big argument with old friend

[ramenmonster]

Met up with old male (gay) friend and he raised the trans thing. He denied biological reality of two sexes, and told me lots of scientists and doctors would disagree that there is a biological difference between men and women. That men should be allowed in women's bathrooms, in women's sports, prisons. That the biological differences between XX and XY make no difference and those men participating in sports are "real women".

I asked him why it was always men who are telling what women should and shouldn't accept, why men are always the ones who tell us we have to "deal with it" and that apparently helping trans people is more important than women (despite us being the weaker sex and 50% of the population).

After some of the things he said I'm now wondering if he's really just a massive misogynist with no clue about actual women's issues. I'm not sure where our friendship can go from here.

Just venting and asking for some solidarity.

There's an excellent book written by a gay man, called 'Gay Shame' ( it's also available to listen to on Spotify), which tackles this:

Only a few years ago, it seemed that the fight for gay rights was won in the UK: legal equality was achieved, prejudice rapidly dying out. Mission accomplished, right?
Wrong, argues Gareth Roberts. Homophobia is making a major comeback under the guise of the ideology of ‘gender identity’. The enforcers of this new creed insist that attraction to people of the same sex is ‘hateful’. They argue that effeminate men and butch women can’t just be gay, but must ‘really’ be trans. Worse, this ideology has colonised the gay rights movement, capturing institutions like Stonewall and the gay press completely. Anyone who disagrees risks professional suicide.
So what happened to the funny, grown-up culture, truth-telling and knowing irony of many gay men? How and why was the older gay rights activism, which gifted such progress to homosexual people, hijacked?
In this passionate, witty polemic, Gareth Roberts answers these questions and argues that we need a new gay liberation movement.

www.amazon.co.uk/Gay-Shame-Gender-Ideology-Homophobia/dp/1800752830

Worth a read/listen? Maybe buy it for your friend as a Christmas present?

I'm sorry that your friend holds these shocking views! I mean, is he not very bright? He doesn't even concede on the biology front?

Amongst my friends my strongest GC allies are all gay - male and female. They are, to a man and woman, tearing their hair out at the grouping together of LGB with TQ+. My oldest friend is a gay man and he has been absolutely scathing of Stonewall and their antics. But, most sadly, he was kicked out of a cycling group for gay men that he founded in his area of London because of his GC feelings and opinions.

‘Doctors’ of what? There’s a big difference between a Medical Doctor and a PHD ( in Gender Studies or Queer Biology) .

Excepting the profiteers of course.

lots of scientists and doctors would disagree that there is a biological difference between men and women

Is he a complete idiot?

Solidarity @ramenmonster and yes some gay men are deeply misogynistic. It's easy to see who he identifies with

I don't know that your friend is a misogynist, but he sounds like he is not super bright. WHich is actually ok, but it means people are easily led in a lot of cases.

There have been a lot of people really misled by bogus science on this - because it was presented by real authorities or people who should have known better - look at the recent controversy at Scientific American, or Neil DeGrasse-Tyson. Or the fact that it has been accepted by the medical system.

For people who tend to accept authority they just believe that what they are told by these people is right. And frankly, the left has invested a lot in recent years in discrediting people who question authority - look what happened on the left with COVID. People who questioned are presented as anti-science right wing nutters.

In the UK this is now much less the case, but some people are really in a bubble even so, maybe especially a certain kind of lefty gay man.

I wouldn't assume your friend wouldn't sleep with a trans man btw, people are often not quite as consistent on this as you might think, some gay men do date trans men.

What a bozo.

The Gareth Roberts book is excellent, and also very funny.

One of the things I've found about arguing with gender ideologues (apart from the fact that it is an entirely futile activity) is that their arguments are generally emotional rather than based on reason, eg you're a bad person if you don't believe this, trans kids are killing themselves because they can't get puberty blockers etc etc

I remember once having an argument online with someone who reacted to my saying that men couldn't become women by saying that some men really wanted to be women and put in loads of effort into it, and how dare I say they weren't real women? But how can you reason with someone whose entire argument is irrational? Really wanting to be a woman doesn't make you a woman, any more than really wishing you were 25 again makes you 25.

If you have to argue with these people, I'd just keep repeating that humans can't change sex and that men can't be women. Though best not to argue at all because they're idiots.

I love that Sense and Sensibility quote.

Kelly Willis also said the same thing pretty much in a lyric.

"What in the world is all this talking for?
Nobody's ever changed nobody's mind
About what's right,
In front of them."`

Save your energy for arguing with people who make laws and policies.

The whole bloody thing is just so emperors new clothes and in 100 years they might look back on this period in history with the same level of WTF as we do on the Salem Witch Trials.
The vitriol that JKR has received of late is just insane.

This morning I watched the recent Neil DeGrasse Tyson interview with Bill Maher and was cringing at the fact that Tyson refuses to accept that there are differences between men and women, particularly in sport. He refused to say that the line taken by Scientific American on this subject (i.e. women are held back from equalling male sporting levels because of societal issues) and Tyson also tried to argue that there might be proof that women exceed male performance in long distance swimming so there’s no reason women and men can’t have equal performance levels in sport.

To quote Maher “It’s nuts!”

To be honest, Tyson was quite aggressive on almost everything Maher mentioned, as soon as Maher mentioned the upcoming January planetary alignment Tyson went off on a tirade about people thinking the universe cared about them and was giving them signs. Maher was just mentioning the fact as an astronomically interesting occurrence, he’s not a spiritual thinker. To me, it seemed as Tyson was doing a lot of mind reading and projecting when being interviewed, and he didn’t seem keen on letting Maher finish a sentence without interruption.

The representative from the Democratic Party who was on the show later was also behaving in a similar way when being asked about why the Dems lost the election - defensive, dismissive, condescending and wouldn’t admit that people had had enough of ID politics.

I encounter aggressive and condescending behaviour like Tyson’s quite often in a certain type of person who claims to be a free thinker but really gets their ideas wholesale from their tribe, and it sounds like the behaviour of OP’s friend when they were having their discussion too. It’s frustrating when someone like this refuses to even listen to something they don’t agree with - I don’t have the urge to stick my fingers in my ears to block myself from hearing people saying things I disagree with and I don’t know why this has become so prevalent an attitude in society of late.

Sadly your old friend is a raging misogynist who doesn’t give a shit about women. Purely centring male rights unapologetically.

Don't give any more time to him and please don’t feel sentimental regret because he’s such an old connection. He’s got toxic, women-loathing views ingrained through him. He’s not worth it.

I did try to educate him a bit with some of the reasons women feel unsafe about sharing facilities and sport, and misogyny in general

As a fully grown man who has probably felt unsafe in certain situations due to his sexuality, you really shouldn't have to educate him on this.

And what the fuck does he think a same-sex marriage is?!

I've had 'the discussion' with a couple of old female friends on separate occasions. Fortunately, although we disagree, they know me a major leftie, so being gender critical comes as a surprise and they have been open to discuss and then move on with normal friendship. My male gay friends are pretty sensible and agree it's all eyerolling material. The thing I always bring up in the discussion is - how do we tell genuinely, in distress people with dysmorphia from those seeking to force a fetish into women's spaces?

How do we tell? We can't. That's the problem, in a nutshell.

'sWhy I use it.

You are completely wrong about that althemiddle.

All that’s required to be trans is to say you’re trans. No surgery required.

If by “being fully trans” you mean someone who’s been issued with a Gender Recognition Certificate declaring their sex to be that of the other gender, then that doesn’t require surgery either. It just requires some paperwork, £5 payment, and sign off by a gender recognition panel.

Even if a man is genuinely suffering with gender dysphoria/dymorphia (putting aside the impossibility of distinguishing them from fetishists). Women are under no obligation to 'be kind'. Especially at the cost to our rights, safety, dignity and mental health.

I do think there are some men who wouldn't bother with women at all if it weren't for wanting sex with them. As your friend is gay he doesn't have that issue so it's far easier for him to take the men's side on everything. For him, if other men say they're women that's good enough for him. It's sad because it's ruined your friendship but at least now you see him as he is Op.

The struggle they are going through such as being relentlessly promoted in each and every outlet more than one inch socially left of Das Reich?

Oh, to be so oppressed.

This is the "gotcha" we can always challenge gay men with.

told me lots of scientists and doctors would disagree that there is a biological difference between men and women

the second someone says this it shows them for the utter fucking idiot they are

i have patience with some of the arguments and i am willing to liston but when ihear this i know there is no point in continuing

Can someone post that fabulous guy-lies-on-train-tracks-while-rescuer-delays-help-because-of-laws-of-motion sex-denialist analogy? If you've read it, you'll know the one I mean.

I have it in 7 clumsy screenshots, which I'm sure the OP doesn't want, but a single doc/link to this is the perfect answer to this guy and all like him - it beats him at his own game, bro-to-bro, leaving no room for comeback that I can see.

I think it's the most effective riposte to this silliness I've read anywhere, not least because it permits the most pedantic sex-denialist to hold on to his reassuring conviction of intellectual superiority... while exposing this as utterly irrelevant, immoral and fundamentally absurd regardless. It's pretty powerful.

What I don’t understand is that if there was no biological difference aren’t the reasons to have the 2 categories really backwards and the kind of thing these supporters would normally be against? Socially constructing two categories where one is disadvantaged isn’t progressive is it, if that was the case.

The argument is only polarised, @ramenmonster , because of misogynistic reality-deniers like him.