To wonder if I’m just old and possibly on the wrong side of history

[bambambini]

I do wonder if we are possibly seeing the start of a huge shift in society and how people are generally perceived. Many of our young seem to want the future to be different from what we've always had - man/woman, male/female - the binary i guess.

Maybe the future will be where everyone is non binary, where all divisions as we inderstand them are broken down. So you won’t be able to tell for sure what sex anyone is, what body parts they have etc.

I’m critical of the current identity politics debate but that doesn’t mean to say I’m right. Maybe I’m struggling with getting my head around it and accepting it because I’m much older and grew up in different times.

We’ve already seen a huge change in social norms with women getting the vote, the break down of racial segregation, legalisation of homosexuality etc. Maybe identity politics is the natural progression.

Trans women who say they are lesbians are straight men, FFS.

Silently
Male rapists are already in women's prisons with some of the most vulnerable women : like Martin Ponting - double rapist of two girls:
fairplayforwomen.com/prisons/misgendering-double-rapist

Self ID will allow any man to identify as a woman and no one will be able to challenge it. In fact, women are likely to be called transphobic and accused of a hate crime if they call out a naked person with a penis in the gym showers.
The government has targets to eradicate mixed sex hospital wards as they are unanimously disliked.
Women have fought for and won the right to have sex segregated spaces for many years now. We are not going to suddenly reverse this because self ID transgender women demand access to women' spaces.

I don't understand what is wrong with being a transgender woman? Most women I know will support transgender woman and men in a campaign for their own safe spaces in a heartbeat.

See this is what I hate about identity politics its dividing in this instance women and in particular feminists against the trans community who are mostly living their lives quietly. Its the same way that the working class are being divided by race when they should be uniting around what they have in common. It not the right that are doing it though its the left.

The world is split between those who want to address these facts, and those who prefer to ignore them because they are inconveniently at odds with an ideology which must be pursued at all costs.

No, there are those of us who don't see ever single one of those points you made about inequality as being more important to fight and change than to draw gender lines. I'd like to see every little girl born the hero of her life, not the victim of it.

You can't change sex even with extensive medication and surgery. You can only change the outward appearance to better pass as the opposite sex.

Yes this is correct actually. I am amazed that it is considered progressive to encourage people to mutilate themselves into a simulacrum of the opposite sex.

Surely we should be opening up gender boundaries rather than going down this narrow road of gender stereotyping.

@guardianfree, I asked for evidence of women being raped by transwomen in prison, do you have any?

Half the point is Silently, that some of those who are currently screaming to be allowed full access to the women's estate are indeed basically straight males. Also rapists. Under the new laws those calling themselves transactivists want so badly anyone can call themselves a woman and have full access to women's prisons, without any prior history or demonstration of good faith and with no challenge permitted.

Given the fact that males have always exploited loopholes to try and get easy access to women for sex, forced or not, it is ridiculously naive to suggest that that suddenly, magically won't happen now. It starts with teenage boys leering at the teenage girls forced to change with them however they feel about the situation, with no chance of complaint, and ends with rape and murder.

There have been a few examples of individual sex offenders who have suddenly declared themselves to be a woman, I expect there will be loads of links to those cases. You might also want to look at this. "It was therefore concluded that approximately half of the known transgender population in prison are either sex offenders and/or highly dangerous prisoners."
fairplayforwomen.com/prisons/3781-2

caringdenise009
It's shocking isn't it. The trouble is, he seems to think it's OK to write it. Of course he's ill - but he's dangerous. And how are we to tell the difference?

Is that a serious fucking question? Men who raped women are put in a womens prison because they say they are now women. And you want PROOF that they do it again?

WTF is wrong with you?

Silently
Are you suggesting that you're happy with male rapists being in women's prisons unless you have evidence that they're actually raping women?

Women can't rape you, but men can.

Only a man with a penis can meet the legal definition of rape but that doesn't mean that women aren't raped by other women, only that the law doesn't acknowledge the fact.

Are you happy to let TIMs into female spaces, simply because they say they are women? We're not talking about disliking TIMs, we're talking about them taking over female spaces. You know those spaces that have been created to protect women from aggressive or perverted men, such as toilets, changing room, women's shelters?

I'm sorry but I've no idea what you mean by TiMs, I know that it's used by sectarians in Northern Ireland but that wouldn't fit into this context. Is it a derogatory term?

Are you using US stats, Silently, by any chance? Comparing crime in the UK with crime in the US is like comparing apple and oranges i.e. entirely fruitless ().

IIRC from scanning others' research, there were 8 (some would argue rather 6, as there is confusion over whether these cases were murders or suicides, I believe) murders of trans people in the UK between 2008 and 2016, so slightly fewer than 1 a year, bringing the rate of murders of trans people in line with rates of murders of other demographics in the UK. I think someone unearthed related figures which suggested that, in the UK, transwomen are statistically more likely to be perpetrators than victims (12 transwomen committed murders in the same 9-year time frame). I know other MNers will be more clued up on crime stats & I'm hoping they will step in.

Hearing that trans people, and especially transwomen, are 'bottom of the pile' does not sit right with me. You do not cease to be a member of a demographic which commits 96% of the world's homocides because you claim your 'gender identity' (still got no fucking idea what this highly irritating phrase, on which there is zero consensus, means) doesn't quite fit your idea of what this demographic represents. TIM have one massive advantage that women will never have - the state of being effortlessly male. They may prefer not to have been born male, but everyone else can see that they are male, and that makes all the difference. It is an advantage no one can take away from them, and that women cannot access.

What I also object to is the hijacking of language by and the insistence of one group of people on changing the established meaning of a word so that those it traditionally referred to can no longer be properly represented in discourse. Language is by nature exclusionary - if it is not, it serves no purpose. Languages begins from the point of isolating one concept from all the other remaining concepts - exclusion is not evil by nature.
I am a lesbian. I thought I had been lucky to been born in a time where, slowly, we had stopped being shamed for what we are. And suddenly there is no word to describe female-female sexual attraction, because what once sufficed is now allegedly violent! We are simply erased because we cannot be talked about. It now means male-female, female-female, male-male - in short, anything. Yet female-female attraction has its own specificity - its own set of sociocultural nodal points which make of it a unique situation deserving of its own word. You might say, 'just make up a new word' - but why should we? We want our history to remain intact. History is chosen, recorded - ours was not recorded for centuries, and now you're trying to take away what little was taken down? Words have their own cultural heritage. It's not just 'lesbian', but 'woman' as well - in every published cultural product, you're happy for the meaning to have completely changed?

FWIW I have never met a feminist that gave a stuff about what people wear, or who they love. I want men to be feminine if they want, but that doesn't make them women, it doesn't mean they can claim women's awards or take their place in the Olympics, just 'cos they wear a dress.

Women are not dresses, or lipstick. We are people, adult human females and we deserve to retain the rights our great grandmothers won for us.

Where are people getting statistics about trans murders? If you say only 8 in the last ten years or whatever it was how was that figure arrived at? Are murders of transgender people recorded in the UK Crime Survey?

The thing is though - reproducing is always going to involve “egg meets sperm” and no matter how fluid you are you will only produce a maximum of one of these
Unless of course due to increased infertility embryos are created in a genetics lab and matured in an artificial womb. In which case feminists are going to have a melt down.

suggesting that you're happy with male rapists being in women's prisons unless you have evidence that they're actually raping women? shock

No, I'm suggesting that the prison service is actually managing to do its job and keeping inmates safe, by segregation, I presume and, therefore, your argument is an emotive red herring.

The world is split between those who want to address these facts, and those who prefer to ignore them because they are inconveniently at odds with an ideology which must be pursued at all costs.

This and they are ruthlessly pursuing it right now.

Why would feminists have a meltdown about gestation outside the womb? It could free women from the whole messy and ever-so-slightly health-threatening bother of pregnancy.

Personally I'd love to see a male contraception pill too. It might help to stop them blaming women for the fact that sex makes children.

Silently, so now you do want segregation?? I'm confused.

Oh I do love it when someone uses the word 'feminist' to refer to invent a group of people who all think the same thing, as a collective.

TIM have one massive advantage that women will never have - the state of being effortlessly male.

I imagine that if a person has reached the stage of wanting their gonads removed, they are probably finding their male state anything but effortless.

"Only a man with a penis can meet the legal definition of rape"

That's transphobic - you mean a person with a penis...

The government has targets to eradicate mixed sex hospital wards as they are unanimously disliked. You have no right to speak for everyone. I was admitted to a mixed sex ward earlier this year. It was an emergency, I was seriously ill and it was life threatening. The ward was wonderful, the Sister was truly amazing. I never felt frightened, the men never bothered anyone. It was well run. I have been in an all female ward in the same hospital that was a disgrace. If I had to go back into that hospital and was given a choice I would go back to the mixed ward.

Silently you asked can you give some examples of where women have been raped by transwomen is prison or on hospital wards?

as you can see women in Dallas are suing because they have to share space with males.

“The Plaintiffs have been forced to share intimate facilities with men, who allege they are women,” the Feb. 15 complaint states. “These men openly express their sexual desire for the women inmates, at times, in the showers, and bathrooms, while women are naked or partially clothed.

Is that right? Should women be forced to share space with males?

Silently, so now you do want segregation?? I'm confused.

The prison population is segrated in all kinds of ways, it stops them killing each other. I haven't argued that any group should be placed into the general prison population, only that trans rapists aren't a threat, just an emotive argument.