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.

The 'middle ground' is one that respects everyone's rights, and also reality.

So anyone who wants to pretend they are the opposite sex, or don't have a sex, (they are pretending, because sex is not changeable) has the right to do do.

They (like everyone else) should be able to present themselves (hair styles, dress, makeup etc) as they like. They should not be discriminated against, harassed, or suffer violence because they want to pretend they are the opposite sex.

If they want 'medical treatment' to become a more convincing simulacrum of the opposite sex, they should pay for it themselves. (The NHS should NOT be paying for it, as this 'treatment' damages people's physical health without any evidence that it improves their mental health. And a lot of the people who want it don't have any mental health problem, they have a sexual fetish). People who are suffering mental distress because they wish they were the opposite sex should be helped by the NHS to deal with this distress and come to terms with reality.

Society should not in way pretend that they actually ARE the opposite sex. The GRA should be repealed. Legally 'sex' should always mean actual, biological sex, as observed at birth or earlier. It may be polite to play along with the pretence sometimes, but it should never be mandatory.

Anywhere where it is necessary to divide the sexes it needs to be on the basis of actual sex. So women's sports, hospital wards, toilets, changing rooms, prisons all should be single sex. If there isn't a good reason to separate the sexes, they probably shouldn't be separated - dividing by 'social gender' is sexist nonsense.

They idea that 'true transsexuals' exist is just a load of sexist bollocks, and always has been. There are two sexes, and seven billion different personalities. Womanhood is not a feeling in a man's head.

Yes. I would say a 'middle ground' is either some men can be women or men can be women in some contexts. But if either of these are the case then what do we do with the people, and there will always be some, what do we do with the people who disagree that this particular man is a woman or that this man is a woman in this particular context? It's unworkable. And why I say there is no middle ground. It's not that I'm being stubborn and refusing to accept a reasonable compromise; it's that there is no reasonable compromise.

There is no middle ground. No debate as it were.
I don't agree to the 'old fashioned transexual' being in any space that me or my daughter or granddaughter has to use.
Men are men are men regardless of the feelings they have about themselves. Once you remove that premise you have to open the door to all men as we are currently seeing.
So no, no debate works fine for me.

As middle grounds go, this looks perfectly acceptable.

Except

They (like everyone else) should be able to present themselves (hair styles, dress, makeup etc) as they like. They should not be discriminated against, harassed, or suffer violence because they want to pretend they are the opposite sex.

There are plenty of men who dress as a woman for what that politician called 'erotic purposes'.

AGP escalates to public display. How would you suggest we combat the forced participation of the general public, including children, in a man's fetish?

I don't think there is a middle ground.

Either you believe male people can be women and should have access to women's spaces, or you don't.

Third spaces seem to be a solution very few people actually want. Trans people don't seem to want third spaces because they would be "othering", and as a taxpayer I would only, grudgingly, support a lot of money being spent on providing these spaces if trans people actually used them. I think it would have to be accompanied by making using a single sex space for members of the opposite sex a criminal offence, and even then I don't think it would stop some people.

Few will argue with that. In theory, in practice it may be different though. It is what most support as a minimum and build that, some will think it too far of course.

This isn't a middle ground. This is basically, "putting things back the way they were before the Gender Recognition Act".

I completely agree that this is what should happen, but I don't think anybody can reasonably pretend that it amounts to a compromise between what trans activists want and what gender critical feminists want.

You are right it isn’t middle ground between trans activists and gender critical feminists. It feels like it should be because is isn’t saying to be discriminatory about trans people which is what the trans activists say that gender critical feminists want. But actually the gender critical feminists are starting at the middle ground and perhaps some have moved a bit more towards the extreme when they have become angry and fed up with being threatened and called fascist for standing up and saying what they believe.

Whether or not trans identified people want third spaces or categories is not the point. What it is, though, is a middle ground, practical solution - which is one area they are going to have to concede on.

We already see many sports now starting to create third and open categories for trans identified people to compete in. This will gradually become the obvious solution everywhere. for everything. Already some new buildings are installing separate men's and women's toilets plus a third. 'gender neutral toilet. This recognises everyone's existence and also protects everyone's dignity.

What gender critical women want is for people to respect the boundaries of their sex. That is it.

People do all kinds of things in relation attraction and feelings of a sexual nature in public, which are considered okay. How many things do women do in persuit of feeling or looking what they consider to be sexy? To what extent should they need anyone else to agree? How acceptable is it to assume others motivations? I think it's important to look at situations when they're the other way around. Women have been treated awfully on the basis of other people's assumptions and feelings about what they wear in public

Where I would try to think to draw the line is how intrusive and inappropriate a person's clothes and behaviour is for a given situation. I don't want to give the impression that I think anything goes, that's obviously not the case

The problem is not people who adopt trans identities, but the contemporary ideology ( which was not a thing in the 1960's when 'sex change' operations began) which seeks to insist that one can change sex, or that the concept of gender identity supercedes the reality of sex.

Nobody much has an issue with people presenting however they like.

This trans person discusses the difference between old school transsexualism and contemporray gender ideology. Gender ideology is the issue; is the problem.

"The term transsexual was defined as a medical one and was what appeared in all my early medical files when I was sent from doctor to doctor, hospital to hospital and into psychiatric units.

By the time I got to the point of surgery - always the end of the process and after several years of other therapy first back then - something had shifted. As you were asked to sign a waiver before they consented to do the surgery that you understood that it was not changing sex but reassigning gender.

I was told by the psychiatrist about to pass me onto the surgeon that this was a legal requirement because the law would not recognise any change of sex and he was sure never would as he had just gone to court to give evidence to help annul a transsexual's marriage to a man as illegal on those grounds.

So gender was introduced into the nomenclature not for any reason other than to give a separation from sex.

This is probably why transsexuals have always been realistic about this concept of changing sex. We had to get that before we passed that point. If we didn't then you were not taken further.

I would guess based on how many people today seem not to get this biological reality within the transgender community that it is not part of the treatment path nowadays.

After I was signed off by Charring Cross in the early 80s (they only did two or three years follow up after my final surgery) I was basically left alone and never really asked about the subject again, even by GPs, though, of course, I told them all every time I moved to a new area. I did not even see my notes until 2004 when my GP wanted to check them with me during the application for a GRC and I discovered that they wrongly claimed I had had breast enhancement. I had been offered it on the NHS in 1980 but had turned it down.

All the records still used the term transsexual. I never even heard the term transgender until all the stories started appearing on Digital Spy where I had posted regularly on media matters and the subject had suddenly become something everyone was talking about. But calling it transgender.

That's when I first started searching the net to find out what was going on, joined the only non fanatical forum I could find (Angels) and started catching up on what had been going on over the past decades whilst I was getting on with living.

Whenever I used the word transsexual I was reminded not to, just as I was told to use terms like Cis and Terf. I looked into what these meant as I had no idea and quickly decided they were needless or provocative so I was not going to follow that pattern. But transgender or trans for short seemed a harmless enough word and I thought, as transsexual emphasised the misconception of 'sex change' perhaps it was a sensible modification.

The reclamation independently seeming to happen now appears to be happening partly out of distancing to some degree, but also I think because it emphasises that in our case - whilst the biological reality is understood - it always was about changing as far as possible the sex characteristics of the body. And not about expressing a girly gender identity, or indeed any kind of lifestyle preference or interest in clothes or hobbies.

For some gender expression very much seems to be what it is about. I think for transsexuals it is about the body. Probably why there is very little interest in physical transition by those transgender and it is really more about expressing personality in a way they find more comfortable.

So without presuming different causes or origins as we are still guessing on those with any of us - I think there are two very different focal points of what we seem to be doing about it.

Reclaiming transsexual just seems to have occurred to a few people at the same time as a way to point that out"

Women wearing sexy clothes to be attractive to the opposite sex isn't a fetish.

Involving children and the general public in turning you on, is.

I realise that transvestites have managed to acquire the cultural acceptance of transsexuals. But that doesn't mean to say it's at all acceptable.

It’s impossible to compromise with the type of man who wants access to women’s spaces, they want to take over and tailor those spaces to their (often sexual) needs and interests. The claim or performance of gender nonconformity is a surface-level change that is adopted as camouflage in order to better achieve boundary-crossing.

It may seem trivial to some, but an earlier example of this male gender nonconformity as aggressive colonising tactic is the My Little Pony fandom which was aimed at young girls but (from 2010) was taken over by adult men who display the same behaviours as men claiming cross sex identities.

Excerpts from the article linked below:

'[men] rationalize their fandom by explaining that they define themselves outside the traditional masculine role.'

'They pride themselves in their nonconformity, yet exhibit the same aggressive characteristics typically coded as male in society. Some Bronies have aggressively invaded a nurturing female space simply because they felt like victims of exclusion.'

'many Bronies have taken the liberty of adopting the innocent imagery of the pony and forcing it to become a sexual object that, at its extreme, partakes in and promotes sexual violence.'

'The existence of the Brony subculture is, in many cases, a manipulative contradiction that includes a supposedly feminist collective of men who seek to rebel against masculine, gendered standards in society by adopting [appropriating] a feminine symbol.'

https://archive.ph/nkf4v

You're assuming motivation in much the similar way a man might about a woman. Nobody walking around in public minding their own business is inviting or deserving of any bother or interference from other people based on what they're wearing

I understand there's a lot of anxiety and other stuff going on which leads to that, but unless the clothing is inappropriate regardless of the person wearing it, or there's evidence beyond the clothes covering a person's body such as their behaviour or history of anything inappropriate, then it's an assumption and it may be wrong.

This thread is about middle grounds, and the point of mentioning and being interested in it is that I think it's something that needs separating from all the other issues, as much as possible at least. I've already accepted that there are scenarios which are definitely inappropriate, so please don't assume I'm arguing in favour of any specific nightmares you might be imagining

That might be true of the vast majority of people.

But what about the people who film themselves masturbating in women's single sex spaces and post the videos online? We know that they derive erotic pleasure from being in women's spaces and from other people satisfying their desire to be referred to as women. Quite a few of them have said as much.

I know it's not a nice thing to talk about. But these people exist.

I don't want to share women's toilets and changing rooms with such people.

But even if I were OK with nice, harmless trans women who just want to pee using women's spaces (which, full disclosure here, I'm not), I have absolutely no idea how you can let the nice, harmless trans women in and keep the perverts out.

Do you?

This every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

I actually don't believe there is a middle ground because that would imply women conceding something. I won't.

Perhaps though the "middle ground" is a change in the law from a protected characteristic of gender reassignment to gender presentation (even though I hate the word gender)

So discrimination on the way someone dresses would be against the law but I can still see that being abused by the men with special lady feelz.

@MargotBamborough

I would've been happier not knowing people did those things. None of that is appropriate, anyone who does it deserves legal consequences, whether anyone else is present or not. I don't even like seeing socially acceptable nakedness in male only places.

Access to women only spaces is a separate subject, I wasn't talking about that at all

I also would rather I didn't know these things. I suspect that most people on team "be kind" either do not know these things or are desperately trying to pretend they don't.

But since I do know these things, I would like to know whether there is any way to prevent these people from doing these things in women's spaces, whilst simultaneously allowing the right kind of trans women to use them.

I cannot think of one.

Needless to say, they do not do these things in men's spaces, because being in a men's space is not a transgression.

But you're describing la dette culture-Which isn't equality and it's not what (most) of us 2nd wavers were fighting for.

We didn't want to ape lad culture (which many men didn't and don't buy into) - we wanted to be jet pilots. Or doctors. Or firefighters. To not have to give up work if we had children. For our own mortgages.

We didn't even "want it all" (as in "she's a wife! A mother! A professor! A domestic goddess!) we wanted the same opportunities as our male peers. Not the right to drink a bucket of wkd, fart and snog anything with a pulse. (well maybe some did! Idk)

@UtopiaPlanitia I thought the whole brony thing was just a bit quirky, but harmless. I never looked into it, just something I heard about when I started seeing this woman & the people in the flat opposite had a my little pony poster on their front door. She explained to me they were bronys & what that meant. I've not finished reading, but I can tell you already that is not my understanding of non-comformity. That's clearly taking over and distorting something for another purpose. I can't get my head around why anyone would do that, maybe it becomes clearer further down the article

Well there you go, my talking about this issue has been reported. Proving my point.

I'll try again.

Firstly and again, women wearing sexy clothes to attract men, is not a fetish. And no one thinks it is.

Secondly, it doesn't make me anxious, it fucks me right off.

Thirdly, there is a cohort of men with self confessed AGP, who are more than happy to talk about it, from one end of the Internet to the other. Indeed, books have been written about it, and many academic papers. Ray Blanchard came up with quite a long list of criteria, including heterosexuality. Hence male lesbians.

None of this is guess work on the part of women. (Nor is it generalisation, HQ. I'm simply stating facts.)

The strategy of no debate employed by transactivism has meant that this aspect has gone under the radar. This is changing now, as the public become more and more aware. Transwomen like Isla Bryson are very revealing.

I note that you have no way of addressing the different types of transwomen (even Stonewall includes cross dressers under their definition of transgender) and I disagree with minimising it.

Which is why, when people say a middle ground can be that men can wear what they like, I still have an issue. And it's not the clothes, it's the reason for wearing them.

However I genuinely think that the culture is changing, and that public opinion will prevail.