Is it possible to be a feminist and also have some empathy for transgender people today?

[HoundOfTheBasketballs]

I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert here but everything feels incredibly polarised. Like, either you’re with us or you’re against us.
Is there no middle ground in this debate?
I am, and always have been a feminist, but I know and like people who are trans and non-binary. I can’t be the only person feeling confused and conflicted, can I?

It's not having no empathy for vulnerable autistic, abused or mentally ill teenagers but it's balancing that with the harms that the affirmation model does to wider society.

If 'empathy' only means total capitulation to a tran's person disordered thinking about their sexed body, then no I'm not empathetic. It's also worth remembering that even young, vulnerable, autistic males are not immune to the sexual or misogynistic drivers for transition, especially if they're chronically online.

They're are also a lot of young autistic males out there who are very angry with their mothers, either because female parents generally bear the brunt of their children's mental Ill health or because mothers are seen as an obstacle to them living their lives as they want - whether that's obsessive gaming, special interests or transitioning.

With this in mind I think it's misguided, even when we love some of them dearly, to think this particular subset of trans identified males are somehow totally benign and unproblematic for women and deserve unqualified support.

This is exactly how I feel. The word empathy is totally overused, and incorrectly. I can only have empathy with people whose specific issue intersects with my experience. I can have sympathy with others.

Maybe I'm prissy about this as I have a Classics background and it is Greek in origin, but the usage makes me wince every time.

People who think this believe that we should centre men's needs ahead of our own. They may not consciously understand that this is where their priorities lie, but it's the only real explanation for what you're talking about.

As my grandmother used to say, "don't display your ignorance".

100%

It’s because of this board and the magnificent women that post on here, that I learnt vulnerable children were being indoctrinated into believing changing sex would solve all their problems.

Teachers, psychologists, psychiatrists, Doctors, all contributed their own ideological beliefs onto vulnerable children. 😵‍💫
Parents also played their part but I see that more sympathetically for some of them.

But, it’s the militant TRA’s that are guiding those same children on how assertive they have to be to push non-believers into acknowledging their ‘rightful’ place in all things that they have no right to demand.
Parents allow this in the mistaken belief it’s protecting their kids.

My 3 children are 3 and 4 years old but now they have a better chance of being protected from the evils of being told they might have been born in the wrong body They will now be told they will forever be their biological sex. Hooray 🙌✊

I do have sympathy for that. Our children are susceptible to suggestion and vulnerable in their own right. It is not OK what has been done by teaching them gender ideology in schools. I can only imagine how difficult this has made your everyday life (on top of all the other autism issues). I hope you can find a way out - DBT online therapy has been helping our autist DS who is a GC/atheist type but struggles with feelings, anxiety and self regulation. That might be worth a look to see if it would help your DC?

I am very grateful that my DS is in a school which has one staff member who blocked this ideology. They have personally taken a lot of heat for it and are probably very relieved to be vindicated by yesterday's judgement.

On the other hand my DS is 6ft2 and while he is scared of his own shadow (and a whole list of other things) he is male and physically imposing. He would cause women concern if he turned up in the ladies changing rooms.

It is possible to be vulnerable and trigger the vulnerabilities in others simultaneously. I can only help my DS deal better with the world. I do ask others for reasonable accommodations for him - but I can't ask other people to give up their rights to help us

We are asked, in light of the ruling to think about the transwoman. The transwoman who just wants to get on with their lives, dont use womens spaces, dont think of themselves as women.

Why do we have to think about a group who agree with the ruling? It makes no sense.

Unless the picture painted isnt true? That they do want to be seen as women and they do want to join womens groups, but see themselves as exceptions. They used the fact that they were welcomed in by women, pass, not like the 'radical trans'.

But this ruling smashed that fantasy for them. There is no distinction between trans identifying men, their motivations, their certificates, their skills with make up, the 'permission' they assumed they had.

And they are expecting women to fight on their behalf to support their fantasy of their woman-ness. To protect them because their trans is different to other trans, because they were conned into believing they could become women and because thats what woman do right - compromise their safety, happiness and right to a name because mens needs are greater.

Thats gender expectations right there, not this pretend gender thats clothes and makeup.

Persecuting? Did you read what @ChazsBrilliantAttitudewrote?

The statement was about the biological differences between male and female bodies and the difficulties that women face because of their female biology. It was factual and balanced.

We haven’t been asking for protection from trans women. We have been asking for protection from men. Not always physical protection like safety to get changed and use the toilet but protection from sex based discrimination in things like representation in awards and on boards etc. Which we already had but we’re being denied

My kids are millennials. And they are GC all the way. But I actually think better of GenZ than you do. They are getting it now I reckon for the most part.

To me there are clear differences in the groups. Middle aged late transitioning men are a totally different ball game to the autistic 21 year old who just believed what he was taught as fact in school and thought it explained his discomfort in his body.

Oh absolutely this.

Thetr are so many people who've been lumped together under the trans umbrella

Middle aged, fetishistic men
Gender non conforming people
Teenagers struggling with natural teenaged issues like identity abs changing bodies.

One of these groups has been hugely helped by establishing an overarching trans 'identity'. I wonder which? The others have been sacrificed on a pyre by the charlatans.

Most people don't have their heads around this nuance.

Non-binary means exactly the same today as it did yesterday - Identification that falls outside male or female.

All that yesterday's ruling said is that women are people who were born female and have XX biology. It provides a definition so safe spaces allocated specifically for women, are only for those born female.

Would you also say women don't need protecting from men? Because there's a reason single sex areas exist and it's not because 100% of men would rape or injure women and girls and I imagine the same is true for trans women. But it is to reduce risk. A woman can complain if a random man walked into a woman's changing room and the man would be removed. The same man could identify as a trans woman for the day and if anyone complained they would be treated as a transphobe. The same risk is there and the woman may feel just as vulnerable in both circumstances.

Quite. They don’t see themselves as the same as female people, do they? So why would they have an issue with this ruling, when they already respect women’s sex based rights?

This whole debacle was for the most part a trend that got out of hand and caused real damage to women and young people. We are now starting to come out the other side as reason and reality re-establish themselves as guiding principles. Those who backed this dubious ideology to the hilt are going to have a difficult time explaining themselves to future generations when we look back on the real harms that have been done. For the time being they are in denial it seems and unable to comprehend that quite simply they were in the wrong here.

I have seen some pretty harsh comments on MN about trans women. But they to me obviously come from a place of frustration and having to repeat ourselves over and over in the face of being told disagreement with what we are told is ‘unkind’. Even then they may be insulting but they are not aggressive like the aggression we get for expressing GC views places other than this board. GC women get rape and death threats, persecuted out of their jobs and hobby clubs. Told we are failing as women if we don’t preform womanhood in the gender regressive way.

if aggression and unkindness is being recognised as a problem it is NOT GC women who are the main perpetrators. And I really take umbrage that I’m called unkind and hateful for raising concerns about males in my dd school toilets. When she is telling me she feels uncomfortable with that and given no alternative or support. That I’m called aggressive for refusing to change that stance online having listened to the alternative arguments and not been swayed.

mostly women getting accused of being aggressive are simply not aggressive. They are sticking to their point and views. They are not shifting over and giving way in an appropriately female way in the regressive gender or sexist ideologies.

Though strangely enough doesn’t seem to be expected of males who think they are women, despite all the people who think we’re mean totes believing TWAW, pinky swear.

However mean people think women are on here, always worth reminding them of what's being directed at us from the other side.

terfisaslur.com

Quite honestly, I don't think they'll ever actually admit this.

I've already seen the 'it's all the rights fault, transpeople totally accepted the reality of their sex' on here. 🙄

Thank you for posting this its a stark reminder indeed that all this hatred at women is nothing more than thinly veiled hatred against women full stop. Replace the word terf with woman and you'll see exactly what is going on here. We don't hate them, we just don't want males in our spaces. They are the ones that hate us and want to rape and kill us.

Many of the women that post here came to this board because they were desperate as their own children were being sucked into this abhorrent ideology. If you want to give a group your sympathy or empathy read the trans widows threads, read the actual abuse these women have faced and been forced to accept by society.

In what way? Surely you are being disingenuous, by lumping different groups under one banner as “transgender” when you know that’s wrong and harmful?

The view of the analogy that you seem to not be able to see is that you told us

"I don’t believe that keeping trans women out of women’s toilets significantly reduces the risk of crime"

Meaning, that you don't see excluding male people who all have the same risk of committing sex crime from female toilets reduces crimes being done to female people in those toilets.

Sure, it doesn't entirely prevent it, just like locking your door won't stop someone who really wanted to enter your property. They will do it anyway. But it is a deterrent that is accepted by society. It also has some legal ramifications for insurance etc.

The analogy is, why do we bother locking the door if it doesn't completely stop crime? We do it because it prevents a certain number of crimes by simply locking the door. It also allows us to know that if someone is in your house when you haven't invited them in, they are there when they are not supposed to be there. Meaning we exclude all male people, regardless of their philosophical belief about themselves.

Because in doing that, we will be better able to prevent some crimes from happening.

You also seem to be ignoring the known facts, and statistically supported facts, that a male with a transgender identity has at least the same risk profile of committing a sex crime as all other male people in the UK. Therefore that group of male people should always have been and should be now treated as all other male people in the UK are treated.

ie. all male people excluded, no special groups created that are treated as exempt from those safeguarding actions.

There is no logic that supports creating a special group of male people to be allowed in, particularly when that group has AT LEAST the SAME risk profile as all the other male people.

It is an argument purely based on emotionally manipulative premises.

I'll admit it I'm old and a witch, complete and utter bitch but transwomen are men, always have been always will be (despite what IW claims). Do i want them in the ladies loo, do i fuck. Don't care that they are trans only care that they are men.

wah wah wah, you cruel heartless old witch (yep that's me)but they just want to pee, they can do that in the mens, but but what about intersex. Don't bring people with DSD into it, they want to be left out and they are all male or female in any case, i personally have a lot of sympathy for the struggles people with a dsd suffer from which are completely separate to any issues trans people have and being married to a man with a dsd i have experience of how it's affected him and his life choices.

Look I'm an old and angry menopausal witch who wants the men to get the fuck out of women's spaces, for my sake, my mother's sake, my daughter's sakes. If transwomen have an issue with using the men's they need to fight for their own spaces and get their hands of ours.