Anyone in the middle?

[piesforever]

All I see on here is GC rants. I am in the middle, I support trans people but do agree they shouldn't take part in gender specific sport, and there needs to be more caution in "changing gender" for sure, especially hormones and surgery for young people. I do agree some are troubled or young people, who are hating puberty or have had some trauma. Let's support them overall though, it must be horrible whatever the outcome. Anyone else feel a bit of sympathy to both "sides"? In fact, why are there sides, we need to find common ground and help each other!! Instead of being furious all the time. It's not healthy.

How are women treated differently than men in a way could meaningfully apply to an adult male?

For example, not seen as threatening by women or men.

Well nothing can be done about that.

We shouldn't be telling girls and women to ignore their instincts which are there for their own safety because their inherent mistrust of men makes some trans people feel sad.

This is entirely theoretical because there's no way to test this, but for the people who have genuine dysphoria, I reckon that if it were possible to wave a magic wand and change their body to that of the opposite sex, they would still have dysphoria.

Because dysphoria is a problem in the mind, not the body. So how could changing the body ever fix it?

I was actually thinking about this in the shower this morning.

Specifically in terms of early onset gender dysphoria in boys, which seems to manifest itself as boys playing with the "wrong" kind of toys and wanting to dress up in the "wrong" kind of clothes.

This is what Susie Green describes as being the earliest signs that her boy was actually a girl, and she says she thought he would probably grow up to be gay and she would have been OK with that but her husband wasn't.

There's so much to unpick there.

Firstly, the idea that the toys and clothes a young child likes might be a reliable indicator of their future sexuality. Now, I don't know whether this is true or not. Maybe little boys who like to play with dolls and dress up as princesses are more likely to become gay adults. Maybe they're not. Who knows.

I can see the logic for why we give little girls dolls to play with. Women give birth. Little girls will most likely grow up to be women who give birth to the next generation and so giving them dolls to play with is a way of preparing them for that role. So, as twisted as it is, there is a certain logic to the idea that dolls are for girls.

But if observe that your little boy likes to play with dolls and you assume that he is likely to be gay, what does that say about you? Is this just ingrained heteronormativity? Being attracted to male partners is a womanly thing, playing with dolls is a girly thing, so a boy who plays with dolls is doing a girly thing which is an indication that he will grow up to do womanly things such as being attracted to men? Huh? That's fucked up. A doll is just a doll.

Secondly, it isn't being attracted to men that makes you more likely to have to care for a baby as an adult. It's having a uterus.

Arguably, the children with the least need to train for future parenthood by playing with dolls are boys who will grow up to be gay men and children of either sex who will identify as trans and medically transition. Because these are the children least likely to ever become parents themselves.

So if you see your son playing with a doll and worry that it means he will grow up to be gay, firstly, that's homophobic, and secondly, aren't you rather ignoring the fact that boys who grow up to be straight are actually much more likely to become fathers and end up bottle feeding and changing real babies?

There's just no logic to these ideas. Wherever you choose to dig down into them, you find old fashioned homophobia and sexism, i.e. stereotypical gender roles for men and women, and gay = bad.

And in actual fact, this is becoming more problematic due to the issue of more male criminals now identifing as trans women. One could argue that gives us more reason to question that a man dressed as a woman may be doing so for untoward purposes. We would be neglecting our roles as parents / caregivers if we did not warn our kids of such possibilities.

Unfortunately but that's where we are because of the loopholes that have / are being created by the (seemingly unquestioned by many) trans ideology. What a minefield it has created.

But clearly that can't apply to an adult male. Alpha is as big a risk to women as other men are.

Yeah, I said it was "unrealistic", and taking hypotheticals to the point of using magic.

My point was that the desire itself isn't wrong as such.

I'm still not sure if this is helpful. The desire to be seen as not threatening is understandable. The desire to be seen as not threatening because you're a woman when you're not, is absolutely wrong because it negates women's experiences and boundaries.

Sometimes people want things that are wrong (e.g. in some ways I'd like not to pay tax). We should never break down internal barriers which stop us from doing bad things so in this instance we should not say that this desire isn't wrong. It is.

If Alpha wanted a complete change of tac, they could work on being less threatening. That would require Alpha to be an awful lot more respectful to women and to start to think about anyone but themselves. Then they could be seen as one of the less threatening males. At the moment, they're just up there with the worst of them but also demanding to be seen as somehow different.

Indeed, some of the men with the most interest in being seen as unthreatening are the ones who plan to abduct, rape and kill women. This is why some of the most dangerous male criminals have worn women's clothing or otherwise made themselves appear vulnerable, in order to get potential victims to let their guard down. This is not just a plot in a transphobic crime thriller by Robert Galbraith.

Can you see why giving children, and the wider public in general, that sort of message about transgender women might make us feel unsafe or lead to discrimination against us?

I can accept a lot of criticism. For example I do tend to be a bit self absorbed. But I don't understand how anything I have said could be "threatening" in a direct or indirect sense to anyone.

Do you use women's toilets? If so, do you understand why women don't want you to? Do you think Lia Thomas should swim against women? Should Isla Bryson have been put in a women's jail?

Stop. It.

Just because you are lovely and fluffy, other people aren't. And frankly if you are defending the perverts who don a frock to abduct a child? You DESERVE to be discriminated against.

All we need to do here is say that transwomen are men, and that they behave like men, not like women. So most are nice or ok, some are really nice, some are not nice and some are sexual predators. We don't need to demonise transwomen, we just need to be clear that they are men.

This is just sad in a way, and anger invoking in others.

“I really want to be a woman because women are amazingly kind and loving people, and I love wearing women's clothing and thinking of myself as a woman. But maybe that's not enough.”

It really isn’t ‘enough’. Just like you fucking telling women to be kind to misogynists like Mulvaney and trying to shame us into compliance and submission. Like women need to fit YOUR stereotype of a woman with our ‘kindness’, like we should just be kind while a group of male people redefine what woman and girl is to suit themselves. You seem to believe that is ‘kind’. Fuck that.

“I don't have the biology. And maybe I don't have the emotional intelligence and empathy either. I think I proved that in spades in the AMA thread.”

The sad part of your statement is here. That somehow society encouraged you to think that being a woman was anything other than having a certain biology and then learning to navigate the world having that biology, including the fucking negative discrimination faced for having that biology and the expectation that women should act a particular way because of it.

I honestly cannot believe that you also believed that women’s awards and sexed based education and employment provisions were due to things like ‘low self esteem’. Who told you that? Was it a person calling themselves a feminist who also had no fucking idea of the female lived experience? Calling them ‘awards for mothers because not all women are discriminated against because of motherhood’? Fuck! This board is probably full of women like me who have been passed over for jobs and promotion even as very young women because ‘we might have children soon’!!! The obliviousness is clear.

If someone told you this in the past, they seem to have done you a great disservice!

“I really don't feel aligned with men (warriors, criminals, commanders, Donald Trump, etc). Maybe you are right and I should identify as a third kind of being? Just, like, a person?”

And this is also showing just how deeply held your own prejudices are. You define men based again on pure stereotypes. I know so many men that don’t fit any of these stereotypes - still men! Yes!!! They are just people! People with a particular body falling into the male sex category.

I really hope your time on this board has given you perspective. I noticed people advising you to seek more mental health support and I really encourage you to do so. But get out of the bubble of affirming only therapy if you actually want to understand yourself better.

The message is that MALE behaviour is the issue. Only trans people have attempted to separate themselves from MALE behaviour.

ALL MALE people are discriminated against in safeguarding processes. What you are trying to do is position yourself as a victim of safeguarding processes. The result, intended or not, is the creation of a special group that don’t get discussed and don’t get held to the standards of ALL male people.

Discrimination is not a word that is ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ without a descriptor. It simply means identifying differences. It may be for a purpose. And that purpose may be negative, neutral or positive. It may be necessary or unnecessary.

If you are ‘discriminated’ against in safeguarding, it is due to your sex. Attempting to portray victimhood of being held to same standard as other males is dishonest. But if you are also attempting to lay blame on women and society for negative consequences due to rightful and legitimate discrimination due to safeguarding with a plea such as ‘all this discussion is causing people to react in a discriminatory way against me’ that is also dishonest and in this case it could be said to be a misogynist act.

“This board is probably full of women like me who have been passed over for jobs and promotion even as very young women because ‘we might have children soon’!!! The obliviousness is clear.”

Adding to that, the constant refrain of ‘you don’t need to do that (education opportunities, sport, whatever) because you will be having children one day. Or simply ‘girls don’t do that!’ which I have heard from the mouth of girls and boys peering pressuring each other not even 5 years ago! The significance of this is that it is a phrase used for probably ever, based on the ultimate sexist stereotype… that those girls don’t need to do that because all they will end up is as mothers.

Does it actually make you unsafe though?

Because allowing trans women into single sex spaces for women actually makes women and children unsafe. I am more concerned about them actually being unsafe than about you merely feeling unsafe. Sorry.

You're using male privilege to try and make society let you enter women's spaces. You're denying the risk males pose. You're making revolting statements about the global personalities of women and such statements are used to oppress women. It's good that you can acknowledge that you're self absorbed. Now do something about it.

Yes and just because reality is inconvenient for some does not mean we should all lie. It's sometimes hard to accept our own unearned privilege. That doesn't mean we should excuse people from being required to do so.

Starting of a a thread with a suggestion of " rants" suggest bias rather than middle ground. To my mind. 'middle ground' simply implies the person cannot be bothered to do the necessary critical thinking involved in making judgements about contentious issues.

However, if by 'middle ground' you mean accepting some people have a belief that gender identity is real and is more important than sex - then yes, I'm sure we all do. Though we don't subscribe to, or accept, that belief system ourselves. Beyond that, third spaces, services and categories have to be the way forward; plus continuing to push back against the damaging nonsense of transitioning children.

I'd suggest you read some Queer Theory and get acquainted with the way that is predicated on pushing boundaries, especially sexual boundaries - and then decide how you think and feel after that.

You cannot be neutral when confronted with an oppressive and authoritarian ideology which demands compliance.

The key fact is that transwomen remain male. Single sex spaces, services and catgeories are predicated on the facts of sex. Women and girls have the right to such spaces to provide them with the dignity and the privacy of their sex.

The best most productive thing you could do would be to accept your sex, even if you feel more comfortable 'presenting as a woman', and then campaign for third spaces and categories so that everyone could feel some comfort and dignity.

If there wasn't an attempt at forceful colonisation than there would not be an issue.

@RebelliousCow I suspect what the OP means by a "middle ground" is "on the one hand I recognise that gender ideology is nonsense and trans activists are being completely unreasonable, but on the other hand it doesn't affect me that much and I want gender critical feminists to just put a sock in it and vote Labour".

Given the choice between you “feeling unsafe”, and actually keeping women and children safe, I’ll go for keeping women and children safe every single time.

You should be discriminated against - on the grounds that you’re male.
Just like every other male. Discriminated against in the sense that you should be excluded from spaces and services that are meant to be women only - because you’re not a woman. Not because you’re “trans”, whatever that means. But because you’re an adult human male, and that is the literal definition of a man.

The fact you could even whine about your hurt feelings, as if that’s any reason to knowingly and deliberately expose women and girls to even more risk of sexual assault than we already suffer, by allowing any men who fancy it to self identify as “women” and be accepted as such, is reflective of a truly monstrous level of narcissism.