“You know you’re being an ally when you’re doing things that make you feel uncomfortable”.



It really is in plain sight isn't it. They say the quiet parts out loud.



No. If you feel uncomfortable about doing something that is supposed to make you an ally, you are ignoring your compass that guides your decisions about which ones are right for you. If your intuition is telling you something isn't right in your eyes, then fucking go and find out more, and work out if there is something about what you are doing that you know is poor safeguarding, or leads people to harm.



You should never just tamp it down because some consultant tells you that this is way to be being a 'good' person.

Society may expect things of people of that sex but we should be trying to alter those expectations not alter birth certificates. In a nutshell, there is the difference between the traditional Gay rights movement and the new corporate sponsored LGBTPLC movement.

The point I would make, is that the purpose of debate isn't necessarily to change your opponent's mind. That mostly doesn't happen.

The real point of debate is to test the strength of arguments, and potentially change the minds of a more neutral audience that may be witnessing the debate.

To say "I'm not going to change the minds of the 10%"... who cares if you are going to change their minds? Just destroy their position anyway, if you have the arguments to do it.

Exactly.

'Think of the lurkers.'

This is for the lurkers on here who may be reading this:

When you make a concerted effort to alter our language and our long-held understanding of human nature in order to eliminate sex-based rights and safeguarding for females… expect pushback.

When you begin involving people’s children in an ideology that not only exposes little girls to naked males in traditionally female spaces, but which is psychologically unhealthy, teaches hatred of the body, and has an end goal of medicalization and radical body modification… expect SEVERE pushback.

When your activism hinges on violence, demonization, and an unwillingness to debate, and which demands 100% capitulation, without question, to an ideology that introduces brand new and illogical concepts that affect the more vulnerable sex… EXPECT PUSHBACK.

I have learned the hard way not to discuss these matters in a group. You only need one person to disagree with you and suddenly everyone else takes fright and turns against you to signal their virtue. The backlash can be horrendous and very upsetting - I had to endure people making comments about me in front of me and suddenly it was assumed I was a GC monster with no feelings, or that I deserved everything I got. And this was from people who've known me for decades and whom I counted as friends.



I will discuss it with individual people quietly but some don't want to have those discussions, which is fine and I'm not going to push it because it will damage the friendship. Others do want to talk and are sometimes glad to have found someone of a similar mindset and then we are free to discuss less quietly!



My social media are separated; I have GC accounts and 'me' accounts and there is nothing on my GC accounts to link to me in real life. Only a handful of people whom I trust know my identity.

I’m getting braver with other parents - just this week I’ve been very outspoken with parent friends of 10+years about my views - both very “be kind” lovely types, but exactly those who perhaps haven’t looked beyond the rainbow flags to see the red ones.

I think it's interesting when the word "menstruator" is justified by the claim that women past menopause do not menstruate. I think this illustrates one of the creepy purposes of using dehumanising terms such as "menstruator", which is to separate women into different groups and pretend like those groups have nothing in common with each other. It's basically a "divide and conquer" strategy, splitting women up into different groups and placing them in different silos, socially, politically, linguistically. And yet, women past menopause are the same group as women who menstruate, just older!!! You can't be in menopause unless you are female.

The dehumanisation is not only in the redefining of the words 'girl' and 'woman' and 'female' and their replacement with "menstruator" "cervix-haver" and "pregnant person." It's also in the pretense that the only thing that's important about you is today's biological function, and the pretense that you can be categorized solely on the basis of this particular function, as if all the other aspects of being female are something totally unconnected, as if we are all little lego toys, with parts that can be disconnected in space and time.

But in the real world, the baby born with a uterus is the same person as the adolescent girl a few years later who gets her first period, who is the same person as the young woman a few years later who gives birth, who is the same person as the woman 20 years later who undergoes menopause, who is the same person as the woman 10 years after that who gets uterine cancer, who is the same person as the woman who gets a hysterectomy for that uterine cancer. We're not just female in the one moment where a man looks at us and says, "menstruator." We're female for the entirety of our lives!

the 'respect diversity' people never want to talk about anything real do they?



they never want to talk about women locked up in prison with rapists, about sterilised children, about women and children assaulted by men in women's toilets, about women subjected to voyeurism by men in women's changing rooms, about women feeling unable to participate in their own sports, about prizes intended to boost visibility and recognition of women being given to men.

As for 'trans people have always existed.' No. Sexism, misogyny and homophobia have always existed, therefore people who haven't fitted into sexist, misogynistic and homophobic societies have always existed.

If the UK becomes an outlier in international circles with only females on the team, we'll drop in the rankings over time. There will be pressure to fit in with the norm. Coaching culture is more competitive than the sport itself - look how many sports had exploitative and abusive coaches for years - as long as they were winning, everyone looked the other way.

The USA is proving itself profoundly sexist in this way and it has big influence to make sure that men come first.

There is a delightful interview somewhere online with Austin Killips where she [sic] talks about her hormonal struggles and how difficult it is to manage her hormonal moods. Two blokes simpering at each other about the challenges of femininity. I may have thrown my phone across the room.

The problem with her position - let's have a women lite option for some men, is that while it sounds both inclusive and pragmatic it is anything but.

She's imagining laws where she can giggle with Dylan Mulvaney while they both do their make up in a lovely public toilet, but exclude Isla Bryson from following 15 year old girls in a more secluded space.

She's also imagining that we have the same line, and that the men who don't meet the standard are going to be happy stay out of the spaces. Also that we are allowed to even talk about where the line is, because to acknowledge the line is to acknowledged that these men aren't women at all.

On the start of the quoted debate, it's not true that transgender activism would be "just about people wanting to live their lives", because all of it requires extreme changes in how everybody else lives:

Language must be rewritten so that all women who are women because they are female are now stripped of their own identities as embodied identities are invalid.

Female single-sex spaces must be destroyed so that any male person can enter any such space by simply arguing that they are transgender.

Female sports will become mixed sex sports and few female people will reach the podium.

Female short-lists, scholarships and awards will now be open for anyone who identifies as a woman which means less likelihood that any particular person of the female sex will get a place on that short list or get the scholarship or award. When all these were created because of an under-representation of female-bodied people, the outcome is unfair.

It's really common to try to set the boundaries for a debate from the start in a way which makes it harder to argue opposing points.

Here that is done by simply stating that transgender people "just want to live their lives", so anyone who points out the clashing rights would then be seen as stopping transgender people from doing that and then being seen as a bigot.

They’re not “safe spaces”, they’re single sex spaces. I really hate the way slippery language like this is inserted into discussion. The next move in the TRA’s game is so transparent: they’re safe spaces and transwomen need to be safe too so…. No. They’re single sex spaces and services so women can undress, receive intimate care, sleep and discuss their trauma without males present. End of.

This ‘enforcement’ issue is really just distraction.

Were we ever able to ‘enforce’ access to publicly open spaces? No.

But we could call security/police etc. We could make so much noise to alert others. This was how it was in the past

Now we have no recourse. At all.

Any male who respected women and girl’s and their need for their own spaces will not enter. Males who have no respect for female single sex spaces and those female people’s needs will be the ones we should be very wary of however they present themselves.

It isn't a question of 'enforcing' anything. The clarification will just give employers, service providers, public bodies the right to exclude men from women's spaces, retaining the status quo that has been well-established forever but is now under threat.

That means that these spaces can be properly flagged as women's and providers of them can ask people to leave or take other kinds of appropriate action. No one will be pre-emptively scanning for sex, in relation to most services

As for people 'passing' this will happen to the same extent as it ever did. I imagine that there have always been a few transwomen slpping into toilets etc, sometimes because of a genuine fear of harrassment in the men's spaces and sometimes for malign reasons.

Where it is a problem, women will have the confidence to make a complaint. Where it isn't a problem most women would probably do what must have happen for ages until TRAs fucked everything up: turn a blind eye out of kindness.

Threads like these do my head in. it’s basically ‘oooh but you can’t actually stop TW coming in can you, I mean not really so why bother even trying, you might as well just give up’

until 5 minutes ago men stayed out of women’s spaces because we, the collective we, had a social contract where we knew full well what spaces were reserved for women and which were ok to be mixed. However thanks to a minority of very very loud narcissistic TW & their allies we’re now expected to believe that it’s all sooooo hard to have single sex spaces backed up by stonewall lying to ppl about what the law says. Decent men whether they were wearing a dress or not would stay the fuck out of women’s spaces.

and for the record, back in the days when we were told it was only 5000 old ppl, men who wanted to transition were told to use womens spaces to demonstrate that they were serious about transitioning. No one ever actually bothered to ask women if they were ok with that