12 ways to gently respectfully challenge pro-trans arguments

[Ladyof2024]

I thought this might come in useful to those just beginning to take on the opposition.
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Twelve Ways to Voice Opposition to Daft Ideas Without Losing Friends or Alienating People, by Joanna Gray.

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How to get better at objecting to unedifying ideas

Ask the person suggesting an obviously daft idea if he or she would mind if you shared your opinion about it, rather than foisting it on him or her uninvited.

Respect others’ intentions. Most people are good and are trying their best, so avoid a heavy-handed aggressive disapproval.

Ask questions: “That’s such an interesting idea Chancellor, what are you hoping to achieve by it?” Often, that is sufficient: if the idea is flawed it will unravel itself in no time.

Remember your Aristotle: to win debates you need ethos, logos and pathos. Ethos is your good character and your authority to speak on the subject – most crudely used by those who say “as a mother…”. Logos is the truth of the matter. Pathos is your ability to persuade your opponent. Emotion alone is insufficient to win the point, it must be backed up by truth, but an ability to connect with and respect the emotion of your opponent is vital.

Remember you are debating the idea not the person. Don’t make him or her feel threatened, belittled or ill-informed.

Just try it! You don’t need to present a fully formed Douglas Murray-style-gotcha speech, initially it might just be sufficient to say, “I’m not yet sure why, but this idea is making me feel uncomfortable, may I have a think about it and get back to you?” If social or career disaster doesn’t follow, then you may feel emboldened to make a more spirited and researched objection later.

Be prepared to flatter. “You will know more about this than me but have you thought about…”

Listen to your opponent. Don’t stand there rolling your eyes, tutting or guffawing,

Remain calm and never shout.

Be prepared to use their own language. “Chancellor, this act of removing artworks of men might be considered by some to sit adjacent to sexism…”

Be satisfied with having planted a seed of doubt in those who listen to you, rather than furiously fighting for decisive victory.

Remind yourself why making a stand is important: “If not me, who? If not now, when?”

Yep, agreed. Definitely a grey area.

In many ways, I have a huge sympathy for someone whose sex is misidentified at birth. Even though I've already posted it further up the thread, I'm going to link this BBC article again as it really does lay out how strange a journey it must be for a boy to go through - although it's interesting that it's "common" enough in some places to mean the condition has a colloquial name, and therefore common enough to find others who will really understand the difficulty first hand.

My sympathy drops off a cliff when that person knows that they have this condition, goes through complete male puberty and goes on to compete in women's events.

I have no idea if it's true or not but my children told me that Imane is apparently planning to have Facial Feminism Surgery (or FFS as it is known...). Assuming it's true, my first thought was to wonder if Imane's coaches will decide they'd better treat Imane like a Muslim woman after this surgery, instead of all the hugs and lifting up on shoulders etc. Or maybe the Muslim male coaches do that kind of thing with all Muslim women in Algeria and I'm just ignorant? Silly me for thinking that it would be frowned upon.

Not sure Dadjoke even realises he made that very telling mistake.

Also bathrooms and changing rooms are single sex spaces so they're not "as well as". If they are mixed sex that's a different issue. I don't want to exclude anyone from the space meant for their sex, for the avoidance of all doubt.

I wonder what Freud (not my favourite great thinker of history) would make of all this? I know that mid century movies from the time Freud was taken seriously look terribly quaint now, so I suppose the same will happen re this.

You don't care about trans men at all, except to patronise them. You think they are confused women. You care about trans women being in women's spaces. It was not remotely a slip.

Actually, no. I got excited. I don’t think you do understand.

This is where you own misrepresenting women’s views come into it.

Female people want to exclude male people, legitimately, from female single sex spaces. Male people should be free to enter male single sex spaces, so they are not being ‘excluded from single sex spaces’. If they feel they need to, they can campaign for additional mixed sex spaces.

I care about them as much as any other women and girls that aren't my immediate circle. I care about their wellbeing more than most trans rights activists.

Female people want to exclude male people, legitimately, from female single sex spaces. Male people should be free to enter male single sex spaces, so they are not being ‘excluded from single sex spaces’. If they feel they need to, they can campaign for additional mixed sex spaces.

Just to point out that this has been communicated to this poster literally thousands of times here, by hundreds of female posters. I know you know Helle but just for the benefit of any lurkers.

They are self-harming women. I care about them a lot, they are the reason I have come to know how dangerous and destructive and uncaring genderism is.

I don't massively care about transwomen except that I'd rather not have them in women-only spaces, but I am very distressed about the level of lifelong irreversible damage many transmen have been encouraged to inflict on themselves.

Absolutely. Gay people getting married has no effect on anyone else's privacy or safety. It does not require others to be well-wishers to the happy couple, either directly or indirectly. Nobody is forced to refer to a gay man's life partner as his husband for fear of being accused of bigotry, then threatened, cancelled and even fired from their jobs. They are free to say partner or companion instead. Whereas genderists allow no compromise. You must refer to a man who claims he's a woman as she. You must allow "her" access to spaces previously reserved for biological females. Gay people are also not asking for a complete redefinition of what it means to be heterosexual and insist heterosexuals adhere to their definition. Being gay is not just a belief, either. It's an action- you become romantically attached to people of your own sex, or perhaps you just have sex with them without romantic attachment. There is no action that proves one is transgender. Wearing women's clothes does not prove this. I buy men's clothes not infrequently, if I see something I happen to like. Lots of women do.
It means nothing, since gendered clothing is just a silly social convention. Even having the surgery doesn't prove it, anymore than a woman getting fake boobs proves she was a big-boobed woman inside a small-boobed woman's body. It does prove a commitment to the belief, which is fair enough, they are entitled to believe that and to say so and to, as adults, surgically transform themselves. They are not entitled to enforce this belief socially or politically by bringing consequences on non-believers.

The two are not comparable and it's a shabby excuse for an argument to suggest they are.

Gender critical people want to exclude transgender people from all single-sex spaces,

They don't. You've been told repeatedly, over a long period of time, by many people, that it's not true and yet you still come and lie about it.

Do you not actually HAVE an argument about what we actually want? (You don't need to answer that.) You need to pretend I think something that I don't to attempt to argue against it.

Dadjoke, you couldn't even bring yourself to agree that being trans requires believing there are sexes that match with genders. You clearly agree with a lot of people on here yet for some reason go off on tangents and pretend you don't because we're somehow wrong about what we think.

There are certain circumstances in which trans women (for example) can be excluded from spaces and positions for women, and circumstances in which they can't.

That doesn't make sense, for the sole reason that as far as I can tell (you refuse to clarify), you use women to mean 'adult'. No-one wants to exclude anyone from spaces for adults, except people who aren't adults.

Yes. We have all said it. And that poster has seen those posts over and over.

Single sex spaces for women, for example, in the EA2010, also admit trans women with certain exceptions. Your concept of mixed sex in this context is misleading.

It's up to the service provider to use the exceptions in the act.

If you want to set up a single sex bathroom for women under the EA and exclude transgender women from it, you can certainly try, but it can be subject to legal challenge. You can set up a rape crisis center which excludes trans women, but you can't force an RCC to exclude them.

There is a reason why hard right politicians such as Badenoch wanted to change the EA2010 to specifically remove these rights.

I'll repeat what I said earlier, with some bold for emphasis of various key bits

The problem is that many genderists see people, even vulnerable people, who won't toe their ideological line and pretend that they accept people's "gender identities" as valid as beneath their contempt and undeserving of any consideration at all.

The idea of a conflict of rights or balancing rights does not compute, because they don't believe our needs should be part of it.

However, there is usually an element of cognitive dissonance because most of these people do draw a line in the sand somewhere, and will grudgingly admit that sex matters for some limited purposes.

Yes. We have all said it. And that poster has seen those posts over and over.

Yes. And I'm no longer going to engage with them. I will post to refute their misinformation where necessary, but as I said:

I'm not interested in debating my rights as a woman with men though. It doesn't feel very social justicey for men to lecture me, a woman who has suffered considerably from the actions of men, on what rights I should have.

So I hope that's crystal clear.

Or alternatively, the problem is that many GC people see people, especially vulnerable and marginalised people, who won't toe their ideological line, and deny the rights of trans women and trans men in the population, as beneath their contempt, with ‘invalid’ opinions undeserving of any consideration at all.

I want to know when a male person or a female person identities as a child/infant and the opposite sex, why are we supposed to accept one and not the other?

Or is the next step that these people will be supported to attend nursery and primary school ?

Both are identities. Both should be considered valid, surely? Why aren’t they?

I'm just going to ignore the attempt to DARVO my own words back at me, because it's not something I consider worth bothering with.

What does 'denying the rights of trans women and men' entail exactly?

@Helleofabore it's been said many times but it's not possible to reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. Gender identity ideology is fundamentally irrational.

Well, seeking to have them denied access to spaces to which they are entitled to have that access under the EA is always a popular one in FWR (or rather getting hot under the collar when organisations like John Lewis won’t deny them that access)…

So males in female spaces, sports, prisons and rape crisis centres. Slow hand clap for you. And you’re a feminist you say. Wild.

Access to the single sex spaces of the opposite sex is not dealt with by the Equality Act. Males stay out of female spaces (usually) because they are expected to do so by social contract, not because it's the law.

I have no idea what a "genderist" is. I don't know who they are, and I am not sure why you are directing this at me.

The rights are currently reasonably balanced. Any who wants to remove rights from a minority, in my view, is a bigot.

Males aren't a minority. Trans people have the same rights as everyone else.