J.K Rowling's Position

"If these posts are significantly coming from trans women without similarly nasty provocation from the ‘other side’ then there’s clearly an issue to be dealt with and (edited to add) could be considered to constitute a secondary threat (either way content like this should be policed and dealt with). Can you please confirm if you’re able to?"

yes. The screenshots on terfisaslur are from male people with transgender identities. And no, there is absolutely no symmetry with anything even half way similar that feminists are saying.

I encourage you to do your own research on this. It is really very easy. Whenever there is a trans supportive protest in the UK, look at the images of the protests and the signs will generally contain messages such as that terf is a slur site. You also don't have to look very far to find male influencers with transgender identities posting images and videos of themselves in female single sex spaces with defiant messages, some of them with messages just as threatening as those on terfisaslur.

I, personally, have been subject to such abuse merely for attending a women's event. The abuse being screamed at women at the event was just as you see on that terfisaslur site. And it happens at every single women's publicised event in the UK. There are male people with transgender identities protesting film launches, meetings, conferences, seminars shouting abuse and attempting to drown out the women.

Do you really think that women are abusing or threatening these male people in any way, other than saying 'We need single sex spaces to exclude all male people'? The worst that might happen is a woman yelling 'you are a man!' in the general direction or women singing a song about 'if a man has a willy he is a man'. Do you think that those are comparable to male people declaring that if any woman even looks at him while he is in a female single sex space expect a violent reaction? Or signs about decapitating terms? Or Sarah Baker, a male violent offender, yelling into a microphone at a protest that if 'anyone sees a terf, punch her in the fucking face'?

If you would like to see footage or other images that match the terfisaslur, just go onto twitter, bluesky and search the term 'terf' it will likely come up with results. Otherwise, some of us will be very happy to start posting links to the content.

There are years and years of content out there. This shouldn't be a surprise to any person who has kept up to date with this issue and just how feminists have been treated when they attempt to publicly discuss this issue.

If you did provide studies they would not be accepted as peer reviewed/with the right evidence/ proving anything that meant women were entitled to have some privacy away from men who claim trans identities. The harm to those women would and never will be significant enough for men to agree to grant those women any rights that would present them with inconvenient barriers to their desired use of women.

It's pointless explaining Einstein to a dog, it's pointless trying to use objective reason with someone living in an alternative reality where they all unwanted facts and evidence are invisible, and it's pointless trying to convince a misogynist to permit women any rights. Particularly when he feels that he is entitled to have them undress for him and this relies on her never having any right of escape.

It's rather like trying to convince a domestic abuser that he really should accept its wrong to go on hitting his partner and stop doing it. He won't. We all know he won't. It won't matter how much you explain that he is injuring and scaring her, that she has rights too, that she matters as much as he does, that treating her this way is wrong. He doesn't care that it's wrong; doing it meets his need, he wants to do it and he can because he has power she doesn't. The only thing you can do is LTB and have strong boundaries on the door of the refuge to prevent him marching in to continue doing to her what makes him happy. And be very clear in society that his behaviour makes him an absolute dick.

Here is one for you @UnintentionalArcher

committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18973/pdf/

This is it, really. We are scolded for not provided studies (which would never be funded or allowed) to prove that actually yes, trans women are just as much a threat as men. But never do TRAs explain what magic happens that removes all threat from men when they declare they are a woman. Why does saying ‘I’m a woman’ making a man less of a danger than if they don’t say that?

This is helpful also -

If you have any links to studies or reviews about the threat that trans women as a population pose to women, please can you post?

Most men aren't a threat to women. You might as well make an argument that men with red hair are less of a risk to women than other men, and ask women to prove that they aren't.

The onus is on you to prove that they are less of a risk, but with no clear way of defining 'trans' (see reluctance of courts, police and media to suggest that a convicted rapist might be having them on) that could be difficult.

I think these might be useful for new posters/lurkers -

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3348290-It-will-never-happen-resource-thread

Thanks very much for responding to me - much appreciated. It’s great to be able to engage in sensible discussion with thoughtful people about this.

That first link isn’t working (I’m getting a website not found message). The second one takes me to a website with screenshots of lots of tweets containing abusive/unpleasant language and slurs about so-called ‘TERFs’ (a divisive term which I really dislike). Can you please tell me if those are posts predominantly from trans women themselves, mainly from other people who for some reason think it’s ok to speak abusively to people who they disagree with, or from a mixture? I can’t see the sources specified anywhere on the website but it would be important to be clear on that before making any further comment. If these posts are significantly coming from trans women without similarly nasty provocation from the ‘other side’ then there’s clearly an issue to be dealt with and (edited to add) could be considered to constitute a secondary threat (either way content like this should be policed and dealt with). Can you please confirm if you’re able to?

What you’ve posted is absolutely alarming. It looks like what I would call ‘secondary content’ - i.e. content where abuse and slurs link to those engaged in the discourse itself, rather than content documenting the experiences of women who’ve been harmed by trans women in situations of concern like those raised by Rowling around female-only spaces. This type of content exemplifies one of my original points about how the inflammatory discourse around this has detracted from and damaged sensible, proportionate discussion like you and I are trying to engage in here.

What I was originally asking about was larger-scale evidence about the threat that some say trans women pose to women in those primary circumstances described by Rowling.
If you have any links to studies or reviews about the threat that trans women as a population pose to women, please can you post? If studies/reviews don’t exist yet (I’m sure others with more expertise may know better than me) then online sharing of anecdotal experiences of women in those situations could also form important evidence. The #MeToo movement relied a lot on women sharing their experiences of sexual harassment and was extremely powerful- if similar anecdotal evidence existed for harms caused by trans women to women in female-only spaces, taking that as just one example of concern, and women can speak out or are speaking out about that en masse on social media, then it would certainly suggest a threat posed at a population level. (To be clear taking just one example, I personally think that transgender women should be housed separately in prisons, for various reasons, but I’m not convinced that there is the population-level threat that many suggest). Naturally I wouldn’t expect there to be the same volume of anecdotes as for #MeToo because of small numbers of trans women as a percentage of the population, but anecdotal evidence of any significance of scale would be useful to see.

I will say that I’m going into hospital today for a period, so will endeavour to check back at in the future to have a look at anything you share, but won’t be able to read anything you post quickly.

All the best.

I agree.

The vast majority of trans-identifying men have only cosmetic surgery: they don’t harm their precious male genitals. But with or without a penis they can still intimidate, abuse and assault.

Any man using women’s facilities is threatening all women there, and actively harming women who have been traumatised by earlier sexual abuse.

I agree. I am all for accepting any person who declares a transgender identity being part of the group.

However, if it was my project, I would want to reduce the raw numbers at the start because that would be the very thing that will keep being mentioned to discredit the work, if you know what I mean.

Helleofabore

every male criminal with a transgender identity needs to be vetted as to whether they are or are not gaming the system.

We should start with the assumption that they are and work from there. And it goes without saying that nary a one should be in the women's estate.

Ask firstly if they’ve read her essay, not just the headlines that brand her as anti trans, hateful etc, then ask which parts of her essay they disagree with.

Ah but Sinner!…. Apparently it needs to be a specific review or study. Which of course, would have to be approved somehow and never considered transphobic to start with. Oh and apparently, it would also require an independent team to actually ascertain whether any negative discrimination factors were at play as we are assured accounts for all those male people with transgender identities being in prison in the first place.

Who the fuck is going to fund that? No transgender support group is going to ever allow such a project to be undertaken. Because to start with, every male criminal with a transgender identity needs to be vetted as to whether they are or are not gaming the system. That directly contradicts the ‘we are who we say we are’ mantra from the start.

Then you get to situation of what then happens when reality is shown and the lack of symmetry between male people with transgender identities and female people is real, measurable with conviction statistics and actually there IS a problem. What transgender support group is going to risk that?

So instead, people who declare they are the reasonable moderates, relying on false comparisons with other groups and unlikely future hopeful discoveries, say they will never believe there is an issue until there is ‘large-scale’ figures . It makes them feel better while holding a position that continues to allow female people to be harmed.

Oh yes…. It also denies that female people are harmed in other ways than reportable offences.

We have seen the arguments used by extreme transgender activists as well as those who believe that their ‘moderate’ position is workable in achieving protection for female people. And so the cycle continues.

Trans women are men. Their actions and sense of entitlement show that. Actual women would never display such overt disregard for other women. The end.

As I understand it, there is no large-scale or robust evidence that transwomen as a population pose a risk to biological women.

I suggest an hour or two of browsing

www.terfcrime.co.uk

and

www.terfisaslur.com

I'd still like to know who the young people are who want to dictate what the OP thinks about a topic and that she isn't allowed to express an opinion that differs from their's. Her children?

Yes dear. Very good. Now remember it’s time to change typing hand and antibac your keyboard and mouse. Don’t want any germs or RSI. I am not sure why you are on a feminism board arguing with women as to what feminism is, but I’m really glad you’re learning from the well read, articulate women on these boards. And the useful life tips. 😃

And howseitgoin’s latest post, @middler , is the type of DARVO tactic that is illustrates what I was referring to.

& while your'e at it special agent @middler, this might help you 'process' Hell's 'tip off'…

"In my book I demonstrate that mainstream transactivism is not a grassroots movement, but a top-down one. One part of the evidence is that rich individuals and foundations make large donations to campaign groups that, among other things, lobby to erase biological sex from law and to enshrine gender identity in its place. Some of that money is tied to campaigns for gender self-ID. I discuss the ACLU, HRC and Stonewall in most detail, but there are many others. And I give a sense of the funding that comes from rich individuals by discussing three examples: George Soros via the Open Societies Foundation; Jennifer Pritzker via the Tawani Foundation; and Jon Stryker via the Arcus Foundation.
This is in no sense “dark money”, and I don’t say it is. The information is readily available because all such American foundations and charities are legally required to publish details of where they get their money and what they spend it on. I found the information on their websites. This makes a nonsense of Bilek’s claim that I plagiarised her: that these foundations donate heavily to campaign groups that press for gender self-ID is publicly available information, and she and I are not the only ones to have pointed it out.
I didn’t deliberately select three Jewish donors; it never occurred to me to think about their religions. Two of the three, it turns out, are indeed Jewish, though that is not something I mention in my book because it is utterly irrelevant. Judging by the tenor of conversation on Twitter, Jon Stryker may or may not be Jewish: his religion appears not to be a matter of public record. I have not sought to ascertain it, because—again—I think it’s irrelevant. I also think it’s interesting that the people accusing me of antisemitic dog-whistles are speculating about someone’s religion, when I did not even speculate about it."

'I just happen to only mention jewish donors one of which just happened to be the far right's go to man for 'white great replacement theory'…

George Soros really?🤥

Please. That you believe this is any sort of adequate rebuttal or 'coincidence' is only another example of GC denial of reality.

@middler

I was rereading your thread and came back to this post.

This is perhaps a classic example of what you are talking about in your OP in the way some people will dismiss the concerns of women and girls.

It starts off supporting a previous poster's post by using a false 'nuanced' description for the post. That previous post when you go through it carefully, is actually unworkable in real life and relies on flawed understanding of people with DSDs, historical groups and future potential discoveries that a poster feels 'must' be discovered eventually. Of course, they are most welcome to express their opinion and to come onto the board to discuss it. I would actually encourage the poster to do so and drill further into those concepts expressed.

This quoted poster though amplifies that opinion as 'nuanced' and those based on established science and experience in listening to other female people and their needs while also considering the real life application limits of an 'inclusive' model as 'over simplistic'. That too is fine and that poster's opinion which is equally poorly informed from weeks of previous experience.

Then the poster seeks to shame feminists by completely misrepresenting the breadth of feminist action in the UK. By the way, the poster is not even in the UK and has very poor knowledge of feminism (I encourage you to use the advanced search function and read their many posts on the topic). Either way, this is a false representation of feminist action, because feminist groups are doing all the things that this poster has decided should be every feminist's priority AS WELL as campaigning and working towards ensuring that female people's needs are met through single sex provisions and safeguarding policies.

According to this poster, this must be impossible to do and that women just aren't putting enough focus in fixing male pattern behaviour towards female people. This is actually a misogynistic approach and it is a tactic of Men's Rights Activists who feel they should be able to shame women for their failure to stop men from abusing them. Over the past 6 weeks, this poster has posted almost daily versions of this particular accusation towards feminists on this board.

However, those wider focused actions have been diminished, derided and dismissed by this poster with the sentence: "but alas its loos & 'men in dresses' that dominate public attention"

While then falsely accusing UK feminists of playing into the hands of the 'far right patriarchial interests'. UK feminists are rather solidly left wing politically and this has not changed over the past decade.

Again, this is ignorance and it is a tired old tactic. False alignments such as this is meant to make feminists fear discussing female people's needs of single sex provisions and safeguarding. This poster does this repeatedly on every thread. It is not true and most UK feminists who were the very early groups trying to raise the alarm are still very much active and they are certainly not 'far right' and not playing into the hands of the 'far right'.

The desired outcome of this poster is that feminists in the UK focus their attention on this person's personal political aims, and those are that any male person who says they are female should have access to female single sex provisions.

This post that I am quoting uses very common tactics seen on MN. It is a daily occurrence on this board and it would explain why women are highly suspicious. This post seeks to demonise and vilify women who disagree with this poster.

I hope this might help you to sort through your own thoughts about the topic @middler and see the tactics that people are using and perhaps why you posted here in the first place.

Absolutely excellently put. Yes it is good that there are ways of saying that ‘not a man’ does not immediately mean ‘a woman’. But we need to be careful about saying that anyone is not a male or female or is a lesser version of either as that allows those ‘proper’ men to justify hierarchy and their place at the top.

I hadn’t even considered the increased pressure to pass and what that could do to a person. Also, lying by omission. It’s quite scary the path that they are trying to pull us down. It can’t be good for anyone’s wellbeing.

Thanks for clarifying. I think you raised an important point that joining those third groups is not always a voluntary act by the individual concerned. Whereas transwomen here are the ones saying "we are not men and shouldn't be treated as men".

So there isn't an exact equivalence, and heaven forbid that the stigma should be replicated. But it's a useful reminder that "not a man in the usual sense" can be socially expressed in ways other than "actually a woman".

I suspect the "actually a woman" narrative may up the ante in other ways besides the obvious invasion of women's spaces and appropriation of language. It may increase the pressure to "pass", and the temptation to be less than honest when sex matters. Which then tends to make a holy grail of preventing puberty and transitioning early so as to pass better.

Sorry HeggettyPeg, I wasn’t intending to say you were implying anything progressive about said cultures. You are completely correct in saying that they did not consider that their 3rd genders were the same as women and that they are not sharing the same spaces.

However, I was pointing out that these cultures enforce a certain role on homosexuals. A homosexual male is lesser than a man and so is woman-adjacent (their opinion not mine), and basically that homosexual females do not exist.

My point being it is unlikely these 3rd genders would exist without the misogynistic practices and beliefs in these cultures.

Sorry for not explaining myself properly, I only dealt with the first part of your post and should have commented on the correctness of your post overall too.

Yes. I remember the comment from
the Samoan PM, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, about 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,"

His comment really did contradict so many activist statements that leveraged Samoan culture. I saw a lot less posters posting about the fa'afafine with the view to leveraging their situation to score political points after that.

Also the fa'afafine rugby player. Played for the male Samoan team not the female team.