In my understanding of the trans issue.

[Randomusername01]

I'm trying to work out if I'm being bigoted or not. I agree with some of the trans posts I see here but others, whilst maybe not being anti trans by mn standards definitely come across as mean and on the verge of being anti trans imo. Anyway I digress. Am I right in thinking that gender is just a feeling, constructed partly by society and partly by individual innateness. So I guess I do agree that people can self I'd their gender along whatever myriad there is. But this is separate from anatomical sex, which bar a minority of cases either fall under male with penis and female with a vagina. So you could perhaps identify with being female but anatomically you would be male? So is the problem lies in how society segregates things such as prisons, sports, changing rooms etc. By gender or otherwise?

I want safe and secure unisex spaces too Dommina.

Public facilities should be adequately safe and private for All people, and women are people too FFS!

Gone are the days when women were expected to hide themselves away from men by default. It shouldn't be acceptable to say "these facilities are safe enough for MEN, but if we had to have WOMEN in here too... well, we might have to try a bit harder. Let's just make them their own special lady room instead." No thanks. How about you just make your facilities safe and functional for members of either sex, actually, because aren't we equal members of society??

I've never commented on any of this before but do I have this right?

1. The problem as I see it is that you cannot have a transwoman with a penis in a female space. It just isn't safe for women.

Not all men are rapists etc but a lot of men will take advantage of the situation and even one assault is one too many. We cannot sacrifice women on the altar of trans rights.

2 i can however understand allowing post-surgery transwomen into those spaces though.

I don't understand why, if transwomen believe themselves to be women, they don't go the whole hog and have the operation. Surely their male genitalia would not make 'sense' to them?

I know that's a simplistic explanation but I'm trying to explain to other people so trying to get it clear in my mind.

I agree completely with bluesky.

I also don't understand the transman that was pregnant and had a child. If being female was so abhorrent, why would they do the thing that the female body is designed to do? Makes no sense for transwomen to keep their genitalia if they really hate being male. They are men.

Sorry I meant beyondthesky

Perhaps you should head over to the feminism chat board as that's where the ones with all the knowledge hang out. AIBU is not the best board for this.

I think you have a very naive view but then according to some on here I'm a bigoted transphobe 🤷🏼‍♀️

I don't know Perverse, AuntBeastie seems to know her stuff.

And the Feminism Boards, they've got something of a... well... a reputation, haven't they? God only knows what sort of people they attract these days.

AuntBeastie

Trans women are not women they are Trans women

Women are not "cis" (fucking offensive term) women they are women.

Woman/women does not need a prefix as it is the natural state of being however trans-woman does as it all about the feelz.

And just to cast another load of shite in to the whole sodding mess being bigoted doesn't always mean that you are wrong.

I'm paraphrasing, but a previous poster said that transwomen experience sexism the same way women do. I'd like to give a couple examples of why I do not believe this is true.
I work in STEM and there is a push to increase the participation of women. The reasons for women being under represented go right back to expectations placed on girls regarding maths and science. Now my department is only interested in gender, not sex. So transwomen tick tick the box and it looks like women are well represented, but they grew up male and didn't face any of the barriers to accessing a career in STEM. If you cannot name the problem, you cannot address it and women remain under represented.
In my 20's I did not consider myself a feminist. I thought we had won the war and could achieve anything men could. Then I got pregnant and started a family and had a wake-up call. I think this is common for many women. My career was forced off course due to pregnancy, maternity leave and caring responsibilities. These issues do not face transwomen.
Transwomen face oppression, but their issues are not the same as womens.

@CaligulaBlushed

That is true. But it is about more than toilets now. Should transwomen compete in women’s sports? Even though their physiology gives them an unfair advantage? Should they take spots on programmes in STEM for women? Should they be triaged as a male or a female in hospital? Should they be able to conceal their status from sexual partners before or during the act of sex to protect their privacy? Should transwomen be able to class themselves as lesbians (even if they retain a penis)? Is a woman who is in a relationship with a trans woman who has a penis a lesbian? Are they allowed to demand that lesbians make spaces for them in lesbian representation groups?

The issue with trans is one of colonisation. It feels very much like womanhood is being colonised and then told how to behave. I don’t want to call myself cis. Why should I have to? It is a label that has been given to me, without my consent or any discussion with me. And it is used to describe some of the most painful events of my life as ‘privileged’ in a way that suggests I should be grateful for them. My miscarriage wasn’t a ‘privilege’. My infertility is not a ‘privilege’. My sexual assault was not a ‘privilege’. This is why women are angry. We’ve blinked and suddenly there are whole set of new rules to control our speech and behaviour that no one asked us about and that are deeply restrictive.

Don’t want to be beaten at sport by a trans woman- give up sports. Don’t want to get changed in front of someone with a male body- stop going swimming. Don’t feel comfortable sharing a rape crisis centre room with someone with a penis- leave and go elsewhere. How is this supportive to women at all? It is driving women out of their safe spaces, out of their sports and out of their support groups.

That's a lot of questions all at once there Susan [wow]

I don't see how 50% of the population could be being "colonised" though; even if every single trans person were part of this invasion they would still only be 1% of the population!

Anyway, I welcome trans women why wouldn't I? Your questions do need answers, and I think we can answer them together, natal women and trans. There is more that unites us than divides us.

That [wow] was meant to be , I was thinking of Facebook!

CaligulaBlushed

That’s kind of my point. How is it that women are such a large percentage of the population but seem to have lost control over the language to describe themselves?

Am I to understand then, Carrrl, and blue-sky, that you believe men are innately dangerous? At least much more inclined to be?

What confuses me about the very rad fem position on here is gender. Supposedly gender is a construct, right? I to a large extent agree with that.

Why then, are we labelling men as dangerous? I'm wary of them myself, but see the segregation of sexes as adding to the problem. Forbidden fruit etc. I'm frequently in mixed sex nudist/debauched places, and have never felt frightened. Have I had comments? Yeah, I tell them to back off. The majority of men there are genuinely really respectful and interesting and the ones that aren't, are shunned.

I'll ask, if gender is a construct, then why does it matter what someone identifies as? We know, TW know, everybody knows that their biology may not match to their acquired gender. If gender is meaningless, who cares?

Those are just some of the questions swirling around my head.

The biggest one really is: how have women’s interests and rights been erased so quickly. Because if self-id transwomen become women in law then women loose all of the sex based protections put in place to keep them safe and redress the imbalance created by the patriarchy.

How has this happened so quickly? How is it that large companies are already adopting gender neutral language to refer to all women for the sake of inclusivity? What happens to the women who don’t know what a cervix is and don’t know that they have one if the poster urging them to get cervical smear tests says ‘people with cervixes’ And yes, there are many women who don’t even know that they have a cervix or where it is (one not on Mumsnet, all MN are required to check there’s once a month, at least).

Lost control? It's language, it belongs to everybody! You get to choose what people call you (you want to be called a woman I assume? Totally fine!), but you don't get to say, "this is MY word, you can't have it, get your own one!". Loads of people use the word "women" to include trans women, that's kind of how words evolve isn't it? I bet no one got this upset when the word "European" started including Polish people too.

So many typos in that last post 🤦🏼‍♀️

Why then, are we labelling men as dangerous? I'm wary of them myself, but see the segregation of sexes as adding to the problem. Forbidden fruit etc. I'm frequently in mixed sex nudist/debauched places, and have never felt frightened. Have I had comments? Yeah, I tell them to back off.

^ I don't even know where start with this. Clearly you have never been raped. I am a 5'7" extremely athletic, strong individual, but I could not fight off a 5'10" man of average build who tried to rape me. Bully fir you that telling a man to back off magically protects you, but it's absurd to think this would deter a sex offender such as Ian Huntley (who now identifies as a woman). Do you not think that Hollie Wells and Jessica Chapman begged him to 'back off'?

Jesus wept.

Segregating by sex (for things like sport and prisons) rather than gender has pros and cons. The pros are that we are familiar with it, it is largely staightforward provided you ignore the exceptions, there is a lot of historical context behind it.

Sport is segregated by sex so that women have a chance of winning.

Other facilities are segregated by sex because 98% of all sexual violence is committed by males. Same sex facilities keep women safe, when facilities include males women are hurt.

Their are males with intersex conditions and females with intersex condition, not third sexes.

Believe what you like, feel what you like, but women exist as a biological reality and we all know that. We all know who the women are, generally the ones who have been abused across the globe and throughout all recorded time.

Females exist and wanting them to retain the rights and protections they won is not bigotry. Asking them to give these things up to males is sexism.

Perverse are you implying that people who occupy other boards do not have knowledge?

That's exactly the kind of patronising talk that drives people away from the FWR boards.

Yes, best to move it to the FWR board if you only want the very best, really brave knowledge. The rest of us are thickos.

There are cons to segregating by gender too - some people fear that men will take advantage of this to invade women’s spaces. These fears aren’t unfounded, but there are usually solutions which can be found while still accepting the right of trans people to live completely as the gender they are, rather than the sex.

Karen White anyone?? The male rapist and paedophile who identified as a woman and got sent to a female prison where he sexually assaulted four more women. Jess Bradley wanking at bus stops? Ian Huntley? Lots of others. But if you believe AuntBeastie then there's no issue with men abusing women by identifying as women at all
Penises do not belong in women's only spaces. Sex is segregated for a reason.
Trans women are not women. Woman is not a feeling, it's a biological reality.

My post, not yours.

I think lost control is the correct word when the Green Party now want members to declare being either men or non- men to join. Or events for women are being advertised for womxn to be more inclusive. I would be less alarmed if I wasn’t being told to change the way I define myself. That is colonisation.

I don’t really care how people want to define themselves. I just don’t think you can force your ideology on others without their consent. It’s totally facist.

Jesus Havelock, no amount of penis-free zones would have deterred those evil people!

And as for why men specifically are a danger (based on sex, not gender ID):

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/sexualoffencesinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2017

RiverTam

I have never said you can change sex.

I have not conflated being intersex with being trans. I am acknowledging the fact that segregating people according to a binary model of sex does not make space for intersex people.

You do not speak for all intersex people and you must know that they do not all feel the same on this issue, but, like any group, exhibit a wide range of beliefs and attitudes. It is you who is wildly disrespectful to treat them as single homogenous group to shore up your own position.

@CaligulaBlushed giving such individuals access to women's safe spaces would be a field day for such people. A lot of sex crimes are opportunistic, the reason we segregate by sex is to reduce the opportunities for individuals like Huntley to commit sex crimes.