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?

Being clear that men cannot turn into women is not dismissing anyone.

It is simply stating facts.

The material she suggested was a televised version of a work of fiction.

I agree with you about feminism. I was only saying that if OP wants to engage with friend, then watching it and understanding what it's really about - horrific abuse - would be useful.

Understanding that sex matters and no one can change sex is NOT an ideology.

So no you don’t have that right. You couldn’t be more wrong.

The demand of trans activists is that physiological sex should be erased as a social and political concept and be replaced with gender identity. So it’s not just about accommodating a small group of people - it affects everyone. I would ask her what the effect on the women she works with would be if sex didn’t exist as a concept? Would it make their lives better or worse ? I think some women believe that ending sex will end sex discrimination but I reckon that it will carry on regardless and indeed get worse, because women are and will continue to be discriminated against because of their reproductive physiology. If that isn’t recognised and their rights to define themselves and advocate for themselves are removed, how are they to defend themselves? I expect that she will protest and say that nobody is saying that but there is plenty of evidence that they are- sports, hospitals, prisons etc. What does she think TWAW means if not that? Good luck! Am rehearsing my own arguments for a similar conversation.

I think she’s no different to a lot of “allies”, it baffles me that such ostensibly intelligent people can be so blinkered but meh

Thanks: useful. Still contemplating my response to her.

Today for the first time I stumbled across the idea of Toxic Empathy, which (and I've only managed to read a little about it) is the concept that a person can be so empathetic that they end up becoming ungrounded because they put everyone else's needs and desires ahead of their own and lose touch with their own reality and values and sense of what's right. There are regularly posts on MN from women wanting to know if their relationships and the way their partners treat them is normal, because they've been slowly gaslit into accepting that some outrageously abnormal behaviour is perfectly acceptable by partners.

Is this what's going on with so many medics and NHS workers? I'm thinking of the Upton case or the Darlington case, where management, HR and supervisors all stood by and encouraged men to abuse women by insisting on changing alongside them. Caring professions seem to require people to be empathetic. And of course the people who promoted the abuse of women were part of a virtue circle-jerk which assured them that they were the good guys.

We've been irequiring children and young people (mainly girls) to Be Kind for quite a while now. Messages like Stonewall's 'Acceptance without Exception' tell everyone to just be empathetic and ignore their own doubts or fears. Perhaps we should be teaching girls, in particular, to Be Fierce and take no shit.

Maybe the woman in my discussion group has a bad case of toxic empathy?

Her empathy is only extending towards males, in this instance, though.

It might be worth just asking questions and trying to understand her point of view - just because it so baffling - but with the emphasis on the effects on women. Why does she think TWAW is good for women? What will women gain from it? What will the effects on women be if they no longer exist as a legal class? It’s probably difficult to do without what I once saw brilliantly described as ‘phallic drift’ - that the conversation keeps turning back to the poor, vulnerable men.

@KnottyAuty

Here is a thread about it with more evidence

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5266421-stonewall-change-definition-of-transphobia-questioning-gender-identity-ok-now

Worth saying that you started where she is now but as you’ve seen what self ID has done to women you became less sympathetic - which isn’t the same as hatred.

Won't she just come back with the commonly quoted statistics showing that there has been no increase in sexual assault in the countries that already have self ID?

(I can't speak for the accuracy of said figures but I've defo seen them quoted a fair few times).

Self Id means it’s impossible to gather correct statistics though

men who identify as women will be counted as women in these countries making statistics a complete nonsense

in fact what you might see is a strange increase in the number of ‘women’
committing sexual assault