Violence Against Women

Actually, I don't think we can assume the patterns of offending would be lower, higher or the same.

"The assumption is in the character of transpeople compared to a typical man. I think you might find the character is very different to a typical man. I use the "shoplifter" analogy as a way that you can give a statistic for a general group but when you look at the groups within the group, the statistics vary widely. E.G. People have car crashes. Men are more likely to have a car crash. But within that group, 18 -21 year old men are much more likely to have a car crash. I bet you could even analyse that group and find a specific group who have a really high chance of having a car crash."

I suppose I don't know what a 'typical man' is like, or how transwomen are more like a 'typical woman'. I agree it is possible that there are traits common to MTFs. But without stats it is presumption, not self-evident that the patterns of offending would be lower in MTFs (or higher in FTMs).

Unless there are stats?

I think the argument is that just because a group as a whole is 5% anything does not mean that each and every of its sub-groups is also 5% anything.

FoodUnit I guess because part of rape culture is the "dehumanising" of women and someone who themselves feel that they should be a woman is more likely to view women as equal humans.

"Or looking at it a different way - say 1% of women are shoplifters. Does that mean 1% of middle class women are therefore shoplifters?"

I find this analogy hard to understand. Are you saying that middle-class women, because they are less likely to have economic necessity or addiction are less likely to shoplift?

"Or do you think that by the very nature of being trans, that is far more unlikely that trans people will be sex offenders?"

I don't know why the very nature of being trans means someone is less likely to be an offender. I genuinely don't. If that's true, does it mean that FTMs are also less likely to be offenders than the general population too? Or does their transitioning mean they are more likely to offend than women who don't transition?

Obviously this is all speculation, but either way there's a lot of assumptions about transpeople - so it is open to questioning.

"Look at it this way. Say 5% of men are sex offenders."

Can I just interject and say that the percentage of men who are sex offenders I imagine (and sincerely hope) is waaaaaaaaay lower than 5% otherwise that would mean one man in twenty is.

"Does that mean that 5% of transsexual MTFs are therefore sex offenders? If so - why?"

I feel that this is going down a route that -might suggest I believe transitioning increases any likelihood of any offending. I want to make it clear I doubt transitioning has an bearing on this.

I suppose, I don't know why transitioning would make someone less likely to offend (I know actual amputation of the penis makes certain acts impossible, but I am thinking more broadly than rape or those MTFs who do amputate the penis), unless we concede that offending is entirely 'bodily driven'- in that it is testosterone and having a penis that makes men offend, rather than male-entitlement, rape culture and impunity.

Kim, yes. Its prejudice and ignorance dressed up as concern. You can care about several different issues at once, and the assertion that she(gen) is "protecting and speaking for the interests of vulnerable women" is a red herring. I, as a survivor and mh problem sufferer, could be classed as a vulnerable woman. But I'm not being spoken for. I think kritiq's analogy is spot on.

Ps, I am sorry, this thread must be very hurtful. I don't always agree with you, but you don't deseve this at all. Noone does.

I meant, what percentage of the 98% of sex offenders are trans?

KRITIQ Aunt Rose believed "negroes" were something of a "sub species,"

Well yes, sub-human is consistent with non-human. But 'non-woman' (male) is not consistent with 'sub-woman' (lesser female). I don't believe transwomen are 'sub-women' - although lots of others seem to suggest this is the case. Transwomen are males who feel strongly that they are women and may take hormones or have surgery to make this realistic. But this doesn't make them actual 'women', unless you accept that self-definition is all it is that makes a woman a woman.

kim and mini I want to answer both of you at the same time.

What I mean is that 98% of sex offenders are male and 2% are female. I wonder at what point you'd postulate transpeople go from being part of the 98% to the 2% or vice versa (considering that MTFs tend to transition late in their 40s 50s & 60s).

Also, it is not just sex offenders as extreme as rapists that would make me feel uncomfortable in a women's loo. It is also bumping into your common-or-garden creepy men and street sexual harassers.

And I am not heavily invested in loos as I am consciousness-raising, support groups and feminist organising spaces being women-only.

Just reading back, bear with me

HoopDePoop "All this means that actually, as with all sorts of other things, we can 'play God' to quite a serious extent with our bodies, should we choose to. If you disagree on a moral basis that a man should not be able to alter his sex then that's different to stating that it is categorically impossible."

I think it is categorically impossible to change sex, though it is possible to control hormones in such a way that they mimic the levels common to the opposite sex. However this may occur naturally where a man has lots of oestrogen or a woman lots of testosterone and doesn't mean that person has actually changed sex.

This isn't a moral argument.

And, Aunt Rose would list off the same handful of incidents where white people came to harm at the hands of Black people. On the interwebs, I hear "trans exclusive" feminists list off the same handful of similar incidents involving trans women - the ruckus when trans women were barred from the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival in 1991, Kimberley Nixon's suit against the Canadian rape support charity that refused to take her on as a counsellor after completing their training because she was trans, or even the "glitterbombing" of Germaine Greer by "trans activists."

I wouldn't be surprised that an African American woman say 40 years ago would have felt patronised and offended by Aunt Rose's views and reliance on ill-informed stereotypes and anecdotes to form judgements about women of colour. One could also understand her anger at the thought of being regarded as "not really a woman/person" and being excluded from some places by virtue of not being considered "really a woman/person."

Is it really that surprising that trans women feel something similar when confronted with something similar?

Food Unit, in your post (Wed 03-Oct-12 17:20:00) you suggested that people of colour are people, so there was never a need to re-define the term "person" or "human," to include them.

That's not actually true. The US Constitution, which was written in 1787, refers to "people" and "person" many times throughout the text. However, it had to be subsequently amended to include all African Americans in that definition. Other federal and state legislation also had to be passed to remove other legal "artifacts" that excluded people of colour from the legal definition of person.

You may say to me that of course a person of colour IS a person and I'd agree with you. My Late Aunt Rose and others who subscribe to white supremacist ideals quite probably wouldn't. Aunt Rose believed "negroes" were something of a "sub species," the "Children of Ham" from the Old Testament, but not "people" in the way she regarded white people as "people."

She disagreed with intermarriage because that "weakened the race," and I specifically remember her saying, "because you wouldn't breed a horse to a cow." (I was one helluva nosy kid and overheard lots of these conversations with my mum!) :) She mourned the end of segregation because she believed the races shouldn't share neighbourhoods, schools, lunch counters, or public toilets.

She'd have told you she didn't have anything against Black folks, they were just different and things should be "separate but equal." But, if someone challenged her, or if she'd recently heard a story about say a white person being assaulted by a Black person, or a civil rights march was on TV, a more unsavoury attitude would start to come through.

Aunt Rose would have started telling "stories" - elderly white people being poisoned by their Black staff, white girls being raped by Black men, loose Black women coming onto white men or trying to feel up white girls in the toilets. She'd point to the cities where Black people had "ruined" once prosperous white areas. She believed Black people were naturally violent, sexually predatory and likely to take their grief out on white people, so she felt justified in not wanting them in "white only spaces."

Sorry, but I am still reminded of the parallels here - the "I don't hate trans people but I can't accept that they are like me and I don't want them in spaces that are for people like me," eventually morphing into, "I feel threatened by trans people so I want them well away from any place where I think they could harm me, I don't care what they want."

FoodUnit - do you not accept that testosterone and other hormones play an enormous part in typical male/female behaviour? I understand the radfem view is that gender is a societal construct. But you can't deny that men and women are different, and not just because 'they are' - science has discovered all sorts of things going on inside our brains and bodies which cause different behaviours. It's not stereotyping to say that testosterone causes aggression, to pick the most obvious and relevant example.

All this means that actually, as with all sorts of other things, we can 'play God' to quite a serious extent with our bodies, should we choose to. If you disagree on a moral basis that a man should not be able to alter his sex then that's different to stating that it is categorically impossible.

Food unit, you have implied that MtF trans are just as likely to be sex offenders as men. Go back and read your statement. Don't try to twist it.

Sorry Kim cross posted and I can't return to the thread have stuff to do....

That is by far one of the most offensive things i have ever read on MN.

I don't know why it is offensive to doubt that transwomen have patterns of sex offending that are closer to women than men.

And kim thanks for your post. But I don't believe all MTFs take testosterone blockers- isn't it the case that you can be trans without any hormones whatsoever?

Also, to say that male sex-offending is entirely down to hormones and nothing to do with male-entitlement, means that 'men can't help it' because 'their hormones made them do it'. Which is pretty contentious.