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.

Confused at to why @Pingponghavoc ’s post was deleted? @MNHQ?

The turn was astonishing, wasn’t it?

I am glad I persevered with reading, though. How interesting about the feeling of stability during pregnancy. I would happily have spent my whole life pregnant, given the chance.

I skipped past a number of the abusive posts, then was struck with relief that I am not a parent who has enabled and encouraged such damage to any of my children. The internal disintegration that results from cognitive dissonance often leads to outward anger and abusive behaviour.

Thank you to all the supportive women here and thanks to those who responded with such patience to the attack. I couldn’t have done it, I don’t think.

Coming to the realisation that “I am me. And that’s OK” is wonderful.
I wish the young people drawn to transgenderism would understand that.

Yes, this - because I think this is the core of it, isn’t it? I cannot tell you how many people [women] in their 40s/50s have uttered the words: ‘if only I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have wasted so many years [thinking I was fat, in an abusive relationship, following a career I hated, trying to fit in with people I didn’t like, etc delete as required]. I might have learned to accept myself as i do now. I could have been happier all along.’

It makes me so sad that it takes so many decades to realised we ARE okay as we are. Loveable, likeable, valuable, worthy. If I could gift the modern day teenager with anything in the world, it would be that knowledge.

@TransParentlyAnnoyed

Wow, trans people must really have it horribly hard!

I guess I'm not trans then, nor any of the other people I've met who called themselves trans, because none of us experienced that horrible violence just from walking down the street (quite the opposite, in fact). None of us feel like we are just a minute away from being violently assaulted. We have boringly average lives, really.

Also, I was a trans kid. I survived just fine without transitioning, and I can't bear to think that I would have missed out on my wonderful son if I had been made to transition as a kid. Ugh.

I am not remotely upset about anyone who is not a man in a space where I want to undress, with no equality of respect for me and my needs, does not see me as having a right to consent, and who sees me as a resource for his use.

How he identifies is irrelevant, it's his behaviour that's the issue. And my having boundaries and expecting equality of consideration and need-meeting that is apparently your issue. I think that says more about you than anything else.

Let's be honest here: the point of real conflict is refusing to acknowledge and participate in the demand of VIP status of trans and associated submission. Not being codependent, or a masochist, I don't get that. But third spaces means there's room for everyone to live their beliefs.

This issue will only be resolved when transwomen accept and acknowledge that they are a subset of men - they are men who wish to live as if they were women - and transmen accept and acknowledge that they are are subset of women.

I really don't understand why it is so difficult for transwomen to get behind the idea that they're simply a different kind of man. Surely that would be easier for everyone to get their head around than trying to persuade society that human beings can change sex and sometimes women are born in male bodies.

Not remotely bothered what a man wants to believe; only that he accepts that other people on the planet have rights too, and he's not more important than they are.

Thank you so much @CautiousLurker2 - a vast amount of what you wrote resonates with me too, also a late diagnosed AuDHD woman with some similar experiences. Sharing your story is real and important and is not "making it about you".

I did spend some years in my twenties thinking I must be "actually" a man (which I never went public with because I was terrified of the impact on my career if I stopped trying to emulate normality, and actually I am glad of that now) but my lived experience is of the material reality of existing within a female body which I did not choose. None of us choose the body we get. My thoughts of "actually" being a man were based on an unconscious sexism which accepted the cultural definitions (sexist stereotypes) of what woman ought to be, and thought that if I didn't fit that I must not be one. This was wrong. I do not have any inner sense of gender or femininity, but I am ME and yes that is a lot more complex and nuanced than will fit into any kind of category. And sometimes I'm really not particularly ok but I try to be.

But I now recognise sexism when I see it and anyone that says a male person is "really" a woman can only be basing that on sexism and it is quite right to reject that. That's separate from the real and debilitating effects of extreme body dysphoria which can affect people of both sexes (though only a small fraction of trans people) and sometimes in extreme cases surgical treatment is the only thing that will help - but that help is merely some relief from the worst symptoms of that disorder, it does not and cannot actually make someone change their sex.

Trans people exist and should and do have full human rights. Those human rights do not include the right to force other people to pretend that false things are true. The remedy is that we uphold physical reality in circumstances where it genuinely matters whether someone is male or female, and we ensure that wherever possible or appropriate there is a way for people who would be distressed by that physical reality to have a 3rd option.

I think that is a great idea. I'm not sure I would have anything to contribute from a personal point of view but there are so many women here who have a wealth of experiences and are wonderfully articulate.

"It's absolutely fascinating to look at this and then think about the group politically driving this - middle aged male transitioners, who undoubtedly have influence and how coercive control and emotional blackmail runs through the movement like a stick of rock".

So many wonderful posts. RTB as ever points out the underlying issue. The way these powerful men have been able to manipulate society into silencing the voices of women (and some men).
As an experienced trainer with a long professional safeguarding history, it was evident when listening to some of the "this my lived experience" bullshit being handed out by TIMs to passive audiences of school children and others. It always included at an early stage the instruction that misgendering, deadnaming and asking questions was transphobic and unacceptable. The manipulation and silencing was visible from outer space.

That was over a decade ago and these men have been able to ramp up their levels of coercive control to infest the whole of society with these toxic beliefs. Finally they're being challenged. Finally we have numerous organisations challenging their power and dangerous influence and women being able to speak more freely

I'm cautiously optimistic that their influence is waning - but the harm done to so many is incalculable.

It always included at an early stage the instruction that misgendering, deadnaming and asking questions was transphobic and unacceptable.

It's was really striking in that interview with the Scottish Greens leader that he still can't bring himself to say that Isla Bryson is a man.

To render the basic facts of reproductive biology taboo is really something.

How many generations have been saying exactly this? “Youth is wasted on the young”. It is just part of being human. The problem is that this particular combination of 21st century toxicity probably one of the nastiest and most harmful of all toxic social narratives that young people have had to navigate.

Isn't it? To be able to remove the word woman from healthcare, including maternity! To persuade people the words mother, breast feeding, menopause must relate to men or it's transphobic, let alone the great and good fantasising about women having a penis!
As we all know, you only achieve these levels of insanity through the use of extreme fascist / authoritarian tactics.

"One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive"

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism.

This. Mrs O's post nails it.

Adults who control the narrative and the language, and require the hierachy of power to be established and submitted to before you are even allowed to begin discussion.

Adults who prevent the asking of uncomfortable and difficult questions.

Adults who make taboo the thinking of the unthinkable.

If you have any safeguarding knowledge, it reads as a 'how to' guide, but it's bad to talk about. Many would like you to think it's illegal or to make it illegal.

And the middle aged men driving it? The ones with the influence? It is unmissable that they are white. Straight. Able bodied. Affluent. Highly educated. Middle class. And male. All the boxes of power ticked. There are many vulnerable people within the gender ideology political movement, there are many kinds of vulnerability. But there are many equally vulnerable people across the UK who do not have this political clout and power. Could it be because they lack the driving group with all these power characteristics?

I'm reminded of Helen Joyce saying that Trans Parents are in this for life and will fight to the death rather than face what they have done to their child.

Probably for implying a poster was making shit up!

But it demonstrates a failure that goes on here, and probably within organisations dealing TRA.

You waited for people to leave the thread because you didn't want a barney, and told your experiences from a parenting perspective that rang true. Basically using the site how it was intended.

Someone then responds to the thread. Not directly - either obviously not reading it therefore just throwing unfounded accusations about, or if they have read it are basically accusing posters of creating environments that harm children. Pretty big accusations.

But those posts remain. Maybe because they arent reported, or maybe because they claim lived experience. But how realistic is the idea that a child with gender dysphoria is welcomed with joy within a family? It makes no sense. Especially when the same people claim they are marginalised and open to more abuse than anyone else. There is absolute no flicker of recognition between your experience and theirs?

I cant see that happening with any other topic here. That parents are accused of harming other children by the way they parent theirs?

The completely groundless implication that a child will 'die young' if not given treatment (despite there being no way to actually 'transition') is particularly callous.

There is so much wrong with that poster’s contributions that it’s hard to know where to start.

I do get a very strong vibe that someone has an autistic trans-identifying daughter, has bought in to the trans genderwang and is in the early stages of regret. It’s about making herself feel better about the choices she made for her daughter.

Odd isn’t it - that we are less likely to report those types of posts because we embrace them as part of a process of open dialogue, because they give context to our replies, and because we are NOT trying to silence or oppress posters with differing views (unless they claim to be more oppressed and attacked than Jewish captives in WWII, I am so reporting that). But rather than engage in good faith, they lurk and report and cry foul if you disagree on any level - however politely.

Beaten up by whom? Women? You have now excelled yourself for total lunacy and considering your previous posts, that's quite an achievement.
Edited. Sorry that was supposed to be a reply to @TransParentlyAnnoyed

… deleted as post re-clarified! Am so confused today…

A: "Oh, Sorry, this is the ladies!"
B: Turns round "Oh Sorry, I actually I am a woman, ha, ha",

As it is obvious from B's voice and appearance that they are female...

A: "Oh my goodness I'm awfully sorry!"

Red faces and discomfort all round, but not actual violence. Why would there be a sudden outbreak of violence against gender non conforming women when violence hasn't been reported against obvious men? It's as though people can tell the difference...

Posts by people who consider themselves being spoken to robustly as equivalent to the worst atrocities in human history are shameful and offensive. But they do not incite violence or hatred upon the people being insulted. And as we so often say, you have no right to not be offended.

I want such offensive posts left up so that people can see the sort of disgusting straw man arguments TRAs throw up when they cannot justify their positions.

Operation Let Them Speak.

The idea that we can't challenged anyone using womens spaces because we may be wrong and that would be embarrassing, is suggesting that the worst thing thay could happen is an awkward moment.

Strangely pearl clutching for a group who accuse GC of being prudish movement. They are expecting women to treat men in womens spaces as we would treat guests over for dinner.