Imagine the most sensitive, difficult topic imaginable.

Imagine the least suitable topic for reasoned discussion on a platform which thrives on confrontration, anger, tribalism and over-simplification.

Imagine the biggest linguistic minefield of any topic I've ever come across.

That's the trans debate on here. Something so sensitive, of such importance, reduced to a bunch of toddlers and hooligans throwing out insults, trying to get people cancelled for the crime of disagreeing with them, accusing them of hatred and bigotry based on nothing.

Any word out of turn will be jumped upon immediately by people behaving like a pack of hyenas.

The person who uttered the word out of turn in all good faith will be instantly condemned and excoriated, like something out of Salem.

It's unhinged, harmful and flat out mad.

Always remember in this thread that I'm a man. I'm not a woman; I'm not trans. My perspective will therefore always be flawed. But on the basis that trans people and women are happy to embrace male allies, my perspective is roughly as important or unimportant as any other man's.

What is my perspective? Torn. Very torn. Torn between:

- Trans people, who suffer discrimination, abuse and in many parts of the world, are killed for being trans

- Women, who suffer discrimimation, abuse and in many parts of the world, are killed for being women.

The left's inclination, quite naturally, is to support the underdog and especially support equality. What some of the more heated types on here don't seem to appreciate is that hardly anyone anywhere opposes equality for trans people.

Most of the women arguing furiously about their sex-based rights want trans people to live happy, fulfilled lives. They don't hate trans people; they're not bigoted against trans people. But they are alarmed - very alarmed - by the direction the debate's gone in.

Some months ago, JK Rowling publicly set out that she'd been a victim of serious sexual assault. I don't know about anyone else - but when someone has the courage to discuss something so traumatic, so horrifying, I listen. Just for once, I shut up.

The response of quite horrific numbers on here was to actually *attack* her. "How dare she make herself a victim, the hateful bigot?"

Totally unbelievable. Few things better demonstrated how vile and inhuman the discourse has become around all of this.

Rape and sexual assault are profoundly traumatic and in very many cases, carry a lifelong sentence. Nobody is the same after being raped or sexually assaulted than beforehand; many suffer in silence for years, decades, even lifelong; horribly few get justice either.

In your social groups will be women who've been sexually assaulted and/or raped. They might've told you; more likely, they'll have hardly told anyone. I'm talking about Britain here; a supposedly advanced, modern country. Where there is STILL a climate of silence and shame.

In your social groups will also be women who are terrified of walking alone at night. Women who've been bullied and harassed by men. Women who've suffered low level and high level discrimination throughout their lives, including at home, at school, in the office and elsewhere.

It's gone on since humanity itself began. Literally only in the last 50-100 years have women started to win any rights for themselves - because the oppression of women suited men. Men who made the rules and wrote the laws entirely to suit the most toxic and aggressive among them

Even now, even in the West, many women remain very cautious when meeting a man - because that man is physically stronger than them, capable of violence (because almost all men are), may be controlling and domineering, and has the capacity to destroy their lives.

Quite hideous numbers of women have personal experience of that: physical, sexual, emotional, psychological or all of the above. And it's far, far worse in much of the developing world: where men continue to run rampant over women, and things like FGM destroy children's lives.

What I've written above shouldn't need to be highlighted to anyone who calls themselves 'progressive'. It should be common, horrific knowledge to all of us. But apparently, it's not. Apparently, it's now all going to just be glossed over and treated as irrelevant.

And the victims of it? If they so much as say one word out of turn - if, heaven forbid, they actually stand up for their rights - they are to be denounced. Excommunicated. Cancelled.

It is completely and utterly revolting.

Particularly revolting is the following:

- When women express their fear about male violence, and hence their need for safe spaces, they are instantly subjected to violently unhinged language and threats on here. Including rape and death threats.

- When women complain that they're being silenced, the response is a mass attempt to silence them by reporting them and accusing them of 'hate speech'.

The irony shouldn't be lost on anyone. Their point keeps being proven over and over again.

Someone who thinks that gender is fluid, sexuality is fluid, but sex is not, is about a million miles from being a 'bigot'.

Someone who believes that children should not be pressured by anyone to do something to their growing bodies is, shocker, someone who cares about them.

Someone who notes that the numbers of those detransitioning appears to be growing is making an important point. They do not deserve utterly grotesque responses like the below. The inhumanity and lack of compassion is breathtaking. https://twitter.com/lozmcoe/status/1359193746135539714

What I've noticed is how inconclusive so much of the data is. We actually don't know enough about all this yet - and we're probably still some way from doing so.

Here's a very good, thoughful piece evidencing how limited research has been. https://quillette.com/2020/01/02/the-ranks-of-gender-detransitioners-are-growing-we-need-to-understand-why/

Here's something from Channel 4 Factcheck which acknowledges that it cannot reach accurate, or even remotely accurate, conclusions about the number of trans people killed in the UK. https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-how-many-trans-people-murdered-uk

And here's a survey. Note what happens with women's responses in cases where transgender people have not had gender reassignment surgery.

And that's one of very many issues here. "Trans rights are human rights". Absolutely: I agree. Who could possibly disagree?

"Trans people are supported by a majority of women". How many of those surveyed assume we're talking about fully transitioned trans people?

How many governments who've passed laws actually understand the implications of them? Bad law and bad policy is passed all the time in all sorts of areas. This might be another example.

Or it might not. Because absolutely: trans people MUST be protected.

And then you come to the very intractable crux of all this. To put it crudely: three into two don't go.

So should trans women be expected to suffer horrible abuse in male-only areas? No they shouldn't. And don't we live in a free society, with attendant risks? Yes we do.

Nobody chooses to have gender dysphoria. It must be quite nightmarishly hard for anyone with it: it's a condition which merits understanding, empathy, compassion. Not the extremist attitudes I sometimes see on here, insisting that nobody born male can ever be a woman.

But while that's extreme, so is its polar opposite. Attitudes which hold that:

- Female sex is somehow irrelevant. Like hell it is

- Anyone can just declare themselves a woman and that's the end of it. Nope.

- Women concerned about this are 'middle class and privileged'. Good grief.

For some reason, the Twitter left is obsessed with lumping all middle class women into some convenient box: in which they can be denounced as 'selfish' or 'materialistic' or 'narcissists'.

In reality, all women have lived experiences of being women, with everything that entails. And they don't want those experiences being denied or minimised.

What we've had instead are terms like:

"People with cervixes"
"Menstruators"

Apparently, this is 'inclusive language'.

Well: it's not. It's EXclusive language which actively denies that women are women.

They're already losing rights in language itself; language which hasn't naturally evolved, but is being forced down their throats, and woe betide anyone who says 'no'.

Also exclusive language: 'cisgender'. Take something of huge importance and sensitivity - gender fluidity - then enforce some rigid linguistic code in the name of 'inclusivity'.

Good luck getting most men and most women to ever accept that. It's just divisive.

Most men and most women who:

- Have no issue whatsoever with trans people and want them to have equal rights
- Have no issue whatsoever with LGBQ people and also want them to have equal rights
- Yet will react to this stuff around language with bewilderment. And with a backlash

There's also activists on here who are so completely disengenuous, they all seem to have either read the same few pages of a book or watched the same video. It's like some weird equivalent of how so many people just parrot Tory attack lines and slogans.

Thus:

'Sex-based rights' is a 'dogwhistle' because 'no-one ever used this phrase before the Gender Recognition Act'.

No. No-one ever used that phrase before the GRA because back then, women's sex-based rights weren't being denied. What is was to be a woman wasn't being denied.

'Anyone who talks about body parts and bodily functions is reducing women to those! How reductive! Don't you have more respect for women than that?"

Most women regard their body parts and bodily functions as a pretty fundamental part of their being a woman - and always have.

'I agree with women's concerns about safe spaces! They've been attacked by men for thousands of years. Men are their problem, not us. We're women!"

It's just that, er, very sizeable numbers of women do not agree. And are entirely justified in not doing so.

And my best guess for why they do not agree is:

- Men are generally much more physically powerful than women
- Men have used that physical power to dominate women since time immemoriam
- In the worst cases, this involves forcibly penetrating women against their will.

That is to say: the body parts of men have certainly mattered. A hell of a lot. And they matter just as much where women are concerned too.

Not difficult, not complicated - but apparently OUTRAGEOUS, HATEFUL and BIGOTED to state as much. Which is where I start to get suspicious.

You see: a profoundly serious issue, of colossal consequence for trans people and women - both historic victims of violence and oppression - requires a profoundly serious discussion.

So when I see people actually bullied and intimidated into silence just for expressing an opinion; when rape threats and death threats are sent to them for expressing such an opinion; when women go public about their experience of sexual assault and are treated like THIS...

... I'm left wondering about the more vociferous activists on here:

"What is it you're trying to hide? What are you so afraid of?"

Bullies are always cowards. Bullies always try to silence opposing viewpoints. Bullies whip up herd mentalities and groupthink against some 'enemy'

And boy oh boy, are so many alleged 'progressives' or 'socialists' on here utterly obsessed with 'enemies':

- Tory voters
- Lib Dem voters
- Remainers/FBPE
- Gammon
- Centrists
- PLP
- Starmer supporters
- Liberals
- Israel
- US
- Corbyn critics of any kind
- Middle class women

It just goes on, and on, and on. This socialist utopia they want to build apparently excludes anyone who doesn't agree with them 100% on absolutely everything.

More than that: anyone who doesn't agree with them 100% on absolutely everything must also be denounced.

Thus is someone's view on the trans debate now the new acid test. The new purity test. And the hell with any of the detail or what's actually being discussed here.

It couldn't be more poisonous, toxic or harmful. As this link abundantly demonstrates. https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOM9J_ZIrYtiMagVRr_jhagMR-XP59TBsJFLwNlcS13iIUT4ovqKRN9zttevr0PmA?key=NmJuV1AyRnVSU3dOS2VObVhLSm1uNUkxRjRBSk9R

Look at that never-ending list of tweets in all their violent horror. And just for a moment, think:

THAT is what we've been reduced to? THAT is how we deal with something so sensitive, so important? THAT is how you think you'll gain allies to your viewpoint?

Are you insane?

Way to go proving women have nothing to worry about from all this. I mean, really. Genius level stuff.

To the women who receive this sort of abuse: it's abhorrent. Disgusting. You have my absolute support and solidarity.

To the trans people also dealing with abuse - who've dealt with it for their entire lives - it's abhorrent. Disgusting. You also have my absolute support and solidarity.

But to those trying to reduce something so complex into a series of anti-science, anti-women diatribes...

... I would say 'shame on you', but you obviously know no shame at all.

So I'll just content myself with: "Get lost, you horrific misogynists".

You do not secure rights for one group by taking them away from a much, much, much larger group against their will.

You secure those rights with consent and consensus: which is what everyone who cares about any of this should be working towards.

Not living in some hateful parallel universe.