to wonder why some people just don't get it?

Men aren't subjected to relentless shouted comments from the age of seven, along the lines of "show us your tits, love". Groped in clubs, wanked at on tubes, sexually harassed by bosses and co-workers. Twenty percent of women have been sexually assaulted over the course of their life.

And any weedy bloke can, and does, do it.

Men do not see the threat through anywhere near the same lens.

If, every time you went out, a 7 foot bloke was asking you to show him your cock, and if you answer back, you get a mouthful of threatening abuse, you'd soon get it.

What Lang said.

Clue for Scott: male on male violence has got fuck all to do with women, therefore it's rarely discussed on a feminist board, even with derailing MRAs.

The problem with this is the same problem as the claim "people who drive less have fewer accidents".

Unless you control for difference in the number of hours males and females spend in violence-likely situations (out on the street on their own, in dodgy areas, in pubs, dealing drugs etc), then those figures don't really mean much.

In societies where women spend all their time sequestered indoors away from strangers, obviously the incidence of stranger violence against women will be close to zero. In our society, women are much more careful not to expose themselves to such situations than men are, and this is bound to affect the figures, in the same way that not driving much will decrease your susceptibility to being hit by another car.

I don't understand why posters always use the above statement as if it cancels out the impact of violence on a male individual.

No its to name the nature of the violence which is male as well as the impact on the male victims.

The term 'strangers' obscured the fact that this is male violence directed towards men.

I had posted about the need to name male-pattern abuse when you commented.

By which I meant 'violence against males' rather than 'violence committed by males'.

maybe they're not as good at risk assessment as women?

Or maybe we're conditioned to believe that male violence is more acceptable (ignoring the victim blaming in your statement).

Men are 4x more likely to be assaulted by a stranger

maybe they're not as good at risk assessment as women?

Assaulted by another man/men.

As I've pointed out on many occasions before now (don't mean that snottily btw) I don't understand why posters always use the above statement as if it cancels out the impact of violence on a male individual.

If I'm assaulted and left seriously injured it's unlikely that I'll shrug it off or feel any less aggrieved because it was another male that attacked me.

Looking at the demographics, a man and a woman from a privileged middle class family who've had the benefit of a stable family background, good education etc, are arguably likely to share more in common in terms of life experiences than either will with a male from an extremely poor socioeconomic background who grew up in an abusive family facing extreme poverty and drug/violence issues etc.

I think a lot of people, rightly or wrongly, think that the GC lobby are overestimating the level of threat and perhaps more enraged as a matter of principle than because of the literal risk.

Wrongly

Men are 4x more likely to be assaulted by a stranger and the majority of them get by just fine, so it's easy to see how people assume this is a mountain of a molehill situation.

Assaulted by another man/men.

I think a lot of people, rightly or wrongly, think that the GC lobby are overestimating the level of threat and perhaps more enraged as a matter of principle than because of the literal risk.

Men are 4x more likely to be assaulted by a stranger and the majority of them get by just fine, so it's easy to see how people assume this is a mountain of a molehill situation.

Many people are misguidedly believing that fears over self-ID are about assuming transpeople are predators. That is not the assumption at all. The assumption is that some transpeople will be (just because statistically a percentage of both sexes will be)

This is how things are obscured. Male-pattern abuse & rates remain the same regardless of gender-identity and are substantively different to females.

What happens is that sex can't seem to be considered as the risk factor that it is.

I think for so many people, the 'issue' isn't an issue because they deem it to be scare mongering. Not only that, but it generally doesn't impinge on their lives so they have a very laissez faire attitude.

The moment their own children or environment is affected, then it's a different matter.

The principle of self-ID seems rational. If someone wants to identify as a particular gender, in the modern world of 'live and let live' many are happy to support the self-ID principle. Then, when the potential side-effects of self-ID are explained, I think they tend to be viewed as searching for a loophole that might create a theoretical threat. i.e. scaremongering.

It won't be until a number of abuses of self-ID occur that the general population grasps the issue and by then, there will be huge reluctance to overturn regulation, instead, it will most likely just be put down to 'crimes that could have happened regardless of self-ID' - because a handful of new opportunities afforded by self-ID will be absorbed into the general mass of sexual crimes committed by men. In some cases, it may even be put down as a female on female sexual assault which will further skew the reality.

Many people are misguidedly believing that fears over self-ID are about assuming transpeople are predators. That is not the assumption at all. The assumption is that some transpeople will be (just because statistically a percentage of both sexes will be), but also some predators will utilise self-ID for their own ends, which has nothing to do with being trans, merely about offering an opportunity for predators to breach what are normally a safe havens for females.
And of course, there is the issue that with perfectly legitimate transpeople, children risk being exposed to seeing the genitalia of the opposite sex. The pros and cons of that are not a trans issue, simply a matter of parental concern.

When I told people that Guides were letting boys who identified as trans sleep in the same tents as girls, they flat out would not believe me. It was as if I was telling them about chemtrails or something.

Alex Drummond is a man in a skirt, fine, he can dress how he likes it's a free country. However, he is not a woman, end of story. Why are so many people willing to believe this bullshit? Why the handmaidens to these men. black is white, up is down, one can just go and on. I' m not being a hateful trans bigot by stating the bleeding obvious. (reference to bleeders). People, live your lives as you feel fit, just don't lie to yourselves and others along the way.

Yep, almost every major organisation barring the right wing media is wrong and somehow Mumsnet has become one of the few islands of sanity in the world... yessssss.

I remember very similar arguments marshalled against opponents of paedophilia in the seventies and eighties, and against those raising the issue of rape gangs more recently.

The absolutely irony is that whilst violence isn't the sole domain of men, it's overwhelmingly carried out by them. To use the threat of violence just exemplifies why biological women (and plenty of rational men too) won't fall for the myth that a transwoman is a real woman. There's just too much man still in there - however repressed, however diminished, it's still in there enough to think violence is an answer.

Wake me when a single prominent transactivist states, in one of their frequent media appearances, “You know, perhaps we go to far when we say feminists should be burned to death, or that they deserve rape. Perhaps we should stop saying that. Perhaps we should even forcefully condemn threats of actual violence against women and insist that they stop.”

This.

Yep, almost every major organisation barring the right wing media is wrong

It's not every major organisation is it? Its a few diversity people inside organisations changing policies at the behest of Stonewall without bothering to consult or gain consensus. It is a minority of people who are doing this, D&I people are extremely peripheral to the functioning of an organisation, about as noticeable as the post room and security staff on a day to day basis, and most people ignore their outputs. They have NO IDEA of the impact of what they are doing in reality.

Yes, it's a dilemma.

On the one hand, no sensible person wants to be derogatory and say 'man in drag', and maybe it's too simple to ask 'why can't you be a man who is just very feminine and nature, and who prefers to live life like a woman?' - because that presupposes a woman has one lifestyle and a man has another, when in reality there are massive variations in lifestyles across the sexes, so what's a male vs female lifestyle?

Truth be told, I can't really comprehend how someone can 'feel' like they are the opposite sex. I feel like 'me' and I make assumptions that the general feelings I have are male ones, but I cannot be sure of that. Quite often I feel apart from many men, and closer to women, but vice versa at other times. I can buy into someone feeling more comfortable in themselves living life as the opposite sex (their chosen gender) and I'm happy to treat them 'almost' as I would anybody else of that sex, but it's that 'almost' aspect that causes a lot of debate. How far should we go with it?

One thing is for sure though, 'treating' someone as though they were female is not the same as accepting that they actually are. I can suspend my disbelief only so far!

My point being that rather than taking a hardline 'you're a bloke in a dress' approach, the issue can be addressed by saying 'ok, for acceptance purposes, we'll call you female and treat you as one

I see what you're saying, but the problem is that if we accept men as women, we cannot prevent them doing all the things women do.

Not one of us here wants to stop anyone dressing and looking as they wish (in fact, we're much keener on destroying such stereotypes than the people who purport to support trans "rights"), but "accepting that men are women" means giving them everything they want.

Yep, almost every major organisation barring the right wing media is wrong

Because of course those organisations and the left wing media are above reproach and don't have any agenda except pure goodness.

Which aspects do you mean by "more feminine"?

I do not know, it seems to vary between people. I am not the one advocating which 'feminine' behaviours determine when someone is or isn't trans, I am merely explaining the supposed logic behind trans thinking... that they believe some internal aspect (or all) of them is female and thus are exempt from negative male traits. This is not a view I subscribe to. My view is that they may well have SOME female traits (yet to be scientifically proven), but they absolutely have a male physiology, which almost certainly suggests they have some male traits too, thus are not exempt.

What makes them "female"?
I think you're misinterpreting my post.
I don't believe they are biologically female, but society appears to be condoning the treatment of them as females (within hotly debated parameters). My point being that rather than taking a hardline 'you're a bloke in a dress' approach, the issue can be addressed by saying 'ok, for acceptance purposes, we'll call you female and treat you as one, but you can't just pretend you have zero male traits and thus pose no danger'.

TornFromTheInside

You said I think it's a pretty logical assumption that a transwoman has male physiology, and whilst there may be aspects of a transwoman that are more feminine

Which aspects do you mean by "more feminine"?

You also said The problem lies in the fact that a transwoman wants to be classed as a woman, and therefore to argue they are male (or part male) seems to offend some. Maybe a better way to express it is that although they are female

What makes them "female"?