Thread by @aniobrien

🧵 I thought I’d share what i was going to read out at #LetWomenSpeakAuckland - some of it is abbreviated.

2/ What I write is unlikely to convince the rabid mob who are invested & committed to their narrative. Nonetheless, I write this for the much larger number of people on the periphery who may see their nonsense and accept it as truth without context.

3/ First of all, I do not hate trans people in the slightest. I do not wish them ill will and I think there are definitely ways we could address the challenges they face in society to ensure they can live full and healthy lives.

4/ My concerns lay not with gender nonconformity or people who experience incongruity with their body. Rather with how society is dealing with these things or, more specifically, how a small number of activists are dictating how we should conceptualise sex, gender, and identity.

5/ 2 areas with which I’m mainly concerned are:
1. how trans activism & its manifestation in policy & law impact on women
2. The transitioning of kids.

IMO, gender nonconformity in kids isn’t something that should be discouraged. It should be accepted & allowed to be explored.

6/ Any child of mine will be free to adopt the gender stereotypes associated with either sex. They are just stereotypes after all. Whether my kid wants to wear pink or blue, play with trucks or dolls, or dress up as Elsa or Spiderman is entirely up to them.

7/ What I won’t do is teach my child that because they express themselves in the stereotypical way associated with the opposite sex that they are somehow “born in the wrong body”. In my view that would be regressive.

8/ I advocate for teaching kids that they ARE their bodies & their bodies are amazing. Whether they are born with a male or female body should have no effect on which toys they play with or how they dress.
‘Tomboys’ aren’t broken girls & effeminate boys aren’t defective.

9/ The idea that individualism and challenging stereotypes should mean that a child needs to change their name, pronouns, and be put on a lifelong medical pathway is wrong in my view. These ideas are taught to children. Leave them be.

10/ Big pharma used to be treated with suspicion, but trans activists are chomping at the bit to line gender nonconforming kids for medical intervention that is not reversible, which has severe side effects, and for which the kids are not capable of informed consent.

11/ I would like to stress here that I believe adults should be free to make their own decisions regarding medical transition and I am not advocating against their right to do what they like with their bodies.

12/ It was recently Detrans Awareness Day & many detransitioners shared their experiences online. It’s heartbreaking to see how many of them were transitioned as girls & now in their 20s are faced with the reality of infertility, irreversibly altered bodies, & a lot of trauma.

13/ Many expressed anger at the adults in their lives — parents, therapists, Drs— for not stopping them from “destroying” their bodies. They were kids, teens, & unable to understand the gravity of what they were doing to their bodies even tho they swore they did at the time.

14/ We need to be adults for these children. Allow them to express and explore without attaching further meaning to it. Support them to appreciate their body for what it can do and love themselves for who they are.

15/ Particularly concerning is paediatric transitioning of young gays & lesbians. I am a lesbian & I worry a lot for girls like me. Whistleblowers from the UK’s largest gender clinic, The Tavistock, have told of concerns that transition has become the new gay conversion therapy.

16/ They joked that there would be no gays left at the rate they were transitioning them. Many parents, they said, preferred to have a trans daughter instead of a gay son. I don’t want to see a generation of gays & lesbians who have been treated like medical experiments.

17/ I’ll leave this topic there. I hope that I have conveyed that I have nothing but love for gender nonconforming kids and it is this love and concern that causes me to challenge the narratives being pushed by adults.

18/ Now, women. Difficult women like me — the ones who say “no” and question things — have found ourselves branded as the very worst in society: “TERFs”.

19/ One only need look at the treatment JK Rowling has received for expressing empathy for trans people, but refusing to go along with the narrative of trans activists, to see the degree of hate there is for us difficult women.

20/ there is a great deal of misogyny in trans activism. It is women who are being pushed out of our own spaces, losing out on our own opportunities, and being parodied in a highly sexualised manner.

21/ We are now called “bleeders” or “people with uteruses” and are being written out of our own lives. This is grossly misogynistic especially when compared to the virtually untouched language of men’s health and experiences.

22/ That being a woman is reduced to ‘opting in’ is highly misogynistic. High heels, false nails, short skirts, & a ditzy affect do not make a woman. That is not to say a male should not be free to dress this way, it is simply to question why this should make him a woman.

23/ There’s a suggestion that by demanding the retention of single-sex spaces women are saying all transwomen are dangerous predators. This isnt accurate. It shouldnt be difficult to understand as the existence of single-sex spaces doesnt indicate we believe every man is a threat

24/ It is also about privacy. For some women — particularly religious women — sharing spaces with males (even if they identify as women) is not an option and without single-sex spaces they have to exclude themselves from public facilities.

25/ Women are simply saying “no” to losing our spaces, opportunities, and the language to describe ourselves.

26/ The idea that there is no difference between the physical abilities of the sexes & so sport should be based on self-identity not sex is patently ridiculous. The activists & elites who promote this rubbish should know that the majority of the population know they are lying.

27/ It makes me angry that lesbians &gays have been redefined. Rather than same-sex attracted activists have pushed that we’re SAME-GENDER attracted. This is significant because it has resulted in lesbians being told any heterosexual male who declares himself a woman is a lesbian

28/ We are told that if we are willing to use strap-ons then we should be willing to sleep with transwomen (the majority of which have not had surgery). Heterosexual sex is now considered lesbian sex if the person with the penis says he is a woman. It is Orwellian.

29/ This means spaces that used to be exclusively for women who are attracted to women, are very rarely female-only nowadays. To criticise this is unacceptable coz women arent allowed to say “no”. Lesbians arent allowed to say “no”. If we do, we are excluded from polite society.

30/ Gender nonconforming children and trans adults should be free to live their best lives like everyone else. Their rights should be protected and advocated for just as everyone else.

31/ It is my hope that eventually we will be able to have some honest and open conversations about how to protect children and women’s rights while ensuring trans people are not disadvantaged. The conversation has been all one-way traffic thus far.

32/ I restate my offer here to discuss this in good faith if anyone would like to do so. I would rather answer for myself than have beardy internet bros using me as an opportunity to be a sanctioned misogynist.