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?

No, I agree that if you read accounts by women prisoners and research done with them they don’t see the occasional male locked up with them as that big an issue day to day, provided said male was ‘just like a lassie’ and ‘not taking the piss’. Also due to policy changes in recent years it’s happening much less, which is important to acknowledge.

The articles I have read though also say rather sorrowfully and as obscurely as possible that the prisoners are very pissed off if the male person doesn’t carry on living as a woman once they leave prison - they report feeling used. In general the research says without saying that there can be a culture in a female prison that is supportive of all the women there, and that the culture is vulnerable. It’s interesting that the male people detransitioning once out of women’s prison seems to happen quite a lot.

I continue to believe that no male person should be in the female estate and that the idea of doing this is profoundly anti feminist, but the idea that this issue is still or has ever been the top of the list for women trying to get through the day in jail is not shown in the evidence.

It hadn't occurred to me that she wouldn't have seen the whole series. She linked to the first episode but I assumed, knowing PL's story, that she was intending me to view the whole thing — the abuse, the crime, prison, the fucked-upness, the lot. But maybe she just saw the first episode and thought I ought to feel sorry for an abused kid, without realising how it was going to develop.

In which case I'm wondering whether I've overestimated her. Perhaps she's just another of the very clever doctors and academics of my acquaintance who are turn out not to be critical thinkers and can be persuaded to believe and do anything.

Those may be 2 very different reasons for believing they're trans, but neither reason makes a man a woman. Neither makes him safe to be in women's spaces, or gives him the right to take women's provision. Neither makes 'their reality' actually real - however sincere their belief.

Whatever reason a man has for thinking he is, or wanting to be, a woman he's still a man.

That's not a matter of nuance, it's a matter of fact.

No amount of compassion for the circumstances that led to his mistaken belief reduce the right of women to equal consideration and compassion for their needs and circumstances.

“My long held position of why terfs are so militant in their views is that on the opposite of them is start realisation that they harassed, tortured, marginalized, dehumanized, bullied and tormented people who are going through A LOT”

With the example of someone being told they shouldn’t be in a toilet they shouldn’t be in (and knew that full well).

I hear those who survived Pinochet’s Chile are sending thoughts and prayers.

Watch an episode.
He was the victim of abuse which probably explains a lot. What explains more is that he apparently has never understood he was the victim of abuse.

I miss the laugh emoji for the 'thoughts and prayers'!

Yeah. The women in Afghanistan are holding a vigil as we speak for the poor oppressed transfolx

Agreeing here on the fetishisation of everyone’s opinion as equally valid despite wildly varying degrees of knowledge and understanding of a topic.

Also fetishisation of everyone’s opinion irrespective of whether they have ‘skin in the game’ or not, especially those happy to sell out female athletes when they don’t participate in the sport. There was definitely a need to consult (I’m thinking education) on student experience but at the end of the day, it’s the education professionals who know the research and pedagogy, which they seem reluctant to draw upon these days. Also, commodification, which also applies to ‘gender care’.

Also horrified that an ‘adult’ child had a penectomy and vaginoplasty at the age of 19 … 19! When our brain is not even fully developed and not necessarily in full control of our emotions. That is just so sad and the surgeon should be struck off for performing experimental surgery. Makes me think of The Island of Dr Moreau.

If a man feels harassed, tormented, dehumanised because when he tried to ignore women's boundaries he was told NO, then that's on him.

She isn't willing to talk about her views on this subject at all. When anyone raises a GC perspective she ignores or describes GC views as harsh or unsympathetic and that's that. No details of why, no engagement with anyone who asks questions, which she ignores. I'm not the only person to find her views on gender ideology incompatible with her clearly feminist, woman-centred approach to all the other subjects we discuss.

Wow, that’s an awful lot of ChatGPT generated word salad.

@AidaP forgot ‘literal genocide’ in their hyperbolic post.

Men aren’t allowed to use the single sex facilities of women. The barrister you are referring to is a very obvious man. He shouldn’t have been in the women’s toilets. I am not understanding why you seem unable to grasp that fact.

This person broke the law. Are we just supposed to ignore that?

Then why did they apologise to the two women who reported him? You’re not really thinking this through. I think you’ve drunk too much Stonewall kool aid.

Apparently so, because of the hurty feelz or something.

Hm. I'd say that paper was more nuanced than 'not that big an issue'.

https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/62/4/1000/6370239

'Around half of participants took contrasting positions, being sceptical of the authenticity of the transitions transgender people were making. Importantly, some participants took both positions, often in reference to different transgender women they had lived with during their sentence. This complicates the ways in which transgender women were viewed by the participants and indicates the lack of agency the participants had in relation to the people they lived with in prison, something that affects all people in custody. Some participants in this study felt threatened by what they viewed as men living within their living spaces, attitudes that are aligned to gender-critical positions.'

And the author also noted:

'My positionality as a cis-male, and—at the time—a member of SPS staff was brought into focus during a number of interviews. For example, Hannah wasn’t sure if she could say what she was saying and suggests an apprehension to share more gender-critical views. This will have had an impact on the extent to which other participants might have felt able to express particular views about transgender people in this study.'

It's a decent paper, I thought. Thoughtfully written. Although it is effectively anecdata.

But why would women be sympathetic to men who want to invade our spaces and mock us with their cos-play outfits?

It might explain a lot about him, and I hope the perpetrators were (or will be) brought to justice and the victim has been given support. But it's completely irrelevant to the question of 'the TERF position'.

A man having been abused doesn't undermine feminism.

A man having been abused doesn't alter women's rights or needs.

A man having been abused doesn't mean he's become a woman.

The “vulnerable” label always gets me. How is RMW or SJB vulnerable?

I can if two reasons why it’s used:

• from folks who just feel sorry for them in a deeply patronising way. It makes them feel better to be seen to support people that they pity
• to shut down the (inconvenient) conversation. How dare you evil bigoted hags use facts! Don’t you know that these are the most vulnerable and most marginalised people!!!!

I don;t have a list but this article goes in to it.

sex-matters.org/posts/updates/stonewall-changes-transphobia-definition/#:~:text=Sometime%20in%20January%20Stonewall%20updated,its%20definition%20of%20%E2%80%9Ctransphobia%E2%80%9D.

I know I'm like a broken record, but people can be vulnerable and it doesn't necessarily mean that they are harmless, or blameless, and it certainly doesn't mean if a man is vulnerable that he is entitled to women's spaces, services, or even sympathy.

He was the victim of abuse which probably explains a lot. What explains more is that he apparently has never understood he was the victim of abuse.

I think that is often the case. Particularly with men. Maybe an aspect of toxic masculinity, admitting that you were a victim is seen as admitting weakness, so they'd rather tough it out and 'never did me any harm'.

And some, sadly, will continue the cycle of abuse as perpetrators themselves. Being vulnerable and a victim themself does not make someone safe for other people. Sometimes it can make them more dangerous because they have not learned normal boundaries.

See also Peter Tatchell and his friends who said it never did them any harm to be abused by adult men as alarmingly young children. Tatchell should know better than to propagate that narrative whatever the victims say.

So, just so I'm clear on this, you are by your own admission a long-time dedicant to an ideology that dismisses trans people, you met a woman who is, again by your own admission, an expert in her field with what sounds to be an impressive resume, you point blank refuse to make any effort to engage with the material she has suggested, and now you are asserting that she is the radical who needs educating. Do I have that right?

Gender critical feminism doesn't "dismiss trans people".

It just doesn't agree that the world should revolve around them.