Continuously willing to discuss in good faith: part 3

[BonfireLady]

Continuation of thread: part 3. Hope those tagged below don't mind.

@catiette and @arabellascott, you both mentioned possibly starting a continuation of the thread so please forgive my keenness! I couldn't see anything when I started writing this so I thought I'd kick it off.

I watched the video that @spookyfbi shared, then read the transcript excerpts (thank you @helleofabore) and comments.

Long post alert! But I wanted to share my thoughts in full. Although I feel very embarrassed sharing this on an FWR board (I am fully prepared to get shot! 😂), I want to do so because I think it helps illustrate how an opinion can be formed. In order to explain myself, I'm going to frame it with some excuses context:

As I said in the previous thread, my daughter had told me she thought she was transgender and asked her dad and me for puberty blockers so that she could explore everything. To support her, I unturned every single stone I could find on the subject of gender identity in autistic girls (there's not a lot of info so I had to piece it together). By now, I had read on the NHS website that the effects of puberty blockers and brain development were unknown so that was a hard no. We weren't going to let her do that to her body but we were still open minded that one day she may be our son and we knew we would love her just the same.

I immersed myself in everything I could find relating to gender identity. Science papers, news articles, Benjamin Boyce detransitioner interviews, a therapy book on gender dysphoria etc etc. I also spoke with people from the LGBT+ community so that I could get an all round view. I've said on previous posts that I still value these conversations.

I didn't come here as it was nowhere near my radar. I also didn't read the Daily Mail or Telegraph as I had been brought up on the Guardian and frankly, they were evil publications in my head. And as for Glinner...... No way. I'm not on Twitter but I'd seen some copies of his Tweets in the Guardian and Independent and I didn't want that kind of input. I couldn't imagine how anyone like him could help me find information that could help my daughter. I just thought he was a nasty rude man who enjoyed taking the piss out of marginalised people.

(Suffice to say I have since I overturned everything I've just said in the last paragraph 🤦‍♀️).

Even though I had done soooooooooooooooo much research in to autism and gender identity in children, it never occurred to me that JKR's infamous Wombund Tweet had any connection to my daughter's situation. She just sounded a bit ranty to me and I couldn't see what was so important about declaring yourself to be a woman. I was aware that people were calling her transphobic but that made me even more certain that she was just a nutjob (sorry JKR 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️) because gender identity (as I saw it from my research) had nothing to do with her status as being a woman. I thought "of course you are. And?" and moved on. I eventually read her essays, because it kept coming up in the press and I concluded that she had written nothing transphobic (in fact she said she stood by transgender people so I was pretty baffled as to why people were so angry) and so I ignored her again.

Then... along came Isla Bryson and the Nicola Sturgeon. I slowly started joining the dots and lurking on here to inform myself. By now I was already reading the Daily Mail when it had articles about gender identity and children but still no Glinner. I felt that he was a massive step too far. I balanced out my guilt at reading the Mail by also reading Pink News. I was still very targeted in what I read about. If it didn't help me to directly help my daughter, I skipped past it.

So what has this got to do with the Mica video from the end of the last thread? I'm sad to say that there is a time when I would have believed pretty much all of it if it hadn't been for my shift in focus thanks to Isla Bryson, Nicola Sturgeon and (retrospectively) JKR.

In fact, I'll go further. I would have been really hooked from the start of the video because I find the suffragettes fascinating. I know a fair bit about the story and I always make sure I vote because of what they did to secure that right. I didn't know anything about Sylvia Pankhurst though, so that bit was so interesting. By this point in the video I would have been hungry for more. I know we've come a long way in equality of the sexes but we're not there yet. I would have seen it as a really interesting immersion in to lots of facts about what I could be a part of to change the world for the good of women. I'm not stupid. I have good critical thinking skills (if I didn't, I wouldn't have been able to support my daughter as I have done) but it would have appealed to the militant side of me. I'd have probably skipped or filtered out the weird bits in the middle with the guest (?) speaker (Caelen?) as I found them difficult to follow. But I'd have tuned back in again for all the bits about why today's feminists were the equivalent of the suffragettes in (how it is described as) their exclusion of everyone who didn't meet their standards of a "real woman". I would have assumed everyone on this board and everyone at the LWS events were just bigoted women who couldn't stop talking about the word woman. I'd have conceded that JKR did have a good point that "people who menstruate" sounded wrong, I would have seen it as an odd obsession to be talking about women's rights and the "erasure of the word woman". Sorry
everyone 😬😬😬 Obviously I never did assume that because I came here first, just to be clear!! 😬😬😬😬
I'm just imagining what could have been, if I saw this video at a different stage in my exploration of gender identity. I think I'd have been as disinterested in all the things on this board as I was about JKR's Tweet: just a passing nod while I got on with my life. Worse than that, there's probably a chance that I'd have just found everyone very ranty. I'm not sure if I'd have tried to join in or just dismissed anything you were all talking about. I have no idea because I was so disinterested in the subject of women's rights (I thought we had our rights so all was good) that I'd have filtered out anything important that was being said.

I'm not influenced by online influencers. I make my own mind up. But there's a good chance that the suffragette bit combined with the modern fight for women's rights bit would have helped me form exactly the type of opinion that the video was created for.

Interestingly, as far as the video goes, the bit about the "sterilisation of kids" was such a tiny throwaway comment that it may as well not have been there. If I didn't know better (thanks to my obsessive research in this area I know lots on this subject!!) I'd have assumed it was a conspiracy theory, rather than the sad medical scandal that I believe is currently unfolding in most western countries.

In other words, I'd have been the perfect candidate for being convinced that the women on this board were bigots. Sorry again to all. Obviously I don't think that now at all!

Also, a final sorry goes to Glinner. I eventually started reading his substack when a friend (at the time the only GC person I knew, in real life or online) sent me a 3 part story that had been published by Glinner which was written by a mum who helped her gender incongruous daughter navigate everything. I still think he's blunt in his style but I also think what he's doing to help raise awareness is amazing.

Sorry for the length of post.

I just said dress, I didn’t say dress designed for a female body. Most of the dresses available to buy do happen to be designed for a female body because they are targeted towards a female demographic, so if a man wanted to wear a dress that was designed for a male body would have to get it custom made or maybe there are specialty stores that make such dresses… I’m not really sure how that’s relevant to what I’m saying though. Whether it’s designed for a female body or a male body, they’re both dresses and I just said dress…

In the Netflix film I mention above, one of the regretters says one of his motovations for transition was that he thought, as a woman, he would be treated with more kindness. He came to realise that women are treated with less respect.

The other transitioned said his transition was not so much about feeling like he was a woman, so much as just wanting to be loved for who he was ( a gay man wanting to be loved by a man).

Fair point. Let’s say that in this instance, all I mean by ‘treated as a woman’ is referred to by she/her pronouns rather than he/him pronouns, and nothing else. Then we can at least stop getting bogged down in the gender stereotypes discussion, because I agree that we should generally treat people the same.

Then we can at least stop getting bogged down in the gender stereotypes discussion

But the bases of being transgender is stereotypes. The discussion will always come back to that.

At some point I'm going to do some reflective summaries on this thread as I found Caiette's on its predecessor really helpful. Plus it's a useful navigation on big long threads to filter on OP posts if you want to come back to it in future. Anyway, I digress.

For now I just wanted to pick up on this one. Personally I found the Groups 1, 2 and 3 of people who don't believe in gender identity really useful. It helped me understand why I (group 2) can't agree with Matt Walsh (group 3) on many things he says, except for his clear articulation of the word woman. Not only is that helpful in how I understand myself, but it's also helpful for anyone who does believe in gender identity to easily see that Matt Walsh and I are in different categories of people.

I'm going to copy something that I've just posted on another thread that links to this thought:

I've been reflecting on the outrage against Dylan Mulvaney promoting Bud Light since the interesting conversations that are happening on the "Genuinely willing to discuss" threads.... I can understand why Howard Stern is calling out the transphobia in this because I think he might be right. I think lots of people are angry at Dylan promoting their favourite beer because they don't like transwomen. That's transphobia. Some will have other reasons but I think the majority of the outrage is simply the dislike of seeing a transwoman promoting their "manly" beer.

It's such a loud protest that it's drowned out the voices of people who were angry about Dylan promoting sports bras (in summary, the anger was because Dylan has no breasts and prances about in a parody of womanhood - where instead an actual sports woman could have been used in the promotion) and kitchen products (in summary, the anger was because this promotion was part of campaign about women for women - again, Dylan was parodying women in the way Dylan was waving around all the kitchen stuff).

In short, I think the Bud Light, Nike and Kitchen Aid outrages have all been conflated and grouped together as transphobic, as far as people like Howard Stern are concerned.

Note my careful avoidance of pronouns.... As per my comments on the previous thread, I will use preferred pronouns when they are requested in certain situations but not others. I explained my personal use of pronouns by categorising 4 distinct groups of people who request that others use them. Dylan was in group 4. A group whose preferred pronouns I flatly refuse to use because I chose not to respect them for the reasons I outlined in the categories I created.

So I think categorising people can be helpful when trying to understand a subject.

Treating people the same is all well and good in many situations ( if ever truly possibly outside of a tick box formulaic procedure), but of course there are situations in which sexed differences matter and do effect the way that individuals are treated. Single sex provisions is one of example of different needs requiring different types of facility or service.

I wish I had the time to be involved in this discussion which is an important one. The questions spooky is asking are extremely pertinent and at the heart of a lot of the confusion and conflict.

I made a brief comment on one of the last threads about "GC feminism" not really being "a thing."

The term is relatively recent. Those of us who've been discussing the issues for a while see the feminist stance as purely feminist. Women's rights. Women’s lib. Same conversations have been going on for decades before the term popped up.

Gender critical come from being critical of sexist gender stereotyping. The concept of "being transgender" is entirely based on stereotypes. That's not to

Labels can do as much harm as good. I prefer not to use the term too much as it's now a distraction. As a PP have said the term as a label as been 'queered' - the actual meaning has been twisted and magnified. There's no "movement."

People have concerns about the legal ramifications and safeguarding issues, both medically and socially, due to the undeniable fact that males commit more crime and sexual assaults than females and against females and children.

People have concerns that children are making decisions based on fake sexist science that harms them for life.

Setting the term GC up as an imaginary movement means that any one with concerns has been labelled = bigot and any discussion is shot down.

I second the advice about reading the transwidows threads- they add an important dimension that spooky is overlooking.

We had conversations a number of years ago here about "treating as a woman" and what that means.

Equality doesn't mean treating everyone ins the same way.

It means recognising differences and adjusting laws and environments to ensure that people are not discriminated against.

It's a subtle difference.

You can treat women as women in ways that are actually sexist.

You can make adjustments based on biological differences that means they're not discriminated against

The GC position or "movement" if it exists at all is more a legal one based on evidence, facts and biology. The ONLY reason women's rights exist in law and in the EA is based on evidence. Facts and biology.

The entire existence and concept of "Transgender" to me is an example that society has really failed to tackle sexism and is obsessed with aesthetics.

What strikes me is the assumption that the 'gender critical movement' (as various pp have said, not an organised movement but an enormous disparate group who know that sex is immutable) must have unpleasant/sinister motivations when voicing concerns but that Mica, and others producing similar material must be doing it for misguided but ultimately well meaning reasons.

Interesting.

You want to categorise people on reactions to not wanting to categorise people by biology. So that you can understand 'misconceptions' to 'misconceptions' of the category of sex.

Why do your categories matter, but not the global categories of the sex binary?

https://fistulafoundation.org/

This organisation does great work.

Whatever the reason for doing it the result is the same, silencing women.

🤷

It's not your fault spooky we live at a point in time where we are all lazier and prefer to have information condence and told to us instead of fact finding.

The result of that is swallowing and regurgitating propoganda.

It's very hard to break that cycle and start thinking for yourself.

Been following this thread when I can - haven’t read the whole thing, but I did take r0 minutes to watch the vid that Spooky posted and Bonfire talked about in OP. Couldn’t get any further than that - it is truly frustrating when someone purports to represent your pov and does it in such bad faith.
Did make me wonder whether key GC activists equally misrepresent trans views. I don’t see it, but recognise I could be wrong, curious about whether other people do?

I feel like I made a post saying that the sky is blue and I’m being drawn into a debate about which colour is the best and asked to justify why I think the sky is important.

I think I’m going to step away from the thread for now

You asked for a discussion. You probably suddenly feel uncomfortable because you have found us pretty reasonable, but now we are at a point where you have to face that what you believe may be wrong and you need to re-evaluate. What will running away achieve?

Stick around read other threads, even if you don't post.

I don't think the 'wider public' have misconceptions about what the GC position is; as up until fairly recently most people have been burying their head in the sand and waiting for it all to go away.

Trans activists and 'allies' certainly do seem to have misconceptions, though, an that is based, purely, on the fact that no alternative views or materials may be heard or read. They are instantly classified as banned or hateful and so subject to censure.

Trans activists seem to genuinely believe it is they who are breaking down gender stereotypes. It is as if 50 years of feminism and the gay liberation movement had never happened; apart from a belief, or an assertion, that are no sex based differences at all - "so what does it matter what kind of genitals you have; what you are inside is the most important thing"

I watched an interview with a Cognitive Professor from Missouri this week, David Geary, which details the differences in brain development and I thought halfway through 'ping' I wonder if this is the 'I have a female brain scan' thing that TRAs bang on about and was about to go down that rabbit hole until the prof was like 'Oh my god no way can women compete against men in sports due to the brain differences just due to their processing ability and the way that males perceive moving objects that women just can't'.

I find it fascinating because I'm a woman who does have spatial awareness, does maths, did engineering, did all the things and played with all the things 'boyish' but was not one bit interested in moving things such as sports, cars, trucks etc. I spent my career in engineering.

Every time I go down some research [as yes, I do investigate the other side as much as I can] scientifically and I mean scientifically, it comes to an abrupt halt as the other side literally just has stereotypes and flawed science which either makes up nonsense or comes to conclusions that are opposite to what the studies show [and thats the ones that aren't tainted by the techniques used to investigate said thing]. Ive been digging for 7 full years now.

Yes, I think a lot more research, reading and reflection upon what has passed over the last few days would be useful.

Most mental health conditions - certainly those relating to self perception anxiety, social anxiety, ocd - are a sign that society is fucking up somehow.

gender dysphoria is a clear example of sexism and homophobia in society.

No one should have to alter their body to feel happier. Or feel accepted.

Anyone else is playing dressing up games and none of us are obligated to take part.

We are in this mess because there's a Transgender movement that's become politically active.

Please read this site. Spot the homophobic and sexist abuse seven was subjected to as a child. The distress is real. Seven understood the issues so well they used male bathrooms. Seven joined Mr Menno in lobbying the Scottish gov for women.

One of the reasons seven joined the women's side is that they saw how the real transphobic backlash would come. As far as I know seven has desisted as a result, despite it bringing huge distress - to avoid transphobia.

Blaming women who stand up for their legal rights and want to ensure children aren't damaged for transphobic (homophobic) backlashes, is victim blaming.

sevenhex.com/

https://www.parents.com/parenting/my-transgender-child-this-is-how-i-know/
Another to get you started spooky perhaps a re-evaluation of who is pushing harmful stereotypes on children is needed?

You might just want to watch the Wider Lens interview with the TRA turned whistleblower that I linked earlier.

I won't have time to read all the comments properly today (busy day ahead) but I'm really looking forward to doing so as I can see already from skimming through that it's really interesting. Also, I'll be reading the articles that @Hepwo linked on the first page.

In the meantime, I'm going to ask a question. Is there anyone out there reading this who thinks I'm being transphobic when I say the following?

I don't have a gender identity belief but I respect that others do. This means that I don't believe trans women are women (or that trans men are men). Instead I believe that trans women are men who identify as women (and trans men are women who identify as men). As part of respecting this belief, I will use she/her pronouns for a trans woman and he/him for a trans man if they have indicated to me that this is what they would prefer (in whatever way they choose). However, if it's important for the context of whatever I'm saying and I don't believe the person deserves my respect (e.g. Isla Bryson), I will revert to the pronouns of their biological sex*. I also believe that biological sex is important in law, policies, health care and education, for the many reasons laid out on many threads on this board.

*Obviously I can't do that last bit on MN as my posts will get deleted 🤦‍♀️

I hate the term Gender Critical. Because I don't GAF about gender. Be whatever of the 72 genders you please, I couldn't care less.

So long as sex based rights and needs are respected and enforced.

The GC label references what isn't important, not what is.

Ps just so it's clear I'm not setting some kind of trap with that question (I promise I'm not!) I'm going to ask a similar one about religion.

I don't believe in God but I respect that others do. This means, from my point of view, God doesn't exist.

Is there anyone out there who thinks it's blasphemous that I have said this?