A space for respectful dialogue about sex, gender and diversity

[Tandora]

This is a thread for posters who want to talk and share a diverse range of opinions about sex, gender, being gender non-conforming and/or trans, and public policy. It is to learn from each other; to engage in a productive exchange, and to hear different sides of the story.

It is not a space for bullying and insults. Please do not join if your intention is to control the conversation and undermine those who disagree with you.

Yes, this seems like quite a sticking point.

I stuck with it for a bit, hoping to have a respectful mini-debate about the definitions of the words sex, gender, diversity and gender non-conforming just to get a firm foundation ready for the real debate....

But if I'm not supposed to remember that I know that all transwomen started off being born male... well, there's little more I can think of to say.. other than I'll respectfully say goodbye to the thread now and unwatch it.

It just seems to me the gender critical view is the only one anyone has been able to express coherently, on this thread or elsewhere.

What is sex? A reproductive classification. A woman is an adult human female, female is members of a species which reproduces sexually (or indeed reproductive parts of an organism which carries out both roles in sexual reproduction) which are structured to produce large gametes, whether currently or ever functional or not.

What is trans? When someone holds a strong conviction that they should be/wish to be the sex they are not.

Now, if we want to define trans in tandora's terms:
"A trans woman is a person who has some observable physical male characteristics but who recognises self as female."

So rather than people being male or female, characteristics are. That still acknowledges that sex exists as a binary. So far so good. It acknowledges at least the possibility that we could have done with the handwaving and just say people with observable male physical characteristics are male.

Recognises self as female is rather an extraordinary claim.

What does it mean? I can see three options:

1. That this individual is convinced that they have female physical characteristics when in fact they have male. A conviction of something that is not in material terms true would normally be called a delusion, or maybe a religious belief.

2. That, not actually having female body parts and therefore not being able to conceive of what it feels like to have them, the individual has formed an impression from the behaviour and social expectations of those who do, and feels a strong sense of identity with those behaviours, modes of dress etc. This is where stereotypes come in, and the observable strong tendency for TW to talk about their identification with feminine stereotypes and adoption of feminine stereotypes; the very diagnostics of gender dysphoria which rely heavily on sex stereotypes.

3. That this individual is convinced that being female means something other than having female physical characteristics or feminine stereotypes, and that they are female in this other sense? What sense then? A word must mean something before you can convince yourself it applies to you. Nobody can have a deep internal conviction they're a flibble.

You don’t think there is a clash?

So what would you say to a TIM who wants to compete in athletics against women?

What sorts of organisations do you think can afford to provide so many spaces? In what sorts of contexts do you see these spaces being provided?

What do you think they are, then?

Well I guess my questions would be, why are we teaching children they will be in trouble for not pretending when something is true? Why did a female provision get converted rather than a male? And why has one individual got so much power within a school?

No I don't think that the TRAs would accept it for the very reason that it was the female toilet coopted not the male. It has to be womens space. And that everyone needs to join in the pretence.

I'm not having a go btw! As a pp said, these solutions have been offered and forcefully rejected by the TRAs.

there are a lot of gay men out there who are gay men as a consolation prize because they couldn't be women

you've got to wonder what he thinks 'being a woman' means

he was the one who said a few very determined transphobes have crawled their way to the heart of the law like maggots after the SC judgement. Nice!

I see we've got another Tandora special on our hands.

Another whole thread where Tandora holds court attempting to dictating the terms of discussion while studiously avoiding... y'know actual good faith discussion.

Another attempt by Tandora to control how women speak.

Another thread where Tandora selectively responds, and displays an incredible bit of cherry picking from some posts, thanking people for anything Tandora can view as vaguely positive while ignoring the rest of the post.

Another thread from Tandora who btw thinks we're all fascists for wanting single sex spaces and to preserve women's rights. Who's misogyny has been displayed over, and over, and over again. Men are prioritised over women every time by Tandora no matter what.

Tandora who callously dismisses women who have repeatedly explained their distress and trauma at finding men in women's single sex spaces after being raped.

Tandora who doesn't believe that female distress or harm to women as a result of single sex spaces being invaded by men is real.

Some of Tandora's posts in this thread have been laughable - the eleven billion different toilets needed... but only on a case by case basis apparently for example? I mean come on! Even Tandora knows how utterly ridiculous and impractical this suggestion is.
And that's not even considering the fact that Tandora thinks 3rd/4th spaces would be "outing" somehow (you've never explained that one Tandora). Nor does it take into consideration what other PPs have pointed out, that trans identified males completely rejected the idea of 3rd/4th spaces because it's not about the spaces, it's about gaining access to the women in the spaces.

It's extremely tedious Tandora. A tedious, attention seeking, me me me kind of misogyny that aims to shut women down while telling us to be "respectful" 🙄

NO!

Toe the line.

Yep. I’ve refrained from posting so far as I’m loathed to give this despicable poster more oxygen but if it gives another poster food for thought before wasting their time on this I’m for it.

There's a general rule for good debate on forums.

You post the type of posts you want to see in the thread.
If you want clearly communicated ideas and opinions that can be critiqued, you post those.

If you want people to understand what you think, you post clearly and unambiguously what you think.

If you want to know what others think, you ask questions that will help you understand.

If you want a thread to be about what the thread is like, then post about what the thread is like.

It's obvious which OP prefers from their contributions to the thread.

I've tried over and over to get a clear understanding of what OP even thinks - but it's so vague and inconsistent I literally don't know which of the many meanings are invoked when terms like sex, gender, trans, man, woman are used. Kind of a stumbling point for a discussion about these issues.

IMO this is just abusive.

"I am vile. I am disgusting. I am utterly abhorrent. I am disgusting. I am a liar." But in your own words yes, Tandora you have managed to be right about something for once.

I can't use the words I'd like to because I'm sure I'd be deleted, but I hope everyone who isn't familiar with Tandora takes a good long look at this exchange. Advanced search is also useful if you want to know more about a poster's... views.

I think that some things are simple. Do men and women and LGB people have sex based rights or don't they?

I think all people have rights. I have fought for women's rights to not be oppressed. I have fought for LGB people to not be victimised, stigmatised, or discriminated against.

But you miss the point of my argument/discussion point.

It's not about groups of people not deserving rights. It's about two things:

1. If these groups are given rights, why not other arbitrary groupings? Why do we think that our rights are legitimate, and others are illegitimate.
2. What rights does each group get (and why). And what happens when groups have conflicting rights. How do we accommodate that?

I'm not arguing for trans rights over women's rights. Far from it.

But I am raising the question of why we've moved to a position of entitlement and inflexibility. I'm sure before the TRAs became so annoying and demanding that we were more accommodating.

I am generally against arguing for something just because "it is". I always like to think about how we would arrange things if we started from scratch.

Otherwise, presumably, men would never have surrendered any of their 'rights'.

So what rights do you suggest women “surrender”. Do be very specific. And what rights are you suggesting transpeople surrender? R is this a one way “women budge up and be nice” thing? What rights do transpeople need thst they don’t already have? Rights. Not wants.

@thirdfiddle I agree with your prior post. It is difficult to have a discussion if we cannot agree what terms and definitions mean to each party - even if the discussion that follows is about agreeing those terms. If non GC posters/OP could clarify we might be able to explore.

For example, I know that I understand a trans person to be any person who, for what ever reason - be that psychosexual, psychological, etc - believes that they are the gender that does not align with their natal sex. This is a broad umbrella term that brackets transexuals, AGP men, autistic gender confused teen women, sexual and psychological trauma victims, and trendy intellectuals who claim non-binary status. I do not believe people can change sex despite surgical intervention and, behind what ever driver they have for their desire to be the opposite sex, deep down they know that this or they would be rejecting the label ‘trans’ [not unlike India W].

I think most non GC posters believe that a trans people are who they say they are, that they are people who genuinely believe that their biological sex is subordinate to their sense of gender and that the latter defines them such that a trans women truly believes they should be regarded in all circumstances as ‘women’.

I am not sure what the point, however, of discussion of this is, though? Unless it is to convince the other side of our position, which clearly we cannot do given those positions are science/reality-based versus ideologically informed. It’s like arguing black is white and vice versa.

And then you have to ask, what is the point - what is the goal we hope to achieve? Ideally you’d hope understanding might lead to empathy - I certainly feel for many trans persons - the distress they live with, the mental anguish - but my response to that empathy is to want them to have access to better psychological care, in a timely manner, so that they can find a way to reconcile with the reality of their bodies and ameliorate that anguish. I want to protect them from irreversible medical treatments so that they have space to change their minds. Conversely I’d hope that those on the other side would want this avenue to be available to them and I’d sincerely hope they could develop some empathy for our position - our concern for vulnerable children and women seeking the privacy, safety and dignity of single sexed spaces. But, again, I don’t see any movement towards this. Certainly on these threads.

So it leaves us in a stalemate - both sides shouting into the void that their echo chamber creates.

Women are not an arbitrary group.
We are female human beings and the sex-based rights we fight for will always be needed because of our biology. It's not inflexibility to acknowledge that our needs will not change, because we will not change.
Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution have already taken place. We cannot start from scratch.

Out of interest, why should women give up rights so that men can have more? Do you feel that we are over privileged?

We accommodate people with the Protected characteristic of Gender Reassignment already. They have the same human rights as everyone else, they have all the rights appropriate to their sex (women with identities still have maternity protection, for example) and additionally, they have protection from discrimination on the grounds of the PC of GR.
But the rights that men who claim to be women (MCW) want would prevent women having the right to associate as women, lesbians would not have the right to exclude men from date nights, and measures taken to encourage women into the Armed Forces could be taken advantage of by men. Just examples.

Imagine a silent disco. Everyone listens to their own choice of music through their headphones. Everyone dances, or doesn't, in their own way. Everybody is happy. But what TRAs want is for the music choices of the MCWs to be played over the speakers, and for all the women to be forced to remove their headphones.

Final thought - which legitimate rights did men surrender to allow women to have full human rights and sex-based rights?

Edited for clarity

Oh dear. I did warn you @Tandora that you have no control over this thread no matter how much you ask that we should all be naice.

BTW, you may well have missed my earlier post on what GC Feminism actually means but I have found your dismissal of it as a strand of Feminist thought deeply disrespectful. I can only assume that your understanding has come from Wikipedia and not from any vigorous investigation. I invite you to read the presentation on the following link if you really want to understand the GC Feminist position:

https://hollylawford-smith.org/what-is-gender-critical-feminism-and-why-is-everyone-so-mad-about-it/

ETA sorry, forgot the link

Please do not join if your intention is to control/ shut down the conversation

Oh the irony.

I don't agree with you that transwomen are male by definition.

Yes, they are. Let's be realistic here, Tandora.

Oh, I think Tandora could have held court indefinitely, acting like the chair of an AMA, cherrypicking quote and refusing to define terms, until Tandora's mate so clearly exposed his nature.

Troll hunting is of course against the rules. But we notice repeat offenders, and if you try to build up a TRA clique on FWR, it will inevitably attract at least one of the repeat offenders, who doesn't observe the high tone that Tandora likes to adopt.

If Tandora ever returns to this thread, it might be worth considering whether engaging differently might have allowed you to have a conversation where you'd be challenged robustly, but it wouldn't have been as uniformly negative for you.

If it makes things clearer, think of them less as rights, and more as rights to protections and mitigations.

If the world was fair, we wouldn't need them.

But the world isn't fair. We are still sexualised by society, and that changes how some men treat us, from just seeing us in terms of our sexual desireablity right up to sexual assault. And we still carry the social repurcussions of millenia where we wer assumed to be less than men, there to support them not surpass them. Even though no one admits to thinking that these days apart from Andrew Tate-addled basment dwellers, nevertheless that imagery is so embedded in our culture, from church paintings to story tales to hollywood films to how the newsreaders interact, that subconsciously it affects the expectations and values others place on us and even we place on ourselves.

And all this before we even start to talk about the assymetry of pregnancy and early years care, and how society is structured in a way that the cost of that in time, social capital and earning power falls so much more onto us.

So. There's all that on our backs simply because of our sex.

And women's "rights" - they aren't privileges. They are a few buidling blocks that women have been able to persuade society that it is fair to give us, to help us sometimes put down the burden of always fitting into or around the social constructions of womanhood and the expectations of men, and escape the gaze and the entitlement and the expectation of our attention, and just be us. And sometimes share converstions and observations that we don't feel safe or able to do in front of men, or try things without being overshdowed or overinstructed by men.

So the reason why women have these rights is not "because that is they way it is". That is TRA thining - that women's rights just happen to be there for no reason, and anyone who can grab the name "woman" has a right to them.

No, women's rights are there because once we didn't have them. Every single one, the right to maternity pay, women only toilets, to women only prisons, women's sports, every single women's refuge, right down to the small things like a women's pottery group or a women's coding club, exists because at one point a woman looked around and said "this is holding women back, or making women unsafe, or stopping women particpating properly in society, or getting into a lucrative sector, and I think that matters and I'm going to campaign for it or argue for it or just roll my sleeves up and build it".

And the reason we are "inflexible" about this, the reason we don't think it's fair, or inclusive, or progressive to share these things with men who claim to believe they somehow like us on the inside, is that the reasons we as women needed these things have not gone away yet. Some of those reasons, some of those risks and prejudices and entitlements, are even still in the thoughts and behaviours of the men who think or claim to think they are women.

When men gave up their "rights" (at least on paper) they did so because they realised they didn't need them any more. They didn't need to own us or exclude us or control us, they could just be equal with us, and there was no moral justification to continue to elevate themselves over us.

That is not where we are. Our "rights" are still needed. Until the reasons we have them have truly gone away in society, we need the rights we have to protect us and to mitigate the sexism that we still face.

And with a due sense of dismay that Here We Are Again, let's have yet another thousand-post thread where Tandora

a) fails to tell us what being trans is

and

b) also fails to explain to me (and other rape survivors) why our absolute need for SSSs is somehow less important than TW's desire to be admitted into those women-only spaces.

I mean - we've been asking for months and months. Or is it years, now?

I did suggest Tandora wouldn't be back after their mate had been unmasked.

I was rather sad about that as it rendered my Alanis joke a lot less funny when the post I was replying to had been deleted.

#sadtimes

I am the aggressor.

Yes, @Tandora you absolutely are.

But you didn't mean all that, did you.

You're just winding @Taztoy up, as usual. It's outrageous.

Tandora might have abandoned this thread, but as you aptly said, is like the Terminator and will assuredly return.

That's obvious.

But we talk about women's elite sports, and we support the argument that paying women less for their success than men is discrimination.

It's a bit hypocritical then isn't it, to say that 13 year olds (who are at a similar disadvantage against adult men) should not be able to participate, or that they should not have a league of their own or be paid just as much for their international success.

And yes, I might argue that paralympians could.compete with able bodied people. I suppose it's a case of what we prize in sport.

If we prize excellence above all else then why do we revere paralympians or women's teams? Why not just the best of the best?

Alternatively, if what we prize is actually to do the best with whatever handicaps we start with, then why wouldn't we want a system that does a much more complete job of matching us up against similar opponents - or do what they do in horse racing. Add different fixed weights as a starting point in weightlifting for instance, then allow direct competition.

I'm not actually advocating that we do these things. I am however (since this is apparently a.discussion thread) trying to make people think about these things from first principles and see if they hold water.

I am finding it interesting that most people here seem to feel that privilege is acceptable without really engaging amd justifying why. For that's what our rights and sports leagues are really aren't they. Barring people who might beat us, allowing us to compete successfully rather than being also-rans.

I was partly doing it to.engender a discussion about how we prioritise different groups rights and how we find a way to live together when we have competing or conflicting rights.