Transnegation Roundup/2020/09

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9/1

Parliament is Listening to Our BS

  • 2020-09-01 05:36 @WomenUnitingUK “2. We were in the doldrums of August, and awaiting the well overdue announcement from Liz Truss, but don't imagine nothing was going on behind the scenes. The women of Women Uniting UK were still quietly, tenaciously, fighting to maintain the sex-based rights of women and girls,”
  • 2020-09-01 05:36 @WomenUnitingUK “3. and continuing to raise awareness of the gender ideology that is damaging our children, particularly our daughters. / More and more MPs are listening, more and more teachers are pushing back on unsuitable political and ideological lobby groups having access to children in”
  • 2020-09-01 05:36 @WomenUnitingUK “4. schools, more and more medics are speaking out about their concerns around the medicalisation of what are quite often normal childhood feelings, more and more women from all walks of life are speaking out, despite the threats to their jobs”
  • 2020-09-01 05:36 @WomenUnitingUK “5. and the physical threats they receive for believing that women are a sex class, not a feeling in someone's head. / There are numerous cases due in court: brave people putting their reputations, livelihood, and safety on the line.”

To which I say:

  • The existence of "gender identity" is not an ideology.
  • It's not damaging anyone.
  • "Unsuitable"? (I think this must be part of the "but the children!" ploy.)
  • Lobby groups? We have lobby groups? I guess trans rights organizations count?
  • "Concerns about medicalization"? Trans people have to fight to get care.
  • "Normal childhood feelings"? Normal if you're trans, maybe... and either way, medical care is needed if it is being sought.
  • "Speaking out despite the threats to their job" -- nobody is losing their jobs for having opinions. They're losing their jobs for being bigoted jerks.
  • "the physical threats they receive for believing that women are a sex class" -- examples?

(Interesting how all the timestamps are the same; wonder what that means. Using TweetDeck?)

9/2

Star Trek is too PC, part one million

  • 2020-09-02 numerous comments on 'Star Trek: Discovery' Makes Franchise History With First Trans, Non-Binary Characters (archive.org has some which were removed)
    • "In space is the best place for transickos / Off this planet Is a start. / Vile things."
    • "Star Trek has been completely taken over by these freaks."
    • "Can we get some decent scripts instead of trans propaganda?"
    • "It’s ironic that these two nuts are on a science fiction show because science supports neither one of them." -- except it does
    • "The trans cult is trying to erase women and take away single sex spaces."
  • 2020-09-02 06:52 @Ellen91333928 “[...] She's explaining exactly what happened...and how she got into doing all she can to raise awareness of what's being done to women, to children by The Trans Cult.” (h/t has a rebuttal thread)

9/3

The Phantom Menace

  • 2020-09-03 08:41 @BluskyeAllison “1/ This has been one of the most depressing 24 hours I’ve ever had on Gender Critical Twitter. / To be clear: every woman & girl must know that their sex-based rights will disappear if they do not pay attention & join this struggle.”
    • To someone not familiar with the vocabulary, this undoubtedly comes across as someone sincerely concerned about women's rights. The combination of "gender critical" plus "sex-based rights", however, is a pretty clear indication that she's talking about trans people.
    • The fact that she doesn't say anything overtly offensive, yet is also (if you know what she's talking about) clearly taking a strong stand against rights for trans people, leaves us with an intense feeling of being attacked and yet with nothing obvious to refute. Red-flag.png strategic ambiguity
    • The intense emotion expressed ("one of the most depressing 24 hours I’ve ever had", "rights will disappear if they do not pay attention & join this struggle") only adds to the sense of danger.
    • My retweet goes into a bit more depth.

9/4

The Clone Wars

  • 2020-09-04 22:32 @terfalicious “Well, one is an irrational fear with no evidence to support it, and the other is a legitimate fear based on a long history of forced ‘breeding’ of women. If you’d like to learn more about the history of forced ‘breeding,’ here is a great thread:” - which provides no evidence of trans women taking cis women captive, for "breeding" purposes or anything else.

9/6

But What About The Children

  • 2020-09-06 12:30 @ScottNewgent “Kids are being brainwashed; they are trans in UK schools. In Canada last week, a father was paraded in the "Prisoner Box," The judge warned other parents from speaking against the school system med transitioning kids & ending up in jail too, like this father. / Lupron, the hormone blocker given to prepubescent kids, is given out like candy, yet it has never been tested on gender dysphoric kids, and we do not know the long term consequences.” (2 tweets combined)
    • links to 2001-10-04 2 Drug Makers to Pay $875 Million to Settle Fraud Case "Prosecutors contended that sales representatives for TAP gave doctors free samples of Lupron, a drug used to treat prostate cancer and infertility, and then helped them get government reimbursements at hundreds of dollars for each dose." This article has absolutely nothing to do with transition meds. Yes, Lupron has been used as a puberty blocker... but what does this article from 2001 have to do with that? Red-flag.png misrepresentation

Reality

  • Nobody is pushing transition on kids.
  • Nobody is pushing HRT or puberty blockers.
  • Trans kids typically face steep obstacles to obtaining desperately-needed and desired medical intervention, not to mention being allowed to present as their true gender.

(Don't make me use my angry voice. ...oh, but that's what you want, isn't it.)

9/9

Toilets of Terror, part N

Reality

I came across this very in-depth article about the sexist history of bathroom segregation, which specifically demolishes (yet again) Gender Critical arguments against trans women being allowed to use women's bathrooms:

...this notion of a predatory cross-dressing man is complete fiction. In reality, if you look at the numbers: it is trans people who are at the greatest risk of being attacked in public restrooms.

(Citation: What Experts Say)

This is of course only what we've been saying for quite some time now.

That said, I've been frustrated by how difficult it can be to find stats on violence by trans women.

I search for "sexual abuse by women" and find plenty of information about that still relatively-small slice of the assault-pie: Assault/by women

...but as soon as I add "trans" into the search, I only get results about abuse *of* trans women.

CLEARLY THIS IS THE POSTMODERN WOKE PC TA CONSPIRACY SILENCING THE TRUTH!!

...or maybe it just means that trans women are much more likely to be assaultees than assaulters? 🤔

In any case...

...both sides of this debate claim that they’re on the side of safety. One side argues that trans people should be safe in the bathroom [of] their gender identity, while the other side [cites the risk of attack] in the bathroom by cross-dressing men.

So: in order to factually address this question, we need to look at the relative danger of cis women/girls in women's rooms from two possible sources:

(a) other cis women
(b) trans women

There's plenty of info on (a), not so much on (b).

...but really, though, this feels like a diversion.

For one thing, *everyone* would be safer in unisex bathrooms with a more open design for communal activities (sinks, mirrors) and better privacy for the individual toilets (floor-to-ceiling stalls which can't be peeked into).

More relevantly, though, sex-separated bathrooms were a sexist institution from the very beginning:

as [indoor restrooms] moved into the public realm, they entered a world that was at the time shaped by a very popular idea called the 🌺'separate spheres ideology'🌺...

...which was:

The idea that women belonged in the home and that men belonged in public spaces. There was an idea that allowing women into the public sphere was to be risky because, given their 🥀“weakness”🥀, they could become contaminated by the vile influence of men.

(
Aside: Gotta love that phrase —
THE VILE INFLUENCE OF MEN 👹
...but really, that's how Gender Criticals sound when they talk about how trans women are ACTUALLY MEN who are of course pretty reliably DANGEROUS AND VIOLENT.
...and therefore so are trans women, QED.😝
But I digress.
)

This theory resulted in:

...ladies-only train cars, ladies-only dining rooms, and ladies-only waiting rooms. These spaces were often decorated to look very domestic...

...which is ultimately how we get to gendered bathrooms.

So very feminist.

To be clear: Gender Criticals are anti feminist, no matter how they self-identify. When was the last time someone made a "safety" argument for separatism that actually benefited the group being separated? Even just staying with the bathroom issue:

  • skin color bathroom segregation (1940s, 50s)
  • fears of gay men having sex in bathrooms (1950s, 60s)
  • claims that the ERA would mean unisex bathrooms (1970s)
  • fears of gay men spreading AIDS in bathrooms (1980s)

...and this is just one example of that.

BUT ANYWAY.

So there's that article (and some accompanying short videos). I stashed it away for future reference, thinking "well... that argument has been dealt with *so* thoroughly by now, the GCs will probably stay away from mentioning restrooms, so [shrug]."

...and then I check Twitter, and see @ripx4nutmeg's tweet, and Wendy's comment "This is why we flip out about locker rooms, etc. How can you tell the difference between the innocent and the abusers?" which is basically the racial profiling argument, but with genitalia.

(Actually secondary physical cues serving as a proxy for genitalia, but I think we all understand that by now? Not even GCs are proposing crotch-checks as a prereq for restroom entry... so far...)

So, you know, Gender Critical Twitter didn't disappoint. There's no argument against trans people that's so hopelessly bad that they won't bring it out if it can be given a fresh coat of paint with a current news article.

...or one from 2001.

Argument ab Testiculo

  • 15:04 @sugabelly “Caster Semenya is a man and should compete with men. / The fact that they thought he was a girl at birth, and socialized him as a girl, doesn’t change the fact that he’s actually a man. / He has testes for goodness sake. / He also has no uterus, no ovaries. / No woman has testes.”

This is rather at odds with what other Gender Criticals have said on the matter -- i.e. basically if you're born with a penis, you're a man, and if there's any ambiguity then it's up to a doctor to "observe" what you are. Maybe you can be male without a penis, but you can't be female without a uterus? And doctors can issue false femininity but not false masculinity?

This is someone who was assigned female at birth[1], and whose sex is only being called into question because of scientific tests (testosterone levels and presumably some kind of internal scan), at least one of which was performed without consent.

So the rule is "if there's any doubt, then you're a man"? Apparently some people will listen to the science only where it goes along with this principle.

further reading

Footnote

  1. ↑ and also has always identified as such, not that Gender Criticals give a rat's posterior about that

9/11

"No True Scotsman Woman"

But not all cis females have periods, either, so that isn't a defining characteristic – much less a criterion for exclusion from the category.

Why does anyone still think it's significant to say this?

Or are they just trying to tick off people who actually understand the issues and are tired of fighting with willful ignorance?

Bravely Standing Up for the Lies

20:12 @christophelston “I ❤️ JK Rowling, so I got this swanky billboard in Vancouver. / JK, thank you for standing up for women and children. You are an inspiration.” Ehs2zOSU0AIP5GK.jpg

They've just latched onto this idea that JKR's Red-flag.png false advocacy is helping women and girls, when it's carefully attacking an Red-flag.png imaginary threat while supporting blatantly patriarchal ideas.

Maybe they know that, but they pretend not to.

more about the billboard

  • 07:44 @campervanwoman “I’m still struggling to get over this. NO complaints about the @jk_rowling poster in Waverley Station, yet still @NetworkRailSCOT removed it. 158 complaints about its removal and it was not reinstated. What explanation do they have? What were their motivations for removing it?” - because "I heart JKR" has become an anti-trans rallying cry
  • 20:18 @preta_6 “TERFy hijinks at Hastings and Glenn ;-) ;-) ;-) Check it out Vancouver!”
  • 20:26 @christophelston “It’s very smoky from all the forest fires, but you can see a bit of downtown Vancouver in the background.”

9/12

Rally 'Round the Smear

Way to oversimplify and misrepresent.

9/13

Sex Is Just Reproduction... and genitals, hormones, chromosomes, ruthless efficiency, nice red uniforms...

  • 2020-09-12 20:40 @WELSH_GURL_99 “But what about women who cannot get pregnant? / You still haven't given me a good answer on this”
    • 2020-09-12 22:54 @zaelefty “What about strawmans that never seem to go away?”
      • 2020-09-13 08:09 @ZeeZeeMooMoo “Thats not what a fucking strawman is / You people are literally trying to define women by pregnancy”
        • 2020-09-13 09:21 @Delilahdern “Womanhood is not appearance, character or sexuality. There are all kinds of human, and about half of them are female. Woman means the sex that produces ova, men means the sex that produces sperm.”
          • 2020-09-13 09:21 @Delilahdern “That's it, it's not deeper than that. Sex is genitals, reproduction, hormones, chromosomes. That doesn't mean women are only those things, but that those thing define them as women. After all, women are complex human beings. Being a woman is not dependant on heels or makeup.”
            • 09:23 @ZeeZeeMooMoo “youve just listed a bunch of things that dont correspond / some people have certain chromosomes that wouldnt match the hormones and genitals you expect, etc etc”

ZeeZee's points are exactly right.

  • A straw man is a weakened misrepresentation of someone else's position (something that Gender Criticals frequently do to trans people).
  • What do you do when some of the indicators don't line up the way you expect?

9/14

Harry Potter and the Hashtag of Horror

9/16

Don't Silence Our Widely-Promoted Propaganda

Sadly, knowing who is promoting this, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters is probably full of misrepresentations. Research in progress.

9/18

Amanda Yardley and the TRA PC Police

  • 2020-09-18 13:10 @wendycockcroft “Why are gender identity ideologues threatening transwoman Miranda Yardley? / Because she's a gender realist. / Must we submit our opinions to the local TRA branch for approval before we post them? #IStandWithMirandaYardley”

If there were a local TRA branch, I'd be asking them for a job fighting BS on Twitter.

My Terrible Views Are Being Ignored Because I'm Cis

No, Wendy, you're being ignored because your views aren't based on fact and you refuse to confront that.

Also, your views aren't being ignored, unfortunately. I wish they were.

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