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.

Really enjoying this thread!I'm afraid that I am a bit lazy and I do tend to outsource my critical thinking to others until they say something that makes me think "oi! that's bollocks!" and then I have to re-evaluate everything else too. I've done a lot of re-evaluating in the last couple of years

On a more serious note, one thing that has been a bit lost when people talk about "gender identity" is the difference between "who you identify with"" and who (or what) you identify as". Margaret Thatcher identified as a woman but her political choices often went against womens' interests and she seemed to identify more with men than with other women. She didn't show much respect for other women and the issues they dealt with as women.

Who we identify with matters. The groups we think we're part of, the people we respect, the people whose struggles inspire us. And identifying with other people doesn't have to be total. I can identify with some aspects of gay men's struggles for recognition and I can also recognise that there are bound to be aspects that I can't and wont identify with at all, because I am female.

And there's something about role models. Sane people do not identify as their role models, I don't go round claiming to be them or to be the same as them, but we identify with what they have been through and what they are trying to achieve and feel inspired to copy them, or in a more everyday way simply aspire to a life like theirs.

There's an element of trans that is not so much about identifying as the other sex, it's more about not being able to identify with your own sex. The Genspect panel on men and boys argued that lack of adult male role models to identify with was a big factor for young men.

And when a man claims that by identifying as a woman he is making himself a role model to women or "expanding what it means to be a woman", then he is showing a profund inability or refusal to identify with women.

debate involves some "feather smoothing" from everyone.

Okay. But why smooth some people's feathers and not others? Seems you're singling out Gail here to admonish for her tone, while 'feather smoothing' other people.

Yes.

But I also don’t understand why adults need to have their ‘feathers’ smoothed on a public and anonymous forum.

But why smooth some people's feathers and not others?

This is a very good question.

Fair question.

I guess it was an instinct reaction "in the moment" on something I wanted to call out. I didn't recall seeing it written in quite that (as I saw it pointed) way before in this thread. I thought we had mostly moved on from direct criticism/thanking of one person. Although I accept that I could be wrong on that - in fact it sounds like I might be from seeing Helle and Arabella's comments above. When I get chance I'll look back through everything on this thread and check myself. I have no issues with introspection and also no problem apologising publicly if I am wrong.

This is a difficult subject. But I still think a bit of feather-smoothing all round goes a long way towards promoting meaningful discussion. The points can still be made with as much impact, and framing comments in more measured way doesn't stop anyone from sharing their views. I've said plenty of things on all 3 threads (TBF I said virtually nothing on the first thread, owing to the restrictions in its original "rules of engagement") that are "controversial", about gender identity as a belief and about my own experience in relation to children who are questioning their gender. Up until my reply to Gail, I did so in as measured a way as I could. Perhaps not my finest moment?

However, I accept that not everyone shares the view that measured comments are the best/only way to have a conversation, particularly when feelings and emotions are also important. Online discussion forums have a dynamic that you wouldn't see in real life.

Popping back in as I have been tagged - I was under the impression that we were all adults and capable of having a robust discussion/debate. As @BonfireLady is the OP and wants to direct the thread in a feather smoothing way then that is her choice, I am not inclined to blow smoke up someone's arse and I won't be tone or speech policed.

”I accept that not everyone shares the view that measured comments are the best/only way to have a conversation, particularly when feelings and emotions are also important. “

I see this as tone policing. Adults who enter such a discussion on a public forum should not expect to have their feathers smoothed so they continue to engage. That, to me, is manipulative at some level.

I have found some people who try to frame other people’s posts as being ‘unmeasured’ in tone often have missed the manipulative cues or shaming aspects being deployed by posters that the ‘unmeasured’ tones are responding to.

But I still think a bit of feather-smoothing all round goes a long way towards promoting meaningful discussion.

This right here. This is key. It goes a long way towards explaining the double standards.

There is a reason why women, when defending our own right to have our own single sex spaces and sports, feel the need to smooth the feathers of those on the other side of the debate. Because we want to have a meaningful discussion.

Trans activists feel absolutely no need to smooth women's feathers because they don't want to have a meaningful discussion, as far as they are concerned there is no debate and they have already won. What do they have to gain by trying to placate us or being sensitive to our feelings?

Nothing.

If anything, the reverse is true. If they were in any way sensitive to our feelings, if they treated us as humans with our own needs and experiences, rather than terrible Nazi monsters, they would have to admit that we too have a point, we too have rights, and it is not actually just as simple as "trans women are women".

The fact that women can't just say, "trans women are not women because women are female people, you need to stay out of women's spaces, we will not debate our right to exist independently of you" just goes to show which group actually has the political power and which group does not.

Particularly given the obsequious fawning which made one of the threads utterly unreadable as opposed to the 'if you don't like it, off you pop' reaction to someone objecting to tone policing.

@SpookyFBI

I think there's quite an obvious distinction here to be made between the gender critical feminists and the traditionalists on the clothing.

Personally, I love Harry Styles and David Bowie. Not problematic - more flamboyant the better. Couldn't give less of a shit about David Beckham in his sarong. Men enjoying being masculine bodies in feminine clothes = brilliant. This somewhat sets me apart from the Little House on the Prairie traditionalists that we are often claimed to be aligned with. Clothes are just clothes. I think most GC women would say the same.

Men claiming that wearing feminine clothes makes them female and embodies them with some sort of female essence not so much - it's hugely regressive stereotyping (and usually fetish based, with man trying to coerce others into pretending they are female - this is where "dressing as a woman" is more objectionable). Women have fought hard to have the right to wear less gendered clothes and not to be seen as lesser based on what they wear. Wearing gendered clothing is irrelevant to what sex you are and most of the discrimination women suffer cannot be shrugged off by putting on different clothes.

Obviously, the above doesn't cover trans people (in the sense of someone who genuinely has dysphoria and is transitioning - the more extreme TRA/genderists now claim you now don't need either to be trans, and I do think if you have neither but still want to be seen as a woman rather than a Bowie style non confirming man it's quite hard to claim you're not a fetishist really). I'd never not use pronouns and chosen names or to hurt feelings, but I won't pretend that dressing "as a woman" makes someone actually female where sex matters. It's an act of politeness and kindness on my part, in the same way as I wouldn't do other things to cause others discomfort unnecessarily.

Basically, sex is important, clothes not important. I like non conformity. It's dressing in a non conforming way and claiming it magically changes your sex that I have an issue with.

@frenchnoodle "Or you want what we have now companies just need to understand sex segregation is fine in law and wanted by the majority."

Sorry yes missed this question, where sex matters, sex must be used (the boring kind not the fun kind).

Where and when sex matters and which rules are perhaps sexist nonsense we'd be better off without is I think a thing people will need to continue to talk and think about.

That sex and sexual orientation are also protected characteristics is an important point to keep emphasising I think.

And we are adults who still seem to be able to perform our lives dealing with clients, customers, children and talk in ways that engage with politicians, and stakeholders in our lives.

Yet our written clear and direct responses are portrayed as unreasonable (not directed at anyone), uninformed, abrupt and what ever because an adult cannot engage without feeling they have to be spoken to only soothingly. I think sometimes posters think their suggested approach to the issue is somehow different because obviously no one has ever tried that before. Yet, of course it has. Usually many times! And by the very same people being told they should approach things differently.

The "obsequious fawning" is a sign that we are a group of people who have no expectation of being spoken to by the other group with basic respect and courtesy, to the point where if someone is not abusive towards us, we thank them.

Not a good look for either group really.

Where there is a conflict of interests between natal women and trans women, I will side with the natal women every time

Absolutely.

But this seems to be a core issue.

It feels like we've living in an era with this mental list of 'most to least oppressed' and people feel our sympathies and activism should be doled out accordingly.

And society has decided that Trans are the most oppressed (Christ knows why) and therefore everything needs to succumb to their needs.

Where women sit on that hierarchy is anyone's guess. Possibly nowhere at all - as the continued difficulties women face, outside of places like Afghanistan (which is at least acknowledged), seems to be generally ignored.

There's no room for nuance, no room for complexity, no room for balancing of rights. So standing up for our own (natal women) is like an act of aggression.

I agree. And I do thank posters for not posting the denigrating negative generalisations. That is my socialisation coming through right there.

For what it's worth, @TheKeatingFive, taking the side of trans women over natal women is a legitimate one.

But it is not legitimate to claim that you are being a feminist when you do so. No, what you are doing in that situation is not feminism, it is trans activism. It would be more honest to own that and just say you think trans people are more in need of your support.

People who just dislike trans people because they think it is weird and gross for a man to wear a dress and makeup and that only women should do these things are not gender critical either. They believe in upholding rigid gender norms which say that, in our culture, only women should wear dresses and makeup.

See, even here you have gone quite deeply into ascribing in absolute certainty the motivation of a group of people on the basis of nothing at all.

You go on to tell us that you know what they believe. Of course you don't know.

They believe in upholding rigid gender norms which say that, in our culture, only women should wear dresses and makeup.

They could just as likely be fans of Dame Edna Everage, as a comedy act, whilst at the same time knowing that cross dressing is often a paraphilia which is associated some types of sex offences.

The compulsion to set out what "people" believe in Ladybird book language is strong here.

Just occurred to me that of course the reason that some people will fetishise 'cross dressing' is because of rigid gender stereotypes.

If there were less rigid 'rules' about what men and women wear/act, then there would be no thrill in breaking them. And no doubt fewer fetishistic acts aiming to transgress said 'rules'.

An obvious point, probably, but it only just occurred to me.

The charge/kick/thrill is about breaking social norms, it has f-all to do with the specific clothes involved.

And the power inversion comes from the social coding of the sexes - posits women as weaker and inferior, and/or sexually objectifies them.

So a male 'dressing as a woman' is deliberately debasing himself. It depends entirely on a struture that positions 'male' at the top of a hierarchy.

“Brothers and sisters, the name of the game is power
If you ain’t playing power,
You’re in the wrong place”

How does being a fan of Dame Edna square with believing it is weird and gross for a man to wear dresses and makeup?

Comedy act? Funny.

Cross dressing fetishism? Weird and gross.

Two different things?

Not that difficult?

But I was referring specifically to people who dislike trans people because they think that men wearing makeup and dresses is weird and gross, and that only women should do these things.

That's only one group of people.

Other options are available, such as not believing that trans women are women but that all cross-dressing is completely fine, or being OK with cross-dressing when it's for artistic/expression purposes, e.g. Dame Edna or David Bowie, but not when it is a fetish.

Exactly

You needn't read the Daily Mail or the Telegraph @ BonfireLady ( you can't without a subscription, anyway) in order to research more into the issue of transgender/identity (on behalf of your daughter); there are some excellent books that have been available for quite a while now. Kathleen Stock, Helen Joyce, Abigail Shrier, to name just a few.The Times, though, especially Janice Turner has been great on the issue.

You have said you have never really been interested in women's rights and was always very dismissive of JK Rowling.....yet you sound to me of a certain age and a certain education, so that I find this idea quite intriguing?