Is Mumsnet shutting down GC views? FAO Justine Roberts

[Pluvia]

Mumsnet, are you aware that GC views are acceptable and are held by the vast majority of people in the UK?

Why are you using the 'not in the spirit of Mumsnet' argument to shut down discussions?

In the thread about a trans co-worker you allowed pro-trans arguments presumably from the US, Australia and Canada to mount up overnight. When GC women here in the UK countered with facts this morning you shut the thread down. I didn't see a single offensive post — unless you've changed policy and now think using the medical term autogynephilia is offensive.

This is not acceptable. Maya Forstater's case established that GC views are worthy of respect and yet you seem to be censoring open debate.

There are a lot of women who think the operation should make a difference. I'm not one of them, but I understand why they make that distinction. It demonstrates a level of commitment, and removes a body part that has historically been used as a weapon.

And, it would reduce the numbers by something like 95%.

So I do get it.

I disagree with it, though, because the definition of a woman is not a man who's had surgery.

And if more a practical objection is required, it's completely unworkable, and for many/most women, it makes zero difference.

You were one of the old hands I was thinking of, Datun!

I've been off doing activism in the last couple of months, with some success in my local sphere. I've been round the argument block so many times on here that I got sick of the sound of my own voice explaining things — so I can quite understand why others would think that now was a good time to take a break.

I'd assumed everyone had moved to Ovarit. What do I have to do to get an invite?

Nothing from MN about whether the medical term autogynephilia can be used: of course it also, when it's used needs to be explained which involves the use of the word fetish — a word used by psychologists.

This needs to be decided on by MN HQ. We can't have times of the day when we can use certain language and other times of the day when we can't.

What you are missing in your comparison is that you might avoid those people on the basis of things that they have said or done, which are unappealing to you.

They key difference on that thread was the suggestion of avoiding someone on the basis of a characteristic they had. Not on anything they had said or done.

That sounds like phobia to a lot of people.

I disagree with that distinction too @Datun.

Firstly because women are not dickless men.

And secondly because the operations themselves are fraught with complications at best and and completely bloody bonkers at worse.

You cannot turn a penis into a vagina anymore than you can turn a lung into a liver.

And making genital operations the official dividing line between good trans and bad trans will contribute to the harms happening to dear, sweet, vulnerable, GNC, gay men with internalised homophobia like Shapeshifter and Ritchie.

And as a mother of a young adult son I worry just as much about these young men as I do about the adolescent girls and young women caught up in this self harming, body hating movement.

Maybe we should make 40 the minimum age for cosmetic genital amputation? 🙃

‘Transition’ is a verb, it’s something the person has done.

No one is born with transition as a characteristic.

Hi I am relatively new to MN. Where does one find these well established guidelines for discussion please?

I think your characterisation of characteristic is too narrow.

The truth is that one of the largest group of transitioners is now men who just a few years ago would have been classed as cross dressers; often older and married, and usually heterosexual. Men who have been cross dressing since childhood. Grayson Perry writes about this very well. It ceretainly has an erotic/sexual element as well as an emotional/psychological one.

A lot of such men have become emboldened in recent years to take their 'practice' full time - people like Eddie Izzard; Caitlyn Jenner and so on......

You only have to look at the what has become of the 'Beaumont Society' - set up in the 1960's for men who liked to cross dress, with a section for their wives to come along to weekend events and socialise with other wives. It is now a fully fledged 'trans' organisation.

I see quite a few men presenting as women around and about where I live - and most of them, I suspect, would fit into this category - and it is clear that for most that it has an erotic element to it, judging by presentation and sometimes behaviour.

I also suggest that new generation of younger men identifying as women fit this pattern too - and it is partly predicated on gaming culture/anime avatars/and that sort of thing.None of whom would fit the classic 'crippling dysphoria' diagnosis.

Ha! Yes, I get sick of the sound of my own voice in explaining the background, too. I assume that most people know it already and the reasons for long explanations are over.

We’re talking about employment law, where the characteristic is ‘gender reassignment’.

It’s not an inborn thing.

Yes, I agree. At least 40! Or preferably after a shit ton of therapy, as it used to be.

Sorry, you must have misread my post. I wasn't talking about employment law.

You might well avoid someone who sets up obvious cognitive dissonance in you, though......along the lines of them presenting in one way when the reality is clearly different. This mat not matter so much if you also did not feel that you had to monitor and suppress your own rsponses to the dissonance, or even to pretend that you hadn't noticed the mis-match - under pain of censure.

Why would you put yourself through that?

You really, really can't stop people avoiding men who are keen to violate their boundaries. And you really, really can't stop women talking about that.

Then you’ve missed the context of this thread, which was about a woman being uncomfortable with a colleague who has undergone a process or part of a process.

Have you forgotten the post you responded to by @Pluvia already? Try clicking ‘show quote history’ for a reminder.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/7

Well for sure. I'm sure some white people in the southern states decades ago felt cognitive dissonance when they were expected to work alongside and be nice to black people, which went against every fibre of their being and their understanding of what was right in society.

Why should they have had to put themselves through that?

So are you saying phobia is alright if the target has ' undergone a process '?

What about a mastectomy?

And yes also there has to be reciprocal consideration from the TQ+ lobby that they have responsibilities too. And they are not helping this.

Women are repeatedly experiencing, right here on threads like this from TQ+ lobby supporters and TW posters, that if they have a need for a single sex space and a TW co worker appears in their work place,

1. be very afraid to say anything because it is likely to make a mess of your job and life
2. you are likely to be told that your needs/feelings don't matter and you must serve the male person's while the male person has no such responsibilities towards anyone else
3. it does not matter that you perceive this person as male, you must deny the evidence of your eyes and lie convincingly
4. whatever happens is going to be fucking awful.

And this is because, because of the absolute incapacity of this political movement to manage to care or be reasonable in provisions that work for all as opposed to 'do what we say or get out'.

And when women now are well versed in this? And many will experience a TW joining their work place with a sinking stomach of 'oh hell, I'm going to have to get another job because this person is likely to do all the making single sex spaces impossible/kicking off to HR/making loos and changing rooms no longer accessible to me/all hell breaking loose if I try to stand up for myself'?

It's pattern recognition, not phobia. It's a very understandable fear. You cannot repeatedly kick people in the shins and then scream 'hater' at them for daring to wince. If you want women to not have a problem don't create bloody problems for them.

That sort of workplace inequality is a more obvious indicator, yes - and that is why so many liberal feminists seem focused primarily on 'equal rights' in terms of jobs, pay and promotion etc

What is more difficult to explain is why, even after having children, some of these women still continue to deny more obviously sex based differences. Theer is/was an organisation/campaign group called 'Pregnant and F*ed' which seeems predicated on anger that women suffer some kind of 'motherhood penalty' in terms of limitations experineced on account of having children. Personally. See a lot of this sort of 'equality' feminism as seeking to be free of a lot what stems from being female - to eradicate or erase specific female experieneces......

This is the only explanation i can so far find for why so many women actively support TW being able to identify into women's spaces and services. In doing so I suspect they are suppressing, or ignoring, their own instincts.

Black people are born black.

If someone not-born-black had undergone a process or part of a process that made them look a bit like a black person then perhaps your analogy would make sense.

Right now you are just exploiting black people’s history of oppression in the US to try and score a point in an online discussion about UK workplaces which is absolutely not cool.

Not these useless racist analogies again. Male and female are distinct and stable, universal categories that transcend race, tribe or society.

Sex is instinctively noted and women and girls, in particular, have an innate vulnerability due to certain sex based differences between males and females; which is why the vast majority of human societies - whether they be black, white, slavic, jewish, asian........have sex based distinctions and discrete provisions.

Without such protections women and girls are not free or confident to partake in society at large or to access public spaces.

Honestly, what is the hangup on 'having undergone a process or part of a process' ?

If a woman had a double mastectomy for cancer reasons she would have undergone a process, right?

What you are missing is that the advice was given on the basis of what the person had done. What they did was as a male person use the single sex facilities designated for females.

I did read the thread and can confirm there is a lot of exaggeration going on in claims about what was said and suggested.

Autism, CSA/DA/DV, belonging to a culture or a faith or having a desire for dignity and privacy - women's lives do not revolve around the needs of bloody men. Get over it.