AIBU to think women should not be banned from Social media for asking the question

[Angryresister]

Many women have been suspended from sm for asking the question:
“Do you believe that male sexed people should be allowed access to changing rooms and showers for female sexed people and teenagers?”
Seems like a perfectly reasonable question which we should be allowed to ask

Hi all. We've discussed and have reinstated this one in AIBU.
Apols for the confusion and the hokey cokey thread - there was a genuine misunderstanding in our virtual office.

[quote wildraisins]@Whatsnewpussyhat
Gender reassignment actually is a protected characteristic. For the very reason of all the intolerange and close-mindedness we are seeing on this thread.[/quote]
Wanting to retain single-sex spaces that are provided for in the Equality Act is not the same as hating or wishing harm upon transgender people.

Gender reassignment is a protected characteristic and that is right. It is right that transgender people have protections for their homes, jobs and safety.

However, it is not closed-minded to say that sex-based spaces and protections exist for a reason and that people cannot actually change sex, no matter how much they wish it to be the case.

No matter what operation you have, no matter what you call yourself and no matter how often you lie, you cannot change the sex you were born. I don't care how you live your life but don't lie.

@Crowsaregreat

I think there's a fixation with penises in changing rooms that's a bit unhealthy, tbh. I have an Austrian friend; it's pretty common there to have saunas etc where everyone goes nude throughout, including in changing rooms.

Sexual assault is illegal. Men who want to assault women could just enter the changing rooms if they wanted. Lesbian women could assault women in the changing rooms if they wanted (and it wasn't so long ago that there was a moral panic about it)

I'd be a bit unnerved if there was someone swinging their cock around in a changing room but I suspect the reality would be someone quietly slipping on a swimming costume in the corner.

All the outrage on here is about sex offenders, not transwomen.

@Crowsaregreat

Were not in Austria though, and in the UK there are many cultures whos own personal beliefs are contradictory to those of those with gender ones. Who has more right to use a female bathroom - a Muslim woman or transwoman?

You'd be a 'bit unnerved'? What about a young teen girl seeing a penis in a changing room when getting dressed, is that how they'd feel? How about a sexual assault survivor? Again, people like yourself only think about how you'd manage to be ok with it.

Are you also suggesting that transwomen can't be sex offenders? Because they're far more likely to be statistically than biological women.

A pp mentioned "these are not our crimes" earlier. I've just finished watching that on Youtube. Utterly, utterly shocking.

@Viviennemary

Is there any evidence that a trans man or woman is any more likely to be a predator on the vulnerable than anybody else. It's like a witch hunt.

Not the right question.

The right question is whether trans women are less likely to pose a threat to women than other male people.

Sex is a Protected Characteristic.

Race is a Protected Characteristic.

Religious belief is a Protected Characteristic.

viv

There is a rape a day in schools . And now schools are being told to have mixed sex toilets.

Do you not think safeguarding should be maintained and single sex provision remain a part of that?

How do you keep those that would rape the kids out the mixed sex spaces and only let those who won't in?

@MichaelMumsnet

Hi all. We've discussed and have reinstated this one in AIBU. Apols for the confusion and the hokey cokey thread - there was a genuine misunderstanding in our virtual office.

thank you

Gender reassignment does not have the same meaning as gender and is not the same as the protected characteristic of sex.

Sometimes it is legal to discriminate on the basis of a protected characteristic, without contravening the EA and without impacting on other protected characteristics. The local bus company is not being sexist when it discriminates on the basis of age and refuses to give me an over 60s bus pass.

Good news Michael.

The correct decision.

@wildraisins

Now, please do a search for the number of trans women who have been assaulted by men in male changing rooms and tell me which was easier to find.

I am not going to do that. My focus, being a biological female, is on protecting myself, my DDs and other women.
There may be instances of transwomen being assaulted in male changing rooms.
That's appalling.

This is why trans women are allowed in female changing rooms.
Nope.
Female changing rooms are not a refuge for all and sundry from the "bad man" in the male changing rooms.
The bad man needs to be challenged by other men- men need to work on expanding the bandwidth of "what a man is".

@MichaelMumsnet

Hi all. We've discussed and have reinstated this one in AIBU. Apols for the confusion and the hokey cokey thread - there was a genuine misunderstanding in our virtual office.

Thanks Michael, where's the poll gone? I really don't agree with posts being changed without the consent of the poster involved. Very concerning.

Lesbian women could assault women in the changing rooms if they wanted.

I'm bisexual. I've never been sexually assaulted by a woman in my life. Men, on the other hand:

Concussed by violent, aggressive father
Regularly pinned up against walls and had threats hissed in my face by father
Called a slut by father
Simultaneously victim-blamed and accused of lying about rape (nice contradictory response there) by father
Gang raped at fifteen
Two instances of stalking
Beaten up by boyfriend
Had cigarette stubbed out on my hand
Manipulation, gaslighting and mental abuse (all by one man)
Approached in street and propositioned
Followed home on foot
Followed by male driver and threatened
Sexual harrassment in the workplace twice
More instances of low-level sexism and unwanted touching than I can even count.

Those experiences might sound excessive, and some are extreme, but they are not by any means unique. Nearly every woman can attest to at least some of the same behaviour. They are anecdotal but the statistics overwhelmingly bear this out. Female sex offenders are vanishingly rare. The overwhelming majority of perpetrators are men.

@HebeMumsnet

Morning, everyone. Just letting you know we've moved this over to FWR from AIBU.

Please move it back. This thread deserves a wider audience.

Thankyou.

I suspect trans males may actually have worse offending rates than other males.

There's data to back up your hunch. Cross-dressing is the most common secondary paraphilia amongst sex offenders; cross-dressing is also included by Stonewall under the umbrella term 'trans'.

I strongly suspect males with such strong body dysmorphia centred around their penises that they wish to have them removed are very unlikely to assault women with those penises. But such localised self-directed body-hatred is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition to qualify for the 'trans' descriptor.

@MichaelMumsnet - thank you for listening to people's concerns. Right and welcome decision.

Lesbian women could assault women in the changing rooms if they wanted

I don't think sexual assault and rape are motivated by desire alone.

More by hatred of women or of not seeing us as fully human beings with rights over our bodies.

So I think it's false to equate lesbians in female changing rooms with heterosexual men.

Even if a lesbian sees a woman she finds attractive in a changing room she will see her as a human, not as an object of sexual gratification and is unlikely to hate her for simply being a woman, and therefore will respect her boundaries and not assault her, or state at her.

(And before anyone says it, yes I know NAMALT, but the fact is some are, and we usually can't tell which are which till it's too late. That's why no men should be allowed in women's spaces.)

@MephistophelesApprentice

Watching two sides screaming at each other over who is most pitiful, weak and vulnerable and should deserve the most hallowed label of 'victim' is almost Kafkian in its surrealist delight.

Are you serious? Women are not weak or pitiful, but I refuse for our history of being abused due our biology, which is still carrying on to this day, to be regressed to a top trumps competition. Women don't say they're vulnerable for the fucking ultimate victim prize - it's so people like the few 'all lives matter' nutters on this thread understand there's specific reasons we need sex based rights to be separated from gender ones. Sex and gender are different, and for the safety and rights of women needs to be recognised as such.

[quote DedlyMedally]@Blubellsarebells
It's not absurd at all.
There are some occasions that are obvious, but assuming that means you can always tell is a sort of tautology.
The ones that don't pass will stand out because they do not pass, but the goal with most (I assume) is to be indistinguishable from the gender that they present as and some do succeed.
Who's responsibility will it be to be the sex-investigator and risk telling a woman born with a vagina that she looks a bit like a man?[/quote]
what about single sex schools will these soon be under threat if a teenage boy decides to transition and go to an all girls school.

@BrumBoo

The people who need safeguarding are those who are vulnerable. In this particular case, trans women are more vulnerable.

@wildraisins

Considering the numbers, how have you come to the conclusion that transwomen are more vulnerable than biological women? You're just throwing out words with absolutely no critical thinking behind them, no educated knowledge, no facts, just your right-on beliefs that transpeople are the most marginalised in this country/world. You are extremely wrong, have no basic understanding of the equality act, what equality is, or even seemingly understand the difference between sex and gender and how they need to be treated differently.

Shouting out offensive terms and crying bigotry and ignorance of others is only showing your own lack of understanding. People cannot all be lumped together on the bases of 'be kind'. Equality doesn't mean fairness, and since women and transwomen are not the same what is fair to one will not be to another.

According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey:

Nearly half (46%) of respondents were verbally harassed in the past year because of being transgender.

Nearly one in ten (9%) respondents were physically attacked in the past year because of being transgender.

Nearly half (47%) of respondents were sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime and one in ten (10%) were sexually assaulted in the past year. In communities of color, these numbers are higher: 53% of Black respondents were sexually assaulted in their lifetime and 13% were sexually assaulted in the last year.

72% of respondents who have done sex work, 65% of respondents who have experienced homelessness, and 61% of respondents with disabilities reported being sexually assaulted in their lifetime.

More than half (54%) experienced some form of intimate partner violence, including acts involving coercive control and physical harm.

Just as the rights of women and girls to single-sex spaces and the operation of the single-sex exceptions in the Equality Act are not 'niche' topics that must be hidden away, neither is the right to freedom of expression and the scope and operation of Article 10 rights.

Whether or not you agree with the content of Helen Staniland's tweets (and those of others who can broadly be termed 'gender critical') the creation of a chilling effect which constitutes indirect interference in Article 10 rights should concern us all.

Men who want to assault women could just enter the changing rooms if they wanted.

But generally they don't, largely because it is not socially acceptable. On the other hand changes to self ID laws and increasing insistence on many genders means a switch to unisex spaces by default. Organisations can't judge anyone's sense of identity so they just ask patrons to choose a toilet according to their own level of comfort without changing any of the facilities. That is why we now need to talk about single sex spaces.

Lesbian women could assault women in the changing rooms if they wanted (and it wasn't so long ago that there was a moral panic about it)

But they don't. You just need to look at the figures for violent crime.

Male prostitutes being attacked by male punters.

No surprise there.

So we have mens and anyone who's in danger in the mens?

Right now where can women go?