Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on No escape for women ever.
Why are you so obsessed with hating trans people?
Who here is hating trans people? Having seen far too many linguistic word games and novel, unilateral, ideosyncratic redefinitions of basic terminolgy, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t immediately trust your definition of “hate.” There is much questioning and criticism of gender ideology and trans activism here. This is not hatred. The actual results of acceding to the demands of trans activism have harmed women. Trans identified males remain males** for life, whatever they wear, whatever surgeries and treatments they’ve had, whatever they claim to be. It is not hateful or bigoted to say this. To say it is hateful to call a male human being a male devalues the word “hate” to meaninglessness. Being male is not in itself a hateful state. But males, however they identify, have no place in women’s facilities.
As for claiming trans folks have the most privilege… Trans folks get murdered, harassed, and fired. Do you think we should stop having the government talk about indigenous rights because if they do that means indigenous people have the most power?
Trans activism has attained a remarkable degree of power and influnce in an incredibly short space of time, much of it on the back of questionable claims of being “uniquely” marginalized and downtrodden. A great deal of this has been behind closed doors, beyond public scrutiny or accountability, and without the input or consent of women, whose rights were being eroded or given away to men who demanded them. If they really were as powerless and persecuted as they are made out to be, trans identified males would not have the power and support of so many government departments and business organizations. For example, they’ve managed to get UK police departments to investigate the mildest statements of fact as “transphobic hate crimes.” Yeah, that’s marginalization and powerlessness. Have women ever had that degree of police attention for rape let alone Tweets? If misogyny was as much of a concern as “transphobia,” the police would be investigating absolutely nothing else at all.
What trans activists are demanding (recognition as the sex they are not) are not “rights” at all. Humans can’t change sex. “Gender identity” does not override sex. Women’s sex-based and sex-segregated (not “gender-segregated”) facilities (prisons, hospital wards, rape shelters, sports teams etc.) should not be made available to men, however they “identify.” Trans identified males remain males for life, whatever they wear, whatever surgeries they’ve had, whatever they claim to be. It is not hateful or bigoted to say this.
There is no right to be taken as what you claim to be, otherwise we would be forced to bow to the (self-declared) fact that Donald Trump really is a stable genius. Naively accepting all claims people make about themselves is not a thing, and certainly not a “right.” In fact society usually protects itself from malicious claims of this sort through laws that punish fraud and identity theft. Men claiming to be women is fraud against, and identity theft of an entire sex, a practice which is celebrated, aided, and abbetted by far too many in society, including the same governments that have otherwise outlawed harmful, false identity claims.
I have never seen any trans activists admit that Self-ID opens the doors of women’s facilities to opportunistic predators using this carte blanche as an all access pass. NOTE: I am not claiming that trans identified males are all “opportunistic predators.” But males as a group represent, statistically, a threat to women’s safety. Trans identified males remain male, and thus, part of that potentially threatening demographic. How do women tell the difference between a “harmless” male and one who is a predator? They can’t. The best rule is to keep all men out of female spaces. Period. Women have every right to consider any male entering their sex-segregated spaces as a potential threat, as they’ve already demonstrated a propensity to violate female boundaries. Gender Self-ID undermines this safeguarding measure by allowing men who declare themselves to be women unfettered access to women’s spaces on their own say-so. All a man has to do to bypass this usefull and valuable rule is to say “I identify as a woman.” Suddenly it’s now the protesting woman who is supposed to be viewed wth suspicion as a hateful, “transphobic” bigot, rather than the man demanding entrance to a place where he does not belong. Somehow, women are supposed to trust this man, no questions asked. Women should be under no obligation to tolerate such a gross violation and threat to their health, dignity and safety.
Women defending women’s rights (like Maya Forestater, JK Rowling, Allison Bailey, Julie Bindle, Kathleen Stock, Rosie Duffield, etc.) are routinely tarred as hateful transphobic bigots. Meetings that women organize to discuss their rights, or to just talk about things of importance to women, are routinely mobbed and picketed by trans activists and their allies. We are told that “women’s rights” is nothing but an anti-trans dog whistle, and that any such discussions that do not include men who claim to be women are hateful and bigoted. WE are told, despite the protests of many women, that there is “no conflict” between women’s rights and trans “rights.” These women have a different opinion, which is not allowed. Well, if women’s rights are “anti-trans,” it follows that trans rights are anti-woman. They are profoundly so.
Women’s concerns are real. These are not far-fetched, hypothetical, preposterous, irrational “phobias,” but the result of real harms that are actually happening. To paraphrase a venerable observation, men who claim they are women are afraid of being misgendered by women; women are afraid that men are going to kill them. Men who are violent sex offenders, who claim they are women, have been moved to womens’ prisons, where they have assaulted prisoners and staff. Men, claiming to be women, have been placed into what were originally meant to be exclusively female hospital wards. When women have complained or protested about these and other such occurrences, they have been accused of “transphobic” prejudice and bigotry. I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will: it is not hateful or bigotted to point these instances out; nor is it hateful or bigoted to oppose the disastrous consequences that these ludicrous policy decisions have had. It is not bigoted or hateful to seek to end the policies that have allowed these outrageous incidents to occur.
Trans activists have repeatedly stated that women resisting this invasion of their spaces have no legitimate self-interest in doing so, and that their supposed concern for their own welfare is a just a thin pretext to persecute trans identified males out of sheer malice and bigotry. I beg to differ. Women have every right to prevent harm to themselves at the hands of any , including those men who claim they are women. They have every right to oppose and overturn the legal and regulatory decisions that have so put them at risk, resulting in harm to women subjected to this ill-advised, ill-conceived and unjustified exercise in so-called “inclusivity.” All of these outcomes were foreseen by women whose counsel and concerns were ignored and ridiculed, and who are still ignored and ridiculed. Not all “inclusion” is good. Not all “exclusion” is bad.
If male facilities are unsafe or threatening for trans identified males to use that is not women’s problem, or responsibility to solve. Somehow, trans identified males’ feelings of distress or unease are more important than women’s feelings of distress or unease at sharing their facilities with men. Men’s feelings are to be respected and catered to; women’s feelings are to be ignored and over-ridden. Why? Why must women be forced to surrender their spaces and their comfort for the sake of men who don’t want to use the spaces set aside for their sex? Instead of demanding safety and dignity from their fellow men, they’ve focused their energy on degrading the safety and dignity of women, and slandering women who have the temerity to speak oiut against these efforts. It didn’t have to be this way, but it is. Had trans activists had directed their efforts on opposing male violence rather than invading women’s spaces, the relationship between trans activism and feminism would be very different than it is now.As it is, trans activists and their allies, along with the captured institutions whose power and authority have been wielded against women who say “No,” have much to answer for. It is not hateful or bigotted for women to demand those answers, or demand redress for the actual harms done to women in pursuit of a these misogynistic policies. It is not hateful or bigotted to demand the rollback and removal of those policies.
And in the end, intersex people also exist…
Yes, and?
My understanding is that the preferred trm is DSD, or Differences in Sexual Development, and that “intersex” is considered offensive by many people with DSD conditions. These people are not a “third” or “intermediate” sex falling between male or female. They are still male and female. Their particular conditions are, as far as my understanding goes, specific to one sex or another. Their existence does not render the concept of the sex binary invalid or unclear. It does not turn sex into a “spectrum.” It does not mean humans can change sex. The only relevence the existence of DSD conditions has to gender iideology and trans activism are the strategic appropriation of its “assigned X at birth” phraseology (as a way of diluting and muddying the concept and definition of sex to a degree sufficient to allow men to fall within the definition of “woman”), and the addition of the “I” to the forced-teaming LGBTIQetc. alphabet soup “community.” So for me, the deployment of the “Intersex Gambit” is a sign of either ignorance or bad faith. Should you choose to respond, I’ll thank you in advance for not using any of the following ploys. I’ll save you the trouble by responding to them in advance:
– “Transwomen are Women; it’s right in the name!” If that’s the case, then seahorses, saw horses and pommel horses are all Horses.
-“Clownfish can change sex!” Humans aren’t fish. No mammals can change sex.
-“Transwomen are just another kind of Woman, just like Black Women, Disabled Women or Tall Women!” No’ they’re not. Trans identified males are male; everyone else on that list is female, and no less female for being Black, Disabled, or Tall.
-“By defining women by their biological role in reproduction, you’re saying post-menopausal or infertile women are no longer female, no longer women!” I’ve only ever heard trans activists make this (strawman) argument. That would be like saying that a car that had run out of gas was no longer a car, or that a clock that had stopped was no longer a clock. Trans activism is just so very, very desperate to decouple the concept of “female” or “woman” from their reproductive role in sex in order to gloss over the inescapable material fact that no male will ever produce ova, and that the male body can never be turned into a female one. One might end up with a crude approximation with which some might be able to pass, but none of the work that these men have had done to them will turn them into an adult, human female.
If you want to defend your right to be non gender conforming and occasionally pee or use a change room at the gym, principles like those you’re disparaging are there for you too, whether you agree with the current language around gender or not.
Trans activism obliterates gender non-conformity by reifying gender roles rather than dispensing with them. One’s “gender identity” is supposedly more basic and fundamental than one’s sex. Yet a man is male whatever he wears or whatever he likes. Same with women. A man in a dress and lipstick is no less male than any other man; he is also no more female than any other man. If the basis of “gender identity reinforces the idea that liking “girly” things makes you a girl, then the patriarchy is safe and secure; genderism is serving it, not smashing it. To paraphrase another venerable observation:
Patriarchy says “If you’re a woman, you must wear a dress.” Gender ideology says, “If you wear a dress, you must be a woman.” Feminism says, “if you’re a woman you can wear whatever you want.”
There’s also the inherent homophobia in “transing away the gay,” which is exactly what Mermaid’s founder, Susie Green did to her son when he showed unwelcome signs of effeminacy. Her husband couldn’t stomach the idea that their son was gay, but they were happy to mutilate him in a misguided and impossible attempt to turn him into a girl.
I’ve already said too much, so I’ll stop here. If there’s a TL;DR it’s “Show me the hate.”
*Trans identified males are not women and can never be women. A man can no more identify out of being male any more than he can identify out of being a primate, mammal, or tetrapod. It’s just an unalterable fact of material reality.
