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.

Thank you for such an eloquently well written and nuanced post- I agree with you entirely.

Is that an argument for a different approach then. If you're suggesting that some young people aren't genuine then perhaps we need to do a much better job of talking to them and understanding them before they're given medications and told the are now a different gender.

I think gender ideology will pass. In fact I think we're over the peak (in the UK, maybe not worldwide)

I think trans allies will quietly drop the issue when they realise they are on the 'wrong' side. Trans activists will continue to fight vehemently for a while and their vehemence will turn those who were previously uninterested or oblivious totally against gender ideology. And unfortunately the young vulnerable people who underwent medical transition will be stranded without support.

I hope there will be an inquest into just how it happened (a reckoning of sorts?) and support for young trans people to adjust and de-transition safely and sensitively. But I doubt it

Also, if some young people haven't been genuine in thinking they have a gender identity then we really need to look at why they would believe so in the first place. How much does social contagion/wanting to be cool contribute.

Absolutely. The evidence is that most children with gender disphoria will desist (overcome their disphoria) before adulthood if they are told that they can't change sex and supported to have their own personality without labelling it 'gender'

But this is denounced as 'conversion therapy' by trans activists

Its always felt a bit top down to me, rather than grass roots. Eddie Izzard is Susie because of the GRA, DEI policies and media support, not because anyone sees him as a woman.

All of those acts and policies were imposed suddenly and not after public campaigning and support. Unlike gay marriage, when the public was exposed to the discussion and ultimately became something many could support, we were told that women could have a penis because of some existing Act few knew anything about.

It was obvious that everyone involved in late 90s knew that the trans lobby werent going to get any sympathy with the public. Any 'honorary woman' status depended on the man, the women around him and the situation. Theres no way the public would see a typical reddit tim, and say of course you should follow my daughter into the changing room.

So i think once government and the media lose interest and the fad of child transitioners fades, the whole movement will switch. I think the public will be more sympathetic to detransitioners than to reddit tims.

May I be so bold as to recommend stopping searching for such material?

I don't, so I never see them and my life is immeasurably better for it.

It's hardly a secret that such material is out there. Surely you only need to look once, if that?

I think that’s histrionics.
i have an underdeveloped theory that TRAs are a certain autistic profile that can’t judge what’s socially acceptable and GCs have one that can’t ignore or lie about the scandal.

Exactly. I neither want or need to see depravity beyond what is in the news - that's depressing enough for me.

I don't need to see, for example, Charlie Kirk's death and I'm very happy to be in ignorance of that footage.

Me not watching such content doesn't assist anyone. And as most video platforms are paid for through adverts seen by those watching, by giving them clicks, I would assert those making such content profitable is assisting not impeding the people creating such questionable content.

The argument of "no-one would go through medical/surgical gender reassignment purely to abuse women" is trotted out when convenient but from the same people who also say "no medical/surgical treatments are required for someone to be trans, it's just about how the individual perceives themselves" - and you can't have it both ways. If the aim was to make us accept male bodies in female-only spaces on the grounds that "no-one would go through medical/surgical gender reassignment purely to abuse women" then the trans voices would be clearly calling for such accommodations to only apply to people who have had all the medical/surgical treatments, top & bottom. That's not what they are calling for (and quite right too, it would be abhorrent to gatekeep a special status only for those who have the financial means to to access those surgeries) they are calling for the female spaces to be open to any male person who wants to access them with no conditions or gatekeeping - the mere fact of wanting to be in there is enough. This effectively abolishes all female-only spaces and makes them all mixed-sex. There is no way to legally define or maintain a "women's" space that any male can use on-demand. Obviously all the non-abusive non-trans-identifying men would stay out but the ones who need to be kept out - the abusive ones - have carte blanche to go in any time they like, because women have to be obedient to any male who desires access. Only by establishing that all males are excluded - whether abusive or non-abusive, whether with a masculine or feminine gender identity - is it actually possible to maintain and define it as a space for women. There has been no proposal from the trans lobby for a workable solution to this (if anyone disagrees then please please do propose something that would legally define a way that excludes all predatory males (no matter what they are wearing) whilst also admitting any transwoman who wants access without putting strictures or conditions on what processes they must have completed) (clue - the predatory males do not wear labels and look like everyone else). In the absence of such workable solution, it's clear they just want us to accept that women's spaces must be abolished for all practical purposes - existing in name only primarily for the benefit of males who receive validation and pleasure from being in a women's space but providing no privacy, dignity or safety for any women.

I wonder if the increased presence of detransioners in the conversation, particularly if there are legal cases involved, might be the thing that checks this. That might also lead to some kind of inquiry (in this country, at least), as to how support for this movement damaged so many lives. Unfortunately, the damage to women's lives has often been quite easy to overlook - a lot of people don't really care what happens to women, particularly older women, and whether we have a job or not. But young people full of potential who have been so badly failed by all this - that might be the thing that wakes people up. As others have said, not sure about countries like Germany and Spain, where the devaluing of women is now baked into their legislation.

I think life will become increasingly polarised. The left/right wing dive will deepen, as will the trans/gc divide, Israel/palestine, trump/non Trump etc etc.

I do not search and never have actively searched for such material. For some reason best known to itself, the algorithm(s) on Facebook decided to start showing me posts/videos from "The Empowered Transwoman" (or something similar). I didn't immediately delete it as I thought it was educational to see opposing viewpoints, although I think I have now seen (more than) enough.

I don't think there will be an outcome that will please anyone here. Trans rights are just the far end of intersectionality, ie, the vast and ever-more-complicated theory that society bestows privileges and disadvantages on individuals and it's the job of those in the know to identify and even them out. It's getting like a Heath Robinson cartoon as the experts identify ever more disadvantaged groups while arbitrarily ignoring others.

The problem is that on the right you have those who think the whole thing is daft and want to junk it, and that includes feminism.

There is a possible outcome in which intersectional theory gets pruned back to something more practical but too many people are invested in it for that to happen. I suspect it's going to be all or nothing.

I am pretty sure that my autism is what's behind both my own dysphoria about having a female body and my recognition that instructing doctors to poison and mutilate me could never make me male.

It will stop being a thing.

the mentally ill teenagers will move on to a new social contagion.

used to be anorexia, now trans, the next one will come along soonish.

people will panic about that.

slowly custom abd practice will change back so that trans people are treated as their bio sex in various situations

the social justice people move on to the next bandwagon (maybe Islamophobia?)

and many people who had surgery realise they made a mistake.

more abd more detransitioners sue various providers abd so hormones abd surgery get more and more restricted

the country is moving to the right and against hedonism generally so the blatant sexual attitudes of many adult men who want to be women and more and more disapproved of. They face “microaggressions” hourly and daily and quite a few give up because “society just doesn’t accept us anymore”.

So... all TRAs are autistic and all GC women are also autistic? Is that it?
I don't know why but I have my doubts about this one

I often think this reading here at MN. Because where I am in Canada, this stuff is now baked into the law at a constitutional level. People on the left are completely clueless about any of it as it does not appear in the media. And the political right, as in the Tories here who are MPs or high up in the party, don't talk about it because it's not worth the political risk. Very similar to the way politicians wouldn't, for decades, talk about abortion laws, it was only a losing proposition so easier not to address it.

That being said, I think it will ultimately go away, because it is too far from reality to survive, and we are already starting to see the effects of it and it will become impossible to deny. But I think it will take as many years to come out of it as it took to go in.

I don’t think they are a homogeneous group. I think for plenty of the men at least it is just about sexual fetishism and/or power games, not autism. Plenty of cross dressing men were successful go getters before they decided they were women, socially confident etc. The kind of men who have always provided customers for dominatrixes.

I think you are right that it is a part of this larger kind of ideology.

I'm not sure junking it would be that terrible in the end. I think all the important parts of feminism would survive, because they aren't based on hierarchies of oppression crap, they are based on material conditions. I think those are real enough to justify their existence without intersectionality theory and id politics.

Self ID was the main problem wasn’t it?

It’s a ridiculous idea that is wide open to abuse by perverts and bad actors.

How could it be resolved? Easily, in theory. In practice it means you can't always get what you want, so it'll be hard. But in theory...

Rights need to be defined (and then we all need to agree on the definition. I'd suggest: rights are those rules which can be applied equally to everyone. Freedom of religion, eg., the usual civil rights, who you marry has no effect on anybody else's ability to marry who they want.

The rest are privileges. Dictating pronouns, putting one religion's commandments up in public places, etc etc etc. We can all come up with a million examples.

Trans people have all the same rights as anyone else. They don't have any special privileges. (You'll notice that all the stuff causing aggro are attempts to dictate to other groups. They're all things that cannot be reciprocal without being absurd. Shall we all try dictating pronoun usage to everybody? And that's a minor thing.)

IF we could accept that this would end the holy war, it would end. But too many people are having way too much fun being holy for that to happen.

I think it would be very problematic.

The law about all this is based on human rights legislation and international agreements. Now, the right of UK politics want to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and repeal human rights legislation. All of them. Laws like that are what protect people against the effects of racism and sexism for example.

But on the other side of politics we have had years of academics and various other experts explaining how every state institution is biased in one way or another. So now we see various people who believe they're morally entitled to ignore the Supreme Court FWS decision because the court didn't give the 'right' decision and therefore must be institutionally biased.

Meaning that in the end it's just a fight to see which side is the most powerful and/or cunning and who knows what will get caught in the crossfire