TERFs crash London Pride

Also, looking back over this thread, I note a great deal of "attacking the arguer". Not quite in such a way as to fall foul of the MA, but a persistent characterising of my point of view as bigoted, assertions that my arguments aren't valid because someone might be "hurt" by them, and simple flat-out lying about what I've said. Not cool.
 
I am surprised by where posters have been landing on this issue. Here's the opinion of a female woman (I don't care specifically, biology formed this body and that's what everyone will see) who is also a biologist: Trans people aren't biologically their target sex, but they are their target gender completely independent of surgery. Nothing, absolutely nothing, in biology supports the notion of gender or even binaries. Sex is a spectrum----sure, there's two chromosomes and if you don't look closer it can appear like it's either one or the other. But biology is messy from start to finish. A million things can affect the outcome from before conception to long after, how is it that the person themselves cannot be a factor?
 
No, we weren't. We were observing the simple fact that in English law, and indeed in common parlance in England, the word rape refers to forced penetration by a penis. Forced penetration with some other object doesn't come under the definition of rape.

It's got nothing to do with whether one thing is worse than the other, it's a simple fact of what the word means. If it has a wider meaning in the USA, fine, lots of words mean slightly different things on either side of the Atlantic. That's not a value-judgement, it's just the way language has evolved. (Indeed, someone pointed out that the penalties for both crimes in English law are identical, which suggests that the law doesn't think one thing is worse than the other.)

Then your point is an odd semantic arguement and I retract any implied support or understanding of its validity.
 
I am surprised by where posters have been landing on this issue. Here's the opinion of a female woman (I don't care specifically, biology formed this body and that's what everyone will see) who is also a biologist: Trans people aren't biologically their target sex, but they are their target gender completely independent of surgery. Nothing, absolutely nothing, in biology supports the notion of gender or even binaries. Sex is a spectrum----sure, there's two chromosomes and if you don't look closer it can appear like it's either one or the other. But biology is messy from start to finish. A million things can affect the outcome from before conception to long after, how is it that the person themselves cannot be a factor?

Everything is messy doesn't make meaningful definition impossible.

If you were looking at anything but people it would obviously be male and female, but once people can get offended things get complicated.
 
Then your point is an odd semantic arguement and I retract any implied support or understanding of its validity.


I said, if there is no man in a prison, a woman prisoner cannot be raped. This is not an odd semantic point, it is how rape is legally defined in the jurisdiction under discussion at the time (England), and what rape is commonly understood to mean there. Simple fact, not a "point" at all.

Cue a bunch of Americans screaming at me that I'm wrong, because the word has a somewhat different definition in America. Grow up. America isn't the world, nor the invariable standard everyone else has to abide by.

Are you actually saying you consider English law to be invalid because it defines rape as penetration by a penis? I've heard of American exceptionalism but this is something else.
 
Everything is messy doesn't make meaningful definition impossible.

If you were looking at anything but people it would obviously be male and female, but once people can get offended things get complicated.

Nonsense. Intersex exists in every species that bothers with sexes, we have however spent a lot more time and energy examining human biology. Sex is already meaningfully described as a spectrum with one end marked 'male' and the other end marked 'female'. Individuals can fall anywhere along that spectrum based on the millions of factors that influence development. It's strange though that the mind isn't considered one of those factors.
 
I said, if there is no man in a prison, a woman prisoner cannot be raped.

This is the reasoning for why a woman whose clitoris was so large as to appear to be a penis was put into solitary confinement at her prison. Solitary. For her body not matching expectations.
 
Sex isn't a spectrum. The fact that a tiny tiny tiny minority of cases are exceptions to the rule (only really requiring a rule change) doesn't mean that there is now a wide spectrum of possibilities.

Now, many scientific terms have low resolution definitions that work 99% of the time, with others needed for the edge-cases. The edge-cases here would be anything different from functioning XY. The base case is "XX = female, XY = male"

One expanded definition that would categorize all cases "any amount of Y = male" (ex/ XXY, X, XXXXXXXY, XXXXX... etc.)

I think another definition is whether or not there is a functioning SRY gene, and this then accounts for cases where the SRY gene is found on the X chromosome.

Full disclosure: I am nowhere near being an expert in the topic. You may disagree with me on whether this constitutes a "spectrum" but I'd personally rather not categorize something that is 99%+ a binary system (under the most basic definition) as a spectrum. A slight definition change makes that 100% or near 100% a binary. Ultimately this is largely pedantic
 
I feel this is mostly off-topic and I’m late to responding so I’ll try to keep this short and to the point. edit: I fail but whatever, I wanted to get a response in to this before I forgot. It's probably too off-topic now except the closing part
This isn't a problem at all.

Working class men are disadvantaged compared to upper class men. That doesn't mean economic class oppression doesn't exist. Oppressed working class men gain an advantage over women simply by being born male, in that they will very likely be paid more for their labour than women for doing exactly the same work, for example. This advantage doesn't negate the disadvantages these men face because of their socio-economic status. That there have been individual women in powerful positions doesn't wipe out the fact that historically, political power has nearly always been wielded by and for men as a class.
I disagree with the bolded. I also disagree with the presumption that working class men are advantaged over women. Let’s accept for the sake of argument that not only does the wage gap exist (~5% for same job), that it is also based solely on discrimination. Picking a single example where this is the case doesn’t mean that overall men have advantages over women. The oppressor-oppressed model simply doesn’t account for reality. Once again, the fact that men were mostly those in the positions of power does not grant privileges to the other 99% of men who had no power. Despite the feminist narrative, men don’t just govern by advantaging men over women (I’d argue the opposite is true – that women’s interests are the only interests taken seriously at large and by politicians)
No, they don't. They tend to celebrate it.
Right. Except the bad policies, or privileges that women have over men. These are outright ignored or downplayed in favor of the “men as a class have X” narrative which again I think is nonsense.

LOL. The invisible powerful women!
See above answers

Yeah, right! Women still get paid less for their labour. Often they don't get paid at all.
Often? You mean like stay-at-home moms? Excuse me if I don’t consider the “not working full-time” position to be “unpaid labor”.

Yes, two centuries of feminism has been politically successful and made real gains but the pay gap still exists between men and women all over the world. Money is power.
Money is one element of power. Again conceding the entire wage gap argument doesn’t make it so that men automatically have more power except strictly financially if they work (and only compared to other women who also work).

What you personally "suspect" is irrelevant to whether or nor this bullying exists.
The feminist vs non-feminist perspective is a false dichotomy. Third wave feminism is not the same as second wave feminism, for example. The third wave has largely accepted and been undermined by Postmodern identity politics. Previous feminist political gains are being reversed.
The "progressive sphere" has been strongly influenced by transgender identity activist doctrine/magical thinking. Many on the left are terrified of speaking out about transgender activist bullying. Progressives ( in contrast to conservatives) are strongly motivated by empathy and automatically identify with minorities and underdogs. They are easy meat for guilt trippers claiming superior victimhood, as male transgender activists do!
I linked to examples of transgender activist bullying, above. The unselfconscious use of the slur "TERFs" in the title of this thread and in the comments are also examples of this. There is no such thing as a "TERF".
I never said it doesn’t exist I was merely responding to your claim that it is “MRAs” behind this type of activism. I suspect you’re dead wrong and I think you’re come to this conclusion only because you see MRAs as an enemy to other people into. Again, just a suspicion based on personal experience.
Pre-Edit: I wonder, does this make all politicians in the "patriarchy" also MRAs since they allegedly construct the world to the benefit of men?

The "talking points" aren't anti-trans. They are anti transgender identity activist political doctrine.
Feminists are and have been natural allies of anyone not conforming to gender rules, including trans people. Feminism seeks get rid of gender altogether.

You need to get out more, apparently. :) The notion that lesbians rejecting sex with trans women (i.e men) is transphobic is central to transgender-activist thinking. That's why the Pride protest explicitly referenced it. "Lesbians are female homosexuals" was one of their banners
Well if feminists want to get rid of gender altogether (I agree some of them do) then why do others so adamantly argue that there need to be “women’s spaces”? Do you see how these are conflicting goals/messages?
I never said that that behavior doesn’t happen, as I’ve seen those arguments made by some transgender activists (online, anyway). Pre-Edit: I see now that I wrote ambiguously. What I meant was that I’ve never seen that behavior in the MRM. Only by other progressive groups.

Circumcision is genital mutilation and is most prevalent in patriarchal (male God) religions and psychologically very harmful. It is a form of male violence. There are probably bigger issues facing men than this, though.
As for specific issues (not broad things like “male disposability), I think it’s near the top. Maybe not the top, but up there.

Transgender identity political activism is a subset of mens' rights activism. The activists are campaigning for the rights of men (transwomen).
Women do not have an issue with transmen entering women-only spaces because transmen are women.
What you personally "buy" is your opinion. Thanks for sharing it.
It seems "patriarchy" is a trigger word for you! Whether or not you believe male domination or patriarchy exists isn't so important to the topic of this thread, which is the "Get the L out of LGBT' protest by lesbians at London Pride this year. Maybe you could have a chat with the Pope if you really are unable to identify sex-based power structures.
First, they aren’t only campaigning on the rights of men. Second, I think we just see things differently in how we label and group things. You seem to see anything involving men in any way (trans women ie biologically male) as a men’s rights advocacy. I don’t see things that way. Maybe I’m wrong but I’ve never seen any group of trans activists self-label (or labeled by anyone except in this thread) as under the banner of the men’s rights movement.
Yes, it’s not really the topic but it’s come up as a secondary topic through our conversation but I’ve answered this enough above so I’ll leave it at that.

= strawman, unless you can demonstrate that anyone has ever said "they're pedos". Why wouldn't predatory men take advantage of permission to enter female toilets, prisons and other female-only spaces? Some men, quite a lot of them, are dangerous and sexually abusive.
Women are afraid of walking home alone at night because they are afraid of men. This seems perfectly reasonable! Men are also afraid of men in this context.
The transgender identity political activist cult is indeed relatively small, numerically, but it is politically very successful and has been able to influence national legal policy and law in several countries, normalising for, example, "transitioning" children, as part of a highly lucrative "transitioning" industry for the medical/pharmaceutical complex and in getting men (XY) who subjectively "identify" as women legally treated as real women (XX). This is what eradicating women as a class looks like.

Rolfe posted this link earlier, which is worth reading:

https://astroterf.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/the-cuckoo-in-the-lgbt-nest/

Facebook is blocking it because it has been reported as abusive.

Who did you think might have found it abusive and reported it as such?
I won’t quote someone in this thread saying this but I’ve seen this sentiment a lot, even on TV. It’s basically the primary argument against sex- (not gender-) segregated washrooms.
“quite a lot of them” is weasel-wording it. Also, the same goes FOR WOMEN. “quite a lot of them” are also dangerous and sexually abusive. Wow, guess we can’t have more than one woman at a time in a washroom.
 
From the trenches

I work at a UK university with lots of ties to Berlin, and the situation is getting weird in some places. Let me give you some background first. I've always felt that trans people deserve rights and recognition, and I knew a few trans people (only trans women that I know of), and interacted with them and made an effort to treat them in every way as they wanted to be treated, using the appropriate pronouns and recognising their identity.

In short, I believe everyone deserves respect and legal rights.

The situation has changed in the last few years. At first the debate completely passed me by, but increasingly I noticed a few critical theory people at university making a lot of noise about TERFs and repeating the mantra "trans women are women". I had no idea what this was referring to, and I just ignored it and continued getting on with my life.

In the last couple of years I have been paying more attention, and I do not like a lot of what I see. Firstly I started noticing a few men dressed with some female attire in conferences that I attend, particularly in Berlin. These guys made a big show of their presence, but what surprised me is that they wanted to be called women, when their only defining female feature would be a piece of clothing and/or makeup. So I started seeing men with beards wearing a dress, or a bald man with earrings and stilettos, all expecting everyone to call them women. I have no statistics to back this up, but at least in my experience the number of "clothes trans" (I have no idea how else to call them) outnumber the more traditional trans people that are transitioning and lead their full lives as their identified gender. The ratio is not even close (I insist, this is mostly in my circle of Brighton-Berlin).

In my recent experience, these type of men are mostly showing no attempt to transition, nothing other than their intention to demand access to female toilets and demand the world call them a woman. In a few cases I've seen, they are also demanding access to lesbian women (the so-called cotton ceiling).

I do not like where this leads, as womanhood has been reduced to a pair of shoes.

The more I pay attention to the debate, the more I see a group of men who feel they are entitled to be considered women, attempting to police language and thought, and their agenda is being pushed with violence and threats. Biology is being denied, and gender has become a matter of opinion, and what you feel like that day. This has shattered my early good will towards trans men.

I'm terrified of expressing these views using my real name, I see what has happened to people who speak up about their concerns.

This is my limited experience, make of that what you will.
 
I work at a UK university with lots of ties to Berlin, and the situation is getting weird in some places. Let me give you some background first. I've always felt that trans people deserve rights ...

That's where I stopped reading ....
 
I work at a UK university with lots of ties to Berlin, and the situation is getting weird in some places. Let me give you some background first. I've always felt that trans people deserve rights and recognition, and I knew a few trans people (only trans women that I know of), and interacted with them and made an effort to treat them in every way as they wanted to be treated, using the appropriate pronouns and recognising their identity.

In short, I believe everyone deserves respect and legal rights.

The situation has changed in the last few years. At first the debate completely passed me by, but increasingly I noticed a few critical theory people at university making a lot of noise about TERFs and repeating the mantra "trans women are women". I had no idea what this was referring to, and I just ignored it and continued getting on with my life.

In the last couple of years I have been paying more attention, and I do not like a lot of what I see. Firstly I started noticing a few men dressed with some female attire in conferences that I attend, particularly in Berlin. These guys made a big show of their presence, but what surprised me is that they wanted to be called women, when their only defining female feature would be a piece of clothing and/or makeup. So I started seeing men with beards wearing a dress, or a bald man with earrings and stilettos, all expecting everyone to call them women. I have no statistics to back this up, but at least in my experience the number of "clothes trans" (I have no idea how else to call them) outnumber the more traditional trans people that are transitioning and lead their full lives as their identified gender. The ratio is not even close (I insist, this is mostly in my circle of Brighton-Berlin).

In my recent experience, these type of men are mostly showing no attempt to transition, nothing other than their intention to demand access to female toilets and demand the world call them a woman. In a few cases I've seen, they are also demanding access to lesbian women (the so-called cotton ceiling).

I do not like where this leads, as womanhood has been reduced to a pair of shoes.

The more I pay attention to the debate, the more I see a group of men who feel they are entitled to be considered women, attempting to police language and thought, and their agenda is being pushed with violence and threats. Biology is being denied, and gender has become a matter of opinion, and what you feel like that day. This has shattered my early good will towards trans men.

I'm terrified of expressing these views using my real name, I see what has happened to people who speak up about their concerns.

This is my limited experience, make of that what you will.

I see here, and in other posts that this group of men turning up in little more than a smudge of make-up and a natty little black number are noted for "demanding" access to lesbian women. How on earth can this be? Am I reading this too literally? How can these men "access" these women without their consent? Is there any statistics showing an increase of the rape of lesbian women by transwomen? I couldn't find anything other than "corrective rape" stats which is another unsavoury subject not a good fit for this particular thread. I have read that (some) transwomen are considered rapists by another part of the LBGT community, is this simply demonising or can it backed up by hard figures?

I have to admit that this entire subject is one that I'm staggeringly ignorant about and I've learned a lot just reading this thread and another on a similar subject.
 
That's where I stopped reading ....

I'm curious as to why, I may have phrased it improperly (it may be evident that English is not my first language), but I meant to say that I believe everyone deserves rights and respect, and I have always treated trans people in that way.
 
I see here, and in other posts that this group of men turning up in little more than a smudge of make-up and a natty little black number are noted for "demanding" access to lesbian women. How on earth can this be? Am I reading this too literally? How can these men "access" these women without their consent? Is there any statistics showing an increase of the rape of lesbian women by transwomen? I couldn't find anything other than "corrective rape" stats which is another unsavoury subject not a good fit for this particular thread. I have read that (some) transwomen are considered rapists by another part of the LBGT community, is this simply demonising or can it backed up by hard figures?

I have to admit that this entire subject is one that I'm staggeringly ignorant about and I've learned a lot just reading this thread and another on a similar subject.

Demanding access is precisely what they do, google "cotton ceiling". They loudly call for lesbians to accept their "girl dicks" as viable. There's still consent, but there is a vocal call to change language and sexual preference norms.

A lot of these men (I refuse to call them women) are self-described lesbians, so they believe that lesbian preference for female genitalia is transphobic. I admit that this is not generalised, and it is taking place in some of my academic and technology circles in Brighton and Berlin, reputedly some of the most trans-friendly towns in the world, so perhaps I am experiencing this from the front-lines. This has become a matter of faith in some circles.

I can't speak about other elements of this thread. I have not heard of any rapes taking place, and I know nothing about "corrective" abuses, but I know quite a lot of women who are disturbed by having a hairy guy in a dress use the same toilet as them, but many others do not care.

The main complain I've heard from various women is when female toilets are changed to all-sex toilets, but men toilets with urinals are left unchanged (this is taking place in conferences and a few venues), this increases the lines and creates animosity.
 
Demanding access is precisely what they do, google "cotton ceiling". They loudly call for lesbians to accept their "girl dicks" as viable. There's still consent, but there is a vocal call to change language and sexual preference norms.

A lot of these men (I refuse to call them women) are self-described lesbians, so they believe that lesbian preference for female genitalia is transphobic. I admit that this is not generalised, and it is taking place in some of my academic and technology circles in Brighton and Berlin, reputedly some of the most trans-friendly towns in the world, so perhaps I am experiencing this from the front-lines. This has become a matter of faith in some circles.

I can't speak about other elements of this thread. I have not heard of any rapes taking place, and I know nothing about "corrective" abuses, but I know quite a lot of women who are disturbed by having a hairy guy in a dress use the same toilet as them, but many others do not care.

The main complain I've heard from various women is when female toilets are changed to all-sex toilets, but men toilets with urinals are left unchanged (this is taking place in conferences and a few venues), this increases the lines and creates animosity.

Another constant is the use use of the description "hairy guy in a dress", is this not somewhat disingenuous?

I still can't get my head around the demands they are making seemingly gaining traction (I suspect my ignorance has a part to play). I can demand all the sex or access I want to all sections and subsets of society but that makes no difference whatsoever to my ability to actually achieve my aims. Why is it any different for the LBGT community. What am I missing here?
 
I feel this is mostly off-topic and I’m late to responding so I’ll try to keep this short and to the point. edit: I fail but whatever, I wanted to get a response in to this before I forgot. It's probably too off-topic now except the closing part

I disagree with the bolded. I also disagree with the presumption that working class men are advantaged over women.

Working class men are advantaged over working class women.


Let’s accept for the sake of argument that not only does the wage gap exist (~5% for same job), that it is also based solely on discrimination. Picking a single example where this is the case doesn’t mean that overall men have advantages over women.

The wage gap is global. The average pay for women in 2017 was $12,000, compared with $21,000 for men.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/pay-equality-men-women-gender-gap-report-2017

The oppressor-oppressed model simply doesn’t account for reality. Once again, the fact that men were mostly those in the positions of power does not grant privileges to the other 99% of men who had no power.

True. Ruling men are simply at the top of the patriarchal food chain. They benefit the most from sexism. They feed off men and women.

Despite the feminist narrative, men don’t just govern by advantaging men over women (I’d argue the opposite is true – that women’s interests are the only interests taken seriously at large and by politicians)

:jaw-dropp UK women's groups weren't even consulted on the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act, changes which will impact women negatively.

Right. Except the bad policies, or privileges that women have over men. These are outright ignored or downplayed in favor of the “men as a class have X” narrative which again I think is nonsense.

What privileges do women have over men?


See above answers


Often? You mean like stay-at-home moms? Excuse me if I don’t consider the “not working full-time” position to be “unpaid labor”.

Domestic work (child rearing, cooking, cleaning etc) is labour, and it's mostly unpaid. I don't think many mothers would agree with your characterisation of their job as "not working full-time". Few other jobs have such long hours.


Money is one element of power. Again conceding the entire wage gap argument doesn’t make it so that men automatically have more power except strictly financially if they work (and only compared to other women who also work).

Without money, we have very little power in our society. We have to rely on begging, crime or charity to survive.


I never said it doesn’t exist I was merely responding to your claim that it is “MRAs” behind this type of activism. I suspect you’re dead wrong and I think you’re come to this conclusion only because you see MRAs as an enemy to other people into. Again, just a suspicion based on personal experience.
Pre-Edit: I wonder, does this make all politicians in the "patriarchy" also MRAs since they allegedly construct the world to the benefit of men?

I wasn't saying MRA are behind trans activism. I was saying transgender activists are MRAs.


Well if feminists want to get rid of gender altogether (I agree some of them do) then why do others so adamantly argue that there need to be “women’s spaces”? Do you see how these are conflicting goals/messages?

Women-only spaces are segregated according to biological sex, not gender.


I never said that that behavior doesn’t happen, as I’ve seen those arguments made by some transgender activists (online, anyway). Pre-Edit: I see now that I wrote ambiguously. What I meant was that I’ve never seen that behavior in the MRM. Only by other progressive groups.


As for specific issues (not broad things like “male disposability), I think it’s near the top. Maybe not the top, but up there.


First, they aren’t only campaigning on the rights of men. Second, I think we just see things differently in how we label and group things. You seem to see anything involving men in any way (trans women ie biologically male) as a men’s rights advocacy.

I don't see any campaigning for self-identified transmen to be allowed to use men's bathrooms.


I don’t see things that way. Maybe I’m wrong but I’ve never seen any group of trans activists self-label (or labeled by anyone except in this thread) as under the banner of the men’s rights movement.

Probably because they think they are women!

Yes, it’s not really the topic but it’s come up as a secondary topic through our conversation but I’ve answered this enough above so I’ll leave it at that.


I won’t quote someone in this thread saying this but I’ve seen this sentiment a lot, even on TV. It’s basically the primary argument against sex- (not gender-) segregated washrooms.
“quite a lot of them” is weasel-wording it. Also, the same goes FOR WOMEN. “quite a lot of them” are also dangerous and sexually abusive. Wow, guess we can’t have more than one woman at a time in a washroom.

Consider this: Girls like to deal with logistics of menstruation without the presence of men in the same room. Schools in the UK now allow "trans" girls (boys) into girls' washrooms. As a result of there being boys in the washroom girls stop using the washrooms and stay away from school altogether during their periods.

Who is being excluded here?

If a women walks into a male-only space, do the men immediately assess whether of not she presents a potential physical threat?
 
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It sounds to me as though there's a separate group of men who are gaming the system that was developing to support genuine trans-gender people. The few trans-men and -women that I've met certainly don't match what's being described here, but are being maligned for the actions of others.

Is there any insight as to whether these people genuinely believe that they are trans, or are they doing it for some other reason? Is it an organised movement with some ulterior motive?
 
It sounds to me as though there's a separate group of men who are gaming the system that was developing to support genuine trans-gender people. The few trans-men and -women that I've met certainly don't match what's being described here, but are being maligned for the actions of others.

Is there any insight as to whether these people genuinely believe that they are trans, or are they doing it for some other reason? Is it an organised movement with some ulterior motive?


That's all a bit of a can of worms, not least because who decides what "genuinely trans" means? It seems as if any explanation relating to autogynaephilia will be "shamed" out of court because the trans activists insist that this is discredited, although it isn't.

It certainly appears to be an organised movement. Whenever A Woman's Place or any other women's organisation arranges a meeting to discuss the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act a co-ordinated campaign of complaints to the venue that they're hosting a hate group and hate speech springs up, and a fairly large number of protestors appear in person to disrupt the meeting, no matter whereabouts in Britain it is. I have read an article purporting to explain how this is financed, talking about an extremely wealthy trans IT mogul, and there being a relatively high proportion of non-gender-conforming trans-identifying men working in cutting-edge IT companies.

There are a fair number of older, conventional transsexuals who oppose this group and side with the women's movement. They are referred to as "truscum" by the trans activists and vilified along with the women.
 

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