Does the Transgender community have a problem with well evidenced science? Does the community only ever accept favourable reports, AKA confirmation bias, or is it something deeper?

Protected from what?

Are you suggesting that lesbians and bisexual women carry out sexual assaults at similar rates to males? Could you provide your evidence for that?

You maybe weren't alive at the time, I don't know, but the 'case' against gay men and lesbians was about as strong as the case against transwomen now.

I remember the 70s and 80s and I don't recognise what you're saying at all.
What was this 'case' against gay men and lesbians? They weren't pretending to be something they were not.

It's nothing like our objection to men who identify as transwomen. The objection to these males who identify as trans is that they are male, not that they are trans. They don't belong in women's spaces because they are men.

There is a greater risk from males who identify as transwomen than there is from women. Not because they are trans, but because they are male.

Can I ask you what you think about the huge over representation of lesbians and bisexuals in US jails:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/lbq_women_prisons_jails.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/overwhelming-number-lesbians-bisexual-women-incarcerated-n728666

Perhaps you have some ideas on how straight women can be protected?

Well that would depend on who you ask.

Certainly some would identify as women, some would identify as a third sex.

So you're just assuming. Any examples?

While you're looking, here is a 2019 quote from the Prime Minister of Samoa, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, about the male weightlifter Laurel Hubbard.
"This fa'afafine or man should have never been allowed by the Pacific Games Council president to lift with the women. I was shocked when I first heard about it," he told the Samoa Observer.
"No matter how we look at it, he's a man (sic) and it's shocking this was allowed in the first place."
Full article here:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/other-sports/114420264/samoan-pm-tuilaepa-sailele-malielegaoi-hits-out-at-laurel-hubbard

The whole concept of "identifying as" anything is very modern and Western. I remember when it came into use, and how ridiculous many people thought it.

It was exactly the same 'we must protect the children' argument then that is made now.

That old chestnut? Yes, I was there and no, it wasn't at all the same argument. I don't know whether you genuinely believe that it is, or whether that's how you justify ignoring actual harm and real risk.

I don't feel the need to protect my offspring against the urge to identify as gay or to be same-sex attracted. I still do have the need to protect my offspring against feeling uncomfortable in their own bodies, and against deciding that the only solution to their discomfort is to take steroids or cut bits of themselves off.

That's one of the big differences - between unfounded fears and fears based on facts.

We already do know that men are a threat to women and to other men, far more than women are. We also know that includes men who decide they are women, it doesn't decrease their threat level to women or each other at all.

So men do need to be excluded from places where women are vulnerable. It's that simple and it includes transwomen because the fact is that they present (at least) the same risks as all men do.

And you can kick and scream and claim it's all anecdote and that there are hidden cases but that doesn't make it true. It isn't just anecdote it's countable, and proportionally speaking there aren't more unreported attacks on trans people by other people. For every unreported assault by a woman on a man, or by anyone on a transwomen, there are far more unreported assaults by men on women.

Your position is wishful thinking.

The fear of attack by homosexual men on other men or by homosexual women on other women is largely unfounded. This was an irrational fear.
90% of violent crime is committed by men. 96-99% of sexually violent crime is committed by men and 89-90% of the victims are women. That is MoJ data. So the fear of attack by men on women is entirely rational and not based on anecdotal data. Do you not notice all the reports of convictions of men for attacks on women and girls? The case against men who claim to be women is as strong as the case against other men. "Trans" is merely the ticket which gets those men into women-only spaces.

Well that would depend on who you ask.

Certainly some would identify as women, some would identify as a third sex.

There are many who would want to identify as women and be identified as such by others, but acknowledge the limitations of the society they live in that can not accommodate this, and compels them to live in groups on the fringes of society in impoverished conditions.

What a short memory you have. In the 1980s having a gay sexuality absolutely was a real threat their lives. Have you not heard of AIDS?

Were any of these men actually considered women? No. They were a third group, with their own separate culture, homosexual men. Stop appropriating and distorting other people's history and experiences for your ideology.

The reality is there is a weighty history of trans lives spanning centuries and in multiple cultures.

And these are the ones we have written records of, not including all the cultures that don't have a good documented history.

If you look up the history of the hijra for example, you will see trans is not merely a Western fad.

There will be different terminology used at times to best reflect understandings.

And although I could agree that sexuality and gender identity are conceptually distinct terms in our present parlance, the lived lives of people, and the description of these throughout history and cultures, has painted a more complex, interwoven picture.

@suggestionsplease1 - I am 74 so I was certainly around during the time you describe, and my experience and reading then was quite different from what you describe. And regardless of that, there wasn't any attempt by gay men to foist themselves into women-only spaces or positions so the situation was very different from now. Now there seems to be a move to trans away the gay in children.

Sexual orientation is observable. Not so easily measurable.

I don't know what your sister was playing at telling people she was a lesbian while dating boys, and anyway I don't think you should tell me any more about her. I just hope she's grown up and figured herself out. The urge for young people to label themselves before they have developed enough of a self to label is part of the problem.

based on an unfounded fear of assault or perceived danger to children.

You maybe weren't alive at the time, I don't know, but the 'case' against gay men and lesbians was about as strong as the case against transwomen now.

Of course there was anecdotal information about assaults that was overinflated and misrepresented to try to convey an idea that gay people, as a demographic, were a threat. The individual stories lodged in people's minds; they become salient and memorable in the vast sea of data that shows risk from heterosexual men and women.

This is a very natural (and problematic) cognitive bias / heuristic that people attend to which confirms their existing prejudice.

At that time why would people on this board not make exactly the same case they are making now? They would read about an assault by a gay man or lesbian (and not hear about because they weren't reported/ or media were not fixated on, all the assaults by heterosexual men and women) and perceive a greater risk and start a political campaign to protect their children from gay men and women.

This is what happened.

They were filled with the same fears and sense of righteous cause.

But ...

There's a very simple difference between sexuality and trans. As follows.

If a man sincerely says, "I feel I am attracted to men," it must be true that he is attracted to men. Why? Because to feel attracted is to be attracted.

However,

If a man, sincerely or not, says, "I feel I am a woman", it must be false that he is a woman. Why? Because he's a man.

In short, a sincere claim to be gay must be true; a sincere claim to have changed sex must be false.

This difference suggests 'T' doesn't really belong with 'LGB'.

[ For interest: some feels self-validate like 'attraction': If I feel I'm in pain, I am in pain; to feel happy is to be happy. Others don't: If I feel I am the coolest person at the party, I probably am not cool at all; to feel overweight (tragically in some cases) is not necessarily to be overweight. It does look as though 'trans'-type feels fall in the second category: trans people, at least some of them, feel themselves to be something they are not.

This may need looking at scientifically/medically. But first it may be necessary to get the semantics right. We need to get clear what we are talking about - what we mean by what we say. Hmm?]

Do tell me when this was actually happening?

gah!
@suggestionsplease1 that ⬆ was a reply to you.

Being able to use a changing room or public toilets or single-sex facilities on the same terms as everybody else with the same type of body, and in the way they were intended to be used is not making an unreasonable demand. Stopping gay men or lesbians from using these facilities would be creating an artificial barrier based on an unfounded fear of assault or perceived danger to children.
The danger to women and children from men is well founded. Men also have different bodies to women. Lesbians are physically indistinguishable from other women and pose no threat, either.
TRAs want everybody else, women in particular, to do things differently. They want language to change to the point where some words lose all meaning, especially words to do with women. They want to create a nonsensical category of most women plus some men which has no purpose except to enable some men to be amongst women at all times. They want us to pretend that reality doesn't exist and truth is anything they say it is.
Gays and lesbians just want to get on with their lives.

Which is pretty much what is happening now at times, no?

No, if it was the same as now, gay men would have been insisting on using the women's changing rooms and told they couldn't, and lesbians would have been wanting to use the men's and told they couldn't.

@Helleofabore "sexual orientation relates to the arousal factor that someone feels while having sex with someone of a particular sexed body"

The first sentence in the study DecayedStrumpet posted is "In general, women show physiological sexual arousal to both sexes." We're all bisexual then I guess.

@DecayedStrumpet in any study like this they'll be testing different factors and then seeing if they correlate with what the person claims their own sexuality to be. If they then found a person exhibited things that SHOULD mean they're a particular sexuality, but the person disagreed then it would be a sign the model is wrong, not that the person's identified sexuality is wrong. There's nothing you could find in a study that would overrule what a person claimed about their own feelings.

Gay men wanted to be able to get changed in the mens changing rooms rather than being hounded out, or being told that it might be more appropriate if they used a toilet cubicle or get changed back at home. Lesbians had the same experience

Plenty of people were absolutely adamant that their sexuality meant they should not be in those spaces.

They wanted the right to not be perceived as an automatic threat to others.

Which is pretty much what is happening now at times, no?

Yes and those people were wrong. I was not one of them.

Your point?

I was under the impression the FWR might be populated by a more than a few women who lived through the 70s and 80s

What I remember from that time was women fighting to be allowed to do things which were previously only for men - things like being allowed to do any jobs that they were able to do. We were fighting against stereotypes which said that women should stay home and not be allowed to do certain jobs.

I remember fighting my school to be allowed to wear trousers to school (I lost that one), and being told by my physics teacher that I shouldn't do physics because it wasn't a girls' subject. Stereotypes again.

Now we're being told to accept that people have a gender identity which is based on stereotypes. No thank you.

suggestionsplease1

Those people were wrong. If you disagree, can you tell me what were the demands made by gay men and lesbian women on others?

Genderism does affect everyone because of the demands made on everybody, especially women, starting with the enforced use of "preferred pronouns", all the way to rapists in women's prisons. All because of a subjective belief about themselves that a tiny number of people claim to have.
And genderism is homophobic to its core, so it's pretty rich that you make the comparison.

What short memories people seem to have!

I was under the impression the FWR might be populated by a more than a few women who lived through the 70s and 80s when many people absolutely did feel that other people's sexuality had a bearing on their own lives and their children's lives.

It was exactly the same 'we must protect the children' argument then that is made now.

Gay men and lesbians could not live their lives freely; they had to be very careful if they wished to hold positions as teachers, social workers, gps etc...people believed that homosexuality was a very real threat to their children.