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?

Gingerrogered i fundamentally disagree that the human body is inherently sexual in every situation.

Then you’re either an idiot, male or were hideously ugly when you were a young woman.

I think most women who have been through a female adolescence and young adulthood know perfectly well that young women are not the ones who get to dictate whether they or their bodies are sexualised.

I can certainly tell you that until I hit 30 (and got fat) I was sexualised against my will by stares, gropes, leers, whistled at, faced sexualised gestures, had men openly comment on my face or figure and shout things from cars and vans. This would be on the tube, the bus, the train, in the park, in the supermarket, the swimming pool, walking suburban streets in broad daylight in conservative clothes, hell, even my fucking school uniform sometimes.

Sorry, but you’re being absolutely ridiculous. Your suggestion is just laughable, do you really think if we start skipping round unisex gym or pool changing rooms in the buff or making teenagers get changed for PE in the same room women can just politely tell them that they are not sexualising their bodies at the moment, so please would these men stop leering at them? Do you seriously think those men would instantly see the error in their ways and walk away chastened never to objectify a woman again?

Because, seriously, we’ve been trying to find ways to stop men sexually objectifying us for millennia and we haven’t found a way. To suggest skipping round starkers and asking them nicely not to do it and expecting them to listen is just foolish.

Women very rarely get to choose when our bodies are or are not sexualised. And the times when we do, or we feel happy to expose it without being sexualised - thst’s because we are safe in safe spaces we have created our own boundaries for. Like our home or ladies changing rooms or toilets or spas.

But TRAs and their handmaidens want to make sure there are absolutely zero spaces left in public where we can feel relaxed enough about our boundaries to do that.

For a lot of women, especially religious ones, it will turn into a form of house arrest and severely limit what they can do.

I’ve already addressed the Times study in a previous post. There’s a lot missing from the data. We don’t know how many local authorities were contacted and we have no stats at all from privately run leisure centres. While those incidents undoubtedly happened, the Times has an agenda (as all mainstream newspapers do) and went looking for it, and the data is not an accurate snapshot of every unisex space in the entire country.

And yes of course we have a long way to go before reaching desexualised utopia but it has to start somewhere! The MoJ have admitted themselves that Karen White was a policy failure.

Also, ‘the government’, as in the ruling party, while they’re holding the consultation they aren’t in thrall to the likes of Jess Bradley or Challenor. The Greens and Lib Dems and the NUS and even Labour have no policy making power. They could propose a plastic dinosaur on the roof of every building in the UK but they can’t enact it. I do think there are problems with the trans ideology of those particular people but I don’t believe they’re representative of the trans community as a whole

@Gingerrogered Good point (ugly thing was unnecessary) Everything - everything - about young ‘virginial’ girls/ woman has been hijacked for male sexual inference. There is nothing inherently sexy about a school uniform but for the conditioning of porn and sex media.

So much of female presentation and behaviour has been rewired by men as sexual triggers. Short skirts, open questions, walking alone means we are gagging for it. Because that’s the narrative that lets men assume sexual power and be absolved of responsibility.

Inference being the key word, because when we have our own space, we are freed from that. It is not something that comes from within us - it is projected onto us.

What it boils down to is what is more important, biological males feelings or women's safety?

I've told this story before.

Four years ago I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, i was not permitted to leave or discharge myself. It was a mixed sex ward with the females rooms on a separate corridor from the males and security supposedly always patrolling.

A man was admitted, he wore a wig and female clothes because of this he was housed on the female corridor. I was polite, I felt sorry for him. Despite being uncomfortable (how prudish of me) by his constant talk about sex and overfamiliarity (unwanted hugging etc) I called him his chosen name and made no noise when he came out the "suicide watch suite" and was placed in the room next to me.

I woke up to him in my room, wanking himself off about 5cm away from my face. I screamed and a fellow patient came running and rugby tackled him to the floor. Luckily that patient was male, wanking Sally was 6 foot odd I wouldn't of had a chance I was also on strong sleeping pills, I still don't know if it only happened once.

Wanking Sally might still be in that room, he wasn't kicked out of either hospital or the women's section I refused to sleep in my room with him close by and stayed up all night in the living area all night as did the two other female patients.

I was unceremoniously discharged the next day, off half my normal meds (I have bipolar) and addicted to sleeping pills.

I don't feel traumatised by what happened I feel angry. I was vulnerable back then as are the women female prisoners, women with MH problems, bedbound women in hospital, elderly and sick women needing home care, women fleeing to refuges and women needing to use rape crisis centres who will be put most at risk if this new self ID thing comes in.

Those examples I've used, that could happen to any women. I didn't plan for a mental breakdown, no one does but I had one. I should of been safe and I wasn't.

I don’t believe they’re representative of the trans community as a whole

Nor do I.

I do think people like Jess Bradley and Aimee Challenor are representative of transactivists who are pushing for new laws that diminish safeguarding for women and girls though.

Pandamodium I'm so sorry to hear that happened to you.

What you've posted is awful and the terrible thing it, it's common. We know this stuff happens, all the time. The hospital should have protected you better, I'm so sorry they didn't.

I don’t believe they’re representative of the trans community as a whole

They’re the noisy ones though and the dangerous ones. I’m quite reliably informed that for a long time, people who are, what I think is referred to now as transsexual (ie they live full time as the gender they identify as and don’t get sexual gratification from it) have been living and working as their identified sex and using the toilets and changing rooms etc, etc without any bother or anybody noticing, let alone feeling threatened.

The problem is that TRAs don’t want to do that. They demand the right to shower naked in the ladies room with a full set of tackle out and if your Grandma comes across him with a raging hard on and is upset or shocked then Grannie is a transphobe.

And if some Muslim girls want to take off their hijab to try on clothes but don’t feel they can because a 20 stone man with a beard who is Reg, angle grinder from Doncaster 6 days a week is only separated from them by a flimsy curtain - well then they are transphobes who should go home and buy on the internet. And Reg might well be an autogynaphile who gets sexual thrills from dressing as Audrey once a week, and the simple act of going into women’s spaces - forcing himself into their spaces and making them uncomfortable - he would be able to do that under self ID.

To be honest, quite a few of them just seem to really hate women, think they’re better than them and enjoy threatening and intimidating them and frightening them off. The TRA has given them pretty much free range to do this over TERFs who a pretty mild mannered, polite and group of pleasant middle aged women in sensible shoes, anoraks and warm pullovers.

And there is also a problem because trans people, in particular transwomen, frequently have co-morbid mental health issues which can make them somewhat difficult, unpredictable and intimidating to deal with in social situations.

The problem is the self ID law they want doesn’t just apply to the people who do it quietly now. It doesn’t just apply to people who sincerely think they are trans. They don’t even have to wear female clothes or make up. They could turn up in a businesss sort or a pair of overalls and just walk straight in. Say ‘I identify as a woman’ and it’s open sesame.

Even if they’re a convicted rapist or paedophile or murderer.

And yes of course we have a long way to go before reaching desexualised utopia but it has to start somewhere!
Well it sure as hell isn't going to start with me or my daughter getting changed in front of men, however they identify. Absurd.
As for Karen White being a 'policy failure', are you aware they had previously repeatedly raped a woman with Aspergers on a secure psychiatric unit. Was that also a 'policy failure'? So, 5 women (that we know of) have already suffered as a result of 'policy failure'. Sounds to me as if that policy might just be a bit shit in the first place if it's so easily failed, don't you think? How many more women need to be sexually assaulted/raped before this policy is deemed to be inadequate?

It’s a male trait: Talking loudly and incredulously when you don’t immediately get what you want. It’s actually a damn clear signifier as to who maintains their male-pattern entitlement and who doesn’t in the trans-community.

Excellent post Gingerrogered

This bit although hideously un-PC Then you’re either an idiot, male or were hideously ugly when you were a young woman is especially true

I absolutely agree Beastie that transwomen should have access to women's spaces. I just think in an ideal world Id just have unisex spaces everywhere. I see it like 'I'm female, that's fine. I'm a woman, I guess. I'm just questioning what gender means to me, and if it means anything. In the meantime, I want to make sure TW feel supported, and are allowed into whichever spaces they need.

It is quite telling that you do not feel an equal need to support women. I am a woman and I'm allowed to set my own sexual boundaries. That means I get to say no to male bodied people disrobing in front of me, and no to my disrobing in front of bio males.

I'm really not sure why some women would force me to look at some random man's penis?

Re hideously ugly: it makes no difference. Women who are attractive get attention because they are fuckable. Women who are less attractive get attention because they have had the audacity to not be ‘fuckable’. Still being assessed on a fuckability basis.

It essentially comes down to boundaries and the rights of girls and women to say no to men. I find it astonishing that some women don't see how self id erases girls' and women's right to say no - and no amount of wishing men didn't see women as sex objects is going to change the fact that they do - or the fact that allowing men into spaces where girls and women are vulnerable places us at far greater risk. And it will be abused.

66% of girls aged 14 to 21 have experienced unwanted sexual attention or harassment in a public place.

plan-uk.org/file/plan-uk-street-harassment-reportpdf/download?token=CyKwYGSJ

Deal with this first and then we can talk about unisex spaces.

I wonder if these women would force their little girls to accept random peoplewithpenises exposing their "ladydick" in their face?

I mean... why wouldn't they? Where's the limit? If these women really believe TWAW and that ladydick is a female organ, and that everyone who says they are female is an innocent angel who would never hurt a fly, then why wouldn't they?

Excuse me, I have to vomit now.

I haven't read the whole thread but at any time a man "identifying" as a woman could say "Guess what? I'm going to identify as a man today" and he could.

A woman can never do the same because biology and objective reality.

Women and trans women are not the same.

No law or policy is going to dictate that you MUST be naked with anybody. What about a system of private changing spaces, along with communal areas should you choose to use them?

Dommina, this makes no sense. You're either going to allow women to set our own sexual boundaries, or you are not.

My own sexual boundary is clearly defined and limited to sex segregated spaces. (And I supposed, nobody who looks like Buck Angel) That means no communal anything.

And yet you continue to badger. Would you badger a young girl, say six years old? I don't see why you wouldn't.

It used to be the case that every so often -- not very often just once in a while someone would say that they thought transgenderism encouraged pedophilia, and I thought they were over-reacting. Not any more... Grooming little girls to accept pedophilia seems to be half the agenda now.

About the issue of feeling safe and comfortable around a male-bodied person ... tell you what... if male bodied people stop prostituting women, wanking over women's bodies in porn, raping and sexually assaulting us and judging us according to the fuckability of our bodies - and I mean stop - totally stop - so that girls can grow up knowing that they have full personhood and can exist without fear in the world and are not subject to men's object then I'll think about it. But nor until then. The ball's in your court guys.

And this is the crux of it.

TRAs: Male violence.
Transwomen: Rejection of male violence.
Women: Fear of male violence.

And we’re shouldering the onus of this, again, while men could not give a shit. Because why should they?

All this "ideal world" stuff ignores the fact that an estimated 1 out of every 100 men is a sociopath. Sociopathy has a strong hereditary basis. It wouldn't matter how strong a social expectation and norm you create that bodies should be regarded as non-sexual: these men won't care, because they regard social norms and other people's feelings as something for them to play with. They cannot be changed or "cured".

Stats on sexual assault:

Approximately 1 in 8 lesbian women (13%), nearly half of bisexual women (46%), and 1 in 6 heterosexual women (17%) have been raped in their lifetime.

• CDC's National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey

About 1 in 5 women have been raped in their lifetimes, a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds. Nearly half – 44 percent – of women reported experiencing some sort of sexual violence in their lifetimes. While the numbers are much lower for men who are victims of rape (1.7 percent), about one-quarter of men (23.4 percent) were victims of sexual violence. The agency’s findings are the result of a phone survey completed in 2011.
www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/09/05/cdc-1-in-5-women-raped-often-by-someone-they-know

The US Bureau of Justice Statistics states that 91% of rape victims are female and 9% are male, and nearly 99% of rapists are male. According to the National Violence against Women Survey, 1 in 6 US women and 1 in 33 US men has experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. More than a quarter of college-age women report having experienced a rape or rape attempt since age 14.

• Misogyny and Violence Against Women - UN Development Fund for Women - March 2016

While verbal sexual harassment was the most common form (77% of women and 34% of men), an alarming 51% of women and 17% of men said they were touched or groped in an unwelcome way, and 27% of women and 7% of men survived sexual assault.
And
most women (and men) first experience sexual harassment pretty early in life — during preteen or teenage years.
And
81% of women and 43% of men reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment and/or assault in their lifetime.
More than 3 in 4 women (77%) and 1 in 3 men (34%) experienced verbal sexual harassment;
1 in 2 women (51%) and 1 in 6 men (17%) were sexually touched in an unwelcome way;
Around 4 in 10 women (41%) and 1 in 4 men (22%) experienced cyber sexual harassment;
More than 1 in 3 women (34%) and 1 in 10 men (12%) were physically followed;
Close to 1 in 3 women (30%) and 1 in 10 men (12%) faced unwanted genital flashing;
More than 1 in 4 women (27%) and 1 in 14 men (7%) survived sexual assault.
Sexual harassment and assault is so common for women that most differences by demographic are insignificant. One example of an exception is disability status. 40% of women with disabilities reported experiencing sexual assault compared with 23% of women without disabilities.
www.stopstreetharassment.org/resources/2018-national-sexual-abuse-report/
(The above study had 3 trans natal male participants, and 10 trans natal female participants, included within their "chosen gender".)

I would like to think that these few surveys and studies show how disgustingly common and normalised it is for natal females (or those who genuinely pass as natal females,) to be sexually assaulted - from groping (just over half of women, and assuredly more than once,) to actual penetrative rape (from nearly half of bisexual women, to 1 out of 5 overall.)

I'd like to point these statistics out because I feel like many trans natal males have this idea that they are hugely at risk - more so than natal females - just by virtue of being transgender. But that is in fact a lie (as the stat of 37% of trans natal males experiencing any sort of sexual assault shows.)

As for gender being 'just a feeling' - no it isn't. Gender is a set of socially constructed stereotypes that tell us how to be properly 'feminine' if we are female and 'masculine' if we are male - or more broadly how to behave if we are female or male respectively. Gender is also sexualised - thus men 'like' properly feminine women and women 'like' properly masculine men, etc. Many men who 'identify as female' really mean they identify as 'feminine' - that set of constructed and fetishised characteristics attributed to 'proper' women. Hence - the picture of Munroe Berghof that I have attached - where she is telling us how to be a woman by asserting female sexuality - i.e. the stereotype of the fuckable woman you can see in any soft porn.

"Then there is is this (I've cut and pasted this from a thread I started a while back about trans porn)

This is NSFW - but it's one example

twitter.com/lisadumonde?lang=en

Here's another (equally NSFW)

www.reddit.com/r/transporn/.

Obviously, there are also copious commercial sites - pornhub and the like.

These are not individuals who are dysphoric though, from what I can see. They are individuals who get off on having tits and a cock and from seeing other individuals with tits and cock.

Disturbingly, when I looked up 'how to write trans porn', I found site after site that was more about fetish and kink than anything else - like this one www.sugarbutch.net/2015/11/best-queer-sex-blogs/ and quite a few like this one NSFW queer-oranges.tumblr.com/post/57189374716/tips-on-writing-porn-with-a-trans-character-in-it whre the main theme was 'acceptance' (the partner 'not knowing' but having sex anyway - and, obviously, enjoying it much more than ever before)"

In other words, 'feeling like a woman' often means 'feeling like women have been constructed through patriarchal stereotypes that reduce them to fuckable objects and perpetuate male behaviours that lead to women being objectified and raped'. Funny that. And funny that so many trans women keep their dicks.

Criminal statistics based on California stats from 2008 (in the main,) as they had the most comprehensive stats:

Stats for trans males taken from here unless otherwise stated: ucicorrections.seweb.uci.edu/files/2013/06/Transgender-Inmates-in-CAs-Prisons-An-Empirical-Study-of-a-Vulnerable-Population.pdf
ucicorrections.seweb.uci.edu/files/2013/06/A-Demographic-Assessment-of-Transgender-Inmates-in-Mens-Prisons.pdf
Stats for non-trans males, and females, taken from here, unless otherwise stated: www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Annual/Census/CENSUSd0812.pdf

Registered sex offender:
Females - 1.3%
Trans males - 20.5%
Non-trans natal males - 14.2%

Of the major race/ethnicity groups, it's interesting to see that black trans males have notably higher rates of imprisonment than whites and Hispanics, compared to non-trans males where Hispanics have the highest incarceration rates by far, and females where whites have the highest incarceration rate.
Ethnicity:
Female
Hispanic - 29.4%
White - 36.4%
Black - 29.2%
Trans males
Hispanic - 28.3%
White - 28.0%
Black - 34.6%
Non-trans males
Hispanic - 39.6%
White - 25.3%
Black - 29.1%

As for sentencing, trans males have stats that match non-trans males, and differ greatly from females'.
Sentencing:
Females
Lifer - 8.6%
Life w/o parole - 1.4%
Not a lifer - 91.4
Trans males
Lifer - 13.3%
Life w/o parole - 2.4%
Not a lifer - 84.3%
Non-trans males
Lifer - 13.7%
Life w/o parole - 2.3%
Not a lifer - 83.6%

The same is true with the type of offence - trans male offences are more property focused than crimes against persons', but still align more closely to non-trans males, than females.
Offence type:
Females
Crimes against persons - 32.9%
Property - 34.5%
Drug - 27.2%
Other Crimes - 5.4%
Trans males
Crimes against persons - 49.8%
Property - 30.2%
Drug - 16.3%
Other - 3.7%
Non-trans males
Crimes against persons - 54.8%
Property - 18.8%
Drug - 17.8%
Other Crimes - 8.5%

Percentage of total demographic incarcerated by population:
Females - 0.06%
Trans males - 0.23%
Non-trans males - 0.86%

As of the 2010 census, California had a population of 37,254,518, of which females were 50.3%, which makes the number of women18,739,022. There were 11,408 women housed in California in 2008.
The estimates of the transgender population in the US, between 2008 and now, vary between 0.38%, and more recently as much as 1.3%. Aiming in the middle, I used a stat often mentioned by articles as specific to California - 0.76%. If half of transgender people are born males, that puts the population of trans males in California at 141,567. According to the source studies, there were at least 332 trans males in prisons in California in 2008.
As of the 2010 census, California had a population of 37,254,518, of which males were 49.7%, which makes the number of men18,515,495. There were 159,753 men housed in prisons in California in 2008.

Exactly @YetAnotherSpartacus. Men have spent centuries assuming ownership of women’s bodies. Male policy makers, doctors, politicians all know best for women. Women are not listened to. Any part of our experience that doesn’t align with the male view of woman as sexual servicer is dismissed so forgive me, if when a man tells me they have, “Always felt like a woman,” I am less than convinced. Even now, TRAs aren’t centring women in their movement which perfectly embodies the whole problem here. We are dismissed. Again.

We are not proper women. We are not playing along with the notion of our sex as fuck holes. And they don’t like it because it only serves to remind trans women that actually, they have very little concept of what it is to be female.

Sorry for such long, boring posts, but I think both of them show very clearly that a.) trans identified males aka transwomen are not at higher lifetime risk of sexual abuse and assault than females, and b.) that trans identified males aka transwomen have patterns of criminality, particularly in regards to sexual offences, that are more in line with males than females. In fact, they are MORE likely to be registered sex offenders.