Advice on speaking to MP about sex and gender policy

[Tempanonymouse]

Hello all
Longtime lurker
Am going to speak to my MP about this whole issue.
Not public IRL about this at all (job and personal cowardice reasons).
I'm so angry that something so absurd has become the required public belief. My MP is female labour not said anything public that I can find.
I don't want to sound mad and I want to have my facts at my fingertips. Any advice on best approaches? Part of me wants to make a list of the most unreasonable things eg Isla Bryson , Lia Thomas and work back logically but I think this might be too confrontational? Has anyone had good effects? At this point I am so furious I think I will come across badly. Also any advice on specific asks?
I actually want a wideranging apology from the government and an enquiry into the institutional failure that allowed it as well as all the obvious stuff. But recognise I may have radicalised myself ..
Thanks in advance

I have never yet seen an answer to the question of what rights are missing for trans people.
And I would like to see more honesty about this from TRAs too. I would like them to explain why males should be given female rights.

Trans people already have equal rights. None of you can ever tell us what 'rights' you don't have.

You don't believe the female sex deserves it's hard won sex based rights and spaces. You don't see females as human, only as an object to give validation to males.

These males are NOT women, and never will be. And if you were actually a woman, a female, you'd know by INSTINCT why these males have no right being in female only single sex spaces:

and

https://x.com/listen2tish/status/2007959774604984591

This is the reason none of them can ever, and will ever, answer the question.

Because they know what they want is privileges for the male sex. It's about MALE PRIVILEGE. Not 'rights'. It has never, EVER been about 'trans rights'. Ever. They know it. We know it. They know that we know it. And we know, that they know that we know it.

What you are missing is regardless of who gets the word "woman", female people will still exist and will still have experiences and challenges that male people don't.

So when you redefine "woman" to include male people, you change the meaning of it for female people too. And that new meaning is not especially relevant to many of us especially when it comes to the reasons that we have single sex languages and resources in the first place.

So the issue, despite what you believe, is not aboit whether you are or are not a "woman", but whether female people have the right to self define and to maintain the rights and protections that only exist in the first place because we as female people needed them, and whether we as female people will be allowed to retain the cultural and written history of our sex and of our shared experiences based on our shared experience of sex without it being rewritten retrospectively to include male people who were not, in fact, ever subject to the same restrictions, demands and social expectations.

(And, of course, the issue that there is the vast gap between many trans women's expression of "womanhood" and how female people actually live, and the issue of the children being encouraged to believe their minds are wrong for their bodies and their only hope of happiness is a combination of extreme hormonal and surgical interventions, lifetime deception and forcing everyone they meet to play along with their fantasy of being the opposite sex. There is that.)

Thanks again for the supportive comments. I am definitely a fawner not a fighter for better or worse.@AidaP thank you for your invitation. I do find it encouraging that it is possible to communicate on here and I appreciate you taking the time to read my reply with an open mind. I won't take you up on your offer though. Firstly, as I said in my original post, in my job, if someone did want to harm my career they probably could with my real name and location and I don't have the stomach for that. I am not accusing you of planning that but given that I imagine our definitions of trans phobia are quite different my worry is that friends of yours might feel it their duty to protect others from me by eg contacting my employer. Again, I believe your offer is made in good faith but I am quite risk averse. Secondly, and I say this gently, I m not sure what questions you think I have that would change my mind? As I said before my beliefs are not based on hatred of trans people, I don't think you are all perverts or threats to women. I just think that you can't change sex and that sex matters sometimes so in a situation where I would not want a man despite most of them not being perverts or threats, I also would not want a man who identifies as a woman.
I do not question the sincerity or depths of your belief at all. Its also plausible to me that you may have suffered greatly and I can easily accept that you are more likely than other men to experience street harassment and abuse, or discrimination at work, which I would never condone. In person you may be utterly delightful and charming, many people with somewhat abrasive, if you don't mind me saying, online personas are much more gentle and kind in real life. However no matter how much I enjoyed having coffee with you, I still would never believe that you are a woman. I will still believe that no one can change sex and that sex not gender is what counts when you are separating men and women. I will still believe that it is absurd and unreasonable that I can realistically fear for my job if I publicly express this. And I will still believe that our institutions have failed women, children and trans people by failing to follow the law.
I assume you think that nothing I could say would change your beliefs. Imagine that my beliefs are as sincere and deeply held as yours.
I think @ATranssexualWoman is correct that probably most people on Mumsnet have made up their minds on this issue, certainly I don't think it would be a good use of your time to try to persuade me into your beliefs. However if it is of any comfort to you you have helped me think through a little better how to approach my MP and your willingness to engage with me even slightly has given me some hope that conversation is possible. I hope you enjoy the rest of your bank holiday weekend.

Politeness does not change the substance here.

You say you do not hate trans people, but you are also saying there is nothing I could say, no reality you could encounter, and no ordinary human contact that would make any difference to your view that I am not who I say I am. That is not open-mindedness. It is dehumanisation in a more careful tone.

This is how prejudice often protects itself: by keeping its target abstract. It is much easier to hold fixed beliefs about what a whole class of people “really are” when you refuse the kind of ordinary human contact that might trouble those beliefs.

That is a pattern racism knows very well: “I don’t hate them, I just know what they are.” The language changes, the self-image stays flattering, and the refusal to let actual human contact complicate the belief does the rest.

We have a long history of people changing their minds only when they stop seeing others as “them” and start seeing them as human beings. It is much easier to hate an abstraction than a person. Much easier still when that abstraction has been shaped for you by media and places like Mumsnet.

You were free to decline. But refusing even the possibility that reality might trouble your certainty is not caution. It is prejudice insulating itself.

You are willing to discuss this with other cis people, and so is your MP, but not with an actual trans person whose life is shaped by it. That tells its own story.

Whether you like the label or not, that is not compassion. It is fear and hostility dressed up as concern, with the affected people kept safely out of view.

She said NO. She doesn't want to do that. And you are telling her she's wrong and trying to make her feel bad about her NO?

Hmmm......

Apart from anything else OP, at least you won’t be falling asleep in your coffee.

@Tempanonymouse
All your carefulness, and openness, and the time you have taken to explain.
It is a waste of time and effort.

You can never do enough.

In the minds of entitled men, women simply can't be conciliatory enough.

The screeching violin starts up again....

And by the same token, no matter how polite you are, no matter how many women you try to persuade over coffee, your worldview ultimately requires that female people surrender our own self knowledge, our own experiences, our own rights and needs and submit to a redefinition that means nothing to us but that you need to impose onto us to make your own beliefs about what is and is not significant to "wonanhood" true, because that is what you need.

But don't you see? Regardless of whether you succeed in redefining "woman" to meet your emotional need to own that name and that cultural and legal space, female people will still exist and that still matters in ways that have nothing to do with your conception of womanhood.

You will always be excluded from that reality. The real history of female people has never been the story of trans women. And you and we know this.

All you can really ever do by changing who the word woman points to is make it fit you by no longer fitting us.

You can never make it change reality, and as long as the reality is that being female rather than male has consequences for us, we will always recognise our reality outside you.

Human Beings are mammals. Human Beings cannot change sex.

I do 'see' all people with trans identities as 100% Human Beings. This is how I know that they haven't changed sex due to their mammalian biology.

People can believe fantasies if they want. They should not try to manipulate others into going along with their fantasy.

@FlirtsWithRhinos "You will always be excluded from that reality. The real history of female people has never been the story of trans women. And you and we know this.
All you can really ever do by changing who the word woman points to is make it fit you by no longer fitting us.
You can never make it change reality, and as long as the reality is that being female rather than male has consequences for us, we will always recognise our reality outside you."

👏👏👏

Thank you, Flirts

Yep, so predictable. I see the same energy in the essays men write in the comments of female blogs and articles. "Here is my 27 paragraph essay to explain why your understanding of your own experiences is wrong."

Would you ever go with an open mind and be open to changing your mind that the female sex deserves single sex spaces?

Be honest with yourself.

If you intended to go along with a closed mind and not open to change your opinion yourself, what makes you better?

Being a bloke, basically.

The support humans are meant to support the LARP, not have opinions.

No, I do believe trans people should have equal rights to everyone else. A male with a trans Identity should have exactly the same rights as a male without a trans identity and ditto for women with a trans identity. As far as I’m concerned you can believe what you like. I mean, if some people can believe the earth is flat, some people can believe men can be women. I suppose at least the flat earthers don’t demand everyone else goes along with their belief.

@AidaP - happy to meet for coffee.

To manage my safeguarding plan can you confirm the charge sheet for your two convictions for violence & time of sentencing? Andy other undeclared criminal activity?

Can you confirm if you’ve ever expressed violence toward someone with gender critical views?

Super thanks.

I'm glad it helped even a little bit. Good luck with your MP, and enjoy your bank holiday.

Has this been posted yet?

'two convictions for violence & time of sentencing'

Violence, you say...

So if there is no conflict between trans rights and women’s rights, why are women considered anti trans for exerting their legal right to single sex spaces?

Without using sexist stereotypes, how can a male “present as a woman”? Without those stereotypes, how would a male know he ‘feels like a woman”? Isn’t it rather sexist and misogynistic to believe at all women, feel, and think the same, so if a male acts or puts on certain clothes, he could be considered a woman?

"...And let's send a clear message to the world: fuck bigots and especially nazirowling with a splintery rolling pin."

What a surprise. AidaP on a day meant to being visibility to the men who demand to be treated as if they are female people.

Operation: Let them speak!

OP, good luck.

I wonder if you focus on asking your MP to encourage Philipson to table the EHRC guidelines is the key to opening discussion. I don't think you need to make it personal, ie centre it around a personal impact, I think you can discuss the guidelines and why they are important,

After all, women are putting the pressure on the government about this on a daily basis. That guidance underpins many aspects of female people's every day lives.

And good choice OP to not meet the poster who issued you an invitation after bringing your thread to the attention of bluesky. That is not the act of someone who understands respect at all, that is someone who also doesn't understand boundaries and why female people have them.

doesn't understand boundaries and why female people have them

Or understands but simply doesn't care, because boring old female people come last on the list of whose needs matter.