Here is my position on this subject, as I haven’t yet set it out on this thread:
‘Your average transgender individual’ is no longer your average transgender individual. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the vast majority are necessarily of the type that just wants to exist peacefully and go about their own business.
There is hatred and vitriol overwhelmingly from one side of this ‘debate’ (hint: it’s not actually a debate). Please don’t try to claim that there is any kind of equivalence, because there isn’t. If you can’t see that you need to do a lot more reading.
If any of you who are new to this discussion want to know what current trans ideology looks like, perhaps read up on what behaviours apparently fall under this umbrella (according to Stonewall’s own definition).
There is a reason why women are having to push back so forcefully on this.
Women did not cause this. Women are not to blame for this.
It’s not about those decent men who aren’t predatory, rapists, killers; It never is.
However, tens of thousands of women and girls in this country are harmed in some way by men every year. Millions and millions throughout the world. Those men should not be allowed into women’s spaces, regardless of how those men identify, what they feel like, what they want, how they look or choose to dress, or what title they have thought of to describe themselves, or misappropriated.
As there is absolutely no way of sorting the good from the indifferent from the very bad indeed, all men must be excluded.
Even if there was a way to sort and define and establish that all the relevant men were good, decent, kind men, they still should not be allowed to enter women’s spaces, because a male presence, however benign, is very directly harmful to a certain number of women. A male presence, however benign, is not comfortable for women and girls in their very private, vulnerable spaces. Decent men all know this. Which is why they do not want to be in women’s spaces.
It makes no difference what the individual thinks or feels or wishes to be true. It does not make it true. It does not negate biological fact, nor material reality.
It does not matter how they dress, what they look like, whether they have taken hormones, had surgery (very few do, in fact) or whatever else the case may be.
Sex matters. Biology matters.
Women do NOT have to have suffered sexual abuse, predatory behaviour, violence, rape or in fact any harm at all, in order to be entitled to protection from potentially suffering those things. It is enough to say no, I am not okay with this. I do not consent. My daughters do not consent. My sisters, my mother, my friends, women I don’t know and will never meet, do not consent. NO.
Women do not want men in their spaces.
The vast majority of men do not want to be in women’s spaces.
That does not take away from the rights of transgender individuals. They have every right to live peacefully without fear from harm. But they cannot gain that end by appropriating spaces that are sex-segregated in order to protect women’s dignity, privacy and safety.
I must stress that even if you no longer have a penis, you are biologically still a man.
That truth might be painful, but we all have to deal with many painful truths.
You are entitled to a safe space; you have a right to peaceful existence without harm or fear of harm.
But you are not entitled to my safe space, nor that of my daughters, nor that of any other woman.