A little piece of insight

[Tandora]

Into a topic so woefully misunderstood.

If my pre-therapy description of my experience - wishing I’d been born a boy from the age of 5, wanting my breasts removed, and all the rest of it - had been communicated to you, your initial argument dictates that you would have to believe and affirm that experience.

Ignoring what I know now for a moment; I believed I was under the trans umbrella. Would you have told me I wasn’t? If you’d said it sounded like it was a mental illness rather than a trans identity, wouldn’t this (by your own definition) make you a transphobe? What happened to believing a five year old who tells you people using the wrong pronouns are “hurting him”, and you listening and believing him, because his experience is “real”? What innate self knowledge does a small child have that would lead you to believe the self assessment of someone barely out of toddlerhood, over that of an adult? How do you have enough knowledge of the internal experience of this other person/child to make a judgement about when to believe them or not? Doesn’t that undermine your whole argument?

As it is, affirming me would have been harmful. The point I’m making is that, if you automatically affirm everybody, especially young children who might struggle to define their experience (as per the example in your OP), you risk causing harm. Your logic and your approach is dangerous, and you can’t defend it without contradicting yourself.

I think, based on this thread, I’m going to identify as The Supreme Arbiter going forward. It has quite the ring.

I suspect they are not productive because you are deeply dismissive of the lived experience of real ‘trans’ persons that do not fit your narrative or ideological view? Their trauma, their lives, their experiences are so immaterial to you that you ‘haven’t retained any information’.

Perhaps if you engaged with the PPs like myself (there are dozens and dozens of us on MN who have responded to your threads highlighting that our experience and that of our young persons does not correspond in any way to your comments), you might understand why so many of us persistently push back?

Yes. It's intellectually dishonest as well as being intensely frustrating.

I didn't say your 'trauma' was a logical fallacy. Your question is a straw man/ logical fallacy because in order to answer it I have to accept your premise that distress is a 'competition', (one person's trauma 'trumps' the other) and that there is a conflict here (between resolving your distress and resolving the distress of a trans person). I don't accept either of these premises are reasonable or have a foundation in reality.

I really CBA to do more than skim Tan's posts - there's only so much TRA lecturing I can endure in a week, even if it's apparently not from a TIM but a woman who's actually birthed children.

I caught a reference to scientific proof that trans people were provably different to individuals of their natal sex. Was any such proof provided?

The only study I know of was the brain scans that could be just as well explained by life experiences as genetics, ie not proof at all. Is this something different?

How can you not accept there's a conflict when she's literally told you what will happen to her if there's a man in a single-sex space with her? Why does her lived experience and her trauma not matter, but transpeople's is of the utmost importance?

It's the best Tandora can manage on the hand-waving front

To the contrary, I am deeply interested in your lived experience as the parent of a child who engaged with Tavistock and was suffering from gender dysphoria. Very interested. In my real life I would love to talk to you in-depth about that - but of course I wouldn't ask to do that on mumsnet.

@Tandora What is your opinion of the trans people online, the ones making a mockery of the female experience by pretending to have period cramps? Do you believe they should be validated in their delusions?

Tandora, you have an opportunity here to educate us. If we need a female doctor, what language should we use? Fife made it clear that if we ask for a woman, we get Upton and if we ask for a female, we get Upton, and if we ask for a biological woman, we get Upton.

So if, as you said earlier, you recognise there are biological differences and what matters is using the right language - what language should we use?

Lorrie

I agree. I have seen posters get into these discussions with this poster before and the result is the same as you are experiencing. There is a disconnect between what they say and the outcome in discussion which always ends up with an arbitration of who is and isn’t transgender. Like this supposed ‘linguistic dispute’.

Once you see the disconnect, you cannot miss it. It makes discussion pointless. It is philosophical lecturing.

The absolute cold-hearted 'don't give a single fuck for what you've been through as long as the men get what they want' is utterly sickening.

Tells you everything you need to know about this individual and the value you should place on their input.

Repellent.

I am interested in this too. Language is important. What words should we use to get what we need in this scenario?

It is, isn’t it? I suspect it’s the best any of your clear questions are going to get, and we can all draw our own conclusions from that, or some of us did many threads ago.

There are all kinds of words you could use.

I think the best way - which would enable everyone to understand, and would avoid any doubt at all, would be to request a female doctor, and specify that you would like to be clear that this does not include/ you will not accept/ are not comfortable with being seen by a doctor who is a trans woman.

What @teawamutu said. So many people waffling on about fanciful nonsense with zero empathy for the real issues of women.

Totally agree. These are the type of people we are supposed to let into our spaces, folks

We‘ll never agree on those ‚basics‘ because there is no single answer.

I’ve noticed in recent posts by those supporting this ideology an increasing tendency to confuse fact and opinion. Facts can be objectively proven (with the disclaimer that some facts may change as our scientific understanding advances, yes). In contrast, the questions you favour here can be answered only with opinions, in that you’re asking about generalised perceptions of subjective experience. Opinions, for example on ‚Why does it matter?‘, can never, ever synchronise to the degree you appear to need - as a scientist, you must surely know this.

In the meantime, though, we continue to need answers to Taztoy‘s questions for society to be able function. So, in the meantime, what do you believe we should be doing about these questions? Your response won’t immediately lead to unthinking enactment of damaging policy! Instead, hypothesising potential solutions can actually help to develop a shared understanding of those more difficult, open-ended questions that, as you acknowledge, across 25+ pages, and despite your lengthy replies (thank you - it’s noted and appreciated!) we’ve still failed to pin down.

In this context, avoiding some posts, as you do appear to be doing - and particularly those of a genuinely deeply concerned, good-faith posters like Taztoy and Lorrie - does begin to feel like avoiding difficult questions that actually, I’d argue, get to the very heart of the issue:

1. if the OP is about the importance of respecting trans feelings and experience, how is that reconciled with respecting a survivor‘s?

2. if the OP is about the authenticity of trans identification, how does that reconcile with someone who could have sworn to these words in her childhood, but now wholeheartedly disagrees?

You could answer, but you won't.

I see.

You are saying that men have the right to use women's facilities, but women do not have the right to facilities free of men.

You are prioritising men over women.

You could answer, but you won't.

So you agree that transwomen should stay out of women's spaces, e.g., women's loos, women's changing rooms, women's refuges, women's rape or domestic violence services, women's prisons, etc.?

Bc if they use those spaces the odds are high that it will cause significant distress to some women. E.g., I get flashbacks. Other women experience other types of distress.

I want you to be be very clear about how you will resolve the tension between transwomen's distress at using the gents (or, e.g., fourth spaces bc they are outing) and women's distress at having men, including transwomen, in their spaces. How are you going to make it so neither group experiences distress?

Personally, I’d say that I don’t want “a male doctor, of any kind, obviously including those men who call themselves “trans women”. Much clearer and easier to understand I think.

Yes.

Thank you for at least being as honest as you are capable of being, OP. It's taken a long time to get this answer, but it is at last made clear.

Amazing how The Righteous claim that words are so indefinably nebulously formlessly meaningless, and yet they can make strong definitive statements against Unbelievers when it suits them and expect to be understood (and venerated for their self-identified expertise).

Almost like The Righteous are pious frauds high on their own farts and churning out obfuscatory verbal diarrhoea.

Also chicken shit while self-identifying as stunning&brave.