If you're pro Self ID for trans people please could you explain it to me?

And again, people who are on the fence and who argue that anyone with a GRC is legit and deserves access to women's spaces needs to remember that Clare, who wrote the above, has a GRC. Having a GRC is no guarantee that a person is "genuine", whatever that means, or that the process ensures that people who have one will pose no threat to women.

AGP actively impedes the ability to empathize with women. And we can see the impact in everything TRAs do.

Looking at Clare's site, I noticed Clare had blogged about the male nurse who felt they were an appropriate person to do a smear test on a woman who had requested a female.

clareflourish.wordpress.com/2018/01/02/a-nurse-who-is-trans/

I think we need to remember that even when women say they do not want a male person (or any person) looking at them or touching them or performing a procedure on them, there will always be people to tell them they are wrong!

Wrong to know what they do or do not want, and wrong to have an opinion.

Ironically, as well as trans women telling natal women what they should accept; men and women will also pile in with their 'opinions'.I debated this on a trans friendly' forum and guess what, the natal women there were all in favour of other women being forced to have smears from males.

What I find most worrying is that younger women and girls are being subject to gaslighting so that in the future they will find it harder to say NO!

I would now really, really like to know from those who are pro self id, how they would feel if their wishes about a very personal intimate procedure were ignored. And the rights of a male person to do just what they want to do is elevated.

Maybe the nurse was embarrassed, maybe unsure how to proceed! In my opinion this is even more reason NOT to give self id.

I know what to do, when my presence distresses or worries someone. Not that it does often, but it has done on occasion. I said or did the wrong thing. I apologized and I did not try and force the person to agree with me or get alongside with me. My own embarrassment does not override the other person's feelings.

If men can't get their head around this, in what universe could we ever trust them with self-id?

We need more practical things to do, who can we write to, what can we do, where can we send money?

I wrote to my MP, he was shit. He kept conflating 'trans rights' with gay rights. He is a knob head of the first order. Who else can I write to?

(I am hoping when we are looking at this in the rear-view mirror it will have made us stronger.

Society is failing those kids on so many different levels, meanwhile trans women are winning awards for being stunning and brave for wearing nail polish.

@AngryAttackKittens that is so horrible. The only trans man I have spoken to, on line, extensively, told me they have been raped.

Ps o am not doubting that trans men suffer more than trans women, just curious where the evidence on line is. I know in the USA it is trans women of colour who are often hsts (homosexual transsexuals) and are at risk from men. AGPs who hang around women are not going to be at the same kind of risk as trans women who are around males.

We have high profile cases of trans men being targetted and their rapists - males of various identities - being very clear that they chose to rape those trans men because they're trans men

Oh fuck that's heartbreaking. What are we doing to these poor kids? They are just trying to find a safe place and they are being headfucked and abused from all directions. I don't know what to say.

Anecdotal, but every young trans man I've spoken to who's trusted me enough to be honest has brought up incidents of being pressured or coerced into sex by trans women, often trans women much older than them. There's a definite pattern there, and that's on top of the shit they'll be dealing with from regular blokes.

He actually said trans women were more likely to suffer male violence than women!

@DN4GeekinDerby excellent post early this morning.

I had a gay man tell me recently that trans women were the most hard done by.

Yet "We have high profile cases of trans men being targetted and their rapists - males of various identities - being very clear that they chose to rape those trans men because they're trans men. It's become a fucking power fantasy bragged about on various social media sites alongside raping TERFs." Where I'd the evidence for tans men being attacked so I can argue the case.

Is this as big a fight as the suffragets a hundred years ago?

Perhaps having the bank send a statement to Ms Smith rather than Mr Smith? Does that hurt anyone in RL?

Well your sister who you live with and haven't told might be an example...

As for Miss, Mrs, Mrs etc
The proof I needed to change my title on my bank account from Miss to Ms was something else. They insisted I proved my marriage. The ridiculous thing, is its not a joint account. Nor did I actually change my name. And you don't need to be married to be a Ms.

I was pissed at that.

But we are proposing to make changing your sex easier than this.

Also hate the "well there are women with PCOS who have facial hair so you can't say I'm not a woman!" argument. In order to have PCOS you have to be female, it's a sex-specific condition.

I'd rather take my chances with a random bloke than a bloke with AGP in any sort of space where I'm potentially vulnerable. Saying this has caused me to lose at least one friendship, but it's still true - it's not just that men with AGP aren't harmless little lambs, the reality is that they're more dangerous than the average man is, and more misogynistic.

I think it speaks to the fact that both the medical community and politicians view trans identified males as "failed men" and so therefor women.
The unspoken misogyny baked into the culture is now being codified into law.

I completely agree, LangCleg.

I think it's disgraceful that, rather than be kept as far away from women and girls as humanly possible, deviants like Clare are classed as one of us based upon that deviancy.

The sexual predilections of these particular men is prioritised over the mental health and sexual, physical, emotional and mental safety of all women and children.

I read a comment by someone else on either this thread or another saying stop the world, I want to get off.

They are not alone.

I don't think there should be a GRC procedure. As I see no need for GRCs. The original reason for them is moot now, so no need for them to continue.

Yeah. I'm good with that. It can say 'Miss' on your library card. Just that. No more.

Someone on Twitter suggested that the GRC procedure should include a mandatory psychiatric assessment to show that the applicant does not have a cluster B type disorder or similar and is able to perceive women as actual human beings, understand that others have boundaries that should not be crossed, and fully accept the principle of consent.

I think that would be wise, and Clare's appearance on this thread would seem to indicate the same.

Myunicorn - you're right. I hadn't made the link between changing sex on a document and how stats and data will be collated. I was trying to think of something innocuous and failed.

But it's actually quite hard to think of anything that could be changed where it doesn't really matter.

Perhaps having the bank send a statement to Ms Smith rather than Mr Smith? Does that hurt anyone in RL? (Though pity the shop assistant who queries whether Ms Smith is using a card that rightfully belongs to her when Ms Smith looks like D Moscato)

Library card?National Trust membership card? (Not sure that they usually indicate sex, however)

Theirs is a transphobic argument. They say a majority of women will be perturbed to see trans women even in shop changing rooms where doors to cubicles provide complete privacy; but they do not object, because they are socialised to care for others. They feel fear, anger and disgust, and rationalise that they are right to feel these things, and all women should

And yet you still go in there.

They deny they are hostile to us- they say they only object when we wrongfully enter women’s space. But they trivialise us, saying we play dress-up, and monster us, by referring to autogynephilia, drawing attention to transitioning sex offenders, and claiming we are perverts.

Yet you acknowledge you are an Agp!

I have never been tempted to “little girl” costumes like the ones in Prissy’s cartoons, but I was aroused, and that is the main motivation for collecting the pictures (through a Google image search). While searching, I found a picture of a transvestite I used to know, who is the only person who has admitted to me doing such role-play. Grayson Perry, who sometimes appears in “little-girl” dresses like no little girl ever wore is reducing shame- because of course I am tempted to the old line I may be a pervert but at least I am not as bad as him, which divides people and empowers kyriarchy

You acknowledge you are a pervert and are aroused by the idea of little girl roleplay. You call the women, who do not want you near their themselves or their young daughters TERFS.

Quite frankly claire, after reading your self obsessed blog about your sexual fetish, the thought of you in any womans space makes me feel sick. I challenge anybody to try and support self id after reading your blog.

Because heres the fucking scary part folks. Claire has a Grc. Claire had the counselling and went down the proper route. And not one proffesional person suspected that Claire had sexual motivations for wanting to transition.

We need to stop presuming that men with a Grc are harmless.

This is interesting to me because maybe years ago I would have been pro self-ID. Agreeing with the trans movement was just part and parcel of the circles I moved in. Thankfully I've seen the light.

I don't think I would have been aware of it years ago. And I'm not sure I would be aware of it now if I hadn't got curious about the threads about JJ's AWS fundraiser. And that's scary -- how few people realise the implications. It's not really something I come across in my daily life. It almost feels like they're deliberately trying to sneak this through without people realising.

This is interesting to me because maybe years ago I would have been pro self-ID. Agreeing with the trans movement was just part and parcel of the circles I moved in. Thankfully I've seen the light.

If all that self-ID meant was that someone with a GRC was able to change their passport, driving licence etc from M to F (and vice versa), then I would agree that there should be minimal gatekeeping.

Until very recently I was more or less ok with this, but increasingly with the pisstaking and stretching of reality and boundaries, I'm not. You want to live as a male, female, star fleet officer, cat, whatever, crack on. Whatever makes you happy. Change your name, do whatever you want to your body, free expression fine. But I am not ok with law misrepresenting reality. A man cannot be a woman. Transwoman, yes, fine. That can go on driving licences and passports, people will know to ask your preferred pronouns. But a woman is a specific, definite thing in material reality and in law, and I'm not ok with law or the gathering of national statistics and information being prostituted to do something it was never meant to do.

If all that self-ID meant was that someone with a GRC was able to change their passport, driving licence etc from M to F (and vice versa), then I would agree that there should be minimal gatekeeping.

But when it has such more profound implications, and many of the benefits come at the direct cost to women, of course it is right that there should be a process to go through other than ticking a box on a form.

That process shouldn't be overly expensive or onerous, I agree. But neither should it be a rubber-stamping exercise where everyone is granted.

The analogy that Italian made upthread about being approved for adoption is very apposite. I'm also an adoptive mother and birth mother: the process to become the former was far more onerous than the latter, and rightly so IMHO. Sometimes I forget that I didn't carry and deliver DD, as do other members of our family (at the weekend I had to gently remind an elderly relative that their plans to revise their will to "blood relatives only" would exclude DD, which was completely not their intention but in trying to ensure that a particular wife of a family member could have no claim on the estate they had forgotten that DD is adopted). But if I told the doctors that of course DD has a high risk of breast cancer because all women in our family do, I'd be extremely misguided at best and downright abusive at worst. It helps no-one to deny our reality, even if - in my DD's case - reality can be painful and cause hurt.

I think the fine print of the law probaby says that you are a legal woman, meaning for the purposes of law, you are to be treated as if you were a biological woman.

Except not even then in all cases. There are exemptions allowed in certain situations for female sex only.

Let's say I identify as a pigeon. Someone tells me that a defining characteristic of a pigeon is the ability to fly and that because I can't fly I'm not a pigeon. But, there's a pigeon on the pavement who can't fly because it's wing is injured. Therefore I am a pigeon because look, over there is a pigeon who can't fly, just like me!

It's bullshit.

This is brilliant.