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?”

Gender is how you think about and perceive yourself.

@ElleWoods15 that is actually your identity as a person, not your gender. Your entire identity can't be your gender. You are a unique person with your own values, personality, and beliefs. You're not just a gender. Gender may indeed be a specific part of your identity, though. Can you pinpoint what that is? I'm genuinely curious, because I have never had any perception of this thing that is called gender.

This is thoughtful, but I have some areas of disagreement.

It is one of the peculiar, unique features of this battle that there is no middle ground. (What I am about to say about GI applies to the ideology of gender identity, not the mere belief in gendered souls.)

There is no possibility of compromise because a middle ground doesn't exist.

GI categorises people on the basis of a subjective, unverifiable feeling. Sex realists recognise sex.
Either women exist as a class of human beings or we don't. Either sex is binary, or it isn't. Either a space is single sex or it isn't.

Religions rely on faith to fill in gaps of logic or rationality, but the absolute incoherence of GII is a feature, not a bug. The instability of gender categories makes compromise impossible in law and unworkable for social policy and planning.

Another unique feature of the ideology of gender identity is that we cannot live and let live, that everyone has to believe in it and it has to apply to everybody and mandate everyone's behaviour - or it doesn't exist. It's entirely performative and requires an audience.
"Look at my clothes! Observe my pronouns badge! Now you must think of me in a certain way or you are denying my existence and subjective beliefs."

Even the most virulent political ideologies or religions do not rely on compliance in other people to exist.

(Language is another huge, related problem. Americans and British people can mutually converse in their own languages, translating each other in their heads. The colonisation of non-GII language coupled with the refusal (inability?) to understand original meaning, all make discussion difficult if not impossible. As if the American refuses to accept that when I say purse, I mean what she calls a wallet, not a handbag.)

Back to the article...
I'm also not sure it's true that both sides agree gender stereotypes are too constraining.
Overall, genderists embrace the existence of gender stereotypes. That is absolutely fundamental to the idea of being in the wrong body. Specifically, the males who claim to be women (MCW) who have a special interest revel in gender stereotypes.
Generally, it is claimed that transitioning is freeing, an expression of the true, authentic self. That doesn't suggest a rejection of gender stereotype boxes, but rather of a desire to break out of one box and climb into another. Even many of the "non-binary" people respect gender boxes, because they still label dress styles, behaviour male or female but they make eclectic choices from each box.

I would also argue that transphobia is a largely theoretical threat, whereas violent and predatory men present a real, long-standing threat to women.

It's the early hours and I am in "sleepy but unable to sleep" mode, so I hope what I have posted above makes sense.

Elle

Can you explain more about what you mean here-

“And yet actually if you speak to children who are trans you find that for some, the fact they are a gender other than the sex assigned to them at birth had been communicated by them to their care givers long before anyone could have taught them about ‘gender ideology”

because I don’t want to put words in your mouth or misinterpret what you say.

Gender is how you think about and perceive yourself.

I honestly am confused by this. If i think of myself as quiet, or honest, those things are my gender/genders? That's not how most people seem to use the word.

If you mean "what sex you think you are really despite your physical body" then you must be referring to the sexist/ homophobic notion of "boy brain" or "girl brain", surely?

Really happy to listen if it's something else @ElleWoods15 ?

I could only 'see myself' as male if I thought there was something about myself that was only congruent with being male and incompatible with being female.

I would be genuinely very grateful for a single example of what that 'something' might be.

My belief is that no-one actually knows what sort of thing this might be, but I'd like to be proved wrong because it's actually too depressing to think I'm right.
It always seems to boil down to some loose idea of masculinity/ femininity.

Yes, you make perfect sense, @Snowypeaks.

I'd add that the Friends' summary makes a category error when talking about "the socially constructed boundaries around notions of male and female". They mean 'masculine and feminine' - that's the socially constructed part, not the biological categories.

Of course if something is assigned - especially to a newborn - that is what somebody else thinks about them, not what they think about themselves. And therefore by this definition it cannot be gender.

Indeed. I was interested in how anyone who says that sex is assigned at birth would square the circle that "gender" is something else.

Before I came across MN I was trying to make sense of all of this. The question I asked above is an example of the kind of thing I used to ask on FB - I wasn't being malicious but something just didn't make sense to me, so I pulled out the bit I found illogical and played it back in the way I just did then i.e with an obvious flaw.
It wasn't until I joined MN, asked a million more questions to lots of different people and listened to this (posted by someone on MN) that I realised that it all came down to belief:

And like any other belief (e.g. Christianity), there are illogical inconsistencies that only believers will overlook. It simply takes faith - and your faith will be tested by doubters. The same applies.

So @ElleWoods15 please feel free to ignore my question as we'll just end up going round in circles and back to the same position: (I assume) you believe that everyone has a gender identity (as demonstrated by sex being assigned at birth and gender being how you think about and perceive yourself), I don't. Just as Christians believe that Jesus is the son of god (as demonstrated by the immaculate conception and virgin birth), I don't.

Personally, I think the post from the OP is great. Obviously, as PPs have said, if you come up against a true believer, you'll never persuade them. Likewise with Christianity - I'm not going to waste their time or mine explaining why I don't believe conception is possible without sperm or that virgins can give birth. Christians would either see me as ignorant, offensive or both if I did** - it's not going to get us anywhere expect annoyed with each other.

But if you're trying to pick your way through stuff on a practical basis (e.g. supporting your own child at school) you're likely to come across far more agnostic/"Be Kind" people than true believers or the kind who feign a belief for their own gains. IME it's been effective to liaise in similar ways to those described in the OP, recognising that the wider I liaise, eventually I'll always bump up against a true believer and/or a feigner. But until that point, lots can be achieved that makes a difference (I'm talking specifically about helping my own child here). Obviously the higher up you go to discuss things, the closer you get to hitting the wall of the true believer (or the feigner) - and into some very choppy waters. But if there is a purpose (e.g. supporting your own child), even if/when you do hit choppy waters IME it's still effective to approach it this way as the incremental gains (e.g.improvements in external support, mitigation of risk) do make a difference.

(Elle Whilst I accept that you might think my approach ignorant or offensive, hopefully this post demonstrates my lack of intent at being offensive. If it helps to know, I would be taking a very similar approach if Christians were trying to change science books in school to accommodate the idea that there are exceptions in biology because conception is possible without sperm and women who've never had intercourse can give birth. Likewise if feigners (anyone remember the Catholic priest scandal?) took advantage of people's belief. And if believers are suggesting things to vulnerable people that could/would lead them to shorten or end their lives, where the suggested actions are related to their belief (e.g. Jonestown, Waco), I'll push back even more - particularly if these actions are framed as perfectly legitimate by believers in my children's school, leading a child of mine potentially in that direction)

Thankfully Christians don't demand universal acceptance of their belief and they seem to be making inroads on sorting out their feigners. Obviously, as demonstrated by the variety of people in the aforementioned scandal, some of their "feigners" possibly even do hold a Christian belief.. and then have a whole extra bunch of inconsistencies to justify their actions. They represent the extreme of what happens when a paraphilia meets universal acceptance of a belief. Here's an interesting article where someone is a believer in gender identity (a feeling of inner gender), so not a feigner, but recognises a societal risk to others of universal acceptance of the belief as fact:
https://archive.is/2pQIq

The term assigned at birth was originally used for intersex people born with ambiguous genitals. Drs would literally assign them a sex and carry out surgery to bring the appearance of genitals into line with what they assigned. I think that sex is observed at birth rather than assigned in the vast majority of cases.

Indeed. As doctors are now aware that there is no such thing as "intersex" (i.e. nobody is literally between the sexes, despite how it may outwardly appear at birth), this term has been replaced by DSDs (Difference of Sexual Development) and there are techniques and procedures for establishing someone's sex. There are DSDs specific to females and those specific to males. Because sex is observed visually, some DSDs still can and do slip through the net at birth e.g. this compassionately written article describes one that affects only boys, which is most commonly diagnosed at puberty (this is 46 XY 5-ARD, which is the DSD that was suspected/alleged in the case of the two Olympic boxers this year):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34290981

Note to MNHQ: I really do hope I stayed within the guidelines there. If not, please can I try again by removing whatever went outside it.

Having slept on it, I have woken up really cross at the suggestion that a woman challenging a conversation point must be gentle and respectful (and deferential and dishonest and manipulative).

Someone out there wants social attitudes to go back to the 1910s if not the 1890s.

Indeed. Alas, I wasn't taught to simper and flimflam. Maybe I could just toss my hair as I beg for my rights?

Oh, and still no return of OP.

Shocked I am, I tell ya. Shocked.

Just noticed that my ** and bold text disappeared.

This is the bit I had been trying to point to with that reference:

Elle, Whilst I accept that....

(Edited to sort formatting in a way that will actually stick. Grrrr. I've used double asterisks previously to avoid exactly this issue with single ones. I guess that no longer works!)

I'm a bit late to this but I have a daughter who doesn't follow 'gendered stereotypes'. CAMHS wondered if she might really be a boy.

Is that what you mean?

She isn't a boy. She's a girl. I mean what sort of regressive harmful bollocks would tell an autistic girl that she a boy because she wears her hair short, doesn't communicate like other girls and prefers the feeling of 'boy' styled clothes?

What kind of regressive harmful bollocks would put that girl on a pathway to 'medical transition' involving puberty blockers, radical mastectomies etc...

The idea of the 'trans child' is the most evil thing ever that we have inflicted on children. There is no kindness about it. Dressing it up with rainbows and unicorns is not kindness.

Regular reminder that the Immaculate Conception is about the 'concept' that Mary, alone among humans, was without Original Sin. It does not suggest that her parents, Joachim and Anne, did not have sex or that Anne was virginal.

I would be taking a very similar approach if Christians were trying to change science books

On that particular issue I'd be telling them that parthenogenesis is already covered, thank you. But if they want changes on the basis of faith then the answer is no. Robustly no. No softly-softly, no increments, no compromise. No.

I get that when negotiating, for example, school support for an individual child within a captured system you need to take any and all methods that might work. But for legislation, text books, the wider public debate, my answer is no.

Science text books are for science. Women's rights are for women. I will not fawn and dissemble to massage the egos of those demanding the world change in compliance with their personal faith.

Questions, yes - I'm all for the Socratic method of ripping holes in an argument. But that doesn't require you to make yourself small.

Yes, excellent point. She has strayed into gender-speak.

I'm a bit late to this but I have a daughter who doesn't follow 'gendered stereotypes'. CAMHS wondered if she might really be a boy.
Is that what you mean?

She isn't a boy. She's a girl. I mean what sort of regressive harmful bollocks would tell an autistic girl that she a boy because she wears her hair short, doesn't communicate like other girls and prefers the feeling of 'boy' styled clothes?

It's both ridiculous and dangerous isn't it? The Cass Report has thankfully been a turning point at scale but even the interim report from 2022 was helpful to highlight the risk of conflating autism-related puberty distress with gender identity.

In our case, despite a great conversation with the CAMHS counsellor (when my autistic daughter was wondering if she might be "in the wrong body": she has short hair, struggles socially to fit in, wears "boys' clothes" and loves playing football), the paperwork then went from the hospital crisis team to the receiving local CAMHS team to say that she "identified as a boy". It turned out that this came from a nurses observation. Yes, she had observed my daughter's clothes and hair (I assume) and this was her input to the CAMHS assessment. FFS. Thankfully, after a ridiculous and unhelpful "stand off" for about a month(where we had to refuse urgently needed mental health care for my daughter when she was at crisis point, owing to the risk of starting it with this error in place), I had a positive and collaborative meeting with CAMHS. They confirmed that she never did identify as a boy and agreed that their protocol had room for improvement. There have been many other positive conversations with CAMHS since and my daughter has benefited directly from this already. Some conversations are still ongoing... which is great, but obviously that also means I'm getting nearer to the wall I described in my post above.

Hi @lifeturnsonadime no, that’s not remotely what I mean. Assuming that what you’ve set out above is all that was going on, that’s not ‘being’ trans. It’s sometime referred to as gender non-conforming- but then as has been pointed out many times what is ‘conforming’ and what’s not? I’ve made a point of bringing up my DC to be clear is no expectation that girls wears certain things, does certain activities, can expect a specific role in a relationship, should do certain careers and vice versa, as I imagine many of us have.

So if CAMHS took those facts and ran with it, when your DC was actually seeing them for something else, and tried to label your DC against your DC’s wishes, then I agree with you, it’s out of line. It shouldn’t have happened.

If however your DC was expressing of their own volition to CAMHS that their gender is other than the sex as assigned at birth (ie in this case your DC was expressing that they are a boy and wanted to be treated as such), then that’s different. And if that’s what happened, I consider it would not have been medically sound for CAMHS to just dismiss that and say ‘don’t be silly, you’re a girl’. Nor to say here’s some counselling to make you feel differently (aka conversion therapy).

I don’t have any actual facts to go on, hence I’m trying to keep it neutral using neutral pronouns (as opposed to using them because I think your DC is NB).

@BonfireLady, re your long and thought out post, which I have read, I agree with you that we could go round and round in circles - we have done many times- and I don’t have the energy for that today I’m afraid so I’m not going to respond. Hope that’s ok- didn’t want to just totally ignore.

Agreed.

But that doesn't require you to make yourself small.

Sometimes it's about timing. That doesn't mean you're making yourself small, it just means you're standing back and looking at it from different viewpoints (including viewpoints you don't agree with - the people that hold them won't be changing their mind if it's their core belief) then working out whether there is a collaborative way forward. IME if it's possible to collaborate, even on a step by step basis, some progress can be made. I have no intention of "making myself small" but I do listen to other viewpoints - people hold them for a reason and it's helpful to know why, for the sake of effective communication.

I am still completely baffled by the idea that someone's gender can be other than, as opposed to the same as, their sex. These, sex and gender, are different concepts which are not directly comparable. What am I missing, Elle?

I don't think anyone would want CAMHS to dismiss a child's viewpoint and say "don't be silly", but I would certainly want CAMHS to explore, with the child, what the child meant and was feeling. It is quite obvious that children are exposed to many influences and have to work out what to accept and what to reject.

@ElleWoods15 thank you for your response (and for reading my tome of a comment!!). It is appreciated.

For clarity, I am not asking for any further response today (or ever, in fact) but I'm going to pick up on one thing you said to lifeturnsonadime, given how similar it is to my and my daughter's experience:

If however your DC was expressing of their own volition to CAMHS that their gender is other than the sex as assigned at birth (ie in this case your DC was expressing that they are a boy and wanted to be treated as such), then that’s different. And if that’s what happened, I consider it would not have been medically sound for CAMHS to just dismiss that and say ‘don’t be silly, you’re a girl’. Nor to say here’s some counselling to make you feel differently (aka conversion therapy).

Our journey started when my daughter asked for puberty blockers. She wasn't sure if she was a girl. My view is that it's not "medically sound" to introduce a belief in gender identity as a possible answer to the distress that many autistic children feel about the sensory and change aspects of puberty. For autistic girls, periods, breast development and the new sexual attention from boys can be very confusing and distressing (particularly if they were happy as they were and didn't ever really need to think about whether they were a girl or a boy. In that respect I think I'm saying something similar to what you said about how you bring your own child up regarding sex-based stereotypes and expectations). As I understand it, it's not "conversion therapy" to set aside any perceived gender identity and focus instead on a differential diagnosis to unpick possible causes of the distress without affirming or denying the gender identity. The only way to be neutral and do a differential diagnosis, given how common it is for autistic children to find puberty distressing, is to keep the status quo i.e. to not make any changes to the child's sex-based pronouns etc while the differential diagnosis is done (as doing so would bring in an unintended bias, thus completely changing the therapy from there on in). However, I fully appreciate that we're right back in the "you believe everyone has a gender identity and I don't" territory again now and that we'd be off in our circles again. So I'll stop! 😁

working out whether there is a collaborative way forward

As I said, I'm not talking about support for an individual child - I'm talking about policy, legislation, the way society is ordered etc. I've already acknowledged that your situation with your child may need different strategies.

And on that wider issue I want the (until recently) status quo, based in observable reality. Why should I look for a collaborative way forward with people who want to overturn that? I don't want it overturned.

They are making an extraordinary claim and an extraordinary demand. They need to do the work of providing extraordinary evidence to back it up before I consider it.

And the original article absolutely is saying you should make yourself small. Fawn, flatter, and offer the other person superiority they do not have.

You are a lot less angry that I am. I'm still so angry.

But yes, sensory issues have a lot to do with this. This can't be fixed with puberty blockers.

It is so wrong that this has been allowed to happen.

This is a damn lie.

If you're referring to this:

"You try to make it sound cruel and unfeeling by using the word "exist" as if we are denying the suffering or psychological problems of children. Of course children who are gender-distressed exist. All we are saying is that they aren't "trans". Nobody is."

People repeatedly have said children who believe they are trans do indeed exist, but that they disagree those children can transition.

You've twisted that to say you are responding to people saying trans children do not exist.

Your last paragraph is nonsense. Often studies show roughly equal numbers of trans men and trans women in the population. The most recent census here (recognising that the ONS data is problematic but could be taken as an indicator) showed more people who answered as male confirming they were trans (ie trans men) than people who answered as female (trans women). To say ‘nearly all adults are AGP males/cross dressers…’ is both incorrect and offensively transphobic.

I’m not going to comment further on your DC. While you assert vehemently that your DC is a girl, I am unable to tell from your comments whether they would - of their own volition as opposed to under parental pressure- confirm that.

Quoting the most recent UK Census is a hilarious one to go on, seeing as the vast majority of people who declared themselves "trans" (the infamous "does your gender match your sex" question) also spoke English as a foreign language.