UK radical feminists; what to do?

You aren't listening. Harm has to be balanced & specific to how the prevailing culture views harm. Just because there maybe 'potential harms' or odd occasions of harm sharing public toilets with trans women the pros & cons still need to be balanced. And harm to natal women in terms of increased scrutiny & harassment is one of those harms that many women would consider more important than 'dignity'. In fact many would argue there is no dignity in othering people for self invented 'preciousness'/dignity. We don't tend to indulge ourselves with the same 'airs & graces' as across the pond over here.

This isn't an issue in Australia purely because its not Australian's women's experience to be 'harmed' by trans women in public toilets….let alone even notice them there.

This is simply a manufactured issue that is being imposed rather than a grass roots concern.

Sal Grover has been all over the media with her attempts of this issue gaining traction all to no avail for a reason: Australian women don't care.

You should hear from @keeptoiletssafe why mixed-sex toilets are a bad idea from a safety point of view.

Your characterization of public toilet usage is fascinating: quickly using a locked cubicle in a busy public environment

For those people whose toilet usage is not quick - for toilets not in a busy public environment but which are remote and infrequently used - or infrequently checked - does your calculus change? What if the locks on the cubicles are damaged on Tuesday, but repaired by Thursday?

Your putative refuge has unsupervised single occupant bedrooms. But my refuge has only communal sleeping, and is carefully supervised. Except on Sundays. Her refuge is daytime only, but it does have group counselling sessions. Why are you not certain that the only correct way is a refuge-by-refuge, day-by-day, case-by-case or man-by-man analysis? These are reasonable questions, aren't they? What ever happened to obvious?

You're also concerned entirely with safety. British law recognizes reasons for single sex services as safety, dignity and propriety. Perhaps Australian law doesn't. How about you? You don't care about women's dignity? Or propriety?

If you can't tell the OBVIOUS difference in risk between quickly using a locked cubicle in a busy public environment or a dumb app to sharing an unsupervised room alone overnight while being in a state of recovery, 'explaining' basic logic till you are blue in the face won't help.

This is incoherent and doesn't address the issue of why in Australian law men are always considered harmful in a women's refuge but cannot be considered so in a women's toilet or an app for women (where there is equally enormous potential for harm.) You claim that the answer is obvious, yet you cannot explain it. I say it's not obvious, and it's not obvious because it's actually (and obviously) false.

What's obvious to someone with a modicum of brain cells that hasn’t been infected with phallophobia is the potential for harm dictates access not what might or might not be between someone’s legs.

I'm not privy to the legalese that underpinned such laws but I suspect

Waffle and fudge. Waffle and fudge. Twenty minutes ago it was obvious. Now it's something you can only suspect.

I think you're having difficulty answering this simple question because the fact is that even in Australia nobody belives trans women are women: if anyone really believed that then there would be no reason not to allow "trans women" into women's sports, refuges or prisons.

If you have even a single case where natal women can go and men who identify as women can't it blows to smithereens the whole TWAW schtick. And then there's no reason to allow trans-identifying men into any space, service or app for women at all besides pandering to the feelings of men. The whole edifice is logically incoherent and disappears up its own ass.

I'm not privy to the legalese that underpinned such laws but I suspect in terms of hospitals & refuges, women are more likely to be in a state of serious physical & mental recovery so their recovery outweighs the benefits to housing trans women with them. For prisons I assume the potential for criminality (given we are dealing with criminals) increases exponentially the potential for harm so its less risky to house them together.

OK. I'm now fully telt that I'm a fascist imperialist. Not lectured, mind you, but an opinion has been offered, which I must accept as others are entitled to their views. Let's move on. I still want to hear the explanation for why Australian men can enter women's toilets, but not women's single sex refuges, play in women's sports, or be placed in women's prisons.

I point out that this was claimed as obvious, so a succinct explanation should be no trouble.

The context of this thread is comparisons between countries so I'm simply offering my opinion of how & why we differ. That you interpret this as 'lecturing' is purely a function of your own inability to accept other people's entitlement to views that challenge your own. Like I said upthread, there's a fascist undertone to this whole caper that goes hand in hand with imperialism.

You don't seem to understand the concept of pros & cons existing are particular to circumstances that need to be weighed for the most effective outcome to be achieved.

That's just a longwinded way of saying there is an explanation. I want to hear what the explanation is. Why, in Australia, women's toilets (and apps) can include men, but not hospital wards, prisons, or refuges. You said it was obvious. Lay it out.

invading the psychological space

Hilarious. And yet here you are, lecturing British people on a UK website. Who's invading which psychological space now? Or are you somehow "punching up"?

Because the potential for harm in such situations outweighs the benefits. Competing rights require balancing.

You don't seem to understand the concept of pros & cons existing are particular to circumstances that need to be weighed for the most effective outcome to be achieved.

I'm still curious why it's ok for Australia to do "dunny policing" in sports, prisons, refuges and hospitals, but not in toilets and online spaces. You said it was obvious. Explain it to me.

We're all clearly way past the inclusive model you'd like to push on us, if your country has single sex sports and refuges. Now we're just quibbling about the details.

The point is habits die hard for some. Colonisation & imperialism isn't just limited to resource & land grabbing but invading the psychological space based on that old chestnut cultural supremacy.

The sexism of Genderists is so obvious you can see it from space.

Two structures can be seen from space: the great wall of China, and the great wall of Genderist bullshit they desperately keep shovelling higher and higher trying to shore up their bizarre belief that some men are really women because of feeling all womanny on the inside 😂

As for Australia being a model of egalitarianism ... I suspect Aboriginal and Torres Strait people may have rather strong views on that.

If you knew anything about the Australian indigenous population (which you clearly don't) you would know that:

A: They are not a ideological monolith with some of their loudest voices being anti paternalistic.

B. That there have been substantial legal changes regarding their equal rights as citizens & recompense for 'stolen' land.

C. That the Australian tax payer (as opposed to the British who caused this mess) has been funding indigenous issues to the tune of billions of dollars for decades that has produced improvements in living standards.

D. The crux of the problem is particular to isolated communities not urban indigenous ones where entrenched generational poverty, addiction, poor education & mental health problems perpetuate by virtue of remaining in such isolated communities.

E. Indigenous people have been given the autonomy to manage their living standards programmes.

But do go on & exploit what a few poorly informed fringe activists claim as representative of what is actually going on.

Its the right wing MO isn't it? Claim that a minority of bad actors are representative of the majority when convenient? Muslims, trans people anyone?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closing_the_Gap

Special exemptions still exist for natal women in Australia in terms of sports, prisons, refuges & hospitals btw. We just don't do dunny policing for obvious reasons

To use your own words, you clearly do do dunny policing in sports, prisons, refuges and hospitals. Why do you stop there? Why is that the correct line to draw?

Why are toilets or online apps for women different to sports, prisons, refuges and hospitals?

I don't think your "obvious" is nearly as obvious you think it is.

Anti discrimination laws are part & parcel of living in a free society.

Thank you for showcasing your profound ignorance of this case which was in essence regarding special exemptions to anti discrimination laws of which a social networking app doesn't qualify as….& probably wouldn't even in the UK if tested in court. What next a white's only social networking app?

Special exemptions still exist for natal women in Australia in terms of sports, prisons, refuges & hospitals btw. We just don't do dunny policing for obvious reasons to everyone else that scrutinising women's bodies isn't helpful to promoting women's equality.

Sweetheart, caring about female people regardless of where national borders lie is Feminism not Facism 😂

I get that you don't think female people are worth caring about, but plenty of other people do.

Exactly.

Freedom to say exactly what they are told they can say.

Far cheaper and easier to assuage guilty consciences by adopting popular leftwing causes than taking any concrete, expensive steps towards real reconciliation with First Nations.

Like the land acknowledgment announcements so popular in both countries. Looks good at first glance, but in the absence of meaningful restitution it's less of an apology and more like gloating.

Good point. Another example might be the UK legalising homosexuality (albeit ridiculously late) , but various nations colonised by the UK refusing to do so while simultaneously blaming the law's existence on the UK putting it there in the first place.

I blame white settler guilt for the situation in Canada. Far cheaper and easier to assuage guilty consciences by adopting popular leftwing causes than taking any concrete, expensive steps towards real reconciliation with First Nations.

From my perspective your postings in this thread suggest something similar: you assume the fault lies on this side and blame it on historic colonialism, which was abandoned here after world war 2 (decades before oldsters such as me were born) instead of looking hard in the mirror at your own society’s real and very present atrocious relationship with Aboriginal communities and how that may colour your attitudes.

Maybe fix your own house before lecturing us British about colonialism?

As for Australia being a model of egalitarianism ... I suspect Aboriginal and Torres Strait people may have rather strong views on that.

However, even assuming we're only talking about white Australia, it's long had a reputation for ingrained sexism. Equality legislation may have run roughly parallel with the UK in many areas, but social attitudes didn't necessarily keep up. Which tracks with hurling itself headlong into the currently fashionable version of the men's rights movement.

I guess the colonialist, imperialist, bioessentialist Brits, "the most evil people that ever existed" according to the latest Jameela Jamil hot take, that the likes of Greta and Masha are trying to promulgate here, are also to blame for all those "third genders" in the developing world being exploited and used in the West.
Strange that, because the men using them are almost wholly from European nations that our two clowns here would like to pretend are so liberated when it comes to trans issues.
Downtown Paris is absolutely a hot bed (literally and figuratively) of French, German, Dutch, Spanish men etc being so sympathetic and accepting of trans.
Throw in the mega brothels of Germany and the red light districts everywhere in the EU where European men are so modern in their attitudes to women, gays and trans, and to be frank, Britain is looking more and more an absolute oasis of sanity compared to the festering hypocrisy that is Europe as more enlightened on trans and women's rights.
Sorry if that's overly frank and full on, I just cannot stand the female cosplayers coming on here as some sort of equitable purveyors of a greater wisdom.