I'm male, gay and I don't get it

[NotMushroomInEre]

So, I'm here to learn. I tried to name change, but I can't. I am male and gay - no kids. I class myself as someone who supports trans people, but I equally support women. My intention isn't be to be divisive, although, I think this could be, which is really sad tbh.

For me, transwomen competing in sports that are for biological women is not acceptable. Science dictates the reason for my opinion and there is nothing more to say really.

Women have been oppressed for generations, and even after fighting for the right to vote, and gaining 'equality', women are still oppressed. I can't stand a system that would take women's spaces away and be ok with it.

I have female friends who would abhor what I've just said, and I don't understand it?

Please help me.

Welcome OP.

There isn't all that much to get, people want to be "kind" especially if it gets them lovely virtue points, but women aren't even considered because we live in a structurally misogynistic world..

@Ereshkigalangcleg I try and by kind, I'm not interested at all in virtue signalling, I believe it is a phrase that is commonly used, wrongly, by people on the Internet who don't really understand it tbh. It's really easy to say 'virtue signalling' when people disagree with something.

As for the misogynistic world, I couldn't disagree. However, I would like to be a person that doesn't. My mum was female, my sisters are, I have three grown nieces, and I don't want them to be subjected to misogynistic arseholes.

What do you want to learn?

Put simply you have a pretty good grasp on the issue from what you've posted.

@BreadInCaptivity I asked a group of female friends what they thought about transwomen competing in sports, I added my suggestion that I thought it was wrong - a third space could work? I was screamed at. I couldn't believe it.

@BreadInCaptivity yep, I'm not going to negotiate women's rights over tran's rights. I'm always going to support trans people's rights, unless it imposes on women's rights. It isn't ok to compete in women's sport if you were born a guy, it just isn't!!

It isn't ok to just change your sex before you go into prison.....they aren't trans people though. They are fucking perverts that our legal system is letting them get away with. They should be accountable for that.

OP I'm a woman and have the same stance as you, nothing you have said should be taken as being wrong or cruel to anyone, it's literally just facts and sex based rights should always exist. People blindly follow what everyone else says thinking they're being kind etc and without actually thinking because saying transwomen shouldn't compete in women's sports but also that you support trans people AND women can be thoughts that co-exist but people are so ready to pounce these days.

If you are generally politically progressive, and so are your friends, that's not surprising OP. It's a very common thing among women of that political tribe.

There are a few common misapprehensions among women (and sometimes men) who think this way:

• Many don't really understand the physical differences between men and women and the degree to which it makes a difference in sports. They would be shocked, for example, to find the #1 Olympic women's hockey team loses against high school boys teams.
• They may also think that hormones change the male body to be within the performance parameters of a female body. Many will say that some women have "naturally high testosterone" which they have picked up from the controversies over people like Caster Semenya, not realizing that CS is biogically male and has testicles that produce male levels of testosterone.
• Many really believe the Trans Women are Women phrase. That is their starting point, they believe that in some meaningful way these male bodied people are actually women. So you can't show they are outside the normal parameters of being a women, because the parameters have to include them to be valid.

In addition a lot of these women have no experience of practice putting what they hear from their political tribe or preferred news sources under real scrutiny, many won't even read any media that might offer a different perspective as they see it as tainted. They assume all right thinking people agree. And they are used to feeling quite self-righteous towards people who disagree.

Thanks for your thoughts @ekinsu Something to consider

@NotMushroomInEre Welcome. Glad you're here. Have you watched any Mr Menno videos? If not he is this charming and funny gay man who is gender critical and furious at gays and lesbians being labelled bigots for being same sex attracted. He has lots of great videos, this is the latest

NotMushroom, you haven't seen the level of homophobia us lesbians are getting? We are called bigoted terfs for refusing "girldick". I would bet my next paycheck that you haven't had someone scream at yOU for not eating some ManPussy because, at the end of the day, the transactivists actually do know who the females are.

We all have already heard we just need the right dick countless times, but now it's from "our community" -- well eff that because the most dangerous place for a lesbian is at a Price march and the L certainly has no seat at the table. Google "terf is a slur documenting". Sadly there isn't even a lesbian community anymore, it's been completely taken over by aggressive AGPs. No clubs, no gay dating sites because if we say we want bio females we are kicked out. If this isn't misogyny on steroids, I don't know what is!

Them screaming at you - that sounds fear based - meaning they know at some level what happens to women that publicly agree with you and don’t even want to be adjacent to someone suggesting it.

I also think that they might be so socialised into being a ‘good’ and ‘kind’ and ‘liberal’ and ‘right’ person that any suggestion that puts a chink in their purposely unexamined beliefs needs to be shot down as quickly as possible, they don’t want to even think ‘bad’ thoughts.

I’m with you though but feel ashamed and lonely about it most days as I’m surrounded by ‘believers.’

You might find if you talk to them individually they actually agree with you. There is a lot of fear about speaking about against trans women, so many tend to either agree with the conversation or stay quiet.

I have spoken out and had women speak to me afterwards that they agree with me. I have also not felt comfortable to speak out and spoken to those who did afterwards to show my support. It’s always been gratefully received.

I actually think the majority of people realise no one can change sex and that sexes are ‘equal but different’ and that a trans woman will never be a woman and they should not be in woman's spaces.

But there’s a scary, powerful, (& very strange) social force that is submitting us all into compliance. I suspect it’s pharmaceutical companies using incredibly clever marketing techniques (but I don’t want to go down the potential conspiracy theory route on your thread, so I’ll leave it there!).

People don't understand biology; they want to 'be kind' and forget it works both ways and no 'kindness' is returned, they have been taken in by the whole 'transwoman are women' nonsense . For the record, I would never discriminate against a transperson, but neither do I believe that taking hormones turns a person into the opposite sex. Saying otherwise is just stupid.

This article on crony beliefs made a lot of sense to me and explains what happened to you meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/

There has been some very successful, if factually incorrect, propaganda spread that transpeople are the most oppressed, the most victimised and the most physically threatened minority. That may be true if you’re a trans sex worker in South America (which is where the statistics, such as they are) come from, but in the UK transpeople are pretty much the safest demographic, and in fact are more statistically likely to be the perpetrator than the victim of serious crime. When Jess Phillips was lightly piled upon (compared to some) for not naming any TW murder victims in her annual reading of the names in the HoC on IWD, it transpired she couldn’t include them because there has been no transpeople murdered in the UK for something like four years now (which is great news; no one wants an epidemic of transphobic killings).

Nevertheless, that propaganda has done its job and the general belief about transpeople, especially TW, is that they are very vulnerable indeed, so OF COURSE if you express any concerns whatsoever about TW in sport, the loopholes self-ID offer predators to exploit, safeguarding children - any of it - you are on the side of the evil bigots who oppress this poor vulnerable minority and must be loudly educated to do better. And of course it is those on the left who pride (no pun intended) themselves on their liberal tolerance who shout loudest - and I say that as a lifelong lefty liberal myself. Young women have been suckered in, told they have female privilege and that it’s their job to make TW included everywhere to make up for that privilege. And we all know how uncomfortable it can be to believe you’re the oppressor with privilege over the oppressed, so they do what they’ve been told.

No one seems to pause and consider that this oppressed, vulnerable, powerless minority who needs all of us to lift them up and subjugate our own needs has effected a level of institutional capture and influence over policy that any other genuinely oppressed minority - people with disabilities, say - could only dream of…

The issue is that many women were brought up to be deferential to men, to accommodate and make allowances for men and see male approval as Very Important.

There are women (I know some) who will never accept an invitation out with friends for dinner because their husband can't look after themselves for the evening...

They see men as hapless, incompetent and slightly vulnerable whilst also more important than women. And they are horrified when other women stand up to men because its not womanly or unfeminine. These women often also feel an overwhelming compassion towards men and feel we should protect them and give th special privileges because, after all, they're only men...

This is why you got the response you did.

By saying what you did, you triggered all these feelings they have towards men. They don't think for a second that transwomen are actually women (because they're actually quite hard on other women) but they recognise them as being even more extra special than ordinary men and feel that it is their role to protect these extra special males as they would injured animals or very small children.

@LordLoveADuck that is an especially brilliant one. It really deserves its own thread.

Op, it sounds like you understand the issue quite well and hold a sensible position. I think speaking to your friends individually would be the way to go. Ask questions about what they believe and why, rather than telling them the facts as you see them. People are more likely to change their mind if they get there through their own thought process.

If you have the time, Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, provides a framework for understanding why and how people think the way they do. The audiobook is also very good.

Here's a keynote speech on the topic:

www.amazon.co.uk/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0141039167

BenCooper
One thing that rarely gets mentioned is those stats in context. Even in Brazil, where the numbers of male transitioners murdered is truly awful, more women are murdered each year.
extractBrazil ranks fifth on the scale of countries with the most femicides in the world.In 2020, murders of women increased by seven percent.Two thirds of the affected women are black.The data also show that a woman or girl is raped every eight minutes in the country, and almost 60 percent of the victims are 13 years old or younger.newsrnd.com/news/2022-03-12-femicide-in-brazil--a-woman-s-life-worth-less-than-a-handful-of-drugs.SJgkxadqZc.html

Sounds like you think what you’ve always thought and your friends are embarking on a misogynistic journey you don’t want to go on. And why should you? Stay here.

Building on what Blue said, if your friends aren't following the issue and are simply taking the so-called progressive line, it's possible that they still believe "trans" means a man who is 1. gay and 2. hates his sexed body so much that he has/wants his genitals removed. This is no longer the case, as we all know, but a lot of people still haven't had that memo.

They might not realise that a woman is now anyone who says they are one, or that men are being placed in women's prisons or that a woman was raped on a supposedly all-female ward and then gaslit by the staff because "there are no men here". Do they know that a woman is taking rape crisis to court because they refuse to provide a female only support group? Do they know that an assault victim was admonished by a judge for refusing to call her male atttacker "she"? Do they know about the social contagion in troubled teenage girls? Do they know that schools throw safeguarding out of the window as soon as a child says "trans"? Do they know that the NHS is systematically removing the word "woman" from all their literature? Do they know that police follow guidance that male officers can search women if the officer says they are a woman? And if a woman objects, she's at risk of being done for a hate crime? Do they know?

I had my doctor try to gently correct me on my beliefs recently. I’d only gently alluded to them but she talked about how science is recently only discovering the different layers of differences in sex. I think she probably meant DSD but it was somehow shaming, although she was kind. I know no one in real life that is gender critical.

I think you sound like you have your head around the issues, although are possibly still mired in the ‘trutrans’ belief. I.e. you say

It isn't ok to just change your sex before you go into prison.....they aren't trans people though. They are fucking perverts

How do you know they’re not trans people? They say they are. Often they have, or are in the process of getting, documentation that says they are. The justice system treats them as though they are. Most of them make some effort to alter their appearance.

What’s the meaningful difference between the trans-ness of a person who has committed a crime, and one that hasn’t?

what’s the meaningful difference between a class of males who impinge on female rights in prisons, and those who do it in rape centres, children’s organisations, schools, hospitals, leisure facilities, sports etc?

"@PlantSpider I think she probably meant DSD but it was somehow shaming, although she was kind. I know no one in real life that is gender critical.

My workplace is quite woke. Some of my colleagues voice their opinions on gender issues quietly to me and say they think it's a load of twaddle. But you have to be careful who you speak to because you might think someone has similar views and before you know it you're in the manager's office being told you are going on a stonewall course .

As for DSDs I was reminded recently of a woman I met over two decades ago at university who had Turner syndrome. I can say woman because she definitely was one, and she said she was one. She looked like a woman. She had relationships with men. But she had underdeveloped reproductive organs (plus other physical issues). It's a medical condition, so why are DSDs (or Intersex as SW keeps insisting on calling them) included on the Pride Progress flag? It's a medical thing, not a sexuality, identity or paraphilia thing. It is not proof that there are different layers of sex. For a medical professional to say that is astounding to my ears.