I typed this very long reply for the "Are you a feminist thread" and was too late as it closed.
Damned if I'm going to waste it after typing all that. It was in response to a couple of comments about "I'm not a feminist because of transphobia" and "I don't like positive discrimination" but I think it might also fit this thread because it's why (or at least part of why) I completed this survey in the way I did.
The transphobia thing.
I don't in theory have an issue with trans people who want to quietly live their lives as they feel most comfortable.
I do have an issue with Maria Dean, a trans 'woman', expecting to be sent to a woman's prison when her crime is being convicted of more than 30 offences against women and girls, including burglary and voyeurism, including breaking into their homes and and filming herself wearing their underwear. link to Guardian story here.
This is a man with a penis spying on women and girls, stealing and wearing children's underwear, and filming himself while he does it, wanting to be locked up with vulnerable women.
I do not want Maria Dean to be harmed in prison, but don't think the rights of one man who has abused women repeatedly trump the rights of all the other women in the prison he wants to go to. They have a right to be kept safe from him.
I don't think it makes me transphobic to say that I don't think Maria Dean or sexual abusers like her have a place in a women's prison or a right to ask to be there, but others seem to disagree.
Incidentally, Jenny Swift, who is mentioned in this article as a trans 'woman' who committed suicide in a men's prison, stabbed a father of two to death in what the paramedic who attended the scene called "the worst stabbing I have ever seen" and he stabbed him "numerous times" in the face, chest, and arm, before attacking him with a broken shovel.
Swift was apparently taking non-prescription hormones at the time, and the attack was described as "alcohol and drug fuelled". It took the man a month to die in hospital, of pneumonia and some kind of brain damage, so Swift was only charged with attempted murder.
I think it's safe to say Swift was 'unstable', but lets blame putting a man in a man's prison for his suicide.
I had to read three or four articles about how badly Swift has been treated before I found this one, in the Daily Record which actually described Swift's crime as well.
That seems to be a thing with stories that are sympathetic to trans prisoners wanting to be sent to a women's prison, they don't seem to like mentioning the violent crimes they commit.
And the description of the crime matters. When Maria MacLachlin, a sixty year old woman, was attacked by several trans activists and punched in the face by one of them, the press described it as a brawl, and the police wouldn't give the gender of the man who attacked her in case they were wrong.
So we are describing a large younger man punching a small older women as a 'brawl' rather than an assault, and we're too frightened to hurt his feelings by saying 'he' in case he prefers 'she' or 'they'. Being utterly disgusted and pissed off by this doesn't make me transphobic.
And again as far as Transphobia and TERF's go, you don't see many women clamouring to be sent to male prisons because they identify as male. If TERF's are that keen to see trans women killed or committing suicide, why are these trans 'women' so keen to be locked up with women rather than men? If TERF's are the greatest threat to trans 'women', why are trans 'women' and their supporters so keen to be kept away from men?
I think all prisoners should be safe in prison. That's why I don't think people like Dean and Swift should just get to hand pick the prison they are sent to because they feel like it. Because they're going to pick somewhere where they can continue to commit their crimes or be physically stronger and more powerful than most of the women around them. And that's wrong, and it puts women in danger.
Then there's this story in the Daily Record, discussing how male sex offenders are stealing female prisoners underwear from the prison laundry.
Just in case you think the female inmates will be protected from crimes like Marie Dean committed while they are in prison. This is what happens when men and women are expected to share facilities. Women are victims of sexually motivated crime.
Then lets look at all women short lists for things like employment or politics.
Somewhere on here is a comment along the lines of "it should be the best person for the job, even if that person is a man not a woman."
That sounds fine, until you look at those photo's of Donald Trump and his all male meeting in the White House, deciding the fate of women's healthcare and all the things that go with it.
Do we really believe that that room full of men are "the best people" to decide what happens to women when it comes to our health?
That there's not even one women in America who can match them in terms of education and political experience?
And that even if there isn't a woman who can match them in terms of education and political experience, there's not anything about being a woman that might make women better placed to talk about what they want and need in terms of healthcare?
Not one man in that room has ever given birth or had a period or needed treatment for an illness or ailment that mostly or only affects women, or had to lie about needed contraception because of bad period cramps rather than for birth control, or had a termination.
Yet apparently they're still somehow 'more qualified' than any women who has ever done any of those things, to make decisions in women's best interests. Really?
Because we know that Women's healthcare (and that includes contraception and access to on demand terminations) is about more than our health. It's about our safety, our economic stability, our right to choose when and how we have sex, and who with, and how often. It's about our families, the children we have, the jobs we do, the places we live. It's about our right to represent ourselves.
And that's just as important when it comes to women as it is for people of colour, people who have disabilities, any group of people who are not self-represented but should be.
Women have been kept out of politics, denied the vote, and told that men know better for years. That's why we have and need all women short lists or 'positive' discrimination now. Because historically we've been excluded and we are still, as the Trump photo proves, being excluded now.
In 1917 a woman called Margaret Sanger was put on trial for advocating birth control in America. She was told by the judge that "no woman has the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no conception; if a woman isn't willing to die in childbirth she shouldn't have sex."
That still seems to be an opinion held by too many people in power in the USA right now. Do you know when rape in marriage finally became a crime in all the states? 1993. So women in 1917 had no right to refuse sex if they were married but didn't want to die in childbirth. It's still relevant now, because women are being denied contraception or insurance by men in power. Employers can decide for their employees if they can have birth control or not on their insurance.
Look up what Ruth Bader Ginsburg has to say about women making reproductive choices for themselves rather than have the government do it for her.
As the government will be involved to some extent, we need to ensure that woman have roles in that government that allow them to speak for themselves and from experience a man will never have had.
So when Labour are opening up all women short lists to men, that's a problem for me too. Women are again being silenced, because someone else's 'feelings' are somehow more important than everything women experience as women. And again, I don't believe saying so makes me transphobic, it's just a convenient way of saying shut up to women.
If feeling angry about any of this, if feeling like women are being overlooked and excluded once again, if thinking that my body does actually make me more of a woman than someone else's make up or outfit or feelings, also makes me a transphobic TERF to some people, then okay.
But it really doesn't.