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.

I can’t cook for toffee so I just skim past the recipes. Seems weird to me that posters take it as an insult when it’s so obviously just a way of the passing the time.

I love me a gif tho and If MN doesn’t want us to use gifs in certain topic areas surely they could just turn the function off?

"Which leads me straight to the hypothesis that the difference is binary sex based, and it is the insult of limiting and presenting boundaries to male people's emotional freedoms that is the issue, rather than a difficulty with actual truth and logic."

It is a bit of a hobby horse of mine in recent months - but I think the whole issue of limits and boundaries is a central issue for our time - and on many levels.

Some activists chafe against all limitation and what they see as unnecessary boundaries and borders - which are deemed oppressive or restrictive to individual freediom expression or movement.

Whilst there are other groups and activists who sense the need for limitation, restriction and for boundaries and borders - for the reason that boundaries ( & thus limitation) are vital for the intergrity of any organism and for its healthy functioning. Boundaries define a group and help to maintain its function; they also deter predators or bad faith actors.

@SelfPortraitWithHagstone Yes, exactly that!

@NotHavingIt Love Meghan's podcast, some great speakers.

Also if you haven't listened, Bari Weiss's episode with Louise Perry and Jill Filipovic discussing porn is fantastic. It also made me think how rarely we hear three women discussing an issue that predominantly (and negatively) impacts women.

Yes @SelfPortraitWithHagstone & @countrypunk That was very similar to my idealistic younger self's beliefs too.

I wonder if that is common?

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.

OP, thanks for your detailed replies. I have read them all carefully, and thought about them, looking for the answers you mentioned above. You raise many interesting points, but not what I can see as answers.

So maybe you and I were asking different questions?

Mine would be along the lines of:

How can men be women? I used to believe that a communion wafer was the body and blood of Jesus, but I don’t now. Now I don’t accept that something that seems untrue is in fact true, without strong evidence that my perceptions are wrong.

Statistics show that men commit most violence and almost all sexual assaults. With self-ID, what is there to stop every sex offender pretending to be trans in order to gain access to women and children?

Having experienced sexual assaults and harassment, why should I risk my safety and ignore my justifiable fear of being in a confined space with a strange man?

I’ve taken time and effort to ask genuine questions. I really would like to know if you received convincing answers to these.

If not, what were your questions?

Thank you.

.

@HatThatWearsYou I imagine it is.

Acknowledging the differences was a fairly painful process for me. But now it feels liberating - things just clicked for me. And I celebrate and cherish the things my female body can do.

That was a central argument of liberal feminism, I think.

Women should try to replicate men in everything, including taking part in 'the sexual revolution' by objectifying themselves.

Quite convincing, for a while. At least, I fell for it.

@ArabeIIaScott Yes, and that was the feminism I absorbed growing up in the 90s/00s.

What interests me is how and why some older women still persist with this idealism and keep raging against reality. That is the only reason i can think of for why women such as Caroline Noakes still seems intent on super-imposing Gender identity onto Sex.

She's also, obviously a privileged, educated, middle class woman who has most likley relied on other, poorer women to carry out many of the functions and roles that she hasn't been able or willing to do herself.

To that extent she has ben shielded from the worst aspects of sex based difference. Though, of course, she has made allegations of sexual assault, and is a campaigner for discrete menopause rights - but both of these things position her as a victim of her sex.

If only sex did not exist.........

I think it relies on you internalising misogyny - and you do, because even though that's miserable it gives you the illusion of agency, which is better than acknowledging the stark truths about structural oppression that you can't opt out of. In that sense I think it has a huge amount in common with the way gender ideology works on young women: the illusion of choice is seductive, even if it results in self-harm.

As for older women, not everyone gets wiser and more self-compassionate as they get older, especially if there are ahem strong incentives to stick with the old way of thinking.

I was sincerely looking forward to reading a summary of how the OP was "educated" into the stance that self-ID is a brilliant idea that benefits women and girls. As a contrary person I genuinely enjoy reading viewpoints counter to my own, sometimes just for the language and structuring used.

But after 20 pages the only argument offered seems to be that countries with self-ID score better in some other metrics? Is that it?

Dammit, those were meant to be em-dashes, not a strike-through.

@lechiffre55

When you do that post can you put a statement that is what you are doing please? I'd love to participate and try entering the discussion from the other side, I think if I was born 20 years later I'd be trans and I could add a lot to such a debate I feel. but if you don't explicitly say it I'm likely to miss the point and stick to my current gender critical thinking

So, I guess there were too many questions asked that would have exposed the gaping holes in the foundations of thought that underpin your beliefs here. Hence you followed the script of all that have been before. Almost boiler plate replica.

Yep.

And of course, anyone reading even a small part of this thread sees the glaring difference between emotionally driven, bullying, 'I've got no argument' transactivism and the wonderfully incisive, patient, analytical and logical explanation of the women opposing it.

In fact, just reading all the OPs posts, would do the trick.

As I never tire of pointing out - transactivism is the very best advert for gender critical thought.

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:

I have a question.
What is this young group of children protesting or reacting to? Or have they really gone barking mad?
https://twitter.com/RadioGenova/status/1651617685665447941?s=20

Also it occurred to me that while I think @lechiffre55 's idea is a really good one - does it strike anyone else as rather telling that even in a discussion about gender roles we wait and wait, patiently trying to cajole someone into doing something that they maintain they want to do but can't, because we're being SO MEAN, and then finally shrug and roll our eyes and decide to do it ourselves? 😆

@SelfPortraitWithHagstone 🤣

I don't understand how you can recognise gender as the problem and then, rather than trying to dismantle that, decide that the way to solve things is to pretend that sex doesn't exist?!

Hmm. Interesting thread. I wonder what sex the Op is. I thought she was a woman because it’s usually women who have both caring responsibilities and a job, and studying. I have known men with caring responsibilities. I’ve known some who were quite good at it. Most weren’t nearly as good at it as they thought they were, and didn’t work as well. But, without exception, they got a lot of praise for it, and told how marvellous they were, whereas women don’t. The op did seem to wear her responsibilities like a medal on her chest so….
I know that humiliating housework is a part of sissy porn. I know that some late transitioning trans women would like to be seen as mothers or Grannies, but I don’t actually know of any who just do that shit, non performatively. Strange.
I was one of those women who tried to have it all. Loads of children , a demanding job, some sort of social life. I always used to say that I never wanted to be one of those Mothers with a capital M. What a bloody fool I was.
I think I see trans women very similarly to high income househusbands. They stay at home with 1 or 2 babies, at least part time in nursery. They have a female cleaner, and their high earning, knackered wife comes home every night to make the dinner, put the kids to bed and spend the evening pairing socks and paying bills. And who gets the praise? Good job Superdad. They do womaning so much better than us.

@NotHavingIt

I agree that some limits are good and some are bad, and that limits themselves are not inherently problematic.

I like using Chesterton's Fence as a philosophical razor: if a boundary exists, we can interrogate why it exists. Presumably it is there for a reason, so what reason is that, and is that reason still relevant.

For employment, there were realities in the past which limited engagement of women in the workplace which were valid at the time but now are no longer valid, so let's remove them.

Single sex spaces for women exist as a practical response to a reality that still holds true so let's keep them.

Single sex spaces for men exist for different reasons. Perhaps breaking these down and including women is a good thing, but perhaps there remains a psychological benefit to also retaining these spaces for men.

I bristle at the progressive Left and their belief that all boundaries are inherently there to be transgressed.

Barking mad!

And far left (I think they are the barking lot) versus some religious group in Poland is as much as I've managed to determine and even that may not be correct. It's very hard not to get sidetracked by the barking Muppets.

We just can't help ourselves can we!
😂

Oof.

This is bracing, difficult, and rings true.

Seeing as it's Friday could you not offer a wee bit of fluffy reassuring fantasy to counter it?