to think that we could have a different sort of discussion on trans issues that might be helpful?

[BertrandRussell]

We can discuss the nature of womanhood endlessly. Philosophical discussions are always absorbing and interesting and very necessary and there should be plenty of space for them. However, it seems to me that there are practical discussions that need to happen which always get subsumed into the theoretical. There always have and always will be transpeople, and for the vast majority of the time it’s not an issue. Or shouldn’t be- there are transphobes in the world who should be treated with the contempt they deserve. Of course trans people deserve all the rights and protections that everyone has. However, there are some areas where the rights of transpeople are in direct conflict with those of non transpeople, and the conflict looks unresolvable. But we need to find resolution- and quickly. Could this thread concentrate on how we do that, and not be sidetracked?
To me, the urgent issues are-

1. How do we make it possible to preserve spaces where women who have been hurt or traumatised by a man can be sure they won’t meet a male bodied person?
2. How do we record crime so that it does not look as if there is a rise in violent crime-including rape- committed by women?
3. How do we preserve women’s sport so that it is not taken over by male bodied people who have an automatic physical advantage over people who were born female?
4. How do we make it possible for people to want to form relationships based on genital preference without being considered bigoted?

It’s not really in the scope of this thread, but I would really like someone to explain the thought processes that get to “Transwomen are women”. Because there has to be more to it than “because they say they are” or someone else saying “well , I say they aren’t” would carry just as much weight. I don’t have to automatically believe someone’s assessment of themselves in any other area of life.

It’s not really in the scope of this thread, but I would really like someone to explain the thought processes that get to “Transwomen are women”.

I disagree that it's not in the scope. It's the question that fundamentally underpins the whole debate. And it's the point where everything always falls down and goes unanswered because there is no way of defining a man as a woman without circular logic or sexist stereotypes.

BertrandRussell I agree with peachgreen with regards to this question; I think there are people who have a fundamental belief, a faith, that they can’t explain but won’t budge from. It IS a faith, akin to religious faith. So all that can be expected is those in charge of legislation make changes based on science, facts, reason and logic.

BertrandRussell I agree with peachgreen with regards to this question; I think there are people who have a fundamental belief, a faith, that they can’t explain but won’t budge from. It IS a faith, akin to religious faith. So all that can be expected is those in charge of legislation make changes based on science, facts, reason and logic.

Separation of church and state. If only someone had thought of that!

@OvaHere I didn't say it was an extremist view. I said I didn't know.

@S1naidSucks I don't know. I'm very glad I'm not in that position. As I keep saying, I don't see a solution that's palatable for either side.

@OldCrone Not my place to say. But I absolutely accept that some transwomen - and some men - abuse the system to commit harm.

@BertrandRussell Because there has to be more to it than “because they say they are”
Not for me. I know I'm a woman because I know it inside. It's got nothing to do with my experiences or my biology. I believe transwomen feel the same. I totally understand why that's difficult for you and many others to believe. Again, I don't have the answers.

Because i find myself incredibly conflicted as a liberal person. I genuinely think the current trans debate is damaging to hard won women’s rights and I don’t feel anything has been done to help me not think that. In fact- practically every day brings stuff that make me worry more about it. I try very hard to understand but I don’t have any sense that the other “side” (don’t know how else to put it) is trying to understand me. Or to try to accommodate me- as I am trying to accommodate them.

I'm really sorry all, I have to bow out now and do some work! I've really appreciated having this space to put forward my views without being attacked - thank you @BertrandRussell for hosting the discussion, and thank you to you all for receiving me without hostility.

@BertrandRussell For what it's worth, I feel the same way but from the other side.

Still hard to do though practically it seems. It’s written in the US constitution but the religious regularly get their legislation through, particularly anti-abortion. They just dress it up as something else and get away with it. That’s why vigilance and countering it is paramount. Faith and beliefs have no place in law.

“@BertrandRussell For what it's worth, I feel the same way but from the other side.”
So where are the threads started by the “other side” asking how the TWAW people can try to accommodate the GC people and suggesting compromise?

Very true NotBad. I did think in the UK though we had done a fairly good job on legislation being secular (apart from NI). All this gender based faith stuff seems to be a move away from that.

So where are the threads started by the “other side” asking how the TWAW people can try to accommodate the GC people and suggesting compromise?
I suspect that trans-inclusive feminists tend not to post on MN for reasons I've explained before. And I really am going now!

But i’m glad to have it confirmed that there is nothing more to it than “I am a woman because I say I am”.

Not for me. I know I'm a woman because I know it inside. It's got nothing to do with my experiences or my biology.

So would a female person with severe mental disabilities, such that they would be incapable of "knowing inside" that they are a woman, still count as one? And if not, wouldn't that be rather dehumanising? And after all, such a person could still be raped, still become pregnant - indeed, there have been sad examples of this.

@peachgreen
I hope you come back. It’s good to have some actual discussion. It is depressing that your conclusion seem to be a rather more sophisticated version of “TWAW- get over it” but there has to be a way forward that is more nuanced than that.

I don’t have any internal feeling of being a woman. My only experience of womanhood is through biology and the judgement of others based on a gender role stereotype I refuse to inhabit.

So does that mean I’m not a woman? What do you call a human being like me who has no sense of gendered self?

peach I know you’re heading off now but I have appreciated the discussion without it declining into anything uncivil. We may disagree but it’s good to have the conversation.

Using women's toilets. Accessing domestic violence and rape shelters. Attending "women only" sessions at swimming pools, gyms etc. Being part of women's groups at work.

That actually really annoys me. Women aren’t trying to to take those opportunities away from men who identify as trans, since they never belonged to males to start with. It’s not women who are ‘taking these opportunities away’, but men who identify as trans, who are trying to take them away from women. I don’t understand why you think women should give up the things they have fought long and hard for, instead of asking those who identify as trans, to creat their own spaces.

Women, some of whom have actually died in the fight for women’s spaces, still don’t have equality, but what we have is being taken away from us to pacify a subset of men. What about all of this is beneficial to women?

It seems that the only thing on offer to women who cannot subscribe to core tenets of gender-faith, like TWAW, is re-education to more adequately conform (outwardly at least) to the faith.

TWAW is a faith based, not an evidence based, position. Yes, there are hypotheses regarding the causes of GD (yet zero settled science). But GD is a different beast to the belief that males can be females, and vice versa.

I think people are free to hold faith based positions, and practice a faith. I think males are free to believe they are women, and women are free to agree with them.

I'm just not sure why this particular faith should form the basis of a mass societal reorganisation, which disadvantages natal women.

I don’t have any internal feeling of being a woman. My only experience of womanhood is through biology and the judgement of others based on a gender role stereotype I refuse to inhabit.

Same.

I know I'm a woman because I know it inside. It's got nothing to do with my experiences or my biology

???

How can this be that you didn't notice periods, breasts, street harassment, being told to close your legs or boys you look up your skirt or any of the other myriad experiences or biology that give you clues that you are female?

Wow this thread has moved fast watched the new Black Mirror last night instead of joining back in. V disappointing tv, this seems to have been a much more interesting way to have spent the evening .

I'm on the app and only up to about 11pm yesterday so still some catching up to do. I do however, so far agree with many that actually until the definition of women as it is goes back to non-negotiable and after that the other side of this argument can actually empathise and be honest about the risks, we are, in the words of Ovahere, at an impasse. I think third spaced/separate events are the ways to go but I'm not sure we can shout as loudly as those with the polar opposite views.

I also think Rufus you're def not whiny

-->continues scrolling

JamesKettle your post at 23.32 last night was excellent. Your boy has clearly got a very loving and supportive mum

@peachgreen

I asked you: "You have said you believe that transwomen are women. Can I ask at what stage of transition you believe this to be true?" I also gave you some examples of self-defined transwomen and asked if you believed them to be women.

Your response was: Not my place to say.

So despite insisting that TWAW, you don't think it is your 'place' say exactly which self-defined transwomen you actually believe to be women, otherwise your response to my question would have been an unequivocal "yes" for 'Pips' Bunce, Alex Drummond and Karen White.

I take from your response that you don't believe that TWAW is a universal truth, which applies to every single male who declares himself a woman.

It's actually not that difficult to have respect for people and their rights, but draw the line where their rights override the rights or personal safety of other people.

This is what we do with ALL other rights, through the application of human intelligence, and the only thing that makes it difficult is people's PC hysteria and virtue-signalling.

Should a trans person be respected as a human being, treated with dignity and where it is practical accorded the right to live as their chosen gender? Sure, of course.

Should a random, unannounced member of the public with a willy ever be in the ladies toilets while they are in use, a women's refuge, women only swimming session, basically any space meant for women and/or children only as a surprise for the occupants of that space? Or locked in a prison with them? Well, obviously not.

Should a person who went through puberty and musculoskeletal development as a male be smashing the bones in a woman's skull in a UFC competition or competing against them at power lifting? Well again, obviously not.

Should children's organisations have special blind spots in their safeguarding policy that allow people with willies to be at residential trips with female children, and have it be policy to hide that fact from parents? Again, obviously not.

Should who a person consents to have relations with and whether they are morally ok to make that decision ever be subject to debate by other people? No obviously not, that is the logic of rapists and has been used as such for centuries.

None of these things are actually mutually exclusive in the minds of anyone who isn't an extremist. Human intelligence is capable of walking the path quite easily on this one.

I think the main problem is people who PRETEND to hold positions for the social approval they perceive they will get from being PC. They will flat out uphold things that fly in the face of common sense and reality.

Sorry, will try and reply to the posts I missed.

@kesstrell That's a really extreme example. In cases of diminished capacity the person's primary caregiver who has power of attorney would presumably assign the person a gender and given the majority of people's gender matches their natal sex it would probably be a safe assumption.

@S1naidSucks I think we're talking semantics here but I believe transwomen do have the right to access those spaces under the Equality Act, and have done so for a decade. So that's what I meant by "taking away". I understand your point though, in that you don't believe they should ever have had those rights.

What about all of this is beneficial to women? Again, that comes back to the core debate - I believe it benefits women because it benefits transwomen and transwomen are women. If you don't believe that, then I absolutely understand why you don't believe it benefits women.

@janeskettle I totally understand your point re: faith vs science. I hope more research is undertaken to understand the causes of GD.

@HumberElla Regardless of what you believe makes you a woman, if you define yourself as a woman, I will call you a woman.

@oldcrone No, what I meant was that I don't know how those three indivduals define themselves. For example, from what I've read about Pips Bunce, he uses male pronouns and defines himself as gender fluid. So not a woman.

As an aside, regardless of Karen White's gender status, I absolutely do not think that anyone who has a history of sexually assaulting women should be held in women's prisons and have access to other women. That goes for anyone of any gender.

@sackrifice Of course I noticed all those things. But they aren't what makes me a woman. I would still be a woman even if those things hadn't happened to me.

@justarandomtricycle The problem is some of those "obviously nots" aren't "obviously nots" to me.

Should a random, unannounced member of the public with a willy ever be in the ladies toilets while they are in use, a women's refuge, women only swimming session, basically any space meant for women and/or children only as a surprise for the occupants of that space? Or locked in a prison with them? I disagree. I believe transwomen should be allowed in all these places UNLESS they have been convicted of sexual assault against women.

Should a person who went through puberty and musculoskeletal development as a male be smashing the bones in a woman's skull in a UFC competition or competing against them at power lifting? I'm not sure this is so straightforward. I would like to see more research done on the benefits transwomen have and how they can be mitigated.

Should children's organisations have special blind spots in their safeguarding policy that allow people with willies to be at residential trips with female children, and have it be policy to hide that fact from parents? Again, I disagree. If an adult has been DBS checked I don't have a problem with what genitals they have. And I don't believe in outing transpeople.

Should who a person consents to have relations with and whether they are morally ok to make that decision ever be subject to debate by other people? On this one I agree. Personally I think it's silly to rule out a romantic relationship with someone based on their genitals but I absolutely defend the right to do so. This is at odds with some of the more hardline trans-activitists opinion but trans-inclusive feminists aren't a hive mind.