Prospect Magazine: Kathleen Stock v Robin Moira White

I wouldn't bother Arabella. The chances of
you doing that, simply to find your efforts going unread and scornfully dismissed are high. Previous experience has shown that these kind of requests are often a deliberate attempt to both control and waste other people's time.

...

• I can, if anyone is unable to, source and cite those surveys, but I have a pile of work on today and so delivery of this helpful service might be delayed, for anyone having trouble doing this work for themselves.

Well, we know from several surveys that the majority of people do not support males accessing female services and spaces.

So males who do this do it in the knowledge that a majority of women have not given consent and actively don't want them to be there.

TurquoiseBaubles

Hard to see it any other way since once a male realises that there are women who are harmed (through retraumatisation, or being fearful) with their presence in toilets and changing rooms, they are in fact doing so with deliberate intent.

It must be quite hard to reconcile it within yourself if you have genuinely believed you are ‘entitled’ to be there but realise that it was a false entitlement. Even if the law has been interpreted to support you, finding out that the reality of your presence may be an uncomfortable truth. Which would be why people don’t want it discussed. And certainly, can never be acknowledged that it is not based in hate. That actually, many women, very reasonable women hold this belief. Not hateful bigots after all.

Robin's insistence that Robin has the right to go into women's spaces means all of Robin's actions are aggressive and dismissive of women.

It's interesting. Apparently we aren't allowed to comment on transwomen's appearance. And the result is that transwomen can insist that no-one notices they are trans.

It's exactly the same as not being allowed to "misgender" someone, and then them claiming that the fact that others use the "correct" pronouns means they are accepted as actually being that sex.

It all comes back to the "pronouns are rohypnol" argument - I would add that "not challenging" is also roypnol.

I find it interesting that not allowing some male people into female only spaces is considered to be " removing protections from" and "exclusion of " these people and that stating that they are not the sex for whom these spaces are provided is "othering " them.

*Oh fgs. Firstly "those men" are likely to be women.

And that really isn't how a court or tribunal works but carry on belittling, well I suppose everyone involved.*

I agree, some of those people will be women. But they are also influenced by unconscious bias.

BTW belittling seems to be your forte right now.

So long as you stay quiet, nobody gets hurt.

Problem is that won't always work. There's risks either way.

So long as you stay quiet, nobody gets hurt.

Let's face it, the dramatic hyperbole has been extended to: because you women wouldn't stay quiet about losing your rights and being trampled all over you've caused those men to do these things and do harm!

It's staggering isn't it? Nothing you can ever say is enough to make some male people view your voice as having any meaning or importance they need to regard - but at the same time your voice is so horribly, terribly powerful that you are the cause of male people doing bad things!

A psychologist would say that while this on the surface looks like someone managing to hold two totally contradicting, illogical positions at the same time and not realising it - in actual fact, the words mean nothing because the purpose of speaking is to serve the same purpose: to control females to the male's agenda. Therefore anything said is consistent to the speaker because it all serves the same end.

So the question is not how are you supposed to make sense of and engage with these multiple conflicting messages all at once.

The question is: should females be a subordinate and lesser race to males, and under their command? Females, are you for this? Would you vote for this? Enable those who think like this?

That's the key issue of the day if you're biologically female.

Pregnancy affects almost every aspect of our body, Keflavik. Maybe something to do with relaxin/the hormone that softens ligaments and soft tissues?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxin

I mean, I have no idea, just a wild guess!

@ArabellaScott that's interesting. I play a wind instrument and had terrible trouble when I was pregnant because something happened to my soft palate (!) and made the air snort out of my nose. Really weird, never happened before or since in years of playing.

So many examples in life where men behave unreasonably (or downright abhorrently), yet it’s the women pointing it out that criticised.

You're not allowed to say anything, and your silence is evidence that you have nothing to say.

It's the same thing as you're not allowed to generalise, but you mustn't be specific either.

There's a male (married with kids) contestant on French Bake Off at the moment who has an unusually high-pitched, squeaky voice. He spoke in one episode about how difficult it had made his life as a man.

Fact shaming. Interesting idea. It's clearly a thing. Helpful to put a name to it.

providing evidence to prove your point against someone else's preferred interpretation is... mean

'Fact shaming', blow me down.

Just to check:

• TW offer personal views and anecdotes of their experience as this is something deeply personal to them.

• Women who offer personal views or anecdotes of their experience are 'vile'.

• Pointing to stats, data, or evidence is rude.

So we are not to offer personal views or anecdotes, nor share evidence of general facts.

What are we allowed to say? When are we allowed to say 'no, thank you'? Are we allowed to say 'I do not want to share a confined space where I am vulnerable with a male'?

Generally speaking, women should just shut up, is that the gist of it?

'Women have all the rights they need - the right to remain silent'.

I think the new term is 'fact shaming', which basically means providing evidence to prove your point against someone else's preferred interpretation is... mean, or something.

Not only do women now have to fight to be allowed to be biological realists (and this not be a hate crime), but also to be factual realists.

And who/what agenda is this serving?

Why a sex based one that prevents females saying no to males who wish to make use of them for their own reasons. And this is what it is I'm afraid, however uncomfortable that may be to face. If it was the space that was the target and not the people, if 'inclusion' was actually sincerely meant as opposed to being a veneer of respectability, then third spaces would be the obvious answer and we would not be in a sex based situation where male people have zero respect or care for females. And woe betide any females who think their little lives and reasons mean they ought to be able to say 'hang on a minute, this does not work for me'.

The gaslighting on top that sex isn't a thing here.... well it's just got silly now.

Did you have the expectation that after seeding the search terms it might have been impolite to shape the follow-up research, Arabella?

am a little taken aback that someone claiming strong views on the subject would have not heard of all the research and writing on it, tbh.

It honestly can sound like vile to some means 'disagreeing with me/ not doing what I want'

I think when one hears an observation about oneself (either personally or about a group that one is part of), and that observation conflicts with one's self image, it is very common to feel that observation as an attack and therefore assume the person making it must have biased or malign motivations rather than expressing an honest observation.

It is much more comfortable for the psyche to believe that than to consider that one's honestly felt beliefs about oneself internally might not be how one appears (or indeed behaves) in the world to others. And the psyche likes to take the easy way when it can.

This is a general observation about people so I'm sure trans people are no exception.

@ArabellaScott

I have only posted a couple of pieces of evidence, Kimiko, because I had thought that this particular social issue was so widely acknowledged, well known and written about that it wasn't necessary to offer you a wide selection of links of the many studies that have shown evidence of differences in how male voices and female voices are perceived.

But there you go. Try googling 'male voice authority research' and you'll find many thousands more. Happy Christmas.

I wonder if this is a generational thing that some of us find hard to grasp? There does seem to be a sense of entitlement for some demographics that all of the work should be done, complete with reading notes and page references. That attitude is disappointing for the future development of scholarship in an educational setting but it's amplified on social media.

I wonder what it is that has led somebody to practice testimonial injustice and ascribe a credibility deficit to you that allows them to discount the references you cite?

And of course, no one is missing the irony of being told how vile and spiteful women are for pointing out someone's appearance, in a discussion that argues for access because women don't point out someone's appearance.

• also, bonus tip: If you add 'unconscious bias' to your search terms, you'll find loads of evidence of how yes, women are also affected by sexism wrt voice and the sex of the speaker and of how much of this sexism isn't even something we are consciously aware of.

Given that much recent research is on digital voices, AI, etc, you'll see that this issue has far from 'gone away' since the 70s. Just about as much as general sexism has 'gone away', I expect.

I have only posted a couple of pieces of evidence, Kimiko, because I had thought that this particular social issue was so widely acknowledged, well known and written about that it wasn't necessary to offer you a wide selection of links of the many studies that have shown evidence of differences in how male voices and female voices are perceived.

But there you go. Try googling 'male voice authority research' and you'll find many thousands more. Happy Christmas.

I find males in female toilets generally vile. I don't know why they are there. Nobody does. But we aren't allowed to make a peep about it otherwise the male might turn on us.

And this is the reason men should not be in female toilets. Because it is threatening. It's intended to be much of the time. It provides huge excitement to those males. There's nothing else like it. Women being forced to shut up and validate. These males don't have solidarity for women or care about what they think. Women are just unwilling props to their role play.

Robin doesn't have respect for women who say no. Really Robin, I don't think the women here care much about this. It's clear you don't have respect any women who points out the obvious and doesn't validate.

I don't have respect for any male who abuse women's boundaries and continually gaslight them. These people damage women's safeguards and they sully the reputation of decent transwomen (and I can think of a few) who wouldn't dream of doing this to women.

There's no good reason that you can't come into the mens sex segregated spaces Robin. No one's going to touch you or even say anything to you. Really, men don't care that much. And let's face it, you're heavily protected by the law which is just dying to come down hard on actual transphobia. Stats show that in the UK, transwomen are pretty much the safest group out there. So there genuinely is little to worry about.

But really, we're all there just to pee. Just like you. So do the decent thing for once. Stop gaslighting women. And leave their spaces alone.