Older generations show resistance to trans rights

[Inauthentic]

"Millennials and Gen Z tend to be overwhelmingly supportive of trans people, having grown up in a more inclusive environment, while older generations show far more resistance to trans rights, likely intimidated by the speed of social change."

Is this your experience?
There appears to be an overwhelming support for gender critical beliefs on Mumsnet.
Is it because it's mainly older generations engaging in this debate?

How old are you and what are your views?

I am 45yo and I mostly support trans rights (with the exception of trans athletes competing in woman's events and I agree puberty blockers is a grey area)

@Nextdoor55
Its very sad and worrying that people who have a mental illness such as gender dysphoria, which apparently makes them suicidal, are then told that having surgeries and taking opposite sex hormones is the only way to alleviate that illness. This is the whole reason that GIDS ended up being closed. Therapists lied to children, they had little to no follow up, the evidence that they became mentally well post transition just doesn’t exist. Even the evidence that not transitioning leads to suicide. In fact the opposite is true. Despite the very long waiting lists, there hasn’t been an explosion in suicide by children on those waiting lists. I know 3 children who were referred to GIDS. All 3 have come out as gay and no longer claim to be trans.
Mermaids, that well known charity, exploited that storyline. Telling parents ‘better a trans child than a dead child’ was one of their mantras. But it just isn’t true. Suicide rates pre and post transition remain the same.
Children with gender dysphoria have been badly let down by the medical profession.

To be fair, " being lovely" is not an indication that one has actually changed sex - and so long as everyone is aware of that ,and has no false or unrealistic expectations of themselves or others, then there should be no issue.

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/paedophile-secretly-filmed-women-public-28737673

it never happens

For those who think the 'grey area' for sport lies with allowing 'male athletes' to just be themselves and even if it is unfair, that it should still be allowed because [insert emotionally manipulative reason here], this may be a good place to start. The Canadian Centre's report and its rebuttal.

[emotionally manipulative reasons such as - 'there is only a few', 'everyone should have access to sport where they feel accepted', 'but these people are treated as female in every other aspect of their lives, it is cruel to exclude them from female sports', 'but they work hard to suppress their testosterone', 'it is not cheating if the laws and regulations allow it', 'they are so marginalised, why add to that' and so on and so on.]

Here is the original:


www.cces.ca/sites/default/files/content/docs/pdf/transgenderwomenathletesandelitesport-ascientificreview-e-final.pdf



here is the rebuttal:


idrottsforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/devineetal221129.pdf



”When Ideology Trumps Science: A response to the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport’s Review on Transwomen Athletes in the Female Category”



Cathy Devine, Emma Hilton, Leslie Howe, Miroslav Imbrišević, Tommy Lundberg, Jon Pike



Independent Scholar; University of Manchester; University of Saskatchewan; Open University (UK); Karolinska Institutet



29 November 2022



This is good reading for anyone who wants some background. Although it is a long read.



Some highlights:



"Descriptive accounts tell us how things are. Normative accounts tell us how things ought to be. To answer the question: ‘is it fair for TW to compete in female sport?’ we need both."



and



"For example, the anonymous authors claim evidence showing that male advantage is lost after one year of testosterone suppression, while the two papers cited in support of this statement explicitly argue that male advantage is retained well beyond one year of suppression. In fact, a recent cross-sectional study (Mobilia Alvares et al, 2022) measuring the perfor- mance of transwomen suggests that the advantage may be maintained after 14 years of testosterone suppression." (p. 4-5)

And

"The Range Argument rests on a misunderstanding of fairness in sport. The same misunderstanding lies behind the repeated claim that it is wrong to compare TW with male athletes (‘cis’ men), and that they should be com- pared with female athletes (‘cis’ women). The difference is between the two conceptions of fairness in play: the ‘Advantage’ conception and the ‘Range’ conception. The Advantage view justifies our current categorisation into male and female sport, and so justifies the existence of women’s sport. The Range view does not justify the existence of women’s sport: rather, it would prescribe a sports category defined on the basis of some metric or set of metrics as a substitute for women’s sport – for example, tall sport and short sport. On the Advantage account of fairness, what matters is male advan- tage, so the appropriate comparison is between Transwomen and males to see whether there is retained male advantage. On the Range view, what mat- ters is whether TW are in the range of female athletes, so this prescribes that the appropriate comparison is with female athletes. This leads to the result that some TW metrics are within the female range. But the same objection applies: what matters is the removal of male advantage, not whether some males are (for example) shorter than some females." p 5-6



and



"Sports categories do not exist to account for undertraining and poor fitness; there are plenty of opportunities at the recreational level for TW to join other equally under- trained and unfit males." p 7

Also on p 7



"The CCES write in the conclusion of their Executive Summary (9): ‘There is no firm basis available in evidence to indicate that trans women have a consistent and measurable overall performance benefit after 12 months of testosterone suppression.’ If that really were the case, then the inclusion of TW would not be prudent. Suppose it turns out that they do have a sig- nificant advantage over women (which is actually the case), then, having included TW would have been unfair (and unsafe) for women. The prudential principle is this: if we lack conclusive evidence, but a change of policy could lead to bad outcomes, then we should not implement such a policy – until we have such evidence. The paper equivocates between three claims: that there is no evidence of advantage, that there is no advantage, and that there is advantage (but fairness must be traded off against inclusion). This is deeply confused, but we note here that absence of evidence does not support a policy of including possible male advantages in female sport."



then 



"Furthermore, what is supposed to happen once we have achieved ‘rep- resentative levels’ of participation? Should we then resurrect the fairness criterion and exclude all TW? With zero participation, we would have to open the female category again for TW, and this ‘game’ (close, open, close, open) could go on forever." p 8

and



"The other view is to say that, because the sociocultural disadvantages faced by TW are ‘special’ and differ fundamentally from the disadvantages of other athletes, sports authorities should accede to the demand that they be included in female sport. On this line of argument, inclusion of TW in female sport is not fair, but is an act of solidarity with them. This justification, though, must attend to the opposite claim: that because inclusion is not fair, it amounts to an act of animosity towards female athletes." p 10

Page 12 & 13 bring in sex testing and how olympic women athletes were all in support of it but that it was ignored.

And how sexism is rife. 



"Similarly, the voices of black elite female athletes from the Global South without these XY DSDs/VSDs, are ignored in the name of anti-racism, in fa- vour of advocacy for athletes who do have them. This completely disregards the black elite female athletes without these congenital conditions from the Global South, who are well represented in, for example, elite athletics, and depend on female categories and the World Athletics DSD regulations for their success"

TL/DR - No. Sport is not a 'grey area'. If male athletes compete in female events, they remove opportunities for female people who have no other choice, they put female athletes in danger of injury and harm.

There is no other categories that allow a group from outside the protected designations to participate. No 25 year olds in the over 85 year olds, or the under 12 year olds, no person with good vision allowed in the category for people with no vision. Why is any person insisting this special treatment should be allowed?

Isn’t this an example of the system working though?
he’s going to go into that bathroom whether it’s allowed or not. He was rightly arrested and charged.
In struggling to see what would be different if sex based bathrooms were the law? What would be different here in this scenario?

If women and girls are told and educated (directly or indirectly, including with signage telling them that they have to allow male people into the toilets because the venue has stated they should be there), you leave women and girls in the situation that they will only ever be able to report an incident if it happens.

Do you see the issue?

That makes a mockery of safeguarding principles. Whereas in the past, if any female person saw a male person in the toilet, or just entering the toilet, they could raise the alarm. ie. get police or security, tell others not to go in etc. If that basic ability has now been removed, it means that a woman or girl has to be harmed in a provable way for action to be taken.

How many women and girls have to be harmed before all male people (over about 8 years old) are again excluded from toilets?

@valensiwalensi a commonly used phrase here is "good men stay out so bad men stand out". If everyone understands that males aren't allowed in women's spaces, people like this criminal are more likely to be spotted, challenged and stopped. If males are allowed in women's spaces, or if there is enough confusion and uncertainty about the rules, then men like this have an easier time.

All the teens I know are roughly in accord with 'gender critical' views. Otherwise known as basic common sense. (There are only two sexes; you can't change sex.)

All the teens I know are also very aware of the fact that they shouldn't talk about these issues, at all, ever. They know not to voice opinion or ask questions. They may be disciplined for wrongthink, or attacked on social media.

IME it sometimes comes out as wee memes, or daft jokes.

This observation holds true for most adults, too.

@valensiwalensi

I think that the point is that many males will fear being challenged in single sex spaces, so will find it harder to just enter and swan around. They either creep in at quiet points or try to take advantage of unisex spaces (statistically it is proven that women are less safe in unisex spaces). The "difficulty" is increased in single sex spaces, so overall fewer assaults happen. Therefore, if all spaces are effectively made unisex and welcome to males, the social policing of entering a space meant for females falls away and overall the number of assaults will rise - same number of men who would like to be predatory, but more options for those who would. And few options for vulnerable women to avoid spaces where there might be predatory males.

Anecdotally, I was stalked at my gym. It was quite a tough time for me as a young woman (student). I told the gym staff (male) and they implied I should be flattered and did nothing. Things came to a head when he tried to follow me into the ladies' changing room to persuade me to go on a date with him and an older woman who'd clearly seen what was going on gave him a very loud piece of her mind. She might have done it anyway, but the fact that he crossed a boundary and invaded a woman's space probably emboldened her to lose her shit with him - she certainly couldn't have told him to go away and never come back in a unisex space! I am forever grateful to her.

'bad men will just do it anyway so why bother trying to stop them' has been done to death upthread / on other threads.

Back to sport.

I feel real upset and disheartened at the framing of fairness in women's sport as 'banning trans people from sport' . As a PP said, no trans people are banned, but they are expected to compete in the appropriate sex category - like everyone else.

The ex Olympic Swinner Sharron Davies has a unique insight into competing with opponents who have benefited from testosterone as she swam against the East Germans in the 70s/80s (when testosterone doping was rife). She discusses this in her book Unfair Play (which is also on Spotify as an audio book).

She is standing up for women and girls in sport because she lived through unfair play once and she can see its happening again.

@Nextdoor55

I hope that your child is doing well now

Statistically, it really isn't true that trans people are most targeted for violence in the U.K.

To be clear, I wasn't responding to your post!

That sounds like an awful experience.

Access to single sex spaces isn't governed by whether or not you are lovely.

And what you do with your body is usually, but not always, your business.

Some exceptions:

• You cannot consent to someone inflicting actual bodily harm, or more serious bodily harm, upon you. This effectively imposes legal limits on the consensual sexual activity of adults by outlawing more extreme forms of sadomasochism.
• You cannot consent to undergoing female genital mutilation.
• You cannot have an abortion without a medical reason if you have passed the legal limit for doing so. You will therefore be obliged to carry the baby to term and give birth to it, and attempting to prevent your baby from being born alive and healthy in these circumstances is a criminal offence.
• You cannot refuse consent to being strip searched by the police in circumstances where the law provides that such a search may be carried out on you.
• You cannot consent to getting a tattoo if you are under the age of 18.
• If you are suffering from severe psychiatric problems you may be sectioned and forcibly restrained.

So yes, bodily autonomy. But there are limits.

I am 53 and gender critical, I have 3 teens who are also gender critical because we have discussed the issues at length at home.

Yes @crunchermuncher

Or campaign for their own competitions.

Truth is that only a very small minority of people actually believe that trans people "are" their acquired sex. Most people know it is a fiction to "be kind" and so the debate is just about where we draw the line. Even the OP acknowledges sport as an exception and possibly puberty blockers, so the OP is in the terf camp of allowing for reality sometimes. Once we realise that probably 90% of people are in the "sometimes but not always" camp and the stigma attached to not saying that the emperor has no clothes on falls away, then we might be able to go back to some sensible boundaries and the tone of the debate would improve for trans people too.

I wouldn't be surprised if this correlates with life experience- I came of age in the height of ladette culture at a time when being sexualised was sold to me as being empowering, and most my peers (including me!!) were seeking validation from men.

It's taken life experience to realise that actually, what men think of me is irrelevant to my feminity and that however hard I tried to pretend it wasn't the case, pregnancy and breastfeeding does take its toll on careers. Plus looking back at the expected behaviours between me and my brothers growing up, as an adult I realise how many sex based expectations were put upon me by those around me.

As a teen and young adult I'd have rolled my eyes at a frumpy middle aged woman with gender critical opinions.

Year later, and with my fair share of sexual harassment experiences along with birth and breastfeeding and my perspective has changed somewhat on the need to preserve female spaces.

I only know a few young adult transpeople. They vary individually as much as any group of people do. The only common factor is that they centre themselves and talk about how they feel and gender ideology constantly. There make sure everyone is aware of their views.

@Tinysoxxx

I would partially agree with this. I worked with two trans people, both trans men. One of them was not noticeably female, just looked like a small dude and was the happiest, most contented, self assured person. Gender identity was never mentioned. Presumably because people identified him in the manner he wished.

The other was noticeably female, and basically looked like the stereotype of the butch lesbian. Daily discussions - lectures - were based around trans rights and lamentations regarding misgendering, the nhs not funding top surgery and their plight. Their belongings were covered in trans words and images. It was exhausting…. People were identifying them as female because they looked female and biologically that is what they are. Interactions felt like therapy sessions and this person was very disturbed.

Note that one of the trans men wanted to be referred to as a ‘he’ and one wanted to be referred to as ‘they’.

Overall I don’t think people should be so controlling over others and offended regards everything. But there we are.

@Nextdoor55

I’m glad your child is doing better and more settled. I would be skeptical that the mental health issues have gone for good. Regards trans rights, I am in agreement that something that makes life outcomes better for a tiny percentage of people while making like outcomes worse for most of the rest of society is not feasible in the long term, I think there will be a major push back eventually when negative implications for bigger groups (such as women, children, people with mental health and neurodiversity) are properly documented.

Also - why do we see so many transwomen beating all the women in sports?

I can't recall ever seeing a race/ competition where a transwoman entered the women's competition, then got thrashed by all the natal women.

Seems rather.... coincidental. If there isn't a physical advantage to being born male.

Edit for typo

@crunchermuncher

differences between male and female

https://www.livestrong.com/article/355987-female-male-muscles/

however there are also very substantial differences in muscle and other factors between races (google ‘differences muscle race)…. So it could be argued in the interests of fairness that we should be categorising athletes on the basis of race too… except that it isn’t acceptable….

https://slate.com/technology/2008/12/race-genes-and-sports.html#

I actually find that sport can be the best lever to start a discussion.

There are a lot of middle class white men who believe that saying "trans women are women" is the correct, progressive viewpoint.

Because they are gender conforming themselves, they see a trans woman who chooses to present in a feminine way as a "non man" who does not belong in men's spaces. They consider that it is fine to think this because the trans women consider themselves to be "non men" who do not belong in men's spaces, and believe they belong in women's spaces. The middle class white men therefore believe that women should also consider trans women to be "non men" who belong in women's spaces. They are encouraged in this belief by the kind of young, attractive, privileged, well-educated, left leaning women they choose to socialise with, date and marry, who also tend to say that "of course trans women are women and belong in women's spaces".

But many of these men, and to a lesser extent the women, are interested in sport.

There are an awful lot of people, mainly "progressive" left leaning men, who will say that trans women are women, but should not be competing in women's sport, because that's not fair.

I absolutely love it when this comes up in conversation, because it is the Achille's heel of their argument.

Talk me through this one, Jon, You think trans women are women. Why shouldn't they compete in women's sport, if they are women? Because it's not fair? Why isn't it fair? Because they are bigger and stronger and faster than women which means they'll have a competitive advantage in sport? Right, so we are acknowledging that they are not physically the same, that a trans woman's body is not the same as a woman's body. But if your position is that they are women because they have the gender identity of woman, isn't it unfair to exclude them from the women's competition? Isn't sport ultimately just a bit of fun? No? OK, so we are acknowledging that women's sport matters, that allowing people who have been through male puberty to compete in women's categories is unfair on female athletes who have no real prospect of beating them. Understood. That's a reasonable position. I'm sure most people would agree with that, even if excluding people like Laurel Hubbard and Lia Thomas and Emily Bridges from women's competitions would ultimately be very disappointing for them.

What I don't get is why women's sport is where you draw the line. I agree that women's sport is important, but is a woman losing out on a sporting opportunity really a graver injustice than a woman being raped in prison by Karen White, or female rape survivors not having access to single sex support because all the rape crisis organisations have decided that female only support groups are inherently transphobic?

Then once you've managed to get them to concede that it isn't actually very logical to be fine with those things because trans women are women, but draw the line at women's sports, you are within striking distance of being able to gently put it to them that if they believe that trans women are women except for all the situations in which they aren't, they don't really believe trans women are women and are just saying they do because they think it is what they are supposed to believe.

No need to differentiate by race. Because there are enough exceptional athletes across all the races to ensure enough fairness for all. The race category is not as reliable a predictor of performance as the sex and age categories.

Does sound like it.
With all those advancements in skincare it’s just impossible to tell anyone’s age, never mind gender! 🙃

Oi!

Susanist!

Same here. I remember being at university in the mid nineties thinking why is there a feminist society? We dont need feminism anymore, they've done it, women are equal, look at me studying science with all the boys and partying just as hard as they are. I realised a decade later when I started having children what an illusion that was (though actually I should have realised much earlier in my twenties after multiples incidents of sexual harrassment on public transport and watching the boys in our grad jobs be rapidly and automatically promoted). Its easy to be the same as the boys in the university bubble, but out in the real world you realise how much systemic sexism and misogyny there still is in modern society.

When I started having children, it was my life and career that had a bomb dropped on it, not my male partner, whose life carried on pretty much as normal out any evening after work. Even post young children when I thought it was time where I could catch up and got an exciting new job I've recently discovered that all the men at my level are being paid more, still, today. And lets not forget the actual biological differences, years of PMT, periods that make you feel wrung out, pregnancies that end with crutches, invasive medical procedures, terrible childbirths.

That is why inadequate men that can't hack it with their peers coming along and appropriating what they think (wrongly) are the fun bits of being a woman - lingerie, swishy skirts, painted nails, long hair - infuriate me so much. Even beta males that think they can be women have all the cards stacked in their facvour. I will never accept them as women.

That isn't becasue I'm middle aged. Its because of my life experience. I do wonder how many of the young handmaidens that are students now fawning over TRAs will look back in a couple of decades and feel ashamed. I cringe now when I think of what went through my head when I walked past the femsoc stand in the nineties.

I think many people start to view these discussions differently when they realise how emotionally manipulated they may have been.

I think that these two documents (Dentons and the law center) shed quite a lot of light on the strategies behind where we are at present.

Here is an article discussing it.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists

You can find the Dentons report through this link though.

https://gendercriticalwoman.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/iglyo_v3-1.pdf

Just adding this link for the Messaging Guide : Transgender Youth and the Freedom to Be Ourselves

From December 2021

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5fd0f29d0d626c5fb471be74/t/61b13d00236e2f7f2dbb9a36/1639005441624/Transgender+Youth+and+the+Freedom+to+Be+Ourselves.pdf

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4439659-Ryan-Grim-results-of-latest-trans-activism-poll-A-tweaked-playbook-for-the-US?reply=113763453

The Transgender Law Center’s work.

This link also shows a 'playbook' on how to leverage other social justice issues to manipulate people into supporting beliefs not upheld with any factual or scientific evidence at all. In fact, in this link above, the general population are called 'persuadables'. They are not hiding that this is pure emotional manipulation.

And finally, here is something similar from the UK Greens. Just in case people still doubt that there is an emotionally manipulative tactic being used across the world. This one gives people stock answers that they believe will work to either shame people into agreeing with them or that they feel will be 'convincing'.

https://lgbtiqa.greenparty.org.uk/2023/06/15/dogwhistle-guidance/

it is in archive sites if you want to track it down. (Ie plug the link into archive dot ph)

Caution: the link to the Greens includes some misinformation presented as 'facts'.

Happy to have a discussion about this with anyone with questions.