Transgender is it just me that is totally perplexed?

[Athos]

Why do you assert men are more likely to object to sharing toilets with trans people?
Any evidence to back this up?

Even if it's true, what does it tell us beyond the fact that women are socialised to accommodate other wishes?

 

[Magnus McGinty]

FWIW if I've understood her right I don't agree with her but I think she is sure entitled to her point of view.

I think you missed the point that it was in response to smokedout suggesting ‘you should perhaps listen to trans women’ whilst meaning the ones he agrees with.

 

[co-op]

Perhaps tone and content is a factor? Or perhaps people would prefer to hear from trans people describing how it feels to be trans rather than from non trans people telling trans people how they should feel about being trans?

No I'm talking about reflexive pile-ons based on an assumption that this is a nice 'n' simple bigotry vs anti-bigotry argument. It's pretty much what happened a couple of years back on these boards.

It was just before the Rachel Dolziel story broke and it was some consolation watching the same un-thought-out liberals turning themselves inside out trying to reconcile their transgender 'defence' with their transracial righteous fury. (and just in case anyone is desperate to misinterpret, no I don't think the two are meaningfully analogous, it's just liberals really struggle to make the difference).

 

[co-op]

Or perhaps people would prefer to hear from trans people describing how it feels to be trans rather than from non trans people telling trans people how they should feel about being trans?

Maybe they would prefer this; but when (as happened before) a transwoman turns up and starts laying down what appropriate female gender behaviour is and how this is innate then anyone with any grip of the topic is bound to challenge it, right? Instead there was just unctuous creeping. The only people who criticised her views were those who had already all been denounced as bigots.

 

[Athos]

I did listen to what Miranda Yardley said. I'm still waiting for her to explain the how she squares the gender essentialism which is central to the autogynpehilia theory with her own rejection of essentialism.

Isn't your own position 'gender essentialism'? The idea that woman-ness exists innately and independently of biology or socialisation is literally to say there's an essence of womanhood.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Why do you assert men are more likely to object to sharing toilets with trans people?
Any evidence to back this up?

Results of the latest British social attitudes survey. Results of every recent study carried out in the US. All online and just a search away. Men are more likely to be transphobic than women and are more likely to hold transphobic attitudes on every related issue, from whether they believe legal discrimination is justified to whether they feel comfortable sharing toilets with trans people. In Britain at the moment only 13% of women describe themselves as very or moderately uncomfortable sharing toilet facilities (just 4% “very uncomfortable”).

This really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who hasn’t been paying disproportionate attention to the views of a transphobic faction of radfems and their attempts to present their fringe ideology as the view of “women”. Women in Western anglophone countries are currently on average more progressive on every social issue and more generally left wing than men. Those women who are transphobic, like men who are transphobic, are much more likely to be social conservatives than TERFs.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Even if it's true, what does it tell us beyond the fact that women are socialised to accommodate other wishes?

For a man who is ostentatiously concerned about the right of a tiny group of TERFs be listened to respectfully, you seem remarkably dismissive of the views of much larger numbers of women.

 

[co-op]

This really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who hasn’t been paying disproportionate attention to the views of a transphobic faction of radfems and their attempts to present their fringe ideology as the view of “women”.

No you're arse over tit here. It wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to radical feminists and their analysis of toxic masculinity. It wouldn't be any surprise at all to them that men performing masculinity hate transwomen.

 

[Athos]

For a man who is ostentatiously concerned about the right of a tiny group of TERFs be listened to respectfully, you seem remarkably dismissive of the views of much larger numbers of women.

I don't accept your premise, that's its only TERFs who have concerns.

 

[bimble]

Nigel Irritable I'd quite like to know how you define TERF, as you use the term in every one of your posts here.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I don't accept your premise, that's its only TERFs who have concerns.

That’s not my premise at all. TERFs are a tiny and unrepresentative group even among the minority of women who hold transphobic views. The bulk of that minority are social conservatives (ie they overlap heavily with the minority of women who hold for example homophobic views or who hold that sex outside of marriage is wrong).

Being a tiny and unrepresentative group doesn’t in itself mean that they are wrong, of course. But it does make their frequent attempts to naturalise the views of their tiny highly ideological fringe movement as the expression of “women’s concerns” or as “women asking questions” entirely mischievous. So called “gender critical feminists” are about as representative of women as the Nation of Islam is of black people or the Alliance for Workers Liberty is of the working class.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

No you're arse over tit here. It wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to radical feminists and their analysis of toxic masculinity. It wouldn't be any surprise at all to them that men performing masculinity hate transwomen.

And yet in one of the ironies inherent to TERF politics it turns out that they prefer the political conclusions that men “performing masculinity” reach when it comes to trans rights to the views of the bulk of women.

 

[smokedout]

Even if it's true, what does it tell us beyond the fact that women are socialised to accommodate other wishes?

Good job there's rational men like you around to set them straight then.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Nigel Irritable I'd quite like to know how you define TERF, as you use the term in every one of your posts here.

Somebody who opposes the right of trans people to both legally and socially live as the gender of their preference and who uses some variant of a radical feminist analysis of gender to justify this view.

This is a very small number of people of course, usually in Britain associated with one of a number of declining political or subcultural milieus. The vast majority of people with “concerns” about trans rights are not TERFs but are instead social conservatives. It’s that balance of forces that leads TERFs, who are usually left wing (or in Britain centrists), to ally with the forces of social conservatism.

The significant debate in wider society when it comes to trans people is that between advocates of trans rights on the one hand and social conservatives on the other. Unfortunately that fact is regularly obscured in the discussion here.

 

[Athos]

Good job there's rational men like you around to set them straight then.

Says you. The irony!

 

[Athos]

That’s not my premise at all. TERFs are a tiny and unrepresentative group even among the minority of women who hold transphobic views. The bulk of that minority are social conservatives (ie they overlap heavily with the minority of women who hold for example homophobic views or who hold that sex outside of marriage is wrong).

Being a tiny and unrepresentative group doesn’t in itself mean that they are wrong, of course. But it does make their frequent attempts to naturalise the views of their tiny highly ideological fringe movement as the expression of “women’s concerns” or as “women asking questions” entirely mischievous. So called “gender critical feminists” are about as representative of women as the Nation of Islam is of black people or the Alliance for Workers Liberty is of the working class.

They are the concerns of (some) women. This is a case of (some) women asking questions. Hence, they're women's concerns and questions. I don't think that phraseology implies any claim that they're universal amongst women.

 

[free spirit]

Somebody who opposes the right of trans people to both legally and socially live as the gender of their preference and who uses some variant of a radical feminist analysis of gender to justify this view.

This is a very small number of people of course, usually in Britain associated with one of a number of declining political or subcultural milieus. The vast majority of people with “concerns” about trans rights are not TERFs but are instead social conservatives. It’s that balance of forces that leads TERFs, who are usually left wing (or in Britain centrists), to ally with the forces of social conservatism.

The significant debate in wider society when it comes to trans people is that between advocates of trans rights on the one hand and social conservatives on the other. Unfortunately that fact is regularly obscured in the discussion here.

From what I've witnessed, TERF is mostly a term of abuse flung around by a vocal fringe of transrights activists at anyone female who happens to disagree with them on any point at all.

It's bullshit identity politics at its worst that's proving to be so divisive that IMO it risks undoing much of the progress that's been made via less divisive approaches in the past.

Just an observation from the sidelines.

 

[co-op]

Somebody who opposes the right of trans people to both legally and socially live as the gender of their preference and who uses some variant of a radical feminist analysis of gender to justify this view.

Here you go, since you can't say anything except your repetitive strategic overview of the balance of forces on this - some straightforward yes/no questions;

Am I a terf because I think any group promoting patriarchal gender roles needs challenging, even if that group happens to be made up of transwomen?

Am I a terf if I question how it is that a person 'becomes a woman' (or even stranger, just "is" a woman) when they have neither female biology (if that's relevant) nor any experience of the intensive gender-socialisation into a female gender role that women raised as women get?

Am I a terf if it appears to me that the word "cis" contains within it at the very least a strong implication that most people are non-coerced into their gender roles, are happy in them and that they constitute a 'natural' gender binary? (all of which assumption seems utterly wrong to me)

Is it terf to reject the meaningfulness of the 'woman born in a man's body' narrative?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

You have the causation confused. You aren’t a TERF because you ask these or other questions. You argue these opinions, sometimes disingenuously presenting them as “questions”, because you are a TERF.

 

[co-op]

You have the causation confused. You aren’t a TERF because you ask these or other questions. You argue these opinions, sometimes disingenuously presenting them as “questions”, because you are a TERF.

"I cannot answer your questions so I will just call you a terf instead. In the circles I hang out in that always does the trick."

FWIW I put them as questions because you have never addressed (or even tried to address) any of the complex questions on this thread and I thought some yes/no versions might help me understand where you are coming from. It seems to me that, for example, smokedout has a nuanced position and might not even describe me as a terf despite our obvously coming to this from different angles. I would be gennuinely interested in their answers to these questions. They've obviously engaged with it and thought about this.

You haven't and are unable to respond to the most straightforward & open criticisms. I understand that you are trapped by the fact that you are a practising politician and in public you have to parrot the party line but maybe you can at least admit in private that there are complexities that won't magically disappear just because you stick your fingers in your ears and chant la-la-la?

It should be clear that there are a significant number of regular thoughtful posters on these boards who also think this. Are they all terfs too? Is that your only response?

 

[Sunset Tree]

You have the causation confused. You aren’t a TERF because you ask these or other questions. You argue these opinions, sometimes disingenuously presenting them as “questions”, because you are a TERF.

They seem like fair enough questions. How would you know if someone asking these was being genuine or doing it because they're a TERF, and would it really matter in terms of your answers?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

"I cannot answer your questions so I will just call you a terf instead. In the circles I hang out in that always does the trick."

FWIW I put them as questions because you have never addressed (or even tried to address) any of the complex questions on this thread and I thought some yes/no versions might help me understand where you are coming from. It seems to me that, for example, smokedout has a nuanced position and might not even describe me as a terf despite our obvously coming to this from different angles. I would be gennuinely interested in their answers to these questions. They've obviously engaged with it and thought about this.

You haven't and are unable to respond to the most straightforward & open criticisms. I understand that you are trapped by the fact that you are a practising politician and in public you have to parrot the party line but maybe you can at least admit in private that there are complexities that won't magically disappear just because you stick your fingers in your ears and chant la-la-la?

It should be clear that there are a significant number of regular thoughtful posters on these boards who also think this. Are they all terfs too? Is that your only response?

It’s genuinely fun to watch you gloat because you imagine that endlessly repeating the greatest hits of TERFery, dishonestly phrased as questions, constitutes some kind of clever argument. It’s like dealing with a witless internet new atheist happily convinced that anyone who treats his views with contempt just can’t answer Reason and Science. Unfortunately discovering something I explained in one of my first posts on this thread is less of an achievement than you think it is. Here it is again:

“To be blunt about it the point of my posts wasn't to invite yet another debate on TERF talking points. I'm all too familiar with their arguments and have come to the conclusion that they are so incoherent that they are of little interest in themselves. I'm more interested in the material and sociological factors that go into creating a movement nominally committed to gender abolition that spends most of its time angrily insisting that people are whatever gender they are told they are and lobbying the Tories to keep medical gatekeepers to gender recognition. That I have a certain amount of sympathy for members of an oppressed group who have ended up with these weird politics doesn't mean I have any particular respect for those politics.”

That is, I’m interested in TERFism as a movement and as a case study in people’s ability to talk themselves around to the most perverse conclusions given their supposed starting points. I have no more interest in debating TERF views on their own terms than I do in debating Scientologists on the theology of Xenu. Or more precisely, I have as much interest in having an amicable discussion about trans rights with obsessional transphobes as I do in chatting about the rights of black people with dedicated racists.

As for you personally, you aren’t even arguing your dull TERF talking points in good faith - you insist on portraying your strongly held fringe ideological views as “questions” or “concerns” even though everyone reading this discussion is well aware that you believe that you already have the answers to your supposed questions. Those “questions” are designed, not particularly subtly, to smuggle TERF assumptions into a discussion from the start.

Take for instance the first one about challenging “any group promoting patriarchal gender norms”, by which you mean trans people. I don’t accept any of the premises embedded in that question and nor would anyone who has any knowledge of trans movements that hasn’t been filtered through the presumptions of your milieu of bigoted zealots. Trans people are not a “group promoting patriarchal gender norms”. TERFs, despite the more and more vestigial rhetoric about gender abolition, do actively promote patriarchal gender norms by seeking to police deviance from those norms through reinforcing legal, medical and social restrictions on the rights of trans people.

There is a particularly vicious hypocrisy involved in first demanding that trans people be subjected to medical or legal tests of a sort that inherently act as strong pressures to present themselves in stereotyped ways to pass and then following that up by denouncing the supposed tendency of trans people to act in gender stereotyped ways. On this issue TERFism is an older sibling chortling “why do you keep punching yourself?” in the form of a political movement.

If the “gender critical” were slightly less consumed with malice and slightly less paranoid about the great trans conspiracy against women, they might start to wonder if demanding that the Tories police the boundaries of gender harder is really such a good idea. They might also widen their focus from the terrible transwoman menace to trans phenomena as a whole and begin to wonder how exactly they have come to view large numbers of young people rejecting their assigned genders in favor of a variety of alternatives, along with the related rise in the visibility of people with intersex conditions, as a threat rather than the most significant step forward for gender abolitionism in decades. I have no expectation that TERFs in any numbers will prove capable of taking a look at that wider picture however. They’ve staked too much on fearmongering, they have in practical terms given up on gender abolition and they are incapable of thinking outside of their movement’s framing (a framing inherent to your “questions”).

Please though, continue to gloat. If you are taking requests, the parts where you invent bizarre stuff about what I believe and why are the best bits. So far I believe in gendered spirits or at least pretend to because admitting the unanswerable power of TERF arguments would both end my flourishing career as a “practicing politician” and get me “thrown out of the cool kids gang”. That’s pretty good, but I think you can get crazier if you really try.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

It’s genuinely fun to watch you gloat because you imagine that endlessly repeating the greatest hits of TERFery, dishonestly phrased as questions, constitutes some kind of clever argument. It’s like dealing with a witless internet new atheist happily convinced that anyone who treats his views with contempt just can’t answer Reason and Science. Unfortunately discovering something I explained in one of my first posts on this thread is less of an achievement than you think it is. Here it is again:

“To be blunt about it the point of my posts wasn't to invite yet another debate on TERF talking points. I'm all too familiar with their arguments and have come to the conclusion that they are so incoherent that they are of little interest in themselves. I'm more interested in the material and sociological factors that go into creating a movement nominally committed to gender abolition that spends most of its time angrily insisting that people are whatever gender they are told they are and lobbying the Tories to keep medical gatekeepers to gender recognition. That I have a certain amount of sympathy for members of an oppressed group who have ended up with these weird politics doesn't mean I have any particular respect for those politics.”

That is, I’m interested in TERFism as a movement and as a case study in people’s ability to talk themselves around to the most perverse conclusions given their supposed starting points. I have no more interest in debating TERF views on their own terms than I do in debating Scientologists on the theology of Xenu. Or more precisely, I have as much interest in having an amicable discussion about trans rights with obsessional transphobes as I do in chatting about the rights of black people with dedicated racists.

As for you personally, you aren’t even arguing your dull TERF talking points in good faith - you insist on portraying your strongly held fringe ideological views as “questions” or “concerns” even though everyone reading this discussion is well aware that you believe that you already have the answers to your supposed questions. Those “questions” are designed, not particularly subtly, to smuggle TERF assumptions into a discussion from the start.

Take for instance the first one about challenging “any group promoting patriarchal gender norms”, by which you mean trans people. I don’t accept any of the premises embedded in that question and nor would anyone who has any knowledge of trans movements that hasn’t been filtered through the presumptions of your milieu of bigoted zealots. Trans people are not a “group promoting patriarchal gender norms”. TERFs, despite the more and more vestigial rhetoric about gender abolition, do actively promote patriarchal gender norms by seeking to police deviance from those norms through reinforcing legal, medical and social restrictions on the rights of trans people.

There is a particularly vicious hypocrisy involved in first demanding that trans people be subjected to medical or legal tests of a sort that inherently act as strong pressures to present themselves in stereotyped ways to pass and then following that up by denouncing the supposed tendency of trans people to act in gender stereotyped ways. On this issue TERFism is an older sibling chortling “why do you keep punching yourself?” in the form of a political movement.

If the “gender critical” were slightly less consumed with malice and slightly less paranoid about the great trans conspiracy against women, they might start to wonder if demanding that the Tories police the boundaries of gender harder is really such a good idea. They might also widen their focus from the terrible transwoman menace to trans phenomena as a whole and begin to wonder how exactly they have come to view large numbers of young people rejecting their assigned genders in favor of a variety of alternatives as a threat rather than the most significant step forward for gender abolitionism in decades. I have no expectation that TERFs in any numbers will prove capable of taking a look at that wider picture however. They’ve staked too much on fearmongering, they have in practical terms given up on gender abolition and they are incapable of thinking outside of their movement’s framing (a framing inherent to your “questions”).

Please though, continue to gloat. If you are taking requests, the parts where you invent bizarre stuff about what I believe and why are the best bits. So far I believe in gendered spirits or at least pretend to because admitting the unanswerable power of TERF arguments would both end my flourishing career as a “practicing politician” and get me “thrown out of the cool kids gang”. That’s pretty good, but I think you can get crazier if you really try.

Nice wall of text. How do you think the casual observer will interpret your refusal to engage with the questions posed along with the other implied threats that disagreeing with your line might bring?

 

[Sunset Tree]

That is, I’m interested in TERFism as a movement and as a case study in people’s ability to talk themselves around to the most perverse conclusions given their supposed starting points. I have no more interest in debating TERF views on their own terms than I do in debating Scientologists on the theology of Xenu. Or more precisely, I have as much interest in having an amicable discussion about trans rights with obsessional transphobes as I do in chatting about the rights of black people with dedicated racists.

The questioned posed seem very different in nature than debating the theology of xenu.

Am I a terf if I question how it is that a person 'becomes a woman' (or even stranger, just "is" a woman) when they have neither female biology (if that's relevant) nor any experience of the intensive gender-socialisation into a female gender role that women raised as women get?

Is it terf to reject the meaningfulness of the 'woman born in a man's body' narrative?

Just the two I've quoted here. I don't think I'm a terf. I don't know much about trans issues really. But these seems like key questions. Are these questions that are just not allowed to be asked because the answers should be self-evident? Can you answer them and help me understand? I genuinely don't know the answer to these, or how a man who wants to live as a woman just 'is' a woman. These aren't easy things for most people to understand, and I'm sure a lot of people who aren't terfs would ask these.

 

[andysays]

Nice wall of text. How do you think the casual observer will interpret your refusal to engage with the questions posed along with the other implied threats that disagreeing with your line might bring?

There are no "casual observers" here, apparently, only those who accept trans-ideology 100% on one side and TERFs on the other.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Nice wall of text. How do you think the casual observer will translate your refusal to engage with the questions posed along with the other implied threats that disagreeing with your line might bring?

That would depend on whether this casual observer is capable of deciphering that wall of text, understanding why I don’t accept the premises baked into those talking points posed as questions and noting that there are no threats in it implied or otherwise. In your case I don’t hold out much hope.

 

[Sunset Tree]

I read the wall of text and still not sure how terf premises are baked into those talking points? I feel like these are the questions most people would ask if trying to understand trans issues.

 

[Shechemite]

Very unfestive of Nigel Irritable to go full trot without giving away free newspapers

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Can you answer them and help me understand?

If you really want my view as to whether you are a TERF, the questions you should be asking are different from those our resident transphobes use to frame the discussion. Do you oppose the right of trans people to live as the gender of their choice, legally and socially? If the answer is yes, you are a transphobe. If you are a transphobe, do you justify that position by recourse to some variant of a radfem gender analysis? If the answer is also yes, then you are a TERF.

It is unlikely to be difficult for you to work out if you are, in my view, a TERF. And people can and do have a range of views on the issues that our transphobic posters use as the basis for their disingenuous questions. Trans people certainly argue a range of views on them. Nobody particularly cares what you think as long as you aren’t using those views (or views dishonestly posed as “just questions”) to further the oppression of a highly discriminated against minority.

 

[Sunset Tree]

If you really want my view as to whether you are a TERF, the questions you should be asking are different from those our resident transphobes use to frame the discussion. Do you oppose the right of trans people to live as the gender of their choice, legally and socially? If the answer is yes, you are a transphobe. If you are a transphobe, do you justify that position by recourse to some variant of a radfem gender analysis? If the answer is also yes, then you are a TERF.

It is unlikely to be difficult for you to work out if you are, in my view, a TERF. And people can and do have a range of views on the issues that our transphobic posters use as the basis for their disingenuous questions. Trans people certainly argue a range of views on them. Nobody particularly cares what you think as long as you aren’t using those views to further the oppression of a highly discriminated against minority.

I don't oppose the right of trans people to live as the gender of their choice. Can't you ask those questions while supporting that right? Are you saying that just asking those questions is transphobic and furthers the oppression of a minority by its very act?

I just think that those questions don't sound too offensive and it might be better to engage with them than automatically call someone a terf (because what if a non-terf is asking?).