Girl Guides are now GIRL ONLY! - Thread 2

It doesn't make them all worthy of the same treatment.

But it does! That's the essence of what democratic societies aiming to balance rights call safeguarding!

Our choices are:

1. We lose all single-sex spaces (I can't believe you're arguing for that).
2. We exclude males except for transwomen (I think you're arguing for this?)
3. We exclude males including transwomen (we're certainly arguing for this)

Please please please, if you answer any question, answer this one.

If I'm right, and you favour 2) above, why is your preference a blanket ban on the group who are statistically less likely to offend sexually against females (non-discriminatory, in your eyes) and an open invitation to the group who a statistically more likely to (discriminatory, in your eyes)?

I do sympathise with the "genuinely dysophoric" transwoman, I do. But I simply don't understand how you can put his feelings over women's physical safety (especially given his physical strength advantages and again, I believe, statistically supported - proportionately greater safety from actual physical attack)

Please, for the love of goodness, explain!!! Quote my post above to address each part, and give us some stats and links!

Solid, that’s actually kinda offensive.

@SolidMam

One of the other considerations that feeds into safeguarding principles and relates to treating all male people as one group is male physical advantage.

May I suggest you read this thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5142027-save-female-sports-evidence-thread?page=1

Where there is so much evidence that even from the age of 6 male people have physical advantages over female people. Even with grip strength and punching power.

Because of this male physical advantage, ALL MALE PEOPLE are treated as being at the same level of risk.

That is also why there are blanket exclusions for male people who demand to play sport in the female sports categories.

I think that many of us on this thread can discuss very confidently with you about male physical advantage.

Women should not, and do not, need to negotiate keeping same sex toilet provision. Men are free to use the male toilets. If they feel unsafe doing so when cosplaying then that is something they can take up with other men.

No one has ever said that 'all transwomen are rapists' on MN. No one. Ever. Because it would clearly be not true.

"I know that's not going to go down well given the obvious historic connotations to that argument.'

This is another completely unreasonable accusation. You really do come across in your posts as very prejudiced against the people here discussing this issue with you. You seem to have arrived with a huge pack of preconceptions and they are coming out one by one.

"It doesn't make them all worthy of the same treatment."

SAFEGUARDING

Please understand that strong safeguarding principles where there are a huge number of people accessing provisions absolutely demands people are treated the same.

This means that if a provision is SEX segregated, ALL MALE PEOPLE ARE TREATED THE SAME otherwise it will considered ILLEGITIMATE DISCRIMINATION.

If all male people are excluded from a provision based on historical risk assessment ALL male people are excluded. It is based on risk and for any exceptions to that safeguarding priniciple, a group of male people would need to be evidenced that they have the same rate or lower of committing sex offences than female people. Because any higher risk means that female people in that provision would be at higher risk.

Please provide the evidence that male people with a transgender identity have a risk of committing sex offences that is equal to or lower than female people in the UK.

I suggest you might like to start by looking at the prisoner statistics for male people with transgender identities. Let us know if you need us to point you in the right direction.

It is a safeguarding decision to exclude all male people regardless of how they identity.

No.

I am sorry. I will not accept that pivot to 'a public toilet is a privilege'. You are now trying to deflect.

Having access to sanitation is a right.

"But under the Supreme Court ruling, is there now anything to stop a male walking into a women's toilet anyway, as they can just say they are a transman? It does feel like in some ways the sex-based ruling makes single sex spaces less safe, if they are inclusive of trans men."

This has been discussed many times on the feminist board. Again, this is a very tired and incoherent trope that has been repeated over and over again by heavily invested transgender activists.

Any male can walk into a female toilet - sure.

AND of course, male people who are in those toilets cleaning, or fixing something will have a sign out that female people can then actively consent to those men being there or go and find an alternative solution.

If a toilet provision has been labelled as being for 'women', 'girls', 'female' use, it is considered single sex under the SC judgement. When someone male enters that provision, any female person in that space can go and seek assistance to have that male person removed, if police are involved there may be charges.

If a male person enters that space, any female person can stand outside and tell other female people that there is a male person there so that the female person can make an informed choice about entering or not.

Before this law was clarified, organisations would put up signs in the toilets informing female people that even microaggressions against a male person in the toilet would be punished by that organisation. This is now considered unlawful if the provision is designated to be single sex.

There are no such thing, by the way, as single gender public toilets. Because any allowed access by a male person with a transgender identity into that toilet space, means that ALL male people who want to enter can. That is how discrimination law under the EA works.

Single sex provision is based on sex. Not gender. Mixed sex provision is for all.

There is no way to deflect from the issue that if a male person demands access to a female single sex space, they have access to ALL provisions which no other group has access to. That is an additional privilege and it is actually disciminatory.

I would say because not all transwomen are rapists, but I know that's not going to go down well given the obvious historic connotations to that argument.

And of course - if a female feels unsafe, then I hope she would be able to express that and have her needs respectfully met. I hope there would be dialogue.

Abusers of all women are almost always born male. It just so happens that so are transwomen - and that some abusers have potentially latched on to the gender identity to facilitate abuse. And some tranwomen are abusive misogynists in their own right.

It doesn't make them all worthy of the same treatment.

In terms of commonality I would say they are both girls because they know they are ...

That sentence is unfinished. What is the quality that they know themselves to have, that means they fit your/their definition of "girl"?

As an example. When you and your child finally state what it is they think a girl is... and all this time your child has thought "girl" meant "left-handed". You can see why a definition would be needed. What if your child has been thinking that "girl" means female? You need to be clear when talking about this or you are doing your child a disservice.

If your son plays football he does so with his male body. He is not playing football as a girl because he isn't one.

I do hope. you don't suggest to him he should play on girls teams.

My daughter doesn't play football as it happens she plays another traditionally male sport at a very high level. Thankfully her sport's governing body has now determined that no males (of any gender identity) can play in female teams/ leagues.

Woman = females (born female) + transwomen (born male) + (presumably, I'm still waiting for clarification when it comes to sex-based rights?) intersex people

Men = males (born male) + trans men (born female) + intersex people

Ridiculous! Makes the terms "women and men" redundant then if it includes anybody and everybody. Noting that transwomen and transmen still get to keep their specific terms as well. But it's not enough, apparently.

Good to hear you're reading the links, and I do see, reading more closely now (multitasking!) that your transman argument was that they'd make it more likely men slip in. But I refuted that above regardless - it's just nonsense that we can't tell sex in a vast, vast majority of cases.

And damn right toilets are a privilege. Like we need to be told that! Less than 100 years ago, your grandmother and greatgrandmother may not have been able to leave the house because there was nowhere they could use a toilet (that is, nowhere they could, not nowhere they felt comfortable doing so - women would stay home or go on the streets!)

The demographic you think should remain nameless simply didn't used to have them. At all.

It's not a gotcha, it's just a characteristic they might both share as girls, by my definition.

I hope your child flourishes and that her "confusion" is resolved.

How many more do you want then?

Because I have not even covered the women's testimonies from prison cells.

I have not linked up the woman who was told that she certainly was not raped by a man while on the hospital ward here in the UK, because there were no 'MEN' on the ward ... when all along there was clear records of a male person on the ward but that destablisation of language was used to further traumatise that woman!

I have not linked up the rapes of girls in the US by male student who anally raped girls in the female toilets in school and how that was hushed up and the parents silenced. That male student was a 'girl' and the parents moved him to another school where he raped another girl in the school toilets.

Shall I go on? and on and on and on and on and fucking ON

How many more do you want to know about?

Now, can you tell us why ANY female person who has also experienced any abuse by a male person should lose access to a female only provision? Why is it that female people must feel unsafe because a male person has a philosophical belief (ie. there is no biological marker at all it is only a belief) that they are female?

Nope. Please see my post about about trans-identifying males - transwomen - being the demographic most likely to be convicted of sexual assault by a very, very long way. Over and above males. Way over and above females, including transmen.

I ask again, are you actually reading our replies??? I mean, in recent posts, at your explicit request, people have obliged you with literally hundreds of media and research-based examples of transwomen assaulting women. I've not yet seen you respond to this with anything bar, Yes, but transmen having access creates an even greater risk.

And to pre-empt the argument, if this is what you meant, that permitting transmen entry makes it harder to discern males entering, this relies on the presumption that transmen look more like males than transwomen. Until they work out a way to medicate males so that their skeletons shrink, I'm afraid this just isn't realistic.

Do you think masculine looking women should stay out of female only spaces then?

Woman = females (born female) + transwomen (born male) + (presumably, I'm still waiting for clarification when it comes to sex-based rights?) intersex people

Men = males (born male) + trans men (born female) + intersex people

Just pointing out the incoherence of these definitions again due to the destabilisation of language.

When you use the term 'female' - this actually includes 'trans men'. PLUS those male people who demand to be described as female.

Your definition is and remains incoherent no matter the tweaks you make because you, personally, are using destabilised language. The very destablisation of language you have given your full support to, is making every thing you say now obfuscated and inaccurate.

Do you see it yet? Do you see what we have all been pointing to while you personally attack us in defence of your own efforts to destabilise language?

Yes, for me, too. And actually attending sessions run "in support of" trans people. Sitting in a room listening to an adult man use the phrase (or close), "Of course, we can all change sex nowadays, so that's good," in a talk to an audience that included several impressionable 11-year-olds did nothing to inspire my confidence. I mean, I honestly wasn't sure myself for a while if transwomen could have periods or not (I know, I know - please don't comment on that, it still embarrasses me... but it was a direct consequence of messaging like his, from "experts"). In the light of that, what the heck are the kids thinking?! I do know some of them at least struggle to recognise sex in the sense of those who made it clear to me that women in Afghanistan are oppressed on the basis of their subjective internal gender identity! I mean, they're being taught untruths! Upthread, Solid asked me to try to see it from the perspective of the kids. And I am - I really, really am!

There are a few times that I look back on now, before I was fully au fait with what was happening, when I wish I'd not said what I said, or had said more. That presentation was one of them. Nowadays, I'd ask the guy about the success rates of operations, and, particularly, associated complications. It would make my point nicely - if he's telling kids they can change sex, he needs to explain what he means by that. And he frankly shouldn't feel able to, thereby demonstrating the inappropriateness of such messaging. As it is, I don't even really believe he'd even feel able to respond in honest and vaguely age-appropriate terms eg. Not all operations are successful, and almost all leave long-term health issues. The propaganda has been too influential to comfortably permit such truths to be freely spoken.

"is there now anything to stop a male walking into a women's toilet anyway, as they can just say they are a transman?"

yes, obviously, as we can now challenge them without being called transphobic. We can ask (eg) our workplaces to ensure our privacy and dignity in single-sex spaces and then can enforce that. Women's prisons will be single sex, and so will rape crisis centres

Please Helleo, I specifically asked to only share what people are comfortable with, in good faith. That's what I'm trying to do too. I'm trying not to make demands, just debate.

Thanks for the links, I'll take some time to read.

Your son can't KNOW he is a girl because he isn't. If he believes he is it is because adults who ought to know better have lied to him. Any pain he feels from being excluded from single sex spaces as a result of those lies are 100% the fault of those adults.

My child told the cahms professional that she is not a boy. She just doesn't like girly stuff. It was entirely inappropriate for that CAMHS professional to put ideas into my gender non conforming daughters head.

When she was little she did have some gender confusion and wonder if liking boys things made her a boy. Explaining that girls can be whatever they want to be massively helped. As did the fact she was home educated due to her additional needs as I was able to shield her, to a degree, from captured institutions like schools.

I don't accept your definition of men and women/ boy and girl as it is reductive.

Children of both sexes can play football, why on earth do you think that's a gotcha?

In the example you use, a public toilet is in itself a privilege, depending on your position. The point about rights and privileges are moot, as they are all dependent on power, status and precedent.

Mixed sex provision is often preferable - I agree - as an option for everyone.

But under the Supreme Court ruling, is there now anything to stop a male walking into a women's toilet anyway, as they can just say they are a transman? It does feel like in some ways the sex-based ruling makes single sex spaces less safe, if they are inclusive of trans men.

"What personal experience have people had here of a transwoman or transgirl in a single sex space that has had detrimental results?"

Here are some more experiences from the female perspective.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4281706-pushback-at-wi-spa-in-los-angeles

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3534134-This-never-happens-again

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4807291-sorority-house-inevitable

https://www.independentwomen.com/2023/06/21/paula-scanlan-a-upenn-swimmer-speaks-out-about-the-truth-of-sex-differences/

Even when it comes to employment issues:

www.feministcurrent.com/2022/12/21/whats-current-canadian-female-prison-guard-forced-to-monitor-trans-identified-male-develops-ptsd/

I mean, @SolidMam , how many examples do you want?

Or do you really need women here on this thread to expose their trauma to you? Considering the dismissive way you have acted towards the needs of female children, why on earth should any poster do this since I doubt it will convince you at all.