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Transgender is it just me that is totally perplexed?

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trashpony said:
Oh and here's some terrible, terrible transphobic media reporting:
Transgender woman in male prison ‘nightmare’ on hunger strike

What the Guardian failed to mention is that Marie Dean is actually a prolific sex offender who broke into teenage girls' homes and filmed himself wanking in their underwear.
Cross-dressing Burnley burglar jailed indefinitely

There is no way this person should be housed in the female estate.
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There were details in that second story that really should have been mentioned in the Guardian article, such as the sex acts, sex offenders register and indeterminate sentence.

However, I should still point out that the Guardian article does contain a link to that Lancashire Telegraph story.
 
bimble said:
Nope. He has never addressed what 'they' say. He has never engaged with what they say has just dismissed them for being small in number.
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Here's a time Nigel was addressing what 'they' say:

"The issue with TERFery is not that it says gender identity is not innate but that it seeks to deny trans people their right to live as their preferred gender socially, legally and politically."
 
elbows said:
There were details in that second story that really should have been mentioned in the Guardian article, such as the sex acts, sex offenders register and indeterminate sentence.

However, I should still point out that the Guardian article does contain a link to that Lancashire Telegraph story.
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It has been changed to add that after people tweeted the Guardian and the hack. It wasn't in the original story at all.

Male estate: 85k ish
Female estate: 4k ish

The number of women serving custodial sentences for sex offences is very small - about 100 vs over 12,000 men. Moving any man who decided to identify as a woman once incarcerated like Ian Huntley and a number of other sex offenders have, would have an enormous impact on women's prisons.
 
Soz @VintagePaw - this is a response to you but forgot to do quotes

Not really, to be fair, Nigel has frequently repeated himself endlessly, veering between 'you terfs are not even worth talking to (including an eye-watering amount of ad-hominems and insults)...and an evasive hiding behind opaque politico-speak or claiming terfs are seeking to deny transpeople their rights to live according to their preferred gender politically etc etc...but this is just an assumption and a claim he has made with no evidence apart from his say-so. This is NOT what anyone has been saying ever. The sheer polarity of opinions and lack of nuance has left me flummoxed since we appear to be at cross purposes, over and over. First of all, the glaring assumption that one theory fits all sizes when I, for one, am still not clear about the most basic terms being used. There is not one single trans experience...and there certainly are many flavours of feminism (not some simple rad-fem fringe but a huge swathe of people with (fancy that) opinions (and experiences which are on a spectrum...and have evolved over some time...and will (hopefully) continue to do so...And finally, the yawning gap between theory and real world experience. I have no experience of gender issues but I can attest to the amazingly fluid and often cyclical arguments (to support a political and social agenda) which has characterised so many, many dissident positions, from sexuality to theories of addiction...where ultimately, accommodation has been painfully arrived at over literally decades of debate. So, I dunno, it might be better if we were a little kinder to each other as we flail around in an effort to understand.
I have already stated some of my positions...but I am more than open (in fact I expect them) to change...and I admit to being on board with taking a bit more time before leaping into legislative traps since checks and balances including risk assessments and multi-agency decisions, however hesitant, are doing case by case analysis (as in all cases of safeguarding for instance)
 
Vintage Paw said:
I was going to reply, mochasoul, before you deleted, that if you don't have a gender identity, I fully support you in that. Just as I fully support those who do feel they have one, and who know what that is.

I take issue with the idea that while we all have a deeply complex debate about the nature of gender (which isn't something we can hope to have a definitive answer on currently, or maybe ever), trans people are being asked to stop existing until we get it all sorted out. The rub being of course that we won't sort it out. So, if they can just sort of stop existing full stop that'd be great. But cis women can continue to exist. The ones who do think they have a gender, the ones who aren't anti-trans, the ones who aren't 'gender critical' in the sense that they don't believe chromosomes or genitalia are the sum of their being, they're still allowed to call themselves women, even if they're doing it erroneously in some people's view. But not trans women. No. They've got to stop it right now.
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Sorry had to absent myself for a while, I'm stretching myself a bit but didn't want to go without replying.

I've said all I had to say on the subject on debate about the word "cisgender" which it assumes I have a gender identity regardless of what I have to say about it.
There's two levels of *identity* I recognise. My inner self, is not woman, is not black, is not sister or mother. It doesn't even have a name. If I refer to any of those things when I say, "I am" is simply because humans are not telephatic and those things, some of which inoquous, others expressing a range of experiences due to society structures, help me express myself with the rather inadequate tool that is language. I wholly reject the word cis on those grounds. Not that people won't refer to me as such even when they know nothing about me.

I have never said trans don't exist. I've never said they don't have a right to exist. I've never said they shouldn't exist. As far as I'm concerned they should absolutely exist (as I said before in the thread - they are, by merely existing, the biggest spanner in the gender works - gender the axis of oppression argh we now have to define things as we go along because all of the meanings have been eroded). I reject the claims they make because they apply to me too (cisgender = I too have a gender identity). How that is not a bonanza for the ultra sexist right which still seeks to put women in their places I have no idea. Furthermore, the more I look into what other feminists have been saying about this while I gently slept not imagining how the rights of any group of people, least of all transgender people, may be made to be pit against women's rights, the more things I find that sit very uncomfortably with me and my own idea that the only things that matter are that people are people and they should express themselves the way they want; repecurssions that could go far and wide in disabling women, in particular, but other people too from combating systemic oppressions. I don't have time tonight but the twitter thread below, puts a lot of what I have been thinking in much better words than I have, and has given me more to chew on. I'm angry though that these things aren't being discussed freely because we're TERFs and should be no platformed, vilified and persecuted as we try to work out and discuss these matters, even when it's exclusively on the level of how women may be affected and how feminists should approach these newer manifestations of structural sexism. I probably won't be returning to the thread tonight but I'll read any response to this some time tomorrow.

 
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bimble said:
No go on, please. I'm irate but I am listening. What have I missed? He said this thread was poisonous because it did not reflect the wider debate. Then explained what he thinks the wider debate consists of. I've taken the time to quote both posts of his, before and after I asked him to clarify. He thinks the wider debate does not have space for anyone who is not the conservative right.
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This thread is poisonous because poisonous views were allowed to set the tone for much of it. Those views are fringe views as well as being poisonous but they are not poisonous because they are fringe.

It’s a matter of fact that the main lines of division over trans rights map onto left / right or more particularly socially progressive / socially conservative divisions. Anti-trans positions on the left are very much a fringe phenomenon.

This is even clearer if you take an international view. Britain is an anomaly in that such positions, while ultimately still marginal, are held by a small media milieu and enough of an activist layer to make a certain amount of noise. Everywhere else, it’s something you’d have to go looking for to find. Why Britain has ended up unique in this regard is something I tried to explain much earlier in the thread. But even in Britain, what happens to trans rights will be decided by the battle between left and socially liberal pro trans rights stances and the forces of social conservatism. TERFs do not have the social weight to play a significant role themselves, which is precisely why they have sought to make themselves of use to the force that does have that weight, social conservatism.

Noting that an ideological position is extremely marginal doesn’t in itself mean anything in particular about the intrinsic merit of that position. But it says quite a lot about whether or not there’s any practical need for its opponents to engage with it, particularly given that most adherents of very unpopular marginal ideologies have a tireless dedication to endlessly repeating the same points. Trans people and supporters of trans rights may be interested enough to engage with TERF arguments or they might not be, but either way it doesn’t really matter. Social conservatism is the opposing force that matters.

As for whether there’s space for TERF views on the left, it’s quite clear that there isn’t. That’s not something I’ve decided, it’s a result of a wider process of ideological sorting. The bulk of the left (and of the feminist and lgbt movements) have come to classify transphobia with racism etc as an unacceptable bigotry and now responds to it with a similar hostility. Much of the latter part of this thread has been taken up by complaints about that process.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
This thread is poisonous because poisonous views were allowed to set the tone for much of it. Those views are fringe views as well as being poisonous but they are not poisonous because they are fringe.

It’s a matter of fact that the main lines of division over trans rights map onto left / right or more particularly socially progressive / socially conservative divisions. Anti-trans positions on the left are very much a fringe phenomenon.

This is even clearer if you take an international view. Britain is an anomaly in that such positions, while ultimately still marginal, are held by a small media milieu and enough of an activist layer to make a certain amount of noise. Everywhere else, it’s something you’d have to go looking for to find. Why Britain has ended up unique in this regard is something I tried to explain much earlier in the thread. But even in Britain, what happens to trans rights will be decided by the battle between left and socially liberal pro trans rights stances and the forces of social conservatism. TERFs do not have the social weight to play a significant role themselves, which is precisely why they have sought to make themselves of use to the force that does have that weight, social conservatism.

Noting that an ideological position is extremely marginal doesn’t in itself mean anything in particular about the intrinsic merit of that position. But it says quite a lot about whether or not there’s any practical need for its opponents to engage with it, particularly given that most adherents of very unpopular marginal ideologies have a tireless dedication to endlessly repeating the same points. Trans people and supporters of trans rights may be interested enough to engage with TERF arguments or they might not be, but either way it doesn’t really matter. Social conservatism is the opposing force that matters.

As for whether there’s space for TERF views on the left, it’s quite clear that there isn’t. That’s not something I’ve decided, it’s a result of a wider process of ideological sorting. The bulk of the left (and of the feminist and lgbt movements) have come to classify transphobia with racism etc as an unacceptable bigotry and now responds to it with a similar hostility. Much of the latter part of this thread has been taken up by complaints about that process.
Click to expand...

Thats a really long version of 'you are irrelavant because you are small' .

You say 'Noting that an ideological position is extremely marginal doesn’t in itself mean anything in particular about the intrinsic merit of that position'.

All you are saying is that its small so right or wrong lets ignore it. Why did you call this thread poisonous?
 
campanula said:
claiming terfs are seeking to deny transpeople their rights to live according to their preferred gender politically etc etc...but this is just an assumption and a claim he has made with no evidence apart from his say-so. This is NOT what anyone has been saying ever.
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The primary political objective of the TERFs in Britain, and the central focus of their political agitation, has been to prevent trans people from gaining the right to legal recognition of their gender by self declaration. Their most recent activity other than that has been to try to deny self-ID trans women access to All Women Shortlists. It’s frankly bizarre to describe this as a claim I’ve made without evidence.
 
bimble said:
Thats a really long version of 'you are irrelavant because you are small'
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.

You keep repeating that as if there’s something controversial about noting that a marginal outlook, held by a small ideological fringe, is largely irrelevant to a major social struggle.

bimble said:
You say 'Noting that an ideological position is extremely marginal doesn’t in itself mean anything in particular about the intrinsic merit of that position'. Have you got a view on that by any chance?
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Did you not understand what the word poisonous means?
 
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trashpony said:
It has been changed to add that after people tweeted the Guardian and the hack. It wasn't in the original story at all.
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Ah that explains why none of that stuff was mentioned in the daily mail online version of the story, which was probably 'inspired' by the original version of the observer one, with a snippet or two of added detail not related to the offences that the mail writer may have bothered to obtain for themselves.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
.

You keep repeating that as if there’s something controversial about noting that a marginal outlook, held by a small ideological fringe, is largely irrelevant to a major social struggle.



Did you not understand what the word poisonous means?
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I do understand what it means though i find it really hard to spell.
Why is criticism of the ideology of Genderology (which says that everyone has a gender identity which is innate) poisonous?
 
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bimble said:
I do understand what it means though i find it really hard to spell.
Why is criticism of the ideology of Genderology (which says that everyone has a gender identity which is innate) poisonous?
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"The issue with TERFery is not that it says gender identity is not innate but that it seeks to deny trans people their right to live as their preferred gender socially, legally and politically."

That’s now been said to you three times in about a page and a half. You really do have a remarkable enthusiasm for putting arguments you would prefer to argue against into your opponents mouth.
 
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trashpony said:
It has been changed to add that after people tweeted the Guardian and the hack. It wasn't in the original story at all.

Male estate: 85k ish
Female estate: 4k ish

The number of women serving custodial sentences for sex offences is very small - about 100 vs over 12,000 men. Moving any man who decided to identify as a woman once incarcerated like Ian Huntley and a number of other sex offenders have, would have an enormous impact on women's prisons.
Click to expand...
Correct me if I am wrong but wouldn't Ian Huntley still be assessed as a danger to others in that event, and be treated accordingly?
 
does anyone think the 44% stat on the article i linked is solely down to trans women or 'men in dresses' ?

'44 percent of lesbians and 61 percent of bisexual women experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner'

are all the intimate partners 'male'?

one does wonder.

you shouldnt throw stones from a glass house.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
"The issue with TERFery is not that it says gender identity is not innate but that it seeks to deny trans people their right to live as their preferred gender socially, legally and politically."

That’s now been said to you three times in about a page and a half. You really do have a remarkable enthusiasm for putting arguments you would prefer to argue against into your opponents mouth.
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oh the irony. You have refused completely to engage with what people like me are saying , we do not agree that gender is innate.

But ok. Do you think that for trans people to "live as their preferred gender socially, legally and politically" the definition of the word woman has to change? Is that a thing that we agree on? It no longer means adult human female right?
 
pengaleng said:
does anyone think the 44% stat on the article i linked is solely down to trans women or 'men in dresses' ?

'44 percent of lesbians and 61 percent of bisexual women experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner'

are all the intimate partners 'male'?

one does wonder
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Wow. I didn't know that, I suspect our loose bi morals make it easier for people to justify harsh treatment.
 
bimble said:
oh the irony. You have refused completely to engage with what people like me are saying , we do not agree that gender is innate.

But ok. Do you think that for trans people to "live as their preferred gender socially, legally and politically" the definition of the word woman has to change? Is that a thing that we agree on? It no longer means adult human female right?
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I never had you down as speciesist
 
'44 percent of lesbians experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner'

'26 percent of gay men experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner'

bit of a contrast init
 
pengaleng said:
well it needs addressing really because it appears theres a problem
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Power, rather than patriarchy. It is still legal to assault kids. Focusing on biology as a means of protecting the vulnerable is incredibly shortsighted. As a single mother of a small boy, this really hits home.

Eta: I mentioned kids as another example rather than an explanation for the first point

Eta 2: Patriarchy a problem too. We need to be able to hold more than one thought in wur heads at the same time.
 
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