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.

I see it this way. Men have fully formed, impregnable rights. Sure, many men are precarious (mental health, homelessness, poor education and prospects etc), but as a rule, men have it made. Doubly reinforced by the fact that men have such lack of precariousness that they literally expect women to accept any ID they choose.

Facing them are women, way more precarious, full rights only achieved for decades not centuries or millenia, and at risk of pushback, such a period being right now.

These two groups are on a cliff edge, the men on the solid stable side, the women with their back to the sheer drop, scrambling for footing on the crumbling edge. As it has been for decades, despite women getting grippier boots to attain some balance.

Now the transwomen have arrived, just requesting equal treatment, and for women to budge up. Unfortunately budging up requires women to take a big step backwards, where there is no more ground. Only one way at that point.

So sure, we can all do the both sides dance, but this is the reality, women don't maintain their place of relative security, no the "balance" the TRAs require obligates women to give ground by moving backwards. And since precariousness was already built into the previous position, collapse of the female sex class can be the only result.

Never give way when you're on unstable ground with you're backing into oblivion.

Dubai? Really ? ? ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thawb

one of the places where men wear dresses as a standard thing

I sense someone is worried the thread stopped being about them!

Incidentally this is one of the things that drives me nuts with some of the political lobby insisting that a TW who commits rape, assault, and as recently seen in court a narrowly avoided murder of a child post sexual assault, is 'not really trans but a man pretending'.

Fgs. What do these people think is going to happen when these male people are released back into society? Is someone going to confiscate all their clothes and wigs and heels? Follow them around and ensure they don't buy women's clothing or wear it? What a ridiculous invasion of rights that would be, even if it was practically considerable. Most women I passed in the supermarket this morning were wearing jeans or tracksuit pants, trainers, many didn't have earrings in or long hair, they don't have a costume.

A TW is a male person who identifies as trans, that's it. That's all. What they wear is entirely up to them, I'm all for people living any way that suits them. The boundaries are not trampling on other people's access and rights, accepting that no one changes sex, and respecting that not everything can always be for you and about you.

There's a lot of open road between "it should be illegal for biological males to wear dresses" and "biological males should have unrestricted to women's toilets, rape crisis groups and sporting categories".

It does not have to be one of these two extremes.

This is why most of us consider that this is the middle ground.

Who says the truth is always in "the middle" anyway? If I throw my mobile phone out the window, most people agree it will hit the ground and smash. But (since I subscribe to nutjob theories of levitation) I am convinced it will fly 30 feet straight up in the air instead.

So who reckons my phone will just hover in midair outside the window, because after all that is in the middle between the two?

Logical fallacies'r'us.

That's a great analogy.

Go ask Nicky Wire if men can wear dresses.

Go ask Martin Gore if men can wear skirts. I mean he wears more skirts than I do and I wear skirts all the time.

I’d say go ask Leigh Bowery, Kurt Cobain, David Bowie but they’re no longer with us.

is it common? No. Will it be easy? I don’t know. It was not easy for women to start wearing trousers. But women stuck it out. Probably more women want trousers than men want skirts, there’s a practical aspect to trousers skirts don’t always have.

But do you want men to be able to wear dresses without remark or do you want dresses to still equal woman?

I think that while any one should be free to wear anything they like, no one should wear sexual fetish gear in public.

I fought for the right to wear trousers at work and school, for practical (they are warmer) reasons not because it gave me a sexual thrill.

We all know here what we can't mention, so dress how you like, be who you want but if people and that includes men as well as women think you are getting
a sexual thrill, they will judge you.

Are we seriously having a go with 'if you say no to male people colonising all women's spaces to meet their special needs, (and as a byproduct harming and excluding actual women, in some cases from having anything at all, but oh well), it's only a skip to criminalising men for wearing dresses'?

Seriously?

Can I have a go? If we say no to a 20 mph speed limit replacing the 30mph ones then the streets will be filled with hells angels running down grannies on their harley davidsons at 80mph.

Yep. It's like someone stealing your car and being told you now both own the car and need to find a middle ground.

"Middle ground" between a victim and a thief is not middle ground no matter how morally justified the thief feels they are.

"Middle ground" between truth and a lie is not middle ground no matter how morally justified the liar feels they are.

"Middle ground" between two entirely different meanings of the same word is not middle ground, it's undermining both definitions and leaving nothing useful in their place.

The middle ground between men who identify with womanhood and womanhood is that the men accept what they feel.is not, in fact, womanhood and thereby free themselves to explore and understand it properly instead of trying to understand it in the frame of womanhood. Trying to jam their identity into the same box as female just means we end up with a broken box that doesn't fit either if us properly.

Such a shame so many women are helping with the pushing. The OU academics in the Jo Phoenix case, and all those nodding through men in women's prisons and sport, are giddy as they put their stilettos and flat pumps to "good" use.

Its telling that it wasnt that long ago women fought to make trousers acceptable for women and girls, but men didnt bother to 'unisex' high heels and skirts.

Yes. So much of this is in essence, do not jump up and down on other people's toes and then wail that they're denying you exist/infringing your human rights/stopping you expressing yourself when they tell you to get off.

Wear whatever you like as long as you’re not indecent (so no kinky bondage gear in broad daylight). Alpha, if you were at school in the 80s then you must surely remember the New Romantics, plenty of male pop stars in make-up and dresses carrying the torch lit by Bowie and Bolan in the 70s. They didn’t need to change their pronouns to she/her, they were fine being fabulous men in glamorous clothes. Oh, and plenty of women fancied them. I think trans women who are attracted to women are seriously narrowing their dating pool.

Dresses. What the fuck do dresses have to do with fucking anything?

“Remember the dignity of your womanhood. Do not appeal, do not beg, do not grovel. Take courage, join hands, stand beside us, fight with us"

you have already been told dozens of times: most of us here believe that people should be allowed to wear what they want. And that includes you and your silky lovely dresses.

What we are also saying is that wearing that frock doesn't make anyone a woman any more than me wearing my (bought in the man's section) cargo pants today makes me a man. (i have all the pockets. It's fucking brilliant)

'Edit your typos unapologetically with us'

To take your analogy further, the women pushing are the ones at the front, closest to the men.

They won't be pushed off the cliff themselves until all the less privileged women who were standing behind them have already fallen.

Yes. It's one long round of 'do it to Julia'.

But, they hate being reminded that they too are now becoming like those they derided, admonished, abused, or demonised. They hate it with a passion. So, you end up with posters such as the OP. There are a number on MN, less so on FWR but you end up with them on threads outside of FWR. They are the ones calling us zealots lacking compassion while admitting that they agree partly. They will say they agree in the 'extreme outlier cases' but then they cannot draw the boundary of when something becomes 'extreme'. They react because of the dissonance the reality of their position starts to cause them.

Edge cases always make bad processes. You have to make robust processes that cover most naturally occurring and obvious occurrences of things. And then accept that there may be the odd outlier that needs to be handled as it happens. That is literally my bread and butter - setting up processes that will cover 96% of all eventualities, and be robust enough to handle the outliers that get thrown up. Some outliers can immediately be discounted, the others have to be accomodated within existing systems. It requires a little effort, but they are rare so it's not an issue.

I had hoped that more men would wear skirts and dresses tbh. Because my observation of life has shown that things that women do aren't interesting or of any note until men start doing them. And then they suddenly become important and worthy of notice. And my hope was that we might start getting a LOT more pocketses.

@Brefugee

I had hoped that more men would wear skirts and dresses tbh. Because my observation of life has shown that things that women do aren't interesting or of any note until men start doing them. And then they suddenly become important and worthy of notice. And my hope was that we might start getting a LOT more pocketses.

Also in my case because I think hot men in well cut, male cut dresses and makeup look even more hot and I'd like to see more of them.

Men wearing dresses cut for women which they have padded out at the hip and bust are, however, not at all hot, because mocking or steteotyping women is never sexy.

In the early seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, every now and then there'd be a man in the background doing something engineering-y in a mini-skirted 'skant' uniform - by season 3 everyone (except Troy) was in the regular Starfleet trousers-and-tunic, which was better in most ways but also a bit of a missed opportunity.

As it is in this world all the men I see in skirts are priests, monks, Scottish rugby fans and the very very occasional Irish army bandsman - if I lived somewhere more urban and cosmopolitan I presume there'd be more robes and sarongs.

well I'm an ancient old crone. And i lusted after David Sylvian who was as androgynous as they came back then. And John Taylor in eye shadow. And Adam Ant in all that... stuff.

agree about male dresses. But there is a reason most designers design for boy-shaped figures (as a sewist i say it's because they are lazy arses who can't be bothered to design round curves).

All those Swedish guys in the leather kilts that were all the rage about a decade (?) or so ago. Phwoar. Funnily enough, all the new romantic blokes in all the make up and weird clothes were attractive for the most part. In a way i simply don't find drag artists or men in lipstick and bad wigs are now. It could all just be personal taste.

But i am seething about the pockets. I had High Hopes.