Transgender is it just me that is totally perplexed?
- Thread starter The Flying Pig
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basically i dunno if you are aware of this but you come across as a right twat on here, so of course you think loads of crap about trans people is brilliant
and you got the audacity to sit there and say we wont learn anything if we rubbish it? o rly tell us more about that, you dont seem to want to learn fuck all or have yer opinion changed
waste.
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What opinion? I'm not sure what I think, I don't have a fixed opinion. I thought that vid you posted ages ago was really interesting. I think there's been a lot of thought provoking posts aswell as lots of shit, and if it just gets called a car crash then some good stuff gets missed too. I do have questions, particularly around the increase in referrals to camhs clinics, and I'm trying to think about that, maybe in a too abstract way that comes over less thoughtfully than i had intended, that's possible. So yeh, maybe I do come over as a twat.
I wonder what gave me that impression/
krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
Oh definitely. I've "banged on" about it here before. It shouldn't surprise people that such phobias exist within LGBT circles. Nor, I guess, should we be surprised that the word "trannies" is being used here. Saddened, more like.
Mation
real life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
Fuck the fuck off, with that. That is such a nasty post. What happened to you to make you so devoid of empathy? (Rhetorical question; I don't want to know.)
Athos
Well-Known Member
What do you mean be "[debating] the legitimacy of other people's lives"?
Because, we hear words like 'legitimacy' (and e.g. 'validity') often in these discussions. But it's not clear what they mean. It sometimes comes across as a manipulative way to control (prevent) discussion by mischaracterising others' positions. It's quite possible to discuss what gender is and what it means to be a woman or a man without saying others lives are not legitimate or valid (whatever that means). Choosing not to subscribe to somebody else's attempt to redefine a word does not delegitimatise them as a person. And disagreeing with someone is not akin to trying to 'exterminate' them, as some of the more hyperbolic trans rhetoric suggests.
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If you examine the broader context, you could see this thread as the inevitable response to people discovering that they aren’t even allowed to voice their genuine concerns — whether they be practical or socio-psychological — without getting the kind of response we see from either Nigel Irritable (“you’re all bigots”) or Sea Star (“you all hate me and want to exterminate me”). Silencing people works for a while and allows your cause to build up a head of steam but eventually all those repressed issues burst out as a backlash.
I genuinely have no idea where I stand on the whole phenomenon of transgenderism. I’m torn between respecting the fact that people are forged in their environment and need to be allowed to live in the way they have been made (however that has been done) and an intuitive concern about the inherently reactionary way that acceptability for transgender people is being approached. I think it’s complicated, basically.
But one thing I am sure of is that for a while, I have been increasingly concerned at seeing structures designed to overcome female inequality becoming dominated instead by trans activism. At first, I told myself to look the other way, because this was important to have out too and it would work its way through. But now, we have trans activists in the Labour Party taking on Women’s Officer roles and using that to try to prevent women from using the equality structures that exist to help them just because those women refuse to define themselves according to the philosophy of the trans activist. That kind of aggressive push to dominate women’s political space cannot happen without the kind of inevitable fight back this thread has primarily been focussed on.
I don’t see the likes of FabricLiveBaby!, bimble, MochaSoul or ElizabethofYork as trying to prevent trans women from living their lives as women. I see them reacting to having their own protections as a marginalised group — namely women in a patriarchal society — be undermined. That’s what this thread is all about.
I'm not just curious, I work in a clinic where young trans people are being referred in increasing numbers and this is quite new. The level of distress amongst all young people who get referred to CAMHS is very high because there's fuck all funding and the thresholds are therefore very high. I do have an interest in classification systems which can come over as quite academic, I suppose, although I think of it as political, as it effects all the young people I see, all young people in education, my own children and their friends, and myself, everyone.
I think there is a tension between discussing the issues as wider social issues and the risk that it further marginalises an already marginalised group and that people feel talked about rather than talked to. I'm not into saying stuff to avoid conflict but I don't want to cause distress either so I'm happy to leave the conversation.
I think there is a tension between discussing the issues as wider social issues and the risk that it further marginalises an already marginalised group and that people feel talked about rather than talked to. I'm not into saying stuff to avoid conflict but I don't want to cause distress either so I'm happy to leave the conversation.
Please don’t. I think you have valuable insight and I think it’s a conversation that needs to happen.
FabricLiveBaby!
Live Baby Fabric!
As I said before, most women on the left who come to see self identification as problematic (for lack of a better word), were at one point fully supportive.
What happens usually is that you ask a question that you really don't get (in my case, it was the idea of gender identity as innate, because I really do not have one, and even if I did, how would I know that's what it is), the reaction to me simply stating "I don't get it, can someone explain it to me" and not finding the explanation convincing was:
This is transmisogynist (a new word I'd never heard)
Don't be a TERF (a very bad thing)
Go educate yourself
Simply for admitting what a lot of people don't admit which is : I'm sorry, I don't get it.
So I did. I went and educated myself. Weighed up the arguments and found out that those awful TERFs I didn't like had actually a lot of interesting stuff and quite well reasoned things to say.
For me what is interesting is that there seems to be a one way flow. People start neutral, and someone asks them if they're in favour of trans rights and they say "of course"! So they're on the side of GRA and transactivism (because, why not, what's the problem), then they hear something they don't get, or something doesn't sit right but are too afraid to ask because they're very aware of the way "cis scum" and "awful TERFs" are talked about, and how people are ostracised for having wrong think so they stay quiet, but it still doesn't sit right so eventually they ask questions, then they get told to fuck off and read about it, get blocked by people they thought were cool, and then end up changing their position because there are too many inconsistencies which no one seems to be able to answer.
It's very rare (infact I haven't seen it) going the other way, wherever people are anti GRA and come out being pro.
Now either all the people in the one way flow are bigots undercover, or there's a problem with the way the debate is held from the outset.
You can see it in this thread. No one wants to be labelled a bigot and incendiary language has been rife of this thread from the very start.
It's quite clever and in my opinion does its job very well of scaring people in to silence. And that's why you get these explosive discussions.
You can only keep the pressure from blowing the lid off for so long.
ElizabethofYork
Old Crone
FabricLiveBaby!
Live Baby Fabric!
It happens to everyone eventually. It's like death or taxes. Even Jack Monroe got called one because she called herself trans AND a woman (labelling herself non-binary gender-queer trans woman and forgetting the commas) . Which is erasing transwomen by claiming a label which supposedly isn't for Jack, ironically.
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JimW
支那暗杀团
Very much how it's been for me. Good luck and appropriate rights for all but then hearing some of the gender theory that's patently bollocks and on the face of it pretty damaging gives you pause.
Yep. I was called a transphobe and a liar and the person doing so (Nigel Irritable) still hasn't told me why.
If I called someone a racist or a homophobe or whatever else and couldn't or wouldn't back it up, they'd have every right to be extremely fucked off about it.
But different rules seem to be at work here. Seems you can smear people and then just refuse to explain/engage any further. I think that's extremely damaging.
As MochaSoul said above, I absolutely started from a completely inclusive view on this. Then asking a few questions/trying to understand the issues further in good faith apparently makes me a transphobe. I find that utterly depressing tbh.
crossthebreeze
Well-Known Member
I agree with you for most of what you've written here, but i think that Sea Star has made some valuable contributions to the conversation in between flounces - not at all the same as Nigel Irritable who has pretty much admitted that his "bigots" diatribe is because he wants to silence people who disagree (especially it seems certain women) out of the conversation.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
I think a great difficulty about this is that sometimes the categories people want to fit in don't fit them without great difficulty. People have pointed out men transitioning to women have missed some defining experiences natal women have had. Without denigrating trans people's experiences perhaps new categories need to be created to accommodate people who don't seem to fit comfortably, from their pov, in their birth gender, nor, from many other people's pov, in their trans one. Maybe I'm wrong, quite possibly in fact, but I don't feel saying people are x or y when they may be z is doing anyone any favours.
Mation
real life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
You're explaining this thread to me why, exactly? I'm capable of reading, ta, and I've already seen the broader context. And I've seen conversations about this in which questions are asked that are not predicated on an underlying belief that trans women are not women; they look very different. This thread, however, is part of what drives people to feel suicidal.
So your view is that the contributions that have sustained this thread are motivated by what, exactly? The post I quoted stated that the motivation was "curiosity" about the "legitimacy of other people's lives". That's what you still think, upon response and reflection?
Mation
real life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
They (the contributions) aren't homogeneous, but as I said in my previous post many are coming from an underlying disbelief that trans people, trans women in particular, aren't right about themselves.
OK. Well, I disagree with you on that, which was why I made this point in the post you have objected to. And you objected to the mere existence of my post, note, not responded to its susbstance ("You're explaining this thread to me why, exactly? I'm capable of reading, ta...").
Mation
real life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
Your post didn't say anything new to respond to, it just summarised this thread from your point of view. It was already possible to glean that from the thread. Hence me asking why you were bothering. I understand the thread. I think it should stop anyway.
Sunset Tree
Well-Known Member
Trans issues haven't been much on my radar until I started reading this thread and got interested. But I've always had this vague idea that TERFS are horrible people, based on hearing it used a slur and not really paying attention.
Nobody using TERF seems able to engage on even basic points. It's just catchphrases basically: 'trans x are x', 'denying their existence', etc. You're not allowed to ask, well, what do you mean by gender identity? Is it innate? How is a man/woman defined? Just the basic questions are abuse.
Now when I see TERF, I feel more judgement towards the person using the term, as it gets used as a way to avoid engaging on questions they don't know how to answer. It's OK not to know all the answers on a complex issue, but doing that is pretty uncool.
Nobody using TERF seems able to engage on even basic points. It's just catchphrases basically: 'trans x are x', 'denying their existence', etc. You're not allowed to ask, well, what do you mean by gender identity? Is it innate? How is a man/woman defined? Just the basic questions are abuse.
Now when I see TERF, I feel more judgement towards the person using the term, as it gets used as a way to avoid engaging on questions they don't know how to answer. It's OK not to know all the answers on a complex issue, but doing that is pretty uncool.
Athos
Well-Known Member
That's one way to put it. Another would be that people are telling women that they're wrong about themselves (when they assert that what makes them women isn't some 'essence of woman', independent of society or biology).
Can't we take some heat out of the discussion with some more thought about framing?
Surely it's possible to have a sensible debate? Maybe not with some of the extremists on either side, but between, say, those who condemn violence against trans people, believe they should have adequate facilities, and are courteous in their use of pronouns, but who, ultimately don't think those born and socialised male are women, and those who favour trans inclusion but recognise the value of sex-based measures to help women resist patriarchy? In a positive way that recognises differences but tries to build solidarity around similarities.
bimble
floofy
The thing is that the idea of Gender Identity only works if its universal, is something that everybody has, not just trans people but everyone. And not just universal but also the only real criteria for membership of the class 'women' or 'men', so if you think you're a woman it must be because you possess the Gender Identity 'woman' and for no other reason.
Sunset Tree
Well-Known Member
Urban has multi-page discussions about all kinds of topics. It's weird how a few people have said this one should be deleted. Is the argument that these discussions are distressing to trans people so just shouldn't happen ever? If discussions about the nature of gender are too harmful to take place then we're in a strange place.
weepiper
I fix the machines that fight climate change
Careful Pickman's, the TERFfinder General will be after you with that sort of chat.
Sunset Tree
Well-Known Member
To be honest, this is what I just don't get. When I first posted in this thread I asked and got told by Nigel Irritable it's a TERF question so he won't answer it. Still none the wiser. Surely the concept of an innate gender is at odds with the idea that gender identities are constructed through socialisation, which I always thought was a good feminist position (and what I've always believed).
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