AIBU .... to open a transgender discussion thread for respectful debate !

[wrexhamtrans]

For the last couple of days I enjoyed a great discussion over transgender rights on a thread that has now closed. Despite over 1000 posts it was on the whole very respectful and insightful.

So let's have something new.... let's have a thread started by myself, a transsexual woman where we can have a healthy dialog. No TRA agenda, no erasure, no abuse or disrespect......

To kick things off I'd like to pick up on a comment made on a previous thread.
I fully accept many other women, who would previously allowed this [transgender women in women's spaces], now wouldn't because "we gave an inch and they stole a mile"

In the past there existed generally a happy coexistence between transsexual women and women.

Unfortunately the goalposts moved and we now have this broad umbrella of transgenderism which I will be the first to say is completely ridiculous. It is this new label that campaigns for cross dressers rights and acceptance of those who are sexual motivated. And of course self id is a dangerous and foolish idea.

Please remember there is still a quiet minority of transsexual women who do want to live their life in peace and who are as much against this as any woman. These TRAs do not represent me.

Being a woman for me is who I am. It's how society sees me because it cannot accept the way I am as permissible as a man. I am castrated and hormonally transitioned and awaiting surgery. I live every day as a woman and i am treated as one in many ways including misogyny, oppressed by male privilege, sexualisation....For some transition was the only way to have a life.

Those who cross dress and are sexual motivated are making a choice. Those with gender dysphoria are not.

There needs to be compromise on both sides, probably more so on the TRA side.
As transsexual I would like to have seen the following...

1. No self id. All those identifying as women to be psychologically evaluated and screened. Gender Dysphoria is no joke.
2. Any rights given to trans women go to dysphoric transsexual women who are in physical transition. No rights at all to other groups eg cross dressers....in other words is transsexual rights not transgender rights.
3. Access to some women's spaces permitted after X months of HRT and testosterone blocking therapy ie when Oestrogen and Testosterone levels are that of a natal female.

Unfortunately I think too much has been conceded already to revert.
I am fed up having my identity hijacked and turned into something it's not. I wouldn't wish gender dysphoria on my worst enemy. People with GD are damaged people who struggle considerably with gender identity and face daily abuse, ridicule and violence.

I absolutely do believe it is possible to born in the wrong body.....to have a brain chemistry of one gender and a body of another. Indeed we know of one generic condition called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome which does exactly that. The idea though that it's ok to mix this up with sexual fetishism is sooooo wrong.

Can you think of any other medical condition where it would be accepted for someone else to claim that condition because they like to pretend they have it ? If I applied to the Council for a Blue Badge because it turns me on to sometimes pretend I am disabled I would be told, rightly so, where to go. Why oh why would the Government capitulate that with gender dysphoria ? You were born in the wrong body, have significant mental health issues ? Yes, we will help you. You like to pretend you are a woman because it turns you on ? Of course, jump in there too.....

Keeping up fine thanks, you keep up. You show up exactly what is wrong with the FWR boards the more you post.
It's robotic, bizarre and pattern down to a tee, even the last thread you were doing the same.

Many severely abuses women try to destroy their bodies to avoid being an attraction for attention from men.

I agree, and I know women this applies to.

The distinction between gay men who transition and heterosexual ones came originally from the work of Ray Blanchard, a researcher who worked with men who identify as women and wrote a number of papers and book(s?). It's a classification system called Blanchard's typology, and further work has clarified some of the issues. Here's a paper explaining and discussing it.

Since the 1960s, several studies have found that homosexual MTFs are seldom (if ever) sexually aroused by dressing in the female role (termed transvestic fetishism) while all three subtypes of non-homosexual MTFs are typically so aroused.

Anyone who doubts that AGP is important or real needs to do some digging. It is openly discussed by MTFs in pretty much all the blogs and forums they frequent. Or look at what pops up under girlslikeus. NSFW so be careful.

A safer option is an article Miranda Yardley, a transsexual, has written on the autogynaephilia.

Why is your privacy invaded?

And yet look at the transman that R0wantrees linked to. He could use the ladies toilet if he wanted to because he was born female? And that wouldn't make women feel uncomfortable?

She should of course be able to use the female facilities. As she explains, she is a woman (adult human female). I found her story deeply moving. She was very badly failed, the victim of male sexual abuse by her father and inadequate and neglectful medical services.

If she looks like a bloke though, some on here wouldn't believe that she was bio female and would demand proof or not want her in there in the first place as she was too butch.

Er, you can't dictate whether I feel my privacy is invaded.

I agree, you’re free to feel exactly how you want. It is a free country, the problem arises when people that hold exclusionary views start announcing that everyone must also hold this view or you’re less worthy or intelligent. This then turns it into a sort of dictatorship, and some people such as myself and the other people on here don’t want to just sit back and let these things be said and go unchallenged.

Why would you assume you are advertising your transition simply by using disabled toilets??

Sorry you've lost me.

Why would transmen or women be using the disabled toilets unless they have a disability?

I'm saying that making transmen or women use the toilets aligned with their birth sex they will be advertising their difference.

I was comparing my experience of having a disability and having to use disabled toilets and answering a PP who said what's wrong with being different?

My answer is that sometimes you don't want to be seen as different. You want to blend in, to go un noticed. To not always be labelled as different.

So again we're back to this Weetabix aren't we?

So do you think entry to women's spaces should be based on whether a male can imitate a woman well enough?

So then they cant use their birth sex toilet if they don't want to, they have a choice the same as I do, to maybe have to use another option.
I don't have an issue using them, they are normally available and they are much bigger with all the facilities inside, and as such preferable, to my mind.
There's no reason that the disabled labelling can't be removed to avoid any perceived stigma

She should of course be able to use the female facilities.

And I too am deeply moved by the story.

But what about all of the women that will feel uncomfortable by the presence of a man in the ladies toilet? The women that the PP is concerned about? Surely they will just see a man in their toilet?

the problem arises when people that hold exclusionary views start announcing that everyone must also hold this view or you’re less worthy or intelligent.

I think that you don't care about other women's privacy and dignity or rights and put male people first. I'm as entitled to that opinion as you are to yours that my views are "exclusionary".

Why are you ruling out all transwomen? What is your criteria for "having a problem with them all?" Possibly because, as many posters have said many times, having been accepting of trans women in female spaces for the whole of my entire life the words and actions of the very many loud and aggressive TRA voices and those of their, in my opinion, unthinking supporters have

a) made me rethink that accommodation and

b) decide that, as I can't be expected to police every trans woman I ever meet, the only way to ensure that the proposed changes to the law will NOT negatively impact the safety of women and children is to simply say "No!"

Don't blame me for that! Blame TRAs, blame violent mean who have claimed to be trans women, blame politicians and organisations who have happily leapt upon the TWAW bandwagon and have allowed some horrendous crimes to occur, blame all of those people who said "That would never happen" and then sat back and said "Well not very often" when it did!

A year or so ago I would have been asking what accommodation, what compromise could we realistically come to that would mean that 'real trans women' could be safe.

Now I am asking why are women being asked to make that accommodation? Why aren't men sorting out their own problems?

Why is women's safety such and easy concept of collateral damage?

And don't say it isn't.... unlike the beginning of this year, when it was all surmise, today every single woman can name at least 2 men who have violently, sexually attacked women and, despite NOT having a GRC, have been housed in the women's estate and/or been prosecuted as a woman, the crime being rape, requiring a penis!

THAT is why opinions and feelings are hardening. Women's safety is being sacrificed to this ideology!

Penises should not have access to women's toilets.

But what about

As I said Weetabix do you believe that it's about whether a male person can imitate a female sufficiently well?

Shriek

Again you've lost me, sorry. Are you saying that anyone can use the disabled toilet?

You mention that you use them because they are everywhere and bigger. Do you have a disability that requires you to use the disabled toilet?

The only people that should be using the disabled toilets are those with a disability or if they are designated baby changing facilities. They aren't a 3rd space.

What about women who don't look feminine enough to you, Weetabix? Would you ask them to leave? Because that is where your logic leads.

But what when they don't blend in, Weetabix?

Why does that make a difference really?

Because, like with a visible disability, you are then ‘different’ whether you like it or not.

The argument about seeing a man in a women's space, see above, that arguments means this simply cannot be policed.
So have a separate facility, which is superior to the ones of either sex

Breastfeeding rooms in the workplace are not considered 'exclusionary', they are an adjustment. People can accept that.

So they can also accept other women only spaces and have some respect for the women that need them. They just don't want to.

But what about all of the women that will feel uncomfortable by the presence of a man in the ladies toilet? The women that the PP is concerned about? Surely they will just see a man in their toilet?

She isn't a man.
She deserves respect for that fact.

As she explained in the interview she:

"underwent a sex change 15 years ago has revealed it was "the greatest mistake", saying: "I'm a woman, I'm still Debbie."

TRAs created this problem. It's such bullshit to blame women. If entitled males had never used women's facilities, we wouldn't expect that "masculine" appearing women weren't female.

I think that you don't care about other women's privacy and dignity or rights and put male people first.

You’re welcome to have that view if that’s what you think, it would show that you’ve not really listened to anything I’ve said and have instead chosen to ignore it, so that you can keep telling yourself that you’re not really a bigot, other people just don’t care about woman as much as you do.

That’s fine, when people do bad things or have questionable views they often find ways to justify their actions and words by blaming everyone around them. I’m used to it with a previous abusive relationship. Luckily, I came out the other side and now refuse to be manipulated.

So they can also accept other women only spaces and have some respect for the women that need them. They just don't want to.

Exactly.

so that you can keep telling yourself that you’re not really a bigot, other people just don’t care about woman as much as you do.

It's exactly what I think, with reason.

I don't believe males can ever be women. I think women have the right to single sex spaces. I think women are not the oppressors of males with gender dysphoria.