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.
-------------

Twelve Ways to Voice Opposition to Daft Ideas Without Losing Friends or Alienating People, by Joanna Gray.

====================================
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?”

This isn't true, is it.

Can you articulate what the GC position actually is? In a way that a GC person would agree with?

(I know exactly what the response to this will be! )

Even Sir Kier Starmer has admitted that MCW do not have the right to be in women's single sex spaces.

https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/07/02/keir-starmer-labour-trans-single-sex-spaces/
You've been fed misinformation.

So, Elle, if you took legal advice and discovered you were wrong (which you are) and that MCW do not have the right to be in women's single sex spaces....then what?

As you know @Ereshkigalangcleg the Equality Act only permits exclusion of eg trans women from women only spaces where it is done for both proportionate and legitimate reasons. But as I say, you knew that already 🙄

What evidence can you provide to back up this supposition?
May I assume you are young? In that case, I was an activist for LGBT rights since before you were born. My concern is that the T in the flag has dwarfed the rest of the movement and has brought in a draconian set of rules that all must follow or be considered "bigots." My concern is the L, G and B are being convinced by unscrupulous T activists that they are not L or B or G, but in fact are T or NB. The rest of the flag is slowly being erased. I'm concerned about not just the misogyny shown by many T activists, but this form of homophobia.
I am all for their rights. I am not for their entitlement to erase all the significance of biological sex, or to erase lesbians, gays, and bisexuals, dominating the movement for their own gain.
If you can't see that this is what has been happening, you have to be willfully blind.

We're allowed to say that our biological sex means something and that we get to have spaces to enjoy privacy on the basis of our sex. You can't shut that down with your ugly claims that it's rooted in bigotry.
In some cases it is. The far right nutjobs (usually religious social conservatives) who claim to be GC are at least partially motivated by bigotry IMO. You know who I mean, the "family values" types who also object to abortion and gay marriage. Just don't try to pull that crap on those of us who care more about human rights than you could possibly fathom, and this is why we object to vicious, authoritatian gender ideology enforcement by a bunch of thugs in cocktail dresses. There are many of us. We won't be silent.

Sorry, which bit are you taking issue with?

Genderists are people who believe there is a thing called 'gender' that a human being can have (or be).

As you know @Ereshkigalangcleg the Equality Act only permits exclusion of eg trans women from women only spaces where it is done for both proportionate and legitimate reasons. But as I say, you knew that already

What I know full well, Elle, is that exception enabling women's only spaces applies to all men, not just "trans women". So those proportionate and legitimate reasons such as women's privacy and dignity and freedom from sexual harassment by men are used every single day all over the country without controversy. Have you actually read some of the examples in the notes? I can quote some if you like.

Single sex spaces are intended to exclude all members of the opposite sex. The upcoming court case involves males with GRCs who want to access them. The other males who "identify" as women don't even get a look in. They are excluded by default as they are unequivocally male for the purposes of the Equality Act.

Not so.
It permits the exclusion of all men, with or without the protected characteristic of GI.

If males have a GRC, they may also be excluded as a proportionate means to a legitimate end.
This test has been presented as a very high bar to clear. It's not. If women's privacy, dignity and safety is at issue - as in communal women's facilities like public toilets, or in a therapy group at a rape crisis centre, for example - the test is met.

And can I say how disconcerting it is to see a woman so fired up because she thinks (erroneously) that men are losing rights, while being so relaxed about women losing the right to even define ourselves as a class of human beings?

Personally I prefer to get my knowledge of the law from, well, the law itself (legislation, case law) than the Pink News (no disrespect to it) and a politician trying to win votes from some terfy mumsnetters!

And I'll happily repeat your repetition of this bit:

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.

Perhaps one of the most well-known examples in the UK when it comes to the discovery of the line in the sand, and its grudging acceptance, is Nicola Sturgeon squirmingly arguing that transwomen are women except in "the prison context":

https://x.com/PeterAdamSmith/status/1620051699900755970?t=hVnP3x3nYG8Kjw46Zmu8ew&s=19

By her own standards, I find it incredibly transphobic that can say this. Why? Surely it can't be because Isla has a penis (as evidenced by the bulge in Isla's pink leggings), as that would also be transphobic. Surely Isla is just one of the girls, albeit a violent one who raped two women, in any context because transwomen are women.... Or is Nicola saying that Isla can enter women's sports, use women's toilets and changing rooms but the line is drawn on prisons because... because.... of "the prison context"?
What about Tiffany Scott, Barbie Kardashian, Scarlet Blake and more? Obviously Tiffany is now dead but when Isla and the others get out of prison, are they full and proper women again because there is no longer a prison context?

Arguably, anyone who draws an arbitrary line according to their own criteria for when transwomen stop being women is even more transphobic than someone who says that they simply don't believe that people have a gender identity. This includes all the TRAs who suddenly decided, according to their own equally unclear arbitrary standards, that Isla wasn't "true trans". Of all people, surely they should agree with Emma Watson that "trans people are who they say they are". We're constantly told that it's transphobic to think otherwise.

There are several sources, if you care to Google. You won't, of course. I picked the Pink News link because I thought it would be more acceptable to s genderist.
You could also look at the guidance of the EHRC or even...read the Act.

And I'll happily repeat your repetition of this bit:

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.

Perhaps one of the most well-known examples in the UK when it comes to the discovery of the line in the sand and its grudging acceptance Nicola Sturgeon squirmingly argue that transwomen are women except in "the prison context":

https://x.com/PeterAdamSmith/status/1620051699900755970?t=hVnP3x3nYG8Kjw46Zmu8ew&s=19

Indeed. A very good example of the cognitive dissonance. It reminds me of a Labour activist on Twitter who once said "trans women are women, except for relationship purposes". Relationship Purposes Robin, he was dubbed.

TA on the streets, Terf in the sheets!

Haha so very often true!

Not so.
It permits the exclusion of all men, with or without the protected characteristic of GI.

If males have a GRC, they may also be excluded as a proportionate means to a legitimate end.
This test has been presented as a very high bar to clear. It's not. If women's privacy, dignity and safety is at issue - as in communal women's facilities like public toilets, or in a therapy group at a rape crisis centre, for example - the test is met.

And can I say how disconcerting it is to see a woman so fired up because she thinks (erroneously) that men are losing rights, while being so relaxed about women losing the right to even define ourselves as a class of human beings?

Well said. Great post.

As I’ve already said, I choose to refer to the law - legislation and case law. Legislation is…. the Act in this case.

I’ve also reviewed the regulator guidance.

But you stick with your googling.

Once again @Snowypeaks I am done engaging with you!

When Keir Starmer couldn't make up his mind whether women had penises or not, I was really hoping that someone would ask him on camera whether he would date a woman with a penis if he and his wife were to ever divorce.

If not, why not?

If people like Nichola Sturgeon and Keir Starmer want laws that uphold the belief that transwomen are women as if it's factually true, there should be no context within which it isn't. They either are or aren't women.

Or if they accept it's belief, rather than fact, why do they think this belief should be upheld as fact in law?

If people like Nichola Sturgeon and Keir Starmer want laws that uphold the belief that transwomen are women as if it's factually true, there should be no context within which it isn't. They either are or aren't women.

Or if they accept its belief, rather than fact, why do they think this belief should be upheld as fact in law?

Exactly.

I googled the quote from KS, not the legal point at issue.

Nobody is fooled, Elle.
You don't know the law on this but you will not admit it.

You couldn’t be further from the truth. But it’s the old jammie dodger again from me @Snowypeaks (wish my phone had that emoji)’

I agree no one is fooled.

They are Mumsnet emojis by the way, so all phones have them.

Yes. In claiming that trans women "are" women through some ineffable quality of "gender" that is nothing to do with the physical qualities of womanhood, genderism has indeed successfully legally destroyed some of women's sex based rights and supports despite the male-bodied trans women suffering none of the challenges for which these things exist.

And even where legal protections for women (the sex class) do still exist, many in this movement continue to howl outrage that there should be any space where women (the sex class) can choose to be physically apart from men, or any right to tell their own truths outside those of men.

This shows so clearly the dishonesty and misogyny of the genderist movement.

Women, the sex class, the people whose sex based challenges and needs necessitated those rights and supporting the first place, lose out so that men with the ineffable quality of womangender can gain.

Because whatever the GRA or Equalities Act says, the law does not, cannot, somehow mystically make these men actually women. It's just a legal fiction, an empty word with nothing meaningful behind it, a marker that assigns a status not a descriptor of a material fact.

So what these laws that give trans women the right to enter women's spaces and take women's resources really do, the way they "make" a man into a woman with a right to be in womens spaces, is simply by forcing unwilling women into playing along with these men's charade. No magic, no "transition", just the base exercising of the political and social power of men over women. Again.

What a nasty, misogynistic movement!

Sometimes TWAW but sometimes TWAM
...

This all makes perfect sense 👍

“If people like Nichola Sturgeon and Keir Starmer want laws that uphold the belief that transwomen are women as if it's factually true, there should be nocontext within which it isn't. They either are or aren't women.”

“Or if they accept its belief, rather than fact, why do they think this belief should be upheld as fact in law?”

We keep asking this and never get even an acknowledgment of the inconsistency.

Either any male who states they are a female person (ie either girl/woman) is indeed a female person. Or they are not and can be treated as being a male person for sport, for rape crisis centres, for provision of medical examination or for conviction of rape…..

Every month there are less and less occasions a male’s demand to be treated as a female person will be considered acceptable. The number of people who also accept that these male people are to be treated as female is dropping as they realise the massive disconnect with material reality those demands now have and they realise it was never anything but a philosophical belief.

There is a sense of desperation when I now see posts that declare that TWAW. Because that statement has lost any power with the growing number of ‘except when …’ amendments that now follow that.