J.K Rowling's Position

Just waiting for the "you're all transphobes" to start.

It's a classic MRA line isn't it? NAMALT. (So get your tits out for the lads).

These lads especially need you to.

No just target men.

On what planet is 'no, I don't consent to taking my clothes off with men' = 'targeting' men?

Go and hang out with the consenting women. That's it. That's all. Leave the non consenting ones alone. Women's lives do not revolve around what a man tells them is going on between his ears.

Sexual violence against women is not a trans problem, it is a man problem, including men identifying as women.

There are all sorts of valid arguments based on statistics of violence, etc., but I like to keep it simple and stick to the underlying principle:
there is a clear definition of who is a man and who is a woman, it is based on biology and the UKSC has confirmed that.
Any facility, or job, or role that is designated for 'women', is designated for women as defined in law.

So to take the example of toilets, as they seem to weigh so heavy on the minds of trans identifying men: the women's toilets are for biological women.
Trans identifying men are not biological women.
Therefore they are not allowed to use the women's toilets.
Whether they are violent or lovely is irrelevant.

Applying exactly the same rules =/= targeting.

Target men for a male problem? By george I think he's got it

(I know you haven't and you're just a vexatious little irritant but you do give us so many opportunities to point out trans women are men so thank you for that)

OP said - "I appreciate that most transwomen just want to go about leading their daily lives identifying as women and using women spaces is part of that and they have no ill intent."

Two things - IMHO a man entering a woman's spaces is either completely oblivious of the real world and acting as if they have bad intent, or they do have bad intent. But even if you don't accept that can you evidence your position?

So target trans women for what the greater part of the population is responsible for? Makes sense….🤪

A "trans women" is a man. Men are the problem.

Male violence against women is a problem

trans women are men

HTH

Sexual violence against women is not a trans problem. The sooner your 'movement' is able to stop conflating the existence of 1% of outliers with the epidemic of sexual violence the sooner you might be able to make an impact.

Oh & it might help if you google your thought leaders Magdalen Berns, Posie Parker & Helen Joyce (who JKR openly supports) and their comments concerning 'Jewish billionaires plot to sterilise white girls' a la antisemitic racist white replacement theory if you really want to know what the far right 'alliance' is.

basically (and as always) it's not because they are trans, it's because they are men

Next, while I believe that discussions about female spaces have validity - I speak as someone who has been a victim of violent male physical and sexual assault, for example - I believe that the vast majority of trans women are not, to use your helpful term, ‘bad actors’. There are of course a small number of examples of individual bad actors, including some from prisons. While I agree that is problematic and a solution is needed, I believe these examples to be the absolute exception and not the rule, as in any walk of life.

First, as has been pointed out by PP, the question is not whether particular transwomen are bad actors. Of course most of them aren't. Most men aren't bad actors either. Yet they're excluded from women's single sex spaces bc a few of them are. That's how safeguarding works. Theoretically, the ppl who think that transwomen should be allowed in women's single sex spaces need to show that transwomen are at least as safe as women, not that only a few of them are bad actors. I've never seen any evidence suggesting that transwomen are as safe to women as other women.

Second, even if transwomen were as safe as other women, many women wouldn't be able to use toilets, changing rooms, and other women's spaces and services if transwomen are allowed in those spaces. I have CPTSD and a history of childhood abuse. Some of it was men and boys raping or sexually abusing me in public toilets. If I see a man (or older boy), including transwomen, in a public toilet, I have flashbacks. Flashbacks include feeling terrified, feeling physical pain, and re-experiencing my abuse. They can last from hours to days or even weeks. So if transwomen are allowed in public toilets (or, e.g., the toilets where I work), I can't use them. Women in some religions would have the same restriction.

To those of you who say that JKR is over-reacting to transwomen in single sex spaces, how are you weighing the urinary leash that many women will have to live with if transwomen are allowed in SSS? E.g., how do you think it will affect women in abusive relationships who can no longer get a job (if transwomen are allowed in SSS there), go to school, go shopping or to public places like cafes, bars, or shopping areas without very careful planning? Isn't that restriction a harm in itself?

Many do not understand CPTSD (or other trauma reactions). They act like if I just educate myself and learn that most transwomen are not violent, my CPTSD will be fine. It doesn't work like that. I can cognitively know someone is not a risk but if something about them triggers me, I'll have flashbacks. I've had to stop interacting with close friends bc they triggered me.The cognitive part of my brain knew they were safe yet my body did not. I can't control that. If I see a man, including a transwoman, in a public loo, I will be triggered. I can't help that. Lots of women are the same. How much is our ability to use public spaces worth?

It's not even remotely right wing

@Howseitgoin knows this. He just thinks it's a great tactic for getting you to STFU and giving the men what they want.

I've always found it wild that women's fight against an ideology which tells them to 'shut your face or I'll shut it for you' is framed as a right wing issue.

Or that fighting for the dignity and safety of rape survivors and women in prisons is seen as not worthy. There was literally a double rapist designated to be placed in a women's prison, following actual policy.

Or that protesting that alien face hugging colonising male trans activists trying to control how women actually do their activism (the TRA's who tried to take over the protests in Edinburgh against the overturning of reproductive rights in America, for their own agenda being one such example) is women being pushed out of their own social activism movement.

Or the total institutional capture in Scotland in which women were literally told by their elected representatives to wheesht.

'Feminism. Only men can do feminism right'.

Honestly, absolutely wild.

Thank you for sharing. Despite following these issues for quite a while I’d never seen that essay. As always it’s very clear, well drafted and persuasive

I actually have never seen a coherent and logically or factually consistent detailing as to exactly what changes when a male person says this.

Just like there is this factually incorrect that a male person without testes miraculously never sexually abuses another person again. There was a useful study that I might dig up again that showed that castrated male people still sexually abused. They found other ways to do so.

A question I have never seen answered is :

What is the difference between a male person who has lost their penis and testes due to injury or disease and one that voluntarily has them removed to fit their identity? Why is one excluded from female single sex provisions and one considered female enough to be included?

So much of this is emotionally driven philosophical reasoning that lacks coherence, evidence and even logic. It is all based on the postmodernist and other theories that prop up ‘something is what I describe it as’.

Once you strip away the emotionally obscuring language, it does become clearer. Unfortunately, it is also considered extreme to use precise and accurate language. And to be considered extreme is something that someone are desperately uncomfortable with so they may not even realise the emotionally manipulative language they use.

Are these young people your children and their friends or YP you work with, OP?

As far as large data sets being required for proof of safety or not, how many records need to be collected for an accurate review.

How about this. There is a growing bank of reported incidents. There are only some

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/3348290-It-will-never-happen-resource-thread?latest=0

There is also https://reduxx.info and a site that MN blocks which is “trans crimes Uk dot com” (all one word)

There are UK prisoner statistics broken down into sex offences, there are Canadian, NZ and some USA state statistics. All showing similar patterns. That male people with transgender identities do not commit sex offences at the same rates or lower than the female prisoner population in that country.

What more data and incident repeats are needed by those declaring there is not enough to say there is an issue and we should maintain strong safeguarding where male people are excluded no matter how they identify?

There are also already reports too of female people coming face to face with their male abuser / assaulter in what they expected to be female only spaces. This includes girls. Those female people are being told they have to accept these male people in the spaces they are vulnerable in, dismissed by others.

Even if it is not their abuser specifically, seeing any male person in that space may distress them.

And for those who claim to not be able to reliably identify the correct sex of a human using body cues that cannot be changed, please don’t assume your experience is the universal experience. It is not. For every single male person who ‘transitions’ in real life and with interaction (even if that interaction is limited to observation of movement) there will be atleast one girl or woman who will correctly identify that person’s sex.

Essentially people who are very likely to still be biologically men

They are ALL always going to be biologically men, because they are men.

I don't understand what you think happens when men say 'Im a lady'. Because nothing happens. It doesn't matter how many times they say it.

If you're so weak that you can't handle robust debate with strong women without resorting to insults then FWR isn't the place for you.

Absolutely pathetic.

Some of the issues with the ‘genuine transwomen’ argument have been mentioned. Part of that also comes down to the issue with who is and isn’t genuine.

How is it kind to the person in question that some people believe they are ‘genuine’ while others don’t? Again it comes down to this issue of the ‘sometimes zone’. I don’t believe it is healthy for anyone to be in the ‘sometimes’ zone in regards to accessing single sex provisions.

It is also very poor safeguarding that access to single sex provisions is left up to someone to arbitrate whether another person is ‘transgender’ enough or ‘genuine’ . There is a reason all male people above 8 years old were excluded in the first place. It is very poor safeguarding to allow any sub group in based on whether they can be assessed as having the potential to harm or not.

And yet, why is society being pushed to lower safeguarding principles in this way? When did this ever work previously, why is this group of male people getting this special treatment?

Robust safeguarding principles do not mean that an identified group of male people gets special access until enough data is collected of physical harm to exclude them again. That is not the way safeguarding female people works.

Evidence of harm was mentioned by a poster upthread. Importantly, what was said was that there was no ‘“large” quantities of data collected. Who the fuck thinks robust safeguarding should allow experimentation of a previously excluded group having access to women and girls until enough women and girls have been harmed in quantifiable ways to exclude that group again?

That is a philosophical theory experiment.

The comparator for making a general safeguarding policy is not whether that sub group of male people have a lower risk of committing harm to female people compared to other UK male people It is whether that sub group of male people have the same or lower risk of committing harm to female people as the general female UK population.

There doesn’t need to be any ‘large’ data collection done to prove there are issues either. Because the ‘harm’ is not only about reportable physical harm. There will be a large amount of harm that will never be reported and only partly because women and girls don’t bother reporting crimes where they are the victim to any authority.

However, safety is but one aspect of the safeguarding needs for female people. There are numerous harms.

Harms include:
-Rape and sexual assault.

-Violence.

-Sexual abuse that is not rape or sexual assault.

-Sexual abuse that also includes solo sexual acts or using the experience in future sexual acts.

-Any other abuse that may include verbal abuse, intimidation in any way etc.

-A male person's presence where female people need privacy and dignity.

-A male person's presence where female people need to feel safe from any male person's presence (over the age of about 8 years old).

-Female people self-excluding knowing that there may be a male person accessing that provision.

Narrowing the discussion to sex and violence offences does not remove these other harms from consideration for single sex spaces.

The point is, why should any female person be subject to higher risk of any of these harms just to allow a group of male people with a philosophical belief about their identity that doesn't reflect material reality access?

It also comes down to asking this question.

How many additional women and girls being attacked or harmed in anyway in female single sex spaces are acceptable to you before we can expect to exclude ALL male people above the age of 8 years old?

We have been given answers such as ‘35’ and ‘over 100 each year’. If you are someone who has dismissed excluding male people because you haven’t seen enough proof that including male people in female spaces is causing harm, what is your number?

I think @middler that many people on this board understand there are people who do believe they are not the sex they materially are. Their presence in the world doesn’t change the human sex categories.

An argument we regularly see is one where people declare there ‘must be ‘ some way to give a group of male people what they want without causing harm to female people. That we as a society just hasn’t found the way yet. This is sounds comforting but it is, to be blunt, a lazy position. Because, it calls for female people to then be part of a societal wide experiment while those who want to reorganise society to be this wonderful ideal civilisation, feel good about themselves.

Sport is an excellent example of what I am talking about. How many women and girls been irreversibly harmed in the live experiment that was the inclusion of two groups of male athletes in the female sports category? Even more than 25 years on, female people are still being harmed and those who demand that there must be a way are still desperately trying to find a way. But the issue is they used philosophical theory to categorise humans where it could never remove the physical aspects to make that philosophical theory work, if you see what I mean.

So too with this discussion about ‘genuine’ people with transgender identities. Yes, of course there are people who believe they are something in they are not. It happens for many immutable aspects that form someone’s identity.

How helpful is it really to have a person who is not materially the sex they say they are, be treated only some of the time as if they could be the sex they claim, rather than the sex they materially are? To me, this is the unkindness of those who believe that their solutions are kind and manageable. Because how kind is it that a male person can be treated as being female for only part of their life and not others.

How kind is it to treat someone who is a male person as being female and allowing them to use the female toilets at your venue, where all the female people have democratically and free from any coercion agreed that he can do so, then be expected to act according to his material sex at another venue?

How kind is it that for most of the week, someone is affirmed in their identity yet is denied access to female sports teams on the weekend because actually they are not female?

How kind is it that a male person is constantly reminded that they are not really what they believe they are or want to be and that some people also may be feeling coerced into acting as if that male person is who they say they are? By the way, that doesn’t include what we have seen from self published content that this coerced superficial acceptance is attractive for some of those group, but there is no way of knowing unless you know the person extremely well.

And on the other hand, whether it is kind for female people to have those male people included is given a scant thought. And very often those who desperately need the single sex provisions are dismissed by people who have decided that even though they too have experienced abuse from male people, they don’t need this group of male people excluded so those other women and girls, they are over stating their need. Those women and girls are either making up their distress, are hateful or just ignorant or they need to seek help to just deal with it or any number of other reasons for being dismissed.

While the male people are to be centred.

There is no way around this in the way that some people almost plead for when they declare that it is
‘nuanced and others don’t see that nuance’ or that ‘there must be a way we just haven’t found it yet’ and so on. So, when people say that others are so extreme and can’t see nuance etc, it is often more that actually those people have already worked through the solutions from so many different aspects that they realise these pleaded for solutions are not really workable and not even that kind at all.

I recommend OP that you do stick around and read past threads. Last week on this board there were at least three threads specifically about JK Rowling / Emma Watson. But there are so many threads on this single board where these issues are debated. It is not an echo chamber despite people’s derisive accusations. If a concept cannot be debated with evidence provided, is it supported only by emotional reasoning ? Should we, as a society, be prioritising this emotional reasoning?

I think that there is a trap in thinking that you (this is a general ‘you’ not aimed at anyone) have a more ‘nuanced’ view to those who seem more hardline. It could also be very possible that those who have what some consider hardline views have more information at hand and have read very deeply and widely, while also robustly discussing exactly how concepts and solutions work in real life application.

For instance, we now have had people with differences of sex development introduced as a destabiliser to sex categorisation. However, even those people with DSDs can be reliably sorted into either male or female sex class categories. They are people and have been politically leveraged as a destabilising factor. And those doing this don’t even realise how they are copying this political leveraging to create a nuance that is cruel to those with this group of conditions.

So too, leveraging the different cultural groups of people who were put into cultural roles due to the oppression within their society.

The leveraging of these disparate groups to create this ‘nuanced’ view needs to be considered very carefully as to whether the way they have been leveraged is valid. I have yet to see any argument which supports their use to destabilise what we know about sex categories for humans and the impacts of being a female human in today’s society.

There is also generally a sense of ‘we just don’t know’ that is also foundational to some arguments. We do know a huge amount about human sex categories and human brains. There is not going to be a future where we can change someone’s sex unless you have a machine that changes an entire adult human body at atom level and puts that person back together so their coding is changed as well as their body parts.

Is that likely to happen? Should we be making societal changes based on this remote future? I think if you are someone who thinks, yes, we should, then you are not someone who understands how laws need to be developed.