Reflections on Trans Arguments

[LimeFinch]

I've noticed a lot of general discourse about trans people that is based on misinformation, some of it dangerous, most of it born out of ignorance, so here's a handy reference to counter some of the claims I've seen.

Trans People are extremist! That's wot I done heard!
Transgender extremism doesn't exist - it's just a right-wing talking point used to discredit legitimate healthcare and equality efforts.
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/uk-un-view-trans-rights-much-needed-common-sense
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/11/hilary-cass-trans-children-review
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/02/gender-critical-beliefs-under-the-microscope

Puberty Blockers are Dangerous! My total lack of medical knowledge says so!
Puberty blockers are often lifesaving interventions. They're prescribed only after long assessments involving NHS gender clinics, parents, and specialists. They are fully reversible and shown to reduce the risk of suicide in young people with persistent gender dysphoria.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/tonic-psh-consultation-analysis-report.pdf
https://www.bmj.com/content/386/bmj.q1638.short
https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/resources/interim-service-specification-specialist-gender-dysphoria-services-consultation-response
https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/news-events/news/rcpch-responds-publication-final-report-cass-review

I Heard They're Changing Kids' Genitalia!
No people under 18 are getting genital surgery in the UK. NHS policy and private clinics alike restrict this to adults.
Indeed, more cisgender teens receive breast reduction surgery on the NHS than trans teens receive chest masculinisation surgery. The procedures follow similar approval processes, yet only one group is routinely scrutinised.
https://pure.johnshopkins.edu/en/publications/breast-surgery-in-adolescents-cisgender-breast-reduction-versus-t
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/10/revealed-thousands-of-trans-surgeries-carried-out-by-nhs/

They're in Women's Sports! I read it on teh internets!
There are only a small number of openly trans athletes competing at a professional level in the world, and none are dominating their fields.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/61346517
https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/sport/athletics/65051900

But, but, but, Women's Sports! No men!
Sex-segregated sports were historically introduced to exclude women, not because men were being beaten. The idea that it was about fairness is a myth.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jun/13/how-the-fa-banned-womens-football-in-1921-and-tried-to-justify-it
https://research.birmingham.ac.uk/en/publications/health-gender-and-inequality-in-sport-a-historical-perspective

Ok, but Trans-women are Stronger. That ain't Fair!
There is no consistent biological advantage for trans women in elite sport. Oestrogen therapy significantly reduces muscle mass, strength and performance over time. Regulations often require minimum hormone levels and transition periods before competing.
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/15/865
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/59312313

Trans-Women are Men!!!!!! Any fule knowe that!
Identity is personal. “Man”, “woman”, “boy”, and “girl” are social roles - that’s gender. Not to be confused with biological sex - male and female. No trans woman claims to be biologically female, and no trans man claims to be biologically male. That’s another right-wing straw man argument.
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/media-centre/interim-update-practical-implications-uk-supreme-court-judgment
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/resources/lgbtq-hubs/trans-hub/the-truth-about-trans

Trans History is Different to Women's History
The idea that trans women have a “separate history” to cis women echoes the same tactics once used to exclude Black women and disabled women from womanhood.
https://blog.bham.ac.uk/socialsciencesbirmingham/2024/03/08/international-womens-day-trans-women-cannot-be-left-behind/
https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/trans-and-disability-justice-how-are-our-struggles-linked
Tall women, Black women, trans women - these are all adjectives describing different types of women. Every woman’s experience of womanhood is unique. If you exclude trans women from being women, what condition are you using to define womanhood? There isn’t one necessary condition. So trans women cannot be excluded from womanhood on this basis.

Trans-Women are Men in Dresses! I read it in the Daily Mail!
Crossdressing is not the same as being trans. Many cis men crossdress and are not trans.
https://fiorry.co/glossary/crossdresser/

But Anybody can be Trans in an Instant! I'm scared!
The risk of coming out as trans due to internalised homophobia and sexism is a real thing but is not as common as many would have you believe. That’s why the NHS has a structured care pathway with long waiting times and assessments. No one can simply walk in and access hormones or surgery. Many people are left in limbo for years unless they are in crisis or suicidal.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/referral-pathway-for-children-and-young-peoples-gender-services-community-and-hospital-paediatric-services/
https://transactual.org.uk/trans-lives-21/

Organisations are Convincing Kids They're Trans! Think of the Children!
No one is trying to “convince” people they’re trans. If you feel deep discomfort with the sex you were assigned at birth, you might be trans - but that’s for you to explore, not for anyone else to decide. The queer community is generally very good at spotting people who are dealing with internalised issues - no one wants anyone to transition unless it’s truly needed. This whole “kids being convinced” thing is another empty scare story.
https://transactual.org.uk/healthcare-professionals/inclusive-healthcare/
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/referral-pathway-for-children-and-young-peoples-gender-services-community-and-hospital-paediatric-services/

Now, I'm very aware of the MN reputation for shutting down the threads - and removing the accounts - of anyone who doesn't go along with the anti-trans-hate-cult, but for the short time this thread remains up it's worth taking some time to actually look at the links, to think about the status of trans-women in the current society, and consider how this judgement - and the subsequent interpretation of the same by those who are a little hard of thinking - might reflect on us as self-assumed rational, reasonable human beings.

Do Democrat voters have to embrace the anti-woman bullshit?

You are deliberately missing the point but I guess also making my point, misogyny is rife. I am not interested in arguing with you about this as nobody gains from it, certainly not woman, and that's really it, we are not better off, we are not safer, we are not paid the same, our healthcare still doesn't matter, rape victims are still not taken seriously...................I am not here to bash other women as I still believe that we have more in common than which side of the trans debate you stand on.

I think the USA Supreme Court saying 'What even is this' can be used for pretty much every case going forward. Pointing to the highest legal activists in the USA who were unable to evidence any suicide harms and convince them that 'trans' is even a thing is eminently quotable and demonstrable across the globe.

If it's so unimportant why don't the people who feel they absolutely have to be accepted as the sex they are, in reality, not, to the degree that women can be literally touched, counselled or representative by a man in a role that is supposed to be reserved for women and she is supposed to force herself to believe the hands touching her are genuinely woman's hands, the person hearing her most vulnerable fears has the same experience of sex based threat and trauma as she does, the person explaining what women need to a government or medical or professional body is speaking with knowledge her sex based needs, why don't those people just drop it, let women (original sex based meaning) continue to exist as a meaningful legal and social group with right to their own language, history and political voice, and maybe even help women deal with those bigger problems?

Women are fighting back. We never asked for this. I'm sure every single one of us would much prefer not to have to do this. So if you think it's not a big deal snd there are bigger things to worry about how about telling the men colonising us to back off?

I guess what I am saying is that 'United we stand and divided we fall' and I think this trans debate has divided feminists and I feel we are falling and losing ground and once again I very much feel we have been played by the right wing.

Anyway I wish each and every one of you a wonderful weekend and a peaceful coming week. I won't be engaging any further as ice cream is calling me.

so basically the thread has now pivoted to ‘yes but right wing people and guilt by association’

nice to know things remain predictable

The gender critical is right wing argument always makes me chuckle.

There's an old lawyer courtroom saying. When the law is on your side bang on the law. When the facts are on your side bang on the facts. When neither the law nor the facts are on your side bang on the table.

Blaming gender criticality on the right wing in an attempt to justify dismissing it out of hand is banging on the table. Make a fuss and an angry big spectacle and hope people will fall for it.

I was on this long before the right wing glommed on to it.

So maybe the right wing were played by Mumsnet.

Oh, apart from it never works that way round does it?

Yes but at least rape victims in the UK can access a biological safe space and are no longer forced to " refrained their trauma" I'd say that was a gain.

Oh BTW @mymindispuff , the reason I got into this whole thing was because the trans identifying male Monroe Bergdorf made a huge fuss about the pink pussy hats at an anti Trunp protest.

Yes, that's right. Trump made that awful crack about "Grab 'em by the pussy", women grabbed that image as a symbol of their resistance, and an entitled bloke who believes he's a woman whinged about how that excluded him because he's a woman too.

Didn't care that there was a direct connection between the pussy symbol and what Trump said. Didn't care that, regardless of the truth or not of the existence of "woman" who don't have vaginas, the people Trump was "grabbing by the pussy" are by definition people who do have, well, pussies, and those people specifically wanted to protest comments that were directly about them.

Didn't in fact care about why women were angry at all, just cared that he wasn't seen as one of them.

And at that point I realised that these men, these "trans women", were not empathic allies of female people sharing a common enemy in Patriarchal power, they were just another group of men who see us as props for their own centre character, and they will happily destroy the very tools we need to fight exactly the type of sex based injustices and dangers you highlight if those tools require acknowledging the inconvenient truth that most of the reasons being a woman matters in law, in society and in culture are reasons that can never apply to a trans women.

You think it's a distraction to the fight. I think it's protecting the very tools we need to be in the fight.

Well don't tell us. Go and tell the people who are so obsessed with pronouns and including male women in everything that they've lost the fucking plot and need to go back to basics and start supporting female women again.

Well, precisely.

I'm wondering who our last 'won't somebody think of thr menz' posted has passed the baton to. We've had one after another since this thread started.

Well, summer fete season, I suppose - this is clearly the whack-a-mole stall.

And we are back to the boring shit and ignorant right wing tropes.

Cos there's no where else for the attacks to go because they've run out of all other arguments.

Not sure what you think has been concocted (made up)?

You seem to have conflated two things, sexual assaults on women going up, and you disagreeing that women need single sex spaces and services sometimes when our sexed bodies differences matter.

Not sure what you are arguing. That because assaults have gone up we shouldn’t make it harder for any man to self-ID into women’s spaces?

Indeed. That would be the Wadwha that I meant.

The same one that left the SNP because they allowed the extra words in the law to specify that a rape victim could ask for and have reasonable expectation to get a same sex medical examiner.

The same one who told us the rush of power that he had over deciding if a woman in the USA got food vouchers to feed her family or not when he managed a call centre in India.

That is the person I refer too.

But nothing to see at all.

Women are capable of caring about lots of things at the same time. But I don’t see how allowing a self-selecting group of men unfettered access to female only spaces, activities and opportunities makes our lives any better. But there are countless examples of how this harms women.

No one is saying that keeping transwomen out of our spaces will be a magic cure-all for all the harms we face. But again, allowing a self-selecting group access to our stuff dies cause us harm

*does cause us harm

How can we do anything to improve the lives of women without a definition of women?

Because after years of asking everyone who claims that some men are women not a single person has been able to offer a coherent definition of woman to replace adult human female.

How do we tackle inadequacies in healthcare if we are looking at information pertaining to lots of woman and some men.

How do we prevent violence against women if women means a sexed body or a feeling in someone's head?

How can we increase female representation if the positions and schemes to promote women are also open to some men?

How to we communicate messages to women if we have to cloak them in 'inclusive' language that results in those who have English as an additional language not understanding the messages?

How do we encourage more women to participate in sports and for womens sport to receive more coverage, more money and great recognition of everyone knows the best athletes are in fact men?

we are not better off, we are not safer, we are not paid the same, our healthcare still doesn't matter, rape victims are still not taken seriously

To make claims like this - which I agree with - you have to know who 'we' are. To take just one example. If you start including male executives who identify as women in figures calculating pay gaps (counting them as women), you skew the data. I'm surprised you can't see that

It's hard enough already to convince people that yes, the shitty things that happen to us are often because sexism. It's amazing how many explanations people (women as well as men) can think up to explain why it might not have been sexism, he might have had a bad day, she might not want financial independence, women just don't apply for those jobs, women can be sex predators as well, sex work is a choice, and on and on and on

If we already can't explain what happens to us because we are women without some man-centered idiot telling us "well, actually...", how is having a whole bunch of "women" who don't face the same challenges at all, who were brought up taking the default credibility that comes with their sex for granted, whose sexuality is formed by male desires and male privilege and not with the vulnerability of pregnancy and the awareness of rape, "women" who interrupt us to tell us that the challenges of our sex are nothing to do with women's rights and feminism, "women" whose voices come with the default credibility of men, how the hell is that NOT making things worse for female people? How the hell is that FEMINISM?

Anti clockwise? There's a wonderful word for that - widdershins!

Loving all the discussion points and the signposting to Mumsnet on Reddit. Please, come, read, discuss. Is this a sign that (some) TRAs are finally, finally, finally realising that this debate isn't going to just stop; that they are currently losing and they don't understand why.

mymindispuff

I honestly think that many people simply imagine that if you have men identifying as women, it will all be fine, because it's hardly any, and most people understand anyway and mentally make the separation in their heads.

That it won't really, significantly interfere with actual women and their rights.

Until you get official statistics claiming that women raping other women has significantly increased in the last few years. (And, comments from the man in the street under the articles saying isn't it disgusting, that's feminism for you).

And you have vulnerable women prisoners being housed with male rapists. Women who can't escape, sharing showers with convicted rapists.. All officially sanctioned.

You have nurses in the NHS being forced to take their clothes off in front of men, if they want to keep their jobs. Again, officially sanctioned by the NHS. Do it, or else, love.

You have female suspects being assaulted by men under the guise of strip searching them. With the police cheering them on.

You have lesbians being told they must have sex with men, otherwise it's akin to an apartheid. Being told by the world's ^leading gay charity%, ffs.

You have young women having their breasts removed, because they're being told they're not really women. On the bloody NHS.

What about the way for many women to get out of poverty or attain self-esteem? Sport. There was a man on the radio last week saying oh come on, it's less than 20 men involved in women's sport.

By March 30, 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 women’s division events across 29 different sports were defeated by transgender-identifying men. Male athletes have taken over 890 medals from female athletes.

Come ON !

Open your eyes. This is happening. This isn't the future.

Women's rights are not just being decimated, they are being erased.

Try and understand, if you can't see sex, you can't identify sexism.

Look at all the official bodies, the NHS, the police, the ministry of justice, the government, schools, the IOC, who are all feverishly shovelling the most disgusting sexism down women's throats purely on the basis of the lie that sex doesn't exist.

Wake up.

i'm just adding that fortunately, women have been seeing this happening, and they have forced a massive spoke in the wheel with the Supreme Court rolling.

You might want to thank them.

At this point, people who say 'there's no problem' are either deeply credulous or have deliberately hobbled themselves to be uninformed.

This is the independent review for Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre after a damning ET which shows how the institutional capture of the organisation (and many others across Scotland) led to rape survivors who needed to access single sex rape crisis services to suffer harm -

https://www.rapecrisisscotland.org.uk/resources/ERCC-Review-Report-FINAL1-.pdf

And women celebrating a win which helps such vulnerable women 'sat uncomfortably with you?'

Good God.