Gender Critical and Transphobic Trans Allies

[JamieCannister]

It occurred to me last night that there are actually loads of people who claim to be trans allies who are gender critical and transphobic. And deeply ignorant.

People who will genuinely say "trans women are women" and that everyone should be free to live their lives how they want (eg self-ID into women's spaces, receive hormones and surgeries on demand, with no concern for how this stops women living their lives as they want).

They believe "trans children" exist, but that gender non-conforming kids should be left alone and only transition when they reach adulthood if they still want to. They often don't believe that "trans children" ever receive puberty blockers or wrong sex hormones, and don't think they should, yet don't realize that this puts them completely at odds with the ideology they claim to support.

They believe that hardly any men are in women's sports, so it doesn't matter, besides no man would be allowed in until they have "transitioned" at which point they would no longer have male advantage. Fallon Fox either did not happen, because it could not happen or it was a mistake by the sports organisers and it will never happen again.

They believe that DSDs prove that gender is on a spectrum and trans is real, whilst completely missing that the implication is that we can medically test for transness, when the people they claim to support would argue that all medical gatekeeping is wrong.

I don't know where I'm going with this.

There are the real nutter TRAs at protests. There are trans people who are deep into a cult.

But there is also a massive group of people who genuinely believe they are allies, and genuinely believe they are 100% TQ+ friendly. They are happy to shout abuse at "transphobes". Yet stick them in a room to speak with a protest-attending TRA and they would either be condemned as a disgusting transphobe, or they would be browbeaten into being quickly educated and forgiven so long as they do penance as instructed.

The middle ground ends up being that this type of person with this type of view about stuff is to be accepted but they'd not be accepted if they held an unapproved view. And that some people are to be accepted but others aren't. It inevitably ends up in a complete mess where the only way to keep a lid on things is to empower ideological enforcers. And then you end up with wars breaking out between enforcers belonging to different factions.

I'm with the Supreme Court over sex. The gender identity stuff falls into quasi-religious beliefs and there being lots of different personalities, and people are allowed a lot of latitude over those so long as they accept these are personal and not to be imposed on others.

Can I get help thinking something through?

I’d be happy treating gender ideology as a belief like religion. Are there any practical ways this can be done that recognises the needs or trans people in the way religious people might be accommodated but that don’t impinge on sex based rights/material reality?

I see broadly three groups:

1. militant TRAs for whom TWAW is a statement of truth that applies without exception. Sports, prisons, hospital wards should all be available in a self ID basis, as should a gender recognition certificate;
2. GC people who have been in the trenches long enough to know that there’s no compromise with the people in group 1, and that actually the whole ideology is a heap of shit based on regressive stereotypes and why the fuck should women budge up to accept these men in our spaces etc and who on earth thinks that blocking a child’s puberty is a good idea except in rare cases of precocious puberty (I’m in this group);
3. the majority of people who want to be kind but haven’t read or thought deeply enough about gender ideology, think there’s some middle ground where we protect women’s sports but let some men into women’s toilets etc as long as they’ve put in enough effort to “live as a woman” (without thinking about how insulting that concept is to women).

The last decade or so has seen group 1 convince policymakers that they are on the right side of history, but the more that group 2 educates group 3 about these issues, the more people join group 2!

The tide is turning, but it will take a looooong time.

Genderism is incoherent. Hence the obvious division between "transsexuals", "transvestites" and the enbies and as you say the trans allies.

They are looking for different things. This gives us an advantage once we got past the initial organisation stage and the attempts to shut us down.

Right now their most focused attempt against the Supreme Court ruling is led by Maugham and McCloud who are doing it not so much to win, but to get paid and look/feel like they are doing something.

Laws and policies require 'black and white' thinking.

How can any group of male people be considered as if they are female, when they are simply not female people?

When you then consider the times where those male people are acceptable to exclude, you are then getting 'a mess'.

If a male person is to be treated as if they are female right up to the point they are in court for rape, in which case, they are not considered female, this is an inherently inconsistent belief.

If a male person is to be treated as if they are female right up to the point they want to compete in a female single sex sports event, in which case, they are not considered female, this is an inherently inconsistent belief.

If a male person is to be treated as if they are female right up to the point that they want to present themselves as a female health care provider, or a rape counsellor, in which case, they are not considered female, this is an inherently inconsistent belief.

If a male person is to be treated as if they are female right up to the point they have to go to court where the opposing side does not have use their demanded pronouns, in which case, they are not considered female, this is an inherently inconsistent belief.

If a person has to be treated as female in some instances and male in some instances, there is no 'protection' for that male as a female person. The cracks formed as soon as the exceptions started being considered acceptable in society. Hence there was no debate allowed previously.

And it is, to be brutal, irrelevant if that male person has undergone any medical transition. Undergoing brutal surgeries make no difference to material reality - they are still a male person, just one who has undergone extreme body modification. Still male, still a man.

No person on this planet should have to act as if they support a philosophical belief that they don't believe in, and that has no materially provable foundation. And yet here we are. Being told that sometimes a male person really should be treated as if they are something they materially are not. Because that is respectful and kind, and those male people really have a genuine need so we should treat them as they demand.

3rd spaces (akin to muslim prayer rooms in hospitals) - not wanted by TRAs

The right to set up their own venues for their own people, where toilets are mixed sex but divided by gender identity (but even then is there are risk of being sued by a woman victim of sexual assault?)

Struggle to think of any more. I think to a very large extent the whole point of TQ+ ideology is that it is men who want what women have, and the religious equivalent might be something like muslims in the UK demanding that everyone has to eat halal meet, not simply that muslims are given a religious exemption to kill animals in a way which is deemed to cruel to be practiced by ordinary non-muslims

I'm an atheist, but I had a very religious upbringing and I respect religious people who truly believe the things I no longer believe - as long as they don't try to impose them on other people.

But by 'religious people' I mean believers in religions, not in recently popped-up groups who promulgate newly-minted irrational ideas and then insist that the whole of society should turn themselves inside out just because the new religion says so.

Established religions are in my opinion irrational and some of their ideas are damaging and indeed offensive; but many societies have found it possible to set up a balance in society where people may practise their religion without hindrance, but no-one is obliged to share their beliefs or join in the practice of their faith.

Transgenderism does not recognise that balance. It requires society to make huge adjustments to suit its demands, and obliges everyone to participate in it.

When the Supreme Court ruled that there were limits to what transgenderism could reasonably demand of society, the reaction was dramatic and aggressive.

I can't think of any other belief group with as few as 262,000 members making such far-reaching demands of society - changes in education, the law, sports, language, the media, the medical profession, etc. - to have their 'needs' met.

Kirstie Allsopp is a classic example of a gender-critical trans rights ally, I remember when she jumped feet first into the argument without understanding any of the issues. She thought she was being this wonderful, wise, kind and reasonable person. She tweeted this:

I hate bullying & bigotry. I think women’s sport & vulnerable women’s spaces shld be protected. Using preferred pronouns is simply good manners. I’m a woman, not a cis woman. I’m not threatened by men who’d rather be women, good decision, I love being a woman, except at Christmas

What she failed to grasp was that many gender-critical people are pretty much on the same page as her but were screamed at for trying to find acceptable compromises / third spaces etc because anything less than TWAW is not accepted by hardline trans rights activists.

https://x.com/KirstieMAllsopp/status/1646876648925548547

TWAW is quite a transphobic message when you think about it, because it insists that it would be in some way shameful or undignified for a TW to identify proudly as a TW. It insists that those who do appear to be women should remain as closeted as possible and that it is only polite to pretend not to notice those for whom that closet cannot be an option.

I think you’d have to be pretty ignorant to actually believe the TWAW mantra - I mean, the only people who can’t be transwomen are women, and that’s abundantly clear to anyone. I do agree though that most people don’t understand the full implications of what’s happened - TW able to conduct intimate examinations if you ask for a woman etc

People might also feel that they don’t understand, and that would make them defensive too

At the risk of stereotyping a lot of them are so incredibly patronising whilst simulataneously CLEARLY knowing less than their out and out GC opponent! They are smug because they think they do know best.

Yes definitely - the laughable ‘right side of history’ claim!

My son had a right go at me for being so hung up about a tiny few people who were already having a hard time. Of course he doesn’t agree with men in women’s sports, changing rooms, toilets and prisons, if such things ever happened, and children need to be left alone, but why cant I just be kind?

There are quite a few posters on MN who in their defence of people they support as being transgender, end up being arbitrators of who is and is not transgender.

Ah yes, all the I have a lovely transwoman friend and you would never know that they are male, I didn't until they told me and they are perfectly safe to share female single sex spaces with, why would you want them to go somewhere else? types.

Only their lovely friends are proper transgender.