What do you say to women who accept TWAW?

Yes the question should be how do you explain to the millions of women that they are not entitled to the privacy of single sex spaces when they are vulnerable.

I say that TWAW is damaging to many people and the first people to suffer are trans people, it silences those like Debbie Hayton who has as much right to be heard as anyone else.

It can also seriously compromise the heal care they receive eg being called for prostate exams when they don't have a prostate.

I have a medical background and we did have some trans patients but for the purpose of lung function tests you have to set the equipment to sex not gender.

The TWAW mantra also impacts TW and TM negatively in healthcare is the HCP cannot / is too embarrassed to ask questions to take a full medical history. You may think that asking a teen about puberty blockers for a broken arm is irrelevant but it can have an impact on treatment and usually the patient knows more about their medication than an A and E doctor.

Transwomen have the same propensity for violence as any other man - yes, research and stats are available (I'll try and link the Break it down for me thread).

One of the problems with threads like this is that the OP is seeking to harvest negative comments by women about transwomen. So we are forced to use language that doesn't clearly represent what we are trying to say (MNHQ have additional rules here). Basically whenever you see a post like this most posters mean that we cannot tell which transwoman is a transwoman and which is a man using transwomen as an obfuscation, with malicious intent. In exactly the same way as we cannot tell a nice man from one with harm on his mind just by loooking - the very reason we have single sex services in the first place.

That 'small proportion of men' do a lot of harm, to men and women. Women have single sex provision to escape from as much of that as is practical. One man in ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million?

Stick around. Ask more questions. You'll get a range of answers

I’m fine with TWAW. I’m one of those millions. I accept trans women as women in the gender sense of the word. I’ve even stopped defining myself as a woman (in the gender sense of the word) because I accept that a TW’s experience of her own gender is valid and I, not sharing that experience of knowing myself to be a “woman” by anything other than biology, am actually agender.

What I’m not fine with is conflating sex and gender, because it’s taking provisions made for people because of challenges specific to their sex and handing it to people who don’t have those challenges because of their gender identity, which is a different thing

'Woman' is not a gender identity, its a sex based term for human beings who are female and adults.

It's a small proportion of men who attack women, and as such an even smaller proportion of trans women who would have that mindset, surely?

Of course not all transwomen, like any other males, present a threat to women , however there is no evidence that they are less likely to be a threat than other males. Given that men are excluded from single sex spaces for women because some of them may be dangerous, why would you not also exclude transwomen, as some of them are just as likely to be dangerous as any other member of the male sex.

Fair Play carried out an FOI request and the results are awful. Four times as many men in prison than outside of it say they are transgender.
Half of all transgender prisoners are sex offenders or dangerous category A inmates. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) have confirmed by Freedom of Information requests that 60 of the 125 transgender prisoners known to be in prison in England and Wales are convicted sex offenders.
fairplayforwomen.com/transgender-prisoners/

Can I ask (I don't usually venture onto these threads) - is TW violence against bio women common?

Patterns and prevalence of male violence against women and children appear unaffected by whether male perpetrators identify as trans or not.

The specific patterns of abuse towards wives/girlfriends and children are described:

www.transwidowsvoices.org/
childrenoftransitioners.org/

I don’t bother, you can’t really reason with a bigot. I do find it very sad though that there are so many women who will fall over themselves to prioritise men even where it means throwing their own sex under the bus.

I would say “do you post as Shizuku on Mumsnet? No? That’s good, that means we can have a proper discussion about it rather than you just shouting your opinion at me and then storming off and not answering questions before picking a new fight.”

You remind me of the Bad Tempered Ladybird.

I actually don't know anyone in my daily life who honestly believes that TWAW.

So it has never come up.

Can I ask (I don't usually venture onto these threads) - is TW violence against bio women common?

Only as I see that is quite a big part of many people's arguments here - eg risk of rape or assault if TW are allowed into female single sex spaces like changing rooms etc.

I have to admit that side of things hasn't really crossed my mind with regards to the TWAW argument as I'd have thought that would be fairly unlikely, unless the chance to assault women is why someone is trying to appear as a TW?

It's a small proportion of men who attack women, and as such an even smaller proportion of trans women who would have that mindset, surely?

As the discussion inevitably focuses on the relative 'whataboutery' of public toilets, I would ask them if they acknowledge the rape of vulnerable women in the women's estate by sex offenders who now identify as women (which is happening - see the evidence of the recent MOJ court case) and why these women do not deserve to be protected. It's nothing less than state sanctioned puntative rape.

What do you say to women who accept TWAW?

Nothing unless they’ve asked me something. Then my answer will be based around what they asked.

Eg: “yes, I do, it’s quarter past 2.”

how do you explain to the millions of women who accept TWAW that their lives have been negatively affected by that acceptance, given that as far as they can see, nothing bad happened and their lives just carried on as normal?

I'd say ''this is neoliberalism in a nutshell, but it isnt Feminism.''

Should women who do not understand complex medical language be denied potentially life saving treatment because transwomen object to the word " women" being used to refer to something which only affects members of the female sex?

I’m fine with TWAW. I’m one of those millions. I accept trans women as women in the gender sense of the word. I’ve even stopped defining myself as a woman (in the gender sense of the word) because I accept that a TW’s experience of her own gender is valid and I, not sharing that experience of knowing myself to be a “woman” by anything other than biology, am actually agender.

What I’m not fine with is conflating sex and gender, because it’s taking provisions made for people because of challenges specific to their sex and handing it to people who don’t have those challenges because of their gender identity, which is a different thing.

So I’d like the people who think that TW, being women by gender, need the separate toilets, sports, political representation, initiatives, spaces and laws that were created for the female sex, to explain why.

Explain, from first principles and ignoring what ideas about men and women may exist today for historic reasons based on sex, what are the practical, observable differences - as in not just in how a person may see themselves but in how they are seen and exist physically and socially in the world - that exist between a male-sex man and a male-sex woman, but not between a male-sex woman and a female-sex woman, such that we do not need any sex-specific provisions but we do need gender-specific ones?

Because either sex doesn’t matter at all, in which case we need to ditch these historic relics of oppression by sex and identity which, if any, new ones are needed based on gender, or it does matter and we need to acknowledge that females exist and that women by gender who happen to be male are not being invalidated, judged or attacked if they excluded from female-sex spaces and provision.

So, to the original question:

To people who believe TWAW but accept this is not the same as sex and females still need single sex rights and support I say, hell yeah, crack on.

To people who believe TWAW and gender identity should replace any sex-based provision I put the question above and wait for the clarification.

And to people who believe TWAW, gender identity should replace any sex-based provision and the question above doesn’t matter because replacing sex with gender identity has not so far caused them personally any problems, I say...

Lucky you
But it has caused problems for some people
And the more single-sex provision is lost the more people it will cause problems for
And don’t people have a right define themselves and speak of their common experiences based on their sex as well as their gender?
And we don’t put rules, protections and protected opportunities in place for the usual case where people are reasonable and things go ok, because reasonable people and ok outcomes don’t need them. We put them in place for the bad times and the hard decisions, where one person’s power can hurt or oppress another’s. I’m alright jack is not a reason to get rid of someone else’s rights.

They can believe and chant gender mantras as much as they like. What they are not at liberty to do is force the removal of my rights and the rights of millions of other women for their dogma.

Hounding women's groups and harassing women to force them to include males into single-sex spaces is the behaviour of zealots. They can get off their lazy arses and put in the time, effort and money to set up separate shared spaces with males if they want, and leave the rest of us to maintain our single-sex spaces and services.

I don't. In the same way that I don't go around telling Christians that their god isn't real....

^^same everyone's entitled to their incorrect opinions

The GC claim is that accepting TWAW has detrimental effects on the lives of women who aren't trans. Actually the claim is that TWAW harms both women and trans people alike. That gender remains an invidious curse. That hman beings cannot change sex. That people should feel free to be who they are without feelings of shame for not meeting some outdated toxic stereotypes.

With absolutely no evidence to prove that transwomen are any less dangerous to women than any other males , should women be expected to share dormitories, showers, refuges with members of the opposite sex if said people identify as women?

The word pre-op throws me. Pre-op is the appointment you have before an operation. If you have no plans for an operation, you aren't pre-op. But un-op doesn't roll off the tongue.

I think if trans women want to live as women then that's great...welcome! But I don't like the attempted erasure of the fact that there are some natural differences between trans women and biological women that have massively affected the lives and opportunities of bio women for hundreds of years.

Similarly for trans men, not worried about whatever they do, but let's not start using weird terms on tampons etc to try and imply that it's not only biological females who menstruate.

So my main thoughts on it are that TW are welcome to join the club, but let's not try and change the fundamental principles of what has put women where we are today.

Gosh OP you've got a lot of time on your hands!