"Lots of women disagree with you!" - How to respond to this?

[TERFCat]

Recently, the "many women disagree with TERFs" (or something to that effect) argument has been given as a response to me.

How would you respond to this point?

Hypothetically, if there was a poll and 99% of women agreed yo allow men in women's safe spaces, what would you say?

I'm gender critical through and through BTW! I just can't think of a good response to the above points!

“Don’t be daft, no one thinks it’s possible to change sex. Not even you.”

'and plenty more agree with me! When polls are conducted they show a majority are on my side.'

"I personally wouldn't be getting my 'stats' from Thicktok, but if that's what you prefer..."

What is a woman?

I would ask what, specifically, they disagree with.

Women are self excluding from rape crisis services because those services are refusing to provide single sex services.

Services are being asked to provide (or more strictly speaking, go back to providing) a single sex service, alongside the 'inclusive' mixed services they currently provide.

They are not only refusing to do this but are attacking services which provide this and are receiving funding from other sources (for example Beira's Place). It's worth bearing in mind that the existence of the other single sex service will not impact the funding that the mixed sex service receives in any way but the mixed sex service still campaigns against it's existence.

I would ask why they disagree with single sex services being available alongside the others.

And even if 99% of women disagreed, what would they suggest should happen for the women who cannot use mixed sex services, for a number of reasons.

It depends, if it's a general comment about GC-ness, 'I'd just shrug and say yeah well lots of women agree with me too'.
Or 'Well people believe lots of strange things, don't they?'
I agree with AlbertVille that if it's specifically TWAW, a more animated 'you do realise you can't actually change sex, don't you?'

My late mother had a highly effective side-eye accompanied by a brusque 'Ah here!' [in a Dublin accent] which shut down any threatened teenage nonsense from us, and would come in very handy in these circs

My rights are not yours to give away

The 2021 census stats show transgender people make up 0.5% of the population (England & Wales) and we consider their needs in the provision of services and legal protections. Even if the population of women (and men) needing single-sex spaces was only 1%, a fair and just society would accommodate their needs too. However, recent polling suggests a much higher %, a majority, of the population want to retain single sex spaces. I’m not as keen an archivist as other FWRers so I will have to rely on them for links to the polls. 🙏

Census data link:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/genderidentity/bulletins/genderidentityenglandandwales/census2021

Lots of people think the world is flat, too.

I'm happy to campaign to keep our hard won rights, including for women who disagree with me.😇

What exactly do lots of women disagree with? That raped women should be allowed to choose to be counselled by someone without a penis? Why would a woman disagree with that?

Hypothetically, if there was a poll and 99% of women agreed yo allow men in women's safe spaces, what would you say?
I would make an appeal to diversity. We are constantly having this unpopular social engineering forced upon us at the same time as being told to respect diversity. The trans agenda is largely a niche western middle class cause with virtually no support outside this ivory tower. Women from all backgrounds, all nations and all religions need to be considered in these decisions.

"many women disagree with TERFs"

• And many more agree with them
• You do not get to give away the rights of other women just because you are ok with the situation
• are you sure about that? Do you know what so-called TERFs actually believe?
• When a man says he is a woman, what changes him into a woman? Is it cosmetic surgery? No. Most (80%?) keep their penises. Is it taking synthetic drugs like hormones? No. That is just putting chemicals in your body. Is it wearing women’s clothes? No, a skirt is just a skirt and wearing trousers doesn’t turn a woman into a man. Is it DNA? Nope. Cosmetic surgery, drugs and clothes cannot change your DNA.
• can you explain to me, exactly, how sex changes?
• In 100 years or 1000 years when archaeologists dig up bones and analyse them, will they say ‘aha, transgender’ or will they say ‘this one’s make and that one is female’.
• dying my hair does not make me a natural blonde. Cosmetic surgery doesn’t make a man a woman.

Or prisons. I would be asking the 'other women disagree with you!!' lot, what specifically they disagree with regarding objections to putting violent male sex offenders in the female prison estate. And not as a hypothetical, as it did and does continue to happen.

The majority of people in the world have always known, and still know, that human beings cannot change sex. The fact that some women have been convinced that we have to pretend otherwise in order to 'be kind' does not mean that, deep down, they really believe TWAW.

And the fact that some have been persuaded that women need to give up to men their right to privacy and safety in single sex spaces is not progressiveness or inclusivity - it's just typical of the ages-old expectation that women will put themselves last and allow men's wishes and desires to take precedence.

Even if other women are happy to have a man in their changing room, they don't get to make that decision for me and my DD.

I don’t set my moral compass by what “most people think”. For me I’d use capital punishment as a parallel, but I appreciate that doesn’t work for everyone

Well first off if that person actually wants a conversation I'd check they understand what so called TERFS actually believe. Pretty pointless to proceed otherwise.

Do they understand GC = critical of gender, that belief in stereotypes that is SHARED by trans idealogues and traditional conservatives alike?

In the unlikely event they actually engage honestly (it rarely happens with posters here) then take them at face value: They know lots of women who are fine with mixed sex facilities. So what? Seriously, all that tells you is they know a pretty privileged, insular bunch of women who are either ignorant about current affairs or so cowed by social pressure they're happy to give away rights of all women because they personally think they don't need them.

The fact that one individual doesn't know any women suffering trauma from abuse; incarcerated women; Muslim women; mothers of children with SEN etc doesn't change the reality of the world.

I would add, that it really does seem important to some people that we pretend there's no difference between the sexes. If that's your aim, why are you talking to me/women? Get out there and talk to the males. Tell males to stop cat-calling, discriminating against, groping, coercing, using, abusing, controlling, dismissing, raping, and murdering women, and we'll take it from there?

People's responses to questions will depend on how the question is framed, for a start; and also it will depend on the demographic that has been targeted for questioning.

Most people have not really thought these issues through - they either go along with the consensus of their social media tribe, or else they are pretty oblivious as to the more fundamental issues involved, and so respond in ways they consider to be socially acceptable. They will be able to gauge from the tone of the interviewer, or the wording of the question what the 'correct' response is supposed to be.

( Lots of people voted in the Brexit referendum ( both for and against) without any real understanding of the issues. They voted tribally and they voted with emotion - based upon how they perceived their identity in an international context. Most people had no clue about the workings of the EU, let alone form an opinion on whether they approved or not)

"many women disagree with TERFs"

How would you respond to this point?

• Many women are ‘TERFs’.
• Many women were against women’s suffrage.
• Many women haven’t thought things through properly.
• Many women hate feminism.
• Many women feel uncomfortable asserting boundaries because they don’t feel entitled to insist upon men respecting them. This is why we need feminism.
• When it comes to bodily consent, 1 “no” trumps any number of “yesses”.
• Many women prefer to be popular with men than to stick up for women’s rights.
• There’s so much misinformation, most people don’t really know what they are disagreeing with.

Was this in an online disagreement or a real life discussion? In my view there are different responses that work better for each.

"What do you disagree with? What is it you think I think?" Make them say it. It will likely be some nonsense like all GCs hate Trans people.

'Great, diversity of thought is on the whole a good thing, perhaps we can have a respectful debate (about gender stereotypes, evidence based healthcare, safeguarding and the hard won rights of women), or disagree agreeably?'

Plenty of women didn’t want the vote.
and your point is?

I would ask what the percentages were, who carried out the poll and how that meant that it was on for my rights to be given away.

“Can you be more specific? What is it they don’t agree with?”

Given how GC views are (wilfully) misrepresented, who knows what these sorts of statements mean these days.

I'd say that even if some other women disagree, they don't have the right to consent to women's spaces being made mixed sex spaces on behalf of all other women. If those women believe they share the same identity as trans women and want to share spaces and sports with them on that basis, maybe they should come up with a word for whatever it is they think they and trans women are all identifying with and campaign for spaces and sporting categories for that group.