I can't get my head around the phrase "Transwomen are women".

"I'm not going to engage with you further mary because I find your misogyny a bit worrying and some of the stuff you say quite disturbing. Describing women fearing male violence as being 'blubbering imbeciles' is really offensive.
I'm sorry that happened to you and I hope you are getting some real life support with it."

I find the most protected and provided for class being also the most vocal about violence and the most demanding and entitled offensive to be honest.

I also find accusations of misogyny to be utterly pathetic when describing a person who disagrees with a gender feminist, ignoring that it would mean hating myself and many of my closest friends it shoes the arrogance of gender feminists because you think you speak for all women. Odd considering about 70% do not identify with the "patriarchy, misogynistic, man hating" worldview it spews.

I had support now i have a life.

Ok I know I said I would leave this thread! Last comment and then I'm going to bed -

mary if women didn't give birth to children and keep then alive through constant self-sacrifice, there would be no more humans on the planet. Head on over to the Mn threads about childbirth horror stories if you want to see stories of first world women's "discomfort". Or head on over to the red pillers on reddit if you want ideological allies.

Ok done. I'm not engaging anymore.

I am pretty sure that every civilization up until now was built by men while women were provided for and protected and for almost all of that time (250,000 years or so) it seems to me that without a grocery store on every corner, air-conditioning and all the mod cons we first world people enjoy women in those days were quit content to let men tame the wilderness and do all the building.

But oh dear Mary. You're not a historian, are you?

Bright, sadly "vocal" (no matter how niche) is the entire issue. Vocal is what gets listened to. Vocal is what gets legislated for. Vocal is what decides the future. No one in power actually surveys the real feelings of everyone before they make a decision.

...wanders onto thread...

God the transphobia among MN feminists is depressing!

I don't find the line 'transwomen are women' at all controversial, but clearly I'm in the minority here.

...sits on hands because there's no point in arguing with people who have already made up their minds.

"So the risk to women and transwomen is from men? So why is it women who have to make the adjustment?
It's hardly a new idea for women to have to suppress their fear and discomfort in order to meet the needs of men. Same old, same old."

Same old, same old?

I am pretty sure that every civilization up until now was built by men while women were provided for and protected and for almost all of that time (250,000 years or so) it seems to me that without a grocery store on every corner, air-conditioning and all the mod cons we first world people enjoy women in those days were quit content to let men tame the wilderness and do all the building.

I am part owner of a groundwork and landscaping company and i have worked on building sites for all my life and i can drive any site vehicle there is but i could not get up a ladder with a full hod of bricks or tiles on my shoulder even at my fittest and strongest let alone do it all day and fast enough to keep a bricklayer or tiler happy.

So who had the needs for most of human existence when it was a lot harder to get by that carrying a hod of bricks? First world women know nothing of discomfort and have their every need met and met by men still.

Go find a building site and watch the work going on then multiply it by about 50 for what it was like just a few hundred years ago.

In a feminist context, I tend to think of a patriarch as someone who believes that the gendered hierarchy of society, which underpins the oppression of female people, is a good thing. This can include e.g. a page 3 model or a prime minister or a billionaire. I don't see why Clarkson is a patriarch, but "young left wing men and women", who approve of the gender hierarchy and influence trans legislation, apparently aren't patriarchs.

My point was that do you really think there is anything but a small , vocal minority who agree with these extremists? Do you really think there are Page 3 girls/ Clarkson clones queuing up to support these views because " hey that'll be one over the feminists"

And mary - "blubbering imbecile"?? Really??

ok I'm signing off the internet for this evening, too grumpy.

I'm not going to engage with you further mary because I find your misogyny a bit worrying and some of the stuff you say quite disturbing. Describing women fearing male violence as being 'blubbering imbeciles' is really offensive.
I'm sorry that happened to you and I hope you are getting some real life support with it.

Then why not set aside spaces specifically for trans people? Why do cis women have to take the hit? I have humanity towards both trans women and cis women, but the latter are being steamrollered by mainstream opinion in this debate. Women's fears of male sexual violence is being painted as bigotry and it's outrageous.

And I wasn't being shout-y about trans people in single sex spaces actually, I was cross about your comparing homophobic hostility to gay men in the military and feminist objections to trans women in women-only spaces. An offensive comparison I think, since the implication is that radical feminists are being irrationally bigoted.

So the risk to women and transwomen is from men? So why is it women who have to make the adjustment?
It's hardly a new idea for women to have to suppress their fear and discomfort in order to meet the needs of men. Same old, same old.

Women's very real fear of the very real risk of male violence isn't petty. I find it quite surprising a woman would think it was.

I suppose its a matter of perspective.

I do not think about being raped walking to my car even though i was gang raped and tortured in the past (the gang consisted of men and women fyi).

Yet some women worry about it all the time so i am told. After speaking to men where i work and asking them about violence etc they told me that they never think about violence much at all and never think about being murdered.

So looking at the statistics a man is far more likely to be violently attacked than a woman or child and is far more likely to be murdered than a woman or child.

In fact a man is far more likely to be murdered that a women is likely to be raped walking to her car yet men never think about it at all let alone let it bother them to a point they become a blubbering imbecile about it and cannot go on without a lot of attention paid to them and their feelings on the matter.

So why is it that the most protected class (WOMEN who are now even more protected than children) and the LEAST likely class to suffer a violent attack are the ones that go on about it the most?

The victim routine and the rape culture meme are really not the sort of things that go hand in hand with the concept of "strong and independent" in my opinion.

Everyone has rights, but sometimes those rights clash. Which demographic has to make space for the other is an exceptionally complicated thing to figure out. However, given that spaces are generally not set aside specifically for trans, then a choice has to be made. So, whilst someone can be SHOUTY CAPS about the connotations of a trans woman in a female changing room, surely they can also have the humanity to understand tge connotations of a trans woman in a male changing room.

Mary, so if it were possible, with technological advances, to easily scan everyone's brains, would you then divide everyone up based on their brain scans, into separate showering facilities and similar?

Because when people claim there are male and female brain differences, it is usually connected to things like spatial reasoning skills. I don't actually intend to do any non verbal reasoning tasks - map reading and so on, in the shower, so am not sure why I need to do so in the company of people with a similar level of map reading skill.

"Mary, some of the articles on your wiki link were about how gay men have the same brain structures as straight women. Do you think that gay men are actually women too?"

No but then i read the article fully and saw that while homosexual men do have some areas that are similar to women's and less like mens the structures and densities are not as dense and structured as women's but are more dense than mens. While other areas are the same as heterosexual mens brains.

So no according to the findings if we were to draw a line with women at one end and men on the other they would perhaps be between 25% to 50% towards the womens end.

That is a poor example as its more complex than that but its gives you the basic idea.

I don't understand. I don't understand why this is such an issue.

Someone who is mtf transgender is not the same as I am from a "being a woman" perspective; in our experience of the world, in our upbringing/socialisation, in our physical biology. That is not bias or bigotry - that is just how it is. I don't seek to exclude, I seek to be defined as I see myself and as I group myself. It upsets me when that view of my own identity is conflated with things it is not.

Most people define woman as "born biologically female and raised biologically female". BILLIONS of people fit into that description of "woman". That's real. Those people may be perceived as having a less valid global voice than the left wing chattering classes, but that doesn't and shouldn't make their sense of self-identity invalid, nor the needs associated with their biological and social status as women.

I have every sympathy for mtf trans people, it must be a very difficult journey and place to be, but please stop appropriating.

Women's very real fear of the very real risk of male violence isn't petty. I find it quite surprising a woman would think it was.

gowether -
95% OF RAPES ARE COMMITTED BY MEN, 95% OF RAPE VICTIMS ARE WOMEN.
WOMEN ARE VICTIMS OF MALE SEXUAL VIOLENCE
EVERY.
SINGLE.
DAY.

Comparing women's legitimate fear of male sexual violence with straight people's fear of gay people is so offensive.

I'm sorry to get all shout-y capitals-y, but seriously!!!!

"Mary, lots of transgender people don't consider themselves men or women. What brain structure do you think they have?

And what aspect of brain structure do you think women share that requires us to need a separate shower area?"

1. A scan would be needed to know that.

1. The same one that focuses on a petty point that would never be seriously challenged or have its boundaries crossed when people are discussing a very important issue i expect.

Mary, some of the articles on your wiki link were about how gay men have the same brain structures as straight women. Do you think that gay men are actually women too?

This lists her fairly extensive body of work as a neuroscientist

www.aston.ac.uk/lhs/staff/az-index/rippong/

"Mary, I'm going to disregard the Wikipedia entry"

That is your choice but it has links to good peer reviewed studies for many of the claims.

I certainly disregard the claims that are unsupported by good studies etc for obvious reasons but to disregard all of the article is just because its Wikipedia means a waste of time looking for stuff elsewhere that will be in it.

Anyway the one i linked said they searched all articles published between 1990 and 2013.

A total of 126 articles were included in the study, covering brains from individuals as young as birth to 80 years old so its pretty comprehensive.

Mary, lots of transgender people don't consider themselves men or women. What brain structure do you think they have?

And what aspect of brain structure do you think women share that requires us to need a separate shower area?

Many intersex people really don't like being used as pawns in trans activists' arguments (they also don't really like being called hermaphrodites). Intersex people are in a particularly vulnerable and troubling position in that most of them are coercively assigned a sex at birth and have their genitals operated on (/mutilated) so that they cosmetically appear to have the 'right' ones. It's appalling. They are then raised as whatever sex their parents/doctors decide, and very many intersex people have dreadful health conditions which really impair quality of life.

Even aside from the fact that glibly comparing the circumstances of trans people with intersex people is quite offensive to this very marginalised group, your point also doesn't work mary. Almost all intersex people remain living as the sex they were coercively assigned at birth - it's fairly unusual for them to transition to the other sex. When they do, it's often because they don't really fit into either sex category socially, and their personalities fit better in one rather than the other, e.g. a person who has been raised as a girl, but feels more comfortable being viewed socially as a girl and being allowed to do stereotypically masculine things (which is very reasonable!)

Here's a paper on this by Leonard Sax -
mega.co.nz/#!JIcmyJIS!lL_NLI5Vfakr_FnvbP_iclTsYF9I09OykqUZyZo0o3g

www.aston.ac.uk/EasysiteWeb/getresource.axd?AssetID=80901&type=full&servicetype=Attachment