Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Dating as a TERF

579 replies

TERFisTHEnewTREND · 14/12/2023 19:39

I'm a 34 year old female. I'm currently dating via Tinder.

When the gender issue has come up and I've mentioned that I'm a TERF, a lot of men have disengaged from me. I once went on three dates with a man, we got on great, and then when I mentioned my views on gender ideology, he ghosted me after!

Do you mention your stance up front or do you wait? I don't want to date anyone who thinks humans can change sex, is it worth stating this on my profile?

Any help/ advice/ insights appreciated.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
25
Creampies · 16/12/2023 21:55

Could you explain the difference between a chancer TW and a proper TW.
the only people who can be trans women are men
so how do you tell the difference between a bloke in a dress and a man in a dress

OceanicBoundlessness · 16/12/2023 21:55

DC1888 · 16/12/2023 21:48

When I say progressive, I'm referring to the general attitude towards trans people, ie. compassionate, and not the hostility that terfs exude ("bloke in a dress"). Kellie-Jay Keen, she's a bigot plain and simple.

Your question is a good one. I'm against altering the language in referring to women as "birthing people", "people who menstruate", "cervix havers" etc. I would be more inclusive of legitimate transwomen (not the chancers) as also being women though (just not natural women).

So what you're saying is trans women are trans women?

catduckgoose · 16/12/2023 22:03

DC1888 · 16/12/2023 21:48

When I say progressive, I'm referring to the general attitude towards trans people, ie. compassionate, and not the hostility that terfs exude ("bloke in a dress"). Kellie-Jay Keen, she's a bigot plain and simple.

Your question is a good one. I'm against altering the language in referring to women as "birthing people", "people who menstruate", "cervix havers" etc. I would be more inclusive of legitimate transwomen (not the chancers) as also being women though (just not natural women).

Inclusive how and where?

Exactly which female-only spaces are you offering up for eradication?

nothingcomestonothing · 16/12/2023 22:07

DC1888 · 16/12/2023 21:48

When I say progressive, I'm referring to the general attitude towards trans people, ie. compassionate, and not the hostility that terfs exude ("bloke in a dress"). Kellie-Jay Keen, she's a bigot plain and simple.

Your question is a good one. I'm against altering the language in referring to women as "birthing people", "people who menstruate", "cervix havers" etc. I would be more inclusive of legitimate transwomen (not the chancers) as also being women though (just not natural women).

LOL, go and post that on twitter or Reddit and see what happens. You're a TERF.

MsRosley · 16/12/2023 22:20

You have to have a grudging admiration for people like @DC1888. So certain of their virtuousness, their superior grasp of the ishoos. Up they pop, ready to own these bigoted old terfs who are clearly wallowing in a cesspit of stupidity and ignorance.

There's really no finer pleasure in life than watching their ill-informed, unexamined ideas swiftly eviscerated and handed to them on a platter hewn from their own arse.

SinnerBoy · 16/12/2023 22:30

DC1888 · Today 21:48

When I say progressive, I'm referring to the general attitude towards trans people, ie. compassionate, and not the hostility that terfs exude ("bloke in a dress"). Kellie-Jay Keen, she's a bigot plain and simple.

You appear not to realise that, for decades, women did give way, out of a sense of compassion, or fear, or whatever. Transw and their friends decided to take advantage and push themselves forward and to try to take women's territory, prisons, WI, rape crisis centres, other women only groups; imposing themselves, dominating and driving women out of them. Claiming that they were more womanly than women, that they had cervices etc etc.

Any woman who demurred was vilified and hounded out of public life, by a baying mob.

Many women had a long hard think about the situation and tried to remedy it, to be met with more howling, pitchfork-wielding mobs and thought,

"No, fuck this shit, I'm not standing for it!"

Shit, I mean if a mere bloke like me can see it.

redlavender · 16/12/2023 22:31

I'm against altering the language in referring to women as "birthing people", "people who menstruate", "cervix havers"

There's no need to call a woman any of those things because a woman already IS those things - a woman gives birth, she menstruates and she has a cervix! That's literally the definition of a woman?!

FlirtsWithRhinos · 16/12/2023 22:31

So @DC1888 , just to make sure I understand:

  • You don't think trans women are actually women
  • You think however it's rude and mean to say so
  • And for that and that alone, simply to avoid being rude and mean to men who think they are women, you are prepared to sign away women's rights to single sex spaces, to women-only opportunities, to our legal and political existence as female, even to our own name and history?

Is that about the size of it?

MargotBamborough · 16/12/2023 22:41

DC1888 · 16/12/2023 21:48

When I say progressive, I'm referring to the general attitude towards trans people, ie. compassionate, and not the hostility that terfs exude ("bloke in a dress"). Kellie-Jay Keen, she's a bigot plain and simple.

Your question is a good one. I'm against altering the language in referring to women as "birthing people", "people who menstruate", "cervix havers" etc. I would be more inclusive of legitimate transwomen (not the chancers) as also being women though (just not natural women).

Right, so if someone is compassionate towards trans people but completely lacking in any kind of compassion for women, is that progressive or regressive?

You describe Kellie-Jay Keen as "hostile". She's been outspoken about her opinions and said some things some people don't like. Her detractors, on the other hand, have violently protested against her having the right to speak, physically assaulted her and other women (including punching a 70 year old woman in the head at the Let Women Speak event in Auckland and fracturing her skull) and caused her to flee New Zealand due to credible threats to her own safety by trans activists.

If she is hostile, how would you describe their behaviour? (Apart from criminal.)

SinnerBoy · 16/12/2023 22:42

🍟

Sits down to wait...

MargotBamborough · 16/12/2023 22:43

FlirtsWithRhinos · 16/12/2023 22:31

So @DC1888 , just to make sure I understand:

  • You don't think trans women are actually women
  • You think however it's rude and mean to say so
  • And for that and that alone, simply to avoid being rude and mean to men who think they are women, you are prepared to sign away women's rights to single sex spaces, to women-only opportunities, to our legal and political existence as female, even to our own name and history?

Is that about the size of it?

Nail, meet head.

howdoesatoastermaketoast · 16/12/2023 22:50

Hi @DC1888

It sounds a lot like you believe it is ok for women to disagree with and dislike dehumanising language - I agree (not everyone does)

It also sounds a lot like you believe that there are two categories of people who can be treated differently in law and policy

women (although I note you're floundering for a term to describe this group of humans)

and trans women (again though our divergent position on terminology notwithstanding)

and that in some situations it might be ok for women to do something which is not ok for a trans woman to do. - I agree (not everyone does)

A quick moment to persevere on the point of language

Adult Human Females continue to exist, and remain a significant enough group of humans for us to have a word to describe ourselves, our lives, and our shared needs related to being adult human females.

Women exist; even if the fact does upset some men. The argument that in order to minimise the distress of men who are unhappy about the fact that they are men, women should give up the word women, agree that women are NOT a type of human but are rather a type of personality / a particular type of brain / or a particular type of spirit / soul/ essence is not reasonable. It is not a reasonable accommodation that we accept dehumanising language and erasure of boundaries.

No terminology to refer to women is acceptable to those for whom it is the act of referring to ourselves at all which seems so unreasonable, see rule 3

  1. Women speaking for themselves are exclusionary and selfish.

https://4w.pub/the-rules-of-misogyny/

The Rules of Misogyny

#12. Women’s ability to recognize male behavior patterns is misandry

https://4w.pub/the-rules-of-misogyny

Catiette · 16/12/2023 22:58

@DC1888. Thanks for replying. I'm off to bed soon & busier tomorrow, but will check in then, too. For now...

You've answered in general terms, however, there's a lot of nuanced discussion in the last 15 pages that I'm not at all convinced can be boiled down to 1) Terfs aren't compassionate & "bloke in a dress" is evidence of this, and 2) A hypothetically clear distinction between "legitimate" v. "illegitimate"(?!) trans people. These flatten complex issues into reductive generalisations - such generalisations are easier to argue & reassuring to cling to, but are not necessarily helpful in addressing a difficult issue.

To start digging more deeply, I'd say about 1), above...

I see a great deal of compassion on these threads. But this compassion is sometimes unclear to the more casual or biased observer because of the blunt language often used.

Women on these sites use this blunt language as a defensive weapon. This is a movement that is wielding a euphemistic lie to force women to resign their words, their rights & their very sense of self. As such, truth directly spoken, however uncomfortable it may be for some to hear, is a necessary pen-sword, wielded to protect women's bodily and perceptual integrity.

This is a movement that tells women that they, themselves, are not what they say they are - that they're what men say they are. That women's very perception of reality - their natural ability to recognise a physically superior and potentially sexually aggressive male - is unethical. That their right to exercise their free will to identify and describe this threat should be denied. That their most fundamental right - to define themselves and describe reality as they experience it - is fundamentally wrong.

And this is before we even begin to consider the consequent threats to women's sports, safe spaces, freedom of movement & association, legal protections & representation in public life.

And all this is happening when, easily within my lifetime (& I'm fairly young), a woman's body was, in a very real sense, still deemed her husband's property (marital rape - criminalised only in 1992), & a woman's words were secondary to her male partner's (opening bank accounts, getting mortgages).

In this context, women using language that deliberately emphasises the sex of a transwoman - "bloke" - & draws attention to his resurrection of the superficial trappings of femininity symbolic of those impediments to progress that equated feminine with inferior - "dress" - seems like an astonishingly mild response.

And if you Google TERF is a slur, you'll see just how mild.

After millennia of fighting their way free from the confining, misshapen mold of the male gaze (women are beautiful, women are pure, women are sexual; Madonna, whore; maiden, mother, hag) the male gaze is, once again, defining us. This is wrong. We have a right, & a need, to name ourselves as a class. I can't believe that this is being challenged so vocally. It terrifies me.

We have a right, in fact, to be absolutely furious.

howdoesatoastermaketoast · 16/12/2023 23:07

Indeed - the truth can upset people; it does not therefore follow that the only possible motivation is to upset people.

I assure you they are not giving equal concern to upsetting women or avoiding offending us.

https://x.com/brandubh4/status/1664996421458616322?s=20

https://x.com/brandubh4/status/1664996421458616322?s=20

Waitwhat23 · 17/12/2023 00:11

Excellent post. And your last line has put me in mind of a comment made on Sarah Phillimore today on Twitter regarding the interview with Paola Diana -

'Excellent way to handle any call for ‘kindness’ - with controlled fury. Because we are not being ‘asked to be kind’ - it is a demand for compliance, thinly disguised.'

(Edited to add that this is intended as a comment on Catiette's post)

MsRosley · 17/12/2023 00:13

Catiette · 16/12/2023 22:58

@DC1888. Thanks for replying. I'm off to bed soon & busier tomorrow, but will check in then, too. For now...

You've answered in general terms, however, there's a lot of nuanced discussion in the last 15 pages that I'm not at all convinced can be boiled down to 1) Terfs aren't compassionate & "bloke in a dress" is evidence of this, and 2) A hypothetically clear distinction between "legitimate" v. "illegitimate"(?!) trans people. These flatten complex issues into reductive generalisations - such generalisations are easier to argue & reassuring to cling to, but are not necessarily helpful in addressing a difficult issue.

To start digging more deeply, I'd say about 1), above...

I see a great deal of compassion on these threads. But this compassion is sometimes unclear to the more casual or biased observer because of the blunt language often used.

Women on these sites use this blunt language as a defensive weapon. This is a movement that is wielding a euphemistic lie to force women to resign their words, their rights & their very sense of self. As such, truth directly spoken, however uncomfortable it may be for some to hear, is a necessary pen-sword, wielded to protect women's bodily and perceptual integrity.

This is a movement that tells women that they, themselves, are not what they say they are - that they're what men say they are. That women's very perception of reality - their natural ability to recognise a physically superior and potentially sexually aggressive male - is unethical. That their right to exercise their free will to identify and describe this threat should be denied. That their most fundamental right - to define themselves and describe reality as they experience it - is fundamentally wrong.

And this is before we even begin to consider the consequent threats to women's sports, safe spaces, freedom of movement & association, legal protections & representation in public life.

And all this is happening when, easily within my lifetime (& I'm fairly young), a woman's body was, in a very real sense, still deemed her husband's property (marital rape - criminalised only in 1992), & a woman's words were secondary to her male partner's (opening bank accounts, getting mortgages).

In this context, women using language that deliberately emphasises the sex of a transwoman - "bloke" - & draws attention to his resurrection of the superficial trappings of femininity symbolic of those impediments to progress that equated feminine with inferior - "dress" - seems like an astonishingly mild response.

And if you Google TERF is a slur, you'll see just how mild.

After millennia of fighting their way free from the confining, misshapen mold of the male gaze (women are beautiful, women are pure, women are sexual; Madonna, whore; maiden, mother, hag) the male gaze is, once again, defining us. This is wrong. We have a right, & a need, to name ourselves as a class. I can't believe that this is being challenged so vocally. It terrifies me.

We have a right, in fact, to be absolutely furious.

Edited

Bravo!

DC1888 · 17/12/2023 00:39

nothingcomestonothing · 16/12/2023 22:07

LOL, go and post that on twitter or Reddit and see what happens. You're a TERF.

*My last post in this topic as I'd rather read than get peppered with questions.

Terf is extreme so I reject that accusation, I'm a moderate. I think most people are on this. As I said before I think this whole issue started because some liberals went mental and made it far too easy to change gender, and also started changing the language ("womb havers"). They are responsible for creating the backlash (and one which has gone way too far). The Posie Parker character wouldn't exist if it weren't for the far left losing it.

Are transwomen natural women? No they are not. Sex cannot he changed. Gender identity can though, but the criteria for doing so has to be rigorous and not the one the Scottish bill proposed. Women, and legitimate transwomen (who can also be called women), I think that's a moderate view.

Creampies · 17/12/2023 00:43

There is no moderation on this subject :-
Trans women are women
or trans women are men.

the two concepts are mutually exclusive, pick one.

Apollo441 · 17/12/2023 00:43

DC1888 · 16/12/2023 21:48

When I say progressive, I'm referring to the general attitude towards trans people, ie. compassionate, and not the hostility that terfs exude ("bloke in a dress"). Kellie-Jay Keen, she's a bigot plain and simple.

Your question is a good one. I'm against altering the language in referring to women as "birthing people", "people who menstruate", "cervix havers" etc. I would be more inclusive of legitimate transwomen (not the chancers) as also being women though (just not natural women).

JFC and for the love of Buddha will you please explain what a genuine transwoman is and how we can f..ing tell up front .

I really don't expect an answer because there isn't one.

Apollo441 · 17/12/2023 00:47

By the way @DC1888 writing transwomen without the space marks you out as a terf. Sorry.

Waitingfordoggo · 17/12/2023 01:12

The reason I found it astounding is the UK is the birthplace of androgyny becoming mainstream via glam rock/new romantics...the UK was far ahead of anywhere else in uprooting gender norms.

@DC1888 You say this as if you think there’s some sort of contradiction here? It is PRECISELY because of the UK’s history of subverting gender norms and stereotypes that it is ‘TERF Island’. Women in the UK know fine well that what people wear or how they behave does not have anything to do with their sex, and that is why so many of us do not accept that a male who wears make up and a dress, and enjoys shopping trips and white wine spritzers is a woman of any sort, even if he has had surgery to alter his physical appearance. Can you explain what transwomen have in common with women that they don’t also have in common with men?

UK ‘TERFs’ want our daughters to be able to wear their hair short, play rugby or be good at maths without someone suggesting they might be actually be a boy ‘trapped’ in a girl’s body. No. There is no such thing as a gendered soul. A belief in such a thing is a religious belief. I respect others’ right to hold that belief (but of course, like other religious beliefs, it should not influence policy and legislation). In return, my beliefs should be respected.

We each have a sex, and everything else is just our personality and preferences.
Insisting that womanhood and girlhood are defined by a list of feminine traits or behaviours is extremely regressive.

FlirtsWithRhinos · 17/12/2023 01:24

DC1888 · 17/12/2023 00:39

*My last post in this topic as I'd rather read than get peppered with questions.

Terf is extreme so I reject that accusation, I'm a moderate. I think most people are on this. As I said before I think this whole issue started because some liberals went mental and made it far too easy to change gender, and also started changing the language ("womb havers"). They are responsible for creating the backlash (and one which has gone way too far). The Posie Parker character wouldn't exist if it weren't for the far left losing it.

Are transwomen natural women? No they are not. Sex cannot he changed. Gender identity can though, but the criteria for doing so has to be rigorous and not the one the Scottish bill proposed. Women, and legitimate transwomen (who can also be called women), I think that's a moderate view.

Darling, don't you realise most so-called "TERF"s think the same as you?

The only difference is that we went looking for that magic difference between "legitimate" trans women and the others and realised it just isn't there. There is no special thing that makes a trans woman something other than a man enacting sexist ideas about womanhood.

Women are people with any sort of mind and female bodies.
Men are people with any sort of mind and male bodies.
Gender is the social stereotypes attached to the two sexes.

The only way a man can be a "legitimate" woman is if you believe womanhood is a difference of mind not of body. The only way gender identity can be real is if you believe the stereotypes attached to men and women are more than just social prejudices.

Do you believe that sex and gender are different, that sex exists and cannot be changed even if gender can, and that sometimes it's sex, not gender, that matters? If so then congratulations, you are a TERF.

Now ask yourself another question - if behind that terrible dreadful name TERF is nothing more than the reasonable expectation that sex, esepcially its consequences for female people, should continue to be recognised as socially and politically significant, why are so many people invested in portraying so-called "TERF"s as extreme bigots? Who exactly benefits when people like yourself, who consider themsleves to be reasonable and moderate, are scared away from even trying to hear what these "TERF"s are actually saying?

Helleofabore · 17/12/2023 05:26

DC1888 · 17/12/2023 00:39

*My last post in this topic as I'd rather read than get peppered with questions.

Terf is extreme so I reject that accusation, I'm a moderate. I think most people are on this. As I said before I think this whole issue started because some liberals went mental and made it far too easy to change gender, and also started changing the language ("womb havers"). They are responsible for creating the backlash (and one which has gone way too far). The Posie Parker character wouldn't exist if it weren't for the far left losing it.

Are transwomen natural women? No they are not. Sex cannot he changed. Gender identity can though, but the criteria for doing so has to be rigorous and not the one the Scottish bill proposed. Women, and legitimate transwomen (who can also be called women), I think that's a moderate view.

And again we cycle around.

Your position has been unworkable from the get go. It is the position, having these male people now wedged into the word woman, that has caused the harm we are seeing now. This has been explained to you in different ways in this thread.

You have failed to grasp that you are the person here who is the ‘nutter’ you keep accusing everyone else of. Because you are ignorant.

You admit it. Yet, You think we all are too, so you say. Whereas, many of us have read widely and have listened to law experts debate this topic. We have done a huge amount of what could be constituted as research. Some people who post on the threads of FWR are experts though, many are not. But as ignorant as you? No. Because we are not the ones throwing around the slurs and misinformation.

You are.

However, your position is unworkable. So many of us have taken the time to point out the flaws of your posts and you just ignore it all.

Because there is NO RIGOROUS TEST!

You are talking about a diagnosis tool that doesn’t exist. There was always misdiagnosis being given. Even 20 years ago. Less misdiagnosis, I grant you. But there was still misdiagnosis.

Now there is no diagnosis needed at all.

Still, there is absolutely fucking NO magic diagnosis. Therefore gender is not a solid basis that laws should be made on. It is fluid. Even unintentionally. It is this fluidity that shows it is not innate.

If a male transitions after your magic test, and has hormones and surgery, but then detransitions, how will anyone know he has detransitioned again? With that historical diagnosis, he is still able to access female single sex spaces. But feels male so will probably use male facilities. And female designated job roles.

And is he now magically protected by all laws for adults, including those of female and male, by nature of him magically having this diagnosis done by rigorous testing once, but now detransitioning. But that diagnosis is still in place not removed. Or, are you stating that it is not a permanent state? How does that then work? Has this male individual now become a Philip Bunce or Eddy Izzard? Which day do we allow them in? Or have you bigotedly now defined transgender for transgender people and declared fluidity to be non-existent?

Are you getting it yet?

Or did this trans male individual get ‘cured’. yet may have breasts and may have an inverted penis to recreate a vagina. So what sex category legally does he belong in under your proposal?

Under your category, he is a ‘woman’ still. Or has is it a temporary diagnosis and transient? Like an illness not a condition. Is that what you are saying? And if the diagnosis can be changed, how often?

What about that man retransitioning because it was too hard to now live with the neo vagina and breasts as a man? What happens then if this trans person gets dementia. And is a man in their mind again. But is treated like a woman?

Again, your laws mean that this person will be treated as female, on a female dementia ward but he is living again as a very distressed man. Now in a body that he doesn’t recognise as his own. He has yet another layer of body dysphoria.

But he shouldn’t have ever been treated as if he was a female person under law. He should never have been allowed into female single sex spaces designed for not just safety, but privacy and dignity. As your solution has actively allowed. As had the current laws until slowly, slowly, those bigots and nutters you describe have started to pull apart those laws to expose their conflicting nature. And to start protecting women and children again through law cases, through guidance and through getting laws modified from that position that your solution allows.

You describe ‘case by case’ as a solution but you have not once articulated how that works to protect women and children. You simply keep doubling down saying that it is the right approach and that people pointing out you are wrong are bigots and extreme. ‘Nutters’.. All the while showing you haven’t thought this through, you are operating at a level of superficiality that has already proven harmful and dangerous.

And on the name calling point, you have been the poster here using the derisory, derogatory language of the ignorant. Hermaphrodites, bigots and nutters. You seem to be only here to sneer and name call. You equate women who have a depth of knowledge that far outstrips yours as akin to Bible Belt evangelists.

Which is hypocritical considering what you have posted and the lack of any depth of explanation therein. Your posts display that said evangelical style belief that you accuse others of. All centred around this case by case basis, based on rigorous testing. And propped up with the belief that you are the righteous one.

Helleofabore · 17/12/2023 05:35

With that historical diagnosis, he is still able to access female single sex spaces. But feels male so will probably use male facilities. And female designated job roles.

Should be “With that historical diagnosis, he is still able to access female single sex spaces. But feels male so will probably use male facilities. And can still take female designated job roles.”

BeyondHumanKenneth · 17/12/2023 07:00

There seems to me, on the basis of this thread, that there are two types of TERFS, if you take TERF as wishing to keep some spaces female-only.

Those who are TERFs and who own it.

Those who are TERFs and who deny they are and seek to shame the former for being TERFS.

The difference is in shaming others about wanting to keep some spaces female-only. Hence the words 'bigots, regressive' etc.

There is no shame in this, so please if you think like this, just own that you are a TERF and stop trying to shame people for wanting female-only spaces.

Maybe we should invent an acronym to distinguish the two - I suggest a SHTERF a - Shaming TERF who is more focussed on shaming others than actually thinking about the ways forward on this.