Why assume that someone with a different viewpoint than yours has failed to reach out beyond their bubble to enlighten themselves? (I'm sure you didn't mean it to seem patronizing.)
Yes, I have talked with trans people online. Many over the last 5 years, as my concern has steadily increased about what I see happening to women’s and girls’ rights, privacy, safety, sports, and language for ourselves.
Yes, I have talked with trans people in real life. I have worked in live theater for 20 years, which is an environment with a self-selecting, higher-than-average population of non-gender-conforming people of all stripes. (And I’m not even counting “non-binary”-identifying people as “trans,” or the numbers would be much higher.)
I have talked with adult “trans women” who have had feminizing surgeries and vaginoplasties -- but only 2 of those, and probably 10 or 15 years ago. The vast majority of "trans women" I meet now are fully intact, heterosexual men with no intention of having surgery. In the last 5 years, I have interacted with an increasing number of these -- and with fully intact “gender-fluid” men (typically 25 – 55) -- who presume that I should be happy to find them in the women's restroom if they say they’re having a “girl day," even though they make no effort to look like anything but men. (It's always humiliating and unpleasant. They pee with the stall doors open, don't clean up the pee they leave on the toilet seats, and come out of the stall still not having tucked themselves back into their clothes. It feels like bullying to me -- like they're determined to make a point about how they can break women's boundaries anytime they like.)
I've had multiple conversations with two teenaged “trans men” (14 and 15, both autistic and neither having given any previous sign to their parents at any point in their lives that they were unhappy to be girls).
There is no single "trans point of view." The older trans women I've met didn't view themselves as actual women, even though they've put in the most effort and time and money and pain to present as women. The trans women I've met in recent years (online and in person) are infinitely more likely to insist that they ARE women -- even though many have done very little, and intend to do very little, in the way of surgery or even hormones.
But it doesn't matter. Yes, of course, I assume in the privacy of their own minds, all trans people "know" they are trans rather than actually members of the opposite sex.
The issue isn’t whether trans people actually believe they are the opposite sex. It is that they -- or activists claiming to speak for them -- are trying to bully the rest of us (particularly women and girls) to behave as if WE believe it – and telling us that any expression of legitimate concern about what this means to women’s rights is nothing more than “transphobia” and “debating their right to exist.”
In both online and real-life environments, I, like many women, have found it increasingly difficult to have productive conversations on this topic. By “productive,” I don’t mean conversations intended to convince the other person of my point of view, but conversations in which genuine and legitimate concerns on both sides (women's rights and trans rights) can be expressed, and heard, and addressed.
Instead, even the mildest expression of a thought that suggests one isn’t fully on board with the idea that women should just shut up about having their boundaries and opportunities steamrollered by fully intact, male-bodied people now gets you called a “transphobe” or a “bigot” and is used to justify shutting down any exchange of perspectives or expression of legitimate concerns.
What do YOU think is the purpose of the mantra "Trans women are women"?
In my experience, it seems to be mostly to try to silence women by telling them they have no legitimate grounds for protesting the imposition of fully intact male bodies in their same-sex spaces, their same-sex sports, their same-sex prison cells, their same-sex domestic violence shelters, and their ringfenced educational and professional opportunities.
It is gaslighting of the highest order, and it does nothing to contribute to a productive conversation about how to move forward in a way that is respectful to the needs of both trans people and women.
In Matt Walsh's recently released video "What is a Woman?'" surgeon Marci Bowers, M.D., told Mr. Walsh, "I AM a woman. I function as a woman in my daily life."
I know trans-identified males who expect other people to "affirm" that these men have "women's bodies." They mean in how they look, not anything else involved in being female. Some of them will say to close friends, "I wish I had a more feminine body," and if the other person says anything but, "you DO have a feminine body," they get angry at the other person for "withholding affirmation" or being a "transphobe."
I have also talked to post-transition "trans women" whose families will say something like, "I accept now that you really are a woman."
In my experience, the original trans people (not Gen Z or younger) were/are concrete thinkers when it comes to sexual identity and gender. They often will offer as evidence for being a woman the fact that as a child they preferred to play fantasy games like the girls, especially admired female actors rather than male stars, that they didn't like rough games and so on. The postmodern nonsense about being nonbinary is a recent introduction.
In the past, gender dysphoria meant simply that a person of one sex wanted to be living as a member of the opposite sex, and to be treated as if he/she was a member of that sex. But, that second part does mean that even in the 1990's, people who transitioned hoped that strangers would not be able to discern their actual sex. Most of the surgeries are undertaken so as to look more like a member of the other sex, and therefore "pass" in public or even under prolonged scrutiny.
Why assume that someone with a different viewpoint than yours has failed to reach out beyond their bubble to enlighten themselves? (I'm sure you didn't mean it to seem patronizing.)
Yes, I have talked with trans people online. Many over the last 5 years, as my concern has steadily increased about what I see happening to women’s and girls’ rights, privacy, safety, sports, and language for ourselves.
Yes, I have talked with trans people in real life. I have worked in live theater for 20 years, which is an environment with a self-selecting, higher-than-average population of non-gender-conforming people of all stripes. (And I’m not even counting “non-binary”-identifying people as “trans,” or the numbers would be much higher.)
I have talked with adult “trans women” who have had feminizing surgeries and vaginoplasties -- but only 2 of those, and probably 10 or 15 years ago. The vast majority of "trans women" I meet now are fully intact, heterosexual men with no intention of having surgery. In the last 5 years, I have interacted with an increasing number of these -- and with fully intact “gender-fluid” men (typically 25 – 55) -- who presume that I should be happy to find them in the women's restroom if they say they’re having a “girl day," even though they make no effort to look like anything but men. (It's always humiliating and unpleasant. They pee with the stall doors open, don't clean up the pee they leave on the toilet seats, and come out of the stall still not having tucked themselves back into their clothes. It feels like bullying to me -- like they're determined to make a point about how they can break women's boundaries anytime they like.)
I've had multiple conversations with two teenaged “trans men” (14 and 15, both autistic and neither having given any previous sign to their parents at any point in their lives that they were unhappy to be girls).
There is no single "trans point of view." The older trans women I've met didn't view themselves as actual women, even though they've put in the most effort and time and money and pain to present as women. The trans women I've met in recent years (online and in person) are infinitely more likely to insist that they ARE women -- even though many have done very little, and intend to do very little, in the way of surgery or even hormones.
But it doesn't matter. Yes, of course, I assume in the privacy of their own minds, all trans people "know" they are trans rather than actually members of the opposite sex.
The issue isn’t whether trans people actually believe they are the opposite sex. It is that they -- or activists claiming to speak for them -- are trying to bully the rest of us (particularly women and girls) to behave as if WE believe it – and telling us that any expression of legitimate concern about what this means to women’s rights is nothing more than “transphobia” and “debating their right to exist.”
In both online and real-life environments, I, like many women, have found it increasingly difficult to have productive conversations on this topic. By “productive,” I don’t mean conversations intended to convince the other person of my point of view, but conversations in which genuine and legitimate concerns on both sides (women's rights and trans rights) can be expressed, and heard, and addressed.
Instead, even the mildest expression of a thought that suggests one isn’t fully on board with the idea that women should just shut up about having their boundaries and opportunities steamrollered by fully intact, male-bodied people now gets you called a “transphobe” or a “bigot” and is used to justify shutting down any exchange of perspectives or expression of legitimate concerns.
What do YOU think is the purpose of the mantra "Trans women are women"?
In my experience, it seems to be mostly to try to silence women by telling them they have no legitimate grounds for protesting the imposition of fully intact male bodies in their same-sex spaces, their same-sex sports, their same-sex prison cells, their same-sex domestic violence shelters, and their ringfenced educational and professional opportunities.
It is gaslighting of the highest order, and it does nothing to contribute to a productive conversation about how to move forward in a way that is respectful to the needs of both trans people and women.
In Matt Walsh's recently released video "What is a Woman?'" surgeon Marci Bowers, M.D., told Mr. Walsh, "I AM a woman. I function as a woman in my daily life."
I know trans-identified males who expect other people to "affirm" that these men have "women's bodies." They mean in how they look, not anything else involved in being female. Some of them will say to close friends, "I wish I had a more feminine body," and if the other person says anything but, "you DO have a feminine body," they get angry at the other person for "withholding affirmation" or being a "transphobe."
I have also talked to post-transition "trans women" whose families will say something like, "I accept now that you really are a woman."
In my experience, the original trans people (not Gen Z or younger) were/are concrete thinkers when it comes to sexual identity and gender. They often will offer as evidence for being a woman the fact that as a child they preferred to play fantasy games like the girls, especially admired female actors rather than male stars, that they didn't like rough games and so on. The postmodern nonsense about being nonbinary is a recent introduction.
In the past, gender dysphoria meant simply that a person of one sex wanted to be living as a member of the opposite sex, and to be treated as if he/she was a member of that sex. But, that second part does mean that even in the 1990's, people who transitioned hoped that strangers would not be able to discern their actual sex. Most of the surgeries are undertaken so as to look more like a member of the other sex, and therefore "pass" in public or even under prolonged scrutiny.