceptionally bloody sexist.

The only interest I have is that female people get equal access, consideration

Yep. This. All we ask is that women are given equal consideration.

In fact, scratch that. I'm done asking. Women are entitled to equal consideration, by law.

@ArabellaScott

The only interest I have is that female people get equal access, consideration

Yep. This. All we ask is that women are given equal consideration.

In fact, scratch that. I'm done asking. Women are entitled to equal consideration, by law.

Quite.

The whole idea of 'asking' buys into this ongoing and phenomenally misogynistic belief that female rights, services, spaces, are something belonging to males that they might gift a few bits out to females if they're good girls. Sometimes. But only of course if it suits males at the time. Like single sex spaces.

Which we could have until male people wanted to come into them.

And yes, it has to be law.

I think it's been destruction tested by all this that males will not respect or consider female needs or rights out of choice, good will, sisterhood or anything else, regardless of how they identify. There have to be strong, unbreakable boundaries that prevent males simply taking everything and ruling everything. Since females trying to talk about their needs, to reason with males focused on their own wishes and feelings and interests, don't even succeed in being static on those males' radar. They just don't see females as real people, they are utterly unable to listen or understand the female experience as it's just plain not relevant to them and their interests. It's proven over and over again in real time on these threads.

To be honest @abitofadvice1234 is another example of what my learning experience on these boards have taught me.

I used to feel so very sorry for struggling transwomen. And I used to think that I personally would be happy to share certain single sex spaces with them but that I couldn’t speak for all women.

But is is always the same. Here is yet another poster who is so full of their own tragic story that there isn’t an iota of empathy for what biological women are going through.

So convinced that they have a special right to enter any female place they want that they don’t stop to think about other traumatised women for a second. In fact, they are rude about them.

This makes me feel that I am not perceived as a real person. This might be a bit of a newsflash but almost every single woman has experienced sexual harassment or assaults. Some have absolutely horrific experiences. And guess what, the majority of the people who are pushed into prostitution are biologically female.

Female socialisation tells us to emphasise deeply with any suffering person and try to alleviate this suffering. But women need to wake up to the fact that in most cases this empathy only goes one way.

Anyone who feels that their trauma trumps any trauma of any biological woman and that they have a superior right of access is pushing the boundaries of the most vulnerable in society.

And I don’t want to share any single sex space at all, not even a communal toilet with single cubicles with them.

I thought by “male trans woman” you were saying just, well, any trans woman. Now I see that (I think?) you meant untransitioned.

Yeah that person shouldn’t have been there.

Do we have another transitioned male gatekeeping 'womanhood' then? Like we don't see this almost daily on this board. Transitioned males who fully believe they 'pass' but agree that others who don't should not be allowed to enter female spaces. Like THEY have somehow earned the right to enter female spaces themselves in any way rather than just taking that entitlement for themselves.

I really cannot believe how often we see it. In fact, I think I have just seen in on another thread last night from a transitioned male that doesn't pass at all. Still pointing out though that 'passing privilege' is alive and well.

That the extreme hypocrisy behind that gatekeeping seems to be ignored, or simply not seen is something to behold though. That requires some degree of self-focus and that in itself is quite telling as it is certainly not the case with female socialisation.

Thank you Arabella, this turned into a very enlightening thread again.

[quote abitofadvice1234]**@Artichokeleaves* and @ArabellaScott*

Just saw the article you were referencing. I thought by “male trans woman” you were saying just, well, any trans woman. Now I see that (I think?) you meant untransitioned.

Yeah that person shouldn’t have been there.[/quote]
So special privileges for even more special people within the special group? Not Stonewall's acceptance without exception then?

The person whether transitioned or not should not have been there, full stop, the end. This should have been a single sex space for females only. Other spaces and services are provided within the organisation for TW whatever their state of transition.

Women want and are entitled to female only spaces that are free from any and all males, to deny them that is misogynistic, discriminatory and in a number of circumstances downright dangerous.

Women were not put on this earth to be your validation tools, human shields or collateral damage, we are not some subhuman support creature we are human, we are entitled to our rights, we are entitled to be treated equally under the law.

It is, I think, an example of the Dunning Kruger effect. Trans women observe female people from the outside - how we live, how society treats us, what "everyone knows" about us - but believe their knowledge of what it is to actually BE a woman is just as complete as that of someone who is one.

Undoubtedly the same goes the other way, and the things I believe I know about what it is to be a trans woman are flawed and superficial. The difference is that I am not trying to insist that my conception of a trans woman overrides her own, only that her conception of womanhood should not override mine.

I really really wish that gender ideology had not gone down this route of demanding that TWAW and TMAM. I think we could learn lot and support each other very well if we were only free to acknowledge we are not the same thing. I wish I could have those open conversations with trans people about how the world looks from behind their eyes vs mine, but we cannot do that as long as I have to pretend there is no difference between us other than transphobia.

It's ironic that in insisting we are the same, genderists force us to focus on and highlight our differences, whereas if they allowed us to be different and where necessary separate without issue, we would most likely be coming together around our similarities.

There is, as anyone who's actually thought this through has realised, absolutely no way at all to separate out a sufficient degree of transition from no transition at all, nor to gatekeep which males enter female spaces. If it's any one at all then it's all. The End. (for females)

Exactly. I don't use the word "transitioned" because it's not universally understood to have one meaning, it's therefore obfuscatory and confusing, probably by design. I also don't make any distinction between the motivations or legitimacy of males in female spaces. There should be none.

It's ironic that in insisting we are the same, genderists force us to focus on and highlight our differences, whereas if they allowed us to be different and where necessary separate without issue, we would most likely be coming together around our similarities.

Yes, good point. It's been discussed on here many times that feminists were naturally allied with transwomen before anyone suggested TWAW. At the instant that line was crossed, though, it became essential to women's rights and safety to strengthen and protect that boundary line.

The majority are currently backing away at max speed from the 'fact' that has been pushed for ages that people can and do change sex.

'identify as female' etc is going fast.

As usual. When a statement of truth for recitation becomes widely seen as ??? then a new direction is implemented quickly.

The goalposts are constantly jumping about, along with a sincere denial that the previous position was never the case.