Check your facts
Does this make any sense?
One item: mentally ill and deluded are not the same thing. It’s horribly easy to be deluded without being mentally ill. It happens to everyone, all the time – we can get things wrong at first glance, we can have bad or incomplete information, we can have loyalties or hatreds that push us toward mistakes, und so weiter.
Another item: if believing you are the other sex is a mental illness, then that’s what it is.
Another item: if an ideology is based on a delusion, then that’s what it is.
Another item: if an ideology is based on a delusion and hugely destructive of women’s rights and of normal maturation, then that’s what it is.
Let’s get real: the whole point of trans ideology is to treat a delusion as a branch of progressive reform. The problem is there is nothing progressive about pretending men are women. Claiming that men can be women is either a lie or a delusion. However “cruel” it may be to say so, it’s better than pretending it’s true.
Looks like more of the same, to me.
“Be kind.” That was trans’ first foot in the door. That’s what they mean by “you don’t have to [or, shouldn’t] call trans deluded or mentally ill.” “Being kind,” and not calling a spade a spade, is what got us into this mess in the first place. And notice, it never goes the other way. There is never any exhortation to T and their advocates to “be kind” to women, or to “be kind” to confused and vulnerable children, or to “be kind” to L or G. The “kindness” only ever flows in one direction.
“You won’t get the protection and safety you need if you call us deluded or mentally ill.” That’s what they mean by “choosing a strategy that is LESS protective of [women] .”. Less protective in what way? They want women to “simply acknowledg[e] the reality of trans women,” and then also have to explain ” why sports are an exception where sex matters.” They are again simply assuming and asserting that gender is primary, and that women have to jump through hoops to justify sex differences before men can be excluded from women’s anything. It’s classic DARVO and gaslighting. We can’t “simply acknowledge the reality of trans women,” because they are not real.. That’s the entire point. Sex-segreation is not the “exception” that requires justification. It is the rule. Rather, it’s the weird claim that men can enter anything and everything for women that is the exception requiring justification. How is the T position more protective, or more effective at providing protection for women? Answer: it’s not. They are lying, again.
Another DARVO is “a lot of us like trans people and don’t like cruelty,” while saying that the women’s position “is because they enjoy insulting trans [people].” (I refuse their lingo of “folks”.). Again, it’s exactly backwards. The whole T enterprise is open season on insulting women and being cruel to women. That seems to be one of the main attractions. The vitriol, violence, and threats — again — flow primarily in one direction only.
This is T dogma in action: lying, gaslighting, and DARVO.
I have no idea why people don’t see through this immediately.
Well said, Ophelia, let’s call a fig a fig and a trough a trough. I consider it a kindness actually. Being told the truth isn’t supposed to be easy, it’s supposed to be honest and caring, even if it’s difficult. Living a lie never benefits anyone, and these “supporters” are doing more harm than good. Let them believe what they want and live how they want, but don’t let them force those of us to go along with whatever they believe — those of us who don’t go along with it also have the right to think what we want, and if we see the harm in believing in such things is detrimental to women’s lives and rights and point that out, then that’s within our rights too.
Men in women’s sports, women only events and awards, and women only spaces by definition must exclude men, whether they “identify as” female or not. It’s fine if they want to “live as a woman” but it’s not fine if they try to force everyone to agree or aquiesce. Those who do are cowardly and are doing them, and everyone else, an injustice by insisting that we agree despite our better judgement, and again, we all have the right to execute our better judgement. People deserve the truth, even if it’s unpalatable. Otherwise you’re living a lie. If it’s mental illness then let’s call it that, and if it’s a social contagion, then let’s call it that.
I don’t expect everyone to live by some social or cultural standard, but when an ideology tramples on the rights of others who deserve to live their own lives as they see fit, and it’s just, and hurts no one, then a line needs to be drawn, and the truth of things needs to be known and widely spread.
And, of course, the whole argument is a lie, because any time gender-critics have put forward positions about why sex-based divisions matter, they immediately get shut down with the bumper-sticker slogans (TWAW, Trans if you say you’re trans) that denote the entire movement.
If the Trans movement were to abandon those two slogans, and instead approach the matter from a point of view of compromise in the first place, they probably could have done their ‘community’ a great deal of good without creating the backlash they ultimately have reaped.
Magdalen Berns put it succinctly: “I’d rather be rude than a fucking liar.”
And for most of us, sports actually aren’t an exception where sex matters. Sex matters in many walks of life. Medicine, bathrooms, maternity wards, rape crisis shelters, prisons, changing rooms, and on and on and on. Sex matters. It’s as simple as that.
In Nebraska, they recently passed a bill barring trans women from women’s sports. They were very careful to ensure that it only barred them there; they can be allowed in women’s bathrooms, etc. Sports. For fuck’s sake, banning them in sports while giving them open season everywhere else. Why? Because in Nebraska, women’s sports are taken seriously (I know, surprising, but their women’s teams are outperforming their men’s teams in a big way, and sports fans love winners). The rest of it? Well, that’s just for women. Because women’s sports are watched by men, and men enjoy watching the women play sports without big hulking men on the team, we will ban them from playing sports.
To get the votes of the Democrats, they compromised…as usual, it was women that were compromised.
@twiliter #2
That’s a good point. It’s our right not only to disagree, but to say so out loud.
In the same way that Dilan Esper says that opponents to trans ideology would argue “more effectively” if we didn’t call trans deluded or mentally ill, the whole T movement could have argued more effectively to normalize their fetish if they had stuck to cross-dressing and still using male facilities. They always ignore the part where we say they should be able to believe what they want and live — for themselves — how they want, but just don’t make everyone else play along.
Every single thing they say is projection. THEY would have been more effective if they didn’t call women names. They say they “don’t like cruelty,” while inflicting unimaginable cruelty on girls and women.