How is the trans issue ever going to be resolved?

[PassportPanicFuuuck]

It seems as insoluble as the Israel/Palestine question when the two "sides" want directly opposing things. I've heard the arguments that trans people "just want to pee" and that "no-one would go through medical/surgical gender reassignment purely to abuse women", plus the mantras that "trans people exist", "trans rights are human rights" and "trans women are women" and it's quite clear that the people who believe these things fervently aren't going to change their minds any time soon.

But to a certain extent, life isn't fair. Not everyone does have equal opportunities. If you're in a gay relationship (and there's nothing wrong with that) you can't have a biological child with your partner; if you're infertile (as I am) you can't have a child at all; if you're trans (and there's nothing wrong with that either) you can't enter the spaces of the opposite sex; if you're British you don't have an automatic right to go and live in the US; if you're short and unsporty you don't have a right to be on the Olympic basketball team - and so on. All sorts of opportunities are denied people at various different points, some as a result of decisions you make (like not studying for a medical degree means I can never be a doctor) and some not (see above re. infertility), and beyond universal human rights you don't have a right - one might say "entitlement" - to an awful lot of things, much as you might keenly want them.

Like it or not, once we end up in these categories we have to accept it. Absolutely no-one is eligible to do everything or to go everywhere. However if you have made a choice - even if you consider it to be more a recognition of something innate rather than a conscious decision - it doesn't mean that you have made this choice on behalf of everyone else. If you have chosen to transition (again, you may not consider it to be a "choice") you can't dictate that everyone else ignore biology and logic and linguistic authenticity and you can't dictate that everyone else will want to celebrate your decision. No, we don't have to accept the "lady bulge", we don't have to accept child abuse under the guise of gender-affirming care and we don't have to accept men in female sports / changing rooms / organisations.

Not sure how coherently worded all the above is, but perhaps it will provoke some interesting debate.

@SoftBalletShoes, I think I may have posted this earlier on the thread, but it’s worth repeating - it might help you understand why some posters have really, very visceral reactions to the suggestion that some men - the ones who pass as women - should be allowed to be in women’s single-sex spaces:

Think about that for a moment, this idea of a man who is “visually and for all practical purposes indistinguishable” from a woman. Lots of women have suffered male violence, and some of those are permanently traumatised to the point that if they are surprised by a man in a supposedly female-only space, they will be retraumatised. These women may need domestic violence shelters and rape crisis services at certain times, but they don’t engage with the world solely as rape or domestic violence survivors. They have ordinary lives, too. They use public toilets, hospitals, gyms; they visit pubs, galleries, cafés, museums, theatres. They don’t wear a special badge or uniform so that we can identify them and make sure we cater for their needs. We don’t know who they are.

Obviously it’s not acceptable to say to such women “You can’t have any single-sex spaces”. But is it better to say “You can have single-sex spaces, mostly. Don’t worry: we’ll only let men use them if they look so much like women that you won’t be able to tell that they’re men.”

Think about that. Think about its power to undermine the certainty of an already traumatised woman that the woman she is dealing with at any given moment is truly a woman. If you’re not shocked by the sadistic, gas-lighting cruelty of that, you’re not doing the thinking bit right. Think harder. Think about it until you are shocked.

From here:

www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2024/11/06/sex-peanuts-and-statutory-interpretation/

Old Crone is the ONLY person who has spoken to me as if I'm a human being.

A whole lot of people talked to you politely, including me.

I don't want Taztoy to be retraumatised. I don't see transwomen who have transitioned - like the ones I posted - as men, I think that's the difference. They look JUST like women, at least to me, and the ones I've heard sound like them too.

The ideal solution would be third spaces.

You have not been moderate, respectful or reasonable. You've been dishonest, tone deaf and lecturing women who know a fuck ton more than you. You have belittled and berated. You have used phrases like 'common sense' to imply we lack rationality and understanding of the problem. Your ignorance of the subject has been off the scale. You have zero clue but have paraded about like a peacock showing dominance over everyone.

And then innocently and pathetically are playing a poor ickle me card when you've upset people and had your arse handed to you.

The answer still is no.

Hope that helps.

See my reply to you above.

What should be done about the ones who take hormones and had surgeries, but still don't look like women? They exist, I met many of them.

Maybe if you tried seeing women as human beings and not support props for men you might get one where but coming on a feminist forum saying women should give up their rights to appease men was never going to go down well was it?

I had a panic attack. An extended one. Because of a man waiting outside the disabled toilet door. Now, I don’t go out for the day without making Mr Taz stand outside the toilet door. So he can speak up and reassure me.

and to that point. The answer is a fourth space. Not a third space. We already have a third space
and that is for disabled people.

It's monumental tone deafness isn't it?

I'm left just thinking

"Diddums".

Those were edited photos you posted. Not real! And it's not even physically possible for a male to sound like a female. It is not physically....possible. So you are not telling the truth, again.

The ideal solution would be third spaces.

Which we offered up as a compromise around a decade ago now! And you still say we aren't compromising. Another example of you lying about us.

But these men biologically ARE still men. They haven't changed sex.

You will have to acknowledge that your position has no scientific or objective reasoning behind it.

It's a metaphysical belief, like the belief that people have souls or placing great faith in astrology or something. Absolutely fine for you to believe that if you are so inclined, but you have absolutely no basis for pushing that belief on the rest of us.

I wish was this sheltered and privileged!

I must have been on a different internet.

Absolutely, yes - the mental health comments and the probable 'ebbing' of optimism or bravado that some can assume at the start of grey area trials where rights and precedent will be the pillars within the frame. I'm reminded of Bleak House - the process was also the punishment, and any glittering at the end of the tunnel that appeared to embody the end point, crumbled away under the pressure.

In my opinion, the health effects are probably the ones with the potential to cause the most harm and pain to an individual if things do not go as expected, but there are some that may find the hidden traps coming from data and statistics that have not rested on fluid concepts, historically, too. Pensions (and their gendered trends) and the amount of money that can support a retirement - I foresee screw-ups and this being something else where 'identifying out of...' the different bits of a working life with hindsight, could easily produce a wide set of discrepancies that have a sad impact on financial circumstances.

I posted moderate views landing on both sides, including that I did not believe in self-IDing into women's spaces, trans women in women's sports, or trans women in refuges. As I said my views are/were moderate. But never let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh?

And yes, of course you would say "diddums." I expect nothing else.

Right? I've had worse while discussing fictional people and concepts...

But you called us all 'brown shirts' for wanting women's legal rights to be upheld, so how does that tally with your vision of yourself as a moderate?

You have zero clue but have paraded about like a peacock showing dominance over everyone.

The argument appears to be.

Some women don’t see certain types of trans identifying men as men. And therefore they should be allowed into women’s single sex spaces.

but.

lots of other women - me included - see them as men, can identify them as men quickly, efficiently and effectively. And we say no.

Why does our no not count?

I am pretty sure I did too, but my post has gone unacknowledged. As no doubt will this one.

I am deeply fortunate never to have been the direct target of male violence or abuse by a partner, but at the age of 9 I was forced to witness my stepfather of the time beat up and rape my mother. When I screamed and tried to drag her away, I was slapped and sent flying and told to shut up and take note as to what happens to whores. My mother had been unfaithful with her boss and used the marital bed, I was told that this was total justification for her punishment. I was nearly 13 before I understood what I had actually witnessed (sexual intercourse) but closer to my twenties before I understood it was rape. Moreover I was older still before I realised that I had been so forcibly and violently abused myself in that moment that I had actually believed that my ‘whore of a mother’ deserved it.

Outside one therapy session, I have never shared this with another soul before. My half-sisters do not know and will never understand why I really could not give a fuck that it was his 70th a few years ago and I was ‘busy’. I have been scared of men and intimacy my whole life, a legacy that really impacts my marriage and my DH’s own self esteem and sense of being loved. i suspect it also feeds into my formerly trans identifying DD’s sense of femininity and her understanding of what it is to be a woman, even though I have never - and would NEVER - share these facts with her. The legacy of DV of male violence is multi-generational and I absolutely NEVER EVER want a male appendaged person in my close and intimate space unless it is my husband.

Surely @SoftBalletShoes I have that right? Surely the rights of women like me - and I KNOW, not just from MN but 50odd years of living and being around other women, that my experience is not unusual - surely our right to be safe from men, any man no matter how he identifies, should be at least equal to if not elevated above the rights of their feelings?

And surely my expressing it here - in a moment of considerable vulnerability - you cannot accuse me of being a bully and a liar?

Your views are NOT moderate.
That's what people are telling you.
Listen please.

Have you read Seethlaw's posts as well as Crone's posts.

Do you now understand why your suggestions weren't really helpful to anyone?