DarthNigel
Can I just address your last post?
Firstly, thanks for giving it some thought. It's frustrating when people have a knee-jerk reaction, without thinking anything through. So I'm grateful that you have.
I'm worried that this man is following me because he means me harm'
This is something that is said a lot. Understandably.
But there are several problems with it. First of all, predators do not come with a label, as we all know. There is no way to tell if someone is going to harm you, if they don't want you to know beforehand.
Secondly, a man has to do very little to make a woman feel uncomfortable. Intimidation is simple with the flick of an eye, a concentrated look or a smirk. 'He's looking at me funny' will get you nowhere. He'll have every right to look, smirk, anything. Short of attack.
Furthermore, I know full well, for instance, that my DH wouldn't dream of going in to the ladies loo. He would know that the women would feel uncomfortable. As would most decent men.
So someone who is prepared to ignore (or enjoy) a woman's discomfort, has already breached the privacy principle. His insistence on entry is already a red flag.
In your average night club an obvious man walking into a crowed women's toilet and proclaiming they could do so because they were a woman would be laughed out of there
No, they wouldn't. Because he would have every right to be there. And you would be committing a hate crime, or a hate incident. That's what self ID means. You have no choice.
I agree, to start with, people will think wtf? But that will very quickly stop when women are told to stfu because it's the law.
Recently Travis Alabanza, for instance. A man who doesn't even claim to be a transwoman, but a trans femme person, insisted on using the womans' changing room at top shop. His best friend calls little girls kinky and deviant. Travis, himself, identifies as a 15-year-old girl on nights out. When Topshop demurred, he took to Twitter in a fury and make them change their policy. He was utterly determined to change where he wanted to, whilst knowing full well it was difficult for the women. (He was told there were girls in their underwear in there).
I'm sure we all like to believe that, men, in general, are decent. Which most are. But for the ones who aren't, this is a gift. This isn't really about trans people at all. This is a dream for every single predator, bully, paedophile, flasher, voyeur in the country.
And don't forget, that cross dressing fetishists, according to Stonewall, are transgender now.
So men who fetishise womanhood, and absolutely get a sexual kick out of their presence in women's bathrooms, changing rooms, locker rooms will be at the forefront of this.
(Are at the forefront of this. I have yet to see a trans-activist who is like the very friendly transwomen on the feminist boards, struggling with gender dysphoria. Who incidentally, are horrified at what is being proposed in their name and by whom).
At the moment, to be legally considered a woman, you have to have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, have lived as a woman for two years, and be over 18. The move to self ID, which has cross-party support, eliminates all three criteria.
No diagnosis, no modification of any kind to clothing or appearance. Your DH could do it tomorrow.
It's social engineering on a mammoth scale. Making the terms men and women legally interchangeable.
This doesn't really affect men. There are no transmen clamouring to get into men's prisons, beating men at sport, or filming themselves peeing sitting down in the gents and uploading it to Twitter.
Interestingly, despite Parliament wanting to force women to accept men as women, it doesn't work the other way around.
The law of Primogeniture is exempt.
A woman cannot identify as a man to inherit a title and take her seat in the House of Lords over her younger brother.
Because, sometimes, woman does mean something. When it might disadvantage a man.