TERF

I don't think any of us doubt that transpeople face great difficulties. What we are saying is that we disagree that the solution to some of those difficulties should be an erosion of women's rights.

You say that it is rare for transwomen to behave badly towards FAAB women. I disagree. It isn't rare. The extreme cases of actually entering safe spaces and attacking women are probably rare - but the point is that the Gender Recognition Act aids and abets such behaviour. The law has created a situation where women just have to hope that male bodied persons will not invade our safe space - space that has to exist in order to protect women from male bodied persons. Fingers crossed ladies!

What is not rare is a general level of aggressive and abusive behaviour towards FAABS who are gender critical. What is also not rare is the holding of the delusion that transwomen are female - and that alone is extremely male supremacist and not something all women are happy to indulge. Because you see, we do actually exist and we do actually matter.

Maybe you do none of these things kim147 but I hope you aren't in denial about the number of transwomen who do behave like this. They are all over the internet, they aren't hard to find.

Just out of interest, are there cis men as well? Is that a thing? Or is it just cis women?

I don't claim to understand the politics of the whole thing, I'm reading, but it's a bit like trying to believe string theory when you first look at it, it's so counter intuitive.

Even despite my limited reading, I still fail to understand how a trans person who still has male external genitalia can, in good faith, expect to be able to use female only spaces. I am not unsympathetic to trans people, I don't think, but surely gender isn't something you can put on or take off as you feel like it, like and overcoat?

Thank you for the New Narratives link Beach.

Am I right to feel slightly hopeful that some trans people are beginning to speak out about the ridiculousness and harmfulness of the current mainstream trans and libfem position?

The cognitive dissonance is brain melting.

Oy. And it has a knock-on effect on the clarity and boldness of all feminist thought, IMO, because it forces women to deny their own instincts and check themselves at every turn for some imagined 'cis' (i.e., female) privilege.

I think many people are sympathetic to the "traditional" transwoman - a gay man who wants to live as a woman and is willing to remove his penis and have sex with straight men.

Yes. But in the West at least, they now represent a minority of transwomen.

These issues rarely come up on libfem sites because most of them run a general blanket censorship around trans politics - any comments questioning any aspect of it go unpublished and the commentator is banned.

Yes, this is exactly right! They mostly refuse to engage beyond "transwomen are women" and accusations of bigotry and "educate yourself!" Yeah right. I've also seen allies turned upon because they are not sufficiently toeing the line (e.g. expressing some concern about how rape victims might feel in shelters). Generally, once someone has been named a bigot, no amount of apologising or self-debasement is enough. Even Julie Bindel has tried to apologise for whatever it was she said. I don't know why she bothered, they still no-platform her whenever she tries to speak about anything.

Their behaviour is so manifestly unreasonable that I would like them to get more mainstream airtime. Their behaviour does indicate narcissistic rage and huge amounts of male entitlement and violence, as well as being completely nonsensical. I think many people are sympathetic to the "traditional" transwoman - a gay man who wants to live as a woman and is willing to remove his penis and have sex with straight men. I think a lot of people think if someone is so unhappy they are willing to go to those lengths, their lives must be awful and they should be helped, and they're a small number and not much danger to women. I would agree with most of that and I hadn't even heard of "lesbian" transwomen with functioning penis until not that long ago. It's a whole different situation.

Totally agree with you DonkeySkin. With everything you say in your above post.

The liberal feminist attitude to all this is so hypocritical. And as you say it is about man pleasing and deferring to men. They behave like this because they truly deep down know that transwomen are men (whilst maintaining that penises can be female and lesbians are being transphobic if they don't fancy female cock). The cognitive dissonance is brain melting.

There have been loads of cases of transwomen trying to force their way into female safe spaces. The rape crisis one in Canada was actually in my mind when I wrote the above post. There have been numerous cases in prisons too - notably with men who are in prison for raping/murdering/assaulting women, demanding GRS and hormones be provided by the state and then demanding that they be housed in female prisons. There have also been cases of transwomen with penises intact using female showers and changing areas at sports venues.

Transwomen also managed to get Conway Hall to refuse to be a venue for the RadFem 2012 conference because they protested that the conference and its speakers were transphobic because they do not accept that transwomen are female and therefore they were not welcome at this women only conference.

So yes, there are transwomen who want to get into women's spaces. For lots of transwomen it is about validation, about 'passing', about having biological females accept them as being the same as biological females. Ironically this behavior is so full to bursting of male entitlement and misogyny that it clearly marks such transwomen out as being nothing like biological females. And it smacks of delusion/narcissism/mental health issues.

And due to the Gender Recognition Act, these transwomen have the law behind them. The law agrees with the fantasy that a man who wants to be a woman is the same as a biological female.

I have often in these sorts of discussions been told that such behavior is very rare and in no way representative of transgenderism. But that isn't true. Not only is the behavior not that rare, but in addition there is a pattern to it. And in addition to that, when there is case (like the rape crisis one for example), hundreds of transpeople and liberal/progessives will mount an internet campaign in support of the transperson and attacking those who will not defer to them.

If you want to get a feel for what goes on, start a trans critical blog or tweet on trans politics in a critical way. You will be flooded with threatening, abusive, misogynistic communication - if you are anonymous attempts will be made to out you and make your identity public, you will receive death threats, rape threats and be told that you are driving transpeople to suicide. You will notice a pattern in the behavior, language, etc which will remind you of what commonly gets called narcissistic rage.

I sometimes wonder if it is the hormones - if giving female hormones to males does something to mental health. Having said that, plenty of trans extremists don't actually take hormones and they still exhibit this aggression and delusion.

Of course one must assume that there are also lots of lovely reasonable transwomen who just want to get on with their lives, accept that they are not the same as biological females and have no desire to muscle in on women's spaces, politics and rights. Indeed such a group are trying to organise and speak out - they call themsleves New Narratives

But he specifically says he's not trans.

Oh. I've seen him claim to be trans previously, so maybe he changes his gender identity according to his mood. As is his right as a male

Do all those liberal feminists accept that this man is a woman just because he says he is? How can they?

They swear they do, but of course they don't. I think the reason they are so fanatical about defending transwomen is because they see them as male - males who are the lowest on the rung of the male hierarchy and who therefore need to be protected by females and prioritised over them.

What mental contortions must they have gone through to have abandoned all common sense and integrity? What do they say about these rapists who claim to be women? Are they really prepared to throw real women under the bus for rapists?

These issues rarely come up on libfem sites because most of them run a general blanket censorship around trans politics - any comments questioning any aspect of it go unpublished and the commentator is banned. I left a comment on the F-Word site after they ran an article by a genderqueer male (not even trans!) who said women who associated with gender-critical feminists should be no-platformed like racists.

I questioned whether a male had any right to tell women how to do feminism - this went unpublished due to 'transphobia'. So even calling a male who looks fully male and is treated as such by everyone, erm, male is absolutely taboo among liberal feminists now. You can imagine how far you'd get pointing out that quite a lot of rapists and serial killers are identifying as women these days.

So yes, I think it's clear that many liberal 'feminists' are prepared to throw women under the bus in favour of this utterly anti-feminist and really male supremacist ideology. But I also think that many of them haven't been exposed to either gender-critical thought or the genuinely harmful aspects of the trans agenda and are going along with this because it's seen as the caring and liberal thing to do.

Is this what third wave feminism is?

Sadly, yes. It's really distressing. As a woman who came of age in the thick of the third wave in the 90s and spent many years trying to pretend that stripping and porn were cool, I really don't consider third-wave feminism to be feminism at all. IMO, the third wave represents the gutting of feminism by neoliberalism and post-modernism.

It's quite amazing AskBasil isn't it?

They call it bathroom panic and talk about how transwomen are more likely to be attacked or raped than women and therefore women just need to get over it. If that Harmsworth man had been refused access to the shelter, they would have fought for him to get in. After his conviction, they are denying he was trans. Massive amount of wishful thinking and naïveté.

There are parallels with the Islington care home scandal where there was a reaction to the old idea that gay men were paedophiles by effectively saying no gay men were paedophiles. An admirable attempt to end discrimination against gay men but carried out in a wrong-headed manner that led to abuse by paedophiles who realised they could take advantage of liberalising attitudes.

But he specifically says he's not trans.

I am frankly bewildered.

I really thought there was a possibility that he's just taking the piss - in fact I was a bit about him, thinking maybe he's a bit of a transphobe tbh.

Do all those liberal feminists accept that this man is a woman just because he says he is? How can they? What mental contortions must they have gone through to have abandoned all common sense and integrity?

What do they say about these rapists who claim to be women? Are they really prepared to throw real women under the bus for rapists? Is this what third wave feminism is?

I've seen that man Jasper Gregory around gender-critical sites on the internet and as far as I can tell he is 100 per cent serious about his claim to be a transwoman and a lesbian.

He's also only taking trans politics and the ideology of 'gender identity' to their logical conclusion. The central tenet of trans (and now liberal feminist) thought is that 'woman' is a metaphysical identity that anyone can choose to adopt, so who are we to say Jaspar Gregory - or, for that matter serial rapist Christopher 'Jessica' Hambrook, who attacked the women in the Toronto women's shelter - is not actually a woman? That would be extremely bigoted of us privileged cis females.

AskBasil, that man is either taking the mickey, which is just insensitive and horrible of him, or, if he is serious, he is quite disturbed/dangerous and the last place he should be is a female locker room (or rape crisis centre). His whole tone when talking about lesbians and how enraged he can make them (with what looks to me like a smirk on his face) makes me feel sick. I am really shocked by this. And the vey belittling phrase, "I want time with the girls" - how dare he??

Outs there was a case in Canada a while ago where a transwoman wanted to volunteer as a peer counsellor in a rape crisis centre. She was not allowed to volunteer and sued the centre under human rights legislation. She initially won and got damages from the centre but the decision was overturned on appeal. I've seen transactivists attacking that centre on twitter very recently and talking about organising to have it closed down if they won't accept transwomen.

There was this case this year, also in Canada where a man raped women in a homeless shelter where he claimed to be a woman:

www.torontosun.com/2014/02/26/predator-who-claimed-to-be-transgender-declared-dangerous-offender

It's interesting that he is described as a man who "falsely" claimed to be transgender. I haven't seen any report where he admits that he was falsely claiming to be transgender therefore it seems contradictory that transactivists say on the one hand that we must accept a person's stated gender identity but when this happens they are able to say he was falsely claiming to be transgender.

The dangers to vulnerable women, particularly women in shelters and in prison, are so clear and obvious but transactivists say these women are bigoted if they are not comfortable with male bodied persons in their spaces.

On the point about lesbians, I have seen lesbians called "vagina fetishists", "bigots" and other names because they don't want to have sex with transwomen with a penis.

"Can you imagine anyone really asking for that? It's really hard to imagine someone transgendered would demand to work as a nurse in a rape crisis centre? "

Yes I can. A predatory male who wants access to women and gets a power kick out of forcing them to accept him in their spaces where they feel unsafe with him there.

This was posted on my FB yesterday and I'm not entirely sure if this guy is taking the piss or if he's serious, does anyone know? The worst thing is that it's impossible to tell if something that initially looks so mad that it surely must be a joke, is in fact deadly straight-pan serious:

That is quite scary, Beach.

Can you imagine anyone really asking for that? It's really hard to imagine someone transgendered would demand to work as a nurse in a rape crisis centre? You would think that any sort of transgendered person would have at the centre of their experience the violences of gender? Holy fuck. I would think there should be some sort of rape crisis get-out clause to be really specific about who examines you (no brunettes! no one with a geordie accent! even sort of stuff) because of the fact the individual is in crisis and could be triggered. Everyone would surely be able to recognise that supporting the requests of an individual in that sort of crisis is not analogous with supporting the suggestion that everyone with said geordie accent or whatever 'is' a rapist, or saying anything about any given group that the person in crisis is resisting. It would be like saying, this person can't think clearly and this isn't the time to 'educate' her about possibly prejudicial attitudes arising from her experience. Or am I suggesting a backdoor to state sanctioned racism, etc.?

I think that's awful - and I think it's really scary that I didn't know about this before. What do they mean by they have to have transitioned for 2 years? Does that mean, completely living as a woman - but how could that be proved unless they physically changed their bodies? And how can you be screend for cervical cancer if you haven't got a cervix? Are there women who think they are men asking to be screened for prostate cancer even if they haven't got a prostate? And what about the poor lesbians who might go on a date with one of these women and then be in for a bit of a shock? If I went on a date with a woman who thought she was a man but turned out not to actually be physically male then I'd feel really cross! And a bit creeped out, to be honest.

Yes rosabud, you have got it right.

And what you describe is the reasonable side of transgender politics.

There is a more extreme side which insists that penises can be female, that transwomen have the right to cervical cancer screening, that men can give birth, that saying women menstruate and breastfeed is transphobic and that women only safe spaces such as rape crisis centres, prisons, refuges, etc must allow entry of male bodied persons who claim they are women.

And the scary thing is that the law is on the side of these extremists.

Imagine a situation where a rape victim must be medically examined and that rape victim, quite understandably requests that the examination be done by a woman. If that rape victim refuses to be examined by a male bodied nurse who has a penis and takes no hormones but claims that they are a woman and wears lipstick and tights, the rape victim is being transphobic and breaking the law.

That is the actual legislative reality since the Gender Recognition Act. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Recognition_Act_2004

I have been reading this with interest and, as it's not something I know very much about, have been looking at the links and googling as I go. Have I got this right?

1. Some people feel they are not the same gender as their physical body would suggest so they can take steps to make them a different gender.
2. Some of those people do not wish to change their bodies physically but would like to call themselves/consider themselves by their chosen gender anyway.
3. Those people have the legal right, in some places, and there is a growing body of thought in other places that supports this, to do just that.
4. Once people have chosen their new gender, they can then tell people of that gender what they can campaign for and what they ought to think about certain issues to do with their gender.

I get point 1. I am sympathetic to point 2 (as in the idea of physical surgery must be daunting) but, surely, if you can't physically change your gender then noone else can really recognise that change in you. I think point 3 is a nonsense - I can't just decide I'm a man and expect to start using male toilets/locker rooms - other men would be very uncomfortable with that, surely? At the very least, it would be rude and insensitive on my part. As for point 4 - it's a nonsene point again because those people who have not lived as a gender all their lives will not have the same experiences so how can they possibly tell what those who have had that gender all their lives are thinking? It would be like me telling someone who has had gender issues what to think about them - how would I possibly know??

The points I still don't get are: how do men who have not changed their physical gender (but say they are women) think that lesbians will be interested in them? Surely a lesbian is someone who most certainly is not attracted to someone who is physically male - if they were attracted to them, then they wouldn't be a lesbian anymore, would they??

As for sharing locker rooms with people who are not physically male, you are either sharing with a) a man who is trying to trck their way into a female locker room or b) a person who thinks they are a woman but can't do anything about it physically - which is unfortunate, but very confusing for the average woman/young female child in the locker room. Obviously a) is unacceptable and b) is sad but impractical really - and a bit dangerous because how would you tell the differenece between them?

you're welcome buffy. it is all stuff i have in favourites so no bother to link to.

thread about space sounds like a great idea.

Yes that was all I could think of too. Dancing and singing beautifully. No rocknroll!

Briar - I can only think of a performance context, like dance.

Which often, involves dance designed to attract the Male Gaze