If you're GC, what should trans people actually do?

[AmaListening]

I'd like to understand what someone with gender critical views thinks trans people should do.

Maybe let's make it specific with a couple of famous examples: Laverne Cox (trans woman), and Elliot Page (trans man).

Imagine you had it exactly your way. What should those human beings, who feel and identify the way they do, do about every aspect like: names, pronouns, surgery, clothing, relationships, social spaces, work, sports.

How should Laverne speak about her own identity? Should Elliot not have had top surgery?

I'd really like to understand what the world looks like for trans people if we carry GC views through to their end points.

Wanting to rip his skin off. Looking in the mirror and not knowing the person he was looking at. It always feeling jarring, incongruous.

So I take from that he wasn't a girl/woman in the same way that I was. That there was a mismatch between his body and inner sense of self.

But someone who has such a dislike of their body doesn't know how they'd actually feel if they had a different body. They might feel just as repelled by any other body they might have had.

Someone who feels repelled by their own body needs psychological support to help them to accept their body, not cosmetic surgery to aid them to have a body thar looks the way they think they want their body to look. Especially when such surgery impacts on the normal functioning of their body.

I only wish that any thread such as that would get honest and well thought out answers. The issue for me is that no one, except a few who then get ostracized, will come out and say the truth.

It has to be all hidden in obfuscation and when it is pointed out what the end result is, then people are told they are imagining things. Yet, much of the change in policies in government and in other organisations is planned. The discussion tactics have been strategized.

The original stored Denton’s report has been deleted. This blog post has links to active stored PDFs.

https://gendercriticalwoman.blog/2020/07/23/that-dentons-document/

This document is worth the read. It is horrifying though that one Trans strategist, James Morton iirc, has been recorded as saying that when policy has been changed to place males who are trans in female prisons in the UK then all access to female single sexual spaces will fall into place. The focus was to get that access of males into female prisons. And that was a female person who said this! I think there really is a certain amount of females adopting misogynistic actions to ‘pass’.

Here is also a communications guide issued by another law organisation setting out their strategy for manipulating public view.

Messaging Guide : Transgender Youth and the Freedom to Be Ourselves

From December 2021

static1.squarespace.com/static/5fd0f29d0d626c5fb471be74/t/61b13d00236e2f7f2dbb9a36/1639005441624/Transgender+Youth+and+the+Freedom+to+Be+Ourselves.pdf

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4439659-Ryan-Grim-results-of-latest-trans-activism-poll-A-tweaked-playbook-for-the-US?reply=113763453

This document is honest at least. It calls the public ‘persuadables’!

It recommends to emotionally manipulate communications and answer questions by intertwining trans issues with race issues. And to never mention sport and to redirect all conversations away from sport. This was released just after Lia Thomas started to make headlines and after Laurel Hubbard’s Olympic appearance.

I don’t know how you feel about seeing deliberate manipulation such as this @AmaListening , but it certainly doesn’t sit well with me.

When does Page say they felt this? This feeling of ripping their skin off. Was this before Page realised how much women were objectified or after? Was it before or after their first trauma event ?

When you read this account, do you give this account more credibility than a person with anorexia who declares they are ‘fat’ when their body is so reduced that there is so little ‘fat’ on their body that their skeleton is so clearly delineated? If so, why?

Really, OP? I dont think that's the experience of most women. It is far more common for women to feel some or all of these - resent being told that they could not do things because they were a girl, to have been told they were inferior because they were a girl, to hate periods, to feel their breasts are too small or too big. Some are same sex attracted and made to feel bad about that. It is only with adulthood that many women accept their bodies.

I have not read Elliot Page's memoir. I understand from comments on here that there was a lot of trauma in Elliot's life. Does changing your body remove that trauma or is it just the attention/ approval you receive from people with an agenda? People who undergo extreme surgery and have to take medication for life pay a very high price. I have a trans relative and they have a trans partner. Both have poor health, one is unable to work full time. Both could have been happy and healthy with their same sex partner without transition if they had not been told they were "in the wrong body".

Transition is now an epidemic in young women, often autistic and/or with other problems. Those problems are rarely worked through before the rush to affirm. It is even said to be "transphobic" and "conversion therapy" to explore why someone is unhappy with their body and whether they can learn to be happy without lifelong medication and permanently damaged health. Transition shortens lives and no-one is sure what it does to the brain.

What gender critical women want is for young people to be supported to work through their problems, to have a healthy life, to not experience homophobia. We want a world where children learn they can be who they want, have sex with anyone who will have them while still having a healthy body. We dont want a world where anyone in a dress can attack women, a world where women are told they have no rights, that they exist solely to satisfy the desires of males.

Why is gender dysphoria the only dysphoria treated by affirmation?

OP, you might be interested in a new thread that has just been started

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4870071-gym-swimming-changing-issue?page=1

I pointed out to the dad that his young daughters 11/13 simply accepted that a male in their 40s is naked in their open changing room. What the actual fuck! Where is this messaging coming from? It seems most certainly not from these girl’s dad, so where?

We now have a generation of children who have such low privacy boundaries that these girls never mentioned to their father that this male individual was using the female changing room. Obviously enough times that they described this male’s bum and ‘huge’ boobs.

I appreciate your tweaked question as it shows you really have been reading. But I think it is really important also for people to understand how we got here and the harm that teaching children and women to push down their discomfort to prioritise any male who people feel is vulnerable is doing.

There is no need for us to not give people respect, however ‘giving respect’ should never have been to simply give into demands the way that has been done. Acknowledging this is then portrayed as ‘transphobic’ and hateful. We see those accusations all the time. Any thread about women’s rights conflicting with perceived trans rights on AIBU gets the same slew of posters making just those accusations.

However, something needs to change and it needs to change fast. There is a generation of children being told to accept behaviour that is potentially harmful meaning that they are then much more open to harm. All under the guise of ‘kindness’ and ‘tolerance’. And I put those words carefully because they have now started to mean just the opposite.

Yes, truly - but I remember my mum allowing me to wear whatever clothes I wanted, whereas Elliot writes about being forced to conform to feminine dresses/bows in hair etc.

I'm married to a woman. I think I assumed that people who wanted to restrict trans rights would equally want to restrict my rights. That people who don't "believe" people can transition would be of the "Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" mindset and imagine same-sex attraction to be something to "heal" too.

So when GC gay women started posting on this thread, that was powerful. And I don't think my fears are founded.

This is a really good answer.

I suppose I'd want them to accept that their sex will never change but that they are free to choose whatever name they want and wear whatever clothes they want. As an adult, change your appearance as you wish.

But don't force other people to lie about facts.

If you're a big hairy bloke don't try to use your male privilege and testosterone to force other people to pretend that they think you're a woman. Absolutely nobody really thinks that. They see you as male. Even if they're woke and try to convince themselves that you are a woman, their inner senses will still know that you are not. Accept this.

If a woman asks to be examined by a female nurse or security officer, don't create a fuss. Accept this and refer a female colleague. Don't stamp your size 9s and insist that you are a female, because everyone knows that you're not. Be sensitive to the fact that 90% of sexual assaults are by males so women have good reason to exclude you.

Go about your business quietly. Like with the religion analogy, believe what you want but understand that many will not agree with you. Don't try to inflict on others.

“Elliot Page (and I'll keep using that example because I'm reading his memoir) says he felt so very different from this. Wanting to rip his skin off. Looking in the mirror and not knowing the person he was looking at. It always feeling jarring, incongruous.”

By the way. @AmaListening I DO understand how Page feels. I have always suffered from this feeling.

The solution is not to fucking have a complete body overhaul that involves taking life limiting and usually shortening testosterone injections. You cannot escape that feeling of disassociation. I recommend that you read the stories of detransitioners and those who remain transitioned who came to that realisation after always looking to that next phase of treatment to be ‘the one’ that makes them feel better. They also describe the euphoria around transition and around progressing each stage.

There is a reason why there are no peer reviewed studies that show long term improvement to mental health. It is a mental health condition being treated in a way that is counter to other conditions like it. Why? Because one sub group out of a rather diverse grouping of people under the trans umbrella managed to convince enough medicos to detach the condition from being classified as a mental health condition.

Who benefits from forcing treatments to be affirming only? BTW this is being done via laws around conversion therapy. Who benefits when there is not one peer reviewed study showing an improvement to mental health with these treatments.

One study tried to conclude there was an improvement, albeit small, but they were forced to rescind that conclusion because the reality was it was a false conclusion. And that was a Yale study so not an unreputiable University.

I recommend you keeping asking ‘who benefits’ OP. I predict that when you find the answers at the end of the chain of benefitees, it is not usually the majority of trans people. And it rarely is female trans people.

Thank you, will have a look.

I think another POV that really helped me here (which relates to your post) is that seeing it akin to a religion might be helpful. I can respect a Christian, speak kindly to them etc but that doesn't mean I would believe the same or change policies to include Christian viewpoints if it led to safeguarding concerns.

GC women are usually anti rigid gender roles. A good solution could be to include more bandwidth on what a woman is and man, rather than the idea anyone can change sex

There’s no reason for this not to benefit gay women or men too

Can we ask why you had not realised that it was lesbian feminists who were amongst the very first people to raise the issues? Why did you believe that women pushing back on these issues were homophobic?

Was it just because of what you have described as the bubble? Or is it that you didn’t read any of the supposed evidence and analyse it critically? Didn’t know where to start?

I am not accusing you and if it comes across that way, I apologise. I just would like to know why you thought those things and if there was any source in particular you got that information from.

Because on threads in the past it has come up that people watched YouTube or it was just their bubble or it was both. That the material they watched and read was never discussed with a view to understanding truth, but blindly accepted. Occasionally though, they post a link to something they found very convincing and we look through it to see it was based on misrepresentation and dishonesty and fell at the very first hurdle.

Such as this ridiculous notion that acknowledging female body differences is regressive and ‘not helping’ women’s cause. Ridiculous because that is based on misrepresentation from start to finish. Hard to pick that apart without background though. And impossible too, if you don’t read very widely and read and watch content that you disagree with. (A reason I also push back on any person who tells others not to read or watch particular content)

@AmaListening "I'm married to a woman. I think I assumed that people who wanted to restrict trans rights would equally want to restrict my rights. That people who don't "believe" people can transition would be of the "Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" mindset and imagine same-sex attraction to be something to "heal" too."

I think this is a narrative that has a lot of traction- and it's very hard to counter. It is very toxic to rational discussion, though.

Can I ask what you mean when you say "restrict trans rights"?

The trans movement have very successfully planted the idea that trans rights are like other minority rights - they are not. Study the case of Mermaids v the LGB Alliance, you'll see blatant homophobia. The CEO of mermaids admits her husband was homophobic and that was a factor in taking her child to Thailand to have major surgery - and then laugh about the penis being too small to make a vagina. Where is the "be kind" in this?

what does a society to support a person who has that experience, whilst also honouring the needs and rights of, and safeguarding, cis women?

Please don’t call me “cis”. I’m a woman. I need no prefixes. And I’m not responsible for honouring the rights and needs of men who want to be women when those rights and needs clash with mine.

Society treats dysphoria in a better way, as it does with other types

Please don’t call me “cis”. I’m a woman. I need no prefixes.

Agree and from me too

I hate my body. I've had an eating disorder and consider myself extremely ugly. When my periods started before my peers and I regularly leaked everywhere, I felt even less at home in my body. My sisters and I were called 'the girls' and I hated it because it felt like I as an individual was never seen. There are many reasons and ways to hate one's body. EP describes nothing which is unusual for a woman to feel. If you like your body to any degree, that's pretty privilege.

“You cannot escape that feeling of disassociation. I recommend that you read the stories of detransitioners and those who remain transitioned who came to that realisation after always looking to that next phase of treatment to be ‘the one’ that makes them feel better. They also describe the euphoria around transition and around progressing each stage.”

Meant to add.

They often then realise that these treatments do not make them feel better. That realisation then comes with the realisation too, that maybe they have agreed to treatments they never needed. This might be due to not doing their own research, or the clinician failing to give appropriate counselling or due to pressure from external sources assuring them that these treatments work.

The detransitioners regularly report feeling that the community ostracised them for expressing doubts, or questioning anything or even discussing the failures of their treatment. There have been too many such accounts that it seems to be a feature not a bug. There seems to be huge pressure to never discuss the failures or the doubts, pressure to never introduce negativity into the discussion.

Who benefits from that?

Another person here who objects to "cis". Cis mean other, I'm not an other or a non man or a birthing person. I was not a chest feeder, I breastfed.

I know that many people outsourced their thinking on this and believed Stonewall. Again - study the case of Mermaids v LGB Alliance. Read about the CEO of mermaids. Read about lesbians being told they are transphobic if they wont have sex with a man in a dress.

Please don’t call me “cis”. I’m a woman. I need no prefixes

I reject this cis label too.

The obvious hypocrisy of forceably labelling a whole group of people by labelling them as ‘cis’ is outstanding when you realise it.

OP, you said of Elliot Page: That there was a mismatch between his body and inner sense of self.

This is an incredibly common experience.

I'm sure every disbled person ever has experienced this - you try navigating life in a wheelchair and tell me if it expresses the true you.

My elderly relatives say it to me frequently.

People with anorexia say it.

People trying to complete their first-ever Parkrun, but struggling to breathe, who feel let down by their bodies.

People who don't like their appearance, or their weight, or the size of their breasts.

Some of these people will feel it more deeply than others and for some it will become a real problem in their lives.

None of that means that Elliot Page is actually male.

Let EP have every surgery and hormone treatment that EP likes. EP is an adult. I hope it makes
EP feel better. I doubt it will, but I hope it helps.

This is the only form of body dysmorphia treated with affirmation. We dont cut arms off people who feel their healthy arm does not belong to them (yes they exist). We dont affirm eating disorders. We dont tell people who believe they are Jesus that they really are.

If your child identifies as a dinosaur would you support surgery to make them look like a dinosaur? If not why not and why is there a difference between that and a sex change?

Elliot Page's description of a mismatch between the reflection in the mirror and the body itself, and the mental perception of what the image and the body should be is exactly what people with anorexia have always described.

No one has ever thought other that they were mentally ill, with a particularly dangerous condition (highest death rates of any mental illness) and need treatment. Which doesn't always work, but often does, eventually.

Poor Elliot looks so pitiful now, a five foot nothing balding wizened skeleton - and looks more like lots of anorexic women I've known than like any man. What anorexia doesn't need is validation and affirmation.

And what it really doesn't need is anything that causes extra physical damage.

I was thinking about this today and that it's a good example of where the issue lies.
AFAIK, Laverne Cox pretty much just dialled back from that without anything more than a metaphorical oops.
And this is the problem, while feminists are trying to call out that we have a serious problem with the Blasts, people like Cox are unthinkingly providing cover for them.
Cox is still campaigning just as strongly against 'transphobia' as ever, without acknowledging that some of that has come from genuine worries about people like Blast.
Imagine how much progress could have been made if LC had said, "I got that wrong. I didn't realise that people like Blast would take advantage, but now I know, let's find a way that works for both trans people like me and that also keeps women safe"
But that didn't happen.
Blast and other predators get away with their behaviour and get to go to women's prisons because when we point at a Blast, people like the OP and Laverne Cox point right back at us and say but what about Laverne Cox.
Laverne Cox is being used as a shield for someone like Blast and that reflects badly on every single person who heard one name and whatabouts with another.

@AmaListening "what does a society to support a person who has that experience, whilst also honouring the needs and rights of, and safeguarding, cis women?"

The problem is-I don't know. I don't think anyone knows. And one of the reasons we don't know is that there hasn't been any sort of discussion about it-because "no debate". The one trans person I know well enough to raise the subject with just says that he doesn't want to get involved-he has his life that he loves and has no desire to be an educator or a poster boy. And I see his point-although I do find it a little frustrating that the debate has become so polarised that moderate trans voices are not heard.