My daughter was assaulted tonight - why I'm against self ID

JudgeFlounceRedRugBlah I'm sorry to hear about your daughter's hideous experience. We have a right to safety and privacy and I'm in a perpetual state of fury these days that we are unable to assert that right without resistance.

One phrase you said, though, leapt out at me. You said I so wish we'd arrived at a point in time where predatory men didn't exist so that it would be easy to give transgender people access without fear

I'm sure you didn't fully consider the implications of what you said.
Because by 'transgender people', you mean boys and men, and by 'access', you mean access to women and girls.

And there is no situation in which I will allow society to forfeit my boundaries, and my daughters privacy, to benefit boys and men, no matter how physically harmless they may be.

I've heard many women focus so intently on the issue of potential physical harm that you can hear them conclude that that's the only real issue at stake.

But to me, that phrase speaks volumes.
It reveals an underlying, and unrealised sexism that women and girls may not exclude boys and men if those boys and men demand access to them. That the most we can expect is to not be physically harmed. But that we have no right or expectation of dignity and privacy.

As if we were family pets. Labradors. Treat us humanely. But of course we have no rights as full human beings to determine our boundaries.

There is so much more to this than whether women and girls might be physically harmed by men getting access.

There is the uncrossable line of women's privacy, dignity and consent. That line cannot be argued away by 'these men are so harmless' arguments.

If women say no - that's that.
And girls cannot consent - so they have a standing, continuous NO instated on their behalf by those of us responsible for their safeguarding.

So whilst I have empathy for your family challenges, I'd urge you to consider more deeply the implications of assuming the only barrier to boys accessing girls is some other external problem; bad men, predators etc.
The barrier is consent.
And it will continue to be a barrier that no man should cross, ever.

*No they don't. That doesnt mean they can't though.

I have said upthread what my child does.*

I don't think you did, or I misread it. I saw you said he uses neutral ones, avoids them, or other times a friend has waited outside when the coast was clear he used them, but didn't say which toilets.

It doesn't mean he can't, what?

No they don't, meaning? Meaning they don't use women's loos and changing rooms?

I truly wish it was not. It is the sad and unfortunate paradox that in trying to please everyone by sitting on the fence, you always end up hurting someone anyway. Whether you realise it or not.

This is along the lines of what Martina Navratilova was saying in her Times article today.

Someone will always be hurt in trying to include everyone here, and you kind of have to fall down on one side.

You can't be neutral. If you think men should have access to women's spaces, that's not neutral.

Yes, a third option is better, but they don't have them in most public spaces/restaurants/shopping centres.

What does your son do? You haven't been clear about it at all.

I am so fucking tired of appeals to female socialisation on this, a Feminist forum. If we can't be frank and clear then what's the point?

Me too.

You wasn't clear about toilets, you said when he's had to he's used a toilet with a friend standing outside.

Was that the men's toilets then? If so, how can he go in them wearing women's clothes?

When caught needing them in public, which one would he use?

The problem is that women always lose with this ideology.

Always.

Whether they be the mother, the sister, the daughter, the wife, the teenage girl, the lesbian.

They always lose, because the whole thing is built on gender stereotypes and reinforcing those stereotypes.

The socialisation side of 'being nice' is constantly repeated. Yet it doesn't matter how nice you are about it, you always lose.

This is my point. You have to recognise that you are always going to lose. And you can not say your daughters will not be harmed as long as you reinforce the stereotypes that gender identity is built upon.

You can deny it, but it always is there.

You can not change sex. And if you believe that women and girls have a genuine need for sex based protections and spaces then you can not pretend that gender identity is a neutral harmless thing.

I truly wish it was not. It is the sad and unfortunate paradox that in trying to please everyone by sitting on the fence, you always end up hurting someone anyway. Whether you realise it or not.

I might be being blunt about this, which is uncomfortable to see, but it needs to be said. The cognitive dissonance is part of the harming process.

So do you think your transwoman child should use the mens toilets OP?

OP, your title says you are against self-ID. However, your child has to self-ID and use a toilet that corresponds with their chosen gender (and not their sex). So are you actually against self-ID? If so, how would your daughter use the bathroom? And would you object to another male using said bathroom after selfIDing?

Just trying to understand your point.

As a socially and emotionally intelligent person with a high degree of empathy and will to inform myself, I'm finding it very hard not to throw my hands up and say F you I'm disengaging and discounting all your points. If I in my position am really struggling to stay engaged and open minded in dialogue with you, I'm almost certain there are several other readers who have already switched off and left the room having made up their opinion that we are all nasty TERFs who can't even play nice among ourselves. That to me seems like an own goal.

Play nice!? Play nice!? I am so fucking tired of appeals to female socialisation on this, a Feminist forum. If we can't be frank and clear then what's the point? We don't have to pussyfoot. The people who think we're bigots won't stop whatever we say, because for them just saying human beings can't change sex qualifies as bigotry.

OP is talking about her DC. Her daughters are being brought up with a brother who identifies as a woman. RedToothBrush has been that daughter/sister so her experience is highly relevant, and just as valid and important as anyone else on this thread.

Criticising her for being on a "personal soap box" is pretty rich, considering that the whole thread is about someone else's equally personal perspective.

I definitely think you can have a reasonable conversation about it. In fact, it really helps if you can get the transgender person's perspective about what makes a male bodied person think they are female.

I would love to hear that from the horses mouth, so to speak, but it's so hard to because those that do come here to discuss won't engage. The only reasons I have seen put forward so far relate to the gender stereotypes that are being pushed despite them being so harmful to women.

I would love to live in a world where colours, fabrics, costumes, face and body decorations and childrens toys and behaviour are 'sex free'. I wish people who are transgender would embrace their differences and campaign to change these harmful stereotypes rather than reinforcing them.

Also, I think that if someone wants to declare themselves a woman, they should be able to define the world woman.

Otherwise they are saying I am x and although I can't tell you what x is you must agree that I am x and that makes me the same as you and even though you have a different definition of x you must ignore that and use my definition which I cannot divulge.

Maybe I'm extremely insensitive, but I honestly don't see what's so confrontational and awful about RedToothBrush's communication.

It seems straightforward, direct and clear to me.

That's often seen as confrontational in women and I think that's what's happening here.

Anyway OP really sorry about what happened to your DD and hope she's feeling OK today. Also good luck with walking the minefield that you're in, I hope you feel you can engage and get support here. Whatever the ideology, at the end of the day it's your child you want to support, whatever form that support takes.

It's different to religion though, as there is an answer, 100% proof that women are women and men are men.

With religion, there's no proof. I'm an atheist, but I cannot show proof there is not god, likewise nobody can show evidence of a god.

I'm a woman, I exist. I'm XX and have a vagina. It's not pie in the sky.

Oddly I found the conversations were a lot like the ones about religion

It's not odd, it's perfectly in line with religion. It's a belief system.

Red is right. It's a circle that can't be squared. It's a zero sum conflict. Acknowledging that is hard and unpalatable.

And it doesn't mean that OP isn't a mother who is doing her absolute best in difficult home circumstances and in an external sociopolitical environment that's making it even worse.

No I mean generally. It used to be #nodebate but even TRAs have dropped that now.

OP could have extensively talked with all her children yes. However, I doubt it was framed in a way that the other child had a choice on whether or not to accept their sibling's new identity.

OP may have said 'We're going to call x by their new name and use their new pronouns but you can carry on using the old ones if it makes you feel better'.

But I doubt it. That's not how it works in families where self ID is accepted. I imagine it would be explained how important it was to accept the new ID.

They have no obvious signs of wanting to pervert womanhood just to emulate it. Imho as transgenderism should be.

You could argue the fact he is 'emulating' what presumably is a stereotype of womanhood is exactly the same as perverting it.

Men defining what it means to be a woman, is kind of perverting it and allowing them to define us.

Yes, I am a woman who loves to wear a dress, at home I wear sweatpants, no bra and no make up. Does this make me a man when I'm at home? No, because I am a woman and there are many versions of us.
Trans people define us in one way alone.

@Fairenuff

Acceptance without exception has been adopted without any logical reasoning or thought

Do you mean by the OP of this thread? Because I don't see how we can possibly know that from her posts on this thread.

So OP has chosen to have child A live a lie to make child B feel better.

We have no idea if this this true or not, we have insufficient data. OP could have extensively talked with all her children about sex and the gender, living presenting as opposite gender and what that does or doesn't mean. Or she could have "brave and stunning-ed" the son with no thought about the daughters. We don't know.

I agree about therapy for the son and family.

But OP how can you say in your thread title that you are against self ID when you allow your own child to self ID and go along with it?

I don't understand that.