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.

@Helleofabore

Thank you. You have expressed very eloquently what I was trying to say!

The middle ground is what gender critical women want. As stated by many people - live your life without expecting others to "affirm" you. You only need that because you know you can not change sex and you are not what you would like to be. The extreme would be wanting to force gender norms on you, inflicting violence if you disagree, trying to get you sacked if you disagree, tell you how you had to dress, what you call yourself, that you werent doing your sex properly. There is only one extreme here - and it isnt us.

I don't understand why all the energy of the trans community has been spent on screaming at (mostly) women who want to retain their single sex rights, why it hasn't instead been spent on campaigning for the things trans people say they need. All these things are supplementary to the sex based provision already in place. In addition to. Not instead of.

Imagine what could have been achieved if they'd done that instead of snatching our resources from us.

Here's what transwomen/ trans identified men can do:
Stay out of women's spaces and sports - including spaces for lesbians. Lobby for your own if you are afraid of other men

Here's what transmen/ trans identified women can do:
Stop demanding that we neutralise language about women to make you feel better. And stay out of gay men's spaces. You are welcome in women's spaces because you are women. You are welcome in women's sport as long as you aren't doping. Also: leave tomboys alone.

Indeed. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Perhaps violating women’s boundaries and scolding women who try to defend themselves, is really the point.

Perhaps violating women’s boundaries and scolding women who try to defend themselves, is really the point.

I think invading women's spaces is at least part of the point. It has been suggested on here for years that men who identify as 'transwomen' could campaign for their own spaces so that women don't lose theirs. Women have even offered to help them to do this. They don't want that. They want our spaces with all the unconsenting women and girls in there.

Transgresing boundaries is definitely the point. That is the whole point of Queer Theory. To queer everything.

This is so true. I have asked at least three male posters on this board why they have not been campaigning for their own spaces. And asked numerous posters more why Stonewall and those before Stonewall didn’t campaign for third spaces. You never get an answer.

I remember being told that it was too hard a couple of times and I offered to help. Crickets. Tumbleweed.

Yet, those male posters doubled down that they had never, never been identified as being male in the toilets / received negative reaction while there. They have claimed they were ‘invited’. One assured us they were told they were being stupid by their female friends if they expressed doubt at first. That their female mates were fully supportive. And then one after another they tell us that they understand some women are distressed, but they are never going to stop.

Those posters show with every post that they are male. And that some have been emboldened by women who either are very privileged in never having needed a female toilet for anything other than to ‘pee’ or are simply lacking in empathy for other women and girls.

But yes. They are not campaigning for third spaces those posters and they have no answer as to why lobby groups have never campaigned for them. And they don’t seem to ever acknowledge the male transitioners who have continued to use the male toilets and spaces. And who have done the work to ‘expand the bandwidth’, of their own sex as gender nonconforming males not expand the female sex category to forceably include them.

To dissolve the boundaries between male and female; adult and child, and between public and private.

Third and/or additional gender neutral facilities and categories have always been the solution. The problem with that is that total appropriation and colonisation is the actual goal, nothing to do with privacy, safety, dignity or fairness.

As I was recently told by a gay man on another forum I post on - " Women are not real" and I am just a hateful bigot for suggesting they are.

Even hard line women’s rights campaigners are not preventing trans people from speaking or from expressing their view.

Indeed, women WANT them to speak. Actually expressing their views can be very revealing, which is why Stonewall said "no debate".

When I mean no symmetry, I mean this is part of it

https://twitter.com/says_computer/status/1690803016687894530?s=46&t=HTxp6zC_d4GZ2FFv4a-YeQ

I would like someone to post the equivalent of the other ‘side’. I don’t like speaking about sides in general. But needed for this exercise.

Under the current version of gender ideology, female bodied people having different social and financial challenges than people with male bodies is not a real thing.

Third spaces accept that the female sex exists and that some needs and experiences are rooted in that sex. Trans Activism (as it is currently constructed) rejects that. They think it's an illusion, a false need created by transpobia, sexism and lack of vision.

So it's not enough to ensure trans people are safe and supported, their (TRAs not necessarily actual trans people) beliefs and values also require that female only spaces, that the whole concept of female being more significant than, oh let's say gluten intolerant, no longer exist, not just for them.but for anyone. They see accepting any segregation by sex as equivalent to segregation by race...as something immoral, unjust and used to keep marginalised people disempowered.

That's the motivation of the ideological allies anyway. The motivation of at least some individual male people to be in with female at all times is probably less ideological and more selfish. But for the movement as a whole, I think it's driven by naivety and arrogance rather than outright malice or dishonesty.

Yes, they've run with some of the precepts of certain strands of feminism - that gender is entirely socially constructed and oppressive and that maintaining such 'segregation' imprisons women further.

The major confusion is, though, that males can somehow be women, or that a woman' is just an idea or an identity in someone's head. Which is kind of suggestive that some males quite like the kinky idea of being subservient and oppressed themselves, and so do some women ( those that don't adopt gender identity labels and just accept themselves as the sex they are)

Woman = subservience plus oppression (seems to be the equation).

But how can some people, women especially, get to the age of 50+ and still go along with the above idea, like some do?

The jump from

gender is socially constructed and oppressive and therefore let's do away with it

to

make gender compulsory for everyone

baffles me.

Particularly since in the 70s and 80s we had a brief period where we really were moving away from gender stereotypes.

some males quite like the kinky idea of being subservient and oppressed themselves, and so do some women ( those that don't adopt gender identity labels and just accept themselves as the sex they are)

I what bizarre world does accepting myself as the sex I am, and rejecting gender nonsense, suggest that I like being subservient and oppressed?

A few reasons I think.

It's attractive to believe that you have just as much power and agency as men if only you could unlock it.

It's scary to realise how much of a target is on your back simply because you were born female.

Humanity has plenty of examples of members of oppressed communities looking for status within the oppression. It's easier to climb as high as you can within the status quo than change it.

I also think there is a strand that says quietly "I still notice gayness as different to straightness even though I know I shouldn't. That's my problem because I grew up in a culture with homophobic stereotypes about gay people. It's important I don't act on it so future generations don't grow up with these steteotypes and don't even notice sexuality. And I know I'm still aware of race even though I should not be, and that's because I grew up in a culture with racist stereotypes. It's important I don't act on it so future generations don't grow up with these steteotypes and don't even notice race. And I know I don't really see trans women as women like me, but trans people and people like Stonewall who understand it properly tell me my perception is just another prejudice so although deep down I can't unsee the man I won't act on that, I'll pretend I accept him as a woman in all ways so that future generations will be better than me and see the woman from day 1".

Like the Emperor's New Clothes, but instead of pretending they see something to hide lack of sophistication, they are pretending to see something to hide what they believe is their own prejudice.

I firmly believe this last is behind most of the politicians who jumped so quickly to TWAW...they know they don't believe it deep down but they think it's shameful to acknowledge that.

Beautifully expressed.

This is why it is an existential threat to women and children. And why the gender zealots are so self-righteous. And why there is no middle ground. In this ideology, women as a recognisable, nameable class of human have to be destroyed.

Mind you, I admire their energy. It must be exhausting to have to ignore so much reality all the time.

There's a discussion exactly like that on this Newsnight clip (from 2018).

Ruth Serwotka suggests third spaces as a solution for trans people. Helen Belcher says that this is like segregation and Belcher should be allowed in women's spaces because Belcher claims to have a 'woman identity'.

This bit is at the end, about 17 mins in.

That's not what i'm suggesting myself - I'm suggesting that is how the logic of TWAW and that gender identity is all in the mind must work - or how it logically plays out.

I've certainly had it TRAsplained to me that a "woman" is "anyone that white cishet men exclude" and I'm a tool of the patriarchy for trying to link it with physical female sex.

So a black man or a gay man is also a woman? News to most of them, I imagine.

@OldCrone
No-one ever explains why segregation by sex is bad, but segregation by gender identity is good, do they?
Mixed sex or unisex provision of toilets/wards/sports/prisons/refuges are what that logic would imply - no boundaries, not a boundary drawn along a different axis. Even if you think sex classification is artificial, why is the boundary between feminine and masculine identities not also oppressive? Could it be that insisting on it forces women - most women - into spaces with male people?

This is why we have difficulty attributing high-minded ideological motives to many of the gender zealots.

So the patriarchy get to define who is a woman, and a woman who resists the patiarchy's fatuous piffle is therefore their tool?

Silly patriarchy.