If the majority of women voted in favour of self ID?

Get away with you, with your pesky statistics! We want to discuss in very vague terms, what we would 'do' about something that's not really been explained.

There is no way, if explained correctly, that the majority of women would vote for self ID, I am very confident about that.

If people were happy for all spaces to be mixed sex there wouldn't have been an outcry over mixed sex hospital wards and we would have mixed sex prisons.

If you have a binding referendum, it would be dealt with better than Brexit, which had no
minimum turnout / minimum vote split. (Plus, the Brexit referendum would've had its result voided if it had been binding, due to illegality.)

There is no way, if explained correctly, that the majority of women would vote for self ID, I am very confident about that.

The only reason there's an issue in OP's question is the confusion over rights and privileges.

Everyone has the same rights. That's what rights are. Otherwise they're privileges.

So all the usual civil rights, which everyone has without affecting the same rights for anyone else, apply to trans people. Job discrimination (except where sex is actually relevant to the job), housing discrimination, etc etc are illegal. Dress how you like (again, within the limits of job requirements). Marry whom you like.

But taking over single sex spaces is NOT in that class. If everybody did it, it wouldn't work for anybody. That's a privilege, not a right. That's why it does not work when applied universally. That's why women have to be told to shut up and be kind, because it's their rights being trampled.

Self-ID? Fine when it's applied to purely personal business. Same way as religious freedom is fine in that case.

Not fine when it's used to tell other people they can't have the same right to self-define.

It's not a question of what the majority thinks any more than any other right is.

My view on whether men should be allowed to use female SSS is governed by the rules of the material universe, which dictate that it is not possible.

There are only two options: mixed sex or uni sex.

If men and women in some societies are happy for all facilities to be mixed sex, then they should certainly go for it.

But even if that were the case women and men will still always rely on different rights, and if we can't recognise the distinct material differences that lead to sex inequality, and thus ensure provision of the resources that mitigate this, we might as well all move to Afghanistan.

It's mystifying that this still needs to be explained.

There would have to be an opportunity for honest and frank debate first, to ensure that women all knew the potential consequences. If it happened now, too many women just haven’t been given a chance to do that, such is the pressure on them still to keep quiet and kind.

IF that happened, and all sides are able to make their case, then it would be like the abortion debate in Ireland: those who lost are perfectly free to continue to campaign but the reality is that when the debates have been had, the decision is seen as fair.

The original abortion debate in the 80s was heavily directed in favour of the catholic church’s stance, so not honest at all. When there was a proper debate, the result was very different. And it’s noticeable that Self ID in Ireland was passed without any similar discussion - as Denton’s handbook explained.

It depends what you mean by self ID.

There is no law preventing anyone from self IDing as a e.g. a witch as long as they don't harm anyone else. It it's not a status that has any legal standing.

On the other hand if most women decided they wanted to remove the concept of sex from legislation and policy, I would assume that they lacked the relevant legal expertise and weren't competent to make the judgement.

Similarly if the majority of people said they really wanted to Implement the Count Binface 99p ice cream rule, I would doubt their understanding of economic policy.

HEPI "A BREED APART? WHAT DO YOUNG UNDERGRADUATES THINK OF CONTROVERSIAL AND DIVISIVE ISSUES?"
https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/A-breed-apart-What-do-young-undergraduates-think-of-controversial-and-divisive-issues.pdf

https://www.hepi.ac.uk/reports/a-breed-apart-what-do-young-undergraduates-think-of-controversial-and-divisive-issues/

The data:
https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/A-breed-apart-polling-data.xlsx

p6: Transwomen and transmen

The questions were:
Q6. Do you think that biological males who identify as women should be allowed to use women’s changing rooms?

Question 6: the responses were:
Yes: 31% (male 26%) (female 33%) (16-19 - 29%) (20-21 - 32%)
No: 55% (male 63%) (female 50%) (16-19 - 58%) (20-21 - 53%)
Don't know: 14% (male 11%) (female 17%) (16-19 - 13%) (20-21 - 15%)

Q7. Do you think that biological females who identify as men should be allowed to use men’s changing rooms?

Question 7: the responses were:
Yes: 34% (male 31%) (female 36%) (16-19 - 34%) (20-21 - 35%)
No: 52% (male 58%) (female 47%) (16-19 - 53%) (20-21 - 51%)
Don't know: 14% (male 11%) (female 17%) (16-19 - 13%) (20-21 - 14%)

Comment from the report:
When asked for their views on the changing-room facilities that transwomen and transmen should be expected to use, roughly one-third of students say people should use the changing room assigned to their gender identity while one-half disagree (presumably assuming they should use the facility assigned to their sex at birth or a gender-neutral space). Although we asked about transwomen and transmen separately, the results were similar for these two groups.

In contrast, a 2026 JL Partners poll for Sex Matters found just one-in-five (19%) adults think people ‘should be allowed to use whichever facilities they prefer’. In the same poll, over one-third of respondents said people ‘should use the facilities of their sex at birth’ (36%) and another third said ‘they should not use facilities of the opposite sex but there should be an alternative’ (34%).

These results suggest students may be a little more favourable than the public overall towards those who wish to use the changing facility for their gender rather than the one for their sex at birth – but it is notable that both a majority of students and a majority of the whole adult population pick other options.

Most of the answers from the 18-24 year old age group for the Sex Matters March 2026 research are not far off this.

The question was: A transgender person is someone who says they are the other sex, that is, a person born male who identifies as a woman, or a person born female who identifies as a man. How do you think transgender people should be accommodated in toilets…

They should be allowed to use whichever facilities they prefer (18-24 yr age group responded):
At work - 38%,
In gyms and leisure centres - 30%,
At university - 30%,
In a bar or entertainment venue - 33%,
In public toilets - 30%
In hospital - 30%
They should not use facilities for the opposite sex but there should be an alternative (18-24 yr age group responded):
At work - 38%,
In gyms and leisure centres - 42%,
At university - 35%,
In a bar or entertainment venue - 32%,
In public toilets - 33%
In hospital - 32%
They should use the facilities of their sex at birth (18-24 yr age group responded) :
At work - 18%,
In gyms and leisure centres - 21%,
At university - 23%,
In a bar or entertainment venue - 26%,
In public toilets - 28%
In hospital - 28%
Unsure. (18-24 yr age group responded) :
At work - 12%,
In gyms and leisure centres - 12%,
At university - 12%,
In a bar or entertainment venue - 12%,
In public toilets - 12%
In hospital - 11%

@MaIeficent Apparently YouGov polling shows that the majority of young women in the UK 'overwhelmingly support self ID'.

Can we have a link please? The YouGov polling from Feb 2025 has sex categories (men / women) and age categories (18-24 / 25-49 etc) but doesn't have any categories of sex plus age (eg 18 - 24 women).

The polling in the 18 - 24 age group is actually quite interesting. A majority say people should be able to identify as a different gender. A (smaller) majority say that the law should allow people to change their legal gender. However, when asked about making it easier to obtain a GRC, a plurality (49%) say 'No'.

So the 'support for self ID' does not extend to legal recognition.

https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/51545-where-does-the-british-public-stand-on-transgender-rights-in-202425

(The full data set is available at the bottom of the webpage)

Perhaps if the question put to young women was “Do you support self ID?” Immediately followed by “Do you support the right of an adult male to get undressed in a room full of teenage girls?” And then “Would you happily get undressed in front of adult males unknown to you at the local swimming pool?”
See if they still overwhelmingly support self ID then like in all these other progressive countries…

No.

Firstly, objective reality exists. I do not subscribe to the sort of extreme social constructionism that argues that things only exist because people say they do. If the majority of women declared that a male could become a female, it wouldn't make that a true fact any more than people genuinely believing that the sun was the centre of the universe made it true.

Secondly, there is a reason we don't govern by 'tyranny of the majority'. Minority groups have rights. A majority of women saying 'we don't mind if males are in our intimate spaces' does not override the minority who say no. You can't give consent on another woman's behalf. You can be happy to personally use a unisex space shared with those males. That's fine. You can't remove single-sex spaces simply because sex-based rights aren't important to you personally. Other women have rights too, including religious women, women who have suffered trauma, and anyone else who simply values privacy, dignity and safety and therefore doesn't want males sharing their intimate spaces, no matter how those males identify.

That sounds very sensible to me.

I don't particularly care what model we end up with so long as women's single sex spaces are maintained.

Oh and so long as language is clear. If the space is unisex, then let it be labelled unisex.

Absolutely. On another thread I suggelsted that it would be a good idea to move to a default that in any provision, at least one third (rounding up) should be single-sex for female, at least one third (rounding up) should be unisex (and should be the default choice for all the women who proclaim they are happy to share with men, who can provide validation services for TIMs in there as well as anyine else who likes being in mixed sex spaces for any reason) and the remainder should be for males.

So - space for 2 loos - keep one single sex for women, so that those women who need single-sex for any reason can. The other can be unisex. Space for 3 loos - one female, one male, one unisex. Etc etc.

I was shouted down by people who think there should be just male and female and the trans-identifyimg should just get over it but I really don't think that is realistic. OTOH there seem to be plenty of businesses that have a budget for virtue-signalling and this would be a way to guarantee everyone has a place to pee without breaking the law.

It's not perfect, but it's a lot more practical and realistic than other suggestions.

"I'm not so interested in hearing about the stats/reality" in your original post, but here you are quoting stats, to make it look as if the UK and the US are outliers. Perhaps we are, and perhaps for once we are ahead of the game and have recognised the problem with self-id, which is that people use it to claim rights and privileges at the expense of other people (particularly women).

The thing with surveys about 'self id' or any mans right to be a women is that the results are unreliable because everyone's interpretation is deferent.

If someone thinks in terms of clothes and name changed, the results will be different to a question that talks about reallocated nhs money to enabling TW to become pregnant. Everyone would say that is a pointless waste of money because they are male.

The question is always "given we know these people are male, in which situations can we pretend that they are female?".

It can never be self id because everyone will have limits to who can pretend and in what circumstances.

@Maleficent

"I'd also be conflicted if the choice was in my hands and I knew my preferred choice would be against the wishes of most women"

Can you please explain what you mean by this. How could the 'choice be in your hands'?

And either you have principles or you don't. If you thought self-id was wrong, how could you (in this hypothetical 'having a choice' of which you speak) choose something you did not believe in?

The majority of people who voted in my borough (probably the majority of my friends) voted for a Green Council and a Green Mayor recently.
I did not vote Green just to keep in with what my friends wanted, to fulfil what they believed would be positive outcome eg for the environment, because I think they did not possess good information about what they were voting for.

I this the sort of thing you mean?

If a majority of women want unisex provision, fine. It already exists and there would be an argument for expanding it.

There would not, however, be an argument for taking single sex provision away from those women who still want/need it and do not consent to share their spaces with men.

Exactly.

We're told "gender" is the defining characteristic, but what are we actually supposed to take from that? Hormonally grown tits, heels and a wig do not speak louder than stereotypically male aggression, threats, violence, piss protests, voyeurism, indecent exposure and utter dismissal of the lived experience of women.

Edit to add: I am in no way suggesting all males with a trans ID exemplify the worst of these stereotypically male traits. But unfortunately the current iteration of trans ideology insists that many of these traits are actually inherent to a male trans ID. This is obviously extremely dangerous! And sadly the mainstream media is not keen to platform transwomen who, for example, use male spaces and stand with women, rather than speaking for them.

"The majority of German women support the self-identification law, known in Germany as the Selbstbestimmungsgesetz (Self-Determination Act), with extensive polling showing that women consistently express higher rates of approval for the legislation than men."

I always find it interesting that men are more likely to NOT support self ID.

I think that this is because men know what men can be like! They know all about dodgy men.

Of course young women are going to be pro self ID! There's been an aggressive push to indoctrinate them throughout their childhood and they are heavily coerced into self negation.

This is nothing new. It's plain old misogyny, with a slightly different flavour.

I missed the trans training growing up in 90s/00s (although ironically I did know actual transexuals and they were a world away from the current ideology) but I was still socialised into putting men and their feelings first. All the abuse and assaults I endured, I assumed were 100% my fault! Never even considered involving the police. Our culture colluded to hide the fact it was actually an endemic problem in society. I was in my 30s when I found out how common rape actually is.

This particular flavour of misogyny is also a class issue. Generally, it's privileged women who have no issues giving away the rights of other women. Women who don't expect to be strip searched or incarcerated or who have the means to comfortably survive maternity discrimination.

When historical biases such as misogyny, racism, ableism and homophobia run so deep in society, I think a progressive stance is to take positive actions against them and try to enshrine these stances in laws. Otherwise every reactionary political swing to the hard right, every top- down, well funded , astro-turfed lobbying group, risks making life more dangerous for everyone.

Self id - the right for a man to claim he is female and be treated as such is never going to work. Not because of laws or opinion polls but because of reality.

The best these men can do is campaign to remove sex as an official category and a PC. But it won't abolish sex or make men female.

If we do decide to organise on individuals men's idea of their gender not sex, how long before we notice sex again?

Do we have to pretend its random who has periods and give birth, who has a 0% chance of ovarian cancer and who has an non zero chance?

Are we going to claim that the testicular cancer rates have reduced because we have to assume anyone can have it?

Do we have to ignore the criminality rates? Is everyone going to be happy with men following girls into toilets and changing rooms because there is a law to say these men are female?

Its fantasy.

Self id cannot work because we see sex, we know there are differences between the sexes. A law to remove sex will last three minutes.

This

AI is GIGO. Garbage in garbage out.

Ask AI is ‘self ID’ is supported and it will tell you the superficial level polling data. Ask it specifically if the majority of female people support any male person above 8 yrs old being in a female single sex provision, and I believe you will get a different AI result.

Ask then for any country that will prosecute a female person for saying a male person is not female or for misgendering or for denying a male access where he demands access to what should be a female single sex provision and the results will be even smaller. If any at all.

You are mistaken, in the countries where self ID has been imposed on the population women weren't asked if they supported it and they haven't been asked if they support it since it's been introduced. You can't claim women seem to be mostly in favour if nobody's bothered to ask them if they are or not.
There appear to have been quite a lot of large scale population surveys as per my second post. Also, we're talking hypothetically as I keep stating. That's why I said "if the majority of women were in favour".

The only thing you've provided to back up your claim is information from Google AI, just because an AI says it's so, doesn't make it fact. You need to link to the survey's the AI is using as source information, so we can judge for ourselves on the veracity of the survey.
Your question is meaningless, it supposes that such a thing could happen, which is highly unlikely. You might as well ask, If pigs could fly would we all shoot beacon for breakfast?