If academic institutions are scared to address this topic, which they are, and while transgender activists are attempting to close down all debate, where do think these statistics are going to come from? Who is going to fund the research?
TERFs crash London Pride
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If academic institutions are scared to address this topic, which they are, and while transgender activists are attempting to close down all debate, where do think these statistics are going to come from? Who is going to fund the research?
quadraginta
Becoming Beth
Right.
Exactly.
"... and some, I assume, are good people.”
Who has made such a suggestion?
The thing is, there is no elephant in the room.
There's just a mouse someone saw running past and now some people are jumping up on their chairs and screaming.
No one is avoiding discussion about ill-behaved men who are abusing the transgender label, or even real trans people doing the same. That is people acting badly. The common connection is that they are people. Not that they are trans.
In any group there is going to be some tiny fraction who behave badly. It becomes a different thing when that tiny fraction is put forth as a poster child of the entire group.
What some people are doing is interjecting their hysterical terror of that tiny fraction into every single conversation about transgenderism that they encounter.
That doesn't have any relationship to not being able to talk about it. That is overwhelming every conversation even tangentially related to the topic of transgenderism with the same, tired, single-note obsession.
There's no elephant there. Just what some are trying to magnify into something that looks like an elephant.
This is exactly the same sort of demonization tactics which turned every discussion about trans people using the bathroom of the gender they identify with into a raging argument about pervs in dresses molesting little girls.
Blacks are thugs. Hispanics are drug dealers. Transwomen are pervs.
Etc., etc., etc..
I am disappointed to see someone with your otherwise well-established reputation for reason and sensibility employing and promoting those sorts of tactics.
Rolfe
Adult human female
Did you perchance write that before I edited my post that you quoted, or did you deliberately snip the part where I explained why the toxic behaviour of the bullying trans activist contingent (which is substantial and growing and appears well-organised) is absolutely relevant to the thread?
You appear to want to use this thread purely for the purpose of slinging mud at a group of women who went somewhere the trans activists didn't want them to go. We're not allowed to talk about the reason the women had banners reading "lesbian = female homosexual" and similar things? You want to outlaw any discussion that might put their action in context and show why they did it?
Shame on you.
Again from ignorance, I find myself wondering if this isn't the expected result of, for want of a better phrase, "creeping acceptance". If sections of society break away from accepted norms and demand recognition and rights (note - I'm not arguing against that) isn't it just a matter of time before, having been accepted and having gained desired rights, another subset breaks away and pushes that comfortable envelope.
Personally, sans rape or assault, I can't see any good reason not to allow transwomen to use public toilets formerly reserved for biological females? A rapist is what a rapist is and seldom, if acting in a planned manner, will the rapist be particularly concerned about such subterfuge. What do I know though - seriously?
I'm kinda reluctant to get too involved in this discussion despite finding it fascinating as I'm wary of upsetting one, both or multitudes of the sides involved. What a minefield!
Personally, sans rape or assault, I can't see any good reason not to allow transwomen to use public toilets formerly reserved for biological females? A rapist is what a rapist is and seldom, if acting in a planned manner, will the rapist be particularly concerned about such subterfuge. What do I know though - seriously?
I'm kinda reluctant to get too involved in this discussion despite finding it fascinating as I'm wary of upsetting one, both or multitudes of the sides involved. What a minefield!
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Porpoise of Life
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quadraginta
Becoming Beth
Why yes. Yes I did. Or more properly, I was writing it in the interval between your post and your edit of that post. Other things go on in life. I wasn't devoted full-time to my post. Apologies. (I guess.)
Yes, it is relevant to the thread. I didn't say it wasn't.
How "substantial" this "contingent" actually is is also relevant to the thread.
What utter crap. I'm not "slinging mud" at all. Questioning your statements and the rhetorical tactics you employ is not "slinging mud". It's disagreeing.
Perhaps you should ponder the difference.
And now you are falling back on just making crap up. Does that count as "slinging mud"? You're certainly slinging something, but it's provenance is less attractive.
Got a mirror handy?
Rolfe
Adult human female
I've encountered many men who can't see any reason not to allow trans-identifying men into protected female spaces. I don't think men really understand that it's male bodies women are uncomfortable with. For some it's a religious thing and they won't be able to go to the gym or the swimming pool if male-bodied people are allowed in the female changing rooms. Others have been sexually assaulted and have a resulting fear of and negative reaction to male bodies close to them when they're in a vulnerable condition. But many women who have had no particularly negative experiences also find being close to male-bodied strangers in public lavatories very disconcerting.
As someone else mentioned earlier in the thread, teenage girls trying to cope with menstruation for the first time (and I don't just mean the very first period, you're very self-conscious and awkward for quite a while) don't want to do this with men or boys around, but boys who declare that they're girls are being allowed to use the girls' toilets in schools.
For many years transsexuals were like Georgina Beyer in the other thread. There was a tacit agreement to allow them a pass as honorary women, and there weren't very many of them. Now, however, there are men who are very different from Georgina demanding access to all women's protected spaces. They want to provide personal services like depilation to women, they want to offer rape counselling to women, they (as nurses) want to carry out cervical smear tests on women. They want to go into girls' changing rooms and get their kit off beside the girls. And we're being told it's transphobic even to want to discuss this, they're women and women just have to move over and shut up about it.
This is no longer just a small number of integrated transsexuals who just want to pee. Women fought long and hard a hundred years ago to have their own public toilets so that they could go out of the house for more than a few hours at a time. What was a tacit agreement to accommodate a small number of people who were trying to fit in has turned into something else entirely.
Men saying that they don't see why women's protected spaces shouldn't be thrown open to any man who wants to go in there are really not helping.
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Errr... sorta.
You are correct that every movement/cause has a degree of people who are just in it to... push the envelope. I am 100% metaphysically certain that if a magic genie was to snap its fingers right now and make every single person on the planet fully accept transgenderism a small but not statistically insignificant portion of that population would just move on to the next way they want to be unique.
Yes there is a degree of "Would you just shut up and let me be special" to some of this. "Labels don't fit me" is a fetish some people have and by definition that isn't a problem that can't be solved by more labels.
But I don't see where that changes anything on a practical level or how we're supposed to go forward differently having accepted that.
Again this is why I feel like such an outsider here. I roll my eyes at the whole "I'm a panqueer gender fluid type 32 post modern transmale with sprinkles" nonsense as much as anybody. I just don't see what it matters to the bigger picture in anything but incidentals.
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Rolfe
Adult human female
I'm pretty much on board with what you have written here. Simply put, it is not an issue I have ever had to deal with and I can't see that it ever will be. I have a niece who is lesbian and seems to just live life like anybody else with her long term partner; then again why would she bother her old uncle with any issues that may have come up in her life, I suppose? I don't think I'd ever ask her what she thinks about trans-women as nothing in her day to day interactions with me or on social media suggests that she has an opinion.
The reason that this thread and the other one has elicited such interest from me is that it describes a section of people (trans-women/activists) that just don't exist* in my sphere of the world. I don't mean that I don't see them or that I ignore them... they simply do not exist in any way, shape or form. During my foray (many decades ago) into further and tertiary education no such people existed, perhaps, I suspect, because it was such a taboo that none were brave enough to "come out" as trans in public.
I knew a "sissy" boy or two but they didn't show any signs of wanting to be seen as female. Who knows what they are up to nowadays?
*There was a bloke in Arbroath who went from being Steve to Stephanie but absolutely nobody gave flying ****. It was that much of a non event I'd forgotten all about him...... her even though she once bought me a lovely bunch of flowers (no, I don't know why). He was, how can I put this, a unique looking woman.
I will continue to be educated and broaden my horizons.
Whilst I'm sure some people with transvestite urges took advantage of the freedoms offered by a career on the stage, I think cross dressing on stage is not what is normally meant by transvestism, at least in the context of trans rights. I'd be surprised if Barry Humphreys, Dick Emery, Stanley Baxter, the two Ronnies or the Monty Python team would have classed themselves as transvestites.
"Dame Edna" (Comedian Barry Humphries) and "Divine" (Performance artist Harris Glenn Milstead) probably the two most "mainstream" crossdressers here in the State's pop culture, were both fairly adamant that they were straight and gender confirming, with Humphries I believe actually saying some pretty nasty things and transgenders.
quadraginta
Becoming Beth
No, but it is an essential component of the "autogynephilia" which is supposedly the root cause motivating all adult transwomen. It's a paraphilia whereby a man (cisgendered) gets sexual stimulation from wearing women's clothes.
The "autogynephilia" theory which Blanchard espoused is, in his view, just another, more elaborate paraphilia. With possible elements of homosexuality.
This is why the TERF crowd is so enamored of his crackpot pseudoscience. It means that the "lesbian transwomen" are nothing more than rude transvestites using the trans label as a cover.
quadraginta
Becoming Beth
"Crossdresser" means one thing. "Transvestite" means something different.
"Transgender" means something else entirely, and is less related to those two terms than they are to each other.
Post-modernism, identity politics and a distortion of the feminist slogan "The Personal is Political" and a backlash against the successes of feminism are part of the mix.
Increasingly, it is young girls rejecting their sex. It's not new for girls to want to be boys, to behave like boys and have the same interests. Boys have more freedom and fun. Nowadays, these feelings and behaviours can be identified as signs of a transgender identity and girls can be offered the chance to, apparently, actually become boys. Who could refuse an offer like that?!
One commentator observed that transgender and identity politics aren't really politics at all because the real world, with its material struggles (.e.g. finding a babysitter), is largely irrelevant to its concerns. Now it's mostly about feelings and subjective experience ('I am a woman because i feel like one'), so it strongly reflects the wider narcissistic, individualistic (neoliberal?), depoliticised culture of our age.
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LOL. It's not "TERFs" who are claiming that they can magically become members of the opposite sex or that penises can be female!
Because the margins are not an single group that's always gonna get along.
And sadly... this is gonna happen. It would be a wonderful thing if... the feeling of being marginalized was a transferable quality. But it's not. Being oppressed is not a guarantee you're gonna recognize it in other groups or fight it if you see it.
Women can be racist. Blacks can be homophobic. I've seen interracial couples oppose gay marriage. The feeling of the fight your own group went through isn't a vaccine against hatred.
The idea that transgender people are automatically going to welcome the next group with open arms is fairly counter to history.