Article on "arguing with a TERF"

[MyAmpleSheep]

I love to keep up with the other side, so here's a lot of words just to say "it's complicated." meanwhile he ignores the obvious answer to his own question.

www.fasttrackfemme.com/p/why-you-cant-win-an-argument-with

Oh, I saw that earlier! Sooo much word salad. I admit I switched off when he said he was "building a careful, evidence-based argument". I couldn't see one.

I enjoyed the "3 intellectual levels of TERF" at the end though.

If only he’d brought some of the hard-won evidence and structure he writes about to create a real alternative to a genuinely reported gender critical argument. I’ve been at this for years and I’m yet to see such an argument presented by any adherent of GI. I suspect it’s a metaphorical unicorn.

The reason he can’t win an argument with a TERF is because their arguments are too strong

The whole model is just three rungs:

1. A man cannot become a woman.
2. Therefore a trans woman is a man.
3. Therefore a trans woman must be kept out of women’s spaces. And out of the sport, the prison, the changing room, the documents, the pronouns, the basic kindness.

Apart from the 'basic kindness', what's wrong with that? He never really explains why 1,2 and 3 do not follow reasonably, except that he just doesn't like it.

It's interesting that his examples of 'Terfs' are all men -

At the bottom of the tree is the flat-roof-pub patriot. “England till I die”, knows what a woman is, said it down the boozer and got a laugh.

In the middle is the podcast graduate. He’s done the reading, by which I mean he’s consumed four hundred hours of Jordan Peterson, Helen Joyce and the rest of the brigade, and he has mistaken agreeing with a confident presenter for having thought something through.

And at the top is ‘the scientist’, or real thinker. For our example, we will cite Richard Dawkins. The man who taught a generation to think in fine gradients about evolution, to distrust the easy story, to follow the evidence into the mess, reaches, on this one subject, for the hardest binary he can find.

His ears must not be calibrated to hear our squeaky, high-frequency voices, expressing our 'opinions', just men's🙄

I actually thought PPW could have written this!

Apart from the 'basic kindness', what's wrong with that? He never really explains why 1,2 and 3 do not follow reasonably, except that he just doesn't like it.

Because "it's complicated", therefore any simple argument cannot be correct.

That's actually his two rung model:

1. It's complicated (axiom)
2. Therefore if you're making an argument that simple enough to understand it must be incorrect

I started tr

reading that yesterday, it's absolutely tosh, unsurprisingly.

It always just comes down to asking (telling) us to risk women's safety because men want access to our spaces, and that there is some invisible threshold for womens safety we are supposed to accept

What a hilariously male-centred and inaccurate load of pish.

It's AI slop! Pretty common among transgender groups.

A man can’t be a woman. Yes, in one sense. Fine. Now explain why that settles whether a harmless, transitioned, middle-aged woman buying a lipstick in Boots is a threat to public order.

Talk about "switcherooing" an argument!
No one gives a shit if a TIM wants to buy lipstick in Boots.
It's the spaces, sports and services we care about.

Why did I know before I'd read a couple of paragraphs that this person works in IT? Classic computer says "no".

Why You Can't Win an Argument With a TERF?
Let me count the ways....

😄

Couldn't be bothered to read after the first bit, lost any iota of interest. Boring and self centred rambling with lots of look at me pics
Lots of words to say not much "I write software, dontcha know"
And the usual fawning comments at the end

I didn't read the blog, but in answer to his question, you can't win an argument with a TERF because we're right and he's wrong, nothing 'complex' or 'nuanced' about it, just bog standard right and wrong.

He wants everyone to ignore the fact that men cannot change sex, and start somewhere else.

If he was honest, he'd ask the question do women need and want single sex spaces and opportunities, and do women have the right to organise without men.

If the answer is yes, then the discussion ends. But again, he doesnt want to start with that question because he doesnt like the answer.

What he is asking is, 'does the function of the space, opportunity or meeting change if some men are present?'

He thinks women should say it depends- on the space and on the man. He wants the idea of women only spaces and opportunities to be questioned, that they aren't always needed and sometimes old fashioned. Like why is it necessary for the WI to excluded men who pass?

Once that question is asked, its expanded to women needing to justify why its significantly safer to exclude all men. Its now not what women want or need, but is it demonstrably safer when excluding a hyperthetical man. Is impossible to answer because the man isnt real and 'significant' is never quantified.

He's basically a man who won't take no for an answer.

That's where i stopped trying to follow his reasoning

Fancy writing a piece about "unfair arguing tactics" and then including such an obvious straw man
or perhaps strawtranswoman?

2/10 must do better

Read it.

NO. Men are still not coming into womens spaces.

"justify" -they really are scraping the barrel now, because we don't have to justify it, the law says "no". All these circular arguments only ever serve one purpose, to confuse women for long enough so that men can use that period of confusion to try to take what they want. I am so tired of all these men who have never grown up.

Always the arguing about single sex provision. Never the recognition that equality law relies on a coherent definition of sex to protect women from discrimination.

Off topic, but I am beginning to wonder whether AI is really on the verge of taking over the world.

TRA arguments summarised:

1. Sex and gender is massively complicated, and only people who haven't progressed beyond primary school biology are stupid enough to believe there are only two sexes.
2. Science proves that men can have female brains and vice versa.
3. A lot of people who believe biological sex is real are evil right-wingers, therefore biological sex isn't real.
4. Everyone has the right to be who they want to be.
5. Sex is a spectrum.
6. Intersex people exist, so there are lots of different sexes.
7. Sex and gender are different, so although sex is real, gender is more important because everyone can have their own gender identity different from biological sex.
8. People who believe that humans can't change sex are reinforcing gender stereotypes.

Most of these contradict the others, but we long ago gave up expecting any kind of logical consistency from these people.

Once that question is asked, it's expanded to women needing to justify why it's significantly safer to exclude all men. It's now not what women want or need, but is it demonstrably safer when excluding a hypothetical man? It's impossible to answer because the man isnt real and 'significant' is never quantified.

You explain it so much better than he did. So, do I want to go from excluding 99.5% of men to 100%, given the difference is tiny so the risk is low? Yes I do. Why should I let in a boundary transgressing cross-dresser, when I'm not allowed to bring in my nine year-old son, trusted male relative, or terrified vulnerable other male, no matter what the emergency?

You missed one, RoyalCorgi.

"Because a person I have defined as evil believes there are two sexes, all people who believe there are two sexes are evil."

(I think this must be why JK Rowling has to be presented at all times as The Evil One who uses all her obscene and ill-gotten wealth to persecute trans people. It's because if she is evil, then everyone who believes what she believes is also evil. QED.)

I definitely recommend his absolute nonsense on "Why TERF Hate Us", linked to on that page. It's self-aggrandising guff saying we're all so terribly jealous because trans people live their free lives and the rest of us are in cages with doors open that we are too stupid to see.

No, we have no time for TRA bullshit because it's sexist, regressive illogical bollocks.

And we'd just like to have our stuff back.