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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to feel confused and old about transgender issues.

539 replies

confusedandold · 24/07/2020 08:29

I was born in 1976 so 43 years old. During school, I don't recall any children in my school having issues with their gender. There may have been some but none that I was away of. I had no experience of transgender people apart from a vague memory of seeing a man in women clothing walking up the road and being fascinated by it.

Transgender issues have never been at the forefront of my mind. I feel that I'm very accepting of other people's life choices and that people have a right to be happy in their lives whatever that means for them.

Lately, I feel completely confused by transgender issues. It has never been something that I'd given much thought to but I get completely an utterly confused by the terminology. Non-binary, cisgender etc this is all wording that I had never encountered before. Everyone seems to be talking about trans right and gender issues and I don't understand where this has suddenly come from. Is it that more people have issues around their gender? Is it fashionable to be gender-neutral? Is it just that people now feel more comfortable in expressing how they feel inside? Is there greater acceptance? I'm returning to the UK after 10 years abroad and this is a topic that was never really discussed when I left.

I guess I'm asking because I don't want to inadvertently offend anyone by using incorrect terminology. As shocking as this may sound but when I was at school mixed-race people were referred to as 'half-caste', even mixed-race people in my school referred to themselves in this way, now this is a huge no-no. Times change, language changes and it is so easy to offend while having no intention whatsoever of doing so.

OP posts:
PotholeParadise · 24/07/2020 12:04

Yep. It's a big fat nope. I am very liberal and left wing and I hate racism.. I am the little red liberal hen who mumbles about privilege and intersectionality! I think I'd rather be called a TERF than actually be a Muslim and Orthodox Jewish Exclusionary Transactivist (MOJET?).

Pertella · 24/07/2020 12:04

Trans women do not count as 'male' (rightfully so) under the majority of the crime reports done in the UK.

Great. So a crime carried out by a male is actually recorded as a crime carried out by a woman.

You keep on proving how self ID is so wonderful 👏

bishopgiggles · 24/07/2020 12:06

elspeth can you quote what I said that you're referring to, otherwise I'm not fully understanding your point?

bishopgiggles · 24/07/2020 12:06

Anyway I think it's been demonstrated here how you can repeatedly say "trans women are women" then go on to talk about them as not included in the group you refer to as "female" or "women". Possibly because then you'd have to think about how you can know if a woman is trans or not without saying something problematic.

I believe some people say TWAW as a kind of blanket to cover views that do actually differentiate people by biological sex but hope no-one will notice because they said twaw.

HandsOffMyRights · 24/07/2020 12:07

Wooley. What's "gross" as my teenage sons might say (actually they are a bit old now for such language), is men refusing to hear "no" from the vast majority of women and girls.

Concerns over safeguarding is deemed as pearl clutching. What a weak argument.

CatsArePeopleToo · 24/07/2020 12:07

Can a woman be a transwoman? Or is penis necessary?

TheClitterati · 24/07/2020 12:07

many transwomen know they are men, transmen know they are women and they say as much. They are attacked by TRA's too - yes the woke straight non-trans people attack transwomen and transmen for being transphobic. Some trans people have even been sued by non-transpeople for their transphobia .

TWAW in particular is a TRA mantra, and is not a view uniformly shared by trans people.

We should also be listening to detransitioners of which there are a growing number - though TRA's attack and diminish their voices too of course.

Signalbox · 24/07/2020 12:11

Honestly it is confusing. In the last 10 years (or so) the narrative has changed from we should be nice to trans people (reasonable) to unless you agree that TWA(100%)W and that they should be permitted to do anything women do with no exceptions then you are a nazi bigot (unreasonable)

And do not dare to suggest that there may be something worrisome in the 4000% increase in girls transitioning (even though there no corresponding increase in women of other age groups) and that this needs to be looked in to to ensure harm is not being done.

HandsOffMyRights · 24/07/2020 12:15

Seems basic data analysis is not your strong point.

Nor basic biology yours.

Pertella · 24/07/2020 12:17

The sad thing is that for many years trans women were using female only spaces without any issues at all.

So well done to the TRAs with their threats of violence and push for self declared womanhood for fucking it up for them 👍

NiceLegsShameAboutTheFace · 24/07/2020 12:18

Trans women do not count as 'male' (rightfully so)

I think you'll find that they do .....

OneEpisode · 24/07/2020 12:20

You also need to be aware that in many countries (Middle East ones but also in the US) there is no equivalent of our Equality Act.
In the UK trans people experience transphobia but are much safer than in the US or somewhere like Brazil.

OneEpisode · 24/07/2020 12:22

So Brazil stats on death rates are sometimes used not to get sympathy for the Brazilian transwomen In prostitution, but for the gender fluid police officer in the UK.

NiceLegsShameAboutTheFace · 24/07/2020 12:24

Now you see why moaning about the tiny chance of being assaulted by a trans person in a toilet is ridiculous?

If it's so ridiculous @WooleyJ123 then why are so many of us concerned? Are we all working from home, yeah it's Friday and a bit bored? Or might there just be some reasonable rationale behind our views?

DianasLasso · 24/07/2020 12:24

Let's look at the numbers.

98% of incarcerated sex offenders are male. They make up about 20% of the male prison population. That 20% outnumbers the entire female prison population, most of whom are in prison for financial/property/drugs crimes rather than crimes against the person.

Fair Play for Women did an analysis of trans identifying prisoners in the male estate using FOI requests and official documents (their numbers were later confirmed by the BBC fact check people and by the government). There were, at the time of the analysis, about 120 prisoners in the male estate said they were trans (I've chosen that wording carefully for reasons which will rapidly become apparent). Of that 120, 48% were convicted sex offenders.

This means that prisoners in the male estate who say they're trans are more likely to be sex offenders than randomly chosen male prisoners (nearly 1 in 2, rather than 1 in 5).

Now at this point either we accept that people are always exactly what they say they are and these 120 prisoners really are trans (acceptance without exception) or we entertain the possibility that some or even most of them are lying.

Let's look at the two horns of this dilemma.

Now, if they're all telling the truth, then i would argue this is a pretty strong argument against treating TW prisoners as women and moving them to the female estate - statistically, they are hugely likely to pose a risk to women prisoners (who are typically highly vulnerable, with a much higher likelihood of having been victims of child sexual abuse, sexual abuse and domestic violence than women in the wider population).

Alternatively it could be that many of them are not trans at all but are in fact lying to gain access to women's prison either to gain access to a literally captive pool of potential victims or because they think women's prisons will provide an easier way of doing time. Incidentally both the association of prison governors and the professional body of criminal psychologists who gave evidence to the parliamentary committee chaired by Maria Miller warned of this danger: that predatory men might pretend to be trans to get transferred to women's prison. (It's all there in Hansard but for some reason was left out of the final report). In this case, self ID looks like a spectacularly bad idea.

In short, either you accept that TW in prison pose a massively higher risk of committing sex offences than women, or you accept than sex offenders frequently lie about pretty much everything including being trans.

In neither case does accepting self ID look like a good idea when viewed from the perspective of the human rights of women prisoners.

Buccanarab · 24/07/2020 12:25

Put simply, once you blur the lines of what it is to be female, men are permitted into spaces once reserved solely for females either on the grounds of dignity (changing rooms, toilets) or safety (prisons.) And I don’t think that’s a very progressive move.

That's the same sort of arguments people used in support of segregation. It was wrong then and it's wrong now. Here, I'll rephrase your post but instead of using sexes I'll use races. See if you can spot what's wrong with this type of thinking.

Put simply, once you blur the lines of what it is to be white, blacks are permitted into spaces once reserved solely for whites either on the grounds of dignity (changing rooms, toilets) or safety (prisons.) And I don’t think that’s a very progressive move.

I've also noticed that frequently posters in these threads use statistics to try and justify their hate and intolerance. Sticking with the above theme of swapping in race for sex lets see how that method pans out.

"Statistic - People from BAME backgrounds constitute 14% of the general population in England and Wales, but make up 25% of its prison population.

Conclusion - People from BAME backgrounds pose a bigger risk to society and so we should take steps to ensure the safety of white people wherever possible. For isntance segregated toilets or prisons."

Now, it's plain to see the above conclusion is wrong and most people would rightly hound someone who actually thought like that. But that's exactly what those posters who try to deny trans people their rights are doing.

The simple fact is the vast, vast majority of trans people are just normal people, who have no interest in abusing women or women's spaces. Like every demographic there will be a small % who are abusers but those people will carry out their abuse regardless of the safeguards you put in place. To try and deny a whole group of people their rights based on the actions of a few is wrong, as is trying to deny them their rights because you feel uncomfortable.

pickledmybrain · 24/07/2020 12:29

That, bucc, is absolute nonsense. Blacks and whites were segregated due to an incorrect belief that white people were superior. Women are not given different changing areas because of their superiority over men, but because we are entitled (or should be) to some degree of privacy.

NiceLegsShameAboutTheFace · 24/07/2020 12:35

The simple fact is the vast, vast majority of trans people are just normal people, who have no interest in abusing women or women's spaces.

So is my Dad (a normal person) but he can still fuck off to the male spaces provided for him and stay the hell away from mine!

Pertella · 24/07/2020 12:35

DING! The racism argument

NiceLegsShameAboutTheFace · 24/07/2020 12:37

That, bucc, is absolute nonsense. Blacks and whites were segregated due to an incorrect belief that white people were superior. Women are not given different changing areas because of their superiority over men, but because we are entitled (or should be) to some degree of privacy.

Thank you. I was just about to start composing a reply but you've done it beautifully, meaning I can grab a coffee Smile

Buccanarab · 24/07/2020 12:47

That, bucc, is absolute nonsense. Blacks and whites were segregated due to an incorrect belief that white people were superior. Women are not given different changing areas because of their superiority over men, but because we are entitled (or should be) to some degree of privacy.

How does allowing a trans person access to a space they feel safest/most comfortable in stop that exactly?

pickledmybrain · 24/07/2020 12:47

Because it’s a bloke in a women’s changing room!

ListeningQuietly · 24/07/2020 12:50

Here, I'll rephrase your post but instead of using sexes I'll use races.
Mixed race is possible
because race is a superficial construct

Mixed sex is not possible
because XX and XY are mutually exclusive

bishopgiggles · 24/07/2020 12:52

Here, I'll rephrase your post but instead of using sexes I'll use races.

A white person can self-identify as a black person and take up positions reserved for black people.
And yes, I'd argue there's actually more leeway re race as it is more complex and more flexible re self-identification than xx/xy. Yet we have examples like Rachel Dolezal.

startrek90 · 24/07/2020 12:53

I was initially all on board with the #bekind #twaw bandwagon. I was a supporter of lgbt rights, I advocated and campaigned for gay marriage etc..

As time went on however and I saw how lesbians are being treated then I changed my mind. Lesbians are really the canaries in the coal mine here.

The trans right movement along with stonewall are actively campaigning to deny lesbians (natal women who are sexually attracted to other natal women) the right to define their own sexuality and their own right to choose who they have sexual relations with. In fact stonewall have been promoting a workshop for self declared trans women (the majority of whom retain a functioning male penis and their original sexual orientation) called 'breaking the cotton ceiling' ie getting into lesbian women's underwear.

Lesbians are attacked, called bigots, assaulted, threatened with rape etc simply for saying that they don't want to be in a relationship with/have sex with trans women. In fact lesbian women are told to 'get over it' that they are 'genital fetishists' and need to learn to love 'girl dick'. How is this not anything other than a male rights movement?

It's really obvious when you compare the treatment of lesbians by TRAs and the treatment of gay men by TRAs. Gay men aren't abused for refusing sex with transmen, they aren't told to get over their genital fetish, they aren't told to love the male vagina.

Its almost as if trans activists think there is a real difference between gay males and trans men.....

To me this TRA movement is just a mens rights movement dressed up in progressive language. Helped along with regular doses of racism and homophobia.

Only someone racist, sexist and homophobic would think black women or lesbian women aren't women but instead a subset of women.