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

They realise they are people with feelings as valid as theirs

But the narrative we are fed is that trans women’s feeling are more valid that women’s feelings. So if a woman doesn’t want to share a changing room with an intact male, that is not as valid a feeling as the male who want to be in the women’s changing room because that makes him feel good.

using that third space would "out" you

The point is that no one cares. Especially not strangers in the very transient space of a loo where you'll likely not see those same people again. Present how you want to present, wear the clothes you want to wear. I'll willingly respect your choice of name and pronoun as long as you don't expect me to announce mine. People's individual identity is not as important to bystanders as those individuals appear to think it is. Seriously, most people don't give a shit.

It's when they try to ride roughshod over another vulnerable group's hard-won rights and boundaries, when they even try to erase 'woman' as some kind of dirty word, that people are apt to get pissed off. And they are pissed off. There's a growing backlash and it's thankfully being endorsed by legal precedent.

As for vulnerability to violence and murder, think about the greatest killer of women on a global scale. Is it malaria? Cancer? Heart disease? If your response is 'no' to all three, you've won a cookie. The answer is 'men'.

Please don't try to tell me women have 'cis' (ugh!) privilege, and therefore have no need for or right to the privacy of sex-segregated spaces. As to the 'abusers will abuse regardless of spaces' copout, a good deal of crime is opportunist.

If someone undergoes gender reassignment surgery then they can use womens' spaces as far as I am concerned.

But not take part in womens' sports - they still grew up with a male body.

I am also dubious about them winning scholarships for women or quotas on boards etc.

If they simply "identify" as a woman and wear a dress and make-up, they're still men and can use mens' facilities.

I know some MNers have concerns about unisex facilities but my local swimming pool has a huge changing area with small and large cubicles (so eg you can take a whole family) in. Everyone is next everyone else, it sort of resolves the issue of who uses what changing room. The toilets are still separate, but there are unisex loos too.

The idea that we cant tell someone's sex without checking their genitals is nonsense.
Absurd and utter bullshit.
Please stop.
Its just silly.

Oh and stop talking about "people with a cervix". Ugh.

@SeasonFinale

I think people should be banned from posting their anti trans stuff on the general pages of MN such as AIBU.

Agree. @MNHQ can you move this to the correct topic (which I have hidden for a reason)

I doubtless hold an unpopular view on here, but I think if a biologically male XY person has undergone gender transition surgery and/or has begun hormone treatment and knows in their heart of hearts they are a female, then of course they should use female toilets! I do not understand the hatred I often read on MN. I know a couple of people who are trans. It's an incredibly difficult journey.

@nanbread

A third space would also make transpeople more vulnerable to violence.

We already know transwomen are more likely to be attacked / killed than average.

What's to stop malicious people targeting third spaces?

It's like you almost understand it.

What's to stop malicious people targeting female spaces?

We already know transwomen are more likely to be attacked / killed than average

We don't know it. It's not true. Stop repeating falsehoods.

I doubt anyone has been banned from all social media for this. Different providers get to choose what content they are and are not willing to host. Too many people claim to have been unfairly silenced when what they mean is they aren't allowed to say what they want to say where they want to say it. You want to ask the question? Fine. No one is required to host you in asking it.

@Simarilion that's exactly what I think and what i find puzzlign about the entire trans debate, that it's based on such old stereotypes of the "feminine". For that matters I don't actually understand why 50 years ago, there were plenty of men who were just a bit effeminate, not necessarily gay, just not aggressive or what we now see as masculine. It seems as if part of the problem is that the definition of maleness seems to have become much less flexible, so anyone who doesn't fit thinks they have to sign up to somethig else to be accepted.

@CrunchyCarrot

I doubtless hold an unpopular view on here, but I think if a biologically male XY person has undergone gender transition surgery and/or has begun hormone treatment and knows in their heart of hearts they are a female, then of course they should use female toilets! I do not understand the hatred I often read on MN. I know a couple of people who are trans. It's an incredibly difficult journey.

MN is infamous when it comes to trans issues.

I think people should be banned from posting their anti trans stuff on the general pages of MN

And I think the same about the interminable 'report thy neighbour' BS, which should be on the coronavirus board. Pity that those who'd rather avoid this stuff just have to suck it up.

This perfectly reasonable question is not 'anti trans'. As a rule, the consistent pestering of women and violation of their boundaries also isn't coming from trans men (who presumably as trans people themselves would be equally at the butt of transphobes' wrath).

It's about a sustained assault on an entire, biological sex class. 'Men' still get to classify themselves as such; we don't hear conversations about ejaculators or 'prostate havers'.

I'm not a 'bleeder'. That is fucking offensive. And I'm damned well going to say so.

nanbread I'm sorry, but the "most vulnerable to being harmed" is propaganda.

Fewer than one transperson a year is murdered in the UK. Each one is a tragedy, but, statistically, they are safer than the general population. More transpeople have been jailed for murder than have been murdered.

Meanwhile - an average of 2.5 women a week are murdered by men in the UK.

Where is our hashtag? Where is our march? Where is the concern that week in, week out, women are being murdered?

Can you IMAGINE what would happen if 2.5 trans people were being killed every single week?

We don't even report the deaths of these women. Not unless their murder was particularly gruesome, there was a salacious element or they were particularly pretty by Western standards.

www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-how-many-trans-people-murdered-uk

That is why single sex spaces exist. It's not a trans issue - it's because male people harm female people.

You can't change sex. So, male people, no matter what their gender identity is, should not be able to come into single sex spaces. It is up to them to find a workable solution, it's not my fucking problem. I've got enough problems what with trying not to be murdered.

35LochJessMonster

SeasonFinale

I think people should be banned from posting their anti trans stuff on the general pages of MN such as AIBU.

Agree.
@MNHQ can you move this to the correct topic (which I have hidden for a reason)

Whats anti trans?
Im not holding my breath for anyone to actually answer this question.
Whats the correct topic for this question?
If its anti trans for mothers to not want our daughters to see dick at their swimming lesson then we have a problem.

and knows in their heart of hearts they are a female

This is nonsense. No woman knows in her heart of hearts she is female. She merely knows her anatomy. The rest is just gender and upbringing and life experience.

No transwoman “knows in her heart she is female”. They simply want to be one. Not the same.

@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?

We already know transwomen are more likely to be attacked / killed than average

There, fixed that.

[quote DedlyMedally]@lifeturnsonadime

My point is that the world has changed. You can't easily tell someone's birth sex by looking at them. Do you institute a genital check at the door?
If so, if someone with a vagina who presented as a man would be perfectly entitled to use women's changing rooms.
A lot of people with penises would not be entitled but you would not be able to tell by looking at them.
My real question is how do you manage that situation if you're not relying on people self-identfying as a penis-haver or vagina-haver.
If someone is a bit too coy, do you demand that they remove their towel and show their genitals?[/quote]
seriously?
women are hardwired to spot a man. even a pretty man in a dress. We are hardwired because a man is a threat at a basic level, whether we like to admit it or not. Across the world and across the millenia, a female alone in a space with a man is risky, so we can see who is male and who is female. It happens with animals too, and we are just clever animals. There are very very few transwomen, in actual real life (not photoshopped and filtered SM) who pass - be it how they carry themselves, their body structure, their voice.

Men do not have this same ability. They dont need to. Men are a threat to them, but its a different type of threat. They are more attune to signs of violence rather than identifying sex, because they are bigger and stronger than us. Their recognition of 'female' is far more basic, which seems to be some of the problem with male violence towards transwomen. They mistakingly find them attractive and then their homophobia/shame/anger takes over in violence. This is why men often claim you cant tell. Why they are quite happy to shove them over into the female nonmale camp.

I've said this before but as a society we need to answer the following question:

Can a person change their gender?

If yes, it must be recognised in all areas - which public toilet you use, whether you're in the girls' or boys' changing room at school, whether you compete in male sport or female sport.

If no, it should not be recognised in any area - no changing your birth certificate, no changing the way you are addressed from Ms to Mr.

There is no middle ground - either you can change, or you can't. We are currently in a ridiculous and untenable middle ground where a man can become a woman in some circumstances but not in others.

It's nonsense.

It is the new world order. Let’s completely obliterated biological fact and legal rights of women and girls so that a small number of men can be pandered to.

Live your life how you want to but in doing so don’t infringe on hard won women’s spaces and rights.

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

You assume wrong. Many are perfectly happy with their bodies and have zero intentions of changing anything about themselves. Its actually transphobic to think that they all hate their bodies akd wish to pass. Gender dysphoria and transition are not a requirement of being trans

I know a lot of Transwomen, i can assure you, not ONE of them has ANY kind of intention of abusing/raping a woman, and i have absolutely no issue in sharing shower/bathroom space with them, and have done at various conventions where we've used the spaces swimming pools/public toilets

As per usual, "allies" like you are absolutely not understanding the very, very serious issue at hand - it is more about the FACT that the current system/demand/practise of allowing anyone who self-identifies as female into what were once female-only safe spaces is OPEN TO ABUSE. This has been proven - the American chain Target changed their changing room spaces from segregated to "unisex", and look what happened - "In particular, voyeurism-related offenses (Upskirt and Peeping Tom) increased significantly after the publication of Target’sbgender-inclusion policy in April, 2016. The three-season forced-category measurement found a 2.3x increase in the amount of upskirt incidents after the policy, and a 2.9x increase in peeping tom incidents after the policy....While media-loss remains a limitation in the analysis, the present study supports the theory that sex predators may take opportunities afforded by gender-inclusion policies to perpetrate sexual violence against womenbin public spaces. No other theory seems to account for the significant and precisely-timed increase seen in the Target reports'

womanmeanssomething.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/A-Longitudinal-Analysis-of-Media-Reports-at-Target-Stores.pdf

This is just ONE study of ONE store chain who changed their gender-based policies. Just one.

THis is why females need protection from the "if you identify, you can have access" policy, because it is completely open to abuse from predators. The sad thing is though is that the trans community is making it all about how women are bigoted, or the "T' word that rhymes with surf, when they should be directing their ire at the predatory males who abuse the system.

Is the solution not to have individual cubical rather than open space area to be showered and changed in?
From a personal perspective I don’t wish anyone male or female to see me get showered naked or changed, and likewise I don’t wish to see anyone else get changed.
I avoid facilities which do not offer the ability to change on my own

@CrunchyCarrot

I doubtless hold an unpopular view on here, but I think if a biologically male XY person has undergone gender transition surgery and/or has begun hormone treatment and knows in their heart of hearts they are a female, then of course they should use female toilets! I do not understand the hatred I often read on MN. I know a couple of people who are trans. It's an incredibly difficult journey.

I think many of us started off holding similar views but then "acceptance without exception" came along and it was defined as transphobic to hold the viewpoint that medical changes/ medical diagnosis were required to be trans. Acceptance without exception means that you cannot have a boundary. This is the problem.