AIBU to think that this has gone way too far?

[dorade]

The Alberta Government in Canada has issued guidelines to schools that essentially allows kids to 'identify' however they want, use whichever toilet/changing room they want and play on whichever sport team they want.

I can't help feeling this is bad for girls.

(PS I'm a long time mumsnetter (2004), just have not posted for ages)

The world has gone seriously fucking crazy.

The sports issue makes me really cross. My dd plays football on a girls team. They are good and have a lot of fun. Very very few of them are happy playing with the boys. The boys won't pass to them, the boys get it priority, they dont want to change with them..

But that's why there is no compromise over this. We are supposed to accept TW as women just like us. I never will

shamelesslyunladylike.tumblr.com/post/97837364323/fallon-fox-why-hormones-dont-make-a-woman

Ive just been reading the above, about various mtt taking part in women's sports, and doing very well, surprisingly , much better than they could have done as men. It must be so demoralising for the women who have to compete against them

I couldn't read it.

Seriously, I am beginning to think that I inhabit my own little universe.

That article is horrific. How can anybody want to see somebody get beaten up so badly? It's disgusting.

I despair at how much more work needs doing for feminism and women's rights.

I'm interested to know if anyone who thinks this is a bad idea, previously supported trans women being treated as women, in women's spaces etc?

Wtf is a 'male lesbian'?

It's like a whole new sub species.

A worrying one.

I've just had an argument (started off as a conversation!) with my 13 and 17 year old daughters about this hypothetically happening at their school - apparently I am mean and horrible to think that a boy-identifying-as-a-girl could have their own changing room, rather than getting changed in the girls' changing room. They've both stormed off and left me. They wouldn't have any problem with it, and they don't think anyone should. I asked whether they thought a girl-identifying-as-a-boy would be perfectly safe getting changed in the boys' changing room, but they didn't seem to want to discuss it that way round!

They honestly both seem to think that the transgirl's wants trump everyone else's. I'm glad they're so accepting, and so fucking opinionated, but it makes me rather sad that they're prepared to throw their (biologically) female classmates' wants and needs under the bus.

There are a couple of girls at DD's school who now identify as boys (I believe). Well they have changed their names. I think I will ask DD her views.

Lagoona, I would have answered pretty much the same as Maryz before this started kicking off. I come from the gender-fluid/gender-bending 1970s, have counted many permanent transwomen among my friends and even more neither/both/sometimes gendered people. I still am friends with one of the latter and - vaguely - some transwomen.

I don't care very much about gender. I'm a gender-critical feminist. Until recently, my gender-fluid friendships brought me joy & hope.

But everything about what's happening now is anti-feminist and anti-female: the replacement of biological sex with gender, the denial of human dimorphism and especially of 'woman' as a physiological reality; the meaning of 'woman' being replaced with a concept that means 'not a real man'; the frighteningly rapid erasure of women's rights & privileges in favour of transwomen's and the overwhelming, increasingly obvious hatred of women from those quarters.

I'm worried and upset that young people who feel like experimenting with gender, don't much feel like fitting into a gender stereotype, or feel like fitting one that's normally stereotyped with a different body - now feel they must declare themselves trans or agendered. Who made them believe they have the wrong body? I think it's cruel.

I want to be able to make a distinction between transwomen who see themselves as 'trans', those who simply hope to 'pass' and muddle along in life, and transwomen who violently invade female spaces & lives. I can't do this because my language is restricted by law as well as social policing.

There are gender-critical trans feminists. Thank god for them.

And yes yes yes - I feel like Maryz and GarlicBake. Very sad that it has come to this.

I want to be able to make a distinction between transwomen who see themselves as 'trans', those who simply hope to 'pass' and muddle along in life, and transwomen who violently invade female spaces & lives. I can't do this because my language is restricted by law as well as social policing.

Garlic - I could have written your post. I have lots of queer/genderqueer friends and have always been in favour of people having the freedom to challenge the gender binary. But somehow it seems to have stopped being about disrupting restrictive stereotypes (something which ought to free everybody) and more about ditching everything but the stereotypes, including ditching important stuff with political implications, like sexual dimorphism.

And that doesn't make anyone more free. It makes everyone less free, including a lot of people who have been fighting against those restrictive stereotypes for a long time and are suddenly being told that the political straitjacket they have grown up with isn't based in physiological differences, because those differences mean nothing. And furthermore, those oppressive stereotypes are not in fact stereotypes or oppressive but are in fact an 'identity' that we have chosen for ourselves, and the fact that others' ascription of them to us coincides with our physiology is in fact a 'privilege'

That article linked above made me feel physically ill. A man inflicting those injuries on his partner should be arrested and imprisoned, not celebrated as a sporting hero. And if both sparing partners had been biologically female, then the fight would have been stopped before it got to that stage. But watching a biological male beating the crap out of a woman is apparently 'entertainment'. Makes me ill.

My own sport/hobby has a number of MtF transsexuals in it (men and women compete equally, biology has no effect on the outcomes), and they generally do not discuss their transitions except among their closest friends, and would no doubt be quite embarrassed about anything that drew attention to their choice of status. I couldn't even tell you which toilet facilities they use because I've never paid any attention to it. They just want to quietly live their lives as their chosen gender. This new generation of 'trans-activists' that want to shout about choices and expect everyone to wave a flag and prove how liberal they are is actually a very bad thing for those who do wish to live as a different gender and prefer not to advertise their previous status.

I remember years back when I was younger, discussing gay rights with a gay friend of mine. This was back in the early days of gay rights really being a mainstream hot topic. His comment was 'Those that don't care will always not care, and those that really hate us don't need anymore ammunition. We need to stop making ourselves a target and the old people who hate us will die off and the young ones won't find anything weird about us because that's what they've grown up with.'

I think he had a point. No doubt many of us have been exposed to transgender people who just go about their daily lives and it has no effect on us. But suddenly, we're expected to tell people how brave they are and welcome them in to places that have traditionally been safe places for women, and if we say stop, this isn't right, we're the ones who are the bad guys.

I'm not really convinced by the TW who 'just want to quietly live their lives' I don't think

Of the TW I've known, half fit that description. But they still expect to use female facilities And you can concede to quiet people, but not gobby ones. I worked with a man for 10 years who transitioned over a weekend. He was absent on Friday, HR came to speak to us and told us, he would be coming back as she on Monday. And that is what happened. Same bloke in badly applied makeup and a dress, sharing our toilets/changing rooms. There were no telltale signs before hand. He was a reserved gender conforming man, whom all the women in the office avoided because he was one that talked to your tits.

None of my personal experiences with TW, go anywaty to soothing the concerns I have with this at all

I don't think there is a comparison to be drawn between trans-rights and gay-rights at all midnite

It doesn't matter how many generations of gender critical feminists die off, the fact remains that TW are men and we want to maintain women's spaces and services, free of men

Gay people, black people...all campaigning to be treated as equal people and not be treated with prejudice. Not asking us to pretend they are something they are not. Not asking to put women's safety at risk