Why DO people 'believe' transwomen are women?

In Iran, a female protester is missing after removing her headscarf in public.
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-woman-hijab-missing-waved-defiance-a8174026.html

You demand Muslim women should be able to come to the UK and just abandon their headscarf, because they crossed a border."

The UK isn't Iran? She wanted to remove her headscarf because she considers it a symbol of oppression.

Good luck with the discussion/echo chamber.

In Iran, a female protester is missing after removing her headscarf in public.
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-woman-hijab-missing-waved-defiance-a8174026.html

You demand Muslim women should be able to come to the UK and just abandon their headscarf, because they crossed a border.

It just isnt how you achieve liberation for women.

So anyway maybe the actual discussion can resume now.

Fact

I rest my case.

UpstartCrow Sat 27-Jan-18 13:33:50

Toilets are not a distraction if your religion or culture wont let you remove and adjust your headscarf in front of a man. Or use it at all if a man is in there.

Toilets are fundamental to being able to participate in society. Ask anyone in a wheelchair if they are merely a distraction.

Guardianfree The original argument was that - and I quote 'women can't remove their hijab in the presence of men'.

You've still not explained BTW, why you need to remove a hijab outside a toilet cubicle to pee, but that's by the bypass really.

Anyway, this argument is - as I suspected - pointless. I've answered the question put, which is a very good one, and hoped that perhaps a sensible discussion could be had. I'm not saying that hasn't happened, but clearly some things are such an article of faith that some other commentators are determined to cling to their positions come what may. And I was meant to be painting a floor several hours ago. I don't ice cakes.

There was one unisex toilet - it had its own door and was entirely self contained. But some clients still complained that weren't male and female toilets. Didn't stop most of them using it though
and
And how many women remove their hijab to pee anyway? Last time I checked they were worn on the head

Ah Elsie - such a give away!!!...
Surely your cake must need icing by now?

If you genuinely want change for minority women you have to enable it to happen. Not just demand they change to suit your agenda.

I always think that if people are resorting to twisting words they have given up on actually debating

The last thing women need is other women telling them they are being precious for wanting a woman to administer a smear test, or a woman only hospital ward.

Which I haven't done.

Neither is telling those women to get over themselves, or leave their culture.

Which I haven't done. I've said that you are supporting the oppression of women in the name of religion, because you are. To try to win arguments about stuff I've never actually said.

When you are so entrenched in your own ideology that you are prepared to erase The Equality Act, you dont also get to make yourself the arbiter of human rights

Which I haven't done, I've pointed out how the Equality Act works in practice. Christian bakers can't refuse to make cakes for gay weddings. That's fact. Would you prefer it otherwise?

"Women volunteer in outreach programs to teach refugees English, maths, and basic skills so they can participate in public life. Some of those volunteers can only be women.
Telling them to get over their religion is not how change happens."

Which I haven't done. I've pointed out you are supporting oppression of women in the name of religion. Because you are. Because you think it helps you win an argument.

I suspect I've actually talked to more muslim women who are suffering the ill effects of their cultural background than you have. Like the time I went with a (muslim) volunteer to visit another muslim woman living in a slum, the landlord of which was able to exploit her because he knew that as a divorced muslim woman she was extremely vulnerable and socially isolated.

There is, nothing less feminist IMO than justifying the oppression of women with 'well that's their culture'.

If you hate religious oppression then go fight it. Fight the men, not the women.
You might be surprised to see how reluctant the women are to embrace your proffered freedom. Changing a culture takes generations of small changes.
You expect women to just walk away form their entire culture and community, and everything they have known, just because you say so.

Do you blame women for staying with abusive partners?

Thats where the trans activists have gone wrong. Just making a demand and overthrowing an existing structure comes from a position of privilege, and the privileged only have one viewpoint.
They cant see how hard it is to accept a complete change of culture, or all the potential problems that the new order will bring.

I actually came onto the thread to answer the OP again and say that I think a huge problem is how the trans rights lobby has piggybacked itself onto the gay rights issue.

I think many people who haven't given this issue much thought simply think that trans rights are like gay rights. They think that saying transwomen are men is like saying that homosexuality is morally wrong. They don't think further than that.

It is not point scoring to be concerned for women with religious reasons for wanting sex segregated spaces. "

Oh come on, of course it is. It's not a genuine concern, it's just clutching at any straw to make an argument.

I used to work in an advice centre where there was a large muslim clientele. There was one unisex toilet - it had its own door and was entirely self contained. But some clients still complained that weren't male and female toilets. Didn't stop most of them using it though.

If, at work, your colleagues couldn't pee all day then there would be a problem. So there needs to be a toilet they can use. But as I said, if you go into a coffee shop, they usually have one or two unisex loos. No-one's yet sued Costa I know of, so the answer is just a few facilities like that.

If someone refuses to use a separate unisex loo, I very much doubt that's something the equality act would consider discrimination. And how many women remove their hijab to pee anyway? Last time I checked they were worn on the head.

No Elsie, it isnt.
Neither is telling those women to get over themselves, or leave their culture.

The last thing women need is other women telling them they are being precious for wanting a woman to administer a smear test, or a woman only hospital ward.

When you are so entrenched in your own ideology that you are prepared to erase The Equality Act, you dont also get to make yourself the arbiter of human rights.

Women volunteer in outreach programs to teach refugees English, maths, and basic skills so they can participate in public life. Some of those volunteers can only be women.
Telling them to get over their religion is not how change happens.

It's the idea that women must cover their hair in public and in front of men that should go.

So the thought would go

To make women less oppressed for religious reasons ensure that they can't take a piss when out in public

Right

Nice and comfy there under that bridge?

I have to agree with Elsie on one point. I hate religious oppression being used as reason for separate toilets.

*Unisex toilets are the answer to everything, apparently. Cancer? Climate change? Just have everyone pee together and the world will be saved.

(This seriously is the weirdest obsession I've run across in a commenter in a while. Takes all sorts, I suppose.)*

As I said, it's not me who keeps perpetuating this argument. It's the people who said they were going to ignore me a while back.

And again I repeat - the position of many on this thread is so entrenched that they aren't able to look, rationally, at what the issues are, but cling to their position, with ever more baroque assertions in their defence. Oh no, we can't have a woman go into a toilet where a man is present (is he going to be in the cubicle with her?) because muslim fundamentalists may become upset. Seriously? Seriously? That is a feminist argument?

Kind of like the people you're arguing against actually, of whom I am not one, but you're determined to cast me as one because you are unable to recognise that this is a discussion with differing points of view, and areas that are ambiguous.

Elsie2791

It is not point scoring to be concerned for women with religious reasons for wanting sex segregated spaces. Many of us live, work, socialise, receive medical treatments etc alongside Muslim women. My friends are very clear that mixed sex changing rooms, toilets etc are not acceptable for them or their older children. But because they are a marginalised group who doesn't have much access to power, their voices are not heard or sought.

Just because I may disagree with some aspects of Islam doesn't mean that I'm going to dismiss their concerns or tell them that they're plain wrong.

StoneCold
I agree to a degree hormones are on a spectrum. But I cannot think it is as far as your husband states otherwise wouldn’t there be a lot more intersex people? Most intersex babies born have increased androgen hormones (ie hormones that act like testosterone).

I await your dh’s thoughts with interest.