40 years ago you'd have been telling me that seeing homosexual couples hold hands and kiss is unnatural and requires the whole of society to believe an unnatural lie that they aren't just horrible perverts.
In both cases, a minority of people have non-mainstream feelings/understanding of their own gender or sexuality, and therefore wish to do things that affect their own body and either nobody else's (trans) or that only affect other people who feel the same way (gay). In both cases, people have argued that it's immoral, that it's about grooming children, and that the external visibility of being gay/trans - either seeing two people of the same gender holding hands, or kissing, or choosing to live their life together openly, or seeing someone who you once thought was one gender but has asked to be called the other gender and to be allowed to dress and act as culture considers "normal" for that gender.
In both cases, it turns out that actually, no, these gay or trans (or any combination of the LGBTQ - many trans people identify as trans AND gay, it's not a case of gay people choosing to be trans to become straight as I've seen claimed) people roaming the streets doesn't make your life worse, it doesn't trick kids into thinking about sex too early any more than a married straight couple bringing a new baby into the world does, and telling kids that it's OK to be gay, and that it's OK to be trans, doesn't lead to more kids "deciding" to be gay or trans it just leads to more people admitting it rather than staying in the closet. Trans kids and gay kids aren't making a decision, any more than you never made a decision to be your birth gender, nor did you make a decision to be gay or not.
Trans rights are human rights, and while I'm not trans if I decided tomorrow to get surgery to remove my penis and ask everyone to call me "she/her", how exactly does that affect you or anybody else any more than if I continue to have the gay sex I so often enjoy?
> People have been fired from their jobs, harassed by trans activists
You could say the exact same thing about people being fired for racism or homophobia and being "harassed" (I wouldn't use that word for fighting bigotry, personally) for being racist or homophobic. Is that evidence that racism should be allowed everywhere?
> The reason was that heterosexual males (who called themselves women) had attended previous such events, despite lesbian women of course not being interested in them, and were being creepy.
There is literally no evidence of this being a common thing, while there is quite a bit of evidence of nutty anti-trans people accusing cis women of being trans because they "looked manly", even though they were just women born looking like that. Meanwhile, the idea that male sex offenders would rather pretend to be female to gain access to private spaces (where if they start doing anything creepy, they can be kicked out by the majority regardless of whether the majority can tell what their birth gender is or not) as opposed to doing what actual sexual abusers do, which is using strength and or manipulation in one on one situations, not joining women-only groups for the opportunity.
It's all just fear mongering lies by a minority of bigots who hate gays just as much as trans people, which are then believed by another minority of people who believe the bigots really do have women's interests at heart. Statistics don't show that people who claim to be trans are more likely than people who don't to sexually offend, and in fact the vast majority of sexual offenses are committed by straight, cis men who aren't trans nor are pretending to be trans. And that fear of "men" can translate into fear of women who were born as men, even though statistically they're less likely to be sexual abusers.
This isn't about some women "looking manly" as you put it, it's about some males ignoring a lack of consent and imposing themselves on female-only spaces. Regarding the lesbian speed dating incidents, here's what the organiser had to say about what happened:
"One transwoman pushed himself against a lesbian in the toilets, and another, clad in purple lycra, was sporting a visible erection."
It should be obvious why she needed to explicitly point out that her events are female-only after that sort of behaviour from the heterosexual males who were intruding. And why these incidents, and the reaction she got from furious trans activists after standing up for the sexual orientation of herself and other lesbian women, has driven her to open a private members club for lesbian women where they can rightfully exclude any and all males.
She's fighting homophobia, yet is accused of being a bigot for doing so.
Do see what I mean by this, and similar such incidents, being examples of a clash of rights?
> > People have been fired from their jobs, harassed by trans activists
> You could say the exact same thing about people being fired for racism or homophobia and being "harassed" (I wouldn't use that word for fighting bigotry, personally) for being racist or homophobic. Is that evidence that racism should be allowed everywhere?
That comparison doesn't make sense. Is it racist to state, for instance, that Rachel Dolezal isn't black?
If people don't believe that men become women by announcing that they are women, then why would they call such a man 'she' and 'her'? Makes no sense does it.
Your argument is like claiming it's Islamophobic and bigoted to state that Mohammed wasn't any sort of prophet and that the Quran is not actually a divine revelation. If you don't believe it then you shouldn't have to act like you do believe it.
In both cases, a minority of people have non-mainstream feelings/understanding of their own gender or sexuality, and therefore wish to do things that affect their own body and either nobody else's (trans) or that only affect other people who feel the same way (gay). In both cases, people have argued that it's immoral, that it's about grooming children, and that the external visibility of being gay/trans - either seeing two people of the same gender holding hands, or kissing, or choosing to live their life together openly, or seeing someone who you once thought was one gender but has asked to be called the other gender and to be allowed to dress and act as culture considers "normal" for that gender.
In both cases, it turns out that actually, no, these gay or trans (or any combination of the LGBTQ - many trans people identify as trans AND gay, it's not a case of gay people choosing to be trans to become straight as I've seen claimed) people roaming the streets doesn't make your life worse, it doesn't trick kids into thinking about sex too early any more than a married straight couple bringing a new baby into the world does, and telling kids that it's OK to be gay, and that it's OK to be trans, doesn't lead to more kids "deciding" to be gay or trans it just leads to more people admitting it rather than staying in the closet. Trans kids and gay kids aren't making a decision, any more than you never made a decision to be your birth gender, nor did you make a decision to be gay or not.
Trans rights are human rights, and while I'm not trans if I decided tomorrow to get surgery to remove my penis and ask everyone to call me "she/her", how exactly does that affect you or anybody else any more than if I continue to have the gay sex I so often enjoy?