Wouldn't this be more sensible?

I think a lot of us started off from this position. The trouble is that trans activism is trying (quite successfully) to erase sex. In fact Shon Faye, a tw, told women "enjoy ur erasure". That is the point. That we no longer have a word to describe ourselves, not woman, not female. I don't think it should be possible to change sex on documents. It creates too many problems - and all of them impact women. Enough. We gave an inch and they took a mile.

I don't understand why gender identity has to eradicate sex. Why can't the two co exist as separate concepts? That's what I meant by live and let live. For example, I'm not sure I really get what having a gender identity means. I've never had an inner sense of "womeness". I just am a woman because I was born one. That doesn't mean I have an issue with other people saying they have a gender identity like I don't have an issue with someone having a religion even though I don't have one myself.
Equally why is there a need to replace biological sex with gender identity when clearly they're not the same thing, it's factually incorrect and creates all sorts of complexity and confusion.

Are you sure you're a newbie here? you've pretty much summarised many years of GC threads....!

Your best first steps are looking up the “Break it down for me” thread here and reading the very accessible Trans by Helen Joyce, which covers the overall picture in the U.K.

Irreversible Damage is solely about the massive surge in girls identifying as trans. It’s bloody frightening and I see it across my teens’ friendship groups.

I'm not aware of this. Where can you self id your sex to access to certain spaces? This seems odd.

Wherever the provider decides you can. This could be a shop with changing rooms, or it could be the Ministry of Justice with women's prisons. In the latter case, there was a court case and the judge was forced to conclude that though it might not be desirable to house sex offenders on the female estate, it was not actually unlawful, according to the hotchpotch laws we have. (I think some posters might argue that it is - will leave that to more knowledgeable posters). Schools, sports teams, rape crisis centres - you name it. The provider will assume that anyone in the women's section must therefore identify as a woman, even if they have their cock out in the changing room. They don't have to do things this way, but an increasing number go out of their way to. A university had official posters up recently saying "Do you think someone is in the wrong toilet? You're wrong - make room and repent" (paraphrased).

Do we know why teenage girls are being affected in this way? Is there data on this that I can find anywhere?
Read the book Irreversible Damage.

The government decided to allow some people to change their birth certificate to the opposite sex to what they were. Then in the EqA they allowed those who were intending to go through the admin process, protection as a PC. (Odd when it was supposedly very few people).

Now everyone is trying to reverse engineer explanations to these bonkers laws, rather than make those who made and now support the decisions explain their rational.

The reason we can't make sense of it or make it work with our sex based rights is because it's a bonkers law. Nothing we can say on this thread can change the fact.

its likely to be a very small group of people who it applies to and if someone is prepared to go through all of that because they feel they're in the wrong body then it's probably fair enough we recognise them as their assumed sex.

I'm sorry, OP, but it's not just about being kind to the small number of people who genuinely believe they are or should be the opposite sex. It's about all the vast number of men who take advantage by claiming to be trans in order to get access to women's spaces; they don't need to show any evidence. Even though the government decided against changing the law to allow gender self-ID (after a public consultation showed huge opposition), in many areas we already have self-ID in practice.

And what about the current trend for teenaged girls to claim they are transmen or non-binary? It's not just another harmless teenage fashion. They're getting mastectomies and taking drugs that do irreversible damage.

As per @NecessaryScene 's suggestion, I really cannot think of any scenario when I would care about someone's gender.

But I do think you'll find there are circumstances in which you absolutely DO care about someone's sex, once you ponder it a bit.

If you're heterosexual, you'll care that your partner is the opposite sex to you.
If you're homosexual, you'll care that your partner is the same sex as you.

And the many circumstances when a woman would feel vulnerable in a male presence - hospital ward, domestic violence shelter, refuge, prison; I care a great deal about someone's sex in these settings. My caring about what sex someone is has nothing to do with being respectful, and everything to do with my sense of safety, privacy and dignity. I am entitled to all three.

Re the title of this thread. Wouldn't what be more sensible?

But why? Why can't everyone just live and let live?

I’m interested in this

I read it as you thinking that the women in this board should chill out

have I read it correctly?

But why? Why can't everyone just live and let live?

We could. And that would be the logical goal of a civil rights movement.

But this is not a civil rights movement. "Trans" people are not being excluded from society in any way, like gay people, or women were. They already have as many rights as anyone else.

But there are a group of activists (not representing all "trans" people) demanding special treatment, at the expense of others.

A relevant piece by Jane Clare Jones:

Gay Rights and Trans Rights - A Compare and Contrast

What I want to do here is think through why the concept of ‘discrimination-as-phobia’ worked for the gay rights movement, and why, despite superficial similarities, it doesn’t accurately capture what is at stake in the trans rights debate, and actually serves as a tool of political propaganda and obfuscation to push that agenda through. That is, I’m going to argue that accusations of ‘homophobia’ were a politically powerful and basically on-the-money part of gay rights discourse, while the use of ‘transphobia’ is an inaccurate parallel which grossly distorts public perceptions of the issues involved in the trans rights debate, and is doing so in the service of actually preventing that debate taking place.

[...]

The key thing to understand about trans rights activism is that, unlike gay rights activism, it is not just a movement seeking to ensure that trans people are not discriminated against. It is, rather, a movement committed to a fundamental reconceptualization of the very idea of what makes someone a man or a woman. In theory, this equally affects both men and women, but in practice, almost all the social pressure is coming from trans women towards the idea of ‘woman’ and the rights of women. And that’s because, when it comes down to it, this whole thing is being driven by male people who want something female people have, and that something, is, in fact, our very existence.

But why? Why can't everyone just live and let live?

often because they have a disordered personality which makes them perceive a need to control the behaviour of others. We’re not allowed to join the dots on this forum, but try the thought on for size when observing the behaviour of trans rights activists.

Yes, most people would agree which is why it's so important for genderists to hide the truth and change language.

Gender doesn't 'matter' for anything official but clearly matters to people individually.

Exactly. And there are lots of things like that, that we know how to deal with. Religions, star signs, weird hobbies,

We should be dealing with this the same way - live and let live, basically.

The problems only arise because they specifically want this to replace sex. There would be the same problems if you tried to replace sex with anything.

Hence one of the main campaign groups on the other side simply calling itself Sex Matters.

That's the entire conflict. One side believes it does, the other side believes it doesn't.

This side is quite happy for some people to believe in "gender". We're sceptical that it needs any recognition, but may be it can be recognised, in which case we'd put "none", just as atheists would under "religion". We're basically liberal.

The other side demands that sex must not be recognised or recorded. A very strong demand - much stronger than ours - that particularly hurts women.

Op the original theory was that a small group of transsexuals (about 5000), who were mostly effeminate gay men with gender dysphoria could legally change their sex and it not be challenged. It was assumed they'd 'pass' sufficiently to make it a matter of personal privacy. There was one particular man who said if he changes jobs, he wants to go to the next job as a woman and not have anyone know the truth.

The criteria was 'living as a woman' for 2 years (which now means supplying some documents with a name change) and having a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Surgery wasn't necessary. (And nowadays you can get a diagnosis of gender dysphoria very easily).

It was assumed that only a handful of men would take it up. And actually only about 6000 gender recognition certificates have been issued, so they weren't far off.

Then stonewall changed the word to transgender and included part time cross dressers (a fetish), drag queens, and basically any Tom Dick or Harry who says they're a woman, with absolutely no need to change their clothing or alter their appearance in any way.

Then a whole bunch of lobby groups got it taught in schools as akin to homosexuality, and therefore a civil rights issue.

And before you know it, children think they're born in the wrong body if they like the wrong toys, and anyone is a woman who says they are, including cross dressers and drag queens.

Of course, this wouldn't fly quite so quickly if it hadn't been backed up with the mantra 'no debate', underpinned by threats of rape, violence and loss of livelihood if anyone even slightly disagreed.

And yes, the conflation of sex with gender that you have noticed, is entirely deliberate.

Make no mistake. This is a political movement, and was started decades ago. With tweaks to laws, long-term infiltration, and the deliberate ploy of aligning it with LGB.

As a last minute failsafe, parliament did say that there would be certain exceptions where single sex spaces should be the norm. And they actually mention sport, refuges and any women only spaces where women want them to remain single sex. But they didn't make it enforceable. They made it optional and up to the discretion of the service provider. Making the assumption that no one in their right mind would eg send rapists to women's prisons.

And that's the problem. Every service provider in the country has been successfully lobbied. And trans ideology is taught in schools and universities.

The law is absolutely in place to stop this nonsense, but people are too frightened to implement it.

As mentioned, Helen Joyce's book 'Trans' will reveal everything.

And, if there was the slightest possibility of her being sued for defamation of any kind, she would've have been. You can take from that that her book is entirely accurate.

Exactly, @BreakerOfBras And if it doesn’t exist and is all about feelings - and therefore has no objective basis that everyone understands and agrees on - how can we have legislation based on gender?

For me, it helped clarify my understanding when I realised gender simply doesn't exist. You can present as you choose, "feel" like whatever you want, but all that really is is personality and preferences. Biological sex OTOH is completely fixed and immutable. The surgeries people go through, believing it'll change their sex, are BRUTAL.

Hi OP, I think you hold a really common position. You are in touch with reality (and susceptible to accusations of transphobia) if you acknowledge the following:

1. sex is real and in some circumstances, conversations and decisions is important
2. at least some of the time, women's feelings matter as much as men's feelings

this thread has loads of good links and discussion
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4584029-please-can-someone-explain-like-im-5

^My last post should say "sex and gender are completely different..."