some parallels

[Manfreglory]

I've been teasing out this idea, that transphobia and xenophobia have much in common.

• both rest on 'you're not from here; your culture is different; you can't know what it is to have grown up 'over here'/had period pains/gone through labour.

• both reject difference or change in favour of sameness or stasis. 'You look and talk and think differently/you underwent a journey to get here/I can't fully relate to you'.

• both rest not just on culture but on biology: 'Your genes are different than mine/your genotype for phenotype A, B or C aren't identical to mine'.

• both are territorial: 'i sweated blood as a member of this sex/to make it in this society - who are you to come here and demand a seat at the table'?

• both are suspicious of the reasons for transformation. 'You just want the perks of being female; you just want to look up our skirts in the toilet; you just migrated here from Guatemala for financial stability.'

• both demonize, aggressively overstating the chance that the person has or will commit a crime. (Migrants: no need to give examples, just read the news. Trans people: 'you just want access to 'our spaces'' (i.e. the spaces where women/cis women enjoy their privacy from all men, cis or trans) so you can assault us'.

• both minimize or even deny, the need for the transition: 'No child is born trans/those parents were homophobic as the kid was just gay/trans women are men with their dicks lopped off/people should stay in their home country and migration is too dangerous'.

• both hysterically fear that the trans person/migrant will corrupt innocents: 'they will indoctrinate children in school/they will spread religious fundamentalism'.

Gender critical women: ask yourself if you've been radicalized into the new right.

Edited to add

Eta this is a reply to @ThatBlackCat's question

Ah! Ok, thanks for that.

Back to being childish, in my humble opinion.

"Group of middle class white TERFS". Ah here comes the TRA racism again 🥱

It’s funny. Humour is one of women’s most powerful tools. Men are scared that we will laugh at them, even though laughing at them doesn’t hurt anything except a few feels.

On the other hand, women are scared that men will kill them. Which hurts so much more. Particularly if they massively overreact to a woman’s joke and attack them, resulting in death.

I also note that the OP referred to “the mother” when discussing his daughter. This depersonalises the woman who gave birth to his daughter, and his daughter too - note “the” mother, not “her” mother. And by claiming to be his daughter’s “mother”, he is either a lesbian in a same sex relationship who didn’t carry his daughter, or he is a trans identifying man who believes that because he is a woman he is now a mother. (By the way, the term mother is reserved in law to be a woman. See Freddie McConnell’s attempt to be recorded as father on her child’s birth certificate.)

Maybe he believes he is a lesbian because he is still attracted to women now he’s “a woman”. I do find it fascinating that sexual orientation doesn’t change, whatever someone does to their body to emulate the opposite sex. It’s almost as if sexual orientation is something immutable… Admittedly, it is confusing to be told that a heterosexual man is now a lesbian because it’s like pronouns and the Stroop test. It’s confusing and deliberately discombobulating because we focus on “getting it right” rather than the real issue, which is men ignoring women’s rights to safe single-sex spaces.

The OP’s request to engage in “debate” but then failing to engage shows he is not acting in good faith. We knew that already, because this thread is not our first rodeo.

So I’ll ask the OP the Staniland question: do you @Manfreglory believe that a male-sexed person has the right to undress in the same facilities as your daughter?

What's really sad is his failure to engage with the humour. @Boiledbeetle ‘s interpretative dance was a thing of beauty. Maybe I should have depicted the T-shirt on a lioness. Would that be funnier?

Humans are mammals. No mammal cannot change their sex. Therefore humans cannot change their sex.

Saying humans can do things other mammals can't is irrelevant to this biological fact and doesn't disprove this argument.

Also beetles are distinct insect classes from cockroaches.

@Boiledbeetle did some wonderful interpretive dance for you, was placed on a t shirt and you call her a cockroach!

ETDTIAHPBMBM: Edited to delete the information already helpfully provided, but missed by me,

"Your simple directive really hard to follow". This was one of the more interesting posts. If you started with this OP you might have had a more interesting conversation.

Unfortunately we need rules which generalise. That does mean that some will be disadvantaged i.e. nice lil old transwomen who've been using certain facilities for years.

The ECHR has ruled that surgery cannot be a precondition for official recognition of gender identity, because of the right to bodily integrity and privacy (Article 4). That same right likely applies to hormones.

Perhaps ironically if you are thinking a "combo" may be needed you are aligning yourself with the right you detest who are considering leaving the ECHR.

If you don't want to leave the ECHR, that only leaves how someone dresses to demonstrate their "gender identity". You will appreciate anyone can dress, style their hair how they like.

Whilst somewhat by definition GC don't believe anyone can change their biological sex, people on the forum have different views on gender.

normalfergy can't/wont acknowledge that sex exists, so gets tied up in knots trying to substitute the illusory 'gender' into places where sex is relevant.

I need a T shirt that says 'THIS IS NOT THE UK AND GENDER SELF-ID HAS STOLEN MY HARD-WON SEX-BASED RIGHTS'.

Maybe not a T-shirt though, the letters would be quite small and I wouldn't want people having to get up close and personal in order to read my chest.

As requested.

Waiting for image approval.

You really are filling up the bingo card! Offensive, aggressive, patronising and factually incorrect, well done! 👍

Bingo! Apartheid klaxon. I could save you the bother by telling you we’ve heard all this before, but I’m assuming that Reddit is down and you’ve run out of 50p’s.

Oh I do love a flounce!

' I'm a mother. . . . . . Who believes sex in sport or in a rape crisis centre hire, should not be lumped into a person's basic right to dignity and safety'.

That reads as though normal fergy is expressing a strong belief that we should not have sex-based rights to dignity and safety, even in a rape crisis centre. I know there are people whose hatred of women runs that deep, but it is startling to read it set out that clearly.

' I'm a mother. . . . . . Who believes sex in sport or in a rape crisis centre hire, should not be lumped into a person's basic right to dignity and safety'.

To be fair, when I read this, I thought... ummm ... how do you separate female people's need for dignity and safety from those very things? Then I remembered all the other posts and realised that this poster has no fucking clue outside a very indoctrinated belief. There is not even logic behind their posts.

Sighs. Someone's been indoctrinated. Everyone wants to be on the right side of history and fight for the oppressed ethnic minorities, gays, trans. Easy pickings. Raped women? Nah.

Transgender individuals have the same rights to dignity and safety as anyone else. What we object to is when it overrides our sex based rights as i.e. biological women.

I would say I support their rights more than you do OP. I don't agree hormones or surgery makes someone "bona fide trans", like the test with the pencil.

Just popping along to plop down that from this non white’s perspective I think OP’s position is utter piffle. Occasionally bits mildly persuasive on first reading but once analysed by folk here with their usual perspicacity, piffle.

Piffle is a great word.

The whole thread was worth it just to see "piffle" in use "IRL". 😂 A beautiful, under-appreciated word!

SNAP! (or jinx!)

Let me break it down...

Suppose a women's sexual assault group is set up. It's going well. Someone walks in who reasonably appears to be male.

The women who are triggered clam up and leave the group. The person could be:

1. male with a male gender identity
2. a transwomen - i.e. someone male with a female gender identity
3. a very convincing transmen, i.e. a woman with a male gender identity

As far as I've ever heard no transmen have been doing 3), they go to a mixed or LGBTQ group. For some reason there's been a fair amount of 2).

It's not about questioning how anyone looks. We automatically identify male v female. This hypothetical trans man is trying to look male. And may be successful and have the same impact as a male in a women's space.

I can see absolutely no relevance to apartheid, unless you think we should never separate services or facilities by sex as somehow that's as bad as racism.

Toilets like someone says aren't the biggest issue. Unless you are a trans man and that is why you were posting?

Mate of yours, Bee?

, , , so ner!!

Treating them like men because they are men. Biology is not bigotry. Whilst I respect your right to identify how you choose it shouldn’t infringe on my, or any other woman’s right to single sex spaces.

I am cheerfully pro-choice, keen on gay marriage and an atheist so I don’t think your Christian fundamentalists would like me much.

Just because your opinions align about something doesn’t mean that you agree either everything they say. I assume you agree that the (recently in the news) neo-nazi in Germany has the right to self identify as a woman and serve their time out in a woman’s prison. I don’t imagine you’ll be out practicing goose stepping and heiling. Life tends to have a bit more nuance.

Treating them like men because they are men. Biology is not bigotry. Whilst I respect your right to identify how you choose it shouldn’t infringe on my, or any other woman’s right to single sex spaces.

I am cheerfully pro-choice, keen on gay marriage and an atheist so I don’t think your Christian fundamentalists would like me much.

Just because your opinions align about something doesn’t mean that you agree either everything they say. I assume you agree that the (recently in the news) neo-nazi in Germany has the right to self identify as a woman and serve their time out in a woman’s prison. I don’t imagine you’ll be out practicing goose stepping and heiling. Life tends to have a bit more nuance.