It’s not good enough
It just amazes me how cheerfully some men can dismiss women’s rights without pausing for even a second to remember that other people’s rights aren’t theirs to dismiss.
I'll ignore your framing and respond to your main point. I haven't said "stand aside". I do say, essentially, that meeting what we agree are the dreadful outcomes for trans men and women requires that we *meaningfully* recognise and engage with the causes of those outcomes. /1
— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) July 16, 2019
Actually we don’t “agree are the dreadful outcomes for trans men and women.” Too much of that is just automatic-pilot hyperbole, and much of the rest is discredited claims about the numbers. No, I don’t agree that trans people have it worse than everyone else, and so much worse that we all (except men of course) have to give up our rights.
It's not good enough to respond by saying 'but women's rights'. There is (I think) a moral responsibility to engage with the data and ways to diminish its causes. And that is likely to mean less grandstanding and more careful, accretive compromise by both sides. /2
— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) July 16, 2019
“It’s not good enough to respond by saying ‘but women’s rights'”…says the man.
What do we have to do to make that good enough? Why isn’t it good enough? Why don’t our rights matter?
He doesn’t bother to say. Not his problem.
Compromise by both sides? So far, I see only one side compromising.
Especially galling given that their usual response to e.g. barring trans women from female competitive leagues is usually ‘but trans rights’.
“Transwomen ” do not widen the “bandwidth” of what it means to be a woman. They represent an expansion of the bounds of what it is, and can be, to be a man. Wear what you like. Call yourself what you like. But the clothing and names (and the surgery and the medications) will no more make you a woman than the magic wand of self ID will. So it is in fact MEN who should be accepting the expanding of these bounds, not women. Trans identified males* should be fighting that battle, the one between and among men, rather than trying to carve out a territory of their own from women’s spaces. Maybe the determination of TIMs to access women’s spaces and argue over the nature of womanhood (except they aren’t arguing at all, simply asserting) instead of fighting the current, limiting definition of manhood is the prototype for trans athletes’ abandoning the tougher, less rewarding competition in the men’s divisions in which they began their careers, to pursue a second career on the easier path to victory against girls and women, also known as “cheating.” “Victory over Justice” becomes a victory over justice. So integrity. Very dedication. Big selflessness. Way to sportsmanship.
I imagine that the vast majority of whatever actual, physical, literal violence** (not, FFS, “misgendering”) comitted against trans people is perpetrated by men, not women, still less by those villified as TERFs. You win more Woke Podium spots in the Oppression Olympics trashing TERFs than you ever will trying to change the minds of men. Victory over Justice. So looked at in this light, it bloody well is his/our problem.
* I prefer this designation to “transwoman,” as I think ceding the term “woman” itself represents a foot in the door. It’s entitled, presumptuous and appropriative.
Sue me.
**The bar for what constitutes “violence” amongst TRAs has been set so low that one needs to spell out broken bones, shed blood and death, just to rise above the hyperbole and know that one’s intended meaning is clear.
Pfft. That’s what happens to cis-women all the time; but are they misgendered? So, not violence, then? The killing of Suzanne Eaton wasn’t violence unless she was misgendered!