I am Spartacus

[disfasia]

I am posting this here since "Am I being unreasonable?" is only a phrase that a female would ask herself. Women are socialised to concede to men, to institutional pressures, and to ask "Am I being unreasonable?" I am posting here because I know I am not. And this is my protest to MNHQ for censoring women's language, for telling us that the only way to refer to a man who lays claim to be a woman is to call him "she", to call him a "woman." But he is not a woman.

In the past ten days, three different transwomen have been sentenced to prison or arrested for rape or murder of women. Just today a rapist of two children was transferred to a female prison. These are men who commit these crimes and the whitewashing of history and the pressuring of women by MNHQ to say "she", deleting comments when we respectfully disagree and point out scientific evidence, as clear in science as the earth's rotation around the sun. And I am sick of it.

I am sick of the harassment of women who say, "No" to male violence. And make no mistake MNHQ, what you are doing to women on this matter is pure unadulterated violence. You worry more about the feelings of males than women who have, statistically speaking, been victimised by male violence.

If you expect women to come to this website and generate movement for you, you need to understand that in a week where Ian Huntley wants to become a woman, where Jessica Winfield (AKA Martin Ponting) another rapist is housed with women, where Texas is facing a lawsuit from three different prisoners who have been subjected to rape at the hands of another trans prisoner, and the recent sentencing of Kayleigh Woods for the murder of Bethany Hill, her really need to understand that women know the difference between a man and a woman. No, we don't need men telling us to address them as a woman. Nor should MNHQ bei so inclined. This is an open-debate and trans "identity" is up for debate because it is a feeling, not a reality. You cannot oblige women to see the world in a delusory way simply because that individual is delusional or confirmed in his "belief."

MN needs to be a space where women are free to interact honestly, where biology is not written off as unimportant. Rape is very much connected to the biology of males. MNHQ needs to allow for women to set their own boundaries in their own language. We should not be coerced or pressured in any way to goose step with delusional ideologies where the body is irrelevant. This is Mumsnet which exists precisely because the body IS relevant.

This is a revolution.

I wish we could get away from this narrative of "aren't we the brave few standing up against a tidal wave of opposition to do what we think is right." The majority of the world is virulently anti-trans, and certainly Mumsnet is. You can barely go a single day without one (or two, or three) new trans-bashing threads, and hardly anyone dares to stand up against the Mumsnet anti-trans party line. Not saying you don't have the right to your opinion, but please stop acting like you are going against public mainstream opinion when in fact you are doing the opposite.

1. "TRAs" do not represent the views of all trans people, in fact much of the time the are diametrically opposed to the views held by the average trans person. For example, every single trans person I know (which numbers dozens) keenly supported the women's marches, and everything I've seen and been told suggests that the vast majority of transwomen did support the marches wholeheartedly. Yet a couple of TRAs went to the press complaining and suddenly it's "trans people think women's marches are transphobic."

2. Some TRAs are NOT trans but cis-men exploiting the trans community for their own agenda. If you live as a man, present in a stereotypically male way, want to keep and use your penis and the only trans issue you campaign for is the 'right' to have sex with lesbians, you are not trans. If you rape women with your penis you are not trans. And yes of course this is very worrying and means the proposed legislation could potentially be used to abuse women, but let's be clear about this. The legislation is bad because it could enable men who are pretending to be trans to hurt women. Not because transwomen are mentally ill rapists. Men pretending to be trans are not transwomen!

3. Having said that, the world is not full of men who live as men and present as men, who clearly look 100% masculine, who use "nah mate I identify as female" in order to gain access to a public toilet so they can rape everyone inside. If a man wanted to get into a ladies loo in order to commit a sex crime, he'd just walk straight in. It's not like most public loos have security.

4. It is possible some of this trans-outrage is being faked intentionally. There is are underground groups of MRAs who actively pretend to be women's rights activists on Twitter and plan campaigns in order to "debunk and destabilise feminism." And when I say actively plan, I mean it. You may remember that a few years ago media outlets around the world reported that a feminist organisation were campaigning to ban Father's Day. Well that was a stunt - the "feminist organisation" was a fake, set up by this MRA group (who set up and maintained dozens and dozens of fake Twitter profiles pretending to be women) intentionally to make feminists look crazy and man-hating. I personally strongly suspect that they are secretly behind some of the more extreme "trans activists outraged over blah blah" headlines.

Point is, just because you read a headline CLAIMING something is true, doesn't mean it is true. So if you read a headline saying "trans activists try to ban phrase pregnant women" - at best it's just one or two trans people taking offense and they do not represent all trans people. At worst it's straight men pretending to be trans as an active campaign to make trans people look bad.

4. Research shows that transwomen suffer the same level of misogyny after they transition as biological women, even from people who knew them as men. As an intersexed transwoman I know said on the London stage recently, "I truly believe there is a war on women, and before I thought this was a woman's world."

5. There are people who are born intersexed or with various medical conditions meaning their biological sex is not clear-cut, and their needs should not be overlooked in the current trans hysteria. In the past I've raised this point on threads here and been told it was irrelevant - sorry, but it's not irrelevant. Posters have explicitly stated that anyone who ever had a penis even if they do not have a penis now should be barred from female toilets. What about people with both penis and vagina, or an internal penis? A statement like that deeply affects intersexed individuals; you can't pretend it doesn't or not think about how their rights are going to be accommodated.

6. Every single trans person I've ever come across or know of, and every single trans person all of them have ever known or known of, has worked as a prostitute to pay for their surgery. Every single one. Statistically a shockingly high percentage of transwomen do. Yet MN public opinion is still that transwomen are men enjoying male privilege who randomly decide to start calling themselves women without any effort to stop being male just for the lulz/in order to invade female spaces.

7. Transphobia is often rooted in traditional misogyny. Most of the transphobia in the world comes from men, not from women. Stop doing misogynistic men's work for them, because they have an agenda to pit women against each other. We see their tactics to pit biological women against each other in all kinds of different ways every day, hardly a surprise they're now trying to pit ciswomen against transwomen.

8. Some anti-trans actions actively hurt biological women, for example proposed legislation that would allow forced genital checks. Trans hysteria hurts biological women who do not conform to gender stereotypes by putting them at heightened risk of attack and being accused of being men. (In previous threads some MN posters have proposed plans where all women would have to carry "proof of gender" ID cards which would need to be shown to be allowed to use a public bathroom - how does that not hurt and oppress women? If this was law, what would happen if a woman forgot her ID card? Would she be forced to pee or change a tampon by the side of a road, which would put her at risk of attack?)

9. Current trans hysteria is based on a society's obsession with rigid gender norms, and those gender norms hurt women. Obviously a four-year-old who loves pink and dolls is not "trans" but the insane labelling of young children as trans for not conforming to gender stereotypes is not a reflection on actual trans people and it is not anti-trans to point out how insane and abusive it is.

10. There are plenty of transmen (born female, transitioned to men) fighting for access to male spaces. One transmale teen took a case against their school to the US Supremere Court. There are tons of transpeople fighting for more gender-neutral toilets. Ask yourselves why we rarely hear about that, but we constantly hear about transwomen in women's loos?

11. The TRA objection (which many trans people disagree with) to the term "pregnant women" is on the grounds that it discriminates against transmen (ie biological women who identify as male) who retain the ability to get pregnant. Not transwomen. Actual biological women. Do you feel comfortable forcing a biological woman to identify as "woman" if they do not want to?

12. Lesbians are not being "forced" to have sex with transwomen -- we do not live in a world where women can be ordered to volunteer to have sex with anyone they don't want to have sex with. So a couple of men are whining on the Internet because they feel entitled to sex with women who don't want to sleep with them. Men are constantly whining because they feel entitled to sex. And that's a big problem, certainly, but it's a problem because it's part of rape culture and toxic masculinity. Transwomen (if they are genuine transwomen and not men pretending) who say such things are still enmeshed in the entitlement of toxic masculinity, and need more therapy to learn what being a woman involves. This has somehow been translated into, "we're one step away from lesbians being forced by law to sleep with transwomen!" Well, no: there is no law that can legally compel you to have sex with someone.

13. If you have strong feelings on this matter, I urge you to go out and meet actual transwomen face to face. Not the "TRAs" - real, ordinary transwomen who have had gender reassignment or are waiting for it, who live as women. I think that's the least you can do if you're campaigning to remove someone's rights, don't you?

Tabasco - thank you so much for posting this. Agree with everything you've written.

And this is my protest to MNHQ for censoring women's language, for telling us that the only way to refer to a man who lays claim to be a woman is to call him "she", to call him a "woman." But he is not a woman.

Absolutely agree.

Bravo OP.

TabascoToastie

You really need to go out more if you think that most trans are those with gender dysphoria.

Gender dysphoria is the very definition of trans. People with the condition, mostly want to just get on with their lives under the radar. And if legislation, culture and discrimination laws were being reserved for these people I don't think anyone would have a problem. But they're not.

Applicants to the Tavistock clinic have gone up 100% in one year alone. Do you really think that there are dozens more cases of gender dysphoria? Do you think a four year-old can have gender dysphoria? It kicks in with puberty.

Do you think the 10 girls coming out as trans in St Paul's school have all got gender dysphoria? No. Rapists by definition don't have gender dysphoria. This is not about people with gender dysphoria. This is about an ideology. One that has no basis in fact and is including a shed load of people with highly dubious motives. The definition of woman is not a man with gender dysphoria. Neither is it about a man who doesn't have gender dysphoria but has autogynephilia.

People with gender dysphoria are horrified about the way this is going. But the tenets of this ideology is absolutely not about them, by them or for them.

They are getting caught in the backlash just as much as women are. Nonetheless, they are in a position where they will benefit from the laws being changed, whilst at exactly the same time, can vehemently disagree with the way transactists are effecting that change. Women, on the other hand are directly harmed by both the proposed changes in the law and the way it is being done.

There is zero benefit to anyone except transactivists.

So yeah, I'm Spartacus.

9) Current trans hysteria is based on a society's obsession with rigid gender norms, and those gender norms hurt women. Obviously a four-year-old who loves pink and dolls is not "trans" but the insane labelling of young children as trans for not conforming to gender stereotypes is not a reflection on actual trans people and it is not anti-trans to point out how insane and abusive it is.

Tabasco - I agree that it is not anti-trans to point this out - but to do so leads to calls of transphobia. It's this madness that the OP is referring to.

1) "TRAs" do not represent the views of all trans people, in fact much of the time the are diametrically opposed to the views held by the average trans person.

Tabasco In this case more trans people need to speak out against the TRAs. They must accept some responsibility towards solving this problem the TRA's are creating. Its not fair to leave it to woman to fight alone. The number of trans people that actually speak out is tiny - in fact I only know of two and they are badly abused by the rest of the trans community.

Until I see the trans community seriously tackling the TRA's I will not bow to the new ideology that is replacing biological sex with gender identity. I will not deny the truth that a penis is a male body part and that a transwoman is also biologically male.

I am sparticus.

1. "The majority of the world is virulently anti-trans, and certainly Mumsnet is. "

This is a UK website on the whole. Not worldwide. And this is not about 'anti-trans', it's about laws & policies.

The entire country can be 'anti-trans', but if the law says a male rapist can go to a female prison then it's pretty irrelevant what people think isn't it? Because the law says 'you can do this'. Or 100% of audiences can boo transgender athletes (not sure if they do but just for example), but that doesn't negate the fact that they get given the gold medal and women can no longer compete.

" please stop acting like you are going against public mainstream opinion when in fact you are doing the opposite."

Whether or not that's true, it's not really relevant. Mainstream opinion tends to follow institutional changes. Racism laws were passed before most people stopped being openly racist, for example. Whether or not most people hold a view (and I'm not sure that it's the case), by enforcing language & public policy, many will change their mind. That might be a good thing or a bad, but what people think is hardly relevant when the concern is with public policy. We don't have 'Propositions' here like in the US.

2. "Men pretending to be trans are not transwomen!" Except that this is not being verified and is unverifiable. We have transwoman rapists, who when caught, are found to be living as men. The police say they are trans women because how can you tell, but then they are living as men.

Also there is no clear definition of 'transwoman'. It encompasses everyone from Caitlyn Jenner, who got turned on by jerking off in his 12 year old daughter's underwear and transitioned age 50+, to someone who has transitioned while age three or four and has always asserted that they are female. It can mean someone like Tara Hudson, with nine convictions for violence, who advertises their 'seven inch surprise' to attract men for sex, or it could be someone who has had a vagina constructed surgically.

3)" If a man wanted to get into a ladies loo in order to commit a sex crime, he'd just walk straight in" This is not the case. Men have been caught in unisex changing rooms under US Target's transfriendly policy filming women. They gained access under the transfriendly policy. Without the transfriendly policy they would not have been allowed in. And a man can make women feel uncomfortable in their private space without committing a sex crime. Men exposing their selves in women's changing rooms may be doing so DELIBERATELY to make women feel uncomfortable, but the police cannot do anything as it's hard to prove. allisonslaw.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/transwoman-exposes-male-genitals-in-womens-sauna-and-has-his-penis-declared-legally-female-by-washington-state/

3again) There is are underground groups of MRAs who actively pretend to be women's rights activists on Twitter and plan campaigns in order to "debunk and destabilise feminism."

So Everyday Feminism is actually secretly run by men? And worldwide women's march leaders banning 'pussy power' and pink hats are actually MRAs in disguise?

4. "Research shows that transwomen suffer the same level of misogyny after they transition as biological women"

That doesn't even make sense. Transwomen would surely suffer transphobia, not misogyny. And there's lots of evidence that transwomen are treated differently to biological women

5. "There are people who are born intersexed or with various medical conditions meaning their biological sex is not clear-cut, and their needs should not be overlooked in the current trans hysteria"

So if intersex people exist, this automatically means everyone is intersex? Sorry, no.

6. Every single trans person I've ever come across or know of, and every single trans person all of them have ever known or known of, has worked as a prostitute to pay for their surgery.

What a load of bollocks, sorry. Most trans people don't have surgery. And surgery is available on the NHS. Are you even in the UK?

7. Transphobia is often rooted in traditional misogyny. Most of the transphobia in the world comes from men, not from women. Stop doing misogynistic men's work for them, because they have an agenda to pit women against each other.

But I thought you said that most people are anti-trans? And these transphobic men don't believe that transwomen are women. So it's not pitting women against each other at all.

8. Some anti-trans actions actively hurt biological women, for example proposed legislation that would allow forced genital checks.

Sorry what legislation??? You seem to have an over-active imagination.

9. Current trans hysteria is based on a society's obsession with rigid gender norms, and those gender norms hurt women. Obviously a four-year-old who loves pink and dolls is not "trans"

Ooh, a valid point. Yes.

10. There are plenty of transmen (born female, transitioned to men) fighting for access to male spaces. One transmale teen took a case against their school to the US Supremere Court. There are tons of transpeople fighting for more gender-neutral toilets. Ask yourselves why we rarely hear about that, but we constantly hear about transwomen in women's loos?

Well I'm pretty sure the numbers are significantly lower. And secondly there is a case today by a boy objecting to a transboy in his locker room.

www.readingeagle.com/news/article/boyertown-student-sues-district-over-locker-room-privacy

And thirdly men & women have different needs. Women are globally subject to sexual violence, men not so much. So if men don't object to transmen in their spaces, that's their prerogative. It doesn't imply anything at all about transwomen in female spaces.

11. The TRA objection (which many trans people disagree with) to the term "pregnant women" is on the grounds that it discriminates against transmen (ie biological women who identify as male) who retain the ability to get pregnant. Not transwomen. Actual biological women. Do you feel comfortable forcing a biological woman to identify as "woman" if they do not want to?

They can identify as a flying pig if they want. It doesn't mean they, as a pregnant person, can be anything other than a woman. All the intersex distraction aside.

12. Lesbians are not being "forced" to have sex with transwomen -- Transwomen (if they are genuine transwomen and not men pretending)

Ah, fake transwomen again. How ever can we tell? Oh, we can't.

13. If you have strong feelings on this matter, I urge you to go out and meet actual transwomen face to face.

Done. Views not changed. Next?

I'm Spartacus too.

The trajectory of this is dystopian. I can imagine a situation in the future where a women's prison contains both men who identify as women, and women who have been locked up for refusing to use the "correct pronouns" or stating biological facts.

'Stating this fact out loud – that you cannot change your sex – enrages men. They absolutely cannot stomach that someone (radical feminists, actual reality) says no to them. They believe that they can change their sex, because their idea of what a woman is so desperately shallow. It seems that for them, “being a woman” means “being whatever I, man, say a woman is.”
I am not Cathy Brennan but I am Spartacus.

We also need to tell children that they cannot change their sex.
We need to tell them that it is not their bodies that are wrong: it is a society that tells people they can only behave in a certain way, only have certain emotions, play with certain toys, be fully considered as a human being based on their sex.

Still Spartacus.

Still a woman.

Still finding cis an offensive term.

Still say no penises in women only spaces.

At least this OP didn't include waffly shite about how fucking glorious MN was. Other than that it's just a rehash of all the other identikit threads.

i'm Spartacus

The censoring is odd, unsettling and stifling. It makes me want to scream. At first I rallied against accusations of gaslighting, but I see it now.

Dismissing the rapists as 'not real trans' which is what they do, is totally bizarre. You either self identify or you don't. Surely?

I don't identify as a woman. I am one. I don't get to say that Katie Hopkins isn't really a woman, just because I find her views repugnant and dangerous.

I will call a man a fucking man, no matter what he thinks he is. And vice versa. But no one talks about FTT people, not nearly as much 1) because everyone knows they're women and women don't matter, and 2) they don't hit the headlines for violent crime, just for having babies, as women have done for millenia.

I don't think it is a rehash, actually. A lot of threads used to start with a pile-on about how "transphobic" MN is, followed by a few gender critical posters offering alternative views, leading to an echo chamber when the original posters limped off.

Now there seem to be more voices (not just names that are familiar from the Feminism board) responding to "transwomen ARE women" with "Wait, actually, they're not." I think it's due to more cases coming up in the news about MtT in women's prisons, MtT winning female sport titles, etc. A lot of people on here have reached peak trans.

I AM SPARTACUS!!!!

The trajectory of this is dystopian. I can imagine a situation in the future where a women's prison contains both men who identify as women, and women who have been locked up for refusing to use the "correct pronouns" or stating biological facts.

This is not some future science-fiction Twilight Zone. This is happening.

Canada made misgendering a crime punishable by $250,000. They are now changing it to a two year prison sentence.

You must use whatever pronoun the person tells you too.

"Authorities there now fine citizens up to $250,000 for the novel crime of “mis-gendering” — referring to people by any words other than their pronouns of choice (including newly constructed words such as zie/hir, ey/em/eir and co)."

thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/civil-rights/301661-this-canadian-prof-defied-sjw-on-gender-pronouns-and-has-a

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.theblaze.com/news/2016/05/23/heres-the-punishment-canadians-found-guilty-of-anti-transgender-speech-could-soon-face/amp/

INTERSEX PEOPLE ARE NOT TRANS!! Sorry for shouting but some people really don't get it.

I am Spartacus!

just a rehash of all the other identikit threads

I agree.

I am not Spartacus.

And this And make no mistake MNHQ, what you are doing to women on this matter is pure unadulterated violence. is nonsense. If you think words on a screen are pure unadulterated violence then I would respectfully suggest you step away from the keyboard and go and do something else instead.

If MNHQ won't 'give in' and allow mis-gendering and it's bothering you this much, why don't you leave and find another forum where you can get away with it?

MN is a business who will no doubt have taken legal advice and they aren't going to relax the guidelines to a point that will make you happy.

If you don't like mumsnet HQ stance on this, and you think it is "pure unadulterated violence" and you feel you're being gaslighted and silenced and all the other things, why continue to post here? Why not go and find another forum (like piston heads as above) that chimes more closely with your viewpoint?

mn is funded by advertising. Going somewhere else will slow their traffic and make an impact on their advertising revenue.