Reframe your disappointment

[MissScarletInTheBallroom]

Inspired by a couple of other threads about the reaction to the Supreme Court judgment from trans allies, I thought it might be interesting to have a thread to discuss what to say to people if it comes up in conversation.

Comments I've seen so far seem to suggest:

• the judgment was legally wrong and this isn't the end
• the judgment might have been legally correct but it was morally wrong and the law needs to be changed
• trans rights are now being rolled back
• this is a victory for the far right
• this was orchestrated and bank rolled by the far right
• this decision will now embolden transphobes to harass and victimise trans people

Perhaps we could brainstorm the best ways to respond to these (and any other) talking points, should they arise?

No, that was exactly what the title was intended to reference!

I'm dealing with people who would not see it as unemotional, factual and constructive. They view your 'separate but equal' language as the same kind of provocative BS as adopted by enthusiasts for Apartheid or Jim Crow laws.

I'm not optimistic about changing their minds.

"no trans people were consulted"

Aha but the Trans groups all refused to take part. They could have applied. They didn't. It isn't that they were blocked - they didn't even try. This is very fertile ground for conspiracy it looks really bad.

So if you want to make a subversive, but not obvious argument turn this back on them.. Lots of pro trans people are suspicious of Stonewall Mermaids et al who have a lot of money but don't achieve much. Build on that say the terfs might have lost but Stonewall were traitors who were just after money and refused to do anything when they could have.

Point out Stonewall worked with big business and the Tories and major arms companies. Suggest their training courses were garbage etc. Trans issues were just a joke to them. So we have to disaffiliate from the antitrans Stonewall.

If Mermaids come up talk about the corruption allegations and the safeguarding failures reveled by trans staff members. Suggest Mermaids refused to take part because they are just money grabbers too.

Say their no debate tactic followed for years was suspicious and lazy they were never interested in defeating the nasty wims - they were cowards and they were actually just banking cash.

[If you are really rolling start suggesting these groups are being run by fake trans people cis infiltrators who are pretending to be trans while the "real" trans people are being betrayed. Start talking about AGP stuff. Tell them to watch White Lotus]

You could even bring in Agent Jolyon who every trans case he fundraised on ended in disaster. Is he working for the Terfs?? Why is one of his cases quoted in the Judgement to help prove biology is real.

Also don't forget to tell everyone the ONLY way to defeat the Terfs is by debating them and reading all their stuff so you can easily counter their awful weak arguments. :)

You can only play the whole 'apartheid' bullshit if you fundamentally believe it is ok to exclude and harm women to properly value men.

Which is seeing men as fundamentally more important and valuable than women.

I've seen some kicking off from men in newspaper comments this morning objecting to women referencing this as male supremacism, but it is in the ball park of this - the issue is men AND women very invested in a sex based hierarchy in which women just don't matter like men do. They don't like having to think about this, but they're going to have to.

In terms of the judgement, the apartheid card is also sunk: it has established that equality law only works if men are NEVER considered to be a type of women. Unless you believe men are a type of women you cannot believe that separating them from women is wrong. If you do believe that, well freedom of belief is a thing, but that means other people are equally free not to believe it and not to consent.

It may have been all fun and games for lesbians in the 80s but it certainly wasn't for gay men who were treated the same way as Trans Women are today. Try not to have too much of an "I'm alright Jack" attitude and think about others in the LGBTQ+ instead of throwing them under the bus and siding with those who hate you, eg the Reform UK mob and the likes of Kemi Badenoch.

Yep, me. I also remember the 70's, and the 60's. Can't remember ever being afraid of lesbians in the changing rooms anywhere, or anyone not wanting them to be there. I'll admit not many were out, but I did know a few brave souls. Never felt threatened by them. Perhaps because they weren't men?!

"but the reality is most TW are straight men who want to fuck women"

How many trans women have you met in real life and got to know to come to that conclusion?

This whole debacle has been a wonderful example of how NOT to win friends and influence people.

If you are an emerging group of vulnerable people, and you want to have accommodations made for you, what you DONT do is

1. Shut all debate down
2. Vilify the groups you are insisting make accommodations
3. Interpret the law as how you want it to be rather than how it is, and encourage employers to do the same
4. Double down on even the most extreme examples, saying abused women are not entitled to single sex spaces to heal in, rapists belong in women's prisons and it is totally fine to medicate and sterilize vulnerable confused children
5. Ignore the very evident problematic elements of your demands

This whole approach was so male in tone and just reeked of the patriarchy. I think it was the nature of how these demands were made, as much as the demands themselves that created the incredible groundswell of women who have managed to resist this.

If TRAs had sat down with women and discussed how we make room for trans people in a way that works for everyone, we could have ended up in a better place. But they didn't. They thought that a story as old as time would play out again, that in the face of male demands the voices of women would be ignored.

To steal an earlier posters phrase, karma's a bitch and she wants her toilet back.

I’m not optimistic either because those left on the side of unreality are now so entrenched that digging their way out is a huge job.

Of course the obvious answer is that unlike those opposing racial segregation, who demanded an end to segregation, transactivists are not asking for an end to segregation.

Instead they are demanding that segregation should continue but that they should be given the right to choose which space they use.

Where men are making that demand, the equivalent would be a white personal insisting that they are black and demanding access to black people’s spaces, even as some black people said the white person was not black and they didn’t want them there.

All this talk of rape. It’s not just rape that is the risk tho is it? Voyeurism, exhibitionism.

i do not subscribe to gender identity. I should not be forced into being a supporting part in a fantasy I find misogynistic and harmful.

in answer to the op. Be prepared for the argument to be taken directly yo toilets and changing rooms and rape. Compared with homophobia and racism. We need to point out it’s not just violence and sexual violence that this was about it was about woman’s awards and woman’s spaces on boards and all the equality stuff we couldn’t even talk about because we had had our words subverted

Yeah, if you go around calling Trans Women men and ignoring their Gender Identity I'm going to assume you're a bigot and someone nasty to others for the sake of it. Gender dysphoria is real and men transitioning into Trans Women is a real thing.

One of the things you could say to people who are dismayed at this ruling:

Gender is a nebulous concept so it's not possible to organise society around something that is completely intangible.

So you do know they're men then. Yesterday you didn't...

We’re women.

You have just described a situation where men created a problem for other men, and admitted that women did not make a problem for anyone.

If men are creating problems for other men, it isn’t our problem to sort that out.

And no, I am not going to prioritize other people’s desires above my rights, which is what you are demanding. Men need to sort out their own problems and that includes the men who are claiming they are women.

You're showing your lack of historical knowledge again - gay men were not treated the same way as trans women are today - 'today' being the day after the day after the highest court in the UK reaffirmed the legal rights and protections of transgender people. Not exactly persecuted, are they?

And lesbians were in the forefront of groups like ActUp and other groups supporting, and actually physically caring for, gay men with AIDS.

Today, however, lesbians have to fight for the right to organise and socialise as lesbians, i.e. women who are sexually attracted to other biological women - ironically with more support from a bunch of judges than from the 'LGBTQ+ ' movement, which has defined lesbians out of existence in its nonsensical acronym.

The Supreme Court judgment was very clear that for the purposes of the Equality Act, trans women are men, and we only call them trans women as a courtesy.

What word do you think we should be allowed to use to describe the category of people consisting of adult male humans? Because that is a category we need a word for, and it includes trans women.

I didn't say that and never call trans women men. Why would I deliberately go out of my way to upset others when all the trans people I know have been lovely?

So if they weren't lovely you would be ok calling them a man. That isn't very kind

Try and look at it from the other point of view for a change.

Should we deliberately avoid using clear and factual language because the trans people you know are lovely and it might upset them?

No I wouldn't, don't twist my words. I have better thing to do in my life than bully minorities.

OK.

But you do understand that trans women are male, and that to call them women (or worse still, female) is misleading?

You said "men transitioning into Trans Women is a real thing" which indicates you think they are men

It's okay, I understand it can be confusing, which is why we needed the Supreme Court ruling for clarity.

It's not factual, sex and gender aren't the same thing, they are Trans Women. And language evolves. Why are you so afraid of change and differences

Have we actually have any progression since I first posted this?

Don't you have better things to do in your life than mis-represent lesbian and gay history?