What questions should people be asking themselves?

[bigknitblanket]

If you were trying to encourage someone who has been taken in by trans ideology to critically think about the whole gender thing…what questions would you suggest they ask themselves?
I’ll start with “At what point during transition does a man become a woman?”

If everyone can choose whether they are a man or a woman, then why do we have a law to promote equality of men and women?

If people are allowed to hide their sex, how does safeguarding work?

That's a good one😄must try it!

I have no time for 'my lovely lovely transwoman friend' 'my lovely lovely 6 foot transman friend' etc.' just want to pee/live in peace'.

I try to look sympathetic - it's a bit of a struggle I admit - but say that the law can't be based on how your friend feels. There's a bigger picture, there are matters of principle involved, and in order to be fair, the law can't revolve around a tiny number of lovely lovely people who think they are in the wrong body.

I try even harder still not to say duh! at the end of all that, but honestly, 'duh!' is the response that most often comes to mind when I think of the counterarguments to the TRAs and their genderwoo 🙄

You can't change sex. Duh!
Women don't have a penis. Duh!
Use the toilet designated for your biological sex. Duh!
'Woman' means 'biological woman' - the UK Supreme Court managed to spread 'Duh! over 88 pages

Do you think people with autism or difference of cognitive development or viual deficiencies should be reprimanded for misgendering people?

Do you think a person living in say, the 1930s who stayed in the closet their whole life, had a typically male body, married and fathered children, and lived and died as a man was actually a woman?

Connie Shaw has some great questions

Are you a man/ woman?
How do you know?
What does it mean to feel like a woman/ man?
Do you feel like a woman/ man?
How can a man feel like a woman?
The Staniland Question - Do you think a male sexed person should be able to undress and shower in a communal changing room with teenage girls?

From Connie:

Do you believe women have the right to single sex changing rooms?
If transgender women are women what makes them trans?

I feel like there’s a generational difference here too - I was watching a video of someone interviewing people at the demonstrations last weekend, and upon being asked “what is a woman?”, the younger transwomen will gush about “a woman is someone with courage and strength, etc” or “a woman is whoever she says she is”, whereas the older transwomen will flat out refuse to answer the question. Because they have enough life experience to know the answer doesn’t support their cause.

I don't necessarily want to change people's views, but I do want them to be aware of three things:

1. The denial of reality
2. The censorship and painting good people as bigots
3. The risks to women

They might still feel TWAW after that, but it's a free society and I not here to bulldoze anyone, I just want them to have to whole story before they form an opinion.
I tend to keep comments very brief and about what I think, feel and experience. I just try to plant seeds for them to consider.

Examples of some of the (all true) comments that made my "bekind" friends a bit more receptive:

I mentioned to a very TRA friend how fearful and upset I was that if I had a pap smear I wouldn't be able to ask for a female nurse without being labelled transphobic. I could ask for a "woman" but that woman might have been born male. She's also very private about her body and only ever has female doctors, same as me. I could see that one hit home as she would hate that for herself and her comments have seemed a lot more balanced since then.

I mentioned to a very DEI friend who's parents fled a communist country that management at my work forcefully "re-educated" a collegue who publicly (and respectfully) expressed concerns about a transgirl sharing changing rooms with his daughter. She knows how evil authoritarian "re-education" is and so really values freedom of thought. She was shocked and a lot less "we must always tick the right boxes" after that...

When a male friend transitioned I mentioned to another friend who was being all "stunning and brave" that "she" said she was really a woman now because she now has long hair and wears make up, which "you need to be a woman". The friend I was talking to is female but has short hair and is quite outdoorsy low maintenance. I could see it ticking away in her head - "long hair plus make up doesn't equal woman though?"

When the same friend transitioned I mentioned to another friend how the only way I could get my kids to understand it was to explain it like pretending about Santa Claus (who they know isn't real). We say these things (pronouns etc) because it makes X happy and it would make X so sad if we forget. The friend I was telling was a bit shocked but she found it hard to argue, especially when I said I just couldn't lie to the kids.

I've had less succesful conversations when I've mentioned criminality, "her penis in r*pe cases" death threats by TRAs etc. People don't want to hear it and think you're being hateful unless it's close to home for them for some reason.

People will figure it out themselves if you let them, and if you maintain your dignity and wisdom and compassion when dealing with them. It's about being truthful and fair and factual (and not ranting no matter how tempting!)

This has a good strike rate because deep down, very few people actually believe that you can change sex

Yes, agree. I have had the conversation with a few people - most of whom were unsure of how/what they felt and were trying to work it out. So I ask ‘Firstly, do you genuinely believe that human beings can change sex?’ , not one has ever said anything other than No. And once they’ve acknowledged that, the rest flows easily.

I was definitely in the bekind camp and peaked thanks to MN

For me it was realising that not all TW were the hyper feminine homosexual type, ie understanding AGP

What is the difference between a transwoman and a man?

Do you really think it was reasonable to force female staff to get changed with their male bodies colleagues, put male rapists in women's prisons and deny female rape survivors female only support?

To a heterosexual man who is all TWAW:
So, if you met your now-wife, and after a few dates found out she was actually a transwoman, would you have continued dating her and now be married to her?

Having seen the violent reactions from some trans activists, carrying placards threatening to kill TERFs and so on, can you understand why many women wouldn't want those people in their female only safe spaces?

If you think that trans women who have had gender reassignment surgery or have a gender recognition certificate should be allowed to use women's single sex spaces, how would you propose we check either of those things before they are allowed in? And if we can't check either of those things, doesn't that mean in practice that literally anyone is allowed in?

Ha! That’s actually my usual approach 😂 I just think this particular person might not take that so well, so plan to be a bit more subtle and get her thinking about things herself rather than feel I’m bulldozing her and therefore getting defensive.

First of all not all trans are male to female. Female to male trans also exist. Just consider that there are more than 2 genders. For example there are people born intersex. Life is not as written in the bible. Live and let live is a good way to go.

Are you aware that around 85% of children with gender dysphoria find their dysphoria disappears by the age of 19, with no surgical or hormone interventions? And so would regret hormones and surgery if they had it? Do you think it's better to mutilate 100 children and have 85 of them regret it, or to mutilate none of them and risk 15 of them feeling uncomfortable for a few more years until they are old enough to make their own decisions?

Why can a child choose to wreck their bodies with hormones years before they can choose to get a tattoo?

Are you aware of the schism that has occurred in the trans community over issues like self-ID and the concept of non-binary identities? Surely you don't believe trans people all think the same? Are you aware that "old school" trans people who are realistic about their chromosomes are called "tru scum" and hounded online?

You say that straight men wouldn't pretend to be trans to access women's spaces. In that case, a hugely disproportionate number of trans people in prison are sex offenders. Some of them commit sexual offences and then transition in prison. So, if there are no pretenders, does that mean you believe that trans people are just disproportionately likely to be sex offenders?

That suggests that a TW could be female though? We need to get away from "looking female" when that is irrelevant to being a woman, under gender ideology.

More apt would be "if your wife considered herself to have a gender identity that aligned with "man", would you consider yourself to be in gay marriage?"

You may wish to spend some time on the feminism boards and do some reading. You’ll learn a lot from the women here, who are incredibly intelligent, articulate and well-educated on this subject.

Your first piece of learning is that the term “intersex” is no longer in use; the correct terminology is disorder of sexual development, or DSD. These are rare chromosomal conditions but are actually all sex-based so ironically they prove sex is binary and do not demonstrate that there are “in-between” sexes. For example, you might want to read up on Turner’s Syndrome which only affects girls, or Kleinfelter Syndrome which only affects boys. Consider also that DSDs are abnormalities, not normal human development. Some people are born with 6 fingers on one hand, but that doesn’t mean we accept that human fingers are on a spectrum and they vary in number. We are mammals, and mammals have evolved to have two sexes. People with DSDs have associated health complications, most notably infertility but often other conditions as well.

In the past, some babies were born with ambiguous genitalia and “assigned” a sex, while the medics and family essentially hoped for the best. At puberty, it then became apparent that the person was actually the opposite sex, which must have been incredibly distressing. Today, this wouldn’t happen; as a result of chromosomal testing and other medical advances, babies are correctly diagnosed and sexed if there is ambiguity which means it cannot be determined from visual examination alone.

You should also reflect that people with DSDs are not a “third sex”, generally find it very distressing to be referred to as such and some have been very vocal in stating that they do not wish to be used as (inaccurate) evidence of “sex is a spectrum” when this is not their reality. You are presumably female, and can perhaps relate to how they feel if you imagine being born without a womb, as some girls are, and then being told by ignorant people that that meant you weren’t female as a result.

You've confused sex with gender there. Easily done if you're not familiar with what anyone is talking about.

Do feel free to dip into these boards (plenty of threads on trans men), or even ask yourself the questions in this thread, to learn some of the positions in this debate.

As Tom Swarbrick asked Carla Denya on LBC - What does it mean to live as a woman(or man)? Do you wear certain clothes? Do you read certain books? Do you like certain things?

Some of the lovely-kind (and very young) people on my Facebook page would counter that sex is largely irrelevant in society today and therefore not really worth mentioning and (at the same time) people can express themselves however they like.

Commenting to save these excellent questions!

For a woman, I would ask:
Why do we have single/separate-sex spaces for women?

For a man I would ask:
Why do we have separate men's and women's football?

I think as a society we have forgotten why we did these things in the first place

Well first of all - I’m not that interested in the FtoM contingent, because they’re not demanding access to spaces that could be detrimental to anyone.
Secondly - anyone who’s born with a developmental sex disorder is still male or female, and that’s not what I’m interested in anyway. It’s very rare and the TRAs had no right to try and weave it into their argument.
Thirdly, gender is a social construct and I have no interest in how people feel about their identity - it’s personal to them and shouldn’t affect my life. I don’t care if men want to wear pretty frocks/lipstick because it gives them a kick, as long as they’re not trying to come into women’s single sex spaces.

If the two non-binary Eurovision contestants from last year had sex and one became pregnant, which one would it be? How do you know?