Is it safety or separation?

This.👆🏼 I'm baffled that @Howseitgoin has managed to conjure out of thin air a drive for separatism, when all we are trying to do is protect the single-sex services we already have.

I don’t need to justify why I want spaces without men. It’s disingenuous to suggest anyone doesn’t know the reason.

The real question is why so many men feel the need to try and break women’s boundaries. But again, we all know the answer to that.

The gender critical movement is not moving towards separatism- it is not trying to carve out new areas to exclude men but rather trying to retain the situation we all grew up with, where women's services and spaces were commonplace and accepted by everyone.

The current problem is that men have been told that they are welcome in women's spaces if they think that suits them, but it is not true. Institutions have been encouraged to allow this with no concern for women's needs. It is absolutely the patriarchy in action, forcing us aside to accommodate men.

The fight back has been extraordinary. Women are simply not going to put up with this. The UK courts agree with us. There is no compromise, no accommodations that will work for women. Trans women need to find a new solution.

OneFlakyMaker
"I want a women-only space so I can feel more comfortable speaking": that makes sense. In the past 60 years, (US) society generaly accepts such arbitrary preferences in the private realm, but won't enforce such preferences in the public realm. You can reject roommates based on sex since a home is the private sphere, but a landlord cannot discriminate on sex since it's not a personal interaction. That's a major distinction that still stands.

My response to the above bit from the original Poster OneFlakyMaker

Single Sex Spaces are, for all the women and girls involved, a 'personal interaction'.

A woman locked in a prison with male inmates is personally in greater danger of violent/sexual assault. A female Olympic athlete will personally lose her place in the Women's Final to a male competitor. A teenage girl will personally exclude herself from swimming at the local pool after being frightened by the presence of an adult male in the changing room.

Moreover, this is the UK. So transgender people are protected under the Equality Act 2010 from losing their home, being denied service in a shop, made redundant etc. for being transgender. The relevant protected characteristic under the Act is "Gender Reassignment".

A further protected characteristic under the Act is "Sex". And the recent Supreme Court Ruling made it clear for the purposes of the Equality Act, that a trans woman's sex is "Male". This includes all trans women, whether with or without a GRC. So all trans women must be excluded from all Single Sex Spaces for Women.

This is what most Gender Critical people want.

So in summary again:

We want protection for transgender people from discrimination AND recognition that sex is binary and fixed, and sometimes it matters a great deal for the safety and wellbeing of women and girls.
Trans women are adults males, so must be excluded from all Women-Only Spaces.

On the UP side MN may have new converts peaking soon.
No to mixed sex shelters
No to mixed sex hospital rooms
No to mixed sex prisons
Progress!!

No idea why posters would think blaming women for mens choices is rational but baby steps.

If your argument is essentially that women and girls don't need safety, privacy and dignity from men you are either a creep, a perv or enabling one. Whichever it is, you hate women either openly or subconsciously because you have utter contempt for their needs.

^ This 100%

I'm just going to eye up the man sheds, and their elite versions.

Which works well without any policing or anyone questioning why they need to exist.

Even if women have no reason to want their own space, women have a right to congregate without adult males being present.

A timely reminder.

Only MRAs benefit in a discussion about the legitimacy of women's safety and think that comparisons with US civil rights and separation are fair and accurate parallels.

There is a reason for this.

If your argument is essentially that women and girls don't need safety, privacy and dignity from men you are either a creep, a perv or enabling one. Whichever it is, you hate women either openly or subconsciously because you have utter contempt for their needs.

There is no other place this discussion goes.

Well here it is again ...

NO

"But if separation is the goal, than that solution will be misguided."

Interesting discussion. I have had the same concerns in terms of the gender critical movement moving towards separatism as that undermines the feminist project. I think its spawning from the idea that women would endure less direct misogyny in a separatist-minded spaces, but the problem is when men are separated from women, they become even more misogynistic. They then have even less incentive to hire women or vote for women. I think never interacting with a group of people makes it much easier to "other" & stereotype them.

Obviously there are times when separation is needed for safety like shelters, hospital rooms, and as long as they exist, prisons/jails are good examples of spaces where separatism makes sense. But I am concerned this kernel of truth is being exploited as a gateway to separatism. It's not there yet but I suspect we are on our way under the guise of 'safety'. As for example it will be 'safer' if single sex schools are made a legal necessity.

But here's the rub, self-imposed sepratism becoming a normalised demand is largely the product of institutional failure as in the failure to protect women via the judicial, education systems & most importantly government policy that exacerbates poverty & by extension violence towards women. We can't expect women not to retreat if we as a society can't or won't do anything about their victimisation.

Cos men don't like that word.

No.

Why do women have to justify why they want single sex spaces, why are the men who demand access never required to explain why they should be in there? All this discussion, just so men can go into spaces they were told not to go.

Well over the past day I have learned it is a badge of pride to be ‘super feminine’. I mean, I just thought we wims aimed to be ourselves and have diverse interests and skills. Now I have assumed that the links being posted about behavioural traits that make women women was actually an aspirational target for the poster. Gosh…. Whodathunkit?

😁

This thread be like...

Its so fucking absurd. Given the context of the rape stats, the violence stats, the poverty, health, stats. A look at culture, sport, media, politics, economics, almost any field.

"women need single-sex spaces while men don't need them (that's a cornerstone of feminism": that's a problematic stance. It frames feminism as a separatist, if not a supremacy, movement. It renders anti-feminist rhetoric more plausible since the movement is inherently willing to create different classes of citizens.

You misunderstand. Women currently need single sex spaces and opportunities that men do not because we currently face an unbalance because society's current social and structural mores were formed by Patriachy and so they advantage men over women.

So while the ideal end goal is, aside from what is additionally necessary for women to allow us to carry the heavier reproductive of our sex without that meaning worse social and financial outcomes for us over our lives, to treat both sexes the same, you can't start from a situation of unbalance and say "oh we'll just treat everyone the same going forward" because all that does is perpetuate the existing imbalance.

It is through ensuring women have refuges (physically and virtual) within society to avoid the things men do that intimidate us out of public life, to take off the burden of noticing and placating men to heal and learn from each other without having our expereinces manterpretted back to us, that we grow our confidence and our voice so that we can be visible and active and show our value in wider society.

It is through this sex specific support that society finally gets to a point where women no longer feel threatened, intimidated or overspoken by men and men have stopped belittling women's abilities, encroaching on women sexually or expecting more attention, support and respect from women than they give to them and reacting with anger and rage when these expectations are not met, and single sex supports are no longer needed.

In other words, reading single sex provisions as an end goal of Feminism is a misunderstanding. They are just a tool to use on the way as we women make our journey out of marginalisation and oppression.

yeah,its going really well in Afghanistan.

Women wanting privacy from men sometimes is supremacy now, didn’t you know?

needy fucking losers

It really was MRA language.

'feminism as a separatist, if not a supremacy, movement'

Oh, aye?! Women are on the point of enslaving men, are they? Good fucking lord.

And that was the purpose of the question - not a "gotcha", not a "you should let AMAB in your stall" (that was never argued), but instead - "what do you really want?"

Oh, you’re back, OP. How lovely. Are you on to the false comparison with apartheid and racism yet? That seems to be a fucking offensive favourite of US posters 🙄 TBH, I can’t be bothered to read all your second post but I feel no guilt as you clearly didn’t read any of the thoughtful responses to you here.

”What do you really want?” Why are you still asking a bloody obvious question that’s been explained to you many times? Why are you putting words into posters’ mouths (eg that men don’t need single sex spaces)? Why do you think you’re the omniscient, superior being lecturing us like we’re little children who haven’t quite thought about things properly? FROATFOSM.

If you weren’t in the US, I’d assume you were my ex. He was a patronising git too. He used to ask me what I wanted to order at a restaurant, wait for me to answer, then sit back in his chair with a smug, arrogant smile and hold forth about why what I wanted was wrong, and did I want to think again as I clearly hadn’t thought properly the first time. He’d then launch into an ‘explanation’ of precisely why I was wrong. He’d cover all kinds of random, unrelated crap in his lecture to me to ‘prove’ why I was wrong and hadn’t thought properly. It used to upset me and confuse me but now I’d laugh in his face at the sheer bloody cheek of it.

You’re his little twin. You asked a (stupid) question, were given answers, and now you’re back again, repeating the same idiotic question, like we might as well not have spoken. Pathetic.

My God people are willing to waffle and wangle endlessly in their mission of suppressing and silencing women so that men can use them.

No. The law provides women with protections against exactly this kind of fuckery. End of. It's done.

Thanks for the lecture!

Back to the old rights-hoarding dinosaurs argument again.

But women only spaces like toilets were introduces specifically to allow women to access public life away from the vileness and dangers of the gents. And men still make the most awful mess and are still a danger / perceived danger.

You can't go around advocating for us to include men while men still behave as they do.

All your arguments fade away in the light of actual reality - the needs of women for safe, clean toilets, and the nasty behaviour of many men.

I had to take my own advice and have a lie down and a cup of tea.

Possibly true.

especially since the EA mirrors EU requirements.