Help me argue that What it Feels Like For a Girl doesn't prove terfs are wrong

[Pluvia]

I'm in a women's discussion group with a woman who is an expert in her field of medicine. She's worked for some years with the WHO and other major agencies and has only recently returned to the UK after about a decade working in Geneva, with stints in Ethiopia and elsewhere in the developing world. Her specialist field is a particular area of women's health. She knows what a woman is.

Sex realism/ the GC pov seems to have completely passed her by. She has no idea of the complexity or reality of the situation and thinks trans people are vulnerable souls who probably have some genetic or neurological predisposition that leaves them feeling that they are in the wrong bodies. She thinks Cass is unduly harsh. Although her life appears to be focussed around women's health, she seems blind to the feminist or women's rights issues inherent in GI.

She has no idea about sexual fetishes, AGP, attacks on women, the misogyny and homophobia that lies behind so much GI. She can't understand how someone like me, who appears to be so reasonable on so many other topics, can be so cruel when it comes to transpeople. I asked her to read Helen Joyce's Trans and she said she tried but couldn't bear the hatred that she experienced in the first few chapters. She has now sent me a link to What It Feels Like For a Girl. which, she says, will show me what I've misunderstood and why my attitude is so harsh.

I'm not going to watch WIFLFAG and give a misogynistic, homophobic gay man any oxygen. Any thoughts on what I can say that might get through to her? At what point with people like her does one just give up?

Does she think a young, attractive, feminine looking boy is representative of the trans community? This is the Dylan Mulvaney trans type, what they call "dolls". Then there are the "bricks", who are the older, non-passing guys who the dolls blame for all the trouble.

I suspect she needs more exposure to the bricks!

Yes to all this! (Except I think you mean Paris Lees, not Paris Hilton.)

I really wouldn’t bother trying

Yes, I know. I guess I see her as a challenge! If she was GC she could be influential. And I guess I'm flummoxed by these women (I've known a few) who look and sound like feminists in everything they do except for this, most basic, most material, level.

No, I mean it's fine for her to think that if she wants and fine for others to think it but if that is what they do think then they also have to accept that they are in the 'wrong bodies' for the single sex spaces they want to use.

So if a male person (transwoman) who wishes he was female can say that he's in the 'wrong body', then he knows to keep that body out of female spaces. It does not belong there. It's the 'wrong' body (ie it's male!)

We should listen more to each other or we just get stuck in shouty polarised arguments.

I asked a friend who leads a charity supporting women who get put in prison what she thought about trans women being in female prisons & she said it’s really the very least of the problems faced by women inside. She honestly didn’t see it as a big issue.

I couldn’t bring myself to start telling her about her profession. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Sorry! I think this should Paris Lees throughout, shouldn't it? Time I went to bed! Where did I get "Hilton' from, are they somebody famous?

@Pluvia Ask her this question, because if your friend thinks that the girl (in the question) is transphobic to want actual single-sex care, you friend untethered from reality on this subject.

"Should a young teenage girl, who has been bady injured in a car crash and needs intimate care while they recover in hospital (bed baths, help with a bed pan, wiping after using the bed pan, changing sanitary pads/tampons etc) who has requested same-sex care get a female nurse for that intimate care rather than a male who identifies as a woman?"

The one time that a TW actually answered this question on this forum, they said that the care should be provided by a biological female and not a TW. So far, the TRAs (who may, or may not be trans identified) who post on this board have not answered it, despite being asked several times.

Despite what Aida asserts, the reality is that human beings cannot change sex.

Yes, this is almost certainly true. But she would accuse me of being cruel and harsh if I were to ply her with pix of the bricks, or images in which men are threatening people. I've tried, starting gently and I've asked her to comment on a couple of articles about trans crimes. She's responded with articles about violent women harming children and a sharp telling off about not all transwomen being sex offenders.

The bottom line is, I think, that she doesn't want to know. Possibly WHO indoctrination.

Lol, yes I do. I just realised what I'd written. It's been a long day...

OP this is maybe going back to basics, but as a counter-argument have you shared with her what JKR actually wrote (as opposed to what TRAs said she wrote)? It's very gently worded and logically set out. https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/
Others on this thread might also benefit from reading it. It's a great starting point for then digging deeper into GC.

Sounds like a dangerous mixture of self-righteousness and arrogance.

I'd steer well clear.

Well we do have words - women and transwomen. Everyone knows when you say transwomen that is a man so theres not really any confusion there

Yes, And remember Dr "Beth" Upton, who said that if a patient, possibly a rape victim, specifically asked for a female doctor, it would be fine for Dr Upton to attend them.

You could send her this short and succinct article that probably illustrates very well why you wouldn’t want to watch the series.

https://unherd.com/newsroom/paris-lees-doesnt-know-what-it-feels-like-for-a-girl/

I would stake my salary on her supporting single-sex care and women being allowed to choose the sex (not the gender) of carers/ nursing staff. She's worked in Muslim countries where it would be unthinkable for men to offer any kind of care.

She would still, from a conversation had with her a couple of days ago, say that if a man wants to transition and 'live as a woman' and it makes him happier, that he should be able to do that and he should be allowed to join our women's discussion group and we should extend the courtesy of calling him 'her'. She also accepts that that would require the consent of the other women in the group and knows he wouldn't get it. She also understands that it would mean it's a mixed-sex group. And this is a woman who's fought for the rights of women and girls for much of her professional life.

Thank you: this is more like it!

Trans people are a minority.

Done be obtuse 🙄

The comments on that article are excellent.

thinks trans people are vulnerable souls who probably have some genetic or neurological predisposition that leaves them feeling that they are in the wrong bodies.

Does this not mean that she thinks trans people have a mental health disorder? Mental health disorders may have genetic or neurological bases, but would she treat a mental health disorder by affirming delusions caused by it? Would she 'reward' a mental health patient for their suffering by sterilisation surgery or a drug regime that did not in any way cure their condition but instead left them with lifelong physical ill health? Would she expect the rest of the world to tiptoe around a mental health patient in order not to upset them?

The fact that she began reading Joyce's book and couldn't bear to finish it because of the tone is extremely interesting. I suggestion you focus on that since it would be useful know what she found hateful in the book. In fact I would love to hear it.

As you know, Joyce's Trans is not polemical. It adopts an investigative journalistic style (because that's her training and what she was doing in writing the book), and is highly deferential to trans people, including never 'misgendering' them. She doesn't suggest their suffering isn't real, and she doesn't even make a case that people suffering severe dysphoria not receive affirmative medical treatment, though she does point out that the evidence for its benefit is not very robust.

Early on she does begin building the case that it's unethical to treat children suffering from dysphoria with hormones, puberty blockers or surgery or prematurely put them on a social transition track. And the implication is that doing so is committing grave medical malpractice. Perhaps that's what set your friend off? If so perhaps that points a child in the family or that of a close friend?

If she read the full first two chapters (it would be interesting to know where she left off!) then she knows the factual history of the medical treatments and the basic formulation of gender ideology. Within the context of Blanchard's typologies, autogynephilia would have been described in a clinical and morally neutral fashion and contrasted with homosexual transsexualism. And it would have been noted that that formulation of trans was uncontroversial for many years. Also, whatever it was that your friend found uncomfortable about Joyce, she supports her arguments with references so any particular objectionable argument can be independently supported.

The main character's experience in What it Feels Like For a Girl is nearly a prototypical example of the homosexual transsexual, and while Joyce is sympathetic to both types of men in Blanchard's typologies, she is especially sympathetic to homosexuals. Also by the end of the second chapter Joyce lays out the argument that irrespective of how we decide to treat trans people, including accepting them into incongruent single-sex spaces, it's still important to recognize that they are in fact in no sense the opposite sex and that it's scientifically and logically invalid to assert that. If anything the experiences of Lees underscore that he is male, not female, and as rich and compelling as his story is, it argues for compassion and understanding but not his legal inclusion in women's spaces or single-sex services.

Does she understand that supporting single sex care makes her essentially a TERF?

Also, sorry about the typos in my earlier post.

If this article is not misrepresenting him, it sounds as though Paris Lees is doing to women what "plastic medicine men" used to do (still do?) to Native Americans and their spiritual beliefs - peddling a distorted version from a position of alleged and spurious insider authority.

That's a really interesting way of thinking about it, and articulates close to my own feelings better than I have myself. Thanks.

Going back to the OPs question, I think this might be a good way of finding some middle ground.
If you genuinely want to engage with your friend on this issue, you need to acknowledge her point of view, even if it's different to yours.
Taking @MissScarletInTheBallroom 's point a step further. I think it's important to recognise that trans people do suffer discrimination, harassment bullying etc, and that being trans is a difficult way to live. However, (and crucially to the argument) this is different to the discrimination and difficulties faced by women, and therefore needs to be addressed separately, with separate solutions.

I think your friends career depends on her seeing men who want to women as vulnerable and she's blind to men like RMW.

She'll probably come around eventually, and likely deny she said women can't meet without including men.

Its not worth watching the programme because its not the truth, its his fantasy and cannot inform the conversation.

Just practice your 'i told you face' for when she is proved wrong.

I would stake my salary on her supporting single-sex care and women being allowed to choose the sex (not the gender) of carers/ nursing staff. She's worked in Muslim countries where it would be unthinkable for men to offer any kind of care.

Oh, so there are some circumstances where she thinks it would not be appropriate for a man to self ID into womanhood. That changes everything.

Ask her why.