UK not polarised over trans equality

Exactly. Teach children facts, not propaganda.

My post above shows the entire reason for the demand for self ID.

Not as the lie tells you because it is 'too hard' to access help - because if you are transsexual it is not and you have already followed all the medical guidelines and made attempts to try and avoid transition - this being the requirements that transgender term 'hard' and transsexuals term 'essential'.

Yet the people with no actual medical reason to transition being unwilling to go via this vital checks and balance process they term it as an 'obstacle . Not what it truly is - common sense.

These people are in effect the cross dressers and various other things that have created the wave of 'transgender' people we see today under that silly banner. They feel excluded from the GRA by the processes involved but do not wish to follow. They were properly devised to balance rights of those for whom transition was permanent and NOT as an identity choice - and to give checks and balances to society also - therefore excluding chancers and those who might abuse much more easy access.

Every genuine trans person gets that and are not the ones calling for self ID.

It actively risks harm by equivocating those who followed the rules and went down the correct path through appropriate psychiatric assessment with the rest who only want status if they have to do nothing to achieve it.

Self ID is not what either women or the 5000 transsexuals presently covered by the GRA want. Why politicians are not seeing this obvious fact is a good question they need to answer but you never see the media ask it either oddly.

Indeed if - as the transgender mob are demanding - the (what they call) 'offensive' word transsexual gets replaced by transgender in law - it puts at risk the ongoing medical support for the 5000 covered for the past 20 years by not differentiating that need.

Self ID will be a disaster for both women and the small numbers for whom the GRA was written.

"one in four knows a trans person personally"

This is extremely misleading, and a case of ridiculous scaling. It's like surveying members of the National Gerbil Society and pronouncing that everyone in Britain buys dry seed mix.

I am in a position where I know two transwomen, both with GRCs. I also know that they are the only known transwomen with GRCs within an area of roughly a 70,000 population, and they are probably the only individuals with GRCs within a 210,000 population area. I also know who is not aware of these two people and, considering they are near enough recluses, it's practically everybody.

However, if you use a wider parameter for the definition of "trans", and include children, teenagers and young adults, who may be treating the label as a form of subculture, then the number expands considerably. But it is still not one in four by any means: that would suggest 25% of the population knows a transperson.

Going by a rough estimate of a 65 million population, this would mean that over 16 million people in Britain know a transperson.

As a useful comparison, there's only around 9 million people in London, so you are talking an extra 7 million on top of that (and Scotland is only about 5.5 million).

It also means that if you got every person in Britain who knew a transperson, according to this frankly silly research conclusion, to stand at half mile intervals, the line would stretch from the UK to East Timor.

That no one pointed this out to anyone at the Guardian says quite a lot about the rigor of their editors and subeditors, in my view.

There currently is a way to tell who has dysphoria and most likely had surgery versus those who just have gender identities and have done little or nothing.

That is because the current GRA rules remain as in 2004 when passed. The person needs background checks into their life, to provide hard evidence of a material change of status permanently, and reports with evidence of treatment by both medical and psychiatric doctors.

The people who qualify under these criteria are those medically defined as transsexuals. NOT transgender. It is only called the Gender Recognition Act because it recognised the need in some cases to default to biology - which transsexuals have always understood - in rape crisis,sport or job shortists for example. These have not been challenged by those currently with a GRC. It is coming from those outside wanting in.

Doctors told parliament in the debate in 2004 that approximately 5000 would qualify for the GRA and just under that number did over the first two or three years. And two decades later despite the huge rise in transgender ideology and activism over past years the total with a GRC in 2021 remained at just 5871. Out of 67 million UK population.

It amazes me that anybody still reads the Guardian !.

@BloodyHellKen You may have to quote directly from Stonewall, with a link to the source, to be allowed it. That's all I'm saying.

I can believe that 1 in 4 people in Brighton who were surveyed have met someone who self-identifies as trans or non-binary or something else under the Stonewall 'trans umbrella' definition.

That's the limit of my credulity.

Maybe it was the bit in my previous post where I made a distinction between trans people who have surgery and men attracted to women who like to dress as women, or as they used to be known, transvestites who sometimes claim to be lesbians?

Is that is Mumsnet? Is transvestite a banned word now?

WTF my post has been deleted. Why Mumsnet?

It wasn't offensive in the least I just said that most Britons are not polarised because they think of trans people as being post op gender reassignment rather than biological men dressed as women who 'feel' like women and who expect to be treated as women.

Also most people have other things to thing about other than trans issues and unless issues around single sex spaces and sport affects them directly it's not something that most people consider.

I also referred to a PP who said that the 'survey' had been carried out partly in Brighton which would skew the results as there seemed to be a lot of confirmation bias in the results.

Lastly 1 in 4 people knows someone who is trans I don't think so, unless they happen to live in Brighton.

The reality is that AIBU gets the most traffic.

It was the same with Brexit. Every single referendum thread got banished to the EU referendum board which was only read by a small number of users, when it was such an important topic that it would really have benefited from more visibility. And then afterwards people were all, "but how can this have happened?" like they'd been taken completely by surprise, because they hadn't gone looking for debate and discussion about it and had no idea about the issues at stake or the strength of feeling on the other side.

The self ID debate is also one that would benefit from wider engagement.

It's not both sides, though.

Only one 'side' is running Antifa cells.

mobile.twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1537345888422600704

I think the majority of the uk population don’t understand the vitriol on both sides over this subject. I also think that saying you are okay with something is one thing until you encounter it I
person and then you understand it from a different perspective.

That would depend on who they asked. But surely the researcher didn’t pick a biased research pool 😉

I do know trans people in RL. They have nothing in common with TRAs and know transwomen are not female.

Me too. And I know one trans person for whom "trans" really is a sexuality and not a gender identity at all. Or at least it used to be a sexuality because he was an "erotic cross-dresser" when I knew him but now she has transitioned.

There is no way to tell who has gender dysphoria, who is transitioning for erotic reasons, and who has both motives.

There are many reasons for confusing gender identity and sexuality. I no longer know how much of that confusion is well intentioned.

Or because AIBU threads are for members to describe some sort of moral or social dilemma for other members to vote and comment on, in regards to whether the OP is being unreasonable or not? I don't see how that format applies to this thread.

It's possible to be compassionate and fair and to also think women need single-sex (not gender) spaces away from males.

This. In today's world, particularly on social media (including MN), there doesn't seem to be room for nuance anymore. Either something has to be wholly good or wholly bad, no inbetween; when in reality, it you step away from the screen things are a lot more grey.

Unfortunately this is very much not how trans issues are being taught in school!

In reality it's more like, "everyone has a gender identity" and "gender is assigned at birth" and "if someone who is assigned male at birth likes pink and dolls they may be a girl" and "everyone is somewhere on the Barbie to Action Man spectrum".

(by age range I mean including say 15 years in each section, not 8 in one, 15 in another.)

That's a very dodgy way of separating things. Normally for decent surveys you would want the age range to be the same in each group, wouldn't you?

It's not just kids that need to know this stuff!

"Remember this is a debate about people"

Do women count as people, do we think?

I really like the way they're presenting the 'public' versus 'the elite' (shades of Brexit ). I assume mumsnet is part of the elite.

The report calls for a coalition of the willing to build on this public consensus as a way to defuse the elite debate – making the following ten recommendations:

Emphasise the public’s shared starting points
Build upon areas of consensus
Embrace case by case approach? ? ?
Magnify experiences of those finding a way through
Acknowledge the progress made
Put elite sport in perspective ? ? ?
Create space for discussion
Listen to those worried about the pace of change
Stop bad faith actors framing the discussion ? ? ?
Remember this is a debate about people

It was, however, the case that support for trans women using women’s changing rooms doubled when it was specified they had undergone gender reassignment surgery, rising from 24% to 48%; the same pattern emerged for toilet use, rising from 29% to 53%.

So, the public want 99% of all transwomen kept out of female toilets and female changing rooms and how does this hilarious excuse for a journalist report it?

On single-sex spaces, one of the flashpoints in the debate around transgender rights, the public were broadly relaxed about the provision of unisex toilets,

It's just the usual isn't it, people are happy to chant the mantras but when it comes to the practicalities, they agree that women should have single-sex spaces and sports. And they are fine with schools teaching that "trans people exist" but they weren't asked if schools should teach kids that they can choose their own gender identity.

A challenge to the organisation that conducted this poll: show the public the Gender Unicorn and poll them on that. I double-dog dare you.

Question up thread as to if 1 in 4 knew a trans person - it's quite likely, if you know any teenagers or work in a school, yes.

Also - at what point will we be allowed to discuss this topic in AIBU do you think?
This was a report which appeared in The Guardian and also in The Times so hardly niche.

It's interesting the spin different media puts on this. This is exactly the same survey that the Times is quoting saying that most people don't support transwomen in women's sports and don't think men who have penises belong in women only space.