I’m in my 60s, and I saw racism, gay-bashing, lesbian-bashing, disablism, and so forth. I thought it was abhorrent that those groups of people were not protected by law. When transgenderism (then called transsexualism) was mentioned, I felt the same, that they also now should be protected by law. I don’t know if I’ve ever met a MtF transgender person (if I have, it wasn’t obvious), and I have known of a few online who were just trying to get on and live their lives.
But there was a thread here in June last year that raised, for me and many others, serious questions about the demands that some MtF people are making about being allowed into spaces previously reserved for women, i.e. biological women. Public toilets, changing rooms, rape crisis centres, women’s Olympic events, prisons, and so on.
I hadn’t realised that most MtF people don’t go through reassignment surgery in the way I had previously thought. Certainly, surgery to transform a penis into a vagina is very difficult and doesn’t always have a good result, and is very expensive. I don’t know how many MtF have their testicles removed. I don’t know many MtF people who have been reported as undergoing surgery but only have breast implants – that seems to be case regarding Tara Hudson, who was transferred to a women’s prison, after much campaigning, despite previous violence convictions and a fully-functioning penis. In fact, there’s no need for a MtF person having any kind of surgery, or taking hormones, just saying they are a women is sufficient.
I’m retired from work now. My last job was working in a NHS hospital for a number of years. That hospital, like all NHS hospitals, worked hard to bring in single-sex wards, on the government-demanded standards of dignity. A couple of years ago, I ended up in hospital, in a six-bedded female bay. There was a toilet/shower area – three toilet cubicles, two shower cubicles – for women only. I assume there was similar for men only, certainly there were signs up that showed the men-only facilities.
What, now, does the NHS do with a fully-bodied male self-declaring as a female – because under the current legislation that is all that is needed?
This is why this subject keeps coming up on Mumsnet. And why it needs to come out of the Feminist section and to be in Chat and AIBU. It isn’t just a feminist issue, it’s something that all women should be aware of.
Statistics are already being skewed by violent crimes being recorded as female by self-identifying MtF. Statistics are already being skewed by self-identifying MtF after they’ve achieved CEO status. A self-identified MtF achieved the Woman of the Year Award. Next up will be women’s athletic records being skewed by self-identifying MtF.
I’d like to be supportive of MtF just trying, and struggling, to live their lives in peace, but I think both they and women are under a threat by a kind of strange activism that doesn’t appear to about any of us.