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?

They think that because money grubbing orgs, nefarious people with agendas and a political class with no backbone want them to believe that.

This is not the fault of women and all the judgement reinforces is that women and girls have rights in law which should never have been maliciously reinterpreted the way they have been.

'Society' just wants their daughters, their mums etc. to have spaces free from men when they are vulnerable and fairness in sport and the word No in those situations to be respected.

Also, there has never been an honour system. Women were never asked, there was never a vote or a referendum. What actually happened is that a few arrogant male doctors who pioneered gender treatments for men decided to take it upon themselves to tell those men they could use women's spaces to practice their very best woman-ing.

Later on foolish politicians who had been lobbied furiously behind closed doors decide to codify this in the GRA - again not asking women for our consent.

We don't know that it operated well. I suspect a lot of the time it didn't but women tend not to speak up or make a fuss when faced with strange men in an enclosed space. The explosion of trans as an identity movement and useful vehicle for misogyny from the 2010s onwards has just meant harms to women have increased ten fold and become much more visible.

As a mother I have a great deal of sympathy for what you are going through trying to work out how best to maintain a relationship with your son and how best to support him.

That sympathy to you does not extend to me agreeing to call a man ‘she’ and ‘her’ because you want us to as it will make your son happy.

As a feminist I am offended that you think today of all days it is appropriate to ask us to do

@Diverze - I really don’t think vulnerable people should think society hates them as a result of this. I seriously doubt anybody has changed their personal views about trans people on the back of this judgement. The danger comes from those who already hated trans people, and most women who want to protect women’s identity as a biological sex do not hate transgender women, they just don’t buy into the fiction that they actually are women. Perpetuating an obvious fiction in a way that made women’s lives less fair was not protecting transgender people from the haters and bigots, it was, in the long term, giving fuel to the haters’ fire, because it was giving up to 50% of society something to be cross about, regardless of what they thought about trans people as people. It’s all too easy for those who want to stir up trouble to pretend the anger is towards trans people rather than towards the load of old codswallop that is “trans women are women,” but that is no reason for sanity not to prevail in the judgement.

Yes the lovely IW acknowledges they have a sex, they proudly and consistently state they are a woman and female. According to the Supreme Court they class as male under the protected characteristic of sex.

And behaves in a very male manner.

Basically we could always tell, we were just scared of the repercussions of saying anything if at work, for example. Now we don't have to be.

No one asked women. No-one. There was no honour.

And why not go after the people who have convinced trans identified youth that people hate them? All the trans organisations saying that misgendering is violence and genocide. And if your parents don't agree with you get new parents.

You're talking to the wrong people

I don't believe I have asked you to do any such thing.

I said that it would not be kind to walk up to my DC and say "you are a man". Why would anyone do that if my DC is just walking down the road? I thought we believed that trans people are free to express themselves as they wish and live in peace and security provided they don't ride roughshod over women's rights. Walking down the road is not a female space.

There are multiple hundreds of posts in agreement with gender critical feminism on this board in the last couple of days. I think you will survive being offended that I choose to use feminine pronouns for my trans daughter.

Is this a reference to an honour system that existed between you and your friends? Or are we discussing an honour system in society?

no worries. I was under the impression it was upsetting you.

And if so, it will probably continue to do so, because, as I said, you're unlikely to get many women to agree that empathy should involve any kind of compromise or compliance.

Apologies. I thought that I had quoted you, but apparently not. Ergo, repeating my previous post. (Apologies for any confusion caused.)

Sorry - you need to be clearer. Which pupil, in your opinion, was "making a mock of genders" and what do you mean by "genders" in this context?

I promise that I'm not being wilfully ignorant here: I deal with semantics on a daily basis, and I'd be grateful for clarification so that I can give a full response to your question.

I'll check in later so that I can answer your original question.

No I don’t actually. They have the rights in law they are rightly entitled to and have always had. They’ve actually benefited from the misinformation telling them they had rights they didn’t actually have. Their massive grift is over, that’s all

That's nice of you to be concerned for me.

I understand it's a theoretical debate for most people, and I don't disagree with protecting women's rights at all. Rather than being upset I find it mildly frustrating because it's all very simple when it's theoretical, and much more complex in practice. Parents universally love their children I think, and it's much easier to say "it's all bollocks don't use the pronouns and tell him he's a man" when it's someone else's young person rather than your own in such distress, for literally years and years on end.

I do find people telling me what I must do, how I talk to my DC, or what I demand of others as a parent of a trans person rather tiresome though.

You said

In what way would it be helpful to say to my 23 year old that they are a man?

Since women are not in the habit of walking up to random trans identified men and calling them men the only way we would be calling him a man would be by using the correct pronouns so I assumed that’s what you meant.

If you are literally asking us not to walk up to your son and call him a man you are asking us to not do something we have not previously done and have no intention of doing and don’t even know who he is so couldn’t do that even if we felt inclined to. As far as I can remember I have never seen any poster on here propose we do that to any trans identified men so that’s a peculiar request.

I don’t care. I haven’t seen a single trans person exercise a modicum of diplomacy throughout this whole sorry affair, no ‘I believe I’m a woman but still have empathy with your position…’, just a complete entitlement to ride roughshod over our rights and dignity while harassing us online and making the most vile personal attacks.

So I couldn’t give a shit, frankly. I refuse to be a woman who is guilted into feeling sorry for men because I won’t give them my seat on the bus.

And here you’re referring to using male pronouns as calling him a man. There’s two sets of pronouns, male or female. Which are you asking people to use for your son?

If I saw your son in the street, I'd read him as I would any other man, and if it were dark and an empty street, cross the road and get my keys in my hand. In daylight, read as a man and give a wide berth on the pavement. As normal.

I'd say nothing. But I suspect he'd know I see him as a man.

Diverze, i'm not sure if that was meant to be snippy. But you can't ask for empathy on the one hand, and then get sarky if you get it.

I'm not sure you realise, but there are loads of women on here whose children identify as trans. And men.

Not theoretical at all. But they disagree with it.

Perfection. 👌🏼

Making a joke by inventing a gender, how is that not making mock ?

All genders are invented. Gender is a social construct.

You say all that as if you are the only person here with a close relative who is trans though and this is the only response that is acceptable.

Not everyone in the same situation agrees.

The problem in facilitating the fantasy that you are the opposite sex is it leads to the expectation that everyone else should do the same and that if others don't they are bigoted. That's massively unfair. It's not for others to validate and uphold the lie.

Worse still, it doesn't change the fact that sex can't change. That only leads to more heartache in various ways.

I am of the opinion it's cruel to lie in this way. And it's unfair and cruel to expect others to go along with it too because yes it does negatively impact others. Even if the person concerned is a very nice person.

Reality doesn't stop because you want it to.

For me it's like saying 'yes you are right not to be eating' to an anorexic.

There was no “honour system”. I never consented to men in female spaces, and I never will.

Describing what was happening before as an 'honour' system implies that anyone who objected or who was uncomfortable has no honour.

It's just another way to manipulate or justify behaviour that was disrespectful to the privacy and dignity of women and instead centred men.

There was no way to opt out of this so called 'Honour system' or to lodge a complaint or objection.

There was no consultation before hand either.

Women had no agency or power under this 'system'. They never have.

It's only in recent years that women have slowly but surely been able to find that voice and say no.

The telling thing is polling on this - as women became gradually more informed they gradually said no more and more.

It was a deliberate policy by trans activists to try and get law passed 'under the radar'. If women were perfectly happy why would there ever be this strategy. Unless there was an implicit understanding that women wouldn't consent if informed?

The language of manipulation repeats over and over and the ways used to try and delegitimise the very idea of non consenting women and their existence is frightening.

Absence of complaints is never a guarantee that there isn't a complaint. It could equally be indicative of women having no faith in a complaints system or living in fear of they make a complaint. Why make a complaint if you feel it will not make a difference and will be ignored anyway.

Over the next few days I'm sure we will see people saying they are going to ignore this ruling and carry on using the opposite single sex facilities and openly making a point of how they can get away with it and no one is complaining.

On another thread, several people have said their employer has said how they acknowledge the upset to trans people - without any acknowledgement of how their policies might have been unlawful and how they might have discriminated against women - thus, once again, stressing an environment hostile to women and not one that will encourage women to enforce their legal rights in.

Yeah, when I see reference to an honour system I am wondering just what the agreement was. Because I must have missed it.

Was it toilet usage (I have never and would never have agreed to it)? Was it preferred pronouns and language? (Nope again)

And if said honour system has been imposed by fear of shaming or worse, or by education from the media, then that isn’t an honour system. That is rather more concerning in nature.