I hope you will be proud of me..

[namechange62]

I'm not very educated, married to a good man, live a quiet life in a small village in the south west, have good relationships with males in my family who are good men. (Grand/Father, uncles, sons, son in law) and have strong women in my life (mother, daughter daughter's in law, nieces etc).
Just setting the scene really..

Well it all kicked off this afternoon at my house. (When I say kicked off I mean a quick argument lasting about half an hour! Not EastEnders worthy..)

I have to say I had a few. Not many because I don't really drink but ..

Somehow it was bought up about Gen Z being offended about something that my kids/and partners grew up with (ages 29-36…). A sketch in Little Britain. Somehow the conversation turned to trans stuff and eventually turned to transwomen.

Anyway I bought up the case of transwomen playing in the (WNBA? ) basketball and how some men are pretending to be women to join. Showing solidarity with the woman having to play with 6ft 10in transwomen? I've probably got details wrong but hopefully you can understand?

Well it got heated.
SIL Sort of agreed but said it's rare. I said even one transwomen taking a female space is one too many. I talked about transwomen in female toilets. How do we know who the 'safe' ones are. It got on to male violence v female violence.

My Dil who works with victims of DV agreed and was quoting statistics about calls to DV helplines rising during the world cup.

My son got very heated and did the usual whataboutery. But what about women who do the same?! Trans men in male sports? Transmen who use mens toilets/changing rooms.

I said it's very rare but he continued to get riled when I started spouting some stuff I'd read on MN.
Mediocre men who fail in mens teams taking places from women, men invading women's spaces for fetish reasons. I said do you ever enter the toilets thinking whether you are safe? (Surprise that he didn't even know what I meant? And surprised when I told him I did!). His GF then agreed with me. I said you have no skin in this game (males taking female places in sport, jobs and prizes) and never will!
He got heated and continued with the whataboutery but I held my ground.

Told him about the transwomen who invade female changing rooms (I encountered one myself) and how would he feel if his grandma had to deal with a semi naked man who was getting kicks by humiliatingly women.

SiL got it and eventually DS got it too. These are normal hardworking men.
Anyway we left it at that but both of them said they didn't know half of what I'd said.

I read a lot on this thread on MN and want to say thank you for educating me. I can't help many people to understand but I think I got 2 men today to think a bit more about it.

If you take part in the discussions on this forum, you'll find that you become more articulate. It's a learning process.

Great break down, I'd add copy and paste rhetoric which gets trolled out on every occasion.

Attempt to bore people into submission.

'gish gallop' is a useful phrase.

Articulacy is a downstream effect of applying logic and critical thinking. Imo. It's mostly just speaking plainly and clearly and thinking hard. It's also probably because for several years we got deleted if we used the wrong words, so women got good at thinking carefully about how to set things out.

I don't think I've seen TPA get deleted before👀

Interesting

Very well done 💐
It’s a tough thing to do but it gets easier.

Thank you Arabella.. when I saw this earlier I instantly got a headache (I get flustered with confusion and don't post much because even the most basic post can get horrible comments.. it's even brave of me to post what I have here! )
I see the post was deleted.. good.
Again I'm in awe of all the women here standing up for us all and giving us the verbal ammunition to hold our own in a debate about protecting women and girls spaces.

I give no fucks on this conversation now. I go full bull in a china shop if it comes up.

One of DHs friend is originally from a very liberal city. He was full TWAW but his job has meant he has had to think about differences for males and females for practical reasons.

Anyway I saw him recently and he was talking about an old friend who has recently transitioned. And what pissed him off and upset him, wasn't that he'd transitioned. He was absolutely fine with that. It was the utterly obnoxious, arrogant and vile behaviour that was accompanying the transition and enforcing it on others in a completely unreasonable way.

DHs friend accepts everyone for who they are. I think this encounter opened his eyes into seeing that it's not just about identity. It's also about behaviour and we can't ignore behaviour because of identity.

I think conversations if had with him previously though helped him process and understand it. It's important we say it out loud that it is ok not to agree with everything we are told we should just accept.

I say explicitly, it's not identity that's an issue - it's behaviour. And if I believe in equality I need to hold everyone regardless of identity to the same standards and what I've experienced has been unacceptable behaviour justified in the name of trans rather than just seeing it as unacceptable behaviour. (This is the basic premise of the entire justice system too - equality and equal treatment which is blind to identity).

If someone trans is a sexist, homophobic arse they can own it as much as anyone else making such discriminations. Trans people are not saints and should not be put on a glass pedestal which has lots of signs saying 'fragile'. They can take full responsibility just like everyone else.

I've avidly read many of the posts on this topic. And I have posted in support many many times. Without appearing silly I can't articulate as well as some posters on here.. but yes I certainly read plenty on this topic.. and am doing my bit in a small way.

Sorry.. too late to edit but I meant flustered with confrontation! Although confusion works too...

I think talking about this in person is a lot braver than doing it online.

Yes but it's my family.. my lovely family.. Saw my DS just now who hugged me and said sorry for arguing with me.. I asked him to please see my/other women's point of view. He said he does now I put him straight!

Every single small thing matters. It normalises certain parts of the conversation which are completely and utterly reasonable. You speaking enables others to - it asks them to think and process an argument.

A poster making a full on, extended verbal attack (which is what that post was, effectively, mixing in all sorts of horrible ad hom attacks among the bullshit assertions) can be really discombobulating. I'm sorry you were upset.

It gets easier. 😂

I mean, it's very freeing to learn that one doesn't have to accept someone else's judgement of your character.

Other posters are free to throw around insults and characterisations if they want.

And we are free to ignore them.

I think I have seen TPA deleted before, and that post was relatively mild in comparison. I suppose after a while you become inured to the same old froth, but seeing it for the first time can be discombobulating, I agree.

Luckily because I've been here a very long time (13 yes) and have seen what many of you have had to put up with I thought it was quite tame.. so I hoiked up my big girl pants and decided to ignore (apart from acknowledging that I got a bit wrong) .
I knew without a doubt that they were just trying to shout me down and I wouldn't be told to shut up when this issue is very important.
My first ever personal post on this topic and I got a deleted post! I sort of feel 'one of the group ' now. Not just a bystander..

Well done op. Every conversation like this is a step in the correct way forward.

Apart from any liking of Little Britain which is a historical embarrassment.

I have reached a point where I know I'm not a bigot. I know I'm not discriminating.

Anyone who knows me well enough knows this too or they aren't worth my time.

I no longer feel the need to prove I'm not a bigot time after time. I am confident enough in reality to say you can't change sex and this might suck for some but it's life and life ain't perfect and sometimes we have to just deal with things in life that we don't like. We can't force other people to think differently.

I’m near retirement now and am weary of this nonsense. My NHS Trust is totally captured and every now and then issues internal comms about how none of our same sex accommodation and Trans policies are changing as we’re awaiting ‘further guidance’ and providing reassurance to the 1or 2 trans identifying staff members and ignoring the majority female workforce.

The EHRC meeting I attended earnestly reported that several London Boroughs were talking a stand and refusing to implement the proposed changes.

The LGBT forum lead talked about staff and patients being forced into the ‘wrong sex’ areas and the quoted the one known trans staff member as saying that the EHRC guidelines were brought about because of the actions of a few ‘ciswomen’. 🙄

I will of course be arguing for respectful and dignified accommodations for all trans patients and staff but NOT at the cost of the privacy and dignity of the 50% of our patient population who are female and the majority of the workforce.

Whilst I’ll have to very careful, as my boss has made it very clear what side of the debate she is on and the whole of the HR department is positively reverential in their TWAW stance, I do want to be able to bring about change from within so will have to be seen to be swallowing some of this hyperbole

I agree. My kids were young and although I didn't watch it they did in friends houses. They were talking about the Fat Club sketch and how fat shaming it would be seen as now..

Maybe you should point out to your kids how the most prescribed drugs in the West are the fat removal ones. That would indicate that people who are fat don't want to be fat, and are taking the weight loss drugs in their thousands without being 'shamed' by others into it.

No amount of memes from the left are going to change reality, just like most people know there's a difference between a man and a woman, despite all the shouty, shouty TWAW claptrap.

Tell them they should take all the propaganda with a pinch of salt and work things out for themselves.

What?

From your comment that I responded to

I agree. My kids were young and although I didn't watch it they did in friends houses. They were talking about the Fat Club sketch and how fat shaming it would be seen as now..

how fat shaming it would be seen as now..

I was just saying that 'fat shaming' is just a meme because the amount of people who are taking weight loss drugs proves that being 'fat' is a problem for a lot of people. When the left highlights something and calls it 'wrong', it's just an attempt to control peoples speech and shape their thoughts but it might not resonate with the people they're claiming to 'help'.
It's like Latinx, no Latino person calls themselves that, that's just something the self appointed social warriors decided to rename them.