Gender reassignment surgery... Would you then be happy with them in female spaces?

So this MN thread is going to be taken into account when making parliamentary decisions?

I don't care what gender or categorisation anyone falls into. I don't take that into account when it comes to their opinion.

crowdo
The problem is that there hasn't been any debate. Women have suddenly found that our language has been changed, our sex segregated facilities are being removed, children are being offered puberty blockers and if the gender identity bill goes through, then no woman will have the right to any sex segregated service - not a single sex hospital ward, right to have a woman administer a smear test, bra fitting, woman counsellor if we're raped. And as women have realised that because we have been quiet and accepting and not made a fuss, suddenly all the rights that have been fought for for so many years are being removed. So we want to debate and question and hold on to these hard fought for rights - but guess what, we're called transphobic when we challenge these changes and are threatened and followed and assaulted in order to stop us raising our concerns.
So when you pop up and say that this isn't going to be solved with debate - we can see that - it's being resolved with threats, no platforming, intimidation, assaults and silencing women!

It's not an issue that is going to be solved with debate.

Why? Why is debate so scary?

None of us have any idea how it feels to be someone else,

Well..quite. But we are expected to believe a person can 'feel like' an entire other sex. Quite how is that? How can you feel like something you are not?

we have no idea if there are differences in the brain that we are currently scientifically unable to categorise
Its of course possible that brain differences between the sexes will eventually be found. As science currently stands though, no differences...
we cannot individually weigh up the sum of every person on earth's feelings and then make one decision that will suit everyone.

Which is quite why 'feelings' shouldn't come into the whole thing at all really. Hence, us stating that 'woman' is a biological reality, not a 'feeling' and that spaces segregated by sex, for reasons that are down to the differences between the sexes, should remain separated by sex, not a 'feeling'

Being any gender does not exclude you from being horrible to and about other people.

Of course not.

However gender is bollocks, none of us give a crap about gender as its known today and I think you may find that most feminists (and indeed, just...people) reject the entire notion of 'gender' alltogether as noone is simply a set of stereotypes, which is exactly what gender is!

We just think sex is more important...when it comes to maintaining spaces segregated by sex. This much should be obvious. None of these spaces are split due to feelings...its biology.

The people on this board are the most clued up I have ever seen on this trans narrative and what is being expected of females. What females are being asked to give up...its fairly insulting to see people make out they simply do not understand. Its pretty much the only space online, or in real life that these issues (which affect us all...not just trans people) can even be spoken about without discussion being shut down.

Its even funnier when your original 'rargh transphobes' type comment (14:21:54), was actually aimed...at a transwoman!

You can't change laws without there being some winners and losers. There needs to be some debate so that as many people are in agreement when the law is changed and this makes the law work.

If there is not widespread consent the law will not work.

Debate may not sound 'nice' but it is working through ideas to get things right.

If laws are brought in without widespread consent, then there will be no respect for that law, people will not abide by that law and the justice system will not be able to deal with that law.

If the law is badly drawn up then the law will not be enforceable.

This leads to a situation for everyone that is not nice, and much worse than a lack of fluffy words.

That is why there is supposed to be consultation and consensus.

It's not an issue that is going to be solved with debate.

Of course it can be. Laws are made by parliament and courts, and debated thoroughly in both arenas.

This debate is not constructive

You mean it's not going your way!

Of course the irony is that (speaking for myself personally), Curry is precisely the sort of transwoman I would feel perfectly comfortable sharing space with, because she understands that there are circumstances when biology matters. The trans identified individual who punched a 60 year old woman at speakers' corner last week, on the other hand, is precisely the sort of individual I wouldn't want to be next to in hospital. As the law currently stands, we can make such a distinction legally - because access to women's spaces depends on a gender reassignment certificate. If the law changes to allow for self-identification, then I have to put up with that violent individual from speakers' corner in hospital wards, prisons, communal shower rooms, sleeper berths, women's dormitories in youth hostels, rape crisis centres, shelters for women fleeing domestic violence. And I am not happy with that.

Curry - in the unlikely event we're ever on the Inverness sleeper together, I'd happily share a compartment with you!

It's not an issue that is going to be solved with debate. None of us have any idea how it feels to be someone else, we have no idea if there are differences in the brain that we are currently scientifically unable to categorise, we cannot individually weigh up the sum of every person on earth's feelings and then make one decision that will suit everyone.

This debate is not constructive. It's an excuse, for many, to make hideous sweeping gleeful judgements. I don't care who goes in what box. I do care about barely concealed bigotry.

Ok crowdo. You don't see any need for sex segregation any where. That's fine.

But plenty of people do. And talking about it is perfectly normal.

Who decides who looks male and female? If someone looks female, but sounds male, what happens then? What if they pass from a distance, but not close up or in a group of women?

Well much as I wouldn't go into the mens (unless I really had to to find my child or something - and even then, I'd loudly announce myself), a transwoman shouldn't go in the ladies (dunno about the men and transmen - you'd have to ask men about that) - I shouldn't need to say that, it should be societally understood (as it has been in the past). An honour system used to work just fine.

Anyone who wants to violate those boundaries is just the kind of person who you probably don't want to be sharing a toilet (or prison cell) with.

Being any gender does not exclude you from being horrible to and about other people.

There's no point having debates about who is this or that percentage of one of the other. Just be nice. If you find that challenging, look at yourself and the reasons why you choose to act that way, not at other people and what they are doing.

I'm absolutely sick of seeing this shit on MN.

Today 14:21 Crowdo

It's not that no one understands. It's that they disagree.

It's neither petty not small minded to have a debate about about this.

I really don't understand why when women say no, that it's suddenly up for question. There is a word for that.

@IAmEatingACurry understands only too well, contrary to your post, because she's a transwoman.

Women definitely are not incomplete men. If anything, evolutionary biologists came to the conclusion that men are modified women. That is why they still have nipples - no evolutionary pressures to get rid of them.

*to include more spaces

Exactly. No males in women's spaces as far as possible (i.e. it depends on whether they "pass" and can sneak in under the radar. No compromise, the technical exemptions from EA to remain for women's spaces and to be more spaces where women are uncomfortable with men being there and more focussed on women.

Otherwise yes it is based on a false premise and is pressure to have genital surgery to be accepted. No.

You've only got to scroll through a few comments on MN about them to see the vitriol.

Who cares about categorisations, if it makes people treat others like shit?

Nobody is suggesting they are freaks. Neither are they women.

Totally agree with point two. It should in no way be encouraged that somebody experience genital surgery to have their decisions about themselves respected.

And those pictures are deliberately chosen to present a biased view of male to female transitions. I have friends you wouldn't know the difference with. I have friends who have had the surgery and I have friends who are only starting out. It makes me very upset to read nasty comments on MN making out that these dear, lovely, and kind people should be treated like freaks.

I am really concerned that we reject this idea that men without penises are women, for a number of reasons, grouped around these two basic principles.

1. Women aren't incomplete men. This Aristotelian view is deep in our culture and must be resisted.
2. It's unethical to create social conditions of entry based on body modification. This is no better than FGM! It's wrong to pressure people in this way.

Woman is not a costume.....

@IAmEatingACurry

Actually, I suspect most people don't have a vested opinion in the lives and opinions of other people. They most likely don't give a shit what other people think of themselves. It's really only on MN that you get this overbearing need to destroy something you are too petty and small minded to understand.

I think some of the conflation of sex and gender is deliberate.

I was down the rabbit hole reading some comments on a Guardian article and some one was saying that sex and gender is a social construct and that sex and gender are synonyms. I would say that the person saying this was not in any state of confusion but wily, streetwise and well versed in Guardian commenting.

Obviously, they are synonyms in a wider everyday context but when you are discussing the nitty gritty of gender/sex politics there is a wide difference - that is why the two different words exist.

Otherwise, it is just people who do not like saying 'sex' because it sounds a bit like...............

I know its pretty much splitting hairs at this stage but I really do not like how its termed 'gender dysphoria'

As I feel a lot of where we all went wrong was the conflating of the words sex and gender

And 'sex dysphoria' would surely be more accurate. I am fairly sure transsexual people would like the distinction made in general too...as I dare bet most transsexual people, would like to be firmly distinguished from the 'female penis' shouty types who call them 'truscum' for daring to have dysphoria to start with :S

I'm not Ok with this. I hope that when the worst of this insanity is over, we end up with a situation where women are recognised for what we ARE, and trans people have a solution that meets their needs without imposing upon women.

A post operative person who has had their penis amputated is no closer to being a woman than a person with intact male genitalia.

Women are not "like men but without dicks". We are not men-with-modifications. We already exist AS something.

I have my sex in common with other women. I have nothing in common with a M2T. We have neither sex nor gender in common. There is no justification for them breaching my boundaries.