Does this person have a point about trans women in loos?

Thank you Upstart.

That post ALittleBitIfVitriol, that's everything I try to say.

ALittleBitofVitriol

Excellent post.

Then surely the 'requirement' to use womens spaces for that period is wrong? Awkward for the person going through it as well as women.

Oh, and Lagertha, if I may point you to another shieldmaiden, who did brave deeds and proudly declared "I am no man!" by way of encouragement

Emphatically no need for apologies. This is a tangled ball of twisted nonsense, and I do not want women to feel they have to apologize for having confused misgivings.

Edit - *that should be madonna/ whore

It's not women who invented this double bind to be big meanie meanies.
Ffs.
The double bind just is
You were born a male. Nobody's fault. It just is.

You want to use female spaces. Women didn't tease or tempt you into them and then cock block you. Your feelings about your body have nothing to do with women, it's not our fault. You want something that just isn't - it's not us denying you. Natural biological phenomena. It just is cold in winter, t**fs didn't cast a spell.

Our bodies are different and have different needs & experiences, this isn't a cool girls club we're nastily excluding you from, you just are excluded - just like I'm naturally excluded from 'Male' even though some of that physical and societal privilege would be sweet. I'm also excluded from the transwomen club.

It also isn't our fault that your sex commits 98+% of sexual assault and 90+% of violent crime. I know that many of your MRA buddies like to blame us, or say that male on male violence is worse. It's not our fault that we have learned responses, triggers if you will, to be wary of the primary and secondary sex characteristics that we recognise in you. It's not women's fault that you aren't comfortable with those characteristics either. Again, we aren't witches, we can't cast a spell to either remove your characteristics, fix male violence or quell our response to it.

Being female under patriarchy is one big double bind. Madonna/white, skinny/fat, ugly/pretty, nice/bitch, meek/bitch, emotional/bitch, frigid/slut, bad mother/bad worker, infertile/too fertile, fetishised/ignored... on and on ad finitum. Just like I don't understand what being a transwoman is like, you have no idea - no idea what being a woman is really like. None. And you betray that truth with every word.

What we can do, what our foremothers fought hard to do, is create our own spaces within which we can feel safe and enjoy privacy to manage our exclusively female bodied experiences. We didn't create them as a slight to you and your sex (who incidentally have fought us every step of the way), we didn't conjur them up with a magical flurry, we fought and fought and poured out our labour, our blood, sweat and tears.

Maybe you can understand why stealing that labour, invading those spaces, is objectionable?
I'm sure that if transwomen similarly fought hard to create those spaces for themselves in society, many women would have been your allies.

Help us dismantle patriarchy, by first doing your own work to dismantle it within yourselves - not by pasting patriarchal femininity over patriarchal masculinity and calling it kweer

You don't need to apologise, you make perfect sense. There are so many strands to our lives and we have to manage all of them. At the same time we are expected to keep so many of them private.
And now we're being told we are bigots for needing to do just that.

I do apologise, I find it difficult to stick to one train of thought. This is why I usually lurk. I hope I make a tiny bit of sense.

Oh thanks wimms. I really struggle with knowing what I can and can't say. I've got a big issue with being told to lie. I think it's my own mental state that causes that, I have aspergers and I find it difficult not to speak as I see but I honestly try.

Bertrand often posts to say that she (I assume that poster is a woman) would like someone to spell it out in black and white how TWAW and then she could digest and think. I'm the same. I'd like to read something that convinced me. I just don't think I can. I'm no scientist, I'm a secretary. I think men are males who were born boys. I know humans can't change sex. I know some men feel happier presenting as women, in as far as woman means dress, heels, lipstick, nail polish.

My daughter is 15. She's being told at school, right now, that the toilets are becoming gender non-specific. My daughter has awful periods, has since she started at 12. Flooding, 2 week cycles, clots, cramps that debilitate. I can't believe she's meant to share that with a 16 year old boy who likes eyeliner and glitter. I'm really mad.

I'm genuinely frightened by the way my language is being policed. By the way men rapists are called she. It's not about the bloody toilets

me too

I don't think the quote in the OP is accurate at all.

I think it is right that most women don't have a problem with transsexual women using the women's loos.

But lived experience doesn't "require using women's spaces" any more than being a woman requires you only to use women's spaces. It means making meaningful changes to the way that you are perceived in mixed spaces, so changing name, mode of dress, hair etc to be in keeping with what is expected of women. It doesn't prohibit someone from using the mixed changing rooms at a swimming pool because they have to prove their gender by using the women's, for example!

The idea that using the women's bogs means that you understand what it's like to 'live as a woman' is hilarious.

I agree with @placemats post at 19:46

A prime example is on another thread on FWR right now with L Madigan talking about taking estrogen and posting pictures of their 'new' breasts on instagram. Actual fetishisation and exhibitionism of female puberty.

Btw Lagertha, your post makes perfect sense to me. Exactly how I feel.

But something so strange is happening at the moment, it's hard to put it into words. But certain trans-activists are making such wild claims on femininity and womanhood that it does just feel like a wholesale erasure of actual womanhood, of growing up female. Womanhood being fetishised into some sort of porn-soaked male fantasy.

@LagerthaTheShieldMaiden - not garbled rubbish at all. Completely articulate and am totally agree.

Lagertha

Mine was said with a sort of heavy sigh...

All these news stories recently - Jess Bradley etc - and this is still about women being meanies about their single sex spaces.

NTDNHAP.

I meant my post, not yours Toe.

Garbled absolute rubbish there. I did say I wasn't articulate.

Do men think all women are their loving Mummies?

I get the strongest feeling the answer to that is Yes. The older I get, the stronger the feeling gets.

Im really struggling at the minute. I read here a LOT. I rarely post because I'm not smart or articulate, I find it hard to put into words what I mean or feel. This though, this bothers me so much. You can't 'live' the experience of a woman unless you are one. Unless you were a girl who now is one. You can't understand all those tiny microaggressions that start when you're 11/12/13 and that continue until you become invisible and then an old bat/hag. I don't care about transsexuals, old school, using the ladies. The ones I know are decent people who know what we all know. I'm genuinely frightened by the way my language is being policed. By the way men rapists are called she. It's not about the bloody toilets

Very few of us are insensitive enough that we’d share a communal changing area pre-op.

But you're talking about pre op transsexuals who have gender dysphoria, not every male under the trans umbrella.

Although in theory we are expected to use ladies loos etc during RLE, the vast majority of us accept that pre everything that isn’t comfortable for us and more importantly those we share these spaces with.

Bronners78 - that's very helpful information. Thank you.