Is it too early for a post mortem?

[Appalonia]

So, now that America has categorically rejected transgender ideology, which I do think will affect the rest of the world, is now the time to ascertain HOW did so many institutions, including the Democratic and Labour Parties get so completely bamboozled by this ideology? Which is crazy, not based in material reality, disadvantages half of the population, has physically damaged thousands of young people, and that they didn't think that people would see through it?

I know a lot of people dislike Matt Walsh, but his documentary, What is a Woman, was jaw dropping! We must NEVER let this dangerous idiocy happen again ( and yes I know it's not over...)

What does this mean in practice?

I could lie about my own experiences of the world and how I have interacted with it for as long as I've lived; I could stop engaging with public life wherever there are specific provisions for women and pray that I never need, for example, another visit to the breast clinic - but would that actually avert the UK's slide toward the right?

Even if every trans woman in the country willingly exiled herself from public life and tried to humour the fiction that she is a man for as long as she can stay alive doing so, I don't think it would make an iota of difference because I don't believe it has, in truth, ever actually been about any of these things.

It would be interesting if identical twins diverged, grew up, and one became a man, the other a woman. But it doesn’t happen, I wonder why?

Every transwoman is a man. There’s only one class of people who can’t become transwomen - women. Transwomen are men, that’s literally the definition.

Again, it might be clearer if you defined what you mean by ‘woman’

A woman is one of the nuanced modes of existence of adult humanity which are vulnerable to reductionist sloganising within the context of an ongoing culture war.

Are you in the Scottish Government?

🤣🤣

Good effort. Even for you, that’s impressive nonsense.

First you must explain how using the few spaces and services reserved for male people, or unisex spaces and services, and not using the few spaces and services reserved for women, necessitate withdrawal from public life.

Also, why is your experience of the world relevant and why would you have to lie about it to take part in public life? I just swipe my Oyster card when I get on a bus.

Thanks in advance.

Also, please have more faith in yourself and your fellow MCW - I'm willing to bet that you could all maintain what you call a "fiction" indefinitely.

Very few people are ‘trained’ in how they interact with the world as a whole. The use of the world trained really does describe a prescribed process with expected outcome from a narrow source of ‘training’. An abuser can certainly train their victim. But it is not a relevant fit to describe the process as already described over the past page as ‘training’.

We could certainly have discussions about learning which seems to be a better description of the stimulus- reaction feedback process. Because when you consider how female people react and learn to issues where their body’s sex category is important, it means that female people will always have experiences that male people will never have.

That is the relevance. And yes, it does then tie into the definition of what is a woman and what is a girl. Retconning your life (general you) to say you were always a ‘girl’ when you were always and forever a boy is just a falsehood. For whatever reason someone says it. It does not reflect material reality.

And I echo others, I don’t think anyone is particularly interested in the minutiae of your pysche. I agree that many of us have already seen enough over the years to see the gaps of logic shored up with theories that lack the strength to withstand even basic scrutiny.

And I also think that no definition will be forthcoming for similar reasons. Because even basic questioning shows the weak foundations that definition is based on.

Instead, the hyperbolic claims will roll on. Any centring of female needs or children’s needs will be dismissed as being, what was it? Putin’s influence? And not based on the legitimate discussions and work from left leaning feminists. Because they were the ones who part of the first alarms and are still active in those discussions. But hey… it is all Putin! All right wing and never the result of all the actions and words of transgender people and activists over the past years being observed from personal experience and media by everyday people.

The polarisation, the catastrophising, the false logic and misinformation and the constant dismissal and derision of female people’s voices have already been very clear. Not just by some posters but by the Democratic Party staff and strategic teams.

I missed that one. An absolute corker!

I’m beginning to think this is an elaborate, extended joke.

Same here.
I have to say it has been genuinely amusing at times.

And that is a meaningless grouping of words.

It is not a definition of woman, it is a description of the outcome of the actions of a sub group of activists determined to destabilise the language around womens (female people). It is male people who have introduced the reductionism by claiming they can be women based on their philosophical beliefs. Which is only ever based on that male persons personal interpretation of what a woman is and their personal projection of that interpretation.

Possibly, but in relation to the OP of the thread, plenty of Democrats would nod along to that definition in all sincerity while wondering why people won’t vote for them.

Mad, innit?

Indeed, but it has triggered some fantastic posts from women on this forum for which I am very grateful.

“I could stop engaging with public life wherever there are specific provisions for women and pray that I never need, for example, another visit to the breast clinic - but would that actually avert the UK's slide toward the right?”

There is that emotional manipulation again. So, not using female provisions can only ever mean some male people will deliberately self exclude because they personally demand that they are included despite them not belonging to the category the provision was created for. Pure emotional manipulation.

And then the mention of breast clinics which are, of course, used also by male people because male people have been known to get breast cancer. So there is that fuckwittery where a legitimate space for both sexes ( providing female people can have female health care providers when they need them) has been falsely used as an example where female people wish to exclude male patients.

The last time I tried to use male-only facilities - which was several decades ago by this point - it became painfully clear that the discomfort I felt from doing so was mirrored by the discomfort that men who were using them at the time felt. I was evidently in the wrong place and that was clear to everyone, no more so than myself. Many other trans women in positions similar to myself report the same thing. Some don't. Many trans men similarly report the same about women's spaces. Some don't.

Those who don't are more than welcome to use whatever facilities they wish.

For some of us, it's an existential issue - a matter of human dignity. I will no more humour it than I will humour men talking over me in meetings or assuming I know nothing about technical subjects. I'm not going back, sorry - and years of experience have already shown me that it isn't a viable, sustainable option.

If it were really that simple, why did the many different experimental 'therapies' employed over the decades demonstrably not work? Why did people persist? Why would anyone have ever subjected themselves to the abject misery that they knew would follow? I endured years of utter bullshit throughout my childhood trying to find the magic answer that would explain it all away.

I bloody wish it was just a matter of waking up one day and deciding to knock it off.

Without wanting to drag the thread into a painful discussion on this specific facet of the subject, there is a reason why we have at least a hundred years of painstakingly earnest (if often hopelessly naive and intensely problematic) research within the medical profession into the phenomenon we now call gender incongruence. That road is paved with many, many graves.

Perhaps. If you feel you have the right to redefine womanhood then sure, that's as good a definition as any.

Nevertheless, female people exist.

Nevertheless, there are things that historically and still today happen to female people, physical and social, because they are female and those things have consequences.

Nevertheless, everything written about women, including the legal rights they have, in the hundreds and thousands of years before trans rights activism referred to female people.

So sure, take your "nuanced modes of existence of adult humanity which are vulnerable to reductionist sloganising" and go fight for them in your "ongoing culture war". Hell, I probably agree with you on a lot of it.

But the fact remains that that this thing you are fighting for, laudable though it may be, is nevertheless a different thing to the reality of being female and the reality of what female people experience and need.

So when you appropriate our name, our history and our resources in service of your own battle you are taking things you have no moral right to and enacting an injustice onto a marginalised group.

To be clear, I'm not saying this thing you, Butters, are concerned about is not valid, or that you do not feel what you feel.

I'm simply saying you can't call it "womanhood" without destroying the language, rights and social and political existence of another marginalised group, female people, so you need to find another nane to label this thing that is not the same as being female.

And there it is.

The complete lack of respect that some male people have for those people who are female.

Because a male went and used an appropriate male space and felt u comfortable and believed the other male people should also be spared from feeling uncomfortable, female people’s needs will be forever dismissed.

If any reader was in doubt about the misogyny inherent in the persistence and insistence of using female single sex spaces when that male person knows that some female people will be harmed and distressed by that male person’s presence in that female single sex space, this reaction is not unusual at all. We have seen this too many times for it not to be a fairly standard reaction.

It's for you to explain to the male people in communal facilities that you are also male. You will find them a lot more open minded than you imagine.
Your appearance may cause consternation - this is a problem which you have created for yourself. Perhaps it was worth it to you to make yourself feel better, but the problems it causes are not for others to sort out.
You speak of discomfort -
no doubt women in women's facilities feel discomfort or worse because of your presence there. This is not something you should just shrug your shoulders over.

Speaking of FCM who have masculinised their appearance, many of them say that they make special arrangements for changing and seek out unisex facilities in advance. This demonstrates consideration for others.

You are free to believe that you are, or should have been a woman. Nevertheless, you must recognise that where spaces are divided by sex, you should not use the spaces reserved for women - that is, biological females. Not your definition of women, whether you think that is the correct one or not.

Your feelings about yourself may have caused you pain in the past but that pain was not inflicted on you by society, or the state. It's not oppression.

If you feel you don't fit in male spaces, campaign for additional unisex spaces - don't make women's spaces effectively unisex to suit yourself and force out women who have nowhere else to go.

None of us is just welcome to use whichever facilities we wish to use and you cannot extend an invitation to other male people on behalf of women.

No offense mate, but if your yardstick for "this thing I want to do is justified" is "because therapy didn't talk me of it", there's a very long queue of addicts, abusers and mentally distressed people back here who would like a word.

(Please also assume I made the obvious point on why men's discomfort is an valid argument to you and women's isn't).

Absolutely mental. Anything to give penis people what they want.

Spoiler alert: a woman is an adult person without a Y chromosome. That includes every person with a DSD.

And what is also clear is that as yet, no public campaign has been undertaken to ensure that male people welcome all male people into their single sex spaces. And that no campaign has been undertaken to ‘broaden’ the constellation of statistical attributes that male people can have. And no campaign that ensures the safety of male people who feel concerned about entering into their rightful male single sex space.

All because male people decided that the solution was to use female people for their personal safety and comfort. That was the only option they ever considered and they took the space.

All because some people have a philosophical belief that they are the opposite sex to what they materially are. It can only now be a philosophical belief because according to the group, there is no medical condition to be treated.

And yet… instead to campaigning to ‘broaden’ the definition of male people to fit in all male people, instead the group has now also ensured that any research into feelings of gender dysphoria will be deemed as transphobic. Because any person is to be affirmed in their gender belief.

I would suggest any person who declares they are the opposite sex that they materially are who wants research into ‘gender incongruence’ needs to be starting their own campaigns to have ethical research done.

But first, that campaign to make sure all male people are welcomed into the male single sex spaces. and the same campaign should make clear that no male person who respects the needs of female people (above the age of about 8 years old) should be using the female single sex spaces. And that those who persist in using female single sex spaces don’t respect female people.

Oops

“felt u comfortable” is obviously felt uncomfortable.