Still Genuinely Willing To Discuss In Good Faith

[Catiette]

I've taken the plunge and started a new thread. In the interests of good manners, an addendum that I may be disappearing to work for a while myself, as this has all been far too interesting to allow me to achieve any of my urgent weekend work to-dos today - I hope that, in the light of that, creating this follow-up thread isn't bad form. I just thought other people may want to continue discussing these issues (mainly, now, the redefinition of woman, and statistical trends re. women globally), and I'd definitely dip back in when the urge to procrastinate overcomes me next. No worries, of course, if people think we did it all to death on the old thread - we were fairly thorough, methinks(!), so can also just let Good Faith Discussion #2 rapidly fade into Mumsnet obscurity. 😀

I don't think anything much has been achieved to be honest

A thread such as this is very widely read obviously and it will be searched and read after it ceases being added too. The laying out these points achieves deeper understanding for many of those readers. I don't consider them a waste at all. Frustrating as they might be.

I guess!

As you suggest it is of use to those lurking and looking in, maybe.

Indeed. Unsurprisingly, @SpookyFBIis vastly outnumbered on this thread by people with the opposing viewpoint. There's a fine line between the majority of posters disagreeing with one poster and a pile on, and I hope that we have managed to stay on the right side of it.

But I am accustomed to challenging people about their views on gender identity in a fairly robust way. I find it frustrating that, for example, the person who draws a parallel between not wanting to teach children about gender identity and not wanting to teach children about same sex relationships can then admit that they don't really understand what gender identity is, and get away with it because this is a nice thread where we are having a good faith discussion.

In real life, this isn't the topic of the week for the debate club. It's a real, live issue which has caused women to be raped in prison by male inmates, female rape survivors to be abandoned by the organisations which are supposed to help them, female athletes to lose out on opportunities, medals, prize money and sponsorship, and most worryingly, children to harm their completely healthy bodies trying to make them "match" this mysterious gender identity that they are told they have.

So it's not really something where we can just agree to disagree. I feel that those on Spooky's side of the debate need to be able to explain exactly what they believe and why it is so important that we must make these enormous societal changes to accommodate it. And they can't. But those changes are being made anyway.

We always post for the lurkers.

I'm very conscious that it's hard to hold onto one pov when one is outnumbered. So I am making extra efforts to ensure that any posters with a minority viewpoint are comfortable and not feeling subject to a 'pile on'. I'd never want to subject anyone to that. Yes, it makes comms more long winded. Sometimes that's unavoidable.

so gender identity could be a 10 point scale hot to cold with e.g. The women's spectrum going from

My nipples are bleeding, I feel like I'll never sleep again and it hurts to sit down at one end

ambivalent / meh whatever in the middle?

to
currently singing 'it's raining men' at the top of my lungs on the dancefloor with my mum at my daughters wedding at the other?

Intriguing idea but I'm not sure they'd be much call for the state to try to track it.

It's a bit more nuanced than the Barbie/GI Joe spectrum, at least.

I agree it's a huge improvement

I suspect it has a lot of merit in terms of tracking / monitoring how a person who has had distress about the sex of their body is currently feeling

I'm not referring to Spooky here - even though she has, in fact, completely ignored me. The thread has caused me to feel suspicious of certain motives ( of arguments not being quite what is presented) - and I'm not sure if that is with good reason?

Do you think gender is a one dimensional spectrum? Or is it multidimensional? Do people have a complex mixture of characteristics, some of which in any culture tend to be seen as more or less masculine or feminine?

This is something that bothers me about TRA thinking - they seem to think that a man can be so feminine that there is a mismatch between gender and sex; because the man is at the feminine end of a linear spectrum, he is really in essence she. In a multidimensional model, there is no completely masculine end. Each characteristic individually could be thought of as entirely masculine or entirely feminine, but no-one fits all the feminine or all the masculine stereotypes, do they?

I don't know what you mean, sorry, you'll need to spell it out.

Me personally? I think there are like a pp noted upthread, probably some behaviours that correlate roughly with birth sex for various reasons to do with biological factors, evolutionary adaptations, reproductive functions, etc.

And plenty that are entirely arbitrary and used as either tools to control or manipulate people or as sort of ... well, 'brainfart' is not a very scientific term but I find it useful. Like, astrology type of stuff.

So yeah, what you said. 😁

@Piccalillipromises
Yes, well articulated.
Variation and overlap in sex or sex-driven characteristics does not mean there is overlap of the two sexes.

That is why I have found this thread really quite annoying. It has all been framed as about being a genuine good faith dialogue and people have been at pains ( too much, I think) to be seen to be thoughtful and reasonable; expounding at great length and in an often verbiose manner.

I've always seen myself as being reasonable too; finding some people's posting styles to be too aggressive or needlessly provocative - but for some reason this thread ,and the one that preceded it, has irritated me - which i think is opposite to what it was supposedly meant to achieve.

I don't think anything much has been achieved to be honest. When people are coming from irreconcilable viewpoints and positions - and won't deal with the trickier questions at all - it is nothing more than a sound chamber.

I've found it really helpful, I honestly think it's one of the best threads I've read on Mumsnet. I'm sending a link to a friend who is trying to work out what she thinks because so many posters have laid out the arguments so clearly and coherently.

We're all at different stages wrt this issue. Up until 6 years ago I was still using the phrase 'born in the wrong body' - not because I literally believed it was possible but I certainly thought it was a legitimate feeling, and I wanted to express sympathy for people who experienced it.

I'm at a completely different place now but I still have a bit of difficulty sometimes when I'm trying to order my thoughts and present my case. I used to save articles / videos that I could point people to, but little by little I'm getting better at using my own words. This thread is really helping with that.

Often similar threads combust pretty quickly. Personally I'm glad this one hasn't, and I'm grateful to Spooky for sticking with it.

I'm still trying to catch up with this very interesting discussion, but one thing irks me - it's been repeatedly said upthread that we shouldn't base laws& rules on 'some people' ie women's fear of 'seeing' a man.

Its not fear of 'seeing'.

Its fear of rape, harassment and assault. Its as though they think this is nothing.

Its as though these fears are unfounded. They are not.

These entirely legitimate concerns are based on trans women offending at a similar rate to other genetic males, and women being able to generally identify who is a natal male (it's got nothing to do with wearing a dress or with genitals, so talk of genital inspections at the door is a ridiculous straw man).

Men understand that a minority of men would harm women, which is what makes women wary and need their own spaces when vulnerable. It's why we have sex segregated spaces in the first place! This is fact-based basic risk management, not fear mongering.

Talking about 'women's fear' is just another way to minimise women's opinions and concerns.

Also some posters seem to have deliberately misunderstood the argument that changing the social contract to allow men to self identify into women's spaces, i.e.no obvious transition necessary, would allow any man to enter. For the hard of thinking, this not the same as saying we think predatory men will put on a dress and pretend to be a trans woman - there would be no need any men are allowed in just as they are (which is what self ID, legal or de facto means).

I know some people have said they want to engage in good faith but it just seems like disingenuously straw manning.

I also valued Spooky's input.

I think it's also important to remember that while safety is an important consideration, obviously, for many women this is also (or only) about privacy and dignity (this is the wording for the reason we have single sex spaces in the Equality Act).

I always post with lurkers in mind so I think this thread has been very helpful from that perspective at least. When I'm posting a link for the umpteenth time on threads and wondering whether the regulars are thinking 'oh no, not this again', I know that there are various lurkers who haven't seen it. There was a thread two Christmases ago where loads (hundreds!) of lurkers popped up to say that they are here and they are listening. It was tremendously heartening and a reminder that even though it sometimes feels that we're rehashing things, there are people in the background taking it all in.

When I read this, I was put in mind of a conversation I had (before all the Isla Bryson stuff came to the public's view) with a friend about the Scottish Prison Service putting male sex offenders into the female prison estate. She brought the conversation to a dead stop by exclaiming that 'that was all worst case scenario by bigots'. We haven't talked about it since but I do wonder how she feels now since it all become a little less theoretical.

To come back to a point raised earlier, about supporting children who believe themselves to be trans.

One thing I find interesting is that a lot of people seem to think that support must involve affirmation. You must share the belief and affirm the belief. And that everything problematic about affirming is either not considered or swept under the carpet.

i'm not sure why

btw I'm sorry if I've offended anyone - overly verbose posts is definitely something I've been guilty of in this thread. I don't think it's a parlour game with no real world consequences I can assure you.

The verbose posts have actually been very interesting and it's been fascinating to see people's thought process, sometimes expressing something I would find hard to articulate myself, particularly the sort of philosophical stuff which is not my forte.

Please don't apologise Toaster.

I think 'verbose' is a bit pejorative, to be honest. Nobody is required to read anyone else's posts.

It's been the lengthy analysis of some posts that I have found very helpful.

My sense was that there was an attempt to find a suitable path through, in law, for those that believe in gender identity. To test out, via this forum, whether that might fly. So, gender identity as a protected belief, along with a parent's right to transition their child if this was their avowed belief.........or something like that.

I wasn't really referring to you. No worries!