How do we find a middle ground?

[Namechange2468109]

How do we find a place where it’s ok to say we believe their are transsexual people (in my lifetime it’s always been around and as far as I am aware not particularly fought against/prevented people accessing services/given equal rights) generally these people (who I totally support and would advocate for) appeared to me to want to go under the radar and just live their lives. I’d have NO issues sharing a bathroom with these people.

What shifted? Why is it now a case that we are bullied into accepting a man (with a beard who in every way looks and acts like a man) as a woman?

I thought in the 90s we accepted that what you wear, your hobbies, who you slept with and career choice did not define you. I was never girlie, wore boys jeans but at no point did I think I was a boy or prevented progressing my life.

We now have men that define themselves as women by going backwards in stereotypes, basically the clothes define the man.

The levels of irony baffle me ‘sex doesn’t exist, but if I wear heels I’m a woman’ ‘don’t assume or judge, but if you don’t assume correctly I’ll punch you’ and my favourite ‘I’m a non-binary lesbian’

The ironic thing is (and sorry if this offends anyone) I never coined myself as a feminist. I genuinely thought the previous amazing women had won the war, I earned equally or out earned my male counterparts, I never felt being a women provided me different opportunities to my brother, if anything maybe a tiny advantage.

But now I feel that all that has been pointless and at 41 I’ve become a feminist because I NEED too. Is this not such a rewind in society. I was genuinely a little nervous today at taking a book to the counter (material girls) a bloody (amazing) book, but a book.

How do we rationalise this?

Sorry for the long post but I am genuinely lost at the next steps to take.

Trans activists don't want 3rd spaces. They
-and it's mostly about men unless they can use trans identified women as an excuse to neutralise women's language- want the validation of being in women's spaces.

Quite.

It all rests on the point three key points:

1. You can't change sex
2. Sex and gender are not the same. Conflation harms both transpeople and women / other groups.
3. If you can't see sex, you can't see sexism.

The only thing open then becomes giving respect for other people's beliefs - and that works BOTH WAYS - but BOTH will have to be accomodated. Neither can be flattened.

And that ONLY leaves Third Spaces as an option.

This isn't a debate. Its the only viable outcome that doesn't cause huge levels of harms.

Its just that most people have failed to work this out yet.

No. They want to use women, and impose dominance over them. Or they want to (try to) opt out of the oppression of women.

It isn't about sex or gender. Its about power.

Once you see this, you can't unsee it.

(And once you understand its all about power and control, that affect how you HAVE to deal with it).

It is also about boundaries, and understanding that you cannot have a healthy functional society which respects people's rights if you cannot respect certain types of boundary. Sex is a fundamental category boundary in humans.

There can be no respect for others without recognising their boundaries. The problem with post-modernism is that it hinges on transgressing and blurring boundaries.

No middle ground. I don’t want one, ta very much.

I want sex segregated facilities all the way.
That is all, really.

Same here and I won't accept anything else.

One thing that I don't think has come up is language, it really matters, for me at least. It's part of the reason I tip toe into conversations like this. Particularly so here, so I decided to stick to reading for the most part and responding on other threads. There's people on all sides of the conversation who use the most unhelpful language. On the GC side there's people who sound intolerant of any kind of male non-conformity, something that I feel is counterproductive for women's rights as a whole. It's also ironic, advancing woman's rights couldn't have happened without refusing to conform and redefining norms. I think more needs to happen on the other side, but its a very different challenge to seek new freedoms without losing status and respect compared to freedoms that enhance status and respect. On the other side people who appear to show little concern of the safety of women and girls.

Also, I'm interested not just in the answer to popular question "how do you define a woman", but everything a person associate with women, and their behaviour around them. The most vocally GC person I know, funnily enough, is a bloke and every woman I've heard talking about him considers him very sexist.

I think the media can be unhelpful too, with their representation of GC views. I got a very different impression of Kathlene Stock, for example, from reading a variety of quotes from her book Material Girls compared to even so-called sympathetic articles that seem more interested generating emotional reactions and conflict than a reasonable conversation. The quotes intrigued me enough to make a reservation with my library, hopefully I'll have finished reading subversive stitch before that comes through!

On the GC side there's people who sound intolerant of any kind of male non-conformity, something that I feel is counterproductive for women's rights as a whole.

Can you give an example of this? Because being critical of gender (stereotypes), would suggest an approval of non conformity.

This male gender non-conformity is an interesting concept, no?

What does a woman do to be 'gender non-conforming'? She eschews all the trappings of restrictive femininity. She refuses to wear make-up, she lets her body hair remain, she wears clothes for comfort, comfortable shoes, trousers she can move in. She returns more to her natural state.

And what does a 'gender non-conforming' man do in the context discussed here? He takes on all those restrictive trappings of femininity. He wears the make-up, the high heels, the mini/pencil skirt, the fake nails, the hair extensions. He is in fact extremely gender conforming. He is perpetuating gendered expectations of men and women. He is not challenging them.

To be gender critical is to understand that gender is the restrictive, sexist expectations placed on us by society based on our sex. I don't think people with gender critical views are particularly intolerant of gender non-conforming men but many do have a issue with the idea that any of these trappings of femininity are innately connected to being a woman.

I have no problem at all with gender non-conformity. I don’t care what people wear or what their sexual fantasies are, as long as they don’t expect me to be an unwilling/unwitting participant in those fantasies. I was a tomboy as a kid and I didn’t wear dresses or skirts until my 50s - oh wow, I must be trans. It’s so silly, so regressive, so stereotype-focused, but like any religion that’s absolutely fine until it impinges on my rights as a woman to safe single-sex spaces and sports.

Men and women are different. It’s how we reproduce, two sides of the same species, since mammals came into being. It’s fine to be different, to have different needs, to have safeguards protecting the more vulnerable among us. It is not fear or intolerance or hatred or bigoted or “phobic” to think or say these things. Sex is immutable, and sometimes that matters.

It is very odd how trans activists have the idea that peole critical of gender want to keep people restrained within gendered roles. Where do we think this idea comes from? Is it because sex and gender have become so well conflated that people cannot separate them in their own mind?

Or maybe it is because if you believe that all sex based differences are actually socially constructed and therefore gendered in origin - then others ( us) are trying to trap people in 'gender' by suggesting that people cannot be what they truly feel themselves to be. That we are saying that biology is destiny.

I don’t think anyone here disapproves of gender non conformity- there's lots of who are against men wearing women’s clothing for erotic reasons, but I don’t see any criticism of Harry Styles of other men who “expand the bandwidth” of what is ok for men to wear (I mean, most of us grew up in the 70s and 80s where there were plenty of gender bending celebs and their followers).

I think there’s plenty of men and women who are very uneasy about loosening restrictions on what men and women wear- but just because both groups believe no one can change sex doesn’t make them political bedfellows.

Thats the trouble with using the specific term Gender Critical to ANYONE. It’s not looking at the details. And vocal idiots are very happy to misrepresent what it means to keep painting women as bigots simply for wanting to keep our rights.

GC means different things to different people. I know you're right, though, when it is used correctly. If I recall correctly, before all this, wasn't criticism of gender one of the defining bits of 3rd wave feminism? Whatever the intent, I think it was far more effective in consideration of women than it was men. Some people might be tempted to say something along the lines of "why should we think about men", but to some extent its necessary. Our fates are tied together

I don't have any examples readily to hand, unfortunately. I don't want to rely on memory to cobble together my thoughts. I will try to save examples when I see them, if I can remember. There are some plausible examples in this thread, but I'm not comfortable with that. I'd rather an example from elsewhere that's not personal to anyone here

They should just call themselves Sterotype Adherents and be up front about it. It’s the rest of us who are wild and free enough to be who we want and wear what we wear. Our bodies are amazing! Women can grow and give birth to whole new humans! We are fucking awesome, and it’s so sad that girls and young women want to identify out of that to such drastic effect. I can see why men want to identify into womanhood, I really can, but they will never be women, LITERAL VIOLENCE though those words may be to them. The truth is not cruelty. It’s a kindness, no other delusion is pandered to in this way.

I grew up in the 80s like many women on here with multiple gender NC men like boy george, Marilyn, and men who routinely wore make up like David Sylvian, Nick Rhodes and Phil Oakley. I genuinely couldn’t give a stuff if a man wears a dress, heels & more make up than 5 lanes of Boots, it doesn’t make them a woman

One of the reasons I posted a rushed history is to show that this isn't say a fad that will fade away. eg in the 1970s "gender benders" were accepted and seen as part of throwing off the more repressive attitudes of post war UK in 50s & 60s. Neither Boy George nor David Bowie (and many who imitated them) said they needed a certificate to where gender non conforming clothes, nor did they dictate that people should use other pronouns when they dressed in this way.

This is why there is no middle ground. And even if the majority of women have no direct contact with a trans woman, the power the trans movement has accrued means that every day of our lives are being dictated to by an unaccountable minority who are not just challenging "out of date ideas" but are invested in undermining women's rights.

Even if we dont all share the same idea of feminism this is a political issue.

FWR (partly thanks to the undemocratic renaming of FWR by MNHQ into a supposed singe issue) is getting more like a shared space where we can come and bitch and moan, but dont see the issue or ourselves as part of the solution.

So the question isn't is there a middle ground, the question is why those who can dictate to us, ie politicians, educators, the media, are in the vast majority telling us as women to STFU and just accept what you are being told is your position.

Apart from immediate post war UK (and USA hence the Feminine Mystique) when there was a Government policy to get women back into the home, has there been such a concerted campaign to tell women you must conform to what others are telling. You do not have a right to object, let alone voice an opinion.

Here is a link to another thread where if anyone had any doubt there has been concerted networking to infiltrate positions of influence so that a small unrepresentative group has control over us. The issue isn't the high profile cases that get highlighted by the media, who just like a loud headline, but about a movement that has managed to get so many parts of society to demonise women.

While we weren't looking this is what was happening by those with a queer agenda https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4903175-civil-servants-letter-says-government-policy-improperly-influenced-by-gender-ideology?reply=129443703
(Thanks to @Bosky)
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Can you imagine if Rachel Dolezal had been lauded for identifying as Black, and then a whole load of white people said yes so do I, and the next thing you know is that these white people are speaking for and dictating to Black people what their history is and how they should behave?

I'm all for men being gender non-conforming. Eschewing violence, being interested in fashion, not giving a fig about sport, crying at romcoms, carrying the mental load at home, scrubbing the bathroom, taking up embroidery, listening, wearing eyeliner, becoming nurses ... there are thousands of things they can do to defy gendered stereotypes and expectations. The only time I have a problem with it is if they (a) playact at being women (which is different from not being confined within the traditional bounds of 'man') and (b) think doing so makes them better than or gives them special rights over actual women.

@Whatsnewpussyhat

Powerful sentence and so true!

'They never answer what grown men and young girls have in common other their 'identity'.
Or why the men can be women just by saying the words, whilst the teens need drugs and surgery asap.

@IwantToRetire sadly capturing institutions and political individuals and parties is a standard feature of our corrupt political system. Early in the 2000s Google and other tech companies, for reasons well outside of this thread, got wise to that and massively increased their political spending. Not just for offensive reasons but defensive ones also. For many reasons, that problem has to be tackled by any effort to make our system truly democratic. It has never been so, non-landowning men got the vote in a similar timeframe to women and a university education once bought you an additional vote. Money has always bought influence and power, and it has never been seriously challenged

On the GC side there's people who sound intolerant of any kind of male non-conformity, something that I feel is counterproductive for women's rights as a whole.

My instinctive reaction is to be suspicious of any male who exhibits non-conformity by wearing women's clothes. I see it as a form of (dis)guise to get into women and girl's spaces. Usually we can tell it is a male, so it is not really that we can't tell. Rather, by wearing women's clothes a male is trying to communicate he is harmless to trick women into lowering their boundaries.

It's understandable to feel that way.

Clothes is an interesting subject, it's varied a lot over time within cultures and varies between cultures as well. That's a whole different conversation of its own

Let’s face it, the ever-shifting so-called “middle ground” that’s being put forward by all political parties is this: “we’re not requiring you to get naked in front of all men (or be called a bigot), we’re just requiring you to get naked in front of these ones (or be called a bigot)”.

Except that it it started off as:

• just the ones who’ve had surgery

Then it was:

• just the ones with a medical diagnosis confirmed by a panel of experts over a period of at least two years

After that it was:

• just the one who say they are embarking on what they claim to be a terribly difficult, degrading and rigorous medical process.

And now it’s

• just the ones who put themselves through the extreme effort and inconvenience of barging into the women and girls changing rooms whenever it suits them.

This 100%

It has affected my confidence in our public bodies and mainstream media so badly (especially BBC) and that was possibly one of the underlying goals behind it all.