Persuading a TA to change her mind

[HalfArsedTerf]

I am passionate about women's fightback against the aggressive gender activists but at the same time I am dependent on my income from running a small business in a small town, so cannot be "out" for fear of TA doing something to harm me. So I do what I can, anonymously on here and on X.

On my FB feed I repost GC news to "friends only". I share screenshots showing the latest madness (e.g. men in women's sports, toilets, prisons etc.) By doing this I have successfully peaked a number of friends. Coward that I am, I never make any comment of my own, so nobody can ever quote me saying something "twansfobic" and then using it to punish me financially.

I found out that a local acquaintance who has for 15 years been on my FB friends list blocked me. When a mutual acquaintance asked why she cited my so-called transphobia. She can only be basing this on my sharing screenshots of news reports on FB.

I don't really understand why a disagreement on this issue means she has to block me. I have a few thousand FB friends and bet we have different views on religion, political allegiance, sexuality, etc. This seems to be the ONE issue which leads to being sent to Coventry.

She is past middle age and (like me) a wheelchair user who is a disability rights campaigner. Her profile declares she is a lifelong feminist, so I find her stance incomprehensible.

I worry that she may poison half the town against me by spreading news of what a hateful bigot she imagines I am and urging other local people to ostracise me.

When I go out I frequently encounter her and although I am nervous I have decided that if I see her, I will confront her, woman to woman, face to face, on this issue. I will try my best to be calm, rational and friendly.

I keep rehearsing things to say in the hope of making her see that agreeing with genderists' demands is not compatible with either feminism or the rights of the disabled to same-sex care. I have seen her advertise for female carers so it's puzzling that she had taken the genderists' side.

Any ideas on what I can say to her that will induce a "light-bulb" moment and make her realise that she is supporting an ideology that harms women, especially the disabled?

If it were at a university, in publishing or the arts I think there’s ample evidence to support the worry of losing her livelihood, but much less so in the wider world.

I think this is a bit naive. It depends on the community and the people involved. I've seen people's businesses get targeted by activists on FB before.

Sorry I meant to quote you @BeaAndBen

I just wanted to make the point that she's not necessarily just being paranoid.

OP’s approach of “show her how she’s wrong” is only going to make it more likely, not less, that the woman talks about OP’s GC views to others.

I do agree with you there though.

There was a cafe in Brighton that refused to put up a trans-related poster. The TRAs really went after her.
Thread here:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4051558-Brighton-TRAs-bullying-female-small-business-owner

Yes I was thinking of that cafe among other businesses.

Do these TRAs never watch a documentary about Nazism or read 1984 or the Handmaid's Tale and think, "Are we the baddies?"

Absolutely. I think in Brighton, Leeds or Manchester she’d have every reason to be concerned. But a small town? That’s not the usual MO.

The trans lobby like to go after those they can trample over with their numbers. Large community of ‘allies’ galumphing over women’s rights and livelihoods. It’s horrible. I have seen it happen to a good friend and it was heartbreaking.

But from what the OP said, this is one woman who blocked her on Facebook ‘for transphobia’ but otherwise hasn’t had any other issues or hints of a problem.

I’ve had any number of former friends and acquaintances block me over this. (And met many amazing women as a result so a win on balance) That didn’t make them come for my business, though. We just parted company.

The OP will become That Transphobe if she starts trying to have conversations about it. Her GC views will be the first thing this woman thinks of rather than the issue fading into the background over time.

@BeaAndBen I agree with you and I think this is key: "this is one woman who blocked her on Facebook ‘for transphobia’ but otherwise hasn’t had any other issues or hints of a problem."

If it was me I'd just let it fade now and deal with any issues if they occurred. I wouldn't be compromising my own views at all, but equally I wouldn't be looking to go and convince anybody.

Could it be that she is so deluded that, like Dr Upton, she thinks TWs actually are female?

Try not to worry - she's not done anything other than block you on a social media platform and explain to someone when they specifically asked, what her reasoning for that was.

If you do encounter anything negative more widely, you could have a few responses prepped, eg: "Oh, that's a shame if she feels that way. I don't think I've ever said anything transphobic online so I don't know where that's come from." Then just move on to a new topic of conversation. If there's a specific article she references as 'evidence', you can even say something like "I share a lot of articles about lots of things - what does she say I said about it?" (Then you can show that actually you said nothing - just shared the article).

Or perhaps not EVERY SINGLE transgender child or person is irreparably harmed and live happy lives.

You can't come in with a sweeping statement like all transgender children are irreparably harmed by their parents and expect anyone who respects trans people to want to sit and have a reasonable conversation with you.

This isn't actually what I meant at all. I meant perhaps she has a loved one who happens to be trans, FM or MF, could be an adult who has transitioned, not necessarily a child. But whatever, she could want to support or at least not actively go against them. This is all hypothetical of course, we don't know her reasons. Maybe she believes TWAW with regards to fully transitioned men. Whatever the case I don't think she would welcome OP accosting her in the street. She just needs to accept the woman's decision to block her unless the woman herself brings up the subject and would like a debate. I think it's fair to think that out of OP's thousands of FB friends a few won't agree with her. She either has to accept that or not post things that's she's not willing to defend.

I think anybody who has transitioned as a child has been irreparably harmed, yes. Children should be given time to grow into adults before making irreversible decisions like this.

I also think that the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry should be focusing on finding ways of curing gender dysphoria, or at least alleviating it enough to enable people with dysphoria to accept their sexed bodies. But that wouldn't be such a money spinner for them, would it? And nobody is allowed to say this because the implication is that being transgender is inherently an undesirable thing to be.

Just to move away a little from transphobia, I think to a certain extent this is also just part and parcel of sharing your political/religious/whatever views with 2000 of your closest friends and acquaintances. Someone is periodically going to not like what you say. That might be your views on abortion or immigration or COVID etc etc. We won't agree on everything and everyone has different deal breakers.

If you don't want this to happen, you kind of have to stick to silly memes and even then someone will probably block you at some point because they find memes irritating. It's social media.

What do you think about these guys -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castrato

Irreparably harmed or not?

Wtf do young boys castrated against their will and not given any replacement hormones have to do with transgender people? That's a whole leap of logic there.

Boys and young men have been given puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and had their genitals removed without evidence that it would help their condition. This has happened under the banner of “transgender”.

This is not informed consent - not so very far away from “against their will” really.

@HalfArsedTerf It is one of the saddest things about this: that women are being driven apart by this, friendships affected, misunderstandings, suspicion, accusations…. I also live in a small town and absolutely recognise your fears. Are men equally affected? Seems not. So why is this “our“ problem to solve. I wish you the best and hope things work out somehow.

Decisions made by an individual after mandatory counselling and waiting periods are absolutely different to things being done to them against their will. Get a grip.

No, you get a grip. Why are you so keen to defend the mutilation and artificial hormone treatment that has been used on vulnerable children, most of whom were one of autistic, victim of trauma or growing up to be same sex attracted and ‘transing away the gay’?

You clearly haven’t read about cases like Ritchie Heron, and the greater number of female detransitioners.

You are aware that puberty blockers for gender issues are now banned in this country because of the horrors that have gone on?

I don't believe there is any kind of counselling which can establish that a minor has capacity to consent to destroying their healthy body in pursuit of an impossible goal. Even if the counselling were realistic and fact based, how can a teenager understand the consequences of ruining their future fertility and sexual function, and drastically reducing the number of people who would be interested in having a relationship with them? And that's before you even address the fact that in the last few years almost all counsellors have adopted an "affirmation only" approach to gender confused children (essentially predetermining the outcome of the counselling) and that nobody appears to have explained to these children what biological sex actually is and the fact that you can't change it.

Most egregious of all are the cases of children being socially transitioned as young as 4 or 5. If you tell a 5 year old girl she is a boy, she will believe it. And then by the time she is 10 or 11 the idea of letting her start her periods as nature intended has already become unthinkable.

As for waiting periods, most detransitioners will tell you that they were approved for hormones after one or two appointments. Even on the NHS, people like Sinead Watson walked away from her first appointment with a prescription for testosterone in hand. And if a child is unfortunate enough to have had woke parents who contacted those ghouls at Mermaids or Gender GP, there really is no such thing as mandatory counselling or waiting periods.

Yes. What @MissScarletInTheBallroom said.

I happened to just see this on X/Twitter:

x.com/journalismseen/status/1893187263787331940?s=46

Even with all those big opinions and facts you all can't understand the difference between consent + replacement hormones and forced sterilisation with no replacement hormones?

There's something wrong with you all. Whether you think the consent is misguided or not, having to give consent first is important.

If the person lacks the capacity to understand just what they are consenting to, that consent is meaningless. How do you not see that?

My four year old would have consented to swapping our house for a month at Disneyland. That doesn’t mean he understood the housing ladder.

Damn those pesky facts huh?!

We are not saying the two scenarios are identical, we are saying that both are wrong. They are comparable because of the devastating and permanent impact of the treatments and procedures. Children (and, as Cass has identified, young adults) cannot consent to losing their sexual function and more.

As a thought experiment do you think it matters if a 12 year old gives “consent” to an adult to perform a sexual act on them? Do you think a 17 year old can “consent” to a tattoo?