I am not a "person who menstruates"

Er, all over the internet?

Is this the link of the page you were reading?

www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/cervical-screening/what-is-cervical-screening/

I would think that the point saying 'Everyone with a cervix should go for cervical screening.' is a problem. Because if you are a male person who doesn't know what a cervix is, you will probably need to seek advice as to whether you are included in this group.

There is a very rare chance that a male person has a cervix. That will be part of a complex medical condition and if they have it, they will know specifically that they will need a smear test.

I also remember that there was a survey done with women and many didn't know where their cervix was (https://archive.is/BGmuP). I think that this page linked is poorly written as it still relies on a person knowing whether they have a cervix or not.

There are numerous reasons why a person doesn't have a cervix, or doesn't know if they have a cervix or not. This includes the very obvious reason that they are male with a typical male body form which never had a cervix. It also includes language difficulties. It is vital to ensure that information is accessible, clear and accurate for as many people as possible and that page does not do this as well as it could.

Maybe you don’t notice them because at a glance you don’t realise they are aimed at you and you’re missing important health information?

‘Little tantrum?’ Wow.

If a female person is able to feed an infant from their nipples, they still have breasts. Therefore they are included in 'breastfeeding' literature. It would not be strange at all to include it under breastfeeding.

By all means, there should be information for any female person who has had a mastectomy to explain that they need to seek individual medical advice. We have seen testimony recently from female detransitioners who have had double mastectomies and who have recently had babies and who experienced trapped milk production. Because they have no nipples now and what breast tissue they had left produced breastmilk and had nowhere to go.

So, any female person who has had a mastectomy should be directed to people who can give them individualised medical advice.

Really? They are all over my local hospital.

I am just reading this thread from the start now and I am not sure whether the following points have been already posted.

There is more than one consideration for safeguarding polices for lowering the risk of harm to female people. One aspect is safety, another is for privacy and dignity and another is minimising various other harms that female people might face using that provision- whether it is a service or a facility.

There is no controversy to state that male people commit sex and violent crime at a rate higher than female people. We can use current UK prison statistics to understand the risk rates between the sex categories. The point is that male people with transgender identities do not commit sex offences at the same rate or lower than the general female population. They continue to commit sex offences at least at similar rate as the general male population. I am happy to post FOI information for you if you want.

We have plenty of evidence now that shows that male people with suppressed testosterone still retain many physical advantages over female people. Including punch power and grip strength. This means that in a situation where a female person was attacked by a male person on suppressed testosterone, they would still very likely suffer from far greater injury compared to if they were attacked by a female person. This risk is an additional consideration for policy decisions. I can post links to studies that show that suppressing testosterone does not remove male pubertal physical advantages.

However, there are also other harms that female people face which support segregation by sex category. For instance, if some male people are included in female toilet access, then some female people will have no toilet access as they will self-exclude (and technically those male people will have access to both male single sex toilets and female single sex toilets).

Yes, there may be 'a female pervert could be lurking in the toilets or changing rooms'. It is less likely than there being a 'male pervert' based on female sex crime prisoner statistics and convictions. But it is a possibility. Safeguarding policies can only take reasonable steps to minimise harm though not completely eliminate it. No policy will completely eliminate those harms.

Then if there is a female 'pervert' and they attack, there is a greater chance that a victim will be able to get away and the victim may suffer less injury. After all, we cannot expect 100% safety.

So, sure. There are 'female perverts'. That risk is taken into account when forming a safeguarding policy.

'It's like people have lost all ability to assess a situation and risk for themselves now.'

Single sex provisions were always there so that female people had less need to have to assess unsafe situations for themselves. It is very weak safeguarding to expect a female person to have to do an instant risk assessment on a male person entering into a female single sex provision to establish whether they are a 'safe' male person or not. Hence, all male people are excluded. Even those who believe they have a right of access to use that provision.

So no. People have not 'lost all ability to assess a situation and risk for themselves now.' What has happened though is that female people have been wrongly told by some groups and educated either directly or indirectly that some male people are not a risk, when they still pose a risk of harm (not just physical harm) to female people. There are even signs in some toilets telling women that some male people should be in that toilet with female people.

No female people should have to do a complex instant risk assessment on that male individual in that situation. They never had to in the past, it was expected that all male people would stay out of female single sex provisions.

Do we ever see notices relating to 'partners with semen'? I think not.

The concept of ‘transgender’ cannot exist without sexist stereotypes.

Employing sexist stereotypes is….. sexist.

You know, I just reread your reply, Satin, and see (I think) that you're accusing Rhino of prejudice, not me. Without going through her posts with a fine toothcomb, my feelings about her words are likely very similar to my feelings about my own. I've found it hard to believe how generously patient she's been on this thread - she's slipped into irritation far less than me. And she's sometimes somewhat scathing about the ideology (as am I), yes, but prejudice!?! Do people realise that this freely chucking around words like "hate" and "prejudice" in response to reasoned criticism of ideas and behaviours is actually making people less able to recognise and address actual hate and prejudice? It really worries me. Anyway, in the light of this I don't want to draw any further attention to it, but did just want to update my previous reply.

I always find it interesting that people respond emotionally to posts that may have lots of information and valid pints that are factual and relevant but will choose not to read and take in that information because someone has not delivered the information in the tone that the reader wants. Rather than reading the information and evaluating it as an information source independent to the emotional response.

Second paragraph appreciated - thanks. I do understand why posters can be so scathing there (fair word) and am also getting a bit more that way inclined myself (for reasons aforementioned!) So it's genuinely good to have a reminder of the value of sticking with my preferred style. It takes all sorts, is my view - different approaches speak to different people. And the humour there is second to none!

First paragraph the cause of some bemusement. I readily invite you to find anything I've said that is remotely prejudiced (misinterpretations can be addressed if I revisit tomorrow, but I may not, as today's taken up a bit of time; if so, I'm quite happy to leave others to judge my words on their own merits, as long as you quote fully with the full post for context).

After she gave a hypocritical lecture on prejudice, yes it is.

I actually appreciate the humanity and empathy in your previous post, my experience of the FWR regulars has been that they are rude, aggressive and scathing with an arrogance that is off putting and after witnessing many a pile on I have only been pushed further from taking any of their points on board. It's been pointed out by many posters who are quickly shouted down too so I'm not alone.

Catching up now on the posts following the one to which I responded. That's what you got from Rhino's reply?!

I rest my case, m'lud (love m'lud, saw it on another thread and have been desperae for a chance to use it).

✔️ obsessed with genitals (ugh, I've typed that twice in my life to quote activists & I know that because it makes me shudder each time - W.T.A.F.?!)
✔️ multiple ad hominems
✔️ exist in the world (again, what's with this whole existence thing?!)
✔️ the anger showing through when the arguments fail

BINGO! Full house, drinks on me!

Ahem. You get rude(-r), I apparently get sarky(/-ier!). I didn't used to - I tend to be the stoically patient type in this debate - but boy, does one need it sometimes in this kind of thread. An explanation as to how that happened, and why I'm confident in my position, below, in answer to your quote as follows:

Perhaps if people are saying these things to you so often that you have a ticklist, you might be the common denominator? If lots of people told me I was racist, or sexist, or that I kept punching down, I might think that I need to reflect on my character instead of chalking it up to a conspiracy against me.

In summary (TLDR!), when "people keep saying these things to me" but only ever in this one, isolated context, whereas in all others what they say about me directly opposes the kind of values the above would suggest - and above all when the language those people use tends towards the absurd and extreme - the common denominator is not me, but those people.

In more detail, though...

I started out thinking similarly to you, and it was, more than anything else, posts like yours that changed my views.

Originally unquestioningly supportive of "transwomen are women", I then became aware there was debate. It was via MN, yes, but I responded to it in the way I usually do - I read more widely (compulsively - it fascinated me!) including on both sides. And what I read left me disturbed enough to start re-thinking my prior acceptance of this. What was it that disturbed me most? The realisation that the "trans side" tended with unusual consistency towards emotional reasoning, hyperbole and, fairly often, personal attack, instead of engaging with the contrastingly in-depth arguments put forward by the GC feminists.

But still I went through an extended period of questioning myself, during which I desperately sought a fair middle ground and, above all, intelligent discussion of what was, quite clearly, a conflict of rights at the very least. And I expected to develop a better understanding of both sides. But, instead, my concern grew. For the same reason.

Over time, with more reading, I shifted into full-on GC. A key turning point was reading a refutation of GC views by a trans(?) critic in 3 devoted hours of hard thought (I spent all that time in a manky station café because I didn't want to lose my train of thought!) My GC-style was the gentler kind, perhaps (some would say naive!), always giving the benefit of the doubt, staying the course of threads like this, and unfailingly assuming any "opponent" may be vulnerable and so choosing each and every word with care and empathy. And I still honestly thought I could draw out something I'd missed, or at least some acknowledgement of my concerns in my equivalent careful acknowledgement of yours. But instead, my concern grew. For the same reason.

I skimmed Pink News, Trans Reddit etc., thinking surely those sites will offer something more than debates on MN... and I saw the same trends. Reddit, in particular, disturbs me. It feels like a lot of vulnerable people who have been taught the litany of ticked absurdities you use and I list above and are hurting in their total misunderstanding of how people like me think and feel about them. It makes me very angry, actually. I want to reach out to reassure the younger among them, in the gentlest of terms possible... but I know from threads like this how that's likely to end. And I also know from threads like these that there's a very real risk of being targetted myself with an intimate cruelty to a stranger that the poster appears to think is entirely justified by my simple disagreement. The kind that your post to me, to which I respond here, is edging towards.

And so now, like many, I have far less patience. I've given this ideology every possible chance I can. But even now, while I indulge in sarcasm (that on this thread's made me look like a waaay committed Trekkie!), I still tend to answer in a largely courteous and always thoughtful way, taking care to highlight my concern for trans people themselves too at one or more points (as I have several times above).

And do you know what? Over on that hotbed of GC evil, the forum dedicated to this, I see others doing the same: women of different races, nationalities and backgrounds; lesbians who themselves fought to win the rights gay people currently enjoy; women who have endured life-changing devastation because of their female bodies; and women - so, so many women - who have suffered abuse because of this. Women who know trans people, have trans friends, and worry about trans children. Women who have read far, far more than me, ploughing their way through Angela Long Chu and Grace Lavery and other well-known trans names. Women who, like me, listen, and think, and respond in the way I and others have above.

And yet, still - still - in the face of all of this, we still end up with something akin to the checklist above. The same old accusations, levelled again and again at total strangers who are simply arguing, in some depth and with passion, an entirely legal, valid angle on their own human rights.

So no, I have no concerns about my character. I've done the work there. And I've waited and waited and waited for the posters I engage with on this to do the same.

In the interests of full disclosure in what's become a rather embarrassing "History of Catiette" (and apologies for that - I also use this forum to work out my own thoughts and test my own views; another reason, btw, that I'm pretty confident in both)... I am a bit concerned right now that I'm beginning to lose patience and my posts are getting sarkier and sometimes a bit too direct and honest. I want to reign that in, because I don't know who's on the other end, and because it's exactly the patience and kindness of other GC posters (and the arbitrary unpleasantness of the insutlingly reductive accusations levelled at them) that gave me the confidence I now have to post as I do.

(Congrats if you made it through. Am now looking for the "Phew!" / embarrassed emoji, but the dictionary isn't behaving. Sad face.)

I wonder if this is of interest OP.

WHAT DOES TRANS INCLUSION IN A LIBERAL STATE REQUIRE?

January 2026

https://hollylawford-smith.org/what-does-trans-inclusion-in-a-liberal-state-require-pre-print/

Abstract. One of the most prominent minority groups today is trans people. Those who see themselves as fighting for trans rights have tended to take these to include a right to legal recognition by the state, and social treatment by fellow citizens, as the sex of identification. These rights claims have been given substantial legal and institutional uptake. If trans people's full inclusion in public life requires legal recognition and social treatment as the sex of identification, then this is merely a description of things being as they should be. But if trans people's inclusion within the liberal state does not require these things, then this may be a description of a violation of liberal neutrality, the enforcement by the state of a contested and controversial conception of the good; and a tyranny of the majority, the weight of social opinion being pressed against those who want to talk about (what they see as) the fact that things are not as they should be. One way to gain some clarity on whether things are as they should be or not is to carefully consider the principles that liberal democratic states have used to secure the full inclusion in public life of other minority groups, and their application to trans people. I'll consider in particular toleration, collective and individual exemptions, and full accommodation; as they have applied to religious minorities, women, sexual orientation minorities, black people, and people with physical disabilities.

Conclusion

Arguments for adopting, or acting as though we have adopted, trans activist beliefs, in the name of the full inclusion of trans people in public life, appear to have failed. Trans people should be protected from discrimination, but trans activist beliefs are not owed more than toleration. The introduction of trans activist beliefs into law and policy in a liberal state should be just as concerning to us as the introduction of religious beliefs into the same. The insistent social enforcement of trans activist beliefs is a tyranny of the majority, upholding one group's interest in living as it believes it should at the expense of everyone else's interests in living as they believe they should. A liberal state is neutral between competing conceptions of the good; liberal individuals form and pursue their own conceptions of the good, the only constraint being that the pursuit does not harm others (Mill [1859] 1978) or wrongfully set back their interests (Feinberg 1987, Ch. 1). Liberalism does not, and cannot (coherently), require one person's participation (affirmation, validation, acceptance, endorsement, or adoption) in another person's projects. Toleration is required; indifference is sufficient. This is the same conclusion that Francione (2024) reached, just via a route likely to be more satisfying to those sympathetic to the case for trans
inclusion.

(sorry, just to add this is a downloadable PDF of a pre-print article from Holly Lawford-Smith. She covers different aspects of the language demands by people with gender identities.)

FlirtsWithRhinos please don't waste your time and energy engaging with this any more. Anyone with a sane, rational mind is aware of biological reality and understands that men can never be women, just as women can never be men. The term TERF is absurd, there is nothing radical about saying men can't be women and shouldn't be in women's spaces.

Some people are so entrenched in this ideology because they are either personally or publicly married to the delusion and to concede any point in this debate feels to them to literally challenge their identity and in their deeply disturbed minds their very existence, or it would mean admitting their culpability in the medical abuse of vulnerable children and in the trashing of hard fought women's rights.

We are living in scary times. Virtually all of us women alive today never experienced life without voting rights and most of us have been fortunate enough to live most or all of our adult lives with approaching equal rights to men in this country, but let's not forget that women have only had the full franchise to vote for 98 years. We have taken our position for granted and our biological disposition to emotional reasoning and compassion has been hijacked and exploited by men and we have been facing an onslaught against the rights that our Mothers, Grandmothers and Great Grandmothers won us.

You can argue for the next ten years with someone like Birdsongisangry and it will just be a waste of your precious oxygen. The tide is turning. More people are becoming aware of the insanity, abuse and injustice. With brave detransitioners like Ritchie Heron, Michael Kerr and Keira Bell in this country (and there will be many more to come in the next few years) and Fox Varian, Prisha Mosley and Chloe Cole (and the 24 others currently suing for medical malpractice) in the US people are starting to ask more questions and their horrendous experiences are helping tip the balance back to reason.

Save your arguments for minds that still have the capacity to reason and are open enough to be changed.

Please, do yourself a favour and read what I have said, both on this thread and many times before.

I have said very clearly, many times, that to believe in transgender identities, whether as a trans person oneself o as an "ally", requires first the belief that what makes men and different is our minds and not our bodies, and therefore that some ways of thinking, behaving or feeling are correct for men but not for women, and other ways are correct for women but not for men.

Yes, I consider that sexist.

That's not a "prejudice", that is a coherent and well argued position.

If you disagree, you are welcome to try to answer the questions I have posed several times now:

Trans rights activists insist that trans women are women and trans men are men because they have the minds of women and men.

In what way is that not a sexist belief that only some types of minds are right for men and for women?

Insisting that society consider "women" and "trans men" to be different types of "people who menstruate" changes us from simply being the half of humanity who are female in all our diversity and with any type of mind into the people who have whatever type of mind it is that transmen feel they don't have.

In what way is that not imposing onto all women a sexist reduction of who we are?

Went to a webinar about menopause once and the trainer was at pains to avoid using the word woman on its own. Women were referred to as "those in possession of a uterus" and all sorts of bizarre phrases.
It's very simple. Only women menstruate. Only women have the menopause. You can just say "woman".
See Milli Hill's weekly article "the word is woman" for lots more enraging examples.

As I said in my previous post, ironic that you're still talking about trans women when the subject of the thread - people who menstruate, people who have a cervix, chest feeding etc - all applies to trans men. The (reputable) services that use these terms are taegeting women and trans men. Not trans women.
I'm being criticised for saying TERFs on here are obsessed with men in dresses, yet you're so focused on it you don't seem to have noticed that you've switched the people you're arguing about. You claim that I'm the sexist one and against women, you're forgetting these people even exist, in your focus on sharing your hatred for trans women.

I can sleep soundly tonight knowing that my morals are intact, thanks very much.

Oh dear.

Do you realise that automated branded a person sexist because they are transgender or don't have a problem with transgender people is an example of prejudice?

I mean, this post is so wrong I don't know where to start. You really haven't understood anything that you have read, have you?

You came in with prejudices, and you've still got 'em all these pages later. What a shame.

Trans people exist in the world, but they do not exist in the world as the opposite sex. It's just a fantasy they want us to play along with for their own needs.

Some of those needs may be suspect but many deserve our sympathy. However, that doesn't justify legitimising the fantasy that some people's minds makes them really the opposite sex, because the impact of that goes beyond those people's needs into the needs and identities of other people too.

So like every person, they should have all the rights of their own sex. But also like every person, they don't get to appropriate the rights of the opposite sex.

Believing the thing that makes men and women different is our minds rather than our bodies is sexist in two dimensions. It is sexist firstly because it assumes some ways of thinking are right for men and others are right for women, and it is sexist secondly because it takes away the language, history, rights and identity of female people, delegitimising our experiences and our voices and re-marginalising and disempowering us just as we were marginalised and disempowered by Patriarchy in the past.

Sexism doesn't follow the word "woman", it follows the female body whatever we may or may not be called.

MERF - male excluding. No one is excluding trans identifying female people from the rights and protections of women. Just male people.

I'm sorry you value women so little that you can't see this.

Yes, I am calling you sexist. And saying you are punching down. I hope you will take your own advice and reflect on your character.

I'll stop telling TERFS they're obsessed with people's genitals and scare mongering about men in dresses when they stop filling AIBU with posts about people's genitals and scare mongering about men in dresses. It's not difficult really.
Perhaps if people are saying these things to you so often that you have a ticklist, you might be the common denominator @Catiette ?

If lots of people told me I was racist, or sexist, or that I kept punching down, I might think that I need to reflect on my character instead of chalking it up to a conspiracy against me.

Also I don't understand why you and others in here object to the word TERF - trans exclusionary radical feminist. You don't believe in/accept/agree that trans people have a right to exist in the world with the same rights as other people, ergo trans exclusionary, the position comes from radical feminism. If you don't want it pointing out, perhaps don't embody what it means.

Of course you aren't obliged.

But we all know if you could answer it with a pithy put down to put me in my place, you would.

But since you can't, you pulled out the old tried and tested shame the angry woman put downs instead.

Stamp my foot.
Little tantrum.
Berate other women.

Yes, there'll always be women ready to defend the status quo by sneering at women who suggest we deserve better, then get up a height when someone dares to challenge them. Some things never change.

That's the thing. I'm not obliged to answer your question. I'm not bothered whether you stamp your foot and have a little tantrum about it, I don't owe you anything. All I said was I'm not bothered by terms like these, and you then proceeded to tell me what women who share my view should think. It happens every time it's discussed on here. It's so predictable it's boring.