Common courtesy, a non-malicious question from a transgender person

[WhiteFlagHeldAloft]

Hello,

I wanted to ask a question that perhaps some of you may have an answer for. This is not intended to be malicious in any way, or to incite a flame war.

I am another person among many who identifies as transgender. My chromosomes are XY, I lived out my childhood and adolescence as a boy and began taking estrogen and testosterone suppressors at age 18. I identify as a woman and ask that others respect me in that identity. I am in a relationship with a woman who identifies as a lesbian, she was born and has lived her entire life as a woman.

I feel the need to clarify who I am before asking my question as the answer to this question is very relevant to me. I rarely leave me and my partners home, and without fail avoid any kind of sex-segregated environment as much as I can. I work from home, so don't have to do much there. I am not a part of any activism. I am not a vocal member of any kind of community, and avoid social media like a plague ridden rat. I have only ever engaged in sexual contact with my present partner, and for fear that I would not be accepted by her I was never the one to initiate such contact. I understand and uphold consent as a universal necessity, particularly as I have experienced sexual violence myself as an adult.

Alright, that's me. There's a lot more to me than that, but for the purposes of the topic at hand I feel its relevant to state the above.

Why is it okay to not be respectful of my wishes with regards to my identity and how am I spoken to? Why is a simple request regarding language when talking to me such an unreasonable demand? Is it not a common courtesy to be respectful towards someone who is being respectful of you? Whenever I mention that I am transgender and was not born a woman, a lot of gender critical people i encounter immediately start referring to me as a man even when they had been referring to me as a woman before. Over the years and pre pandemic I used to occasionally frequent LGBT spaces and still frequent some private LGBT groups online.

I'm not claiming anything about my biology or genetics or trying to argue that ive somehow changed my genetic makeup. I'm upfront about who I am. I have no recourse in situations where someone just decides to remind me in every sentence of how I was born. It might seem stupid, trivial, ludicrous even that it hurts me but it does. I am very aware of how I was born. I am very aware that I am different. I hate everything about how I was born. To be reminded of that constantly, sometimes even aggressively is mentally and emotionally exhausting. I don't understand why, its not as though its so hard to refer to me respectfully. You don't even have to agree with me, you can think I'm crazy or insane or delusional or whatever else. But at the end of the day its still a slight change in how you speak to me. Benign, and inconsequential to you maybe but to me it isn't.

Theres so much hatred in this discussion I feel like its become so polarized to that point that the lives of unrelated individual people are being dragged through the mud for no reason. I don't want to change your opinions on my identity or convince you of anything. I dont want to hurt anyone or make anyone uncomfortable. I just want to be allowed to exist and engage with other people who will respect me. That's all.

So, to reiterate, why is it okay to just outright not afford me common courtesy? Why is it encouraged, even endorsed, by many gender critical people to not give me that respect? I havent done anything to gender critical people. Im not even involved in any kind of activism or social media. I've been dragged into this unwillingly. I just want to live my life and feel free to frequent LGBT spaces where I won't be harassed by virtue of my very existence and nothing at all to do with the content of my character.

You just need to read a newspaper article about men who are transgendered to see the pernicious impact of 'pronouns'. If articles about Lia Thomas used correct sex pronouns then it would be completely clear what is happening - that men are cheating in women's sports.

Live and let live and we'll all get along. Require that I put your needs, wishes, feelings and rights above mine and that you expect a high standard of care and consideration from me that won't be reciprocating while you remove things from me that you don't value so don't see why I do? No. I won't be rude to you but I won't be co operating.*

This exactly

@Lovelyricepudding

You just need to read a newspaper article about men who are transgendered to see the pernicious impact of 'pronouns'. If articles about Lia Thomas used correct sex pronouns then it would be completely clear what is happening - that men are cheating in women's sports.

Pronouns are Rohypnol

I'm going to go all Susie Dent and say my word of the day: Gnosticism

Globalisation has had a massive impact on women. Some of it good but some of it not so good.

Women are discriminated against around the world on the basis of their sex. This is agreed on by Western consensus. Yet in the West we are told this is now no longer important or worthy of note domestically and its only something that somehow happens to poor foreigners. Western women have equality - except when they don't. Usually when they are pretty, middle class and white and walking late at night or in a film directors office. Then they don't. Then protesting a lot is a good thing. The prostitutes deserved it though. No protests supporting them. They were just doing their empowering job, which proves a service and they should have known better. Human Rights are important you see.

This is where collective 'liberal values' currently sit in the English Speaking World.

Its utterly bonkers to have charities talking about 'people' and inclusiveness to western audiences as gender rather than sex is the thing whilst simultaneously insisting on using 'women and girls' to promote causes abroad because otherwise they wouldn't get the same level of financial support.

The cognitive dissonance is strong in the Force. The Jedi Mindtrick is real.

Its almost as if poor western women don't exist and can not be seen even if its right in front of your eyes. To say that you have been negatively impacted by putting gender over sex is a sign of moral weakness. Pronouns are the wave of Obi-Wan's hand when he says these are not the droids you are looking for.

Instead its a taboo that you will be outcast and publicly shamed on twitter for talking about your own reality and experience. Or the dreadful real life experiences of other women.

Its validity and 'true authenticity'
is viewed as fake or unimportant or worse pure heresy. Thats some awfully Victorian thinking going on there, to suggest you lack moral fibre if you don't sign up to beliefs and instead are grounded in the primative backward notions of physical reality. Its also incredibly racist and elitist. Not forgetting sexist and homophobic.

I'm happy to respect all humans, but that isn't unconditional. Other humans must respect their peers too - regardless of their sex, race, sexuality, religion, age and yes you might want to even throw gender in there too. Cos Human Rights see us all as equal when you actually bother to understand them.

There cross pollenation of ideas going on here. Its quite striking as to who it benefits and who mustn't have their own sense of their own identity that comes from themselves which is worthy of respect. And then who hides behind the false notion of rights being based on artificially constructed oppression heirachies.

Who is afraid of the screenshot? Being shunned and outcast isn't a new thing. I'm not quite sure how its progressive in anyway. I'm not quite sure how its inclusive either. If you believe in Human Rights you understand abuses of power and censorship and want to expose and draw attention to injustice.

Thats my problem. The disingenuous dressing up of a hierarchy of identity to punch down on groups that still have massive disadvantages but not disadvantages which are worthy enough or morally and socially valued enough to be freely spoken about.

So screenshot away with bad faith arguments. I like the sunlight.

Jedis can turn to the darkside before anyone suggests the tripe about Jedis being the good guys as some ludicrous defence.

I believe most GC women want transgender people to live their own lives and be respected. They have the same rights as everyone else.
It is the demanding and aggressive trans activists who have caused all the unpleasantness, where women feel they have to fight to retain their sex-based rights.Too many of the so-called trans activists are simply male woman-haters who are rubbing their hands with glee that they've got us in this position.

It's also the 'teaching' of gender ideology and recruiting children to lgbgt clubs in schools that makes me and quite a few others incredibly angry.
Get the lobby groups out of schools please!!!

ArtemesiaK which category would you place OP who, oh so innocently, demands we show 'common courtesy' by destroying the meaning of words we need to describe ourselves?

Seems OP isn't returning. I wonder how many responses here are being pasted elsewhere.

So screenshot away with bad faith arguments. I like the sunlight.

Absolutely. How many people have been told about the horrors of the den of evil vipers, and come here, and read a few threads, and started asking questions ... ?

Share away, monitors. It's all sunlight.

Why can't you just be a transwomen OP? You aren't a woman, you say you identify as one so you know you really aren't one otherwise you wouldn't have to identify as one you'd just, you know, be one.

Quite happy to call you she, they, Brenda, whatever makes you happy but not to say that you are a woman.

Haven't read the full thread, but my opinion is years back, women extended courtesy and respect because we had that courtesy and respect back.

Then boundaries got pushed, aggressive activists paved the way and now we have males coming into single sex spaces for a wank, and a push for being able to access single sex spaces on nothing but a persons say so. Any woman centered language, especially to do with her biology is forbidden. Any organisation that uses it gets piled on until they bow down and grovel. Women get called a subset of their own sex because activists don't like woman being used as a sex descriptor, they want to merge us into one group when we aren't. Women's sports have been taken, women's prisons have been invaded, women's refuges and rape centres are no longer safe spaces to heal but places of ultimate validation. Addtional trans inclusive spaces are not enough, only womens will do.

Single sex exemptions exists but everyone is afraid to use them or have been educated by charities to believe they can't. Every area, every facet of female life is taken from us and nothing is ever, ever enough. All we've worked for, campaigned for, through OUR efforts, OUR sacrifices, taken.

And when women say no that's enough, we're bitches, bigots, terfs. We're hounded into resigning or sacked, we're treated as scum, our hard work and creations removed from us and our names are mud. We are accused of promoting violence in the very harshest language. We're told we make people afraid, we make people want to kill themselves, it's all our fault.

All because we said no. It's an utter fucking betrayal, it feels like women's rights were nothing more than lip service because it only took a few short years to remove them all. This has gone, way, way beyond courtesy.

it feels like women's rights were nothing more than lip service because it only took a few short years to remove them all.

This. They were nothing more than a thin veneer. However now that women know this, that this has been exposed, this time when we re establish women's rights it will not just be token permissions held in the gift of men that men get to call time on when they want them back.

Absolutely all for TQ+ people having the resources and spaces and services and facilities and respectful language and protections in law that everyone deserves - and for female people to have precisely the same. There is going to have to be some tolerance here, from TQ+ people, and some common courtesy in reciprocation.

Women don't have rights. We have privileges that can be withdrawn at any time.

I really miss the days when I thought this was a simple matter of looking the other way out of courtesy and respect. That was before i saw women's courtesy and respect and reticence - and sometimes fear - used as evidence that we didn't mind and even hadn't even noticed.
Women did not ask for this battle.

Yes it is so unbelievably frustrating that women being basically tolerant of a small number of males in our spaces on the understanding that they behaved respectfully, and that we politely pretended they passed, is used as evidence that we had no idea they were there, didn’t notice and didn’t feel uncomfortable. Of course we did! I have always felt awkward about it, not just because of there being a male in a female space, but because of the insulting implication that being a woman involves exaggerated feminine stereotyping when that never applied to me.

But there was a social contract where women were expected to accept it and male transsexuals were expected to behave well and minimise the impact on us. Aside from keeping a low profile in women’s toilets, transsexual males generally didn’t take places on a woman’s prize shortlist, awards for women or jobs as women’s officer, or demanded to be considered a lesbian, because that would have been taking the piss and inviting people to point out they weren’t female.

Thanks OP.

Abandoned threads like this do a great job of showing the thousands of readers of the thread the hypocrisy, the thought processes demanded by males who are in turn demanding this ‘courtesy’, the many reasons why it is treating these issues on a ‘case by case’ basis makes any difference to the overall outcome for females.

Case by case might help YOU but you just either are ignoring or are actually ignorant of the knock on effects of even that small change in language has.

So, thank you.

And thank you for the great demonstration laid out in your paragraphs. The sympathy plea, moving into the reasonableness, the appeal to reason (including that one woman has agreed to support your demands completely… so therefore you must be able to expect it from all others) and then the remonstrating, the coercion, the victimhood, the projection.

One step away from ‘repent motherfucker, repent motherfucker, REPENT motherfucker, REPENT MOTHERFUCKER!!!!’

All in one post. Not even the twitter screen shot account is getting much support or sympathy for your post.

Even the usual posters who would defend your posts earnestly gave it a couple of half hearted posts about ‘pronouns’ and have not defended your attempt.

I doubt you will even bother reading what we wrote. Because I am convinced (if you are even real) that you wanted to lash out at women who reject your claim to being a woman ‘just like them’. Because that is what you are demanding.

And you have shown just how infuriating you find women saying no to you.

Hey OP, ‘no thank you’.

Yes these threads go like:

OP: why won’t you be polite and lie and deny reality

FWR poster: because rational points, clear explanations, harmful consequences and because there’s no respect in the other direction.

OP: ….. no reply… has no argument… posts rational points on Twitter…

OK then

Excellent post, Hellebore

This is a requirement for women to enact a belief a male person requests, whether or not they believe it themselves.

The pronouns - as seen on this thread, many women say yes, ok, if it makes you happy I'll enact that belief for you.

But the requirements escalate.

Enact this belief by permitting a male person to be in a female only space, and enact it even when that excludes some females. Refuges and rape crisis even. And this is the point that some females - many with protected characteristics - have to say hey, look, I can't enact that belief in this situation because it excludes me from having access to women's spaces or any space at all.

But no, no exceptions made for them, no mutuality of consideration, just demand that they enact either by participating or by leaving the space, with no right of reply.

Lesbians face a requirement to enact this belief - up to and including sex, and lesbians who at this point say hey, no, I can't enact this for you in this situation because sex does matter and I'm homosexual, and I know that this upsets your sense of self to hear but I -

Anger. Exclusion. Threats. Name calling.

Even down to this morning, a poster who supports TA politics stating that writing a belief that female people have rights too in a public place is an act that should be regarded as criminal damage, because imagine how it would feel for someone who has requested others enact their belief to encounter an interruption and refusal to enact that shakes their sense of self?

The entitlement here is off the scale. Women look at all this and go - ok, where did this start? And it started with pronouns. The tiny little enactments that are just 'common courtesy' and opened the door to pushing that demand further, and further, without the faintest regard or compassion for its effect upon those being demanded of.

That's not courteous. That is never going to work.

I feel really frustrated about this kind of manipulative behaviour. In its own way, it's worse than old-school sexism.

OP claims to be scared and vulnerable and ever so fragile - too frightened to reply even on an anonymous online forum.

Yet OP wouldn't think twice about taking up women's spaces in real life if need be (even if that scared or intimidated someone), and purposefully came here to tell a bunch of women off and manipulate them.

I'm quite surprised we haven't seen a "you've all made me feel suicidal" response, as that often seems to be the next threat by abusive people.

Theres so much hatred in this discussion I feel like its become so polarized to that point that the lives of unrelated individual people are being dragged through the mud for no reason. I don't want to change your opinions on my identity or convince you of anything. I dont want to hurt anyone or make anyone uncomfortable. I just want to be allowed to exist and engage with other people who will respect me. That's all.

I don't want to change opinions, convince you of anything, or hurt anyone, make anyone uncomfortable, but you must respect my demands?

Got it.

Not a good look anywhere, but breathtaking on the feminist section of a website largely populated by women!

Also, I wonder if the OP realises that this is just the latest in a long, long line of identical threads posted by transwomen.

My question is, what's in it for women, OP?

Name one, single, solitary benefit for women. Just one.

My question is, what's in it for women, OP?

Name one, single, solitary benefit for women. Just one.

We'll be waiting until the twelfth of never for that Datun, reality that there are zero benefits for women and immense harm caused to women must not be acknowledged, accepted or voiced.

For once, just once, I would like people like the OP to be fucking honest and admit that there are no benefits for women and the benefits are all for them, that they know this and that they don't care.

The benefit for women:

By being 'kind' women are accorded the badge of a Good Girl who does as she's told.

That's it. That's the only benefit I can see.

You probably meant to say the badge of badge of a Good Person who does as they're told. Please be more careful next time.

Nah, Good Cervix Haver/Menstruator/Cis Women/Girl with an option to delete as appropriate.

Please remember women and girls are not women and girls in this Brave and Stunning New World, only TW and TG can be that.