Gender Self Identification debate continued

[PoochSmooch]

Continuation of the thread from here

I am trying very hard to understand all of the arguements and I apologise while heartely if I offend anyone with this most.

I've read this thread and I do find the system of self identification to be problematic, surely Gender is a social construct as a poised to biological sexy which, with few exceptions is either Male or Female?

I play a sport to a national/international level however if I was to compete with a self identified female athlete who was biologically male I would lose without any doubt no matter how hard I trained due to our physiological differences, there is already a mtf athlete who competes with some of my friends outside of the category I compete in and this lady does always win, I am concerned about the impact on women's sport.

I am also hugely concerned about women's only spaces i.e. Prisons could there not be a provision for a specialist trans wing/prison to be available rather then potentially putting women at risk (I'm thinking here about Tara Hudson who advertised a 7 inch surprise?)

I have no doubt that people general struggle with their identity but surely taking away from women isn't the right way to resolve this? I have no idea what the right way would be though?

I hope I am not coming across as a TERF, I am genuinely confused about this situation and I don't see how self identification won't be abused? I am learning a lot from the thread and I am sure that this adds nothing but thank you for reading

Vestal it's not 'me' identifying that way, it's a whole wave of feminism that came about after radical feminism 'ended' (like it clearly didn't end but a new wave did start) in the 80s. You can disagree, and think that your feminism is the one true feminism, but academics, theorists, many many women, would disagree with you.

Sports: The one thing that I agree with you about. I think it would be entirely reasonable to keep sports segregated by sex, or to require a certain level of hormones or some other measure (I'm not a sports official or endocrinologist) to keep things fair.

Showers, changing rooms, rape crisis centres and refuges are all covered in my previous post. Organisations should be required to make changes to make their facilities more inclusive, including for disabled people (no cubicles even for disabled people Anlaf that's terrible).

Any space that requires you to be naked in front of other human beings with no alternative is horribly old-fashioned.

Forgive my potential ignorance, but is the problem with crime stats that it will make it seem like violence is more even than it is? I guess that could be a problem. Do you think criminals will care, or do you think trans women are inherently MORE criminal than men? Because a trans woman who is also a criminal could still go through the current regulations to be viewed as a woman legally, so that problem I suppose already exists (if it's actually a problem).

Do you think criminals are going to apply for a GRC before they commit a crime, just to have that crime recorded as being committed by a woman? Why?

What are prisons in the UK like, do you just share a room with one other person and are you locked in that room for extended periods of time? Or is it a sort of "orange is the new black" situation with dorms of multiple women and a guard available. If it's the former, I can see why a person may pretend to be trans to infiltrate that prison to get alone time with a victim, if it's the latter...they wouldn't have much opportunity to assault someone without other people being aware and then getting in trouble for it.

Prison rape, any rape, is a horrific crime, but you're putting the cart before the horse by arguing against improved treatment of the trans community just in case some perverts try to game the system.

I hope I am not coming across as a TERF,

Sorry to disappoint you, but you want to exclude male trans (from women's prisons and women's sports and possibly even from nonconsenting women's vaginas - cotton ceiling alarm!), and your concern for women's safety makes you suspect of being a feminist. (And knowing that biological sex is real and gender is a social construct is considered radical feminism these days).

So, sorry, you are member of the group who is insulted with the slur "TERF".

Better be prepared for the accusations of transphobia you'll get on mumsnet, and the death and rape threats on more male-dominated sites.

Loopsdefruit
what if the law mandated that toilets were single-occupancy rooms, with shared hand-washing facilities (or a sink in the room) maintaining privacy for everyone?

As said above, the toilet thing is somewhat beside the point, it's something that TRA like to point at and make it seem as though feminists are obsessed with toilets. It's prisons, hospital wardss, refugees, STEM awards red where this will matter.

However, as you have asked... I would be very happy to use single-occupancy rooms which opened into a public area (such as opening directly into a station concourse). I would not want to use unisex facilities that were either a) cubicles that weren't floor to ceiling, entirely enclosed or b) opened onto a shared hand-washing area with another door to the main public area. In other words, I would feel very vulnerable if current facilities were simply designated as gender neutral or unisex.

As things are currently, if I walk into a station toilet on my own and there's a man stood there (or 2 or 3), I would turn around and walk out. I would recognise it as being out of the ordinary and I would feel uncomfortable. If the law does change, it is possible that it could become fairly common to walk in and see that. Women will be expected to accept it as normal, because after all those individuals are women and have every right to be there (probably - it won't be acceptable to ask).

You can bet your life though, that if a woman walks in to a toilet, sees 3 blokes there (sorry men pretending to be transwomen- please note I am not talking about actual transwomen) if this woman is then assaulted, you can bet that the immediate reaction will be 'Why the hell didn't she leave the room?'

what if the law mandated that toilets were single-occupancy rooms, with shared hand-washing facilities (or a sink in the room) maintaining privacy for everyone

I've had to use some male and female shared facilities lately and they reeked and were filthy. Men pissed all over the seats and floors. I like sex specific toilets thanks.

Sports: As soon as women identifying as men start to beat natal born men at sports, that will be the day I revise my opinion.

Recent studies have found that the steroids taken by athletes have an ongoing effect, long after they stop taking them.

Men who go through puberty benefit from testosterone. The drugs/surgery that reduce that testosterone, do not reduce that effect.

So you can monitor someone's testosterone levels, but you cannot, ever, monitor how they have benefited from it from the past.

what if the law mandated that toilets were single-occupancy rooms, with shared hand-washing facilities (or a sink in the room) maintaining privacy for everyone

Apart from the man pissing problem, transactivists actively do not want this. It does nothing to validate their womanhood. Try suggesting it.

So, loops, if you are OK with sport being segregated by sex, then you're aware that there are differences between transwomen and women, that biological sex and gender identity are two different things, that it's appropriate to acknowledge that. Fab. We've found our point of agreement.

What people are saying about any new proposed legislation is that we are able to sit down, with women being represented, and discuss how we can fairly address these issues without anyone being penalised. That's all anyone is asking.

The problem with crime statistics is that transwomen seem to maintain male patterns of criminality, regardless of transition. There is a HUGE disparity between levels of male and female crime, particularly in violent crime and sex crime, to the extent that it only takes a few hundred transwomen to noticeably skew the data, making it appear that women are becoming more criminal. Due to the unclear way that crimes are recorded (police and ONS don't agree if sex or gender identity is the metric), very soon we won't be able to separate out statistics on male, trans and female crime, so it won't be possible to do effective planning for the male/female estate. We won't know what is making the data look different, because we can't do any effective analysis. Without the analysis, we won't know how many male/female spaces in prisons we need. Do you see the issue?

Datun (I think, sorry, ADHD brain makes retaining info not the best) I'm sorry that you've experienced that kind of horrific bullying by others. I don't want to say it isn't representative, although it's definitely not what I've experienced and most of the people I socialise with are very supportive of self-ID and of the trans community. None of the people I have come across (at uni, in femsoc, on the internet) have been horrible to me or to other people, although my SU does 'no platform' some people based on their views, university is our home for a lot of time so it's not surprising that we don't want some people there.

There's an awful lot of assumptions being made here about 1) What this legislation will look like. 2) All the terrible things that will come from what you assume this legislation will look like. 3) The sad dystopian future that we will be living in WHEN all the imagined bad things happen due to what you're imagining the legislation will look like.

There are a lot of what ifs, and those have led to huge numbers of people pretending to ID as a marginalised identity to fill in a survey that is only asking how people who actually (day in day out) ID as these things experience discrimination. That's hugely unfair, not just to trans people, but to gays, bisexuals, lesbians, asexuals, pansexuals...etc...

Obviously I don't mean people who are actually LGB+ and who also complained about self-ID on that survey, by all means, it's for you. But people who gleefully declared that they are non-binary because they don't believe in gender. That's gross. That survey isn't even about sel-ID, it's to find out what can be done to support minority identifying people in society, the self-ID consultation will take place later.

The drugs/surgery that reduce that testosterone, do not reduce that effect

I think that reducing testosterone levels does have an effect on muscle mass and strength.

The problem with crime statistics is that transwomen seem to maintain male patterns of criminality, regardless of transition

If you are talking about the Swedish study, that's not a very reliable study to discuss as there are small numbers involved.

I think that reducing testosterone levels does have an effect on muscle mass and strength. - perhaps, but it definitely doesn't change biomechanics due to differences in pelvic anatomy, or VO2 max, or the length of reach, or (in the short term) bone density. All of which are quite different in men and women and all of which result in signficant disparity in sporting performance.

Pooch I think there are biological differences between people with a penis (males) and people with a vagina (females). I think that 'man' and 'woman' are a socially constructed designation that connotes additional things (gender identity). I think that women can have a penis, but that doesn't make their penis a female organ. I likely would be yelled at by some trans people for those beliefs.

Personally (I may be wrong of course) I think that gender identity is a 'fact' and is caused by a combination of genetics and other factors. Just like being gay. I don't believe in male/female brains.

So I think that trans women are women, although they may be biologically male. I think that trans individuals should be counselled on the importance of accessing healthcare appropriate to their biological body, so prostate exams, mammograms, cervical smears, but that should be their decision (obviously I'd hope that they would choose to have those tests and screenings because I wouldn't want them to die from a preventable/treatable disease)

"huge numbers of people pretending to ID as a marginalised identity"

It's been asked before, but what makes you presume that the people filling in the survey from here don't belong to one of those groups?
Even without being classed as being under the transgender umbrella by stonewalls spurious definitions - do you really think there are no women here who aren't heterosexual?!

If you are talking about the Swedish study, that's not a very reliable study to discuss as there are small numbers involved.

I am. I believe it has also been replicated though I don't have the reference to hand.

We could also switch that round and say "well, where are the studies that prove that after transition offending rates for transwomen drop to being more akin to female rates?" Perhaps that exists - I don't know? That would be an interesting question too. Maybe you've come across such studies and could share?

I hope the debate on this in Parliament is well informed - there are lots of issues and I think that a can of worms might well be opened up.

However - the reality is that you don't need surgery or even HRT to get ID in your new gender. All you need is a letter from your GP about your commitment to 'live as a member of the opposite sex'. With that, you can get a Passport and driving licence.

Quite how you 'live as a member of the opposite sex' is a whole new question.

And yes, I did write 'gender' and 'sex' down. It's amazing how often both words come up on forms.

We could also switch that round and say "well, where are the studies that prove that after transition offending rates for transwomen drop to being more akin to female rates

Indeed.

I was reading an article about this recently- but reversed. It was about a transwoman in the USA discussing the fact that attacks on trans people aren't often recorded as attacks on trans people but are instead recorded as attacks on men or women.

Personally (I may be wrong of course) I think that gender identity is a 'fact' and is caused by a combination of genetics and other factors.

Yes, again I agree to an extent. I think it's a fact that some people believe that they have a gender identity, that they believe that it's different from their biological sex, and that they find this distressing. All completely unarguable - that is their reality. And I have compassion for that. It must be hard.

What I don't believe is that that then makes them into the opposite sex, or that their beliefs and hardship mean that women ought to sacrifice hard won protections and concessions. Trans men and women need their own protections, and their full suite of human rights. Just not at the expense of others.

I just posting because I'd like to be counted as someone who supports gender self identification.
However I have some reservations, but as the tone of this discussion is vitriolic and the language about trans people offensive and diminishing, I've effectively been shut up.
You can be simpathetic to the issues transgender people face, but still have some reservations on a political level.

To VestalVirgin
I'm not sure what the German magazine was trying to say, but if they haven't been able to find any lesbians they can't have looked far. If they are implying that lesbians are not 'real' women, so we are now turning into men, it's quite insulting to say the least. Or worse maybe that we are weak with no mind of our own, and just follow the latest trend like sheep?

In any case, this is not a thread I'd feel comfortable engaging with, so I'll bow out, just wanted to make my voice heard.

Dear god.

Someone please tell me what's been said that's offensive or transphobic. Really, the exact words.

If you are talking about the Swedish study, that's not a very reliable study to discuss as there are small numbers involved.

If I recall, it is considerably larger than many if the studies rolled out to "evidence" brain sex...

not

Thats the thing i find most frustrating

On many threads not just trans threads

Poster comes on ... has either misunderstood an earlier post or tells an outright, blatant lie

And never backs it up...cos they can't

Well, notone, just because we can't point to actual examples, that doesn't mean it didn't happen

By my count that is four users who have dropped by on this thread to tell us we're transphobic and ought to jolly well shut up, but only one who has stuck around and explained their own actual position. Hmm.

Forgive my potential ignorance, but is the problem with crime stats that it will make it seem like violence is more even than it is

One example: Something I heard earlier put the current estimated incidence of transgenderism at 1%. If 1% of male offenders transition to female, that's a 20% increase in the female offender category for a single year. That's ignoring those who might transition with "ulterior motives", as the British Assoc Gender ID specialists explain better:

The converse is the ever-increasing tide of referrals of patients in prison serving long or indeterminate sentences for serious sexual offences. These vastly outnumber the number of prisoners incarcerated for more ordinary, non-sexual, offences. It has been rather naïvely suggested that nobody would seek to pretend transsexual status in prison if this were not actually the case. There are, to those of us who actually interview the prisoners, in fact very many reasons why people might pretend this. These vary from the opportunity to have trips out of prison through to a desire for a transfer to the female estate (to the same prison as a co-defendant) through to the idea that a parole board will perceive somebody who is female as being less dangerous through to a [false] belief that hormone treatment will actually render one less dangerous through to wanting a special or protected status within the prison system and even (in one very well evidenced case that a highly concerned Prison Governor brought particularly to my attention) a plethora of prison intelligence information suggesting that the driving force was a desire to make subsequent sexual offending very much easier, females being generally perceived as low risk in this regard. I am sure that the Governor concerned would be happy to talk about this.

data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/women-and-equalities-committee/transgender-equality/written/19532.html

Where will these 100s, actually 1000s of male-to-female prisoners be housed? Will the cry of "yeah well women attack men just as often" [this is a real thing, even off the internet] get even louder? Who will protect female prisoners? How will women continue to argue for legal protection of reuqesting a female rape counsellor, if women are widely perceived to rape often?

those have led to huge numbers of people pretending to ID as a marginalised identity to fill in a survey that is only asking how people who actually (day in day out) ID as these things experience discrimination. That's hugely unfair, not just to trans people, but to gays, bisexuals, lesbians, asexuals, pansexuals...etc...

Someone who supports self-identification complaining about people claiming to be a particular sexuality in order to access a survey?