Men (and biological males who don't identify as men) trying to override a 'no' to gain a woman's consent.

[CassOle]

Holy hell.

I had another Damascene moment of realisation.

I knew that tone and the tactics felt familiar.

The argument will follow the many we have seen. The first time I saw it was McKinnon / Ivy declaring it would be cruel to exclude him from
sport because everyone saw him as a woman, they used pronouns and language and treated him as female. Therefore, he and other male athletes had to be included in female sports. And the sporting federations agreed…

Re balancing of rights.

There is a balancing of rights based on a hierarchy of harms that goes something like this
Prevention of Death
Prevention of Serious physical harm
Prevention of Serious psychological harm
Prevention of Loss of Dignity/Privacy
There is also a part of this in terms of numbers affected.

This is risk assessed on likelihood - so actual evidence based risk.

Now women are at serious risk of physical harm from men in mixed sex situations and despite what we are told transwomen are not at the same level of physical risk if they are in single sex situations. In the UK it's a minimal risk.

They may be at risk of dignity and privacy but this is a lesser risk than the risk to women in mixed sex situations and the risk of exposing a women to a loss of dignity and privacy if even one male is allowed into a mixed sex area if they are in a state of undress is near certain as Darlington Hospital has had to concede.

Not only that a single transwoman can pose this threat of loss of dignity on many thousands of women over time.

Whilst they may not like changing away from women, as long as it's not shouted about without thought or care, it's perfectly possible to retain the safety, privacy and dignity of the transwoman in a different space to women. There is no set reason why transwomen MUST share with women. Indeed there's multiple reasons within 'balancing rights' why they absolutely shouldn't share.

Where the issue is, is with misrepresentation of risk. The whole 'transday of remembrance' for a total of maybe one name in a completely irrelevant situation to these arguments. Or the bullshit of they all kill themselves if you bar them from using the ladies. They absolutely won't. They just don't like it. Or the idea that without being able to use the ladies they will be outted which is nonsense because most people can tell anyway.

It's the misrepresentation of risk and making up 'rights' such as this 'self determination' which isn't a legal right that's the problem.

It isn't the idea of balancing of rights. It's the complete bullshit from men trying to game the system and lie by exaggerating harm to males and denying the level of risk and harm to women thats the problem. And there's a bunch of women who have never been at the pointy end of this who cheer them on oblivious to what's actually happening to other women.

The sporting bodies should be ashamed of themselves. As if sport isn't already much less accessible to women as a career.

That other thread didn't even touch on the point that if it's someone you meet as a transwoman who is well into transition, it's a massively different thing to be expected to go from knowing Greg last week to Tina this week who is Greg, but with a name change and slightly different clothes but still either has a beard/stubble, hasn't even tried to alter his male gait (though the over done intimation 'walk like a woman' is offensive in its own right) and has merely slung on badly fitting feminine clothes - and are now expected to potentially undress in front of him when you wouldn't have dreamt of doing so previously.

The head fuck off this creates that doesn't really cut it. The 'but they are still the same person' line that gets trotted out to emotionally blackmail doesn't really work in this context. Yes we know they are the same person - that IS the problem! Their personally isn't the issue, it's the still existing body that is! Nor does the 'born in the wrong body' line work. Yes the wrong body is in the changing room with me and other females...

I'm not necessarily objecting to the person. If they have dysphoria for their own body as not being female, that's fine but it doesn't stop that body being male nor does it the reaction women might have to that body anymore than we can stop dysphoria.

This is where consent really matters.

I didn't consent to Greg last week and no-one would say I was being objectionable. But Greg calling himself Tina this week and immediately expecting me or any other female to allow him into any female only space without being upset is just fucked in the head.

On this note it's also worth pointing out that every single one of these 'passing' old skill transsexuals did not go from being male like Greg to supermodel Tina over night. Every single one goes through the process of years of work on their bodies. It takes a hell of long time to get laser treatment for bodily hair to get rid of that stubble for example. So every single one, even the 'beautiful passing ones' has gone through a period of expecting women to really put up with and tolerate their very obviously male bodies. They ALL very firmly pushed the boundaries of consent whilst doing this. Every single one.

That thread yesterday was fascinating in how the transwomen tried to gloss over it with this nonsense that they'd never had a male experience in their lives. This is why it's important to point out how much of a lie this is and that they all peed using their willy at some point, they all grew stubble, they all developed a deep voice etc etc. They did not have feminising facial surgery at 15. They did not have breast implants at 11. The 'dolls' don't want to ever admit to once having all been 'bricks' because that breaks the illusion and it breaks the idea that they should be allowed access because they 'pass'. When in the process of achieving 'passing' is it deemed 'acceptable' and by whom?

No one wants to address this inconvenient truth and the practical day to day issue of what transition involves and how it puts so much emotional burden on women to ignore despite their feelings and every single bit of natural instinct they have.

It is always about trampling over the consent and boundaries of women. And even 'the nice, loveliest transwomen' do this if they expect to be allowed to use female only spaces. It's an unavoidable reality and the elephant in the room every ignores and conveniently forget because it doesn't suit their agenda...

I found the follow on comment from Natasha really helpful in getting to the nub of how balancing of rights is actually a misnomer and using it against the GC position is based on a false premise that any balancing is appropriate in these circumstances. She rightly points out what we are actually being asked for is displacement not a rebalancing. A colonisation via sanitised language so to speak:

“There is something about the phrase “balancing rights” that fills me with utter contempt. Not because rights can never conflict, but because in this context they are not being balanced at all. One group’s rights – the more vulnerable group’s – are being sacrificed for the benefit and comfort of another.

Women are expected to acquiesce their rights, and the safeguarding that flows from them, in order to accommodate a subsection of men. That is not balance; it is displacement. Risk is not reduced, it is reassigned – downwards.

One example reported in the press concerns a violent male inmate, serving a life sentence for murdering his cellmate while in juvenile detention. Following his return to the male estate in 2023, he engaged in extreme self-harm after being told he would not be housed in the female estate. Re-placing such an individual among women is not merely a matter of acknowledging that harm might exist. It is the active construction of a regime that makes harm more likely, followed by the sanitising language of an “unfortunate but necessary” trade-off.

That is not neutral governance. It is deliberate exposure.

To describe this as “balancing rights” obscures what is actually happening. Women in custody are not being asked to tolerate abstract discomfort; they are being required to absorb foreseeable risk created by male violence. They cannot consent to it, cannot remove themselves from it, and cannot mitigate it.

Calling this a balance of rights attempts to sanitise a policy choice that knowingly shifts significant risk onto a captive – and often already traumatised – population. That is not compassion, and it is not justice. It is a cruel, unusual, and unjust punishment.”

After watching the discussion here over the past few days, I think that we are now witnessing the harmful affect of allowing a group of male people to live life completely encapsulated by their subjective reality.

That has included even women’s attempts to be polite and act in the barest minimum of allowing that male person to exist in that specific moment as if they are female. This has been done by using any female language to describe them.

By allowing any male person to continue to believe they are seen as being female, even by well meaning polite people who don’t want to hurt their feelings, the inevitable rejection that they are not female cannot be accepted. Instead we see these male people who were protected from material reality through language simply reject that they are male people.

This has happened through collective action.

I have felt clearly this week that there really is contradiction in drawing a line at someone using a person’s demanded pronouns while still believing they are protecting the rights for woman and girls while they do so. I don’t believe this can be done. Ivy/McKinnon and others showed us this at policy level and it is coming to light that we now have a group of men who will simply reject any policy or law because in their constructed subjective reality it doesn’t apply to them.

Because in their mind, ‘no one noticed’ they were male, they completely pass, no one complained, everyone sees them as female. Apparently, not one person saw them as not a female person. So, why would they stop now?

This week’s interactions have shown this very clearly. Using demanded pronouns is not a neutral act.

On pronouns and pretence - McKinnon/Ivy inadvertently showed us the way when arguing for his gargantuan male bulk to be included in women's sports because ladyfeelz: "We are either full and equal women, or we are not."

Ok, you're not then. You're a big bloke. Off you fuck back to the men's.

Being polite just extends the delusion and therefore the fight. We need to get brutally honest.

Yes.

And we have been told that because no women or girls ‘complain’ that there must be consensus.

Men have shown us exactly what politeness contributes to. Just as they have intimidated us to remain silent. The strategy has worked very well for them.

I've said before and for a long time.

Nothing women do is good enough. You can bend over backwards being kind. When It comes to it, this isn't appreciated and it's taken as a sign of weakness which justifies kicking you in the face for your troubles.

There is no respect for women. Just contempt and jealousy.

To be fair, as soon as I realised that pronoun demands are really a power issue and that even if the person is genuine about their belief that they really are the opposite sex, I don't respond well at all to emotional manipulation to allow a person to remain in a purely subjective reality of their own making.

While I believe some people view using female language for male people as 'respect' for others, I don't see this as a 'respectful' request / demand in the first place. I don't have the right to control how other's refer to me when the reference is not based on any material reality.

Why the fuck does anyone think that other's have that right?

Then I think that maybe it is a cultural issue and because I did not grow up in the UK, maybe I am just impolite and couldn't give a fuck if someone found me impolite in a social situation because I did not act as if an identity based on subjective reality was my own material reality. I don't give other's this power over my cognitions.

Hello ore I was brought up in England, so I don't see that's the issue. It's just not being prepared to put up with bullshit. I'm northern, we tend to have less time for this type of bullshit.

Ok. So, it is not just my lack of 'cultural politeness' then.

I genuinely can see how if you are in a situation such as work or family, there is a coercive force to do this. But I have never been inclined to act as if someone's subjective and constructed reality is materially real even for politeness.

And now, having been told over and over that no one ever indicated that they don't see a group of male people as being male because everyone uses female language as demanded / requested, I can see it not only harms women and girls, but it causes harm to those who then cannot believe that any one sees them as the sex they are.

I remember how after Naomi Cunningham started to call Upton a man and use male language for him, so many people seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. All of a sudden, there were very many fewer people denigrating women who had refused previously.

There is a reason for that, I think.

I think that many people did it under such duress and then they felt they were given permission to speak freely. Not to offend people, but to speak without the pause and the cognitive process of thinking - this person wants me to act like I believe they have changed sex.

Using someone's demanded / 'requested' language is not a neutral act. It is not neutral to the person making that 'request', it is not neutral in the impact on the speaker, and it has implications where it contribute collectively.

Oh totally, It's exactly the same dynamic.

These men believe if they can "prove" our boundaries are illogical then said boundaries are no longer valid and can be ignored.

I call it "trying to logic her knickers off".

I don't think its cultural politeness tbh. I think its British Cultural Conformity thats more the issue. As you say as soon as people have been 'given permission' they have very quickly stopped being as quick to be polite.

Orwell talks about this a lot as an observation of British Culture that was particularly true of Left Wing Politics.

Orwell was opposed to totalitarism and popularism. He valued free speech, intellectual freedom, a free press and genuine rule by the people.

By nature he was totally against coercion in politics.

“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever. ”
― George Orwell, 1984

He saw that the UK was culturally particularly at risk to left wing rather than right wing totalitarism because of our underlying political makeup and desire for social conformity (also relating to the class structure) You see a lot of these themes during WW1 where low class soliders would follow the orders of upper class men without question - with rows and rows of men bravely going over the top in waves to be mown down - and for this not really to be challenged by the public at large. Theres this ingrained obedience to doing what we are told by superiors perhaps more than we should, without question.

We are seeing now a backlash/reinforcement of this dynamic too across the board from left to right - not because there is a grassroots uprising, but more because we are seeing a change in who is in control at the top and people are picking a side to support. Theres conformity across the board from both sets of supporters - authoritarism - and they sound like a script which very little variation in what they say and very little thought behind it.

So yeah its about you spidey senses as a democratic liberal minded person that are going 'huh, this doesn't feel right' but most people really struggle with speaking out due to fear of ramifications or being singled out.

I've always been firm awkward squad...

Ah, I knew I'd said this better before!

There's an experience I mentally label "trying to logic a woman's knickers off". It's when a man sees your "no" as an invitation to a debate, as if he somehow believes if he can prove to you that the reasons you don't want to sleep with him are not valid you'll go "oh gosh you are right, my reasoning was unsound, i have no basis to say no, I must therefore accept being fucked by you".

They don't even see this as rapey or coercive. I think they genuinely believe women's desire, or at least grudging acceptance, is the default state that men are entitled to.

This feels like a trans version of the same phenomenon.