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One of my goals here at DWR is to provide a resource that can help when the arguments start flying and you need a little argumentative boost to counter the tomfoolery going on with the other side. Dr. Jane Clare Jones intellectual rigor and acumen will almost never steer you wrong.
Parents are starting to overcome the stigma around the transing of children. Lynn Meagher is just one brave example of individual parents speaking out against the corrosive trans narrative that can endanger children.
“But one thing is very clear. The reason so much energy is put into silencing me is because I’ve publicly spoken, in my own name, on a topic that is currently forbidden to be discussed in the public square. I know hundreds of parents who are very concerned about their kids. They are watching their kids struggle. They tell me that as soon as their child announced that they were transgender, there was almost always a very discernable and concerning shift in their mental health and in their personality. Far from becoming happy, well adjusted and free to be themselves, their kids have often dropped out of school, quit their jobs, and become extremely depressed. And in almost every case, this has been accompanied by a rapidly deteriorating relationship between the child and the parent. These parents are not only unable to find help for their kids, in many cases they are not even able to talk about it.
The type of parent blame and shame displayed above is used to force parents to comply with every type of demand that kids make surrounding this issue. Use my pronouns, don’t deadname me, buy me a binder, take me to a trans-affirming therapist, give me puberty blockers and hormones, or I’m going to call you a hateful bigot and cut you out of my life. As you can see, this behavior is encouraged by the trans affirming culture in which we now find ourselves. Parent receive this treatment from physicians, psychologists, friends, neighbors, family members, the media, and teachers. One dad recently shared with me that during a family therapy session he was addressed by the therapist, who said, “So it looks like you are the only one with a problem here.”
We know that in areas of cultural debate, it’s the narratives that win the war. Very rarely is anyone brought to a larger understanding of a difficult topic by reading articles or studies, no matter how well they are done. We come to empathize and form an opinion when we are confronted with real life stories from ordinary people. We begin to identify with those stories, to listen and hear them. We begin to realize that what happened to that person was unjust. We begin to empathize, and then we realize that it could have been us. We could have suffered, in much the same way.
This is why the stories of detransitioners, and the stories of parents and families broken apart, are so essential. I did not post on Twitter that day looking for sympathy. I write because my story is representative of countless other stories that I have heard, time and time again. None of these parents are able to publicly tell of their heartbreak, but when we get behind closed doors, the wounds are deep. They are fresh and raw and painful. And in most cases, these parents keep their pain to themselves. They go to work every day, pretending everything is fine. They don’t talk to their neighbors, their friends, their faith community, or even their family. They know that there will not be understanding to be had. They know they will be questioned, doubted, shamed, and blamed. They know that others will reach out to their kids and offer “support”, reinforcing the idea that the parents are the abusers, the bullies, and the ones who should be banished. These parents carry the weight of their fear and grief alone.
But more and more, parents are speaking up, and more organizations are being formed to help them do that. The parents are starting to write blogs, articles, and letters. They are appearing on podcasts. They are writing stories for others to share and read in their places. This is really important, because the prevailing narrative is that there is only one response to take when your child announces a transgender identity. Get on board and affirm, or you risk suicide. Not only is this not true, but it’s abusive.
There is another way. Most parents realize when this happens that it just doesn’t feel right. Even if you’ve been a progressive left leaning gay affirming Democrat all your life, you know your own kid, and you know it’s not true. The truth is, loving and determined communication and parenting will do a lot to help kids find their way out of this. There are many parent support groups out there. If you are need of support, feel free to email me. I can help you get connected.
Until then, I will not let the bully trolls silence me, and we will continue to speak up. #parentsspeak”
My apologies for having to source fox news, but hey when you find an authentic feminist given public air time, you have to spread the word.
Male violence (and the threat of male violence) still shapes women’s lives here in 21st century. We have not advanced past the stage of needing female only spaces and strong rules regarding the safeguarding of women and children from predatory men. The transgender idea of self – identification inserts a gigantic loophole into conventional safeguarding techniques thus rending safeguarding untenable and unsafe for women. Human beings cannot change sex and we should not as a society entertain legislation and legal fictions that promote this dangerous idea.
“I learned that predators don’t have ‘PREDATOR’ tattooed on their foreheads. They tend, at least to begin with, to resemble your next door neighbour or friendly uncle. They don’t announce themselves as perverted.They seem friendly, helpful and ever so keen to please, the kind of people who go out of their way to befriend, perhaps proffer little gifts, some pocket money, tell a few jokes, until there’s an uneasy reliance upon them, by which time it’s too late to back out because the hooks are in so far that they can’t be released without more damage, destruction, public shame and deep personal regret. Those men supplant themselves into the empty spaces previously occupied by ex partners or fathers or brothers, bringing salvation, which soon turns to coercion and pain, gaslighting and deflection. Some such men are upright citizens, not just famous disc jockeys and musicians, but teachers, foster carers, priests, Scout leaders, lawyers, judges, doctors, each and every walk of life in fact has predators with disordered minds. They encourage the keeping of secrets, for that secrecy, darkness and shade are essential to achieving their ends. They are not to be questioned in their motives, required to justify or explain what they do.
Some men frighten women; some men bully women; some men kill women; some men belittle and humiliate women and some men harm little girls. Some men get to little girls via their vulnerable mothers; some men get kicks prowling where they can and ambush women or their daughters. That is why women and girls have single-sex spaces, for safety, respect and dignity.
Men who batter or molest or terrorise their stepdaughters into silence don’t grass themselves off – they refer to the falls, the accidents, the self-inflicted injuries occurring strangely in odd circumstances as they babysat. And, offended, do the ‘who, me?’routine, indignant.
Women who are vulnerable and see their children abused by new partners don’t always manage to recognise or speak of what is right under their noses, they’re weakened, isolated, and scared – for some in such circumstances, escape, refuge or justice are for the birds – and were they to pluck up the courage to seek such aid, what they need are soothing understanding female voices who know the terror which comes from having the lighter, weaker, more vulnerable body, unable to fend off attack. Women fleeing violence, abuse, domestic terror inflicted upon them by men don’t deserve to be greeted at the door of a refuge by an intact male telling them to leave their ‘trans bigotry’ outside on the doorstep.
And women who have been brutalised might try to find a quiet cool breathing space in a public toilet in a supermarket where they can take a deep breath and stare into space for a few precious moments whilst fearing what lies ahead, moments to check a noticeboard for a helpline or just to sit in peace away from a boorish leering unwelcome advance.
Mothers in emergency treatment rooms getting shards of glass tweezered from the backs of their heads, or their cheeks, or having their lips or eyebrows decorated with butterfly strips don’t want those administrations provided by fat male fingers – those resemble the hard hands which punched and slapped hell into them.
Grannies in their twilight, scared and alone in hospital wards with varicose veins, hip replacements or hysterectomies don’t desire to wobble onto a bedpan in a nightgown in full view of a male bodied patient.
Teenage girls shouldn’t hide at home for embarrassment of having to use school toilets as boys listen to them rustling next door – we’re sending money to charities building toilets in Africa, for girls, so that girls can get educated, yet here in Scotland we are tearing those girls’ toilets down. Feminist to our fingertips we Scots are. Indeed, but perhaps only upon the international stage, not at the domestic hearth.
We know that the majority of female prisoners in Scotland are not locked up because of their violence, most having suffered trauma in childhood, usually at the hands of abusive men – yet these days women are required to share with transwomen – intact male bodies – with scant if any risk assessment and no regard to the views of the women – retraumatisation comprising cruel and degrading treatment – condoned by a female First Minister in a country whose justice system was once allegedly the envy of the civilised world.
So today in 2021 I am no longer a safeguarder – I left that job a few years ago. In the meantime though, there has been a new training regime instigated when safeguarders learn how to interview children and have to compete the ‘Enhanced Disclosure’ check – you fill in a form which I learned last week no longer asks for the applicant’s sex, but for the applicant’s gender – I don’t know why that is but I do know this – one day in Scotland we will see, as self-identification erodes the safe spaces and safe places women and girls need, that predators will access those places and lives of women and girls will be harmed and their safety jeopardised. Dignity, respect, choice, sex, not gender -‘these will all be tossed into the abyss by the SNP/Green government as they take ‘a leap of faith’ , in the name of progress. Back to the future and the loss of the gains our great grannies won 100 years ago. It is to Scotland’s shame, and my conscience won’t allow it. Will yours?”
Transgender ideology is rife with paradox. This is one of the more important aspects because it illustrates the friction between a supposedly liberating dogma and its actual effects.
Gender stereotypes are, for the most part, harmful for the women and men that follow them. Like the cartoon above – the stereotype is that dresses are worn by women. Well we all know that clothing for the most part, has no gender and can be worn by anyone. But men are ‘not supposed’ to wear dresses because they are for women – men will feel social pressure not to wear a dress because of the arbitrary gender stereotypes.
So what is transgender ideology to do when it argues that wearing a dress, in fact, makes you a woman. Transgender ideology reinforces the stereotypical notion of gendered clothing and who is allowed to wear what. It maintains the status quo and is no way revolutionary.
Contrast this with the gender abolitionist radical feminist position – Let’s dispense with the notion of gender stereotypes altogether and celebrate gender non conforming behaviour because clothes are for people – the end. A woman in a suit or a man in a dress are simply that, a female and a male with clothing that matches their personality and goals for the day. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Kathleen Lowrey is one the few and the brave women inside the University of Alberta that manage to retain an authentically feminist outlook. Furthermore, her criticisms of the new gender ideology are spot on and her insights are useful in understanding the ontology of transactivism in academic and real-world settings.
Sex, Ptolemaic Style
“The pervasiveness of this formula helps to explain the widespread enthusiasm for gender identity ideology in the academy. The relevant flippages are of at least three kinds. First is the reversal of the sex:gender relation as it is commonly understood. Ordinarily sex has primacy. It is the biological given upon which the cultural constructions of gender are elaborated. In gender identity ideology, the terms are reversed. Gender is essential, and sex is the unsteady social construct. Second is the relation of men to women. Conventionally, the social standing of men is understood to be privileged relative to that of women. This relationship is reversed in gender identity ideology. Trans identified men (“transwomen”) are figured as vulnerable relative to women and are even described as the most vulnerable of all women. Third, the quotidian apprehension is that children develop their gender identities as they grow up and engage with and adjust to cultural norms. Under gender identity ideology, it is asserted that children know from very young ages exactly their gender identities independent of cultural conditioning. As a corollary, adult men who express gender identities late in life that appear to be wholly fashioned out of sexist cultural norms about femininity have in fact been real women–the very realest of women–all along. The department colleague who was my most enthusiastic denouncer placed two signs on her office door after I put up gender critical feminist messaging on mine: “trans rights are human rights” and “transwomen are women.” She understood very well the messaging required of a “trans ally” and displayed it quite correctly.
Gender critical feminists like me notice, of course, that one infinitely more often sees and hears the slogan “transwomen are women” than its counterpart “transmen are men.” To understand why this is the case, you’d have to pay attention to patterns of power in the world rather than to Ptolemaic valence-flipping. One of the signs on my office door that most infuriated feminist academic women colleagues on social media described the parallels between men’s rights activism and trans rights activism. Many feminist academic women clearly saw it as their moral and intellectual duty to decry this assertion.”
An individual on Twitter has seen fit to ‘tackle’ all of the opposing talking points deployed against transgender ideology. Let’s see and talk about them here.
A limited and simplistic definition that is correct? Heaven forbid. Concision is a beautiful thing. Accurate descriptions of the reality we inhabit are a boon to meaningful discussions and debate.
Transgender women, that is to say men who through gender-magic think they are women, remain male. For a quick self demonstration please identify as rich and demand entrance into the Davos conference, or even identify as royalty and demand entrance into Buckingham Palace. Thinking you are something does not, in fact, make you that something.
Culturally and legally speaking? I have no idea what this phrase means. Men in some jurisdictions have pushed through laws that allow them to change legal documents such as passports and birth certificates, but legal fictions that do not comport with reality are precisely that – fiction.
Human beings cannot change their sex.
Women are adult human females – this definition is very clear and precise and works as long as you respect the reality we all share. Transgender women (men) do not fall into this category because men are not women. It is really as simple as that. Unfortunately many male trans activists have a very strong sense of male entitlement often argue vehemently that their feelings of gender supersede the material reality we all share.
We cannot allow self-delusion to be the basis of the norms and laws we have in society.
This is category error on such a large scale. Tall, short, black, white, lesbian, straight, disabled women, et cetera all belong to one category. They are adult human females – they possess the physiology to become pregnant and give birth. If you have the large immobile gametes then it is a pretty safe bet to say that you are female. The term women encompasses the vast range and variety of females we see today. What this category does not include, of course, is men and yes even men who honestly think that they are women.
So much confusion is introduced into these conversations because transgender ideology, by its very nature is definitionally opaque. For instance, the use of ‘cisgender’ even in this little blurb. To understand how it is being misused one must first define what gender is.
Gender are sets of societal expectations and norms that are applied to women and men. Gender expectations are fluid and and are society specific, gender expectations are often formed from the roles the sexes play and have played in our society. In other words they are the sex specific stereotypes used in society to evaluate and differentiate people in society. See below.
Gender is arbitrary and often restricts and inhibits individuals from acting outside their ‘approved’ set of gendered expectations. So, gender is imposed on individuals in society and unsurprisingly the roles assigned to females are given less value and prestige.
So, we as individuals are not gender roles. We are individuals with personalities that include roles, attributes, and stereotypes from both sides of the gender role divide.
Thus, the notion of ‘cisgender’ means that you as a person comply with the stereotypical set of ideas associated with your sex. For women though associating with the stereotypes that limit your participation in society and circumvent your boundaries is problematic. Therefore women who are connected with reality and the material conditions imposed upon them by the strictures of gender oppose the notion of ‘cisgender’ because they do not ‘identify’ with that set of stereotypical norms that inhibits them as individuals in society.
Unfortunately in our society one of the foundational axis of discrimination and oppression is the sex you happen to be born into. Sad, but what you are expected to do in society and which roles you are expected to take on are very dependent on the physical bits and parts that make up female and male physiology.
It is not biological essentialism to state that all women have large gametes, double XX chromosomes, and cervixes. To be biologically esentiallist, one would have to state that women are nothing more (or have no worth outside of their) than their reproductive parts/potential.
Of course no one checks ones chromosomes or gametes to see whether or not they are going to harass them. Our species ability to reproduce is based on identifying, determining, and judging the sexual fitness of the other sex. We, in general, are very capable of identifying who is male and who is female in society. No genital/chromosomal inspections required.
If we care about facts and reality then the statement only women have cervixes must stand, because it is accurate and true.
Just because you feel like you should be in a category does not mean that you should be in said category. Please refer to the identifying as rich example.
(Female) Non-binary people and transmen (females) individuals gender beliefs do not change the material conditions of their body. If transmen or women who call themselves ‘non-binary’ (both cases biological females) don’t understand that they have cervix, then that is very much their problem, as facts are independent of gendered feelings.
Linguistic erasure of females is one of the key features of trans ideology. If women cannot name their physical reality, how do they combat and improve their conditions in society? The trend is disconcerting as conditions that happen only to females are having the term woman and female replaced by vague nondescript words. For instance –
So, female erasure is happening because of the self perceived needs of those who choose to self-identify is a problematic feature of trans ideology and it is erasing females from society.
Disagreeing with anything a transactivist says is usually categorized transphobic. Let’s take a peek at a small sample of people who have a ‘pretty solid understanding of consent‘.
So, yeah. Talk about understanding consent is nice, but demonstrating it would be much more nice.
Gender expression is subjective and therefore not a good standard to judge risks with regards to safeguarding. Males are responsible for the vast majority of sexual crimes and assaults against women and children, therefore they (regardless of self-identification) should not be in female only spaces.
And that is because of their sex, not their gender.
Beards are not the problem. It is the males attachted to the beards with the creepy, rapey, attitudes which are the problem.
No community is monolithic. The fact that the LGB Alliance and it’s many sister organizations exist across the world are a testament to that fact. The LGB Alliance sprang into being to defend the rights of people who believe that sexual orientation is important.
A tiny minority of entitled males believe that through gender-magic they are female and want to rearrange society to comport with their subjective gender feelings – they’ve had a fair amount of traction. *shrugs*
Well, taken out of context, I’m certain you got that from what Julia Long said. Judge for yourself folks –
Julia long was speaking to the biological fact that human beings cannot change sex and the claims that transwomen are in fact real women are not possible as women categorically speaking, are adult human females.
Misrepresenting arguments from the opposition is not a new feature, but it must be said that the argument here is this – should other people be compelled to partake in your gender identity? The answer, if we value a free society, is no.
Consider the case of religion. I am free to believe in Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha – I am not, however, free to compel you to believe in any of the aforementioned religious deities.
Same with gender religious beliefs. If you think that wearing a dress and heels and feeling like a woman makes you a woman go right ahead. I should be under no pressure whatsoever to not believe the claim that wearing a dress and heels and ‘feeling like’ a woman turns you into an adult human female.
Hmm. Well we should look at Stonewall’s materials and judge for ourselves.
So, we can assume the claim that Stonewall’s claims, at the very least, require more scrutiny as their veracity of purpose is in question.
The era of ‘no debate’ is over. These questions are necessary to gain clarity and understanding of how gender self id legislation and gender ideology affects society and more specifically women.
Rigorous discussion and debate is a necessary requirement of any proposition that affects multiple stakeholders in society.
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