The loss of freedom of speech, of sidelining women and biology

"It is very astonishing, and I'm glad the subject is not being ignored or brushed away by gransnet. It is the most extraordinary social issue of our time.
I think it comes down to a mental health issue. People want to change irrevocably when they are distressed to the point that they want to erase themselves and what better way than to reinvent themselves as the other sex. Its a sign, a symptom of distress. However, encouraging it is wrong because it tears down natural safeguards protecting the female sex."

I dont agree with that at all

Seems a bit like saying homosexuality isnt real, is just a sign of mental distress.

Seems some people dont believe gender dysmorphia is real

and supporting people who feel that way isnt encouraging it - any more than supporting people who are homosexual is encouraging homosexuality

Being kind works both ways.

AussieNanna

"It is very astonishing, and I'm glad the subject is not being ignored or brushed away by gransnet. It is the most extraordinary social issue of our time.
I think it comes down to a mental health issue. People want to change irrevocably when they are distressed to the point that they want to erase themselves and what better way than to reinvent themselves as the other sex. Its a sign, a symptom of distress. However, encouraging it is wrong because it tears down natural safeguards protecting the female sex."

I dont agree with that at all

Seems a bit like saying homosexuality isnt real, is just a sign of mental distress.

Seems some people dont believe gender dysmorphia is real

and supporting people who feel that way isnt encouraging it - any more than supporting people who are homosexual is encouraging homosexuality

Being kind works both ways.

I think you're missing the point that's being debated.

No one has said that gender dysmorphia doesn't exist, although I do think it's rarer than being made out to be.

What some of us are objecting to us safeguards, and rights, previously in place, for biological women are being swept aside, under a barrage of patent nonsense, telling us that biological men are now women, and that the two sexes don't exist.

Before the activists got involved, no one had a problem with people living as the opposite sex.

But, it's getting out of hand. Confused children and teenagers being given drugs that will alter their bodies permanently, which is wrong.

People getting cancelled because they take the view that biology is what it says, and self identifying doesn't change anyone's actual sex.

Owners/organisers of changing rooms, toilets, hospitals, prisons now suddenly having to pretend that men can be women, and vice versa.

The NHS having to offer screening, and appointments to TW, that cannot possibly apply to them. Because they are not biological women.

It's getting ridiculous. ?

Further to the prison debate:

'The criminal justice system is failing women by favouring transgender rights, a think-tank has suggested.

Self-declaration of gender identity has been adopted by key institutions despite not aligning with the law, creating problems for both female suspects and victims, the Policy Exchange paper states.

The publication cites a paper from Oxford University sociology professor Michael Biggs, who said: 'If campaigners for gender identity achieve their goal, the number of males in women's prisons will multiply.

Given the obvious incentive for heterosexual men to transfer... males would soon outnumber females. The consequence for female inmates hardly needs to be spelled out.'

Many politicians describe the debate as toxic and use that as an excuse to avoid addressing issues of the sort set out in this article. It is a quite shocking abdication of their responsibility as law makers.'

She added: 'Meanwhile across the public and private sectors, women and indeed some men have lost or been hounded from their jobs for daring to question the adoption of gender identity theory in their workplaces... It is positively McCarthyite.'"

The report, authored by assistant professor at Coventry University Maureen O'Hara, called for the elimination of de facto declarations of gender identity in the criminal justice system and for data to be recorded on the basis of sex.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10864075/New-hate-strategy-criminalise-comics-like-Ricky-Gervais.html

AussieNana you are missing the point that only 2 biological sexes exist, as Winston said, and no person can change from one to the other.
A person may be very unhappy about sex-role stereotypes of clothing, appearance, occupation etc but that does not mean the person is actually the sex opposite to the one identified when they were born.
I support everyone's right to live as they wish but I will never pretend that someone's sex is opposite to what I know it to be.
There are circumstances where a person's biological sex is very relevant, many of them are described on this thread and others on GN

Lily the cowardice of so many, to address this, is horrifying.

Aussienana
Being kind works both ways
It should, but it doesn’t. If you’ve been on GN long enough you will have read that *most trans people have no wish to override the rights of females, no desire to cheat in sport, no desire to declare themselves women (which has been made a meaningless definition in terms of sex since 2004).
They, along with AHF are the people who are being harmed by the actions of a few trans*, mainly TW, TRA and others both male and female who are definitely NOT kind, unless they have redefined the meaning of that word as well.

Until statutory bodies stop living in some sort of alternative reality, through "fear", and make it clear that biology trumps needs and wants, things won't change.

All this just panders to a noisy minority.

Until biological men, whatever they choose to identify as, have the same female organs as biological women, they are still biological men.

And, the same goes for biological women. They can identify as they like, it doesn't alter their biological sex.

Endless shouting, demands and tantrums cannot change that.?

As an expert on reproduction and fertility issues, Robert Winston is an expert, in practice as well as theory, on the human body as it works in reproduction and fertility. He is an expert on how it develops, how it works, and how the two sexes differ from each other. He knows about the ways that development can go wrong in the babe in the womb - and about the incidence of that abnormality in the population, which is far, far lower than the incidence of people who would rather be the oppsite sex to the one they were born as.

If he says that someone born with a male body cannot become female, and someone born with a female one cannot become male, he says it with more authority than someone talking philosophically about "queer theory". Gender is "sex in the head" but it is not the sex of the body There is much confusion about these two words, a lot of it among the people making very aggressive statements about the subject.

Gender disphoria exists and is currently a requirement for people applying for a certificate legally defining them as the oposite sex and entitling them to be treated as such in all respects. However, the propsed changes to the law would make it possible to legally change the sex on a birth certificate WITHOUT a diagnosis of gender disphoria - without even any medical input at all.

That opens the door of every changing room in a women's dress shop or swimming pool, every women's ward in a hospital, every post employing a gynaecologist, to any man at all who wishes to enter and is devious enough to claim that he has transitioned to a woman, even if he has a completely male functioning body and likes having sex with women.

Some of these places come (at the moment) under the exceptions to the law allowing them access - but Stonewall and other activists want to change that so that there are no exceptions for women in vulnerable situations. We are going back a couple of centuries in women's protection. Saying that is not anti-trans, It is pro-women.

AussieNanna

" n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Winston,_Baron_Winston
If you read his entry, you'll see he is better qualified on the subject than any of us posting here."

No I dont see that.

He seems an expert on on reproduction and fertiltiy issues, not transgender issues.

I didn't say he was an expert on transgender issues, I said he's an expert on sex, that there are only two sexes, that nobody can change their sex. That there is no such thing as a third sex, even if a tiny percentage of people are born with a disorder of sexual development that makes it more difficult to observe their sex at birth. Nowadays we have the means to ascertain exactly which sex the infant is.

Supporting children who are going through difficulties adjusting to their changing bodies should never involve telling them lies and administering powerful drugs that can damage them permanently and put them on a lifetime of medication. Nobody would support a child with anorexia by agreeing they were too fat and should stop eating.

Good post Elegran. It is frightening how easily our hard fought for rights are being given away, and all under an umbrella of 'be kind'.

Prisons were once unisex. Prisoners lived in one large room, all mixed together Bedding and food were not supplied, except the most basic and horrible rations. They slept on straw, (unless they had the money, or friends who could pay, to bribe the gaolers to house them separately, and buy decent food)

Women had no rights to protection or privacy (neither did men). It was survival of the strongest, and the weakest were exploited by the most ruthless or depraved.

Women had no rights to protection or privacy (neither did men). It was survival of the strongest, and the weakest were exploited by the most ruthless or depraved.

And here we are; a hundred years later and we have rapists, paedophiles and sex offenders being locked up with women prisoners.

"I think you're missing the point that's being debated.

No one has said that gender dysmorphia doesn't exist, although I do think it's rarer than being made out to be."

well some posters did seem to be saying that - it is just a phase, a mental illness thing etc

and no I havent been on GN long, so I dont know what was said in the past - my point was that gender dysmorphia is real. Sure, rarish - but real nevertheless.
Some people did seem to be dismissing that and suggesting all transgender issues were nonsense.

I didnt say I agree with militant activitist (I don't)

Rosie51

AussieNanna

" n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Winston,_Baron_Winston
If you read his entry, you'll see he is better qualified on the subject than any of us posting here."

No I dont see that.

He seems an expert on on reproduction and fertiltiy issues, not transgender issues.

I didn't say he was an expert on transgender issues, I said he's an expert on sex, that there are only two sexes, that nobody can change their sex. That there is no such thing as a third sex, even if a tiny percentage of people are born with a disorder of sexual development that makes it more difficult to observe their sex at birth. Nowadays we have the means to ascertain exactly which sex the infant is.

Supporting children who are going through difficulties adjusting to their changing bodies should never involve telling them lies and administering powerful drugs that can damage them permanently and put them on a lifetime of medication. Nobody would support a child with anorexia by agreeing they were too fat and should stop eating.

well, nobody needs to be an expert to know you cannot change your biological sex.
You can change your social gender and make some physical changes to your body

Im not sure what you mean by 'telling lies'
I do think gender dysmorphia doesnt start in adulthood and I agree with supporting children - in reversible ways

Not getting the anorexia analogy - I don't think dismissing a child's feelings about their identified gender is supporting them either.

AussieNanna

"I think you're missing the point that's being debated.

No one has said that gender dysmorphia doesn't exist, although I do think it's rarer than being made out to be."

well some posters did seem to be saying that - it is just a phase, a mental illness thing etc

and no I havent been on GN long, so I dont know what was said in the past - my point was that gender dysmorphia is real. Sure, rarish - but real nevertheless.
Some people did seem to be dismissing that and suggesting all transgender issues were nonsense.

I didnt say I agree with militant activitist (I don't)

Who on here has said gender dysphoria isn’t real?

Nobody disputes that true gender dysmorphia does exist. Rarely though.

No one objects to men living as women, or vice versa.

What is being pushed against is long held, and hard fought for biological women's rights/freedoms/safe spaces being taken over, so that many women feel unable to use them anymore - whether it's through feeling uncomfortable or through something like culture, which doesn't allow for mixing of the sexes, in certain circumstances.

We have ended up with what are biological men, whatever they are saying they identify as, taking over "safe spaces", (and their TW supporters), and telling us what we must think, say and do.

Or risk being abused, insulted or "cancelled". (All done in the name of kindness, of course...?).

We have had young adults, unhappy as children or teens, thinking they wanted to change gender, and taking body altering drugs, or even having surgery - often encouraged and cheered on by adults and clinics.

A few years later, they have bitterly regretted it, and realised that they were unhappy for other reasons.

The whole thing needs curtailing and it needs controlling.

Aussienana Because of memories of the drastic methods used to "discourage" homosexuality (obligatory and forcible injections of hormones, for instance) there are sanctions against attempts to "cure" anyone of a sexual diversity. As a result, such diversity is usually "affirmed" by therapists.

This leads to children being encouraged into therapy which may be irreversible. The Tavistock clinic is a leading centre for childhood gender bending. It has been criticised for putting children onto a pathway of puberty delaying drugs which resulted in every case in them going on to have gender-changing drugs and/or surgery. Surely some of them were indeed going through a phase, or were influenced by something other than gender disphoria - sexual abuse has been recorded as a factor for many trans people, and psychologists who don't totally buy into current gender theories point out other factors.

It isn't a question of denying the feelings of these children, but of digging deeper to find the roots of their dissatisfaction with their original sex before committing them to life with a changed body for the rest of their lives.

Elsewhere in this thread or others, there are links to the stories of people who had surgical or hormonal treatment to change their body, having had breasts removed or penis altered and converted into a vagina, or hormones stopping the proper development of the production of eggs or sperm. They have found that didn't cure their dissatisfaction but they cannot change their bodies back again, and they cannot now have children.

Teenagers often find those puberty years to be full of confusion, anxieties and the general angst that arrives with an overload of hormones.

Add an unhappy home life, or maybe bullying at school, or peer pressure, and you have a perfect mix for wanting to change something.

They can be unhappy, dissatisfied, worried, unhappy about how they look etc, for a number of reasons, and none of it will be cured by changing gender.

Adult age (18) should be the minimum age that can anyone can take drugs or have surgery for this sort of thing, although, of course, parents and children should discuss how they are feeling.

FarNorth

Lily the cowardice of so many, to address this, is horrifying.

Joan Collins, from about 11.50, won't comment because she doesn't want to upset the trans people and get hate mail or get cancelled.

It's obvious what she thinks but won't say it because she knows what happens.

youtu.be/SSq8Fkhemg0

Mollygo

AussieNanna

"I think you're missing the point that's being debated.

No one has said that gender dysmorphia doesn't exist, although I do think it's rarer than being made out to be."

well some posters did seem to be saying that - it is just a phase, a mental illness thing etc

and no I havent been on GN long, so I dont know what was said in the past - my point was that gender dysmorphia is real. Sure, rarish - but real nevertheless.
Some people did seem to be dismissing that and suggesting all transgender issues were nonsense.

I didnt say I agree with militant activitist (I don't)

Who on here has said gender dysphoria isn’t real?

there were comments that is is just a sign of mental distress for example

that seems saying it isnt real to me.

DiamondLily

Teenagers often find those puberty years to be full of confusion, anxieties and the general angst that arrives with an overload of hormones.

Add an unhappy home life, or maybe bullying at school, or peer pressure, and you have a perfect mix for wanting to change something.

They can be unhappy, dissatisfied, worried, unhappy about how they look etc, for a number of reasons, and none of it will be cured by changing gender.

Adult age (18) should be the minimum age that can anyone can take drugs or have surgery for this sort of thing, although, of course, parents and children should discuss how they are feeling.

of course none of those things will be cured by changing gender - if gender dysmorphia is not the problem.

If it is, none of those things will be changed by dismissing the issue and not doing anything about it either

I already agreed nobody should be able to do anything irreverisble before adulthood - in fact there in Aus they cannot until they have undergone extensive counselling AND lived as the opposite gender for at least 2 years.

so of course there need to be safe guards against people 'going through a phase' or not understanding the risks etc

I don't disagree with that.

I do disagree with the comments which seem to me to be dismissing the concept of gender dysmorphia at all.

Here we go again. ?

Transgender supporters hounded the secretary of state for education as he visited the University of Warwick, with the institution's Pride society accusing him of 'inciting hate'.

Nadhim Zahawi was ushered away by security as protesters at the university chanted 'Tory scum', and 'Zahawi is a transphobe', with some holding placards and wearing the transgender flag.

Prior to the event, Warwick Pride accused the minister of 'inciting hatred', after he defined women as 'adult human females.

The activists were blocked by security as they tried to follow Mr Zahawi out of the campus building, as he left to get into his car, the Telegraph reported.

He had been speaking at an event organised by the University of Warwick Conservative Association on Friday.

The association said that he discussed 'the future of our education system', and then moved onto 'topics ranging from housing to how to engage more young people within the party'.

Warwick Pride, the university's LGBTQUIA+ association, issued an open letter before the talk, stating that some of the society's executive planned on attending the event 'with trans flags and the intention to ask Zahawi questions concerning the rights of trans people in the UK'.

'Given that transphobia is omnipresent in society, it is imperative for the mental well-being of trans students that the university make itself clear that it is indeed supportive of transgender individuals, and that reactionary harmful transphobic rhetoric will not go unopposed,' it said in a statement.

'Trans rights are simply not up for debate, they are non-negotiable.'

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10869129/Trans-activists-hound-Nadhim-Zahawi-university-campus-chanting-Tory-scum.html

Not very kind then ?

What it needs is for those female students to find their places, awards, and jobs have been taken by males pretending to be female. Or as they get older define that their daughters achievements have been over ridden by males pretending to be female. Being a student is evidently an excuse for shortsightedness.

define that= to find that

I thought Universities were supposed to be places of learning, but they were also supposed to be a place of differing opinions, debate, listening and respecting various point of view.

Obviously not. It's now screaming, threats and trying to ban/cancel anyone who doesn't kowtow to "your" opinion.

I don't support Tories, but the Conservative Union at Warwick Uni were perfectly entitled to invite the Minister of Education, to give a lecture.

The lecture was about a lot of issues, but him saying women didn't have a penis, meant he couldn't attend the lecture in peace.

Honestly, these students just don't get it - academia is fine, but an open mind, the ability to debate sensibly, and compromise, is what gets you through life.?