I think this is what I can't get my head around in terms of the trans debate

[Heywhatawobderfulkindofday]

I was talking about the problem of allowing transwomen into female only spaces, I am not in any way an expert. I just expressed that some women have very valid concerns about this, possibly due to complex sexual trauma. It is not based on any sort of superficial prejudice but very valid concerns about people with penis's being in female only spaces.
A white man then proceeded to tell me I was overreacting and offered to send me some articles to 'educate me'. The thing is, this is so dissimilar to the education which you can extend to people on their racism or unconscious bias. What is it going to say? It's going to tell women that they are silly to be concerned but none of the evidence can justify that their fears are unfounded.
What I really struggle with is that in every possible social situation this man will have the upper hand. I am the lowest of the low, a poor, single mum on benefits with no social standing, a regional accent, no skills in debating. I'm sick of being told that I, a woman, should be aware of my 'privilege' of being a 'cis' woman. How the flip can I this man, who people would listen to, trust, respect, not get that?
How can he feel that I should give over control of the one thing I have, the right to pee in a penis free space, for another white man? Just so that the next day, he can dress like a man and also have all the power that goes with that, whilst I remain disempowered, ignored and reviled. I don't understand!

I'm a man, and much as I hate to admit this, it's 100% true. What is disarming and disorienting is the cross fertilisation of the philosophy.

So, on the one hand we can go from Andrew Tate BAD, increasing sexism issues with young boys in school BAD, Sadiq's Maaate! campaign, bullying and old school misogyny in women's football BAD...to any discussion of men taking women's rights NO GO, even from, and often totally supported by and pushed by, other women.

Shelagh Fogerty on LBC was discussing the issues of sexism still embedded in English women's football. But woe betide anyone calling to call out men playing in their teams. That would not even get an airing, even with the reasonable Shelagh. No, the rot has so set in that any caller proposing to raise that in air wouldn't even get to being on air.

Y'know, BeKind and all.

OP, what this man has just shown you is that he doesn't really think women have human rights. Avoid him if you can.

He doesn't really think women are fully human nor deserve human rights. He thinks they are a resource for men to use.

This is depressingly common. The TRA ideology, which is MRA ideology at it's core (and not beneficial to the true transsexuals/ those with genuine dysphoria), essentially uses women as a resource for the validation, enjoyment, and abuse of men. In this ideology biological women have no right to self ID (unlike the biological males we're talking about). We can't say what we want in life, we can't have privacy, dignity or safety if there is 1 man against 10000s of women who wants something different.

You'll know this deep down anyway, probably, as a single Mum.

When the Taliban took over in Afghanistan there were women who thought the men would stand up for them, remarkably few did. We're seeing this phenomenon here, it's just got a different cover.

It's hard to live in this world once you see the unvarnished truth. The gains we have achieved in this country in terms of women being seen as fully human and deserving of equal human rights as men are paper thin. They've been lost in Iran and Afghanistan virtually overnight, the same could happen here. We need to fight, hard, now. But you're not going to win over this man, avoid him, spend your energy and time with women who understand and signing petitions and supporting the women (and a few decent men too) fighting back.

The enthusiasm with which some nice men of my acquaintance have taken to scolding women for not accepting that transwoman are women has been horrifying. I don't think there's any way the one who told me it was "unconstructive" of me to point out that all transwomen are by definition male will ever be getting back into my life.

How very fucking DARE they?

The gender neutral toilets at a local venue labelled urinals, cubicles, handbasins, or cubicles andhandbasins have created exactly the same scenario in which I was assaulted in my late teens. The likelihood of being in a room on my own with a man where no one else can see, hear or help.

@KohlaParasaurus I've also met men like that and have shed one particular man who I'd previously thought of as a friend. I'd known him all my adult life, over 40 years, but he's happy to see men's rights put above women's and girl's, so he's no longer a friend of mine. How can I trust anyone who thinks that way, who is so relaxed about throwing women and girls under the bus? He will never, ever freeze in fear the way that women and girls do when faced with men in our spaces, it's just a luxury belief for him. A luxury belief at the expense of women's and girl's safety and dignity. Fuck that.

For me as a man, taking a GC view after the first story I read several years back, pretty much peaking in that moment of time, only to be so let down by civic society and it's acquiescence in the meantime, and realising my snipey attitude to women from my younger days is pretty much out of date, has been one of my more interesting journeys.

Men are socialised to be very confident in their own objectivity, rationality and assessments.

It's simply very likely never occurred to him that a female person's own experience of being female may give her more insight into what it means physically, socially, culturally and politically to be female rather than male than his externally observed conclusions.

I've had the pleasure of more than one man confidently explaining what women experience to me and based on that explaining to me how I don't understand feminism.

To be clear these men weren't anti-feminist, not at all. Feminism was definitely part of their "one of the good ones" grabbag. They just didn't see how female people were relevant to it.

Hey, I must hang out with the "wrong" men. Other than my ex-mates who I broke up with for reasons of pompousness and provoking sheer boredom, I don't know any males who would dare tell any female what makes them tick.

FFS, I've got to 59, and I still have no idea, lol. But I know what's right, and what objectively needs to be policy. And this intellectual battle for me, which I haven't shirked from (cost me the potential of teaching work, and a couple of friends), has made me think about things much more from the perspective that isn't male.

His logic is built on sand, hang around here and educate yourself and utterly eviscerate him the next time he tries it. He wouldn't last five minutes with a Helen Joyce, there's literally no science behind his position and plenty of specific cases that "never happens" to pull up.

Unless, of course, he figures female people in prisons, shelters, sporting events etc are acceptable collateral damage. Some TRAs, like Megan Rapinoe, are very open about that. If he's one of them, his opinion is toilet paper.

I was going to say something similar, I'm not sure this kind of re-education is so totally different than sending someone to read DiAngelo or Coates or Kendi.

I know an individual like that, who trades in both his career and marriage and social status on his supposedly oppressed status. Except he grew up more privileged than 95% of the population, in terms of money, access to institutions of influence, and education, and has walked into a very cushy career as a representative of this historically oppressed group. He personally seems totally unaware of the lack of awareness that is evident when he tells people who have had far more struggle than he did to check their privilege, but what I always find more astonishing is how other people accept it and even amplify it.

Which is to say - many people seem to think that if you can claim membership in certain groups, you have a kind of hierarchical precedence in terms of social justice concerns, regardless of the actual material facts around your life. It's all about the label you claim.

Here, send him this link and tell him to re-educate himself on equality law;
26 Harassment
(1) A person (A) harasses another (B) if—
(a) A engages in unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic, and
(b) the conduct has the purpose or effect of—
(i) violating B's dignity, or
(ii) creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for B.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/26

Also, sometimes a simple explanation is best.

I was quite frustrated with a man in my female dominated workplace, when we were discussing plans for a major renovation. The planners had included a gender neutral washroom, which he was all for, because what else happens if a trans person needs to pee? He really struggled to see why this might be a problem for women, especially in our setting which includes quite a few people who have addiction and mental health issues using the washrooms.

I realized later though, that it is typical of his thinking about everything, he gave his analysis one day of laboratory grown meat, which seemed to be based on the most simplistic sound bites from 1980s vegetarian magazines. Just not curious or skeptical, but keen on thinking the right thing.

There are quite a lot of people like this, I suspect.

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1618212057496817670?t=7Y_4otwySk-RSC0g2qmk-Q&s=19

Jo has a tweet for that. 🙂

In a world in which Eddie Izzard is celebrated for telling a story about intimidating teenage girls when he felt entitled to use a space reserved for the opposite sex to him, I can see why this white entitled, privileged, selfish man felt that he had the right to put a woman in her place when her opinion was not the one he sanctioned.

Couldn't agree more. All this has been the perfect cover for men to row back what hard-won gains in equality women have made over the last few decades.

I actually think that some have disappeared up their own arses so much that they now actually think they are doing something good. Their need to protect their own privilege whilst removing any cognitive dissonance associated with being an utter cunt is wrapped up nicely in this regressive ideology. They can carry on being in a position of utter privilege and also feel that they are a nice guy. Newsflash though - any guy who says TWAW is not a nice guy. He's no different to the worst of the 1970's woman hating misogynists who patted women on the bum and called them all love.

This is it in a nutshell. Taking all the privilege back, while getting to feel smugly virtuous. What's not to like, from their point of view.

Heywhatawobderfulkindofday

..She has known her whole life she is a woman.

With respect if they are a transwoman by definition they are not a woman so cannot have known their whole life they are a woman. This sort of gaslighting has to stop.