TRA Trolls - can we just say NO?

[BlueEyedBogWitch]

A full thread of NO’s might be more powerful than trying to reason with someone who is not interested in reason.

Just one ‘NO’ each, until they get bored and go away. Every time.

After all, it sums up our arguments very succinctly.

No this is completely inaccurate.

Nothing changed in 2016 except proposals to reform the GRA to make legal gender change less bureaucratic and more accessible for trans people were introduced

and then lots of people who knew not the slightest thing about being trans all of a sudden decided to form really strong opinions about it.

Why then do all your statements and arguments demonstrate that you feel the head view is the right one, and it overrides the embodied reality? Seems to me whatever you claim, what you actually believe is that head's opinion on the matter is the definitive one and the body is out of line.

Which is of course problematic when it comes to shared single sex spaces, because the only version of your sex everyone else experiences is the body one.

And that of course is why it is undeniable that it is body sex and not head sex is the only sex that matters when it comes to the purpose, the raison d'etre, of single sex spaces and provisions.

The whole head sex thing is a red herring. It's like claiming that garages exist so that garage doors have somewhere to go. It's looking at a concept that only exists because of something else and claiming the second concept is the definine one.

You’re a radical feminist? Really? So why aren’t you supporting females in their fight to protect female spaces? Or are these more words where you’re using a different definition to the rest of the world?

I mean, that is part of what we've been discussing for the past 8 or 9 years, right - the push for everyone to agree that 'man' means 'person of either sex' and 'woman' also means 'person of either sex' but that they are so different that to change from one to another is a life-changing transition. But equally they are so similar that no-one who claims to believe it can name a single difference between the two.

Many people transitioning between the two, who claim to believe that being a man or a woman is an inner feeling, also - entirely coincidentally - change the appearance of secondary sex characteristics. But remember, physical sex has nothing to do with being a man or a woman - that's hateful bigoted terf rhetoric, and the reason they incorporate female/male appearances is

Hi Tandora, you appear to have missed my question to you, so I'll repost it:

**
Unfortunately in the UK trans people undergo a lot of coercive psychological interventions which are unethical and harmful.

That's a bold claim, indeed. Would you care to link us some credible information on this? Not from Pink News, Mermaids, Trans Actual, or similar activists.

Thanks in advance!

If trans people are being subjected to coercive psychological abuse, it's vital that this is made public. Please, please show us some evidence.

Nothing changed in 2016 except proposals to reform the GRA to make legal gender change less bureaucratic and more accessible for trans people were introduced

It's a logical fallacy to say 'the thing you are talking about didn't happen except when the thing you are talking about happened'.

Unfortunately what I would like to point you to is outing. i realise this wont be good enough for you and I apologise.

This is not far off my understanding, too - again, based on Tandora's words in the other long thread. I posted quotes there, and paste part of my post below.

Tandora, you've a huge amount to keep up with, but questions unaddressed in the last few pages do seem to be this one about single sex spaces (myself, Fiddle and Sionnach), and Sinner's, above.

Below is my current understanding of your position on the former, with what I think you may believe based on past quotes. Please let me know what you do think.

1)? Do transwomen exist with recognisably male physical features? Y/N

Y: Trans is knowing that actual sex is different from the sex of the body sex as observed at birth based on observable physical sexual characteristics.

2)? Do women exist who are so traumatised that they may find even the presence of a close male relative in an enclosed space almost unendurable?

?: based on responses to other posters' experiences which I didn't quite feel it was appropriate to quote directly

3)? Is the response of the female above to perceiving male features in enclosed spaces (eg. a visiting uncle, a transwoman in a public toilet) bigotry? Y/N

Y: There are a lot of people on this thread who use their experiences of SGBV as a justification for transphobia.

4)? Is this female's response therefore a moral failing that she needs to overcome or "reframe"? (Y/N)

Y: It is possible to be a survivor of sexual violence and not be transphobic

5)? Must this female, while unable to risk encounters with male physical features in enclosed spaces, restrict her movement accordingly? Y/N

???

eh? You said:

the concept of 'transness' around 2016...Previously it generally meant 'wishing to be seen as the opposite sex', or 'wishing to be the opposite sex'.

This is not true. The concept of being trans did not change at all.

The thing that changed in 2016 was that a proposal was suggested to reform the GRA to enable legal change of gender without medical requirements, and people who had never thought/ heard of/ cared about trans people before, suddenly decided to form lots of (ignorant) opinions about it.

Unfortunately what I would like to point you to is outing. i realise this wont be good enough for you and I apologise.

Well, of course it's not good enough, being expected to believe an unsubstantiated and entirely unverifiable claim. We like to see the source and pick it apart.

I doubt we'll get an answer on single sex spaces, but the sneering at SA survivors tells its own story.

Sorry

But you said it was widespread, which means there will be lots of different reports right? Or is this just like the lots of papers you said had been written but you can’t seem to link to? Almost like they don’t exist.

This is not true. The concept of being trans did not change at all.

Again you've changed my wording, and this is something where the words and the meaning are important, and given that you reject what 'trans' currently means I don't think we're going to get anywhere.

Legal self-ID was one aspect of that change. The expansion of the trans umbrella was another. Tons of people still consider 'trans' to mean 'wanting to be the opposite sex' and/or conflate it with having gender dysphoria.

But these subtleties are hard to discuss when I don't know what you mean by various words you use, so I'll step back and let the more interesting discussion threads continue!

Sorry I didn't mean to change your meaning. I must have misunderstood. You said:

the concept of 'transness' around 2016...Previously it generally meant 'wishing to be seen as the opposite sex', or 'wishing to be the opposite sex'.

Honestly this hasn't changed, the way trans people spoke about transness was the same before 2016. It wasn't about "wishing to be seen as the opposite sex", it was the same as now - directly experiencing self as opposite sex.

It does.

It’s not possible for people to have the experience of themselves as the opposite sex.

Popped back into this thread to see how things have progressed (predictably, I wasn’t surprised or disappointed) and it still boils down to this.

I hope this thread that Tandora was threatening materialises.

Yet again, the thread might be coming to an end, so I wanted to make sure I had the opportunity to say this before it finished. Other people might well have said more, or the thread might have moved on.

But no, no, no, no, no.

The transactivist shit response of saying that not all women do this, or that, so when a man can't do it, it's the same?

It's fucking despicable.

Like the man we had on here who claimed he was an infertile woman, because he couldn't get pregnant.

there's every reason to dismiss men for not having this experience. If a woman can't get pregnant, she gets diagnosed, if a man went to a doctor and said he couldn't get pregnant, he'd be escorted from the building.

Men can't menstruate, conceive, breastfeed, go through menopause, have abortions.

If women can't do this, there's an issue. When men can't do this, it's because they're not women.

Pretending that certain men are infertile women, or men who are unable to breastfeed, are just like women, is not only unhinged, it's nasty.

And ultimately rather fucking pathetic.

Men will never be women. And personally, in my opinion, that's a massive loss for them.

Too bad.

I very much agree with you that describing what is actually true and exists matters. However I don't believe this principle has been practiced by those who've written policy that involves the trans-identifying, and it's why we've ended up with so many harms inflicted upon women and girls as a result.

For example, I think if the general understanding was simply "there are male people who recognise themselves to be female" then we wouldn't have had cases like Karen White. He would have been incarcerated in the male prison estate on the factual basis that he is male.

Instead the policy that had him locked up in a female prison was based around the false idea that he and other males like him are some type of female. I know you say this is just words but it's words that make the laws and policies and guidelines that run our society, so it's important to get them right and base them on what exists in reality.

Like when Elizabeth Fry, prison reformist, advocated in the 19th century for separate women's and men's prisons, with the aim of reducing the risk that women would be sexually assaulted, she didn't include males who think they're female in the category of women. It would have been considered nonsense if anyone had even suggested it. But then policymakers in the 21st century decided that the category of women should include males, and that's why we ended up with the reason for sex segregation being completely undermined, and Karen White, who is male, sexually assaulting women in a women's prison.

The way you wrote your post could quite reasonably be interpreted like this. The fact that pushback made you rethink how it had appeared to others doesn't negate that. That's the trouble with being so fixated with trying to use everything as a means of getting your point across. You lose sight of the actual humanity of those you are debating with and what they have shared of their own experience.

Argh I think we've gone back to talking past each other again

😔

Not my intention. What did I misunderstand from your last comment?

No that wasn't a reasonable interpretation in the context of the conversation at all.

I was asked to give examples of cases where medical interventions could be performed even though there was nothing physically wrong.

I cannot be held responsible for interpretations of people who are not reading the context and jumping to conclusions.

We dismiss them because they're men.