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it would be great if there was a way forward that didn't make anyone fearful of their rights; however, people obviously are scared and you haven't answered what they should do if they're not persuaded.
What rights are they/you scared they are losing?
This is also true of a lot of white people who don't want to see an equitable society for them and other people as they think that by providing that equity, they will somehow become disadvantaged. But, they are wrong.
Saying that we should cut transphobes or terfs some slack because it's been that way for a long time and they should be given time to adjust, just doesn't wash. It's been a problem for as long as that construct has been around (moreso in some cultures than others). Trans people have been around forever. And they are dying, either at their own hands or at the hands of others because they're either not getting the care they need or because of the extreme opinions some people hold.
How can it be a radical shift to ask that you treat a woman like a woman/allow a woman to live like a woman, unless you don't believe that teams women are women. Same also goes for trans men who also suffer the same prejudices but are less often the victims of some of the more violent crimes or vitriol.
But I'll stop here lest the memes buzz becomes any more harshed.
stevo_com-
by providing that equity, they will somehow become disadvantaged. But, they are wrong.
Hang on a second. Admittedly I posted all those memes to move things along, but that bit makes no sense.
How can you have one group with enhanced rights and privilege, and then reduce or remove that privilege and enhanced rights without it being disadvantageous?
You can put forward a moral case for fairness, but there is self evidently a disadvantage.
What happened to all those 80s South African politicians? Apartheid ending didn't exactly do their careers any favours.
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Basically this. If you don't think that feminist issues apply to trans women, you clearly don't recognise trans women as "real women" and are therefore a transphobe.
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What rights are they/you scared they are losing?
I think that's been laid out by enough women not to need me (not a woman) to rehash.
This is also true of a lot of white people who don't want to see an equitable society for them and other people as they think that by providing that equity, they will somehow become disadvantaged. But, they are wrong.
I agree, they are wrong, but I think this feels different in terms of how resolving it will rest on the creation/reshaping of rights, whereas previous moves towards equity seem to have resulted from increasing the number of people who are given an existing right that had previously been reserved (in law or in practice) to a privileged few.
Saying that we should cut transphobes or terfs some slack because it's been that way for a long time and they should be given time to adjust, just doesn't wash.
But that's not the argument. The argument is that a lot of people are not convinced that we've thought through all the consequences of this and that simply saying "if you don't accept X, then you're a Y!" doesn't really carry the wider crowd as well as it does in our bubble.
How can it be a radical shift to ask that you treat a woman like a woman/allow a woman to live like a woman, unless you don't believe that teams women are women.
I don't think it's radical at all at a personal level and I think it falls within most people's worldview of not being a dick, when it comes to respecting other's wishes and simply doing what you can to preserve the wellbeing of your fellow humans. The radical bit (for me) is the wider philosophical restructuring that it might entail. Men and women are just category labels for groups of people, we can draw the boundaries of those categories wherever we (as a society) choose and no one definition is more objectively correct than another as long as you can define them coherently. We could well move from using sex as the boundary between those categories to using gender identity and there are good compassionate reasons for doing so (and "trans women are women" is exactly a petition to shift the definition in that way), but given that the "old" definition has functioned for many purposes (even if not for being inclusive) it does feel radical to just shed it (which is how many of the more slogany arguments come across). Even just as a "legacy" definition, sex is useful for understanding how previous patterns of privilege and oppression as a result of gender roles are still playing out.
hugo7
ltc
ffm
So your answer is that they should not be scared. Fair enough, that seems like a reasonable case to make and it would be great if there was a way forward that didn't make anyone fearful of their rights; however, people obviously are scared and you haven't answered what they should do if they're not persuaded. For the most part I get the impression that they don't want to bring anyone down, but are concerned about how they maintain their wellbeing in a situation that seems, to them, to be zero-sum.
I worry that we understate just how radical a shift is actually entailed by what you've said above. Saying "It's ok, we just want to fundamentally restructure a millenia-old social concept so that we now conceptually and legally divide society on the basis of gender identity, rather than sex. It will all be fine" seems just a bit underpowered as an argument for this scale of change, even if it clearly is driven by the urgent need to reduce the exclusion of a very marginalised group.