The Democrats Need an Honest Conversation on Gender Identity

[Ingenieur]

An interesting article in The Atlantic today, and a sign the tide might be turning in the USA.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/democrats-dishonest-gender-conversation-2024-election/680604/

Most voters think that biological sex is real, and that it matters in law and policy. Instructing them to believe otherwise, and not to ask any questions, is a doomed strategy. By shedding their most extreme positions, the Democrats will be better placed to defend transgender Americans who want to live their lives in peace.

Baby steps

That is what Wes Streeting is effectively going to say at the NHS conference in Liverpool, today. He'll sack the ones who are failing and create a league table of NHS trusts. I'm not sure this will solve the problems in the NHS, though.....and just throwing more money in is not going to touch the sides of the inherent dysfunction.

I see your awful "hate speech" has still been permitted :D

Victoria Smith has written about this in the Critic

https://thecritic.co.uk/donald-trump-doesnt-know-what-a-woman-is-either/

I like this analogy

Voting while feminist should not resemble an extreme version of the trolley problem

I really think if the Democrats had won this election then they will never have come back from identity politics. I hope this loss will be the bucket of icy water to the face that will actually wake them up to 'woke'. It is enraging that another Trump presidency is the price the world will pay with no guarantee the Dems will sense by the end of it. Last I heard there were arguments they weren't progressive enough! I hope that was just the Telegraph being the Telegraph or the dying convulsions of a failing body of thought.

You are definitely a bot. Like me.

Either that or we've paid trollfarm employees who reside in Moscow.

Just so you know.

that is your perception, and where, i think, the Dems and their ilk get it wrong.

You/they see "anti trans" when what we are talking about are women's rights.

Think we're asking the wrong question here, TBH.

Posters such as @Maddy70 know that there is no way to let trans women into women's spaces whilst keeping predatory men out of them.

The real question is why do they think trans women's desire to be validated as women (by being allowed to use women's spaces) is more important than the safety and dignity of the women who need to use those spaces?

Indeed.
Or, as I said...
Why is it so important to you for men who claim to be women to be allowed into women's single sex spaces that it doesn't matter that you open the door to predators and abusers as well?

Not that Maddy will ever answer any of us anyway...

My children are still very young and I'm hoping that this stuff will be far less prevalent when they're old enough to be at risk, but my husband and I are already pretty clear about the fact that if we get a whiff of any of this bullshit from our children's school we will pull them out and send them to Catholic school.

It really says something when you believe that whatever the Catholic church might teach your children (and whatever adults associated with the Catholic church might do to them) is probably less harmful than what this ideology might teach and do to them.

"Gender critical voices aren't 'allowed online'? Has anyone told X/Mumsnet/TikTok/Facebook - which are all completely awash with anti-trans/gender critical content?"

Gosh! How wonderful that a poster thinks that these limited spaces are women's voices 'awashing' the internet! Yippee!

All while backhandedly then framing any such discussion as hateful via the anti-trans comment. And all while declaring on MN that they comfortably see little impact on their life and ‘scarcely know that transgender people exist if not for the ‘wailing and gnashing of teeth over this issue in the media and on mumsnet.’

Twitter/X was a very different story before Musk took it over. And strangely, X allows both transgender AND feminist voices to post which is how it should be. Because its focus now is on 'free speech'.

Mumsnet has published guidelines and moderates to those guidelines. It too allows people to voice their opinions but strangely it doesn't allow hate... despite some posters constantly referring to opinions they don't like or agree with as 'hate' and what was it now.... 'vile' ? That was the deleted post, wasn't it?

It is rather stark to see the vilification coming from your posts aimed at people who simply disagree with your opinions.

TikTok? Facebook? I believe there are plenty of women's rights campaigners who have been banned from both of those platforms. So, perhaps they are not quite the 'awash' that you feel. I sense from your posts that you think even one feminist voicing concerns and posting is too many for you.

See, feminists don't push for the voices of extreme transgender activists to be silenced. Instead they ask for discussion and rational debate. There is a distinct lack of symmetry with feminist reaction versus extreme transgender activists who seek, even violently, to silence women's voices.

However, none of this is really as important as having the ability to be able to meet with policy and legislation makers which was something that feminists have had to work very carefully and hard to achieve. And achieved only recently.

And it also pales against the fact that women meeting to have discussions and rallies are protested and have cream pies thrown at them, assaulted and having substances sprayed in their faces. But hey.... don't let facts get in the way.

The 'feelz' of the males are always more important to these brainwashed, internalised misogynistic handmaidens. They'd throw their grandmother under the bus if they thought it would earn them brownie points from the men. They are absolutely the pits. Absolutely disgraceful with no sense of what is right or wrong. Pleasing the penis-havers is and shitting all over forefeminist headstones is more important than doing the right thing by their fellow sex class. They have no self respect and no ability to empathise with any human being that doesn't have a penis. I think they believe they truly are getting a better deal by being on the side of the men. In truth, the men laugh at them. The handmaidens just don't know it. As Madeline Albright said, there is a special place in hell for (the penis-panderers) women who don't support women.

Absolutely.

The purpose of botfarms is to push the extremes.

I honestly think MN tend to shoot straight down the middle (thus pissing everyone off!).

And that's the trouble no one is really having the sensible difficult conversation apart from MN.

"The real question is why do they think trans women's desire to be validated as women (by being allowed to use women's spaces) is more important than the safety and dignity of the women who need to use those spaces?"

The other real question to ask is who exactly benefits from allowing any male into female single sex spaces?

I don't believe that I, as a female person, see much benefit to me for allowing them access. Quite the opposite.

Women in the USA didn't have a party that supports women's rights to vote for.

I sense from your posts that you think even one feminist voicing concerns and posting is too many for you.

Was it a Swedish study that showed that when women speak 30% of the time in a meeting male members judge them to have completely dominated it?

The comparison isn't that women's voices (talking about women's rights) are speaking a lot compared to people speaking about trans rights and finding it a lot. It is comparing women's voices (talking about women's rights) to ZERO people talking about women's rights, and therefore it is always too many. (notwithstanding that "women's rights" are then put through the TRAnslator to mean "anti-trans")

Sums the situation up brilliantly

I wonder whether part of the reason the US has fallen so hard for this ideology is that it is a choice between the people who want to ban abortion and the people who want to force everyone to accept TWAW.

In the UK we don't really have an anti abortion movement to worry about, leaving feminists more free to focus on other issues.

Most of the vitriol directed at JK Rowling over her views on women's rights comes from US based sources. As a British woman, knowing as I do that Rowling is a famous Labour supporter and donor, outspoken remainer and ardent feminist, when I started to hear that she was an evil right wing bigot who hates trans people my instinctive reaction was, "That sounds incredibly unlikely. What has she actually said?"

Whereas for someone based in the US, with no knowledge about or interest in UK politics, and no real knowledge about JK Rowling other than as the author of Harry Potter, the idea that she is a right wing conservative bigot might be easier to believe, especially if in your country the only people opposing "trans rights" are right wing conservatives who hate gay people and want to ban abortion.

The UK conversation is a lot more nuisance because we don't have to worry about the abortion issue* and the US dominate the internet and don't get this at all.

hihelenhi sums up well the point about democratic function that Ive been trying to make on here for years and years and sometimes feel like I'm an idiot for doing.

(* It's more of an issue in the UK than is on our radar - we take this for granted but with shifts in political trends and the overton window we never thought possible we should continue to look over our shoulders on this one. I sense this may be an area that develops in about ten years time, especially in the context of a declining birth rate).

I will forever think of Judith Butler as “academia’s Emperor Palpatine” from this moment forward 😈

Article by Jo Bartosch that I think is of interest to the thread:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/11/13/did-trans-help-trump-to-victory/

" To understand what CO2 does to the atmosphere, it helps to have a degree or two in the field. But to understand that a man can’t change into a woman, one only needs to be compos mentis". 😂

Something the transactivists who rock up on Mumsnet still fail to recognise. All the "you're bots, right wing, fascists, have never met a transperson, meanies etc" in the world, fade into the wind in the face of facts, science and reality. Thanks for trying guys but us compos mentis women on here understand reality, safeguarding children and women's rights.
You'll never win this one - as the Democrats have demonstrated.

A very close friend of mine (boy!) (since primary school) was always super shy, facing the wall when he spoke, htper self conscious etc etc. Transitioned as a 30 year old. Now identifies as female now can live and function, holds down a job etc

He couldn't face the world as male. Now she functions.

She is not a predator to women she is facing the predators alongside us! it's important she can use women's spaces. She also is very aware that women are fearful of her (as she is of them and has been the subject of awful comments) so will always choose a non binary option if available but to use a mens is unthinkable

No, your friend, no matter how lovely he is, has absolutely no right to use women’s spaces.

His inner feelings and ‘loveliness’ don’t over ride women’s right to be in spaces without biological men being there, for their privacy and dignity. I know plenty of lovely men too, they also wouldn’t have the right if they woke up tomorrow and felt differently about themselves.

Look up stats about violence against women and girls and the concept of basic safeguarding and why it exists if you fail to understand this.

Why are women responsible for the mental health of your male friend?

Too many women and girls are being harmed and women are self excluded because of the choices of men like him.

I am sorry he has such mental health issues but his problems are not more important than those that his actions cause to others.

Women aren't support humans to validate your friend. Our presence in toilets is not required to make him feel that he's a woman.

Women are entitled to privacy from the opposite sex - even the mentally vulnerable ones. It's fine for you to be a good friend and share showers, toilets and changing rooms with him if that's what your friendship requires. It's not the responsibility of other women to suppress their own feelings and rights because his requirements are considered to be more important.

Campaign for 3rd spaces. But please stop trying to emotionally manipulate women and girls that they have to sacrifice their own rights because your mentally vulnerable friend requires them to do so in order to feel validated.