Some clarity in how the trans movement became so embedded, so preeminent

[MarcTheGenderSkeptic]

Despite being called a conspiracist here by a TRA, actually I work very hard to continually interrogate my thought processes, and not fall into easy generalisations etc.
So, I was reading Róisín Michaux and her fascinating conversation with someone high up in HIV funding, and the push in the last 20 years is to get everyone in the tent on retrovirals, meaning reaching out to not just gays and addicts, but sex workers (incl trans) and critically, the "third genders" who have migrated to the West in large numbers to end up as sex workers. And the decision was made to go for maximum anti stigmatization, which means zero messaging on personal behaviour, and critically deciding to accept these men as women. Don't blame them, get more onside.
Guess who has to move aside, and accept the messaging on health grounds that biological men can be women? Made even worse by the increase in HIV in European women who are the partners of men who use the services of these "third genders".
Then yesterday I read the amazing post from Hellofabore about how for 30 years plus, the sports authorities including IOC and FIFA decided to make total inclusion the policy, phasing out gender testing, primarily to allow the male DSDs from Africa mainly to be included, as they were IDd as female at birth, and the cruelty to deny they're still female is wrong.
Again, the overwhelming need is to not stigmatize these individuals. Of course a huge group (we know who) are stigmatized for objecting to losing sports opportunities.
And then back to Róisín Michaux again, her illuminating the revolution in psychiatric medicine, where men back in the day were diagnosed with transvestic disorder, a pure paraphylia, again to stop judging and be more inclusive, underwent massive de-stigmatisation and de-pathologisation, from paraphylia, to dysphoria, now to common all garden "sexual health category".
Three enormous areas where the drive to include men, to destigmatise their plight, to bring them in from the cold, couldn't happen in a vacuum. Society organised along sex-based lines couldn't be simply recategorised, no, a large population group (51% XX) was expected to move over, make their definition porous, extend the collective hand of kindness and inclusion, to this hardcore of men who were deemed most at risk, and needing most help.
At the same time, this blurring of definitions and imposed inclusivity spread from sport and medicine to law and education, the most motivated men worked hard to get the Gender Recognition Act on the statute book, and via Stonewall culture, "social training" and the "trans child" escalated as concepts and then real world consequences as noone in polite society other than a very brave few said anything.
So now we have developing nations male DSDs and "third genders", socially incorporated transvestites/transsexuals, and queer culture first world transgenders in the mix, a political culture in the West frozen into aquiescence and policy drift, and the only light of realism and sanity, an army of women fighting back, with amazing results re SC ruling, banishing self ID into the long grass, and medical and sports bodies tacking back to sanity.
But reading the almost scary analogousness of how health brought in trans and third genders at the expense of women, sport brought in male DSDs at the expense of women, psychiatry brought in transvestites from the cold at the expense of women, you can then see how the most motivated men got the Gender Recognition Act on the statute book to turbo charge the social trans/trans child revolution.
For me, I can now see the past as it travels into the future.

However you cut it, what adding "gender identity" and "legal status" (in a world where ones "legal sex" can be different to ones body sex) actually means is expecting society and the law to agree with you that certain personality traits are ok for one sex but not for the other.

I reject that utterly as simply craven sexism wrapped in a progressive banner.

You want to have social, even legal recognition of personality type groups? Great! Go for your life! Fill your boots! If it makes people safer, happier and free-er without inflicting danger, sadness and restrictions on others I'm all for it.

Just break this stupid implied connection between some people's personality types and other people's body sex by not using the language of sex to label it, and not claiming membership of a certain personality group conversation the status and rights of the opposite sex.

Sex, body sex, exists and has consequences. Single sex protections, rights, Feminism, the existence of sex based language itself, they only exist in the first place because of that fact.

This "oh it's more complicated than that" pose is just retro-fitting a movement that we all know began in more sexist days to try to claim it's still valid in a more progressive time.

It's transparent and it insults our intelligence. Do better.

Don't be absurd.

If you include 'men' in the definition of 'female' you remove all women's rights. How can you not grasp this?

If a man can say he is a woman then the categories become meaningless. They all collapse into 'people'.

At best, you are suggesting a man have access to women's rights if he says he wants them.

That story is awful.

Man creates huge fuss because a women's conference doesn't include him. Threatens to picket it, and we know his previously organised picket included gross threats and abuse of women attending a feminist conference.

Unsurprisingly, women are scared off attending their conference. He celebrates this with glee, and then demands the women's conference is scrapped altogether in favour of what he calls an 'Equalities conference'.

The entitlement and malicious antagonism is writ large.

If he can't attend a women's space, nobody can have it, and he will do his damnedest to destroy it.

Consider how women have countered their oppression - by creating new networks and events - and how one bitter man destroys it all out of sheer spite.

It's worth remembering what the arguments were in the ECtHR case (Goodwin) which led to the GRA.

1 Goodwin wanted to marry his male partner. This could have been fixed by legalising same sex marriage.

2 Goodwin didn't want to be outed to his employer and colleagues as a transsexual. I have no idea what he looked like, but it's likely that they already knew or suspected this.

This is what the court said about these issues.

the Court considers that society may reasonably be expected to tolerate a certain inconvenience to enable individuals to live in dignity and worth in accordance with the sexual identity chosen by them at great personal cost.

Of course it's women who have to tolerate a "certain inconvenience", so that men can "live in dignity and worth in accordance with the sexual identity chosen by them at great personal cost".

It seems they didn't notice the sexism in this verdict.

Was Goodwin the bus driver? Yeah. He looked very male. There's footage of him floating around somewhere.

I feel its important to disaggregate three concepts: sex, gender identity, and gender norms (the current local cultural norms associated with the sexes). Everyone has a sex, no-one has to profess a gender identity, and no-one should have to conform to the gender norms for their sex. People who profess a cross-sex gender identity adopt the gender norms of that sex, not to prove that they are that sex in some sense, but to persuade other people to treat them as if they are (and to serve the GRA requirements - that they demonstrate living in their acquired gender, and obtain a diagnosis of gender dysphoria).

Between fifty and a hundred years ago, people had the idea that actual sex change might become medically feasible (we know now that the closest you can get is to transition a boy whilst still a child, which is obviously unethical, if not without its precedent in the service of choral music). So it had a sort of Space-Age appeal.

In the last few decades, a pivot to the concept of gender identity was more or less forced by the retreat from mandatory medical treatment (GRA; Garçon & Nicot v France), and this was bolstered by the development of concepts like gender neurodivergence, and sex as a social construct. The latter idea is so stupid that only an intellectual could believe it, and of course everyone wants to be considered intellectual (or, at least, not stupidly out of touch with modern thinking).

(This meant absorbing multiple phenomena (women who disguised themselves as men for pragmatic reasons, erotic cross-dressers, gay men providing a niche sexual service, etc) into the concept. I don't care about motivation - it's a free country: I only care about the effects on the rest of us.)

Other reasons not to be actively GC: don't pay attention, don't care, hate women and think it's time they get their comeuppance, think there are more pressing problems, fear the consequences socially or professionally, are trans, are of a religious bent and this is your new religion.

There are far more reasons to fall in line than not. But for me, there's one overriding reason not to (apart from the many harmful effects). I object to being forced to act as if I believe something that isn't true. This hasn't happened in England since the seventeenth century. I'm outraged (if not actually mystified, given the dismal human history of illogical behaviour).

So a poster insists that I should have used different words, re-writes what I said to reflect that, and that exchange is somehow evidence that I am policing the language of others?

Wonderful demonstration of the logic on these threads.

Is there any logic in the claim that some men are women?

What is the difference between a transwoman and a man?

The argument for opposing single sex spaces moved from 'how can we tell' to sex means a certificate very quickly.

So there is an acknowledgement that we are two distinct groups - women and men with a certificate.

But single sex spaces arent designed around those two separate groups - they are based around actual sex.

If politicians want to remove SSE and introduce SGE its up to them. But theyll have to define gender and justify why we can discriminate along those definitions.

I didn't insist you did anything.

I simply rewrote your paragraph for accuracy and clarity. Men are who you were referring to. Because TWAM.

Taking the first sentence of your second paragraph. When rewritten accurately it clearly does not make any sense at all

"including men as women in some settings does not mean that sex ceases to matter, or that single-sex provision becomes meaningless"

Including men in women's single-sex provision absolutely does mean that that provision becomes meaningless.

So you are wrong, and accurate language proves it.
No wonder you don't like the "policing" of language.

I had thought of giving up on my thread (could be anyone else's thread as well), there comes a point where there's nowhere else to go, no common ground to find.
However, another TRA has arisen (hi, Lacksie!) and once again I'm reminded of the semantics maze these characters are playing.
So, Northern with the female = biological, woman = social construct, and now Lacksie with this take that single sex doesn't/shouldn't have to mean female only, having mixed sex doesn't mean single sex isn't single anymore.
Just look at both these "arguments", one saying that woman as a term is purely a grouping that can be defined to include males IDing as women, and thus automatically incorporates them.
One saying that single sex can be open, open still = single sex.
It's all sleight of hand, non definitions, circular arguments.
I'd be impressed if there was some new concept here, something beyond definitions and non definitions. But there isn't anything.
So I'm seeing Northern and Lacksie as mere agitants for their cause.
Getting pleasure in having full rein to espouse their conceptual blind alleys and garbage language, pleasure also in the effects they know their snipe has on women here.
My irritation is both in myself that I give the time of day to people who have no argument, no genuine clear blue sky thinking, and that engaging gives them the fuel to keep congesting this space.
As I've said before, the pro trans forum boards don't find a single GC on them, we have no need to argue our case with them, they're lost and we know it.
But as trans ideology more and more reverses in the public sphere, the likes of Northern and Lacksie feel the need to be more intrusive here as their grip on the messaging and public sentiment wanes.
So, as long as they keep.buzzing around, I'll keep up with the GCs here in supplying the flypaper.

@Lacksie Anyway, in all your indignance at having your language "policed", you forgot to answer my question "What settings?" which I asked in response to your statement below

"On that view, including trans women as women in some settings does not mean that sex ceases to matter, or that single-sex provision becomes meaningless."

What are these settings?

I've got a fun question you all like to moan about men in women's loos but what about trans women are they allowed in men's toilets 🤷 😂

I've got a fun question you all like to moan about men in women's loos but what about trans women are they allowed in men's toilets

Of course they are because they are men & 90% retain their male equipment so can use the urinals.

Newsflash - your question is not all all "fun"
...but obviously TW are allowed in men's loos because TWAM

Was that supposed to be some kind of gotcha?

As “”transwomen” are men then yes. Do you mean “transmen”?, then as they are women, no.

😁Do you not remember what you post on other threads? Courtesy of @MyAmpleSheep, this is what she posted to you yesterday @ 21.58 after you dominated the end of the last Sandie Peggie thread with your incessant demands that women stop using accurate and sometimes pejorative language about the behaviour of Upton;

"If you are unable to recognize your own tone policing, here it is, specifically
I don't think .... is acceptable. ...
.... I don't think that is behaviour worthy of respect in a civil discussion, and I don't think it should be tolerated on mumsnet.
I think it should be possible to discuss ... without ....
This is you trying to impose your own standards on others".

Maybe if you didn't post such a stream of demands for women to obey, you'd be better able to recall what you've posted on here? Just a thought.

Oh give it a bloody REST.

‘Fun’ doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

This post illustrates why clear language is required and how much confusion there is about the words used to describe trans people.

Either the poster thinks that trans woman are females who identify as trans or they are asking a pointless question about whether men who identify as trans are allowed in men's toilets

Always the same, TRAs impose their ordered language on everyone else.
Everyone else must watch their tone.
Can you imagine the Ministry Of Language in the world TRAs conceive of?
It would be the busiest, most well funded quango of them all.
1984 Newspeak the template.

Is this a trick Q?
So many TRAs start "what's the deal with...?" before showing their claws with "well, you can't say that!"
Assuming asked out of genuine curiosity, it's not a Q of "is it allowed?" because it's not dis-allowed. It's more a Q of why TW do indeed do so, when next to none did in the 80s.
Look at the Dutch Protocol...boys IDing as girls were found, but vanishingly few girls IDing as boys, fast forward to the present day when 7 in 10 teens at gender clinics are girls
From maybe 0.5% in 1986 to 70% just four decades later, indeed the big upswing in the last decade.
So, less "are TWs <allowed> in male loos?" and more "why are there <so many> TWs?". Toilets are downstream from this most pressing of Qs.

Really? Dr. Beth Upton should be called out for exactly what he is.
Biological woman? my GC arse.