Why is anti-trans so important?

[Elizabethbd]

So, I will preface this with saying that I’m not in the UK, and my country does not yet have the kind of anti-trans debate as there is in the English speaking world.

So, I have a hard time understanding why this is such an important question to many women.

Surely there are women’s issues that affect a larger part of society.

I’m thinking rape and violence towards women, homelesness, sex trafficking and honour killings. Why are these issues not more important and worthy of attention, as they affect so many more women than those who come into contact with trans women (or men)?

I think you're overcomplicating things.

There's no good reason for including male people in female only spaces or recording male crimes as being committed by a female perpetrator. Any gender identity that male person may believe they have is totally irrelevant.

Let's relieve ourselves of the intellectual burden of trying to judge whether someone really believes they have a gender identity or not. It doesn't matter. The world doesn't revolve around them or their gender identity.

But this is what TRAs wanted.
John is trans because he says that he is trans. This is the whole premise of self ID.
You cannot enforce this rule and then say that John is the wrong kind of trans.

It's just another example of Americanisms colonising our language and culture like an invasive species. Much like gender ideology itself.

Goodness knows what is going on in a 'restroom'.

THAT is a truly appalling post.

I don't mind Americanisms, but I think this particularly Americanism is a euphemism that is out of place when we need to be able to speak clearly about the purpose of the space.

When I did a work tour of the USA I agonised beforehand as to what terminology I would used if I needed to use the facilities. I couldn't use 'bathroom' for somewhere with no bath, was afraid 'cloakroom' might just get me a room full of coats, and that loo, toilet, jax, might cause offense. So I settled for 'restroom' which was understood and got me where I needed to be.

The ends justified the means imo.

To return to the title of the thread, Why is anti-trans so important?
Re-stating the fact that it's not 'anti-trans' to be pro-women, I'd like to take a wider perspective on the transgender phenomenon.

Future historians will look back at this era and try to find explanations for how it was possible for an idea which has no scientific merit to be able, in a short space of time, to turn large sections of society upside down, mostly in 'Western' countries.

It is important to know how in a very short space of time, the scientific fact that human sex is binary and immutable was dismissed as hate speech, with such power that even scientists went along with the dismissal.

It is important to examine how school curricula abandoned fact for fiction about 'sex is a spectrum', and how - contrary to the promotion of body positivity which preceded it - children were informed that they may have been born 'in the wrong body' and offered drugs and surgery to 'fix' their wrong bodies.

It is important to understand how a media which believed itself to be free and responsible took to deliberately calling men women, even when the result was clearly nonsensical e.g. 'her penis'.

It is important to investigate how a tiny percentage of the population in such a short space of time came to wield such power in society that they could demand changes in the law, in language, in education, in medicine, and even demand the provision of separate facilities and services for themselves, at a cost entirely disproportionate to their number.

It is important to understand how people were portrayed as hate-filled, as phobic, and even as criminal, for resisting the wave of non-facts and compelled speech.

It is important to record the women driven out of their jobs, physically attacked, excluded from friendship groups, shunned by family members, for asserting what was common knowledge just a few years before.

There have been sudden waves of irrationality in past history - the witch hunts, the Dutch tulip mania, the South Sea Bubble - which historians have studied and attempted to contextualise and explain.

It's important to do the same with the current sudden, powerful and damaging wave of irrationality, i.e. trans ideology.

Well no wonder you misunderstand everything, in that case. If you truly think that a bunch of feminists would be 'disappointed in a rape'.

No one, without disordered thinking, would dream of such a thing.

Indeed.

It's difficult to know how to respond to something so aberrant.

I think what a load of bollocks is probably the most appropriate

I have a lot of respect for you Datun and I appreciate the "bollocks" was aimed at a specific misreading of a comment, but in a subthread about how someone may or may not feel about being raped I think that's harsher than it needed to be (also also likely to be seized on out of context and used against you).

I second that, respectfully.
It's awful that deadpantrashcan was raped, and usually that would have been greeted with .

Many of us on here are survivors of rape or sexual abuse, it's so well known that it's sort of 'backgrounded' as taken.
deadpantrashcan was not to know that.

Not saying that deadpantrashcan didn't dish out a bit of aggro herself, but I think FlirtsWithRhinos was right to ask us to stop and think about our reactions.

I think the important question is why is pro-trans such a huge issue? 🤔

I'm no longer sure which thread full of (faux?)-naive questioners is which, but somewhere there was a request for statistics on how many transwomen have had surgery and how many have had hormone treatment.

The problem is related to the fact that since records started listing gender instead of sex it is impossible to gather facts on women or men, their rights, their issues.

Unless people getting a GRC (already a minority) have to disclose their medical history (truthfully) there is no way of answering that question. All we can go on is their own words. Which mostly say transwomen are women and do not need any body modification, no debate, be kind. People in the criminal system mostly have not had any physical modifications, either surgical or chemical. I fear that women may be more inclined to go down the medical route than men, doing lifelong irreversible damage to themselves in the process.

Maybe this will help

https://fairplayforwomen.com/penis/

Exactly this.

Only because you seem to believe there are people who have a ‘real’ philosophical belief doesn’t reflect material reality versus people who have a ‘fake’ philosophical belief that doesn’t reflect material reality. Have I got that right?

I think sometimes people do say bathroom instead of toilet as they think the term more polite. I find myself doing it sometimes actually. I’m in Ireland.

No I mean men who cynically suddenly decide they are trans when caught for an offence. I think it's clear what I mean and how it affects the stated crime stats of trans women. Posters say it doesn't matter but it does if people iare saying that trans women have a higher incidence of sexual crimes than other men. I'd like to be clearer about what could called ' genuine' trans womens sexual crimes. But I can guess this question is going to be deliberately misunderstood or I'll be told it's irrelevant. I will see if I can find any information myself, just thought someone might have the stats

Even if some men are cynically pretending to be trans when caught what difference does it make when these pretending men are being placed in womens prisons.

Well, precisely.
A bit of an own goal, perhaps?

If you don't have to go through a process of diagnosis to be accepted as trans, anyone can claim to be so.

Isla Bryson springs to mind, leaping nimbly up complete with pink leggings and spotty umbrella...

We have the stats that the ministry of justice collect. It is you who are gate keeping who is and isn’t transgender though. Have you been able to explain what a ‘genuine’ transwoman is ? Have I missed that definition?

Please if you haven’t define who is a genuine transwoman is, please can you provide this?

There been many posters of late, not just on this thread, who insist that transwomen are no danger to women. When you mention people like Isla Bryson, Karen White and Barbie Kardassian we're told well they're just pretending to be trans but it doesn't seem to click with some posters that these men are treated in the same way as the "real transwomen "

I don't care whether a man decides he is a woman at the moment of his arrest or he has been saying he is a woman for the last 30 years.

His crimes are not our crimes and should never be recorded as having been committed by a woman.

I also think that if you are convicted of a sexual offence and you already have a gender recognition certificate saying you are a woman, it should be revoked, and you should never be allowed to apply for one in the future.