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?

The friend has clearly felt this way for some time, and the series has only just come out. Therefore the series cannot be the reason for her view. It's a sidetrack.

Finding out her actual reasoning would be more useful.

I'm an older lesbian who used to live in London and mixed in lesbian and gay circles that included (on the periphery) men like Paris Lees. I might not have had the language to express it, but I knew even in the 80s and 90s, that some femme gay men really hated women while trying to pass as women. I read accounts of Lees's book when it came out: friends (feminists friends and gay friends) talked about it.

I know about the abuse, the internalised and direct homophobia, the idea that girls and women are up for and enjoy abuse and the rest. I'm not going to validate Lees and all the others like him by watching the series.

The entire point of discussion is not to convert another person to your thinking but to achieve together, through reasonable argument, a higher understanding of the concept. If you go into a discussion completely closed to the idea of your opinion being altered then it's a pointless discourse and better not to have it.

Well there's no shortage of those for women.

Such as Dina Ali Lasloom, to pick just one of the ones I've read about in the past 24 hours.

Agree

Stonewall has just (once again) adapted and reduced their list of trans.

So if they can't get it right (and they never could) how are the rest of us supposed too?

What about getting her to watch the film Adult Human Female?

The problem is suspect though is she needs to believe in the cult of trans as she will see being "progressive" as part of her identity and deviating from one of their core beliefs is probably too much for her atm. Like the Democrats in the USA.

But the film might get her thinking.

Honestly I was just making a point that generally we know who we are talking about when we say trans people. I mean you could have a whole thread or several just about who exactly is trans but it's not the subject of this thread. It didn't seem to have a point in the context of the conversation but that's just my view.

Or Transwidows?

I found that film particularly powerful.

@NoBinturongsHereMate I am not hit harder by the plight of one group. The OP asked for ways to structure an argument. I was thinking that coming at it from this perspective might be more effective at getting the person the OP is trying to persuade to listen

Are you not?

while I recognise those arguments [womens rights and needs] it's the damage done to these [trans] people that hits me in the stomach.

You could also share this excellent article in the New York Times with her https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5359014-new-york-times-how-the-transgender-rights-movement-bet-on-the-supreme-court-and-lost?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

Actually, that’s a good one - I personally found it hedged its bets too much, but that means it’s more likely to be a friendlier entry point to someone who is full-on “be kind”.

Thinking about what's 'hit me in the stomach', the first 3 that come to mind are: the Darlington nurse Karen revealing that 'Rose' used exactly the same words as her father had used when sexually abusing her as a 6 year old, and that the Trust wanted to insist on 'Rose' being in the theatre for Karen's operarion; the woman who spoke to Paddy's podcast about the experiences of women prisoners in Limerick (where Barbie Kardashian is held); the prison officer who was made to take a suicide-watch shift for a trans prisoner who spent all night masturbating, knowing that she wasn't allowed to look away.

Well it kind of does. Paris lees is a violent man who would be condemned universally for his actions, but because he claims he “feels like a girl”, he’s lauded and has a BBC series made about him. He has no clue what a girl feels like. So what does he mean when he says he’s trans? What does Jonathan Yanie or Lilly Tino mean when they claim to be trans?.

The trans community say Yaniv and Tino are not trans but pretending. How do we know? What is the criteria to say someone is trans and not just a violent man or man with a fetish?

If you want a meaningful conversation you need to at least watch some of the show. I very doubt the show proves terfs were wrong but you can't argue that to her with any authority if you haven't seen any of it.

I get your point. Apologies

thanks - do you have a link to somewhere thats got the lists as a compare and contrast please?

Oh no worries. I didn’t want you to think I was trying to be goady. I really wasn’t. I just think that without definitions and criteria, the whole trans issue is open to too many bad faith actors.

She is not seeing the nuance, but you refuse to see any nuance either. We can still feel that Paris Lees has been a victim of toxic masculinity, a shit Mother, violence , and fear for their whole childhood. This has informed their mental state and their internal homophobia and misogyny as well as a deep desire not to be a man (based on the men around them) and led them to believe they were 'born in the wrong body'. So it is a neurological condition that makes them feel a need to transition. The feelings are true for that person and denying that it's a real thing for them because it doesn't suit your narrative of what trans people are thinking shows you are being narrow minded.

All that can be true. At the same time it can be true that straight men feel the need to transition because of a weird fetish and they can be treated differently to the traumatised gay men who do this. Is your friend saying they should be in women's spaces? Or is she just saying they need some compassion. Because they do. Everyone needs compassion. Dehumanising people as you have done is never a good thing.

You mean the adult man who blithely broke the law by entering the single sex female toilets?

I agree, it is pretty neutral in its explanation but like you say, that might be a better way in.

I take issue with the very concept of a 'trans person' as a discrete category of human being - with some sort of fixed and unchanging reality.

'Trans' is a conceptual term used to describe those who, for whatever reason, choose or feel the urge/desire/need to present, in some way, as the opposite sex.

People adopt trans identities for all sorts of reasons, and many also desist.

In 2010 when I was still teaching, there was no such thing as a 'trans person' ( as we understand it now)...nobody identified that way, it wasn't a thing. And certainly the 'trans child' had yet to be invented. Everything was about gay rights.

Everyone knew that there were some men who were driven to cross dress or even to go to extreme lengths to have surgery to remove their genitalia.
These men were referred to as 'transsexuals'. Nobody really ever claimed they were women or that they had somehow become female.

Listening to Julie Bindel's podcast Julie in Gender land will give you a wide ranging approach to the arguments you could use. She interviews a wide range of people coming at the it from lots of perspectives. There is a psychiatrist she interviewed that is particularly good at articulating what is happening.

So you are saying we should let violent men and men with a fetish into women’s spaces because they’ve had a hard life? What about all the women who’ve had hard lives but don’t feel the need to commit violent acts or impose their sexual kinks on unwilling victims? Why do the feelings of the violent men trump those of any women who may be traumatised or uncomfortable in mixed sex spaces?