New Trans thread as requested by HQs.

[oilfilledlamp]

Please forgive the intrusion but I've been out tonight and only recently got back. I wanted to respond to MadWomanintheattic earlier when she posted

"If I were an mtf trans (pre op or post op) the last place I'd want to fetch up is in a women's refuge, because of the potential for making other people feel ill at ease. But nothing is clear cut, really.

How often does this happen, really? Has there been any research into prevalence and motivation?

[Nyac]

Oh I started a thread about it and they deleted it. And then someone else started another one over its remains which seemed to prove popular. But there are approved trans threads now are there? How interesting. Mumsnet doesn't normally get this much involved in what goes on on their boards.

I think the issue for women is that the meaning and reality of woman has been changed right under our noses with barely a murmur. Nobody knows the full ramifications of the laws that have been passed yet - but rapists with their pensises intact inside women's prisons is one.

Or the fact that we now have to call people with penises women, if they demand it, and it's us who are the "bigots" if we refuse.

[Nyac]

JB quotes a transphobic judge in that article:

"The Equal Opportunities Commission, your best friend if you are a man wanting to get into nightclubs free on Ladies' Nights, has a lot to learn from this. Last summer, it supported the case of five male to female transsexuals, only one of whom had disposed of his meat and two veg, on the grounds of sex discrimination after a pub landlord objected to one of them using the women's toilets. The claim was rejected, with the judge stating that although he accepted the claimants' wish to regard themselves as women, a person's wish "doesn't determine what he is"."

He would be in direct contravention of the Gender Recognition Act and the Equalities Act now, because legally a person's wish is exactly what determines what they are.

[Pan]

I don't think it's "approved threads" tbh, it's the posts that break Talk Guidelines. I think MNHQ have been particularly noticing on this issue because of the multi-threads on it and some of the insulting/unlawful postings.

[oilfilledlamp]

It's troubling I agree. I know a case of a man who raped and killed women but when in prison demanded a sex change (on the NHS). Then she demanded to be sent to a women's prison, as was her right. While there, her life was so bad, because of her status, that she demanded that the sex change be reverse (again on the NHS) so that she who wanted to be a he, be sent back to a male prison.

At a huge cost to the NHS and the Prison Service.

[madwomanintheattic]

Thanks, oil, will have a look.

[Nyac]

Do we really call men who rape and kill women "she" just because they say they are?

I have such a problem with that.

[Pan]

oil - can you do a link to that case please? I have some professional knowledge of these cases and I am doubting the authenticity of the details of your post.

[Nyac]

It's true, as I said on the other thread, the Gender Recognition Act made men legally women if that's what they decided they were.

The 2010 Equalities Act has made it illegal for us to disagree with that or to point out that there was a prior meaning of woman that didn't rely on a man's "feeling" about himself.

There's been a political coup against women. We are now, as I've seen someone else put it, the group formerly known as women. How we define our reality now is a new question.

[DowagersHump]

Best bit of that article, oil, is this:

"I thought the one battle we feminists won fair and square was to convince at least those left of centre that gender roles are made up. They are not real. We play at them. We develop traditional masculine or feminine traits by being indoctrinated, not because we are biologically programmed to behave in those ways.

Feminism is supposed to be based on the premise that prescriptive gender roles are a cause of women's oppression."

Indeed.

And now I'm going to bed, fully expecting this thread to be deleted in the morning too. Or just my post, for daring to quote a journalist

[Pan]

am also def. off to bed. Can't see this thread still in existence by sun rise.

[Nyac]

Woman used to mean "adult human female". It doesn't anymore. We haven't found out what it does mean, but it doesn't have anything to do with human biology.

[madwomanintheattic]

So in the initial case, Kimberley Nixon was awarded damages, and Rape Relief (the organisation that excluded her) was 'referred for sensitivity training' by the judge. And in fact, the final appeal, which RR did win, was on a technicality that questioned Nixon's motives for wanting to join the solely born women rape relief, as a political move to vindicate her status as a woman, as she left a successful job as a rape crisis counsellor in a collective that accepted mtf in order to do so. (have shortcut the interim 'experience' debate and how not for profits get around the equal accessibility rules)

Bindel's stuff looks really dated. Interesting that so much has changed since 2004 though. Or not.

[oilfilledlamp]

Oh Pan, wait:

This isn't the case I was thinking of and YES !! it's a link to the daily male/fail but it illustrates my point:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1201947/Transsexual-killer-Keeping-mens-prison-violates-human-rights.html

[madwomanintheattic]

Oh Lordy, I missed the bit where he ruled in favour of Rape Relief by comparing their beliefs to religious conviction and articles of faith, such that their beliefs 'did not require logical or scientific demonstration for their validity.'

I'm not sure that's not equally problematic, tbh.

[oilfilledlamp]

Moo No one is threatened, no more that the women who don't feel threatened by men either. I don't see what your point is. Many women with abnormal chromosomal differences do NOT like to be put into the same category as women born men, who had no chromosomal differences at birth. How very insensitive of you to lump the two together.

Phobia means an irrational fear of something insignificant.

[Thistledew]

No matter how much you love hip-hop, a black man will feel aggrieved if you claim the right to call him nigger on the basis that you have a particularly fine suntan.

[Pan]

oil - I thought it was that case, that was referred to on the previous thread, and I know this case pretty well. Your post remains inauthentic on a few grounds re implying exhorbitant costs to NHS for example, and your claim (factually untrue) that she is fighting for a return to a male prison. You've made that up entirely.

night. no I mean, night!

[madwomanintheattic]

Ach, and that 'trans almost rapist' only wanted a move to a woman's prison because he was being actively prevented from fulfilling the RLE elements of transition. Not for any other reason, so resorted to the only legal recourse available.

I have zero sympathy for anyone convicted of strangling their boyfriend or attempted rape, but to say it was an mtf trans trying to get access to a woman's prison doesn't give a clear picture. Even the fail is trying to be fair.

[Nyac]

Vancouver Rape Relief didn't win on a technicality. They won because Canada's Supreme Court rule that VRR were reasonable and rational in providing only born female rape counsellors for women who had been raped and that they had acted in good faith excluding Nixon from the training programme.

You have to ask why someone would target a rape crisis centre operating on a shoestring budget to demand their "rights" in this instance. Rights that the court ruled did not in fact eixst.

Here's a link:

www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/learn/resources/vancouver-rape-relief-society-v-nixon-2005-bcca-601-summary-decision

I think the trans debate will get bigger and bigger unfortunately. Most people don't subscribe to the view that being a woman is a feeling or a mentality, and will be unaware that that is now the legal definition of it. As more and more of these sorts of cases appear, it will be harder and harder to justify the wholesale redefinition of "woman".

[Nyac]

I'm putting this separately as it will probably be deemed "transphobic" which is appalling in itself.

I'm a rape victim. I would be horrified to be counselled about that by someone who had either previously had a penis or still had their penis. It would be extraordinarily triggering, and would say to me that no place is safe.

[madwomanintheattic]

I think the judge realised perfectly well what her agenda was, which is why he ruled in favour of RR. She was already working as a rape crisis counsellor in an organisation that accepted mtf, so her targeting RR was absolutely and solely as a political move. I can see why you'd do something like that but I can equally see why the judge found it reprehensible in this context.

[Nyac]

An XY person attacking a women's rape relief centre and dragging them through the court for years, is not like women fighting for our right to vote.

The former is an oppressive act, the other is part of women's fight for freedom.