Can't we believe that Trans-women are not true women, but still believe that Trans-women should be respected and have their choice not mocked and ridiculed? That sorta how I feel.
The way I see it, if you're a guy and willing to go through sex change surgery, dress as a woman, grow your hair as a woman, live your life as a woman, we should try our best to treat you as a woman.
.....Even though I still don't think they are women. Not sure how to reconcile that.
First, less than 10% of the guys who call themselves transwomen have had sex change surgery. The ones who have are not generally the problem, in fact many of the ones who have had the surgery are staunch allies of the women who are protesting the "TWAW" mantra. Kristina Harrison has been giving evidence to support a woman who was recently sacked because she said on social media that men could not actually turn into women. Debbie Hayton, Miranda Yardley, lots of others, some I only know by their twitter handles, all understand this.
Second, nobody should be mocked or ridiculed. Nobody is mocking or ridiculing any individual who has behaved in a reasonable manner - by saying this I am reserving the right to say what the hell I like about JY and a bunch of others like him.
Third, who is this "we", kemo sabe? It's fine for men to say they're happy to treat transwomen as women, it requires nothing from you. However, it demands that women accept people who are actually men, into women's intimate spaces.
Putting the first point beside the third point, you realise this isn't just a request to accept men who have had surgery to produce a facsimile of female genitals as women, you're demanding that women accept any man at all who claims to be a woman, without any physical changes whatsoever. Because that is the core demand of the modern trans lobby, and it is the main reason for the current upsurge in concern among women.
That is my position. trans-women are not women, but if they want to be treated as a woman then I'm fine with that as it's just a gender role and if it makes people happy Im fine with that.
Sure, that's fine. If you're a man. You can call the person ma'am and hold doors open for her and whatever else it is you do that indicates you're interacting with a woman not a man. But the stakes are a lot higher for women.
And now I have to explain again about autogynaephilia and the psychology underpinning the majority of male-to-female trans people. They are masculine. They are heterosexual. They have a sexual fetish that involves regarding themselves as women. Becoming what you love. Being their own idealised woman. Their behaviour is however masculine. It's demanding and assertive. Indeed, it's bullying. They demand everything from women, and will allow women to have no sex-segregated space or activity at all because that's "discrimination".
Now that isn't all MtF trans people. Some aren't like that. Some are not autigynaephiles. Some autogynaephiles are not narcissistic bullies. But a significant number of MtF trans are autogynaephilic narcissistic bullies, and these are the ones most prominent in the trans rights movement. And women have no way to screen these people out, indeed they are the very ones who are most exercised to gain every possible legal "privilege" that women have.
They infest lesbian groups and lesbian dating sites, insisting that they are women and therefore lesbians and it's transphobic of a lesbian not to consider them as a sexual partner. They publish articles about how to overcome lesbians' reluctance to have sex with them (google "cotton ceiling") and how-to manuals to tell lesbians how "lesbians with girl-dick" like to be stimulated.
They attack meetings of women who are concerned about this attack on women's rights, screaming and banging on windows. They attack them on social media, posting fantasies about killing terfs, raping terfs to death, beating them with barbed-wire-covered baseball bats (painted baby-blue and candy-pink).
They demand, if they are criminals, including sex offenders, to be imprisoned in women's prisons with vulnerable women prisoners, whom they proceed to harrass, assault and rape. They demand to be Girl Guide leaders and go with the children to camp. They demand to be housed in women's domestic violence shelters, and if the rape victim who is forced to share a room with them expresses discomfort, it is the traumatised woman who will be tossed out into the street, not the "woman" with the fully-functional penis. They demand to be included in women-only short-lists for business and political positions and awards.
These are the stakes for women. If you're a man and you just want to be polite to men who have decided to remove themselves from your category and join the other category, it's easy enough. But if you're a woman, and especially if you're a lesbian, it's your category that is being colonised. It's your intimate spaces that are now no longer single-sex. It's your sisterhood that now has a man in a dress talking over everyone and insisting that any topic relating to female biology cannot be mentioned as it's transphobic.
Can't talk about periods, or breast-feeding, or childbirth, or cervical cancer, or abortions or contraception, because that's "triggering" as it reminds them that they are not and cannot be female. Our very vocabulary is being erased, because referring to pregnant women or breast-feeding and so on upsets transwomen. Never mind if actual women are upset by the new terminology.
No doubt I'll be called a bigoted terf yet again for saying all this again, but it has to be understood. Men have nothing to lose here. Men are simply passing the problematic men over to women and leaving us to deal with it, while we're being told to be kind. Well these guys want more from us than simply to have a door held open and to be called ma'am.
