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.

@Froodwithatowel re: "Women have really got to get a backbone while there's still time, and learn to be less gullible. It is being used against you."

Heck, yes. I agree. But hopefully not in reference to my perspective & arguments. Just in case it is, I'd argue that..

My perspective requires a pretty strong backbone: I'm acknowledging the possibility of a minority of others experiencing fear, while still saying a big, loud "NO! Sort out your own needs, without impinging on me & mine!" Not easy to do.

My arguments are far from gullible: I'm exploring the pros & cons of acknowledging (or denying) the possibility of others' perceived fear to a greater (or lesser) degree in relation to our own tactical manouvering in a context of intense societal misogyny, by actively considering which arguments are most/least likely to be "used against us" (although I conclude, basically, whatever we do, it will be - is being! - "used against us" regardless...😠)

(PS At risk of fan-girling, Frood, I've made notes & quotes from so many of your posts to refer to next time The Issue comes up with friends/family/colleagues - you've a fab way of putting things that so often gets straight to the heart of the matter.)

Thanks for the clarification. That's cleared up the one point that wasn't clear before. Mr Wiccan is happy for any males to use the men's toilets (as long as they don't harass the other men and boys in there). Great.

I'm not sure why I'm being told to look up the term harassment. I'm perfectly aware that your husband was sexually harassed by the trans person in the toilet. You have mentioned this several times and I have acknowledged it. It was quite clear that your husband was the victim and that the trans person's behaviour was unacceptable and inappropriate.

That's up to them, Bonfire. Nothing to do with me, or any women, in fact. I refuse to expend any energy on the issue.

As far as I can see, the manufactured consent here has relied on women being kind, caring, compassionate, with no reciprocation expected or extended.

There is a narrative of some men being 'marginalised' but I see no hard evidence to support it.

Well you've got the clarification you needed. He meant you and 2 other posters being harrassing. Please don't ask me anymore questions . Thanks

I would suggest any poster who feels they are being abused should report posts to MNHQ and if the posts are abusive they will be deleted.

I wonder I should report the ones where I was told I was annoying, where I got told to stop centring myself or that my approach on commenting was bizarre?

I won't. But it's food for thought.

I don't see any harassment myself on here, just lots of great questions and debate. It's not always easy being on the receiving end of what can feel like a bombardment, even if it's not. I have every empathy with this FWIW because I have experienced that feeling myself (and by extension I felt that same for Alpha on the AMA, given Alpha is neurodiverse. I felt most questions were broadly answered, if not directly).

Yep, I totally get that viewpoint.

This thread did seem to “kick off” a little in terms of people getting riled up… It surprised me somewhat as most posters here seem to be on the same page when it comes to the fundamental issues.

My perspective requires a pretty strong backbone: I'm acknowledging the possibility of a minority of others experiencing fear, while still saying a big, loud "NO! Sort out your own needs, without impinging on me & mine!" Not easy to do.

My arguments are far from gullible: I'm exploring the pros & cons of acknowledging (or denying) the possibility of others' perceived fear to a greater (or lesser) degree in relation to our own tactical manouvering in a context of intense societal misogyny,

@Catiette this is how I feel too. I think it's very hard to articulate the presence of a strong backbone in an online forum.
I feel comfortable knowing that mine is there but I have no real way (without getting closer to doxxing myself than I would want to) of demonstrating this.

One thing I will say that may or may not achieve this, that is directly relevant to this point in the thread, is that I was recently having a conversation with an MP. We share a belief in sex immutability but I position it as a belief (and I shared my reasoning for doing so) and the MP said they did not see it this way, however understood where I was coming from. It was a great conversation, very open etc. In the spirit of the conversation flow, I said I felt Rishi Sunak had created a difficulty for himself with his absolute statement that a man is a man, a woman is a woman (the equivalent of saying "God doesn't exist" rather than "I don't believe in God" in my positioning) and I wondered aloud whether this may possibly be a reason why this may have contributed to there being a new direction on conversion therapy in the party (to win back some public opinion). I mentioned Ann Widdecombe on GB News saying the same thing, but through the lens of belief and that I felt this landed just as firmly but in a different way. The MP acknowledged my point of view but said he disagreed with me. I had no issue with him saying this at all - it was all in the spirit of the conversation. At times on MN I get told I'm "policing people's language". It's very possible that my IRL conversation with the MP would have come across that way online. By contrast it was clear in the conversation, thanks to tone and eye contact etc, that we were simply talking about a difference in approach but were still on exactly the same page on the main issues that we were discussing.
We ended the conversation laughing at the irony that this was the only point on which we differed.
This hopefully illustrates why I say all voices and styles are important. It may or may not address my previous assertion that I don't believe I'm naive but I'll live with that.

That's normal people stuff...it's easy to fall into getting pushier with the people who agree with one because one feels like they should get ones point if one could just make it a bit clearer, and to feel a bit betrayed/let down when they disagree. Meanwhile the poor person one is talking to is wondering why this person has suddenly flipped from friend to prosecuter.

(It's also why the (trafitional) Left, being principles based, is more vulnerable to this type of hair-splitting than the (traditional) Right who are pragmatic and outcome based. This is not to say I think the Right are better, just more effective.)

I see the "robustness" as an indication of how difficult this particular part of the subject is.
Some threads on MN do get very intense. On a previous occasion (not this time) I found myself in tears and had to take a few weeks off.
It's not easy. Some people on here may know each other IRL - I don't know anyone on here personally - but all of us are here as individuals. It's not groupthink or an echo chamber and it's sometimes really difficult being a part of that, given all the different points of view that are held. On a positive note, IMO it's better than the language of compelled belief from the "other team".

'Near enemies' comes into play, perhaps.

(I'm absolutely not saying anyone here is 'enemies', just noting the principle/idea of disagreement with those closer to you in position.)

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jun/07/change-your-life-near-enemies-buddhism

I’m sorry you’ve had a bad experience on MN before - nobody should be in tears over an Internet forum, that’s just not right, and I don’t blame you for taking a break. For the most part I find this forum incredibly informative, full of highly articulate and intelligent voices. I’ve saved many people’s posts for future reading. The debates can get lively, but anyone who is gender-critical, even if they disagree with me on some things, is fundamentally an ally in my eyes.

Yes, to a lot of the above re: debate & different approaches to the same side! Interesting point re Left & Right - had never thought of it that way, & like it...

It wasn't the outcome I expected (me in tears) but I had deliberately gone in on a thread that I expected to find tough so that I could build up my experience in handling difficult conversations. I had an opinion that I felt was valid on a thread that was essentially about how people interact.
I listened to others and addressed the original question too, putting forward my own viewpoint.
What I experienced felt like a pile-on. All on a subject of "stop policing language" but way more than I had experienced before. Whether it was or not I don't know but that's how it felt, mostly because when I tried to articulate myself it never seemed to land and I just got more questions.
It gives me a empathy for how others might feel in this situation and I'm happy to share it in case it helps anyone else who may feel that way. Like you say, we're all fundamentally "GC allies", albeit it ones that may see things differently. But equally I'm not extending empathy to the point where I won't call out what I see as hypocrisy. It's that fine balance that Catiette mentioned. Not easy but important.

Correction... We're not all "GC allies". I am actually very glad when we get gender identity belief viewpoints coming in amongst the discussions and I much prefer it if they stick around if there are contributions with substance. Not the trolling version though, obviously!

*above edit was to add "amongst the discussions"
As opposed to dominating because primarily this board comes from a women's rights angle.

IMO it's better than the language of compelled belief from the "other team".

Absolutely that ^^

No group think, no policy, women with different views and perspectives who will read, and share links, and share experience, and argue heatedly together for what they think is best for women and girls. I'm grateful to every single woman who spends time here doing that. It's the essence of what makes and protects women's rights, and therefore it is not something that should be 'inclusive' of anyone male. No male who honestly wished women well would argue for it to be.

I finally had time to read the whole thread AlphaTransWoman had created and found it very interesting. It reinforced the uncomfortable feeling I had decades ago when I first tried to see what transsexualism (which it was called then) meant for feminism that the two might not be compatible at all, depending on how the theory underlying transgenderism is built.

For me the goal of feminism has always been in making societies view women and girls as human beings, of equal value and importance with boys and men, and not to box them into tiny rigid boxes where their function is seen as only being sexual, psychological, and domestic support staff. And that can't be done unless we get rid of gender stereotypes and limit the impact of sex to those cases where it really does matter if we wish to give everyone equal opportunities.

This does NOT mean biological determinism at all and neither does it mean blank slateism, but trying to create a society where all people are first viewed as human beings with their own set of skills, talents, and personalities, and only then, in certain circumstances where it matters, as sexed human beings with specific needs based on their sex.

Underlying this is my belief that almost all cognitive and psychological characteristics of male and female human beings have overlapping distributions and that how we behave follows from a complicated mix of biological, environmental and cultural factors.

So seeing Alpha argue that women are one rigid set of characteristics, men another rigid set of characteristics was rather troubling. A person can be warm and have empathy and also be ambitious and competitive, and a person can be cold and selfish and also not interested in competing at all. And so on.

It's difficult for me to see what Alpha's feminism would mean in real terms, given that in Alpha's view women are supposed to be submissive and caring and kind and not at all rational or interested in inventing new things or competitions and so on. Perhaps a form of benevolent patriarchy?

Based on what I see online, some percentage of transwomen do seem to hold similar beliefs, often combined with a focus of the sexual aspects of womanhood, and this worries me when we are looking for compromise solutions.

In the spirit of both respect and robust debate, I'd like to wedge in a little inclusion for the brilliant contributions we get from some of the men that join us on here, including on this thread.
But yes, some amazing stuff from some amazing women. I'm so glad I ended up on here and grew the confidence to progress from lurking to joining in.

And just a silly aside, but the language of alphas and betas I have most often seen on men's rights sites. It seems to be borrowed from some early research on wolf packs which were about unrelated male wolves in captivity fighting each other for leadership positions (alphas).

In the wild wolf packs consist of wolves which are biologically related to each other, and the leaders (the alpha male and female) tend to be the grandparents or parents of most of the other wolves.

But those concept now have an independent existence in social media. Still, I'm not certain what it means for someone to be an alpha transwoman, if the idea is that women are not supposed to be competitive etc. at all.

@BonfireLady, I’ve similarly enjoyed building my confidence, testing my ideas, & finding it a bit overwhelming at times but v positive overall.

@nepeta, yes, your 1727 post expresses a lot of what I feel.

Re the example above of a man being harassed by a transwoman (or a man dressed as a woman) in the male toilets - my feeling is that type of harassing behaviour is more likely from a trans-identifying male than from a non-trans-identifying male.

I guess my reason for thinking this is that some trans males are transvestites, transvestism is a paraphilia (fetish) and fetishes tend to cluster and to increase - if you have one paraphilia/fetish you're more likely to have others, and for the severity to increase with time.

Does anyone have any info as to whether this plays out in real life? It was very interesting getting the experience of a male in male toilets - I was sorry that there seemed to be some misunderstanding that led to disagreement, everyone seemed to be saying the same thing.

i.e. that W's husband had a bad experience of being sexually harassed by a transwoman, and that was why it was a negative experience that he'd prefer to avoid.

Stella, everyone WAS saying the same thing. It was a misunderstanding that seemed to then extend to someone’s husband scolding posters when the reality is we agreed we were merely pointing out nuances of the case. I don’t believe any of us dismissed what happened.

Yes that's what I thought, I thought that Wiccan must have misunderstood the reasons for the questions.

Maybe we're quicker to be protective when we're relating a loved-one's views.