TW and IVF

[CatandSpoon]

I'm pondering...
Would this be a surefire test of how indoctrinated a person is.

Say for example my DH John has decided he is now a woman. As TWAW (or so they would have us believe) he has decided he wants to carry a baby. So he is going to contact the IVF clinics and undergo the hormones, the egg harvesting etc.

If, upon hearing this story a person replies "but no, John can't undergo IVF!"...

Can I then say "ah but that reply makes you a T*RF in the eyes of the TWAW movement"

Is this a potentially peaking example?

I'm trying to think of a way to .. not even challenge friends, but to highlight the ludicrous nature of the TWAW brigade.

You could say “Have you heard about this new surrogacy agency opening, where all the surrogates are trans women?”.

Act all doe eyed and waffle on about how amazing the science is these days.

Ha. I like that.

It's not an analogy. If TW are actually women, then why should they not attend IVF clinics? Biological women do. So it's the next "logical" step. Men are now "chest feeding" babies. Why can they not become pregnant? If TW are women then...

🤣 oh the wonders of modern science

Ah ok I see what you mean.

But I'm thinking more of my friend Susan saying TWAW and me saying "yes indeed they are. In fact John is now a woman and he's going for IVF next week. We always wanted a third baby so it's his turn to carry"
Then I'm imagining the look of shock on Susan's face as she stutters "but that won't work, it's a waste of money, John can't carry a baby "
And I innocently say "oh really? Why not? He's a woman now"

Cue the cognitive dissonance

I was thinking the other day that a simple response to TWAW might be "Oh okay, am I a trans woman then? No? Why not?"

@MrsFButton I like that!

I’m not sure it works because in the topsy-turvy world of Gender Believers bodies aren’t as important as “essences/souls/feelings” (whatever) and therefore some women have penises some men have uteruses and some don’t. So your husband would be a woman without a womb and then you’d get a lecture about not all women have a uterus/don’t define people by their body parts etc and you’d never get a sensible answer.

They’ll just say, ‘Not all women can have babies and they are still women’.

There is enough real life craziness in this movement without having to invent things that are not happening.

They'd just say that not all women can get pregnant in the conventional way (true, as we know) so John is the same as one of those women. But still a woman. Do you think that women who need help conceiving aren't women? No, you don't, I'm sure. So John is a woman who can't conceive but is still a woman. Every bit as much a woman as you are.

Then, of course, you could say John doesn't have a uterus so can't conceive and bear a child. They might say some women don't have a (functioning) uterus, either. This is true, even if it's very rare.

So IVF might not be the best route for John but he's still a real woman. And you're a bigot.

That's how it works.

It wouldn’t work because they seem to think that a woman is “feminine” rather than the type of body that can bear children, so lipstick and earrings = woman, but pregnant = could be either male or female depending on what is in their email signature.

I have one extremely intelligent and empathetic friend who has a colleague who is a transwoman and she says that in her opinion this person is a woman.
I value her friendship greatly and was surprised

@ApocalipstickNow @Usedtolikefood @CaramelMac @Rightsraptor apologies if I've missed anyone
You all make valid points and I see how the argument can be made for John still being a woman!

Thank you all, it was something I had been thinking about and I can see where gaps around my logic can be found

Sorry but that’s such a childish argument. It would also get very easily closed down in that John has no functioning uterus and ovaries the same as lots of other women who require fertility treatment and so they are all seeking help from the clinic.

I’ve seen lots of arguments about how having the female body parts doesn’t define womanhood else women post hysterectomy would cease to be women.

You can’t argue like that with Trans ideology

Then, of course, you could say John doesn't have a uterus so can't conceive and bear a child. They might say some women don't have a (functioning) uterus, either. This is true, even if it's very rare.

So IVF might not be the best route for John but he's still a real woman. And you're a bigot.

That's how it works.

No women produce sperm though. A lot of these men have already fathered children pre "transition."

Exactly right.

OP, you haven't properly understood their ideology.

Yes, like so many ideologies, it is nonsensical and contradictory and all these things, but it still has these internal structures that make sense to people within the ideology and if you don't understand them you will never win this 'gotcha' moment you seem to be fantasising about.

My DH is part of the TWAW group (yes it's frustrating and leads to some incredibly annoying conversations) what I find incredibly difficult is that he is a really clever man, articulate, generally good common sense but 'kind' to the extent that he will twist logic to avoid the possibility of being hurtful to anyone so he has a real blind spot here.

We have had many conversations where he maintains the TWAW stance as I work through a variety of scenarios, eventually he does come to the conclusion that TWA not W in some scenarios but always then defaults back to 'but that's an edge case, for everyday living TWAW' at which point I start banging my head against the wall (metaphorically).

His turning points which he then dismisses as edge cases are:

• rapists/violent male criminals who are placed in women's prisons in the general population. He's ok with them being in some kind of segregated area of a women's prison
• male presenting TW in rape crisis refuges/therapy groups
• him ever having sex with a TW who retains a penis

@CatandSpoon - it's not gaps in your logic, it's that there is no logic in their argument.

A woman is an adult human female. A female is someone whose reproductive system is intended to produce large, immotile gametes. It doesn't matter one jot if the individual concerned doesn't actually do this (she's too young, too old, her system doesn't work as expected) - she still belongs to that reproductive class. The other reproductive class that makes small, motile gametes is male (same rules apply). There are only these two types of reproductive systems in humans and we all belong to one or the other.

And we all know which group John belongs to the moment we see him. It makes no difference if he's wearing a sequined mini skirt and 6" heels. However, some seem to think the mini skirt and heels are what makes a woman. They're wrong.

That’s the problem, catandspoon - you can’t use logic here. There is none.

I listen to a podcast about the paranormal featuring a believer and a sceptic and one of the points they make is that if you’re talking to someone with an irrational belief (ghosts in this case TWAW in your case) then the believer will always move to goal posts to justify their belief.
Because if you start from an unrealistic premise you may as well go hog wild to defend it.
If you start from the idea that men can be women in some metaphysical way you can bolt anything - no matter how ridiculous- on from their as you are starting with an unreal concept to begin with.

@FatAgainItsLettuceTime

Does your husband think that biological women need a word to describe their specific experiences of having been born in a female body and being socialised from birth in a world that sees them as such?

What characteristic does he think all women and characteristic share?

@FatAgainItsLettuceTime - your husband might get there one day! I must say it's very nice of him to be ok with men in a separate section of a women's prison, not something he'll ever have to deal with. Can men not hear themselves when they say things like that?

If these things are edge cases, you could try the 'dog shit Malteser' test, which goes like this:

Someone offers you a Malteser. There are 10 in the dish. Then they tell you 9 are ordinary chocolate-covered Maltesers and the other one is a Malteser too, just dipped in dog shit. Would he eat one? If not, why not? After all, there's a 9 in 10 chance that his Malteser would be fine and delicious, so why bother about the one in ten chance of the nasty one?