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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

TERFs are not the problem

497 replies

niadainud · 30/11/2024 21:20

AIBU to think that transwomen's beef should not be with so-called TERFs, but with men who rape women or who have sexual proclivities such as autogynaephilia?

It is not (imo) transphobic to want women-only spaces for a number of reasons, but if (some) men weren't predatory in one way or another then women would have nothing to worry about.

I realise this is a highly utopian way of looking at it, but it riles me enormously that it has somehow become socially unacceptable not to pretend a man in a wig and a dress is actually female. I was introduced to someone's "niece" recently and they had facial hair. It's just ridiculous.

I also think that "real" transwomen (i.e. those who have undergone surgery etc.) make things more difficult for themselves by adopting this very black-and-white stance. People like Blaire White are realists and seem to speak some sense about the issue but they're a tiny minority.

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Helleofabore · 04/12/2024 21:08

RethinkingLife · 04/12/2024 21:00

Ah, are you thinking more Mermaids than someone actually credentialled in counselling/youth work etc. and certified to professional standards with (say) a governing body?

However, my recommendation upthread still stands.

I would expect it is not credentialed.

MrsOvertonsWindow · 04/12/2024 21:09

RethinkingLife · 04/12/2024 21:00

Ah, are you thinking more Mermaids than someone actually credentialled in counselling/youth work etc. and certified to professional standards with (say) a governing body?

However, my recommendation upthread still stands.

Gendered Intelligence has paid for "mentors" that schools can purchase for individual children at £100 an hour (plus expenses). There doesn't appear to be an age limit. I'm not sure how a campaigning political activist group so criticised for their transactivist interference in GIDs qualifies them to intervene with children in school? But critical thinking can be in short supply in relation to children and their needs as we often see.

https://genderedintelligence.co.uk/services/68-mentoring-in-education

Datun · 04/12/2024 21:13

Datun · 04/12/2024 21:02

I don't think it's anything. I think it's said to wind us up.

Actually, if I recall correctly, I believe it was said originally, like lot of things butters says, to refute a point from a parent.

Ostensibly being in charge of children and mentoring them, was to give butters an authority about youngsters. An authority that I think is utterly imaginary.

Butter's posts are full of contradictions, depending on what Butters is responding to.

Catiette · 04/12/2024 21:17

Am also now worrying about the wording of my post about sexual attraction deriving from the biological imperative and being about the opposite sex etc., while also trying to acknowledge different sexualities and the LGB experience etc. This is so hard to express, so I hope to goodness I've not seemed crass or insensitive and that the lovely people here understand what I mean.

Not an easy discussion to post on. Quite upsetting to read, frankly.

But, as for so many here, this thread has represented a frankly frightening confirmation of feminist fears that trans ideology denies what it means to be female, gay or lesbian.

My eyes have been opened wider still.

GailBlancheViola · 04/12/2024 21:24

we still have to mind our language lest we upset the person who is trying into dissemble and infiltrate consent and boundaries.

Amazingly they don't have to mind their language though -the language used about us and to us has been vitriolic as always one way traffic on the consideration front.

GailBlancheViola · 04/12/2024 21:31

MrsOvertonsWindow · 04/12/2024 20:23

Reckon the person who should be taking a step back is you. You've spent many hours on here smearing and verbally abusing women. You've repeatedly promoted men's rights to access women when undressed / vulnerable and dismissed all attempts by women (with far more patience than me) to show you that women are entitled to boundaries, safety and privacy from random men.

You've thrown around your role as a counsellor of children & young people despite displaying the most unprofessional behaviour, including suggesting that you counsel the young in engaging in sex by deception - a criminal act and an outrageous breach of the requirement to safeguard the young. This behaviour would get any other adult barred from working with vulnerable young people.

You're the sole architect of your own misfortune on this board. Given the hostility and contempt you repeatedly display towards women, you shouldn't be surprised that your posts receive considerable scrutiny.

Amen to that MrsOverton.

Helleofabore · 04/12/2024 21:32

GailBlancheViola · 04/12/2024 21:24

we still have to mind our language lest we upset the person who is trying into dissemble and infiltrate consent and boundaries.

Amazingly they don't have to mind their language though -the language used about us and to us has been vitriolic as always one way traffic on the consideration front.

It has been eye poppingly abusive Gail.

ButterflyHatched · 04/12/2024 21:33

Catiette · 04/12/2024 20:55

The last thing I wanted to say was that I'm sorry for the challenges you face, @ButterflyHatched, and especially your own experiences of assault. Taking the related posts at face value, I can't begin to imagine how it must feel to go through this. I actually can empathise with your need to frame denial of your legal sex in the context of physical relationships as a form of bigotry. (I'm also aware that, in many contexts, awful, genuine bigotry exists).

But I can't empathise with acting on this need, or arguing for it so vocally as a fundamental right that should be granted at the expense of others.

But to condemn people who are simply sharing their own sexuality and their needs as bigots is simply to impose your own perceptions on them, seeking to paint over something deep and fundamental to their very being as superficial prejudice. Even if you disagree with this, and think human sexuality can be reduced to outward physical appearance and documentation, you must surely, again, at the very least, see that there's a real ethical conundrum here, as opposed to a simple case of right versus wrong, and hatred?

Edited

Thankyou! I have a flight to catch but might respond next week if I get the chance. I'm sad this post came so late into thread.

Totallymessed · 04/12/2024 21:34

wincarwoo · 04/12/2024 12:27

Butterfly "life-saving" is pure emotional manipulation.

Those with mental health issues are more susceptible to suicide and self-harm. This isn't a reason to give puberty blockers to kids who have been led on by adults that by not adhering to stereotypes they are in fact the opposite sex or they are born in the wrong body.

I listened to a clip on x/Twitter earlier today, of the lawyer Chase Strangio being challenged in court by one of the Judges hearing the case in the US, on the subject of suicide rates in trans identified children. Strangio said that there isn't actually any evidence to say that that trans children are at greater risk, as numbers are so tiny that no conclusions can be reached. It's quite unusual for me to still be shocked by things from TRAs, but this really, really did.There have been countless adults knowingly lying, in order to guilt trip parents into allowing their children to suffer permanent physical harm. Telling them that otherwise they could be responsible for their own child's suicide.

It's the worst form of emotional manipulation I've ever heard of, and I can't express the disgust I feel for any adult who has been involved in deliberately spreading these lies. And for what? Personal validation?

Totallymessed · 04/12/2024 21:36

ButterflyHatched · 04/12/2024 14:15

I have had enthusiastically consensual sex with many people (unfortunately there have been some horrible traumatic times over the years where my consent was not enthusiastic nor clear, but that is another conversation entirely and another set of scars that I am very much not interested in reopening in front of people who are demonstrably hostile).

Of the people who did not violate my own consent, I had no way of knowing how many of them were bigots. There was a time not so long ago when most people were bigots, and there are a lot more 'stealth' bigots now. I have almost certainly had enthusiastically consensual sex with more than one stealth bigot in my life.

I have no protection from things people do not disclose to me. I could go to prison for the crime of what amounts to being sexually active while stealth.

My standard advice to young trans people intending to go stealth is 'don't fuck bigots or those even faintly vulnerable to bigoted ideologies; they can and will send you to prison and there is legal precedent supporting them doing so' with a side order of 'you can't know if someone is a bigot until they show you. Make sure the first time they show you isn't in court'. Schrodinger's bigot is something we have to factor into our daily lives.

Do you not see how fucked this is? Do you genuinely not see it?

Do you not see the issue with laws that exist to protect people from predatory behaviour becoming a way for bigots to brutalise minorities who hide from them - to the extent that we have to brief vulnerable young trans people who are trying to escape prejudice and persecution that actually they can't and can in fact be sent to prison for trying?

I'm finding some of your posts really quite worrying.

Catiette · 04/12/2024 21:39

Dammit. Giving in entirely, and adding the very last thing I've been wanting to say in half an hour of appalled dipping in and out, for better or for worse...

I do, like so many others, have serious concerns about the messages being given to vulnerable young people by Butterfly. @ButterflyHatched, please, please separate fact and perception in any counselling or similar. References to bigots are emotive, unprofessional and, fundamentally, driven by your own perceptions and needs as opposed to the young people you should be foregrounding.

On this thread, you have message upon message from women, gay and lesbian lesbian posters, lifelong LGB "allies", hardened left-wing campaigners and loving mothers, all telling you that this isn't what's driving their concerns.

You have, to put it bluntly, no right to filter all these different voices and experiences through your own prejudices to present them, reductively, to any possible young charges as quite simply hatred-filled.

And you have absolutely no right to advise these young people to break the law and, potentially, put themselves at physical risk by being exposed as a different sex in the most vulnerable of circumstances, in support of your own, personal convictions.

If nothing else you'd written had convinced me of the limitations of your arguments, then your confident defence of such behaviour would have done so. It's unethical.

Suggest how to navigate difficult conversations - yes.

Advise caution - absolutely.

Discuss the nature and ethics of consent, including in this difficult context - of course.

But to model reductive emoting and all-or-nothing thinking? Again, even if we take your posts at face value (and as others have expressed my feelings in appropriately strong terms elsewhere, this is what I'm trying to do as an alternative approach), this really does suggest that you don't fully appreciate your responsibilities in a role of this kind.

Totallymessed · 04/12/2024 21:39

ButterflyHatched · 04/12/2024 14:58

If you successfully escape from daily lifelong prejudice and exist as a healthy sexually active adult in society you should be prosecuted.

What a green and pleasant land eh?

Anyway, that's only one of the ways trans people are discriminated against. I listed many others as well and that was by no means a particularly exhaustive list.

I'm off on holiday to a lovely country that doesn't discriminate against trans people. Have a lovely week.

Being unhappy and sexually frustrated is not an excuse for committing sexual assault.

MrsOvertonsWindow · 04/12/2024 21:43

Totallymessed · 04/12/2024 21:39

Being unhappy and sexually frustrated is not an excuse for committing sexual assault.

Or voyeurism and indecent exposure.

lifeturnsonadime · 04/12/2024 21:45

Totallymessed · 04/12/2024 21:39

Being unhappy and sexually frustrated is not an excuse for committing sexual assault.

When you unpick sexual and assault and rape (bearing in mind that 98 % of perpetrators are male) I would hazard a guess that 'being unhappy and sexually frustrated' is a fairly common denominator.

Helleofabore · 04/12/2024 21:47

By the way, nothing quite like dehumanising the people who feel the need to know the sex of the person they are about to have sex with.

And nothing quite like dehumanising those people to young people while in a position of influence for those young people.

There are so many layers to this it is taking time to process it.

For instance, if an adult is telling young people that society hates them or will seek to entrap them and take them to court for hate, how is it ethical to spread fear like this?

And coming back to this:

I said "So apparently, if someone finds out they have had sex with someone they didn't know the sex of, no worries ... they can just decide not to have sex with them again."

The answer was 'yes', along with the weird shit that many of us got about 'not wanting to sleep with someone from a minority'. But the answer was yes. I mean, before I am gaslighted and told that I have twisted this, I checked and I have checked again. The answer to this was 'yes' before the string of weird arsed emoting.

Surely no respectful adult would think that it is better to ask for forgiveness after the non-consensual sex act was discovered? I don't believe I can read this any other way. And does this adult advise young adults in this way too?

That if their sex partner finds out later, that it is no biggie that they 'retract consent'? And that it is the partner's issue that they are just bigoted and hateful?

Surely not? Because if my interpretation is correct, this really does show there is no small amount of dehumanisation of other people who are sex partners or protective sex partners going on. If my interpretation is correct, as the 'yes' indicates to me, this really is 'better to ask forgiveness for a non-consensual sex act than seek full consent first'.

GailBlancheViola · 04/12/2024 21:48

MrsOvertonsWindow · 04/12/2024 20:50

Maybe because deception - pretence, fakery, fantasy, appropriation of others is the bedrock belief of those who claim to be the opposite sex? And if you silence those who challenge this, calling them bigots and nazis, that removes the power of peer influence, the social contract, decency and good human values that helps keep society respectful and safe?

Indeed.

Remarkably, ButterflyHatched has said the quiet parts out very, very, very loud on the threads they have been on the past couple of days and confirmed, if ever confirmation was needed, of just how dangerous GI is. The curtain has well and truly been pulled back and the Emperor is exposed in all his glory.

ButterflyHatched · 04/12/2024 21:52

Catiette · 04/12/2024 21:39

Dammit. Giving in entirely, and adding the very last thing I've been wanting to say in half an hour of appalled dipping in and out, for better or for worse...

I do, like so many others, have serious concerns about the messages being given to vulnerable young people by Butterfly. @ButterflyHatched, please, please separate fact and perception in any counselling or similar. References to bigots are emotive, unprofessional and, fundamentally, driven by your own perceptions and needs as opposed to the young people you should be foregrounding.

On this thread, you have message upon message from women, gay and lesbian lesbian posters, lifelong LGB "allies", hardened left-wing campaigners and loving mothers, all telling you that this isn't what's driving their concerns.

You have, to put it bluntly, no right to filter all these different voices and experiences through your own prejudices to present them, reductively, to any possible young charges as quite simply hatred-filled.

And you have absolutely no right to advise these young people to break the law and, potentially, put themselves at physical risk by being exposed as a different sex in the most vulnerable of circumstances, in support of your own, personal convictions.

If nothing else you'd written had convinced me of the limitations of your arguments, then your confident defence of such behaviour would have done so. It's unethical.

Suggest how to navigate difficult conversations - yes.

Advise caution - absolutely.

Discuss the nature and ethics of consent, including in this difficult context - of course.

But to model reductive emoting and all-or-nothing thinking? Again, even if we take your posts at face value (and as others have expressed my feelings in appropriately strong terms elsewhere, this is what I'm trying to do as an alternative approach), this really does suggest that you don't fully appreciate your responsibilities in a role of this kind.

Edited

I don't advise breaking the law. I never said I did. I can only advise on ways to remain as safe as possible if someone is already committed to a course of action.

Please refrain from malicious misinterpretation. The number of posts in this thread that have tried to hammer what I wrote into some bizarre and twisted false version of what is clearly not their intended meaning is really quite disturbing. I'd expect this from Musk's army of twatter trolls or Fox news, but not on a feminist board that holds itself to any measure of integrity.

You've made what initially seemed to be a good faith response; thankyou for doing so. Don't spoil it with this nonsense, please.

Totallymessed · 04/12/2024 21:52

I'm sure I'm not the only person busily taking screenshots, to make sure BH's posts don't conveniently get deleted and disappear from the internet.

Helleofabore · 04/12/2024 21:53

GailBlancheViola · 04/12/2024 21:48

Indeed.

Remarkably, ButterflyHatched has said the quiet parts out very, very, very loud on the threads they have been on the past couple of days and confirmed, if ever confirmation was needed, of just how dangerous GI is. The curtain has well and truly been pulled back and the Emperor is exposed in all his glory.

Those quiet parts can never be taken back. They can never be hidden again. It has been a very shocking and distressing thread in more than one way.

HarmonicAnalysis · 04/12/2024 21:57

ButterflyHatched this evening describes being, on MN, "at a massive social power disadvantage...regularly dogpiled with malicious misinterpretations".

Only two days ago, "I shall meanwhile happily bask in the warm affirming glow of an inbox full of thankyou messages and know that what I'm saying is making a difference, however small."

What a rollercoaster!

This is by far the least eye-opening aspect of this thread, though. I am grateful to read all the thoughtful, eloquent posts by others highlighting the awful implications of what BH is advocating.

lifeturnsonadime · 04/12/2024 21:59

I do wish there was a laugh response not just the thank you one.

I'd use it for the most recent post, us feminists just are not behaving in a becoming manner to males who have openly spoken about propensity to sex by deception!

Why won't we think of the rapists? Because that's what sex by deception is.

ButterflyHatched · 04/12/2024 22:00

Totallymessed · 04/12/2024 21:52

I'm sure I'm not the only person busily taking screenshots, to make sure BH's posts don't conveniently get deleted and disappear from the internet.

Oh don't worry, I can assure you that this forum is being watched very closely by a lot of people right now. The responses here have been genuinely horrifying, far beyond what I might have feared.

At least we can finally move on from the era of 'we can always tell' smug reality-denial now that an opportunity has arisen to transmute everything a trans woman says into a different kind of demonisation instead.

Have a lovely week!

teawamutu · 04/12/2024 22:00

ButterflyHatched · 04/12/2024 21:52

I don't advise breaking the law. I never said I did. I can only advise on ways to remain as safe as possible if someone is already committed to a course of action.

Please refrain from malicious misinterpretation. The number of posts in this thread that have tried to hammer what I wrote into some bizarre and twisted false version of what is clearly not their intended meaning is really quite disturbing. I'd expect this from Musk's army of twatter trolls or Fox news, but not on a feminist board that holds itself to any measure of integrity.

You've made what initially seemed to be a good faith response; thankyou for doing so. Don't spoil it with this nonsense, please.

That last paragraph... Gosh. Very revealing, although presumably not in the way that Butterfly fondly imagines.

teawamutu · 04/12/2024 22:02

ButterflyHatched · 04/12/2024 22:00

Oh don't worry, I can assure you that this forum is being watched very closely by a lot of people right now. The responses here have been genuinely horrifying, far beyond what I might have feared.

At least we can finally move on from the era of 'we can always tell' smug reality-denial now that an opportunity has arisen to transmute everything a trans woman says into a different kind of demonisation instead.

Have a lovely week!

Excellent. That'll save time and trouble.

Silent watching hordes: don't rape people. It's not nice.

Totallymessed · 04/12/2024 22:03

ButterflyHatched · 04/12/2024 22:00

Oh don't worry, I can assure you that this forum is being watched very closely by a lot of people right now. The responses here have been genuinely horrifying, far beyond what I might have feared.

At least we can finally move on from the era of 'we can always tell' smug reality-denial now that an opportunity has arisen to transmute everything a trans woman says into a different kind of demonisation instead.

Have a lovely week!

And I hope you enjoy your remarkably convenient flight.

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