Yep. And the answer is
“You don’t - you just evade the idea that there’s any issues”. Which ultimately means that trans activism adopts a “not all men are like this” approach, because it relies on the idea that safeguarding against the risks male people pose to female people becomes absolutely unnecessary when the male person says “I am a woman”, and always falls back on “but most males aren’t rapists!”. I know that I’m not a rapist or an abuser I also recognise that safeguarding at my work, where I sup-pet vulnerable people, has to recognise the potential that I could be. And it isn’t reasonable that a heterosexual male can be considered to be less of a risk than I am on the basis of having dysphoria; dysphoria doesn’t stop some trans men from being celebrated as “the man who gave birth”, so why should dysphoria impact other sex-based behaviour?
And that’s why it’s important that communication is clear - and why it’s important to not say “trans women are women” unless you really do believe these two things:
1: some male people have an inner essence that enables them to know that they have what amounts to a spirit that makes them a member of the opposite sex
2. No male people place themselves in this group, either accidentally, due to a flawed understanding of themselves or mental distress, or deliberately - based on being a male person who wants access to female spaces
I think that most reasonable people don’t believe either of those things - they actually believe the thing that is true - that some male people find being male distressing, and to help, they live as close to their idea of the opposite sex as is feasible. When activism goes beyond that, it will encounter people saying “no”
(, Sun 15 Aug 2021, 11:22, Reply)