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.

variants of the ‘other side‘ arguments ie the belief that GC feminists are somehow looking to enforce stereotypes rather than abolish them,

yes, I see this a lot too. It's a misunderstanding.

And I believe it's because, like everyone else, they do actually see a man who is displaying female stereotypes. They see it as a form of gender non conformity. Which it would be, if he wasn't insisting that he's really a woman, because that's what women do.

And that's why gender critical women see trans ideology as inherently sexist.

@Datun
Try it. In your head, and having every single word in the English language at your disposal, try to describe how a man would think he was actually a woman. Just try and think what he could possibly say.

A man who's not happy in his life sees women who are. He is both jealous of, and desires them. He thinks if he becomes one, that will make him as happy as he sees the women being, and desired as he desires them. Becoming a woman is the answer to all his problems. He doesn't think he's a woman but he knows with all his heart he wants to become one. That's probably how AGP develops too.

To repeat:

Yeah, choosing @ArabeIIaScott to vent at. Not wise. Given she's a very much loved poster here. You will just get everyone's back up even more. Considering she was just responding to your abhorrent comments even more so.

That is not telling you that you are not allowed to do something. Merely pointing out that it wasn't going to necessarily be received very well.

Look at what you said that she responded to (unless that's the post that has been deleted).

You were unnecessarily insulting to another poster and Arabella called you out on it.

Right from the off you ignored the most basic of questions what is a woman? How do you define that? Because we need to know what your understanding of that is to be able to Have a proper conversation. But you couldn't give a straight answer. You just got more belligerent with each post.

You wanted a discussion. You started the discussion. This wasn't a have you seen this on the news? Then able to leave it for a while thread. This was you asking to having a conversation. You should have waited until you had the time this type of thread needed.

So here we were ready to discuss. You'd gone AWOL. So we pass the time talking about food as is our way when we have a lull in a thread and you choose to interpret that as some unknown to you in joke at your expense. When it was literally is talking about food and Gail PMing me what looks to be a fantastic cherry Madeira cake recipe. Sometimes things are exactly what they say they are.

I don't know why you chose to go the way you did with your responses. But the responses you got in return are a direct result of your words.

If you don't like them then don't have a go at us. You came here wanting a discussion but skipped the questions you didn't like. That's not on us. Look inwards sometimes.

I've got ones with sesame street characters on. They are ace! And one shaped like a cats head!

Life is good!

Womanhood is a social construct. So anyone in society that feels that constraint or feels that they don't fit in the box that society has placed upon them by calling them boys or girls or men or women is welcome to the word. That's what a woman is

I know it's a bit tedious and old hat, but I'm sitting here gently bleeding into my sanitary towel. Should the people who do that once a month (or used to when they were younger or will when they're older) not have a word for themselves?

do those people not face unique challenges?

I'm always in the market for a good cake recipe! Especially if you know the end result tastes good!

@NickCaveisonMN bullshit. The cherry cake and gif people were being arseholes and they know it.
Own it at least.

Well yes. AGP is just a hyper sexualised form of the sexism of trans ideology.

The gender stereotyping that AGPs are interested in is the fetishisation of women's oppression. There are loads of testaments to that very concept. Being treated like a piece of meat, being objectified, being used, etc.

It's all still stereo typing. That's what women are for, right? To be used.

And all of it hyped up on sissy porn and the need for escalation.

“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.

and

“But I became very very very uncomfortable at the way people were speaking about trans women (and it's always the women) such hate.”

So, women didn’t speak nicely, they stated that they had boundaries and that they didn’t believe that they should be compelled to believe that males could be ‘just like them’ and that male people can be oppressed as female people, and that is ‘nasty’ and ‘toxic’?

Or what was ‘nasty’ and ‘toxic’ in your mind?

Many people on this board have their feminism based in ‘working class’ roots.

I most certainly do. That is why I disagree with you that male people can be oppressed in the same way that female people are. Because they are not.

Female people are discriminated against from birth. In some instances from even before birth! Male people are not. In what way has any male person had the same discrimination to overcome to achieve their goals that female people have?

Why on earth should any male therefore benefit from the very hard work of feminists who been working to gain equality. And sometimes equitable solutions rather than straight equality.

And that is not ‘equality’ where the female experienced is neglected and those women and girls are treated like men. But that women and girls have the same opportunities available to them and society (including their peers) encourage both sexes to participate with consideration to each sexes needs.

There really seems to be this misconception of ‘feminists demanded to be treated equally’ being they demanded to be considered just like men. No! They didn’t. They still always needed accommodations for their needs. Such as restrictions on the weight they can lift. They have been in place for decades. To prevent female employees being injured.

So, no! Women were not demanding that they were fully equal to men in every single aspect of their life.

Either way, these paragraphs about ‘nasty’ words really come across as the usual version of ‘those women were unkind and I don’t want to be like them’ and not a well considered foundation to build opinion on.

@beachcitygirl

I think you may have missed my post, because you were posting yourself. So I'm just going to copy it here.

Op, please listen.

To channel my inner Dame Edna Everage and in homage to the late, great, Barry Humphries, I really do mean this in a kindly way - you appear to be almost three quarters terf.

You clearly see the nonsensical gender stereotypes that are imposed on people from society. And that those imposed on women are very detrimental. We should be compliant, nurturing, decorative, subservient, and provide sex on demand. That's when we're not being teary, irrational, and gold digging.

As opposed to the gender stereotyping for men which is much more advantageous. They are strong, rational, logical, good leaders, dependable, clever and worth listening to.

So far, I'm sure we are in agreement.

And then somehow we diverge, wildly. This is the reason why I think we do:

You don't actually think that transwomen are really women. You know full well they are men, and you believe that if they are displaying typically 'female characteristics', they should be allowed to do so as it bucks the societally imposed trend.

Which it might well do, if they wouldn't mind still calling themselves men.

But they don't.

In order to inhabit the stereotypical female characteristics, they then go and call themselves women!

"I'm a woman. You must call me a woman. You must give me women's rights and women spaces. And you must all agree."

It's not bucking any trend! It's not sticking two fingers up at female oppression, or a sexist society. It's actually reinforcing the whole concept that certain gender stereotyping is for women.

How much more innovative, progressive, and liberating it would be for men to say I am inhabiting what I consider female characteristics, or female gender stereotypes and I'm a bloke, so fuck you world.

That's a 'gender critical' position.

It's that the only difference is largely biological. All the rest is gender. And women don't have to display female gender, and the men who display a 'female gender' shouldn't be calling themselves women in order to do it.

I’d like to share my own ‘creation story’ - and OP is welcome to tell me that I’m wrong, as long as she can explain why.

I realised I was GC when I heard a man say he wanted to be treated ‘like a woman’. I’d spent 10 years working in heavy manufacturing fighting to not be treated differently from the men. How dare he say it is ok to treat women differently?

of course, it is clear that there are times when sex matters, when women need single-sex spaces, services and sports. I still believe the only time it’s ok (indeed necessary) to treat women differently is when that is addressing a specific biological need for privacy, dignity, safety and/or fairness. Otherwise, it’s just plain old misogyny…..

love lemon cake 🍰

Gawd. The cake thing is neither here nor there. Many people know each other quite well, just from posting, it's not personal. The recipes are genuine. And it often slides into recipe swapping while people are waiting for the OP to come back.

This thread has a strong hint of cake about it. Is it because the OP is trying to have their cake and eat it!

Seventeen.

Still dodging.

Please define a woman.
Without a definition the whole thing falls down.

Please define gender.
If it's based on stereotypes, explain how it isn't inherently sexist.

These are the core of the entire argument.

Without a response that is enforcable in law, society doesn't function properly in a way that offers protections to those with vulnerabilities.

@Datun
If there's any merit to what I said then it could combine with your reply.

If the man objectifies the women he is jealous of and desires, then maybe in becoming woman he also takes on that mantle of being objectified. Even more of a transformation to "womanhood", another layer to it. "Objectify me like I objectified women, treat me as one of them. Validate me."

I am the cherry cake and gif person as @NickCaveisonMN

Is Boiledbeetle and apologies to @GailBlancheViola I'm sharing your recipe because sometimes cherry cake is just cherry cake.

These are the core of the entire argument.

it really is. Because if a man can be a woman, it is suddenly blindingly obvious, that the only way it can happen if he is basing it all on stereotypes.

Yes indeed.

funny how they never want to take on the mantle of writing the Christmas cards and cleaning the toilet, isn't it?

Have you taken a look at the transwidow threads on this site? They are eye opening in terms of this very concept.

Or you can just Google the website for transwidows. Which might be easier.

@Datun
funny how they never want to take on the mantle of writing the Christmas cards and cleaning the toilet, isn't it?

Are you mad? Of course they fukking don't! Who can wank to that? On second thoughts don't answer that please. I made the mistake of looking things up in that encyclopedia dramaticae thread. Learned my lesson that some things are best left unknown for a good few days I did.

Never say never! Seems to be the motto of some men!

The idea that you can remove discrimination merely by redefining something - which leaves you unable to track whether the change has resulted in positive improvement, no impact or negative consequences is quite frankly bonkers.

Unless you can measure and quantify issues, you aren't progressing anything.

Progression (and thus progressive ideals) have to have this element of quantification.

The idea that you can switch from a definition which is observation based to one which is based on belief that you are something (in the absence of a clear describable definition) and be progressing society is also abject nonsense. Belief based systems in society are inherently regressive compared to objective observable things.

This is where comparisons with being gay really really fall down. Being gay is defined in law on the basis of observable quantities - a human who has sexual attraction to the same sex. Easy.

How is a transwomen observably the same as a woman and part of the same group as opposed to being part of a group of males? Define it. Make it so you can tell the difference between a man and a transwoman. And do so without using regressive gender stereotypes. This is where law making is important if we wish to protect groups with lesser social power to men.

OP, would you be absolutely happy for your daughter to share a prison cell and prison showers with a male bodies sex offender simply because he said he was a woman?
If not, why not?

Are you completely happy about people like swimmer Leah Thomas forcing their team-mates to share changing rooms with them, and those team mates being the ones who are forced to leave when they complained about having to change and undress in front of a natal male and being forced to see an exposed male genitalia against their wishes?

Are you happy that any man can declare himself a woman (by your own definition) and then enter a competition against a female, win that event, and thereby deny a medal/sponsorship deal/ accolade to that female who would otherwise have won?

Presumably you are okay with these things because you said that transwomen should be treated as women in every area with no exceptions.

Can you clarify?

Funnily enough this just popped up on my Youtube feed, not familiar with this creator but jesus... One male beat nearly 14000 females in a marathon.
Jesus.
e

”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.”

Why do you think people here will disagree with what you have written here?

“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.”

And as I just posted. You seem to have misinterpreted what feminists were saying.

They were saying, don’t define our opportunities by treating us as if we are inferior and removing opportunities from us because of our bodies.

They were not saying ‘we are exactly as men’ at all. They were saying ‘we should be evaluated for that promotion based on our skills and experience and not fucking passed over for it because we are child bearing age, or because a man is considered superior, or because a man needs to be promoted to provide for his family.

They were also about declaring that our contribution was worth as much in terms of remuneration and in terms of value to the organisation as any male. Again, because we achieved the outcomes that our male counterparts did, we may have done it differently, but we achieved those same objectives. That means we deserve the same payment and recognition.

That is just a fraction of what feminism was about in the work place.

“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.”

Stereotypes. And I reject them now as I did when I was younger. And I have tried to reach my child to reject them and just be who they want to be.

They are stereotypes and yes, non conformists get pressured.

And yet, I have not read one thing in your post that is convincing at all that males experience the same oppression that female people experience.

And I have not read one thing in your post that convinces me that a male person should be treated like a female person in every aspect.

What I see is misrepresentation of feminism, and emotionally manipulative statements about how hard it is to be non conforming. Yes. I know. Many posters on this board know. We even know what it feels like to desperately wish to be boys and men.

Yet, we know that stereotypes do not make us ‘women’ as it never once made us ‘girls’. We are women because we have a female sexed body.

Everything else is personality and personal choice. Including what we wear, including the roles we take on in life.

And you wonder why we ask for ‘woman’ to be defined before you begin to post?

I don't think you're female.