How to lose friends and alienate people? Be openly GC

[ProfessorFlitwick]

I have recently "come out" as GC to my friends, and I am sad by some of their responses. It turns out that for some of them, me thinking a woman is a biological female is an insurmountable hurdle to our friendship. I'm sad to see women who I know are intelligent just repeating the gender ideology dogma without being open to applying any critical thought to it.

Atheists and theists can respectfully debate the existence of God, and still be friends. They understand they are debating the wider concept of God, and not attacking each other personally or denying the other person's right to hold their view. GI supporters seem incapable of comprehending this way of debating something, any form of discussion is seen as a direct "attack" on the "existence of trans people" and must be immediately shut down. When I think of the types of people in history who try to silence or intimidate people who disagree with them, it doesn't bring up a great bunch of people.

Does anyone else want to vent about their experiences of navigating (or losing) friendships with GI supporters?

Quelle surprise

No loss huh

In relation to women who think TWAW I think they can just be misguided, captured or in thrall to “be kind”

for men who think TWAW I have nothing but contempt

I know the argument- that EI is claiming to be a woman and therefore it's not the same thing. But I don't entirely agree and ill try and say why (thinking aloud a bit).

@PermanentTemporary, what about Harry Styles? He wears feminine clothing often, and is praised for it. It's the New Romantics, guyliner and gender bending all over again in his case, and it's great.

Unhooking manhood from macho stereotypes is fantastic. Izzard used to be part of that, which was actively dismantling the masculine/feminine bollocks into "do whatever you like." No wonder feminists loved him.

Izzard deserves the pushback for the regressive, insulting concept of Girl Mode (he's an old fart of 60, ffs, and I say that as someone not a million miles away from it) and for appropriating the physical reality of being female to prop up his self-perception.

He's a betrayal of everything he used to stand for.

I’m on the fence with puberty blockers but would like to think a doctor can tell which children are absolutely serious and sure in their own minds that it’s what they want

@MrsSlocombesCat - have you read the book by Newsnight investigative journalist Hannah Barnes called Time To Think? It's an incredibly well-researched book with all its receipts laid out clearly so easy to fact-check.

That book shows that no, the doctors couldn't and didn't tell which are "absolutely serious".

They also didn't consider the co-morbidities of mental health issues like sexual abuse, loss of a parent, experiencing homophobia, self harm, autism (and therefore perhaps interpreting things through a more rigid lens), being in care etc etc.

What started as a protocol in the Netherlands to "pause" while otherwise healthy young people had in-depth therapy to look at the cause of their distress became at the Tavistock seeing a child or teen for three short appointments before handing them to endocrinologists with no follow up at all.

Schools are terrified to teach this stuff because there is no absolute guidance. Rishi has been promising it for some time - and the educational policy on this seems to be at odds with the NHS policy. They need to on align.

Schools are damned if they do and damned if they don't. There needs to be some very clear guidelines, because until there is, it will continue to be contentious, with anger on both sides.

@RichardArmitagesWife But none of the men in the New Romantic bands of the 80s claimed to be women. They were men in eyeliner and frilly shirts and that was great in terms of pushing clothing etc “norms” but they were still MEN. I don’t think you can compare them with HS at all.

Have you considered that some of us might have considered the issues carefully, read a variety of views, and just come to a different conclusion to you?

Does anyone else want to vent about their experiences of navigating (or losing) friendships with GI supporters?

I might have done six or seven or more years ago, but fortunately I've met lots of other better, GC, friends — people who believe in material reality and are critical thinkers. Life isn't the same, but the standard of conversation in the pub or round the dinner table is better. I occasionally bump into people I used to call friends, with their 'be kind' and fence-sitting attitudes, and they strike me as dull and politically unengaged and just rather stupid.

@FrancescaContini - Harry Styles is perfectly clear he is a man. A pop star who messes about with expected gendered appearance, just like the 80s. He's not claiming a female identity or any such nonsense.

HS is a healthy approach to wearing feminine clothing while Izzard, in contrast, misogynistically claims appearance is what makes someone a woman.

(I'm not one of the many people with a crush on him, I leave that to my teenage daughter, but I think he's charming and talented)

I thought he claimed to be NB but I apologise if I have made a mistake. Perhaps I am confusing him with that other bloke of a similar age - Sam Smith?!

Yes, Sam “Aren’t I Interesting” Smith claims to be non-binary @FrancescaContini

I went to nursing school in the 70s. So I've been a nurse for a long time. A&P, anatomy and physiology, quite naturally is structured according to male and female. So people trying upend base scientific knowledge should be out of luck. I'm not sure why some medical professionals aren't disputing this forcefully.

I keep my mouth shut to anyone other than my parents and ILs (who thankfully agree with me). I work in a woke field where I would be unemployable if I made my views public and my employer would likely lose clients. I was encouraged to put myself forward to be the next chair of the women's network but I declined, saying I didn't have time for the extra responsibility but in reality because its for women and TW and I don't want to put myself at risk of being outed as GC. Very dangerous times we live in. I think it will be worse under Labour too.

OMG yes, Harry absolutely definitely knows he's a man and has never said otherwise, I'd be horrified if he did since I'm a massive fan.
I actually went to London to see the Vogue cover dress in the V&A, totally stunning, but absolutely worn by a man who knows he's a man.

Saying TWAW isn't an issue you can come to different conclusions on though. It's just a false statement.

For me the question of whether trans women are women (and trans men, men) is an interesting philosophical and linguistic conundrum but mostly a distraction from what actually matters.

The real question is when (if ever) and in what circumstances a trans woman should be treated as if they were a woman, where society generally segregates women and men or otherwise treats them differently. And the answer to that depends on the reasons why men and women are segregated / treated differently in each case, and what the impact would be of treating trans women as women in each case.

In my view this article (jointly authored by Cordelia Fine, who I’m a big fan of) provides a very good assessment of how to approach those questions. https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/2/2/211/htm

The real question is when (if ever) and in what circumstances a trans woman should be treated as if they were a woman, where society generally segregates women and men or otherwise treats them differently. And the answer to that depends on the reasons why men and women are segregated / treated differently in each case, and what the impact would be of treating trans women as women in each case.

In the instances where sex segregation occurs because of the difference in male and female bodies, can you think of a single example in which it would be appropriate to place some male people in the female space, but still inappropriate to make those places mixed sex?

Men are not, nor can they become, any kind of woman or female. Because DNA/biology. So yes, you’re wrong/misguided/captured by ideology.

It is never appropriate to treat a tw as a woman. The only time anyone needs to be “treated as” a man or woman is where sex is important in the equation. Eg medicine, prison, sport, changing rooms. Going along with the fiction of calling a gender non conforming man “she” and using a female pronoun is not treating them as a woman. It’s just maintaining a polite fiction and there are circumstances where it may be appropriate but maybe not

*using a female name I mean (above)

In the interests of disclosure I used to be fully Twaw and that people could be born in the wrong body etc because I’d swallowed the GI narrative. What changed my mind a few years ago was a case in I think Holland where a man wanted to legally change his age to ID as younger and I thought “oh that’s nonsense” - and of course it is - but then logically realised it’s no more nonsensical than someone wanting to identify as a different sex

Men and women can’t become each other, just as cats and dogs cant. They are two mutually exclusive categories that have differences that cannot be changed. But it’s not just about that. There is also a linguistic thing going on where genderists try to say that what makes a “man” or “woman” isn’t biology or dna, but feelings or cultural roles or what people see in front of them.

The trouble with that is you’re just destroying meaning. If a named thing can be its opposite or just mean whatever someone wants it to mean, it becomes meaningless. It’s like if I said water can mean oil and vice versa if I say so. Now if I say either of those words you have no idea what I really mean. But they’re still different and those differences still matter functionally - so you just need new words to describe them separately. That will never end no matter how much you try to conflate them because they’re different and we need to know what we’re talking about.

But, there are some categories that can change into each other. I’m not disabled but I could become disabled. A child does change into an adult. Weight can change. And yet we don’t say that it’s ok to put a child on an adult rugby team because of how they “identify” or put boxers in the wrong weight category because they “feel” 3 stone lighter, or let a fully able bodied person compete in a sport category for people with disabilities.

it’s not just about can we change - it’s about what we are. No male is a female. Just as no 12-year-old is 50, even if they were very convincingly made up. And someone doing a great impression of having cerebral palsy doesn’t mean they have it. And the same goes for race - which of course genderists can easily understand even though race is a spectrum. Something being hard to prove, or a deception being effective, doesn’t change reality. We have strict rules about what you can do and where you can go at different ages, and we make a big effort to enforce that, even though it’s often hard to tell visually.

Categories are based on material reality - if they’re not, then how does a make person even think he is or wants to be a “woman”. If sex doesn’t exist or matter, where does he get the idea of “woman” from?

I think all of my friends are GC. Even the ones with trans-identifying kids don't buy into trans ideology, although they are supportive of their DCs and try very hard to understand their perspective. We are all in our 50s.

Can you be more specific about the instances in which you consider men and women are segregated because of the differences between male and female bodies?