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.

If it’s not about stereotypes, what they hell was that graphic with Barbie at one end and GI Joe at the other about? I know trainers have done a reverse ferret on that one, but there was a point when it was all over the place. And as Helle points out, the stereotypes explanation has been rescinded as it didn’t look good, but it hasn’t been replaced by anything else, not even anything that doesn’t really make sense. Just tumbleweed.

Gender identity is like Dumbos magic feather. He could already fly, but he thought he needed a feather. People can always dress up and act however they want, but thinking they have a gender identity gives them the courage to do it.

My hunch is that for most trans people “I want to do xyz” or “I definitely don’t want to do xyz” comes before “therefore I am a woman/man”. The gender identity part is a rationalisation of the impulse. Obviously, this is just me having an opinion I’ve just thought of - it’s not a core belief! I’d happily be dissuaded of this by even anecdotal data.

I am wondering at one of the arguments that we see here often.

Do ‘gender critical’ people worry how people see them?

The thing about that is, who uses that term anyway?

In Australia , when I speak to people about the need for women to have changing rooms, prisons and sports, I rarely come across family or friends who don’t see the need of women and girls to have these without males included.

They have no idea what that term means. Or if it even applies to them.

It is the same here in the UK, but I know less people. Either way, they have no idea what that term means, but most agree fully or at the very least partially.

To be fair, I see it used on social media by extreme trans activists more than anywhere else. And just about always as Mica has done.

The label doesn’t stop people agreeing and understanding who don’t have exposure to the extreme trans activist narrative. It is people who listen to those activists that end up closing their minds. And maybe that is a ‘them’ issue more than anything else, because it is hardly ‘tolerant’ to not listen to other’s opinions.

From what I've just watched;

a load of men in dresses and skirts just put a nice dress on the king (a nonsense thing) after he was annotated by god (a nonsense thing).

!!!

Yes, indeed.

We have learned to live with our disagreements about 'god', however. Perhaps the way we learned to do this could be instructive in our current predicament regarding 'gender identity' etc.

We do not (most of us, any longer) make and enforce laws about fine theological points; we do not persecute blasphemers ... We teach about peoples' religious beliefs in our schools, rather than teaching a section of those beliefs to children as though they were true. We respect people with different (sometimes, to our minds, nonsensical) beliefs and allow them space to live in accordance with them so long as they don't restrict or constrict others. And so on.

This took time. A long time, in fact.

It seems now such a backward step that we have to go back to fighting for these new (to our mind nonsensical) beliefs to be dealt with societally in the same way as the old ones.

Oh well. Plus ça change ... I suppose.

My teen was horrifed to see those ken and Barbie continuum!

But yes, nothing has been put forward since that was revoked to replace it.

That really is indicative that stereotypes got the lobby and support groups that far. The lack of a clear explanation now shows much about the lack of evidence in general.

I am unsure whether this was posted before. In case it was not, here it is.

Autism, Puberty, and Gender Dysphoria:The view from an autistic desisted woman

I agree with this.

There certainly are people who say “I don’t feel like a man/woman” as reason for transitioning.

But not feeling “like a man” does not make someone a woman and vice versa.

There are lots of religions and beliefs throughout the world and it is easy to respect others beliefs if you are not forced to believe them yourself. I work for a Church but I am not a believer. I understand that other people get something from their beliefs but never has anyone suggested that I should believe too. The thing is in workplaces we have tried to accommodate different beliefs in various ways through dress, prayer rooms, work rotas whatever. We have made separate provision for different beliefs when they matter. With GI we have not and that is where the problem lies.

As a thought experiment on categorising people opposed to an idea in order to bash their motivations. It is a key concept in these circles. So lets say, 100% of people opposed to 'Trans Ideology' are really nasty people, completely horrible, scum of the earth. The theory is that by not associating with them, keeping clear of their ideas, being clean yourself is a very convenient way of stating that you are not 'one of them' and as such, your motivations are pure and genuine.

But even if that is the case, does it change the following:
35% of the children referred to the clinic presented as autistic or had autistic traits compared to 2% of the general UK population [at GIDS].

Children referred to GIDS were 10 times as likely to have a registered sex offender as a parent than the general UK population.

There were not signed consent forms. NONE. The consent was all done via verbal consent and the clinicians were told not to write it down.

There should have been 3 forms send after an initial visit. One for 'meets criteria', one for 'needs more investigation' and one for 'doesn't meet criteria'. The whistleblower said she was never told to send the second two, everyone was progressed.

Around 80-90% of the children referred to these clinics are children who are or are likely to be gay or lesbians. [This is where the 'transing the gay away' phrase which was rife at GIDS came from]. When clinicians who were themselves gay raised this as a concern they were told they were 'too close to the issue' and to shut up.

None of these [told by whistleblowers or people that left these clinics] depend on the people that are on the outside 'hating' trans people. Not one.

And how would you fix this?
Gender identity, the belief that gender (how someone says they feel) is more important than sex.
Is not comparable with single sex provision is it. Out of all the religions gende identity is the only one insistent that I have to have one too and requires me to recatogrise myself into a sub box of my sex.

It's not possible to have both gender and sex in law.

With GI we have not and that is where the problem lies.

What should be done?

I think that the support groups quickly pivoted from using stereotypes when they realised it was such a weak premise for diagnosing someone as trans. I remember when they realized and try to change the narrative.

Same. It was all about the stereotypes. We had one tw on here who said they could only feel 'vibrant' when dressed as a woman.

And wanted to wear colourful clothes, if I recall correctly.

In the beginning when transwomen discovers FWR, we saw it on here quite a lot. Transwoman explaining that they felt more nurturing, or more sensitive 'as a woman'. One particular person said they wanted to be like the mean girls in Hollywood movies.

And, of course, it was instantly recognised and called out as damaging stereotypes. And before long, the official narrative changed. To an inner essence. Indefinable, unverifiable, and too difficult to explain. Yet should be taught to children in schools and incorporated into law.

You still see all the time tho. The most recent incarnation is Dylan Mulvaney . Who cried three times and wrote a scathing email they didn't send, in order to act 'like a woman'.

As people have repeatedly asked. If you haven't suddenly acquired a female reproductive system, and aren't identifying with societally stereotypes, what is it?

I've been thinking about this and I suspect that society didn't accommodate very 'feminine' presenting men as well as was needed.

I think this has played a role in people (bizarrely) feeling more comfortable with the idea that they're 'actually women'.

Just to add, Stephanie Davis Arai, who runs transgender trend, and has done for years and years, gets emails from youngsters and parents, to the tune of thousands a week.

She has said that she has yet to see a reason for transitioning that isn't either due to homophobia/sexism, past sexual trauma, or autism.

Absolutely. It's sexism. And/or homophobia.

It might make more sense if you replace the word or concept of 'God' with 'Higher Self' ( that which is above and beyond individuated consciousness).

Likewise I can imagine that the feeling of having a 'gender identity' most likely is stemmng from the 'Individuated Self' ( the concept of ourselves we have as a whole individual).

I think this has played a role in people (bizarrely) feeling more comfortable with the idea that they're 'actually women'.

Yes, I think you're probably right.

And it's the slippy-slide, starting from metaphorical words "born in the wrong body" that are the only way Person A can express their feeling of discomfort to Person B who has never experienced that feeling, and ending by treating those words as the physical fact: your body is wrong so let us put it right for you.

I really hate to think of all those young people sacrificed to a metaphor.

Both impulses - towards the belief in God, or towards the crowning of a King, stem from what might be called the super-ego, which operates beneath the individual consciousness. The super-ego in turn could be said to draw on the greak bank of imagery that operates at the cultural-collective level of symbolism, and beneath that the basic urges and instincts , which Freud would have called the ID.

Having a gender identity would thus involve drawing on the cultural - collective level of symbols and imagery as it relates to 'male' and 'female'.

Both involve an appeal to different levels of consciousness and associated symbolism. On an everyday level of consciousness we tend mainly to be aware only of ourselves as individuals - unconscious of the deeper collective roots from which we sprout.

Excellent title, @BonfireLady! Busy day, so aiming to catch up this eve. Looking forward to the new stuff.

Using a Jungian model it could be argued that the collective store of feminine archetypes ( stereotypes) originates in the anima of the male, and the collective store of masculine archetypes originates in the animus of the female.

I often think when I see gay men who are very 'camp' that they have in some way become posessed by a kind of negative feminine anima, and very butch lesbians by a male animus ( if looking at this through a Jungian lens)

This is rewriting history.

We accept Bowie etc for years.

What happened to that?

Effeminate men were more accepted a few years ago. Same for butch lesbians. Now that's rolled back. Certainly in schools that's the case. Girls with short hair are asked if they are trans. (I've heard several cases of this with friends who have teenage daughters) and boys can't have more delicate bone structure and wear makeup. These kids typically would have fallen into the goth type trends. That was non conforming.

This is a stupid idea to say that people are uncomfortable with nonconformity. The UK has often LEAD world culture on nonconformity!

And then you have the likes of Beckham wearing a sarong. That was nonconforming.

Even kilt wearing is nonconforming really.

We've gone the opposite way in expecting greater conformity - if you don't share my exact politics, it doesn't matter how you look or how nice you are, I'm going to cancel you.

"Girls must wear pink" from the great supermarket aisles of gendered clothing with pink on one side and blue on the other. This didn't exist a few years back. Marketers realised they could flog a family two things instead of one, because the pink buggy was not suitable for child two if the parents had a girl then boy. There was also a premium for gendered products - a pink razor markets at a higher price than the exact same thing in the bog standard original bic style razor. It's not any bloody different.

That's what entered the room. Hyper commercial marketing to sell concepts not just products.

It is so depressing to see someone say that people don't accept non conformity. It's really ignorant and I think says much about projected beliefs and insecurities rather than reality.

I'd like to take a step back in time and to start with the fact that for centuries 'woman' really just meant a female human being old enough not to be seen as a 'girl'.

The definition had the common problems of all similar definitions of some difficult-to-decide cases at the margins, but everyone understood what the term referred to: Sometimes it referred just to adults of the female sex, sometimes it also included the coding of rules, roles and stereotypes a particular culture assigned to those who are of the female sex and adults.

But it was not about some abstract inner gender identity which is both unfalsifiable as a belief (and so like religious beliefs) and relatively recent as an idea.

What has recently happened is that the term 'woman' has been appropriated and redefined in identity terms. The original term is not about identities. If that definition takes over, we will then have no way of referring to individuals of the female sex.

This has serious negative consequences:

First, it forces everyone to become congregants in the secular religion of gender identity, so that women who have accepted the label 'woman' all their adult lives, thinking that it just means being of the female sex and an adult are suddenly told that 'not only women and girls menstruate etc.', so that being a woman tells us nothing about someone's biological sex. Now it means something else, and the only definitions which are not empirically empty are based on either sexist stereotypes about femininity or allegiance to retrogressive female sex roles.

This is invalidating, to use the term trans activists often use, and extremely so for feminist women who are now told that either they are women for sexist stereotype reasons or that they must transition (at least to non-binary) if they don't believe in gender stereotypes as the rules to be followed.

Second, because it erases our ability to even name people of the female sex it makes fighting sex-based oppression extremely difficult. Every instant of sexist mistreatment is seen as a separate one in that framework :

Sex-selective abortions, FGM, sex trafficking, sexual violence which predominantly affects female people, labour market discrimination against women of reproductive age due to the possibility of pregnancy, the stigma of menstruation, the banning of abortions, religious rules placing women in lower positions and more; all these would be evaluated as separate phenomena affecting groups with no clearly shared name.

Some would happen to fetuses with xx chromosomes, some would happen to womb-carriers, some to people who are pregnancy-capable, some to birthers or menstruators etc.

This hides the fact that all those phenomena happen to the same demographic group: the female sex. In a sense these forms of oppression, sexism and misogyny should best viewed as affecting women standing at the intersection of multiple forms of prejudice and dislike. Intersectional feminists should be able to see this, surely.

Almost all the losses caused by the demands of trans activists are borne by the female sex and hardly any by the male sex. Men are not losing places on the podium in sports, men are not losing the old definition of 'man', and men are not facing increased risks of harassment or violence in their single-sex spaces. It's hard not to see this difference as anything but sexism.

For me being a woman is not an abstract identity. I don't identify as a woman in that sense, though I do identify with women because of our shared concerns and the plight of women in many countries. If some different type of identity could be applied to how I see myself as a woman, then it would be an embodied one, based on being female all my life and accruing the life experiences (including sexual violence, sexual harassment and discriminatory treatment) which go with being a woman and with being treated as one.

For me the above costs are unacceptable. Trans activists should explore alternative routes for gaining their place in the society. It can't come at the expense of half the humankind.

A point about dresses and men...

What's interesting in terms of accepting it is this factor of how well they fit and how flattering they are to body shape.

A well fitting piece of 'womans clothing' or non conforming clothing on men is much more likely to be well received. It doesn't necessarily matter how good the body is, it's how well it fits and flatters. A good tailor is a massive factor imho.

Likewise, the same goes for women. A woman in a dress that does fit well will get comments for looking like a sack of spuds even if she's drop dead and stick thin.

Women generally speaking have a harder job to dress to their shape for three reasons: breast, waist to hip ratio and hip size. Men on the other hand have fewer variables.

It's not lost on me that designers and more recently advertising for brands has looked for women with a standard none curvy body type - more similar to a man, because it's easier to dress. To the point they have started using males to sell dresses etc to women. It's not just because that's the current 'look'. It's because it's easier to tailor to that.

I think that's also part of why Sam Smith gets such a pasting. It's not just the overly sexualised clothes or his body shape. It's because who ever is designing for him, makes him look like a sack of spuds rather than flattering his shape thoughtfully.

A feature of transition is trans women 'learning to dress' and 'how to stand'. The former is a learned skill (which not all women have either) whilst the latter is a biological issue to do with skeletal differences.

Harry Styles doesn't attempt to 'walk like a woman'. He just walks. Sam Smith attempts to do a forced walk which is unnatural. We pick up on that.

Then there is the uncanny valley effect:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

The concept suggests that humanoid objects that imperfectly resemble actual human beings provoke uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of uneasiness and revulsion in observers. "Valley" denotes a dip in the human observer's affinity for the replica—a relation that otherwise increases with the replica's human likeness.

When applied to a male attempting to 'pass' our human perceptions notice something is 'off'. If there wasn't this attempt to mimic and instead went with the idea of being male but just owning it, I think the reaction is often very different because it doesn't produce this feeling of something not being quite right.

And there's something to be said simply for confidence. A man confident in his sexuality, wearing pink comes across differently to a man who is insecure and is told to wear pink which he doesn't want to in case someone makes assumptions...

Generally speaking we are most likely to trust and respect someone who comes across as confident and form less favourable first impressions of someone who is uncomfortable, self conscious or trying to prove a point with what they are wearing. Someone who is comfortable regardless, will come across better because their body language will be more open and welcoming.

And again on body language. If you watch body language of many TRAs, particularly in demonstrations, it screams certain things that amplify women's anxieties. Women don't do the same thing. Because it's male body language still going on. It's not what they are wearing that's the problem. Once you start to notice it, you can't unsee it. Again that's why Styles comes across better than Smith because of Smith's attitude and intent with his costumes compared to Styles.

I think there's been a lot written about the Styles / Smith comparison but I don't think I've seen any comments along these lines to do with confidence, intent and body language.

I think we should start talking about it, because I think it matters.