‘Real women’ rejoice! My approach to calmly and compassionately opposing unreasonable transgender ideology has been to meet them halfway, to accept that gender is a thing that is different from sex, to even potentially accept that a trans woman is a woman (whatever that actually is), but to then point out that identifying as whatever gender should not necessarily allow access to single-sex spaces - meaning that gender pretty much becomes meaningless, especially in our modern liberalistic societies.* Why allow males who identify as women into female spaces? Makes no logical sense since sex and gender are apparently different. So we shouldn’t have situations where trans women athletes horrifically beat the crap out of OG women, females, while ‘progressives’ cheer, as in the recent Olympics. President Trump seems to agree, with an executive order on the matter seeking to replace the term ‘gender’ in official documents with ‘sex’. Clever females have also caught on, as the farcical scenes around having to have female nights at a bathhouse in addition to women’s nights (which became sausage parties) revealed.
And incredibly, given how far the UK has fallen in recent years (a place where child rapists walk free as those protesting them are locked up), the UK Supreme Court has declared that, legally, a ‘woman’ is a ‘female’. Source. This is a wonderful recognition that even if ‘woman’ truly means something else, the term is commonly used pretty much interchangeably with (adult human) ‘female’ so that a woman’s bathroom is really a female bathroom. Anyone questioning this can think about where very young females are supposed to go. They aren’t women but still go into the so-called woman’s bathroom, because they are females. It’s really a females bathroom. I have long suspected that trans women and their allies, while initially benefiting from the understanding that sex and gender are different, then try and have their cake and eat it too, taking advantage of the fact that so many people see sex and gender as the same thing (helped along by Anglo prudishness - sex!) - so they kind of pretend that they are female and want access to female only spaces. The proof is in the pudding. Despite this ruling doing nothing to trample on transgender rights (for example, they can still identify as they wish, and create their own spaces which females could also attend if all are keen), and seems to be more about protecting the rights of females, the trans lobby is predictably upset. Source. They couldn’t be more misogynistic and homophobic* if they tried.
Okay then.
*Extra: It used to be okay to be gay. Y’all don’t have to like it, but it’s a thing, and you can bloody well tolerate it - tolerating of course not meaning liking or encouraging. Somehow it became fashionable to deny gayness and embrace the ridiculous and ironic (given that it’s typically body positive progressives that push it) notion that children were born in the wrong body instead. Whatever your sex you can be gay, you can enjoy ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine pursuits’, you can wear clothes that normally would be worn by others, and you can make yourself look utterly grotesque with your hair and makeup choices. Welcome to a liberal society, you can pretty much do what you want if you’re not harming others, within reason. There is no need to identify as transgender. Even if it’s real it’s completely redundant. Regressive even. Social expectations and roles, vaguely associated with sex? Where’s feminism at?
I agree with your conclusion. Trans gender rights are an expression of human rights. And human rights don’t really matter in a world which ubiquitously accepts difference and where individuals are free to express themselves as long as they all respect and care for the good of others.
But it makes no sense to establish a transgender right that overrides and actually negates women’s rights to safe, women-only places and activities, including ablution blocks, public toilets, women’s refuges, sports, particularly those where age and gender differences are already established for reasons of health, safety and sporting fairness, especially given that women remain endangered by the lack of social respect exhibited by some men. I would add, having followed the issues arising in Scotland around the placement of a transgender person, born male, into a position of responsibility - leadership - in the women’s refuge movement, that it appears that person had little to no respect for women. So it was not OK to give those women’s rights to a transgender born male. And I think this precedent is something to learn from.
Absolutely!