Genuinely willing to discuss in good faith

[beachcitygirl]

Hello.

This is a thread for those who are uncomfortable with black and white and less than civil discourse around self id.

I welcome those with different views but I don't on this thread welcome those who only want to state their firm settled opinion without nuance or discussion that self id is absolutely wrong.

It's my view that there is no point in discussion if mind firmly made up.
I'll respect your legal right to that view but there's not much point chatting about it and pissing each other off.

There are plenty threads of gc women hoping to create more gc women and that's fine.

I'd like this to be a different space. A place for anyone with genuine questions, discussion points and where we all try to be civil and attempt to answer each other in good faith. Anyone who is unsure, let's talk:

My views are that trans women should be treated in every aspect as women and they are our natural allies against misogyny and the patriarchy and that women are more than their biology.

BCG: "I am willing to discuss in good faith. ... My views are that trans women should be treated in every aspect as women ..."

A: OK. Good. Let's just be clear. What do you mean by 'women'?

BCG: "If you don't wish to discuss fine ..."

B: But, well, I'd like to know what you mean by 'women',

BCG: "I just want a space where it not a "we've all made up our minds ..."

C: Yes. But what do you mean by 'women'?

BCG: "I've no desire to waste my time answering dog whistle "what is a woman" ..."

D: But how can we have a discussion if we don't know what you mean by the words you use?

"BCG: See what I mean with the assumptions and bad faith."

.

.

.

... ... "Good faith"?

@SpicyMoth "Just because predators will take advantage of laws doesn't mean every trans person you encounter is definitely a predator abusing the system, and I can see how it can become a slippery slope when that's immediate instinct.
Benefit of the doubt unless evidence points you to believe otherwise is generally the best rule"

Noooooo! You have to carry out safeguarding on the assumption that everyone is the worst of the worst. Then you work up from there. You don't assume everyone is good and work down.

Glad to be of service.

(I'm the best of the Nicks!)

My issue @SpicyMoth is that I am coerced to accept the TW's belief that they are a woman, I am coerced into using the language they insist on.

No, I do not and will not accept forced thought, belief or speech. I would be very wary around a TW as my every speech and expression would be policed. I would be polite, civil and courteous as I am with anyone. Adults can dress as they please within the set parameters required for work or other occasions, do what they want with their body but don't expect me to validate what they think about themselves, that is not my or any other person's role.

I mix with people of various faiths not a single one of them forces their beliefs on me nor polices my speech, thoughts or actions.

It's just so predictable isn't it!

Why does everyone of these threads start with a comment about 'good faith' only for the OP not to have any intention of good faith and just wants to shout transphobia and not engage with questions as somehow they are 'unfair'.

They are all the same.

Avoiding working with any transwoman does definitely sound the very definition of transphobic.

I understand why have this opinion and I tend to agree but there seems to be no forgiveness if people make mistakes with names or pronouns, as in this example:

https://twitter.com/Sal_Robins/status/1651458619207213056?s=20

There have been numerous cases against people who have intended no harm, Maya Forstater for example and the case brought against a Sheffield NHS Trust who bent over backwards to accommodate a trans employee.

I made mistakes with name and pronouns when someone very close to me transitioned about 25 years ago, they never took me to court over it. In time I got used to the new name and pronouns and it wasn't a problem.

The bottom line is that people want to get on with their jobs without unnecessary drama.

Genius

Because Red I believe that these posters sanctimoniously believe they can belittle and shame people from the very first post. And that they think this is righteous behaviour.

We see it time and time again. The posts start off shaming and just continue and yet they think they are justified in the shaming and so they double down.

They play victim then with the 'why?' posts ignoring the belittling, the shaming and in many instances the falsities they have been posting.

@beachcitygirl " I would be wasting my time and reporting posts a lot and no-one needs that. "

Why would you need to report posts? why?
Why is it, that people like you, can't just pass a post by that you don't like, like a normal person would, without having to reeeeeeeeeach for the report button?
Normal people shrug their shoulders and get on with life, not demand that the world bends to fit our entitled and precious fee fees!

It is an indication that the opinion that some people believe is not backed up by proven science but driven by emotional manipulation and possibly some post modernist explanation.

It is like the bizarre tactic of stating that independently run polls across a very wide range of opinion holders are not a viable predictor of what 'the majority' of a population think.

I think if anyone is believing that males can become 'female' for all aspects of life, they are certainly not relying on proven science or robust and peer reviewed studies. They are relying on the emotional manipulation to be accepted as reality.

Identifying as Nic/Nick Cage/Cave on Mumsnet is much more complicated than identifying as Billy Bragg on Twitter.

It's my view that there is no point in discussion if mind firmly made up.
I'll respect your legal right to that view but there's not much point chatting about it and pissing each other off.

Personally when I discuss something, it would be more to test the strength of arguments or perhaps discover a new argument from someone.

You can't expect to change your opponent's mind.

And no, I'm probably not going to be changing my own mind either. In this case, it would have to be something truly radical where you would see things in a completely new way. And if the trans-activist side could actually make that argument, they would probably be doing it rather than screaming "TERF", "transphobe" at people.

If you were actually taking it seriously and having a formal debate with someone, again, it's not done to change the other person's mind. It's done to potentially change the mind of your audience. So a reasonable person, that is looking at the debate, may change their mind on it perhaps.

Fair cop! 😁

I will say all those violent movies except 'face off'. I am still a pacifist. (I nearly wrote Pacificist and I realised that might actually be applicable too!) Warracknabeal is not THAT far from the coast after all...Australia is a very big country.

Hello. My view is that trans women are trans women i.e are male.
I was perfectly content with inclusion. My mind changed when self id started to be pushed in what I think of as an aggressive way. It could be that self id would work but the implications need careful consideration. We have had to fight so hard to make that happen. During the course of that fight I have come to believe that a lot of trans activism is about reinforcing or reinventing patriarchy. Why else would the fight be so difficult?
Women are not support humans

on the changing your mind thing, Mumsnet has changed my mind about a number of things, surrogacy for one

Ok. I can't be online all
Night or all day. I have caring responsibilities (sandwich generation)

I find the gifs and recipes and childish comments exhausting. I have a disabled child and very elderly mother and work as well as studying.

I find this attempt to silence other women through such petty shit nauseating. Let's face it the so called gc argument can't hold much water if one tiny thread on a board with 100's of them throws them into such a lather that they have to do that.

Most of us will have kids and jobs and lives. That's what I meant by good faith.

I will do my best to chat through and answer questions but it ain't that easy to pick through the nonsense or be online enough to satisfy those who see it as a win that I was offline for a couple of hours.

My journey was similiar. I simply hadn't really met anyone who had any issue with trans people or thought to much about it( I knew one such woman and always felt protective of her and sorry for her I suppose, I also was a Corrie fan and liked Hayley) god can you imagine the hate if that storyline was now.
my first impression on this topic was online (toxic) and I did see lots of hate from some towards women. I felt angry and reactionary.

I didn't (at that point ) have the education/words to put my thoughts in order. So I hovered there for a while. Saying nothing and then I watched women being radicalised in real time and becoming as nasty as some of the toxic outlier trans activists and I seen a nasty culture war spring up.

My feminism was rooted in working class roots. I knew that men were the issue.

I let "common sense" fill in the blanks for me. Women can't have a penis etc etc

But I became very very very uncomfortable at the way people were speaking about trans women (and it's always the women) such hate. I around about that time I had started studying politics and I read Gramsci prison diaries in particular on structural inequality and prejudice.

Ive had brilliant lecturers and supervisors along my Path and I work as airline crew so surrounded by lgbt community at work, so I wasn't inclined to bigotry or homophobia anyway and I started to recognise the same arguments I had heard back in clause 28 days.

Biological sex is real. But that's all it is. A sexed body.

Every other thing society decides to do around that is a societal decision designed to keep "order" and punish anyone who doesn't fit in the mounds of
Hegemonic masculinity or femininity and those who stray from heterosexuality.

The best way to control any group of people is to make them believe that their lives are normal and common sense and then they themselves will police people who are different. It works.

From the days of britches & crinolines.
Mary wallstonecraft mother of feminism stated that she could not wait to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates behaviour.

When I was a teenager feminists shouted "do not define us by our sex " now they shout about sexed bodies and periods as if that's what defines us.

So what do we call all these things that are put onto male or female born children, all the things they must do, the way they must live. It's called gender.

It's a fact. It's almost impossible to break its chains.
Impossible for a person alone to do so.

Even those who fervently try not to force gender down their kids throats will find their efforts fail when their little boy comes home from nursery and says I don't like that, that for girls or some such thing. Or grandparents dressing them head to toe in pink or blue etc
Society forces it down throats and has done since the beginning of history.

From the minute we are born societal expectations, rules and regulations are forced down our throat explicitly and implicitly.

The exact same as heteronormativity used to be (and still is in some areas ) forced down our throats as the only way and transgression will bring societal and actual punishment.

If you don't fit in that box laid down. There will
Be punishment by your peers. Of that there is no doubt.

I cannot begin to imagine having to push against that whilst living in a way that feels alien and wrong.

I KNOW it's just clothes but I would hate to feel I had to wear a suit or men's clothes to feel normal or accepted. I find it difficult to feel confident socially if I've got the dress code wrong. You feel awkward. It must be hell to be different in this world.

I can and do empathise with that because
I'm not a white woman. So I suppose I'm
More keenly aware of minorities, and more willing to listen to those voices rather than the privileged majority.
So the penis is a body part, real but we shouldn't have built a whole society around a body part. I mean what the fuck that's mental.
So vagina is a body part, real but we shouldn't have built a whole society around a body part.

More to come tomorrow. I'm
Being shouted on.

Ty for your thought out response!

Whilst I can completely see where your coming from, and agree to be honest, I just more so meant that for the context of the removed thread where presumably the new co-worker isn't a convicted anything, perhaps that's wrong of me to assume.

Following on from that though;
"In the prison population, transwomen are represented in the sex offender population at a much higher rate than other males."

"A smart person would ask why transwomen commit sex offences at a higher rate than other males. Could they be just be predatory males lying about their trans identity?"
I would agree, but say that raises the issue more to me of the vague laws and legislation put in place rather than trans individuals themselves or even the criminals.

Like, in the same way NAMBLA =/= homosexuality
Predators abusing trans legislation & laws =/= trans people

I think the answer to that problem should be less vague laws and legislation, bringing back the need for actual requirements for a Gender Recognition Certificate, formal diagnosis etc, and making sure that a GRC is exactly that, a Gender Recognition certificate, not a Sex Recognition Certificate.
It's specifically called a gender recognition certificate, yet it repeatedly is conflated with sex in almost all scenario's.

I also think there needs to be an acceptance or acknowledgment from the trans community & in law that AGP inclined people exist, and they're trying to latch themselves onto the trans movement in a way that is really harmful to both trans people and women, ie AGP criminals claiming trans as just one example.

Does that make much sense, I'm not sure I've explained fully - lmk if there's any areas that don't make sense! :)

OP, in all honesty and in 100% good faith, I am happy to discuss this with anyone. Good faith does have to go both ways - if you start off with insults and aggression then it does piss people off.

@beachcitygirl

When I was a teenager feminists shouted "do not define us by our sex " now they shout about sexed bodies and periods as if that's what defines us.

I feel like you've misunderstood the message here. Feminists don't want their behaviour or status defined by their sex. It's not about what defines us as women.

Also, I don't like this board being accused of homophobia, there are plenty of lesbians here and all women are welcome.

Cross posted, OP.

You are arguing that you don't agree with gender stereotypes being forced on people.

Absolutely. I doubt many here would disagree. You do know that most of the women on this board are 'gender non conforming', do you? And many are lesbians or bisexuals?

What does this have to do with mixed sex spaces, though?

*I made mistakes with name and pronouns when someone very close to me transitioned about 25 years ago, they never took me to court over it. In time I got used to the new name and pronouns and it wasn't a problem.

The bottom line is that people want to get on with their jobs without unnecessary drama.*

In a long established friendship group of 20+ years we had one friend transition and at a similar time another friend changed their name (first name i.e. the thing we called them all the time) both occasionally got referred to by their original names in the wake of the changes and still very occasionally do (most often when someone is talking about an event before the names were changed so the memory is of 'Bill' and 'Jessica' not 'Linda' and 'Helen'). It is difficult to reprogram your brain to call someone a new name when the old one is firmly attached to them and both accept that there will be slip ups but it must be really stressful to know that making that slip could lead to you being in trouble at work.
'Linda' is fully aware that she hasn't changed sex and doesn't try to compel anyone else into that belief and takes any use of 'Bill' with good grace and even sometimes refers to 'Bill' when talking about events before they transitioned.

But around 5 years ago I was very anti self id. Thankfully I had a brilliant person take the time to talk to me non-judgmentally and patiently and eventually I realised all my questions had been answered and all I was left with was

"Thats not common sense " and as an educated woman I recognised that is not good sense and so I thought hard and i recognised my misgivings came from a fear of the other.

So originally you were against being able to self ID into a women's prison?

But now all your questions about (presumably) the safety, dignity and privacy of women have been answered?

All your questions about (presumably) male prisoners would switch over for access to women have been answered?

You are very lucky to have had that brilliant person take the time to talk to you, because they must have been so brilliant to answer all those fears.

You could always borrow their arguments and post them here, and then we could all benefit from this brilliant person!

I agree with you wholeheartedly, I don't understand why we can't simply call them trans women tbh :/