Poll claims 87% of women in London think transgender women should have the same rights as other women

So, if it's 87% of 1000 women across the cities polled, basically 174 women in London think trans women should have the same rights as other women. Doesn't sound quite so emphatic put like that. And that's without all the things others have mentioned about question bias/obfuscation.

Of course trans women should have the same rights. But single sex exemptions for biological women need to be maintained.

@Serfisafleur

I've been given my first "strike" so I'll need to paraphrase what I said to avoid getting a second

I suggested that the poll result might be because the average person imagines a transwoman to be someone like Hayley from Corrie (i.e. someone who's had all the surgery) rather than a man who still has a penis but wears a dress.

LilyMumsnet objected to how I phrased the later part of that sentence. I do appreciate MNHQ are trying to allow the debate to keep going so will take my strike on the chin.

So have read the original article and see it’s produced by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. There is a real possibility that the poll and the reporting thereof breaches the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles which the Foundation is subject to. If I had time I would explore further but I mention it in case others do. Should be easy to ask for the survey details and the principles are at the bottom of the story. Freedom from bias is vital here.

Transwomen are not women so the term 'other women' is not correct here.

It should be 'have the same rights as other people. And they do.

We need to start being much clearer about this when questions about equality with women are asked

Nah, that would mean that the double speak would be clarified and the poll would go the wrong way to the way they want it to go.

Did the poll qualify “transwomen”? Who are the women they asked? What percentage of respondents were aware that 80+% of “transwomen” are intact self-identifying biological people of the male sex? We need to start being much clearer about this when questions about equality with women are asked.

HurricaneFloss

Any reply from HQ?
I can't remember your exact comment but seriously didn't notice anything against talk guidelines...

I would be very interested in how they recorded the answers of women who did not accept “other women” as a description of actual women.

If I was asked this question and was only allowed yes or no I would not answer. There is no “trans women and other women”, there is “women and men”.

Adding in a good thread by Matt Greenfield with this observation:

I would love to see the responses if the question asked was "Should physically intact males be allowed in women only spaces?" or "Should men who dress as women once a week be promoted as role models for girls?"...

twitter.com/doormatt134/status/1046352165038686209

Pithy comment by Jonny Best inline with PPs:

Of course trans people should have equal rights - no gender critical feminist I know disagrees with that. But trans activists (and stonewalluk) don't have the right to define sex and gender for all of society. That's not 'equal rights' - it's totalitarian bullshit.

twitter.com/JonnnyBest/status/1046398490211962881

I should think 100 per cent of women think trans people should have the same human rights as everyone else, so it's lucky that they do.

However even if there were eighty women who are happy to be naked in a room with a naked male stranger, and 20 women who aren't, the 80 have no right to override the boundaries of the 20. No right at all. Consent is absolute. Women have a right to say no.

Poll claims? That women think this? I find that concerning. I certainly don't agree! And I suspect most don't.

Absolutely trans women should have the same rights as women. And the same rights as men. Human rights in fact.

No one has the right to redefine material reality and for others to live by a creed they don't agree with. A Catholic doesn't have the right to force an atheist to cross themselves. Someone who believes in pink-brain blue-brain genderism doesn't have the right to force someone who believes in the fundamental equivalence of the sexes in all things other than biology to go along with a genderistic faith position either.

We all have the right to freedom of belief. Trans people get to believe they can change sex. People who don't believe a change of sex is physically or scientifically possible don't have lesser rights. The human right to self determination does not cover controlling other people's opinions.

I think I would need video proof of all those women agreeing before I believed it.

I think transwomen should have the same rights as other men, they should not be discriminated against due to their trans status. They are not women.

Doesn't it depend how questions are asked? If I filled in a questionnaire that asked "should trans women have equal rights with biological women?" I'd say Yes. If the question was about access to women-only spaces I'd say No.

I would find the question very confusing. I know a transwoman is a man who identifies as a woman, but if it said 'transgender woman' I would assume it meant a woman who is trans, a woman who identifies as a man.

The article is written from a very pro-self-ID perspective, and seems almost a pointed way to fire-fight what is going on in the UK, TBH.

Let's analyze what it looks like they've done:
Asked 1000 women (in total!) across 5 major cities in the world. So presumably there were 200 women responding from each city? Lord only knows how they selected these women, and whether this was part of a larger survey. How many of the people asked were actually trans themselves?

The Thomson Reuters Foundation poll asked 1,000 women in Cairo, London, Mexico City, New York and Tokyo: "Should transgender women have the same rights as other women?". In total 798 answered yes, 37 said no and 165 declined to answer.

First question is obviously "what do you mean by trans woman, because you no longer really need to do anything apart from be a male who says you're a woman nowadays?"

So actually, I think it is very significant that even if this one question was phrased exactly like this one fifth of respondents said no or didn't want to respond. I probably would instinctively say yes, of course we should all have equal rights but males cannot declare themselves women and demand access to female-only facilities like prisons, sports, rape shelters and changing rooms. Eg, I am for trans rights BUT NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS, AND SELF-ID IS STUPID.
But they would probably have counted my "yes"?

I am going to stick with the PinkNews YouGov data with 82% against self-ID specifically. That seems far more reliable.

I've messaged MNHQ to ask why my post was deleted

The question would confuse most. People will interpret it to mean ''should transgender people have the same rights as others'' rather than should women give over the right to women only spaces.

I differentiate between transexuals who have ''committed'' to the change and had surgery and treatment, but if most trans 'women' have not done this so no way should they be allowed in to women's spaces.

If there is any polling going on it needs to be clear about the two types of transexuality, ie, I only learned fairly recently that a large number of trans get turned on by dressing up as women.

Did the poll make it clear that it meant men, not women who were transgender? A woman who is transgender would be a transman.

What 53rdway said.

If they weren’t clear on what the rights were they will get a misleading result.

Plus how widely was this circulated? They didn’t ask me.

I absolutely think that transwomen should have the same rights as women. But that doesn't mean that they should be able to identify into women's spaces or that they are the same as women.

I'd need to see the following before I could comment in a better-informed way:

the accreditation of the people who conducted the poll and that they'd followed industry standards;
to understand more about the selection of the women polled;
to have access to the questions and any accompanying information.

Offhand, of course pretty much most people support universal human rights (I'd hope).

The issue of universal rights rather than identity politics as an extension of the civil rights movement is a rather different matter.

Obviously a closed yes-or-no question with a leading introduction will lead to "yes" in almost all replies.

Ask the same question but phrased
"Should all male bodied people have unfettered access to female spaces including bathrooms, sports, prisons, refuges and female schools?"

Because this is what is actually meant by "rights".

Transgender women already have the same rights as women based on sex and Transgender status as protected characteristics.