Help me reply to Lord Lucas now before debate on Monday

My first appearance on twitter too, as far as I know!

Is it bad that I am proud mine was the first comment the lovely Owain posted on his thread? He just hugely expanded my audience! My first public outing! I will be signing autographs later!!

The everyday reality of women's lives involves being vigilant to protect ourselves from men

Indeed. As another poster pointed out on another thread, women are trained in this from an early age. Don't walk alone at night, always have your keys ready, don't get drunk, watch your drink, don't wear revealing clothes, always tell someone where you're going, etc

And any time she doesn't follow these rules, she will be ripped apart by police/court barristers if anything does happen to her. Like having her underwear held up in court for the jury to see just how revealing it was. Like being asked on national TV why she didn't get a taxi by Eammon Holmes.

I can imagine "well, what did you think you were doing going to into the toilets alone?" being added to the list of "safety rules women have to follow".

Quite, the lack of empathy is astonishing. The everyday reality of women's lives involves being vigilant to protect ourselves from men - on the street, on public transport, in taxis, in any kind of confined spaces. Ask any woman how she would feel if she was in a public toilet on her own at night and, let's say, a drunk man comes in and starts unzipping his flies. What kind of thoughts would go through her head? Did he follow me in here? How drunk is he and what kind of mood is he in? If friendly, is he too friendly? Is he aggressive? Will I need to make small talk to placate him if he starts bothering me? Do I have a clear path to the door or will it be difficult to get past him if he's blocking my way? Is there anyone else outside I can call on if I need it? Will he stand over me staring and making me uncomfortable or making remarks if I need to buy tampons from the machine, or condoms, or put makeup on? Is he going to flash his dick and/or leave the door open whilst he's pissing? This is not paranoia, all these kinds of scenarios happen often enough for these questions to be asked and for women to assess their safety in this way. For women who've been assaulted, being alone in a confined space with an unknown man can trigger flashbacks. It could of course be the sweetest man in the world who's just going for a piss, but the issue for women is that we simply don't know who someone is when a random stranger walks through the door. This applies to all males, no matter how they identify. I suggest this fella does a bit of soul-searching about how he's being so flippant about women's safety the traumatic experiences of male violence and sexual violence we carry around with us, as he claims men are fully capable of having empathy, but has demonstrated only contempt for women's experiences.

Goodness, my first time on Twitter. Flattered, I'm sure.

Thing is, if the delightful Owain Sutton thought about this from a female perspective for thirty seconds, he might just twig why women don't want penis-people in the ladies' loos.

Here's a clue, Owain, since I know you're reading this: XY people are, on average, heavier and stronger than XX people. An XX person doesn't, on the whole, relish the prospect of an XY person following her into an empty ladies', for exactly that reason. Same as in the otherwise empty carriage of a late-night train, only more so. And the thing is, Owain, whatever the situation may be with transwomen, allowing obvious men to waltz into female-only spaces whenever they feel like it opens a bloody great loophole which sexual predators WILL - on past form - rush through in their bloody droves.

Now post on that on Twitter for me, there's a love.

If you don't, we'll know it's because you know I've made a valid point. And if you do, lots of other people will read it and make their own judgment.

Crikey, that Owain Sutton person is really unpleasant, isn't he? Unpleasant and utterly immune to reason. Rarely a winning combination, ime.

Anecdotal, I know, but my DP often will not clock a transwoman while my Mum and I are thinking it’s obvious.

Blokes don’t spit it because they don’t need to, as others have suggested.

TorkTorkBam I find that difficult to believe. I suggest his need to ridicule and gaslight women talking about their ability to recognise men is coming from another place entirely.

Do you think he is genuinely incapable of noticing that a transwoman is a transwoman? He seems to think we are loons for saying it is really really hard for a transwoman to pass.

I agree with the other posters, it's great he's done this so people can compare the numerous, common sense answers given here, versus his argument which seems to be 'women are thick'. Anyone who's dealt with MRAs online will recognize the tone and see this guy for exactly what he is.

Ironic how he's mocking the notion that socially men are encouraged to have no empathy, whilst showing no empathy.

Excellent.

Plenty of actual reasons, all being retweeted by doofuses who somehow think it's making the opposite point for them.

Utterly brilliant! The people who use blockers will read. I reckon rather a lot of them will not come to the conclusions Owain hopes. Marvellous. Traffic to this board is about to increase again.

Lord Lucas retweeted the following take down of this thread

mobile.twitter.com/OwainAlty/status/1229733189578563584

Can you turn the question round and ask how can a woman know if a person with a penis in their changing rooms is genuinely a non binary person or a man exploiting self id for perverted reasons ?

Excellent post MForstater - exactly right.

A real life example is Charlotte Clymer, a late transitioner, and a person with very large stature (tall and strong, with lots of muscle mass - Clymer was in the US forces I believe) and clearly male-bodied.

Clymer was prevented from using women's toilets in a restaurant, on the basis of the "sandpit" analogy - ie. you're clearly not female, you can't use the women's.

But instead of understanding this, of perhaps having an inkling that Clymer truthfully may make women feel uncomfortable, Clymer kicked up a fuss and called the police.

I don't want the UK to end up in the situation (we're practically there already) where any male can waltz into women's facilities, and women are too afraid to challenge them.

@MForstater

Good analogy re teenagers in the sandpit

Aww they corrected the Lord Lucan typo in the title.

Yes, I was very much enjoying the idea of Lord Lucan contributing to this debate. 40+ years in hiding and it's the madness of transgender ideology that brings him out of the Peruvian forest he's been lurking in.

Aww they corrected the Lord Lucan typo in the title.

Its not about whether you can always tell, it is about whether people who are the opposite sex (but the protected characteristic 'gender reassignment') have the right to use that space, or whether the organisation that is providing it can legitimately say 'this is women only' and expect that to be respected.

It is like a council is allowed to provide a playground for children 12 years and younger (or whatever) or areas for under 5s.

How can you tell if a child is under 12 or under 5? You cannot accurately. But you can ask the teenagers to get out of the toddlers sandpit.

It is not about having someone at the gate of the playground checking children's passports. It is about an organisation being able to meet different needs legitimately.

*Lucas, obvs

Lord Lucan I'm sure would never expect a woman to ignore his male presence and get undressed in front of him.
He understands already how uncomfortable, humiliating, degrading or frightening that would be for a woman.

The question he needs to ask is:
If I can understand why a woman wouldn't want ME present, why on earth would I expect her to feel differently about any other man?

The key question all these men fail to ask themselves is what is in this for women? We have single sex facilities for a reason. What is the advantage for women of doing away with them? If there isn’t one, then it makes it clear they are discussing disadvantaging all women to advantage men.

These spurious theoretical questions are just a distraction from that fundamental point. Could it be they are trying not to recognise it?

How, as a bystander, can you be empirically certain that the motorist who sped past as you crossed the road was speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, drunk driving, and breaking the law?

You saw it, yes, but can you prove what you saw?

You can't? You're 'sure', but you have no hard evidence other than your eyes? My goodness.
We had better immediately dismantle all speeding laws, since citizens are not equipped with speed cameras in their heads. And we must abolish seatbelt laws too, since there is no way at all to police drivers and force them to comply every time they drive. And drink driving laws too, get rid, it's not like we can have a police officer present each and every time a driver enters a car, we'd never be able to police it.

We keep the speeding laws
We keep the seatbelt laws
We keep the drink driving laws
We can't police the moment of decision of a citizen to break each of these laws.

But we can punish those who are reported and caught, and we can use the methods available to us - certification, measurement and observation - to confirm without doubt that this was a transgression.
Sometimes, an innocent person is found not to have been stealing. Not to have been drunk. To be the genuine owner of the car.
This is not a failure of the law - this is a success. It demonstrates the law can distinguish between innocent and guilty.

Such laws are deterrents. And they work.
Yes, some people flout them. They gamble on not getting caught. But most are deterred for fear of consequences.
If the law shrugged, said, "but how can an average person be sure, tho, they simply can't be" and abolished speeding, drinking and seatbelt laws, the incidences of all of these would rocket. If the law said to people "please report any crime you think you've observed. But if you happen to be mistaken it's you for the dock" the cooperation between the public and law enforcement would disintegrate.

We need deterrents. We need consequences for those who are challenged for potentially breaking the law, and we need methods of determining the truth over what actually happened.

Birth certificates exist.
Sex can be observed and verified.

Women can be protected to eject and report potential transgressors, without threatened consequences for 'getting it wrong' and the potential transgressors can demonstrate, or not, their entitlement to that space. Or not.

Ah, I see, yes. I do take taxis, trusting that the law in place will protect me, or at least be a deterrent to anyone thinking of flouting it.

Men have zero skin in this game, and part of me thinks they reject the presence of transwomen because of the 'eeeeww, a gay!' factor that toxic masculinity has created.

I think the way men are allowed, and encouraged to have no empathy has made it almost impossible for them to see the problems here.