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.

The only live link I can find is private, but it's copied here about halfway down, posted 10:53 by ILikeDungs (thank you!)

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4925488-counteracting-accusations-of-bigotry

In case that thread gets targetted and pulled some day I've archived it: https://archive.ph/IwDNU

Brilliant - thank you.

OP, in the link above, the post: ILikeDungs · 22/10/2023 10:53

It's just so good - you may want to share it with your confused friend.

my patience for this fucking nonsense , not great to start with, is wearing thinner by the day. Personally I cannot be friends with complete fucking nutters-every single interaction is fatally tainted by them being utterly barking.

So if this chap was going to breed dogs/cows/sheep/cats/another mammal would he be dumb enough to try to breed two females (or two males) and then be surprised that no offspring were forthcoming?

I mean, my hamster said she identifies as a rottweiler so it must be true, after all silly things like science and genetics don't matter!!!

Hamweiler, actually footage.

A nice counter to the sex-is-a-complicated-spectrum nonsense, but unfortunately not much help with basic misogyny.

Been following this thread and am reassured by the many saying they can't be friends with those who would give women's rights away to men. Glad you're here.

Remember this? I loved this piece for the author's righteous fury and refusal to bow down to the dogma. She also uses the word 'fuck' 37 times.

4w.pub/a-message-to-those-recently-opining/

@Vegemiteandhoneyontoast that is amazing.

Thank you to all who have given advice, I feel so much better. I don't think sharing anything with my friend would be helpful as it wouldn't be read and would probably inflame the situation further and put me more in the "bigoted" box but I've got a lot of food for thought and read everything shared - if the issue were to raise again in future and will educate myself further and be better prepared.

I'm actually feeling angrier now about how he's prepared to endanger women's lives (happy to have biological males in women's sports etc!) and gives no shits about it, the sheer misogyny. I realise he is completely unaware of his own misogyny though.

I definitely think having children is often a turning point. I used to be prepared to tell lies to myself about what I believed, in order to minimise exposure to criticism from others.

But as soon as my children were old enough that I needed to explain things to them, I found I couldn’t carry on that way — I couldn’t teach them things I knew were untrue. My instinct to be authentic with them was stronger.

I came across a PHSE textbook with this scenario. I wasn't (mercifully) doing the topic but my immediate question was, if everyone is gay how come they all have children? The point of the lesson was that being homosexual is normal and ok, but with it being heterosexual which was the minority group who had problems. I just thought wtaf?

I'm glad you feel better about what was an unhappy situation, ramenmonster.

I'm glad you got a lot of sensible, clear, well-informed responses to your friend's opinions - and one absolutely brilliant rant containing 37 'fucks'
I'm glad you've seen that being pro-women and anti-misogyny is not being transphobic.
I'm still sorry about you losing a friend who you thought was OK, though, and I hope you find new more supportive ones soon.

I'm actually feeling angrier now about how he's prepared to endanger women's lives (happy to have biological males in women's sports etc!) and gives no shits about it, the sheer misogyny. I realise he is completely unaware of his own misogyny though.

This is how I feel about the old friend I've distanced myself from. He thinks he's being 'kind' but has no idea how much letting men into women's spaces negatively impacts women. The sneering look of disdain on his face when we discussed it was ugly to see. I felt like the scales had dropped from my eyes and that through all the decades we'd known each other I'd never seen the real him. It was a horrible shock but I know I can never trust him again.

Men don't like to see the ugly in male behaviour, and like it even less when we finally see it in theirs.

The potential partner here doesn't need to be a trans man - if this friend disagrees that there is a biological difference between men and women, he'd be happy to sleep with women, yes?

I think at the end of the day, this is what it's all about. I remember roughly a decade ago the "Schroedinger's Rapist" meme was going around in feminist and progressive circles: the idea that women had no way of knowing which men might attack/rape them. It was like a proto "We choose the bear." And men were just as upset about it and the idea women might finally be able to address the issue of always having to be on guard around men from a position of power. Not long after that, and maybe it was just a coincidence, the same people I saw promoting Schroedinger's Rapist had turned around and started talking about "trans women are women."

I’m not going to debate with you about the reality of biological sex, for the same reason I wouldn’t stand on the train platform debating the finer points of physics while the man on the tracks is ground into bits. Not because your position is unassailable. Because even bringing it up makes you an asshole.

I like that sentence the best. But brilliant article.

Perhaps if I share that article with an old friend it may make her rethink her new position on ‘trans kids’.

Do good friends have to agree on everything all the time? If he truly is a great old friend I doubt he’s coming at it from a misogynist angle or you’d have spotted that before surely? Aren’t these kinds of conversations between friends way more useful than people sitting in their echo chambers ?

From what the OP said in her first post, this goes beyond a polite disagreement. I would think it would be as though she'd told him that being gay was against God and he was going to Hell.

So what does being gay mean to him? Is he attracted to female-bodied people, no matter their self-identification? What about if someone with breasts and fully intact female body and genitalia threw on a man’s suit and said she 100% felt like a man, therefore was a man - would he date her? Why not settle down with a female partner; after all there’s no difference! When he has sex with other males, does he worry about either of them getting pregnant? Why did previous generations fight for gay rights? Misogynistic men like him have certainly sold out women, straight, B or L.

Is it really? He didn’t say women are against God and going to hell. It sounds to me more like his opinion simply as informed as hers, probably because he is a man.

"his opinion...as informed as hers", really? If someone told me that there was no biological difference between men and women I'd think they were too stupid to be my friend.

@Billi80 so you're saying a man who doesn't believe in biology has an equally "informed" opinion on how all this affects women, equally as much a biological woman? Baffling.

Gay men are typically more misogynistic than straight men. Especially around trans issues. Strangely not gay women though (typically)

you should still tell him. Send him this thread. Don’t be silent. That what got us here. Don’t be afraid of losing a friend (who wants to be friend with someone who thinks you personally are worth less?)

just send this URL and be done.