Grey area on trans rights

[Spyrothedragon23]

Reasonably new and learning about be trans issues / community. Happy to learn more but my request as it’s a hot topic for people to keep it adult and polite.

Just wondering if it possible to be a bit grey on the area rather than black and white? Alot of people on these boards feel very strongly about the movement and in some ways I understand.

This is where I am a bit grey:

I don’t agree with anyone with the sex they are born with being in the opposite sex sports / jails etc it’s just wrong and not fair. There’s a biological advantage if some is male and moves to female for sports.

However I don’t have an issue with someone wanting to be the opposite gender if it makes them happy. As long as it doesn’t affect or
impact others (see above statement about sports / jails etc). If it was a friend I would happily call them by a different pronouns or name.

Is there another area of this movement I’m missing? Are some people a little more grey rather than black and white?

No, they don't like you using sex . When you say "gender" that is now taken to mean anyone who feels they're a woman.

Transexual is OUT. Transgender is IN and includes men like Izzard who are "fluid", crossdressers, you know, those middle aged bankers who got their kicks out of wearing bad wigs and frilly knickers on a Saturday night "to relax".

Services, news outlets etc are encouraged to refer to single gender changing facilities.

You can change gender (whatever you're deciding that means at the time), so anyone can claim to be entitled to access single "gender" spaces.

You can't change sex no matter what cosmetic interventions you have, so if you mean sex as in female or male it's clearer to say so.

Control of language is crucial to postmodern movements though, so the GRA elides sex and gender - you get a gender recognition certificate so that you can change your sex on your birth certificate which is clearly nonsensical. When the media reported on the ban on males competing in female athletic categories some outlets said it was a ban on trans females competing in female athletics - obviously trans females are transmen who aren't banned unless they are doping.

The intention is to obfuscate and confuse. Clear language is important. Pronouns are part of this game.

This is a great thread about the trans lobby and the tactics they use.

A first person account from an undercover Mumsnetter who attended a conference for trans activists:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3398737-We-re-Still-Here-Conference-8th-September-A-report-from-the-inside

Made me think of this -

At a point where Scottish politicians are caught smiling in front of a sign that says decapitate Terfs there stops being any grey areas.

Simply I'd call the person Jenny. In the same way I'd not use a derivative of someone's name if they didn't want to be called that i.e. Jen in place of Jennifer.

And when someone asks why you haven't invited Jenny to your women-in-whatever group, then not just the content but even the ordinary words you choose to explain will condemn you. Your perception of Jenny as male or a man will be enough to condemn you. One use of the word "he" and you will be labelled forever.

I was deeply impressed by Nicola Sturgeon's speech about transgender rapist Isla Bryson being put in a women's prison, the one where Sturgeon managed to not use the words "he" or "she" once. I could not physically have done that myself. I'm not surprised Sturgeon resigned afterwards - it was a tour de force but she must have been knackered by the end. (Plus it went down like a cup of cold sick anyway and she must have realised there was no coming back from it)

It is black and white though isn't it. There are 2 genders male and female.

Males have male dna in every cell of their body as females have female cells.

You can lop bits off your body/take hormones/wear a dress or trousers but it's all nonsense as it's completely impossible to change sex.

It's a totally non factual myth. I refuse to go along with other peoples delusions. That was lies maddness

It’s mainly transwomen that have the voice. I don’t see issues related to transmen being discussed with nearly the same amount of regularity or force.

so my opinion on how such a small minority has such a strong voice is- because they’re males and the people being affected by the changes they push for are females. That’s why. same old same old isn’t it?

I firmly believe there are just male and female, no in-between and no movement between the two.

I'd like a way of being active now as I am fed up of feeling so powerless - I have seen what has happened to some teenagers and am worried by this.

When this man gets to intimidate young teenage girls and make them undress in front of him whilst waiting to go to trial for raping two women, then gets sent to a women's prison there stops being any grey areas

I’m a dinosaur, sorry! So to help me get it right, the “correct” terminology is “sex” is all about m/f; “gender” is more nuanced? (And thus I should have said “sex”, not “gender” in my original post to avoid a bollocking from the woke elite)?

Not really, no. It is a minefield and there is no way to avoid a bollocking from someone. Which "woke elite" do you mean? For example those academics who did not want the words "male" and "female" to be used in that proposal instead of (I guess) AFAB and AMAB. That's "assigned female(male) at birth" with its politicised implication that you can't tell what sex/gender/whatever anyone is until they tell you, so sex/gender/ whatever has to be "assigned" and not "observed" like we've all been doing for millennia.

Here on MumsNet Feminism we do tend to use "sex" to mean physical sex and "gender" to mean socialisation. The rest of the world is not so consistent (and we're not always consistent even here)

There's also a whole chapter of Kathleen Stock's book devoted to picking apart the different meanings of "gender" that people use. She also observed that the "trick" of saying something that is only true for meaning A and then extending it to meanings B, C and D as well, has played very well for trans activism.

I work in academia and academic language is a complex thing in itself. I would politely say "autistic spectrum condition" but I believe academic terminology is still "autistic spectrum disorder". The normalisation of gender identity disorders is a matter for wonder in itself.

As for how 'we got ourselves into all this bother' - WE didn't.

Me, I blame these young people. We oldies fought for feminism and sexual liberation and gay rights and then we left it to the young things and just look what they did with it, can't take your eyes off'em for a moment (well a couple of decades) Bah, humbug

I was more like this, but it’s become clear that to a lot of TRAs nothing but full acceptance/assimilation of us and our spaces will do. I was sympathetic to an extent but no more. I will now only use chosen pronouns where I could get into bother at work. Otherwise no.

I was listening to someone on a podcast talking about this recently. (It was possibly 'gender a wider lens' with Stella O'Malley talking to Helen Joyce, but I'm not sure, though I have been listening to Helen Joyce a lot recently. I thoroughly recommend her book 'Trans' to any one who wants to learn more, and also listen to anything where she is talking about these issues, she speaks so intelligently and with such clarity.

Basically, once you understand that there are actually quite a lot of men with a sexual interest in accessing women's spaces, and that men will go to a lot of effort to satisfy their sexual desires, the rapid success of the TRA's becomes much less puzzling.

Anne Lawrence, an American male transsexual who identifies as an autogynephile, has researched this extensively, and estimates the prevalence of autogynephila to be about 3% of males. It is one of the commonest paraphilias.
Autogynephilia: an underappreciated paraphilia - PubMed (nih.gov)

Let's not forget, Nancy Kelly, who is the CEO of Stonewall, called lesbians who don't want males in their dating pool 'sexual racists'. Stonewall, who identifies as the charity for LGBT rights. Who get money to represent lesbians. Just not the ones who are actual lesbians.

If you'd like to be more active you could sign up to SexMatters or other similar organisations who are trying to fight this.
You need to donate anything (although every bit helps) but they are great at signposting petitions and protests that are happening.
I donate to them - not much, but it makes me feel like I'm contributing to something concrete.

The other thing I would say it try and talk about this in real life (obviously tread softly as some people will just scream TERF and walk away). But there are many people (women) who understand what is happening and scared to talk for fear of such screaming, and would love an ally.
There really are more of us out there than the media would like us to think.

No one minds people being trans if that’s what they want.

But they do mind coerced Orwellian speech.

The pretence that trans people are actually the sex they say they are.

The expectation that transwomen are women for all purposes. No sex based spaces allowed etc.

The pushing of gender ideology, puberty blockers or hormones on children ( where that is advocated). The ‘affirmation’ of children and separating them from their parents.

When you suffer stigmatisation to the extent that you won't speak up for what matters to you; and when your meetings have to be held in secret in case activists turn up to disrupt it; and when they do find out your meeting gets cancelled at the last minute due to pressure put on the host; and when males in black balaclavas storm buildings in which you have gathered; or scream "bigot" or " Nazi" in your face; when you get thrown off a forum for speaking the truth, whilst others issue death threats, post images of guns and knives and their accounts remain intact........you tend to start seeing things in black and white terms.

The nature of trans activism and the demands of gender ideology are extreme. Nothing is ever enough. Total compliance is what is required. Fairness and dignity is not what it is about. It is about total capitulation to a radical ideology which seeks to erase women as a distinct group of human being. There is nothing grey about it.

OP, the point is that women's rights are not ours to give away. We hold them in trust for all women and girls, now and in the future. It doesn't matter if you personally, or even if a majority of women decide they don't mind peeing or changing beside men. Because a lot of women do mind. And they matter. So it should matter to all of us.

Yes. This is the end result of gender identity ideology. Rapists being able to use social pressure to prey on women.

@AmaryllisNightAndDay I haven't seen or read N Sturgeon's speech but will look it up now. As for Jen/Jenny asking or expecting to be invited to a hypothetical 'Women in' whatever group then it would matter what the group is about.

Who or what are the "woke elite"? And what does 'woke' mean in this context? @Lydiahateswashing?

It's an unwinnable culture war that is fed by politicians because they'd rather we were talking about this endlessly than tax reform, corruption, public services etc.

I can't be arsed getting het up about it. Trans people want legal and social reforms, these need to happen in a way that vulnerable groups. Over time, the right path will emerge.

Trans/gender bending people have always been around. Right now it's in vogue but I think its a bit like a punk protest movement, give it a decade and it won't seem so cool to get gender atrophy and go on about pronouns any more. There will still be transpeople who need protection, but the zeitgeist will move on.

You must be fond of sleeping at the wheel.

Governments have refinined sex and written acts that are a confusing mix of sex and gender, then refuse to acknowledge what they have done. When women highlight that safeguarding is impossible, the same people who support sex being redefined, then declare it a "culture war".

No, it isnt a culture war, its a safeguarding mess. And if governments contine to pretend that they havent created, and do something about, the safeguarding holes that they have created, dangerous men are going to continue to use them.

What you've said OP is almost literally what JKR said.

And look what happened to her......

Read what she said, what she actually said not what people saying they want her to die say she said, and see if there's any difference between your view and hers. There isn't. And for this both her and her children have had enough death threats to paper the inside of her house