WIBU to ask MNers who think Trans Women are 'Chicks With Dicks' to ...

[KKCupCakes]

Take a look at this article about supporting families of Transgender people by the Gires.org.uk Website to see why that view is so utterly incorrect and harmful?
www.gires.org.uk/assets/supporting-families.pdf

Do your best to get referred to an endocrinologist, slugs :) They're fascinating!

Maybe because they are being treated like women :( - Yep. Yardley often remarks on this.

Yy slugs. I've also pointed out before that I dont get that. This whole 'identify and therefore are entitled to use opposite sex facilities' thing puts those who have transistioned the 'old' way at just as much risk of running into a dodgy person as us, as they just need to claim they 'identify' to get access.

So, imaginary situation - sex offender uses womens facilities claiming to (whilst looking very male) identify as female = women at risk. Women complain, they are the ones villified. Sex offender continues to use facilites. Sex offender sees transwoman in facilities and attacks her as he would the women. But there is also the potential that he'd be angry that he went to all that effort and his victim was trans, putting them at additional risk.
Why would trans want this?!

Meanwhile there are masses - I imagine the majority - of trans (varying) people going about their lives, simply being who they are. The achievements of activists must be helpful to them in many ways, but also constricting. none of the transwomen I've knowingly associated with wanted a gender binary forced on them. They weren't in pursuit of "being a woman", they were "being trans". Admittedly this was in a very different culture to ours, but it all felt very familiar to me as a child of the fashionably androgynous 70s/80s in the UK.

I really understand why teens these days are choosing gender fluidity, if that's the right word. I hope they win out in the end - binary gender causes no end of shit, and TW activism isn't helping any!

Houston just voted down a city ordinance to protect residents from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Basically, the opposers went with the slogan: No men in women's bathrooms. The tone of the article is condescending towards the residents of Houston who voted "no," who are obviously on the wrong side of this issue in the media's popular opinion. The comments below the article are interesting.

www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/how-bathroom-fears-conquered-transgender-rights-in-houston/414016/#article-comments

I've just designed this. Do we think it might be helpful?! (No?)

Well done, Houston.

"Opponents of Proposition 1 have said they would support a proposal that includes exemptions for bathrooms and locker rooms."

That looks reasonable to me! We all have have limited rights, based always on a balance of interests. I don't see why this right should be unlimited; there is a balance of interests to consider.

Quite a few threads ago I pranced in, all cis-woman "how very very dare you" mode. If I could go back in time and give myself a good kick up the arse I would. I actively participated in the creation of a status quo that has silenced women and girls to the extent that it is impossible for them to defend themselves against a loss of rights. Because I didn't think. I knee jerked, due to a need to be on the side claimed ng the moral high ground.

It's like you went in my brain and took out the thoughts. I would have been one of Lila's friends. Protesting the injustice. At that age. So I am very sympathetic to women who are still in that place.

I like it Garlick. I may have to step away though for a while, this is doing my head in a bit.

Going to the loo is a biological function . Our male / female anatomy certainly affects how we do it: Men can hold their bladders longer, can wee standing up. Women need to sit or squat, can't hold it as long, deal with far more incontinence due to our biology, are more prone to UTIs, hell, we even have to wipe a certain way to avoid infection. Differences that most men never even consider, as evidenced when you go for a day out walking in the countryside or forest and the fellas happily pop behind a tree to wee, and that meets their needs for the day, without considering that the women may have their periods, and just can't manage without a bit more consideration to our needs.

If I have to get naked in changing rooms with strangers, shower a foot away from someone, or change a tampon with another person 12 inches away behind a flimsy partition, I want the reassurance of knowing anyone near me is biologically female like me.

Biology matters in these intimate situations.

Not bloody gender.

And to be honest, I'm getting angrier and angrier about justifying and defending my position about why I believe women have a right to be in an exclusively biologically female only environment.

Not in public life. In a very few, intimate, vulnerable limited set of circumstances.

Why should we have to defend this right? It feels something like being required to defend bodily autonomy - I do not owe anyone an explanation for my right not to have my boundaries violated. I just want that right to be upheld.

Totally agree carrot. If we don't speak up though, people will speak for us, and they'll give those protections away without a single thought.

I know, it's just emotionally exhausting and depressing to be fighting this battle against an avalanche of popular opinion. I am encouraged that the debate is creeping out of the feminism boards and into the main boards, and I think reading on these threads posts from women realising that our rights actually are in very real danger are making me hopeful.

But aside from the bubble of Mumsnet and feminist blogs, there is no rational counter-opinion out there yet. And this bubble is small, but in the real world we are half the human race. We are all going to be affected sooner or later. I'm worried that women are going to be thrown under the bus before people realise what has happened.

I have written to my MEP about this issue, as I don't think my MP will do anything.

I worry about it. I make a point of being very sensitive and kind to my trans friends on FB and so on. Both F2M and lovely. However, people shout things like, "SHARE IF YOU DON'T CARE WHO SHARES YOUR WASHROOM" and I have to think about whether to respond. I do but I don't want my lovely friends to feel like I'm being hateful. Of course since they are both F2M, I would be perfectly happy sharing with them.

I freely admit I'm just distracting myself. I'll move onto something more useful now I have seen these somewhere in real life - better done, probably. I liked it.

DeoGratias:
There are not very many trans girls. Most don't play sport. The few that do could surely just use the disabled loo. Is it really such a big issue?

Two little problems:
First, yes, you would think that separate facilities would do, but sadly our trans friends will have none of that. They insist that since they feel they are women then only the women's facilities will do for them.

Secondly, it is highly objectionable that an able bodied person would be allowed to hog the disabled loo.

Is there no end to the suggested accommodations everyone should make so that the feelings of men can be pandered to? First women, now disabled people..

In the case of public schools and public loos in the US, disabled loos are located in a cubicle in either the men's or the women's bathrooms. So of course the female disabled students would be the ones to suffer disproportionately. But don't worry, because they have cis privilege to comfort themselves with.

Ah, only if they have a magic key to access the disabled toilet?

I like Miranda Yardley She comes across as insightful caring and kind hearted.

The amount of shit that she gets on Twitter is appalling.

Ah yes math, my cis privelidge is a great help when i have pissed myself!!

At this point of my life I consider being called a transphobic bigot a badge of honour.

I am so over narcissists. I was married to one, and am still battling seven years post divorce against him. I have no time for them, no time for their self absorption, their refusal to admit others inhabit this earth or that there is a point where they end and other people begin. There are red flags all over the shop on this issue, waving like crazy.

The proposed alternative universe must be challenged every inch of the way, and we must start with our language, or claw back what we have already seemingly lost. We are women, not hyphenated in any way, or qualified in any way, and we must not accommodate our own annihilation. We must not fear that we will offend people either. We need to reject the role of being responsible for other people's feelings.

we need to reject the role of being responsible for other people's feelings

couldn't agree more mathanxiety

I just spent the past 20 minutes on twitter using terf as an initial search, I've jumped through loads of tweets . God it is scary out there!
A lot of hostility to see the least but there is the odd beacon of light from a few vocal trans women. Who also speak out for the right for women ( non trans)to have their own protected areas. The abuse they get from their own "side" is awful.

Quite a few threads ago I pranced in, all cis-woman "how very very dare you" mode. If I could go back in time and give myself a good kick up the arse I would. I actively participated in the creation of a status quo that has silenced women and girls to the extent that it is impossible for them to defend themselves against a loss of rights. Because I didn't think. I knee jerked, due to a need to be on the side claiming the moral high ground.

These recent threads are making me feel quite emotional, in a good way. I think there is almost a collective peak trans moment where women are saying "I want to be kind but come on..." It's so refreshing to see women having a chance to say what they are feeling without the usual torrent of abuse or gaslighting from the "kind brigade" i.e. people kind enough to tell you they hope your tits will fall off and vagina will rot because you don't buy into the cult of trans.