What TRAs or 'gender' advocates and 'gender critical' feminists agree on.

I find it interesting that do many TRAs and trans say that the new guidelines won't work/are unworkable but if that is the case its only because they won't abide by them.

I wonder what the threatened backlash will be. Continuing to use women's spaces?

So many powerful points. Ironically many being addressed to the poster who has only visited FWR previously to start 2 different threads whining about Glinner. Yet has the nerve to tone police and lecture women on here about being kind. 😆😆

The point women are making is not denying that some male people might be at risk of violence and abuse. Male people with and without transgender identities.

The point really is ‘so what does that mean to the discussion about female single sex provisions of any kind’? Why do you and other people mention this violence and abuse in the first place?

Why is a male experiencing violence and abuse being mentioned on a feminist board discussing the needs of female people? What does acknowledgement of that issue mean to feminist discussion @GiddyGiddyGiddy .

@Seethlaw well said:

Women never get anything by being kind. So not being kind is a requirement when fighting for women's rights.

@GiddyGiddyGiddy
but just being blunt and expecting things to change overnight is going to provoke a backlash.

I am blunt, here and in real life (and as long as doing so won't cost me my job, I don't care what others think of me). Blunt works. A lot. It cuts through emotional BS and superfluous waffle, and gets to the heart of the matter. And blunt can be kind and it can be polite, but it doesn't need to be, and I don't care if it isn't.

I am not expecting things to change overnight (this is reality, not a game with programmable characters), but the EA 2010 was clarified overnight, and I expect people to obey the law. If being blunt helps make that clear to people, then so be it.

When discussing safeguarding principles and the safeguarding policy application, groups of male people must be treated as 'the worst of them'. That is because full exclusion is the only answer. There can be no special groups of male people (over the age of about 8 years old.).

I still think that this is more down to how the "T" tagged itself on to to LGB organisations and expanded out that way.

There have been other attempts to progress the "T" and other acronyms and they have been (quite rightly) slapped down when they have been put forward by themselves.

Can't fault that logic.

GiddyGiddyGiddy
Yes, but there are also pretty significant obstacles facing transpeople; they're more at risk of violent crime and there is a genuine crisis WRT medical care for them.

Can you provide some evidence of either of these?
Just something tangible would be nice.

Absolutely.

What is a legitimate interest? Why did this legitimate interest develop? Who is vulnerable in certain situations? And who is most in need of these services?

One that's recently come up on my radar is a males only group. They are a social group. One of the things they've done in recent years is focus on mens mental health and mens friendship. In a healthy way. It's about trying to encourage isolated men to find friends.

There are other groups available locally but this one is doing well precisely because it is 'blokey'. One of the blokes thinks it's a bit old fashioned and not inclusive.

I pointed out who it is inclusive of - recent divorcees, men who are single, men who just want to get away from the stresses of family, men who have certain health issues, men who have trouble with showing they aren't always masculine in the presence of women. He's fine - he doesn't have any of this shit going on. Introducing women to the pot would result in many of the others in the group self excluding. This doesn't mean they don't mix with women. I know them because of this group.

In our heads we've come to believe that inclusive just means protective characteristics. This simply isn't true. It's a much more complex thing.

It can be about identifying vulnerable people within a single characteristic and providing a support network around those particular weaknesses and issues.

These are important distinctions to be made.

In terms of social groups whether it is appropriate to exclude males from a female group. It would be more appropriate for them to have their own group to represent and deal with their unique issues separately without harming their own interests or the interests of women. That's the point.

If there's a women's only outdoor group and one of its stated aims to discuss the female body and the challenges this has doing outdoor adventures and how impacts like female strength, childcare, the menopause and female aging and health care as well as safety and two blokes with beards come up giggling and ask if they are welcome to join, I think we should be able to tell them to legitimately stop taking the piss and fuck off to the LGBTQ group who had their presentation half an hour earlier on the same day. (Real life situation) Instead we are supposed to sit politely and just suck it up and then end up self excluding because it's obvious no one has the backbone to say, this isn't appropriate for you and we serve a legitimate gap in outdoor activities that there is high demand for.

A productive debate could discuss when single sex services are necessary and e.g. the design of toilets. There would be disagreement, but there would be parameters for discussion.

You could have a discussion about freedom of association and how an association should describe itself if it wants to be for people who share a gender identity.

However, all this necessitates the acknowledgement of sex, and it's not clear who is prepared to do that.

This nonsense is HARMING trans people and women ALIKE.

That's the bloody irony.

Women should not capitulate because they are ultimately right - you can't change sex. This doesn't mean they want the erasure of transpeople. In many cases it's precisely because they recognise that the transpeople around them deserve better than this utter shit show.

That's true.

What's also human nature is to not rush to comfort one's opponent when they lose, after said opponent has dragged you through the mud and literally taken you to court for daring to simply speak the truth.

Especially when said opponent doesn't even admit they've lost anyway, or if they did, it's because you cheated or something.

Asking women to be all kind and forgiving now is utterly unfair. Also, it's sexism.

Just bloody stop it.

People have been let off the hook for too bloody long because women haven't got angry.

We should be enormously angry and say it loudly and clearly. We should be writing this down and expressing the strength of our feelings over this. It should be in a constructive way though.

This includes telling people to wind their necks in and stop it with this crap about tone policing.

We have one almighty scandal in maternity services PRECISELY because of all these dynamics.

People have died because women haven't got angry enough.

We should be encouraging everyone here to be angry. Being angry is the only way we will get these issues up the political agenda and heads will rolls where they need to roll. We should be protecting these middle and senior management numpties anymore.

I do not support Farage. I am frustrated as hell by how we have got to this point in 2026.

It's too many over promoted numpties who are too bloody comfortable. And that's the fault of the centre, centre left and centre right.

I'm raging. But my rage isn't being channelled into the dubious bullshit of Reform or the Greens.

Fully agree @RedToothBrush

Yes it's human nature, but you need some people in life to put a rocket up the arse of those who should be taking these responsibilities seriously because it's literally their job and they are paid to be competent.

If they are incompetent and lazy I have no problem holding them to account. This isn't something we should be polite about. This is where disciplinary action is appropriate! Or indeed legal proceedings!

How mean of us, to get grumpy when we pay lots of money as tax payers for those elected to positions of responsibility or those who have been promoted in their senior jobs, to actually go "THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER AND DEAL WITH IT".

Then everyone wonders in faux innocence why Nigel Farage is riding high in the polls. It's because so many people have failed to do their fucking jobs properly and this seems to be some sort of massive shock and revelation.

No it's not really.

Well quite.

I have a whole pile of issues going on in my real life now quite unconnected with this issue.

The theme running through all is the sheer number of adults who are unwilling to do the hard and difficult things. They just want to do all the fun shit and then abdicate responsibility for all the less fun stuff and unfortunately this is having a negative impact on others.

I am having to chuck reality check grenades left right and centre - not unreasonably I might add. The trouble this means people actually have to get off their arses and deal with the problem then.

This is about avoidance of difficult issues because people, to be blunt, are lazy more than anything else and just want an easy life. It's not even about morality or not wanting to voice a controversial opinion. It's about abdicating responsibility so they can do as little as possible and get on with their safe life and dump it on anyone else.

I am now at the point where I get no shits. I know there is no one else to do it and everything will go to shit if I don't.

I suspect this the ultimate problem amongst the civil service, NHS and various other organisations. People couldn't be arsed to give a shit. That means giving a shit for women OR transpeople. They just hope the whole subject goes away and they never have to deal with it.

Unfortunately for them, this isn't the case and they will all be confronted with the consequences at some point and most will be seriously unimpressed about the outcome as they will not 'win'.

The bottom line: when this is the norm EVERYONE is a loser. No one wins.

Yes, but there were a lot of people in authority who could have nipped it in the bud early on, and a lot more who thought it was “progressive” and clapped it like seals.

I genuinely can't think of a similar topic.

I agree that arguments on twitter are deliberately stoked by the algorithm, but that doesn't prevent people talking off line.

I think Sex Matters and FWS are pretty representative of women who believe that sex is important and open to discussion, but who is their counterpart?

A journalist like Sarah Ditum is certainly open to engagement, but Newsnight couldn't find anyone to talk to her.

I believe people did say 'tough shit'.

And got banned. For life.

So they had to be polite. And now being polite is the problem.

Oh how my gast is flabbered.

You haven’t engaged with anyone’s points, on this thread or the one you started and abandoned. I won’t @ you any more but I’ll continue to contribute as I see fit.

Irregardless of all of this, I do think that coming onto a thread specifically started to address commonalities between TRAs and GCs, only to fly off the handle when some of those commonalities are negative, really defeats the point of the discussion.

Okay, clumsy wording by me but the point still stands. Acting as if anyone who's been proven wrong is going to immediately turn around and acquiesce is delusional. That's not a problem with transpeople or even TRAs, it's just human nature.

The overlap between yellow and green show the common factor is accepting gender variation: anyone can wear what they like and be as 'masculine' or 'feminine' as they like.

Edit: Can't seem to post a paste of the venn diagram.

Edit again: it is shown on this thread:
Do you think the term "Gender Critical" is why some people won't engage? | Mumsnet