Trans counterarguments

A page to keep all my counterarguments for reference.

Statements

Parents are transing their gay kids because they don't want to have a gay child.

This would only make sense if all trans people were transitioning to "straight", and they're not. To my knowledge, the majority of trans people are non-straight in some way.

The idea that having a trans child would be better or easier than having a gay child is very odd to me. Being gay is far more socially acceptable than being trans in most Western societies at the moment.

Parents are transing their gender non-conforming (GNC) kids because they don't want to have a GNC child.

This would only make sense if all trans people were conforming to the gender norms of their target gender, and they're not. In my experience, most trans people are gender non-conforming in some way.

The idea that having a trans child would be better or easier than having a gender non-conforming child is very odd to me. Being GNC is far more socially acceptable than being trans in most Western societies at the moment.

Trans men are really lesbians with internalised lesbophobia.

This would only make sense if all trans men were only attracted to women, which isn't the case. There are plenty of gay and bisexual trans men.

Trans women are more likely to be sexual predators.

In order to know this, ideally we'd need to know:

1. The proportion of people in the "male at birth" general population who come out as trans;
2. The proportion of people in the "male at birth" prison population who come out as trans;
3. The proportion of cisgender men who are in prison for sex crimes;
4. The proportion of cisgender women who are in prison for sex crimes.

Then we could compare statistics properly.

Unfortunately, we don't yet have the kinds of accurate statistics on trans people that we'd need to draw these conclusions. For example, in late 2021 The Times concluded that trans people were more likely to be sexual predators based on misread statistics, an article used by a lot of gender critical women to back up incorrect claims in online arguments - but The Times had to publish a retraction shortly thereafter and admit that there is no data whatsoever to support their conclusions. You can read a very thorough post by jane fae examining the difficulties in reporting these kinds of statistics here. TL;DR: This kind of analysis should not be carried out by an amateur; there are other factors in play that an inexperienced person doesn't know to look for.

"[Marginalised group] are sexual predators, women and children are not safe around them" is an argument that has been used against numerous marginalised groups over decades, if not centuries. Most recently (in the UK) it has been used against gay people. I've not yet been presented with any evidence or reasoning that suggests this case should be any different.

Trans women go into public toilets [or other gendered spaces] and masturbate. Here's some amateur porn to prove it.

I don't know if you are aware, but there is so much porn online of people doing sexual things in public places, with various levels of exhibitionism, and so much of it features cisgender women. I don't have reason to believe that the examples you're talking about are more abusive/perverted than any other exhibitionist or gendered-space porn.

To test this I went to Pornhub in an incognito tab and searched for "masturbating in public toilets". The top 20 results (one page) were 16 with cisgender women and 4 with cisgender men.

Singular 'they' when used for individual people is grammatically incorrect.

Let's compare it to singular 'you'.

The second-person pronoun 'you' used to be used only to address multiple people (plural 'you'); when addressing individuals it'd be "thou art working for thine master" or whatever. It could also be used to address an individual in a formal way, a bit like "vous" vs. "tu" in French, or the "Royal We".

In the 1600s, this formal way of addressing an individual as if they were more than one person overtook thou, thee and thine. It is now completely normal to say "you are a dentist"; aside from some regional/cultural variations, it would be very unusual for someone to say "thou art a dentist", right? "You" can be used to address an individual, but the verbs are always plural, i.e. we always say "you are" and never "you is". "You are a dentist" is considered grammatically correct, and it is known as singular 'you'.

Singular 'they' is 300 years older than that.

Here's a table to show you that they are grammatically almost identical:

Form	Plural you	Plural they	Singular you	Singular they
Subjective	You are my employees	They are my employees	You are my employee	They are my employee
Objective	I congratulate you on your promotions	I congratulate them on their promotions	I congratulate you on your promotion	I congratulate them on their promotion
Prenominal possessive	You all wear your name badges	My employees all wear their name badges	You wear your name badge	My employee wears their name badge
Predicative possessive	This desk is mine, and those desks are yours	This desk is mine, and those desks are theirs	This desk is mine, and that desk is yours	This desk is mine, and that desk is theirs
Reflexive	You all assign yourselves to tasks	Employees assign themselves to tasks	You assign yourself to a task	An employee assigns themself to a task

I say almost identical, because I have managed to think of one inconsistency, underlined in the table above, but here's a more stark example:

• When [a hypothetical employee/Mx Smith] is happy, they are productive.

When the verb follows the noun it's singular, and when it follows the pronoun it's plural. Is that enough to write off an entire pronoun set that is 700+ years old? I guess that's the debate that continues to rage. I can't declare with authority one way or another, but hopefully this summary illustrates why I think the argument is arbitrary and silly. English is full of these ridiculous grammatical inconsistencies, which we use fluently and without complaint. Objecting to this one seems absurd to me. It may be grammatically incorrect, but I believe it is grammatically acceptable.

Cis women shouldn't be forced to see trans women (e.g. medical, domestic violence shelters) because a lot of women with PTSD from misogynistic violence will feel unsafe.

Doctors and people who work for organisations who provide safe spaces for abused women have said, over and over again, that if a service user wants a different volunteer/employee to help them then another will be provided, and vulnerable women will not be asked/pushed to overcome their biases while in this vulnerable situation. Even Mridul Wadhwa, at the centre of the 2021 Edinburgh Rape Crisis dogpile, has said this:

"Let me make this very clear, if a woman engages with our services, through any route, and she feels she is not comfortable with the support worker allocated to her, we will of course, prioritise that need and will do whatever we can to provide the right support - this is the very basis of a person-centred approach and is a foundation of service delivery in advocacy work and support services across a number of sectors."

The people who run these provisions see it as a common-sense part of a person-centred approach, but even if they didn't, it is part of UK law. The Equality Act 2010 requires service providers and businesses to accept trans women as women by default, and it allows for exemptions to this rule on a case-by-case basis, but it specifies that exclusion must be "proportionate". Even for something more sensitive like a domestic violence shelter or medical practice:

• Outright excluding trans women as service users is not proportionate - a cisgender woman who is upset by a trans woman's presence can be accommodated in a different room.
• Outright excluding trans women as volunteers/employees is not proportionate - a cisgender woman who is upset by a trans woman volunteer/employee can be seen by a different employee/volunteer.

Yes, the majority of domestic violence victims are cisgender women abused by cisgender men, but there will always be outliers, and the majority of DV shelter volunteers are cisgender women.

Let's return to the assertion that trans women should be banned from these spaces by default to protect women with PTSD, and the reasoning behind it.

• Do you say this because being around people who have traditionally masculine physical characteristics makes them feel unsafe? A lot of trans women pass and don't have those.
• Do you say this because accidentally seeing a penis makes them feel unsafe? A lot of trans women have had bottom surgery and don't have one.

When transphobes are objecting to trans women working/volunteering for DV shelters, it's often framed as an attempt to protect cisgender women from being re-traumatised. But what if a cisgender lesbian woman comes in who has been abused by her cisgender wife? Making the shelter women-only is already useless for her because her abusive wife is not prevented from entering. In terms of personal gender-/sex-related triggers, perhaps someone whose appearance defies gender norms, such as a trans woman or a trans man, would be the best person to help her to feel safe.

Cis women shouldn't have to share single-sex spaces with trans women (e.g. public toilets, changing rooms) because a lot of women with PTSD from misogynistic violence will feel unsafe.

It's just not legal or ethical to bar an entire named subgroup of people from a particular public space based on a small proportion of members of the public having a particular mental illness. The responsibility would be with the individual to manage their symptoms instead.

Again, let's a look at the assertion that trans women should be banned from these spaces by default to protect women with PTSD, and the reasoning behind it.

• Do you say this because being around people who have traditionally masculine physical characteristics makes them feel unsafe? A lot of trans women pass and don't have those.
• Do you say this because accidentally seeing a penis makes them feel unsafe? A lot of trans women have had bottom surgery and don't have one.

We can always tell.

This is the cliché that a "real" woman who was born a girl and raised as a girl/woman has learned to tell when someone was male at birth, even if they've fully transitioned, and no matter how well they "pass".

The photo of trans wrestler Mack Beggs that transphobes love to humiliate themselves with.

A while back, news broke about Mack Beggs, a trans wrestler on a US school's women's team. There's a particular photo of Mack that transphobes love to show to back up their claim that trans people shouldn't be able to participate against people who share their genders. And you can see why, right? That's someone who appears very physically masculine, wrestling with a woman, and holding her in a very alarming chokehold. She looks scared. You can see why someone concerned about women might start to feel a bit worried about trans people in sport based on this photo. It's unfair, and it puts women at risk because physically male people are so much stronger.

Thankfully there's often someone willing to step in to tell the transphobe that they're making a fool of themself. Mack Beggs is a trans man, who was assigned/observed female at birth and started his transition young. Physically his strength and build are comparable to men of his age, but because his state insists that trans people must compete on teams that align with the sex marker on their birth certificate, Beggs is forced to compete on the women's team. He wants to compete against men, but the transphobic laws of his state prevent it. Yeah, that is unfair. Amazingly, trans women are so hypervisible to transphobes that a lot of the trans people who've made this mistake are unable to understand that Beggs isn't a trans woman, either because the idea of a trans person being able to pass just does not compute, or because they don't realise that trans men even exist, or both.

You can't always tell.

Do you believe that male-sexed people have the right to undress and shower in a communal changing room with teenage girls?

Yes, if they are women.

In the United Kingdom all trans women are entitled to use the changing rooms and showers that align with their gender identity by law, namely the Equality Act 2010. That means they have the right, by law, to use the same communal changing rooms as teenage girls.

The Act does allow for exceptions, but those exceptions must be considered on a case-by-case basis and they must be a "proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim". It doesn't allow for all trans women to be barred from using any particular changing room, because that would be disproportionate.

This question is carefully worded to hint that trans women are disgusting child-abusing perverts and to evoke a person's protective instinct towards vulnerable children in order to gently manipulate them towards adopting a bigoted viewpoint. It's not a point of debate in good faith, it is propaganda with a question mark on the end.

Do you believe that women who look different to how you'd expect them to look have the right to undress and shower in a communal changing room that has their gender designated on the door?

Being trans is a mental illness; you can tell because it's listed in the DSM.

The DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) is a manual of over 200 conditions, and referring to it as evidence that a condition from that list is a mental illness would be a mistake, because:

• It contains a bunch of conditions that are not mental illnesses, such as autism (a neurodevelopmental condition), ADHD (another neurodevelopmental condition), learning disabilities, disorder due to Parkinson's disease (a degenerative neurological condition), disorder due to prion disease ("prion" is very vague, there are many prions, sometimes infectious), brain injury disorders, and non-brain things like "Imprisonment or other incarceration", "Inadequate housing", "Lack of adequate food or safe drinking water", and "Low income".
• It is partly intended for billing for medical conditions, so it has to contain things that are not physical in nature (like a broken leg or a dodgy kidney) but do still cost money to treat.
• It is location-specific. It is not used in the UK, for example; we use the ICD. Other manuals contain different conditions, refer to them with different names, and classify them differently.

Gender dysphoria is like anorexia, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), or any other mental illness where you feel bad about your body and want to change it.

Different conditions often have different treatments, even when the conditions themselves are diagnostically very similar. For example, there are no known medications to treat the symptoms of autism, a developmental condition much like gender dysphoria - but ADHD, so similar to autism that it's referred to as a "cousin" of autism with many overlapping major symptoms such as stimming and executive dysfunction, is treated (but not cured) with a variety of medications.

Anorexia, BDD and gender dysphoria aren't even considered cousins. Anorexia is categorised as an eating disorder, BDD is in the obsessive-compulsive category (with OCD and compulsive skin-picking), and gender dysphoria is in its own category.

Sex is immutable.

If we assume this is true, it doesn't stop people with penises from having medical treatment that makes them appear to be female. It also doesn't stop people with vaginas from having medical treatment that makes them appear to be male. For most trans people this is enough. Whether it's enough for you isn't really relevant.

In case it helps, let's go into more detail and follow it to its logical conclusion. "Biological sex" is widely considered to be composed of the following:

• Chromosomes - XX, XY, variations thereupon.
• Hormones - oestrogen-dominated or testosterone-dominated.
• Hormonal expression - dictated by hormone receptors, so hormone expression may differ from hormones. Includes "secondary" sex characteristics such as breasts, facial hair.
• Internal genitalia - testes, uterus, ovaries, etc.
• External genitalia - penis, clitoris, vulva, etc.

(Note that gametes are not included, because many people don't produce gametes.)

The only one of these that cannot be changed with medical treatments is chromosomes. One part of sex is immutable.

And this is moot, because trans people don't feel bad because of their chromosomes. (Like you probably, most trans people haven't had their chromosomes tested and are assuming that their chromosomes are XX or XY.) A trans person feels bad because their body's shape and function, and the way people treat them and talk about them as a result of that, is different to how they feel it should be. This is not changed by altering chromosomes, it's changed by altering the other four components of sex as listed above. The only one you don't need to change to feel better is the only one that cannot be changed.

So if we for some reason conclude that being able to alter every aspect of biological sex except chromosomes means that sex is immutable and cannot be changed, then congratulations, you are right! And it has no effect whatsoever. A trans person will still feel uncomfortable with the other aspects of their biological sex, alter them through the miracle of modern medicine, physically and socially be seen as a different sex, and then feel better.

What is your goal when you tell a trans person that sex is immutable? What would be a positive outcome for you?

What is a woman?

Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity. It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate". The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki.

Read more on Wikipedia here.

What is a woman? (Asked in good faith)

The meaning of words has to be decided by consensus. For the word "woman" there is no consensus, there's just a bunch of people who have different opinions and they all think they're right and everyone else is crazy. A lot of trans people think this question is in the same box as "what is a person?" (identity), and a lot of gender critical people think this question is in the same box as "what is a human being?" (biology).

In order to find out if there is consensus I default to asking the people who experience the thing, right? So. If you ask 100 cisgender women what it means to them to be a woman you'll get 100 different answers. Probably many of them will refer to their ability to bear children or experience a menstrual cycle. Maybe some of them will refer to their desire to be in a relationship with or have sex with a man. Many will probably refer to aspects of their social role, such as being caring or emotional or having particular aptitudes. Some will talk about the oppressions they have faced because of their bodies and presentations. Some will say it means nothing to them at all, and if they had been born in a male body they probably wouldn't really care. Some will have very complex, illogical or internally contradictory answers. Most will probably connect with both biological and social aspects of womanhood and femininity.

If you ask those 100 cisgender women whether they're women, most of them will say yes, and a few will say something like "I think so." If you ask them how sure they are, you will get a spectrum of certainty. If you ask them whether their womanhood has changed over time, some of them will say that they felt like they lost an aspect of their womanhood after an unwanted hysterectomy or mastectomy, or upon finding out that they're unable to bear children - and some will say that it was unaffected by those events but it was affected by other, perhaps less physical, things.

Womanhood is not the name for a fixed measurable thing that applies universally to all women. This is what's known as a subjective experience, and it makes the question an existential one rather than a biological one. What you feel your womanhood is and how strongly you feel it (if at all) cannot be automatically applied to any other woman. All we can do is trust our own sense of who we are, and trust others when they tell us who they are.

"TERF" (trans-exclusionary radical feminism) isn't accurate, because we include trans men in our feminism, as they're female.

This line never comes across as genuine, to me - but let's pretend it's not a lie that you came up with (or saw someone else make) to win an inconsequential argument.

If you include trans men in your feminism because you see them as women, you're not including them. No doubt you are in favour of various things that may incidentally benefit some trans men, like ensuring access to abortion or cervical smears, but... As a group, gender critical people can often be found saying "you need cervical smears BECAUSE YOU ARE A WOMAN, if you have a cervix you are AN ADULT HUMAN FEMALE", and so on. This makes it harder for trans men to access these health services. If you don't understand this and you're not interested in understanding this, you don't include trans men in your feminism. If you understand this and you say it anyway, you're actively excluding trans men. Another name for "excluding trans men" is transphobia.

In order to include a group you have to trust them when they tell you who they are and what they need/want. Gender critical feminists are consistently and vocally opposed to trans men getting what they need. GCs undermine trans men by calling top surgery "mutilation", or by calling hormone therapy "abusing testosterone", or by saying trans men are just confused women with internalised lesbophobia. This list could be made much longer.

For these reasons and many more, trans men listen to gender critical people talking about them and don't feel welcome at all. They feel condescended to and misgendered, at best. If your inclusion of a group is conditional on that group changing who they are to fit who you think they should be, it is not inclusion.

But I'm pretty sure you already know this.

Trans people already have the right to participate in sports - as their birth sex.

Check out this tweet I saw recently:

Source.

Someone in Ireland is arguing, 11 days before the Irish equal marriage referendum (22nd May 2015), that gay people already have the right to get married - to someone of the opposite gender. Now, seven years later, this argument known to be in violation of human rights laws, and most people in Western society would see that this is clearly bigotry and homophobia.

Transphobia is just recycled homophobia, and this is one of many examples.