Wanting to discuss trans people with non gender critical folks

[Taztoy]

I’ve been on another thread - and other threads - and I’d like to talk to anyone who believes that trans women are women and trans men are men.

I don’t understand how that works and I’ve tried on other threads to get engagement , and it hasn’t worked.

so. I’m starting a thread.

I promise I am asking genuinely and I really do want to debate.

I don’t understand how I can tell if a trans woman is genuine.

I don’t understand how the laws could be written to make it work.

I don’t understand how it works as it competes with sex based rights.

I will probably regret starting this but I’d really like to understand

TPA (transparentlyannoyed) says “listen to trans people” whilst continuously ignoring the transman who posts on this board.

TPA says “trans people are who they say they are but some men pretend to be trans”.

TPA despite being told it’s about men not trans, continues to accuse the posters of this board of being transphobic bigots, however, Seethlaw, the transman mentioned above, says we are not transphobic and are just protecting women’s single sex provision. So, do we listen to trans people or not?

TPA proves that there isn’t one coherent argument for treating some men as women just because they say so.

This falls down when you just ask the question of what does being a woman feel like?

I'm a woman, I was born female so it says on my birth certificate, I look in the mirror and I see that I'm a woman, I bleed monthly which is what women do, I'm able to get pregnant which is what women do too.

But do I feel like a woman? I don't know what that even means, I just am a woman and I feel like me. But I don't wear dresses and makeup, I ride motorcycles and collect lego (cars not flowers) I like mowing the lawn and doing DIY.

So what the hell does it mean when a man says that they just feel like they are a woman. It makes zero sense to me but can a trans woman explain?

The 2004 Gender Recognition Act contains a clause specifically legislating against a woman identifying as a man in order to inherit an earldom over her younger brother.

So it is written down in black and white as the law of the land, that actually despite paperwork, pronouns, hormones, name changes, hair cuts, gendered behaviours, statistical constellations of data points, sincere belief, your mum saying "of course you are!" and celebrity hand-wringing a woman cannot become a man because this might inconvenience men.

A man can of course become a woman because it only inconveniences women.

I think this answers your question OP.

I know this is a derail, but I'm fascinated by the explanation quoted above of how TIMs "know" they're really women because women start each day by finding a feminine outfit, and grooming ourselves according to womanly beauty standards".

Does anyone know what these womanly beauty standards are as I'm not sure I'm compliant? I did change my trousers before going to the supermarket yesterday, as I realised I'd spilt breakfast (boiled egg with Marmite soldiers) down myself.

OP I don't think that this is the best way to deal with your Trauma
Are you able to get any help in real life ?

@Taztoy hi taz, I am sorry to read about your experience. I really am. Like a massive amount of women on this board and thread, I am also a survivor of male violence and sexual violence. Sadly we all have our stories to share but can’t always express them online because even though that would be the ideal way to get it out, especially for the neurodivergent community, we don’t want to be writing our traumas to end up in the wank banks of some sexual sadists. Maybe one day there will be a way of verifying who we say we are and having an anonymous space, but with guaranteed privacy. I do know other survivors who’ve found other women who’ve experienced similar attacks and rapes who’ve started facebook groups to share their experiences.

I don’t have a fully concrete reply to your trans question. I have 3 trans friends in my close friendship group. 2 TW and 1 TM.
I will share this, 2 of them are also survivors of CSA and the other was beaten so badly by their father for appearing to be gay, that the shame of their sexuality has been a burden until a later in life transition. And honestly that transition hasn’t made them any happier. (I’ve used they/them so I don’t use their pronouns, for anonymity and also I don’t want them to upset anybody)

I have worked closely with TW before also, who have been sex workers. This was over 25 years ago now. I believe they transitioned because women treated them with kindness, as where men abused them. These people had profound mental health problems.

I personally don’t believe a trans man is a man or a trans woman is a woman. My belief is they’re their own person, a trans man or a trans woman. And I think that they have their own lived experiences that I as a woman can’t relate to, the same way that my TW friends can’t related to periods, pregnancy, endometriosis, I can’t relate to hating having my body so much that I’d go through countless surgeries to change it. That I’d endure bigotry and abuse from the public, just to no longer say I’m a woman.

The trans issue is incredibly nuanced in my personal opinion. So when people say “genuine trans woman”, what they mean is a trans woman who isn’t a predatory male, using the guise of trans to access women’s spaces in order to cause women harm.
Or the men who crossdress for sexual pleasure, not because they have a deep affinity with womanhood and believe they’re in the wrong body, but because they get a kick out of it.

My personal belief is women deserve a protected space just for biological women. Whilst I’m happy to share with TW others aren’t so my opinion is irrelevant of what I’m comfortable with. Other women who aren’t deserve their spaces protected.
The problem is if men want to use our toilets, they could say they’re TM now, big, beefy, bearded TM and access our spaces that way. And yes someone will say, “you can always tell”, well I am sorry but I can’t. I’m sure there are ways to tell but I’m not able to personally.
Men have found ways to attack us and rape us, abuse and kill us without the need of being in bathrooms with us, without being in our changing rooms or even our prisons. I worry that we need to shift that focus back. We will always be raped by men. No matter what they’re wearing, if a man wants to rape a woman, that man will find a way.

I do think there is a lot of hate and bigotry towards TW especially. And that is because often the loudest TW voices have been from a place of disingenuous reasons to be in our spaces. Lots of TW have publicly been noted to have been paedophiles, women abusers and other such problematic individuals. They would not be what I class as genuine TW.
But I am asked, “how can you tell” and I say simply, you can’t. The same way poor posters on here have been married 17 years to perfect Peter and then discovered through an iCloud message he’d been sleeping with escorts/downloading CSAM etc, you can’t always tell a predator. Which is why I think the TW hate needs redirecting because the stories I know from TW are plainly horrifying. Their are so many TW victims who need protection from men, but that isn’t the job of only women, it’s the job of everyone who isn’t a fucking predatory man to work together and find a solution for. I know I’ll get backlash for that, that’s ok, but everyone has a responsibility of safeguarding. We need to protect everyone from predators. That’s my opinion, I don’t care how you present or look or dress, the fight shouldn’t be between women/TW/feminist/TERF (not using as a slur, I don’t believe it is a slur btw) but we need to all accept the world is changing. Trans people have existed for centuries and they are a small minority of the population, predators however are a large percentage. We should be able to protect one another. Do you have to believe that a person can change biological sex? No, I don’t and I love my Trans friends. Do you have to treat people with respect? Absolutely, even if you disagree.

I have spoken at length about my uncle who suffers psychosis. He is allowed out and about and visits the same few places locally to him. The local cafe, the market, sometimes pops into the older people coffee mornings. He is in his early 50s and harmless but believes that he partied with the Beatles, that he was best friends with the Rolling Stones, that he had a fling with Kylie Minogue. All absolute bollocks of course. People just say, “lovely to see you Ken, send ringo our regards” make him a brew and send him on his way. I’m not saying that we should pacify Transfolk the same way but the kindness of not belittling them when out in the community should stand. I’ve been with my friend (TW) and had people walk past us and say, “hello Madame, to me, then, hello sir”, just to be cruel. That needs to stop.

The world is a cruel and dangerous and shitty place for those of us who want to live with peace, dignity and fearlessly away from violence and sexual violence. We are living in times where AI images are being made of the daughters and grandchildren of deeply fucked up peadophiles, where domestic abuse is on the rise, women are being subjected to scrutiny and harassment online for not looking like they’re made by the same creators as Barbie. There is so much hate and prejudice towards women and I worry that energy is being wasted with the hate that is going to TW. Maybe the push back should be towards men who want to hurt us regardless of what they present as, and more so the damage they wish to cause us. Because not every TW is a threat and no you can’t always tell, but those men out there sharing red pill propaganda or being exposed as a domestic abuser, they are the worst threat and they’re getting a very easy ride comparatively to a TW who does just want to exist.

Lol your experience is similar to mine . I mainly knock around in jeans, usually the ones I wore yesterday unless they are dirty, plus fresh undies and first top/sweater that comes to hand. Undies are all the same, matching for ease, in neutral beige or white. No thought required. I wash/shower if there is time, do teeth and rush downstairs to let the dogs pee and feed them. Until recently I might have knocked on kids doors to wake them.

beyond that my morning coffee and meds regime is all i care about.i might pop some spf foundation and mascara on if popping out but most days dont bother. I don't even dry or style my hair - it’s long and curly and best left to its own devices. It’s very usual to end up with readybrek, pasta sauce or mud on my clothes. I am too busy to care or to change until bedtime unless I have to go out.

But I am still a woman. A mother. I don’t wander the universe ‘feeling’ like a woman - unless knackered and stressed after decades of caring for AuDHD DC, carrying the mental and physical load for running their lives and our home counts? The stuff that means that even if I wanted to piss about putting together feminine outfits and revelling in makeup or mastering the dyson hair-wrap I was bought a couple of years ago, I really don’t have the time or energy. But I never see that included in a TW’s definition of their sense of being a woman. Funny that.

I have more of a moustache and beard situation going on than my TW pals! 😂

I think one reason people may think trans women belong in female single sex spaces is that trans women also face risk of harm by other men. The problem is men, and that certain groups of people need protection from men. That includes women (who need single sex spaces) and trans women (men who need third spaces separate from women and other men).

So in that regard, trans women and women have something in common.

But I don't think you can ever square the circle and somehow genuinely believe that, just by saying so, you are magically the other sex. And the very fact that a trans woman would try to insert himself into a single sex female space is ample proof that they don't really understand what being a woman is.

Every transwoman is as genuine as the next.

A PP described it as someone really really wanting to be the opposite sex, and trying to do something about it. (They alter themselves and they try to alter society to redefine the sex binary.)

Something must cause this desire in the first place, so I do believe it's a genuine psychological phenomenon: we don't have to probe any further to decide how to respond to it.

In addition, some non-trans people have adopted the belief that everyone has a gender identity which is indicative of their true sex: if it is incongruent with their birth sex, they should be treated legally and socially as if they are of the opposite sex to their birth sex.

Taken together, this forms a more-or-less coherent (but unfalsifiable) metaphysical belief which is shared by maybe 20% of British people. It differs from other such beliefs in requiring both believers and non-believers to act as if current local physical reality is other than it really is.

This is onerous for non-believers, for all the reasons set out elsewhere on this board.

More importantly, it's a human rights breach for believers to force non-believers to practise their belief.

(Examples include: punishment for expressing non-belief, refusing to allow birth sex to be recorded or acknowledged even when it's a practical necessity, forcing women to vie with men and make themselves vulnerable to them, etc.)

We cannot hope to persuade believers that their beliefs are wrong, nor should we force them to live as if they were. But they should extend the same courtesy to us.

In short, it is not disrespectful to tell trans people that we do not share their belief system, and don't wish to practise it.

If anyone non gender critical does rock up again, I'd like to know why of all the bits of a person it is 'gender identity' that gets the privilege of being occasionally present in the 'wrong body', and then the body needs fixing and the disconnect needs affirming rather than looking at why they feel that way.

There are many ways that people, particularly when they are younger feel a disconnect between who they appear to be to others and who they feel themselves to be. Not just thinking they're Napoleon. It's not unheard of, for example, for people to be absolutely convinced that they do not belong in their family. That despite what the biology tells them, they are not actually related to the people around them. We generally look at why that is, rather than helping them search for their 'real family'.

🤣 I know right 🤣. I don't know whether to be massively offended or just laugh at the unfeasible misogyny! To be fair, I have sometimes wondered over the course of my high-powered ('male'?!) career where I've always been the main breadwinner, whether I would like to spend more time on make-up and nails and stuff. But maybe the fact that I don't means that I'm really a bloke?!

WTF?!?!

if i woke up tomorrow and had a male body I sure as hell would not be putting on a bra, because i wear a bra for functional, not fetish reasons. I wear clothes that suit my body shape, not because they suit my brain, not because they are feminine or masculine.

I would not be entering female spaces because i know that it’s distressing for females to have males in places where they are vulnerable and undressing.

You’ve come to the wrong place. Being gender critical is a protected belief which means it’s not dependent on evidence. Gender critical people have a pseudo-religious opposition to the scientific consensus on gender identity. It’s not something you can reason with.

Please provide evidence for the 'scientific consensus'

Oh goody

" why of all the bits of a person it is 'gender identity' that gets the privilege of being occasionally present in the 'wrong body', and then the body needs fixing and the disconnect needs affirming rather than looking at why they feel that way."

😂

I mean, this is copied homework, word for word.

But ok, yep, the basic fact of two groups with wholly incompatible beliefs where compromise or reconcilliation or changing those beliefs is impossible, is probably about right.

So the answer is obviously: parallel facilities so that each group can have their own needs and access met without interfering with the other one. Yep? Right. That's the law.

Let women have single sex spaces and resources, let gay people have single sex resources and spaces, add gender neutral ones for people with gender identities and everyone can leave everyone else alone and crack on in peace. We got there in the end.

Yay for the SCJ eh?

@Mouldemortthe phrase 'i must not tell lies' springs to mind for some reason.

You are correct in thinking we won't change our minds. But will you allow that, in a secular pluralist society, we should be entitled to continue to practise our protected beliefs without being punished, attacked, or silenced? Such practice includes:

Expression of the beliefs and arguing for them.

Lobbying for access to information about birth sex (but only to the extent practically required).

Setting up single-sex services, associations etc (note that this does not in principle preclude so-called trans-inclusive equivalents for those that believe in transgenderism).

Lobbying against irreversible medical treatments of people too young to understand the consequences.

Or do you think the above activities should all be banned?

What do you think the 'scientific consensus on gender identity' says?
How many gender identities are there?
The same number as there are humans? Because if it's to do with how an individual feels and wishes to be perceived, that is presumably individualised.
Or are there two? Because a trans identified male would say that they.have a female gender, and vice versa for transmen. So they are transitioning from the gender they believe is culturally linked to their sex, to the 'other' one of the two.
Or are there three genders? Male and female for trans people who wish to trans from their sex-related gender to the cultural gender of the opposite sex. And a third, non-binary (ie neither female or male) gender for non-binary people.
Or are there no 'genders' because gender is a cultural phenomenon which changes over time and geography (unlike sex), and is therefore better termed 'personality'?
Or are there whatever number of genders are currently in vogue, eg taking a few of Transparently's words, cis, pan, trans; maybe add to that 'non-binary'; then I think we'd have to have 'agender' for people who don't think they have one at all. So,say, 5 genders?
What is the current consensus?

This is where your trans friend and I part company I'm afraid. Part of puberty for me was figuring out that I was developing as a woman physically and that I'd have to find a way to deal with the physical, social and psychological consequences of that change. Good and bad, convenient and inconvenient, conmfortable and uncomfortable, fitting my current internal sense or not. I knew what sex I was by looking in the mirror, and there were (and are) aspects of being female (social, physical and psychological) that I liked and aspects I didn't. The challenges of developing as a man would be different but not better. And claiming to be "a man in a woman's body" or "nonbinary" wasn't going to get me anywhere, at best it would replace one set of problems with a different set.

Years later I actually did the thought experiment of "what if I woke up in a man's body tomorrow" myself. I reckon my first thought would not be "oh no, I am in the wrong body, how do I get back to a woman's body?" It would be "ooh weird, so how do I live with this body and operate in this world as a man? What are the good bits and the bad bits? How can I adjust?" I adapted to being a woman over time and I'm pretty sure I could do the same if I woke up as a man.

And most of us have other fish to fry than obsessing about what gender we aren't. It's a bit like when Dr Who rematerialised as a woman she didn't waste time worrying about what sex she was she just got on with saving the universe same as always in her new body.

And what about the realities? Did your trans friend specify whether I would only change sex or whether I would grow a few inches when I transformed to male? I am a rather short woman, would my imaginary male body be the same height and I'd have to live as a very undersized man or would it give me a few inches so I'd just be a slightly shorter-than-average man? Those are two very different life propositions. Men who transition all keep their height and many of their other physical advantages; they can pick and choose among other phsyical characteristics. They might keep their deep voice like RMW.

To be honest though I think this is the wrong place to ask for views from people who are not gender critical. FWR is where mainly gender critical women hang out.

The Hive mind speaketh. 😂

I'm half-way. I believe that for the most part transmen are transmen and transwomen are transwomen. I do not for one moment think this makes them exactly the same as bio men or women, but nor do I think it is as simplistic as saying they are necessarily mentally ill and confused. That used to be said of gay men and women. I don't know how another person's identity is formed and what feels right or wrong to them, so I don't have the right to dictate who they are. (Any more than they have the right to dictate how women respond to the erosion of our recently won and very fragile rights to safety and privacy.)

What I have noticed, and need to be honest about, is that while theoretically I am very heavily on the side of women's rights, in reality I know several transmen and one transwoman and I simply can't imagine most of them as their bio sex. Even though the transwoman is very masculine in many ways, in my mind they are 'she'. A friend's daughter transitioned and at the time I was very worried for her. But now, if I pass them in the street, I see her son, I think of him by his new name, he looks like a man. I do still have some concerns that there may be a change of heart at some point, or that the daily need for drugs will cause health issues down the line but I have insufficient understanding of what it is like to be in that person's skin to say unequivocally that not undergoing treatment would be a better life for him.

In the end, the only things I feel fiercely about are

• that self-ID should not be forced upon us when there are so many cases of men abusing transrights solely to gain access to vulnerable women;
• that teens are given proper support regarding body dysmorphia, suicidal ideation, autistic social anxiety etc and not funnelled into irreversible processes before they are mentally completely well and adult
• and that transwomen cannot compete in bio women's sports. Because they are not and never will be bio women
• people being bullied, harassed, losing their jobs, being sent hate mail and threats in the name of transrights. This level of state-condoned coercive behaviour skates too close to that of oppressive regimes.

Those things aside, honestly, I don't care if legitimate transwomen use the same public loo as me, and I am happy to respect what name and pronouns people go by, don't give a damn what clothes other people wear and think it is important to live and let live, which is a right that comes with the responsibility not to foster hatred or retaliation where none is needed.