to NOT think women's rights are being attacked?

[MissPrimaryCrafts]

Wanted to namechange in case this turns into a bloodbath but new users not being accepted so we'll see how it goes!

I realise this could be a bit provocative but I'm not looking for an argument, I just genuinely am finding it hard to understand the other side of this so would genuinely like a polite dicussion so I can understand better. Apologies in advance if it sparks natiness in replies

The issue being transphobia and womens rights...I've seen a lot of talk in threads recently about how 'anyone standing up for women is apparantly and transphobe and TERF' and that women are losing their rights and I just don't see how.

I assume the main issue is with allowing trans women into female only spaces, and people feeling like it's no longer really a 'female only' space as men could just say they're a woman and be allowed in?

I understand this as being a problem...but only to an extent. Firstly I feel like I wonder how much more access this would actually give men? Like honestly, if a man is going to go a commit a crime against a woman, is seeing a 'women only' sign on a changing room door really going to stop him? Is he really going to pretend to identify as a woman to enter the space, or is he just going to enter the space? Does allowing trans women really change things?

Also, if that IS your issue with allowing trans people into female only spaces, then your issue isn't with trans women, it's with men. If you're worried about men entering the space by 'pretending' to be trans, then the potential problems are because of men, not because of trans women. So surely there are better ways to address our issues with men committing crimes than to make sure trans women are excluded from certain spaces? Aren't there other ways we as a society can address the prevalence of crimes against women?

Of course - this is all if you 'believe' that being trans is a real thing, I'm aware many people don't think it's real and I think that's a separate issue. But if you think trans people do 'exist'/it is a real thing, but you want to bar them from female only spaces, I just wonder why? What do you think of the above?

Sorry this is an essay!

Spacegoats?

*in bed

Self identification as a trans woman is the only criteria for being an actual trans woman. That is all it takes to be one. You just have to say you are one, and you are one, because self identification is absolute and beyond reproach. Else you run into the No True Scotsman fallacy.

So given that, access is indeed a problem with biological males, the group which by definition includes trans women.

@HotPenguin

Would you like your daughter to be looked after on brownie camp by an 18 year old male born person who claims to be female and who is sleeping in the same room as them? That's more of a problem to me than anything happening in a shop changing room.

I actually wouldn't have an issue with this. Or with a male brownie leader. This is NOT the reason I have some issues with trans rights.

Apparently the only danger for women are trans people. Otherwsie they would be 100% safe. We can tolerate all kinds of risk all the time for everybody, except the possibility of a transperson misbehaving in a mixed space.

No one’s ever said that.

Women are in danger all the time. From men. They rape, assault and kill us every week for no other reason than the fact we’re female and we have to live with it. Just today a serving Metropolitan police officer has pleaded guilty to murdering a woman he abducted off the street. Knowing a man may be decide to kill you for being a women is part of the female reality. We live with it day in, day out.

But people are saying that in light of the risks we do already have to live with, it’s unfair to do anything that could add to them.

@MotionActivatedDog

Why does everyone think this is all about toilets? is it just wilful ignorance? Because the impact of allowing self ID in terms of access to single sex spaces is far reaching and has been widely discussed. Schools, sports, hospital wards, DV refuges, residential care, girl guides, prisons, funding for STEM programmes, crime statistics, the list just goes on and on.

If you really think this is just about peeing then you haven’t done enough reading and you aren’t ready to ask this question.

I agree, the toilets issue is only one area where women’s rights are being snipped away bit by bit.

And when you look at the list given by MotionActivatedDog you realise that in almost every single case the default expectation is that women and women’s lives will make the adjustments, not men. All men have to do is say “I am a woman”, or even “ I don’t want to be identified by gender” and they have access to women’s spaces.

I would also point out that a great deal of assault committed by men against women and children goes unreported because women and children are not likely to be believed, and they are likely to experience an escalation in violence if they do report and the perp is not prosecuted.
Anyway women can't tell who is a good man and who will harm them, so that is why we have safeguarding.

@steakandcheeseplease

Totally agree.

I’m regards to the religious element, there’s only one side of this argument that demands us to ignore physically reality, science and statistics but instead listen to other people’s beliefs on who they “feel” they are.

Spacegoats are the best thing about this thread.

Aren’t there other ways we as a society can address the prevalence of crimes against women

Nothing has been done about it ever, so unlikely now.

Take it away from toilets (although most international charities recognise that women need safe single-sex toilets and that lack of single-sex provision increases period poverty, UTIs and risk of assault.)

Let's consider what 'rights' are being eroded - the right of women to places on boards and in politics that were ringfenced specifically for women (transwomen have different experiences - these places were not ringfenced for them - but I'd be happy for them to campaign for representation on boards in line with their % in the population as women have had to).
The right of women and girls to complain if there is a naked penis in their eyeline in a public place (whether that place be a changing room or a toilet).
The right of women to say sex-based oppression isn't a fantasy that they can identify out of ...
The right of women to say sex matters in medical treatment (women are regularly misdiagnosed because the medical profession treats patients as default males) and in medical care (assault victims are harassed for asking for female health care practitioners).
The right of women to meet to discuss our rights and lived experiences. Have you attended a meeting about women's right lately? or ever? You will see a marked difference in the last decade. Now, it's common for masked men (even pre-Covid) to shout and harass you on your way into the meeting; sometimes they jostle you; sometimes they assault women.
The right for women to have an opinion about all of this is being eroded. Women have been reported to twitter, their bosses, the police for saying sex is real; for reposting a photo of suffragette ribbons. And let's be clear - most of those cases are vexatious litigants. But in the current climate, men feel emboldened to try to shut women down and force them out of every public space.
The right for women to participate on social media without receiving death threats; rape threats; being doxed; having their families targeted and their livelihood threatened. No-one should be ok with that.
Just as no-one should be ok with Twitter dropping sex from its list of protected characteristics because someone on their mod team thinks sex shouldn't be a protected characteristic hence they can just ignore international equality law.
There is a massive assault on women's rights and if you can't see it then you're being wilfully blind because every woman I know, from every corner of the UK is currently discussing this. From my least politically involved friends to the most - because this assault is impacting them all, and us all, in different ways.
And this isn't just an UK or an US problem - your focus on toilets belies your privileged western perspective. Tell women across the world that they aren't persecuted because of their sex. Tell women being raped as a tactic of war in Africa. Tell women and girls being subjected to FGM. Tell the families of the women being murdered every week. Because every time you say you can't tell the difference between a transwomen and a woman. Every time you say sex isn't real and doesn't matter. Every time you say women's rights are being attacked. You're insulting the suffering, the lives and the deaths of millions of women. You're telling them they choose to be persecuted, attacked and murdered. And, honestly I don't know how you have the gall to do that. Unless your lifestyle is so privileged that you know you'll never have to face their suffering in RL.

This is biggest assault in women's rights that I've seen in my life time.
Frankly, the toxicity and misogyny of the trans movement is so massive, it can practically be seen from space. If you can't see it, it's because you don't want to.

The biggest risk group for biological women is biological men. Not transwomen specifically.

Why does this have to be twisted in to something other than not discriminating against women by sex?

@SlipperyDippery

One in five women have been then victim of sexual assault or rape, if they are alone in a space confronted with someone who looks masculine, has the physique of a man, towers over them like a man and sounds like a man, then he doesn't actually need to assault her himself to do damage to her

@camaleon

Do you accept this as being an issue? Or do victims of sexual assault just have to get over it?

It is obviously harmful to trans women to be excluded from women’s spaces. Therefore we need to have a constructive and respectful conversation about striking a fair balance between the sometimes conflicting needs of trans women and natal women. Do you agree, or do you think I’m transphobic for not accepting that trans women’s rights align entirely with other women’s rights?

I have not denied the fact that women are victim of sexual abuse. Unfortunately, I am very aware as many others from personal experience.

I don't see how this non-sensical discussion over the smalles minority possible is a real way of addressing that reality. Men violence is a massive problem for women and society at large.

I don't call people transphobic or TERF or anything either. Personal attacks abound around this topic. It is shameful to watch and leads nowhere.

what I see is also lots of people who knew nothing about feminism, women's rights, minority rights or transpeople having a super strong view on everything.

“Also, if that IS your issue with allowing trans people into female only spaces, then your issue isn't with trans women, it's with men.”

Well exactly. It always baffles me when it’s claimed that ‘transphobes’ are making out transwomen to be violent predators when they express concern about maintaining female only spaces. Clearly that is not what anyone is saying.

Sex is a fact, and can be objectively determined. It cannot be changed. If you are an adult human male you cannot also be, or change to be, an adult human female.

When we separate humans for sports and privacy, for example, I would like it to be separated by sex.

Of course we could separate by a number of other features. Eye colour, skin colour, height, weight, etc are all objective. Or we could separate by things that can be changed (how you dress, whether you are wearing lipstick). Or we could separate by how we think (whether we like cake, whether we like high heels).

Why do you think separation by gender (how we feel) is better than by sex (who we are)? Or would you prefer no separation? And how would you deal with people who do not feel they have a gender?

This is what I refer to when I say the discussion can lead nowhere. Apparently the only danger for women are trans people. Otherwsie they would be 100% safe. We can tolerate all kinds of risk all the time for everybody, except the possibility of a transperson misbehaving in a mixed space.

What? Why do we have single sex spaces in certain situations then?

Your Muslim analogy doesn't work at all by the way, because we already segregate spaces by sex.

Aside from all arguments about single sex spaces and single sex exemptions for healthcare/carers...

How can companies comply with antidiscrimination laws if they don't:

• Monitor data on employees of each sex they have, instead using 'gender'? It will skew all sorts of stats, all you need is a few highly paid or low paid trans staff to make your equal pay stats a nonsense. As do 'nonbinary' staff's pay figures, unless you actively monitor sex too. Far, far too many companies misrepresent the Equality Act 2010 and ask for prospective employee's 'gender' and never even ask about 'sex' now! How can any of them even say how many female employees they have?

• Protect women who are pregnant/are breastfeeding/have children/are merely of childbearing age - there was a court case in either the US where a court stated that it wasn't sex discrimination to fire/constructively dismiss a breastfeeding women because 'Men can breastfeed too'. Do you want to lose all protection against being sacked for being pregnant because 'men can get pregnant too'?

• Improve the number of women senior executives and board members when anyone can be female or male just by saying so? Phillip/Pip Bunce, for example - do we count as a woman for the stats? A man? Neither? Both? It's impossible to monitor and improve without accurate data.

You also have the issue of crime stats - prepare for a large rise in female violent offences/domestic abuse/rape/even bad driving. There have been at least seven cases I've seen reported over the last couple of months of 'women' being jailed for sexual and/or violent offences - some only 'coming out' as trans when arrested and facing jail. How do you target crime reduction initiatives at the right demographics when your data is inaccurate?

Then there's healthcare - not having sex noted on NHS records and allowing young children to receive a new NHS number with a new gender (confirmed this is happening) can have tragic consequences at a personal level. Doctors need to know your sex to be able to diagnose and treat you correctly. Symptoms of a disease/health issue and the appropriate treatment can vary wildly between the sexes. A baby was stillborn in the US because doctors in the ER thought their patient with abdo pain was a man. This will affect women's healthcare in the long run if data about conditions and drug efficacy is skewed by inaccurate info.

That's before you even get onto the way women are told to shut up and banned if they dare to discuss their sex specific health experiences online and in RL support groups! Reddit banned their Endometriosis support subreddit (board) with hundreds of thousands of users. Why? Women weren't being inclusive enough of transwomen - not transmen, who may well suffer with endometriosis - transwomen, who can never suffer with it for obvious reasons. Same has happened in countless pregnancy support groups on FB, women and doctors have been banned from discussing women's health issues on Twitter because they haven't used 'inclusive' terms.

Why not just use 'inclusive' words then, you may ask? Because it means people don't understand what healthcare professionals are talking about! A survey found something like half of women had o idea what a cervix was or whether they have one. Posters asking 'people with a cervix' to attend screening means women lose out on screening. Men's health issues aren't being communicated in this way - no posters asking 'Prostate havers' to get checked - so women lose out yet again. I saw a communication advising 'people who menstruate' should have a vaccine and thought will all those women who don't menstruate due to health issues/contraception/menopause/pregnancy not bother then? The word women wasn't mentioned once. It all adds up to a lot of women suffering worse treatment.

I could go on all night with examples of how it affects women adversely. But the main issue is that the vast majority of women SAY NO to self ID, or intact males with GRCs in their single sex spaces and the resulting issues gender ideology causes in many, many sectors of life and the law. We do not want this and we should be listened to.

@illuminatethis

Sorry (figured out how to name change!) but I'd really like people to explain WHY you see these things are problems?

Would you like your daughter to be looked after on brownie camp by an 18 year old male born person who claims to be female and who is sleeping in the same room as them?

But what is the issue here? Do you think this man is pretending to be trans so he can get access to young girls? Do you think the nature of being a trans perseon makes someone a pervert who shouldn't be around children? Would love to know more about your issue with it

the erasure of language pertaining to being female in medical care, for example

This is another one I don't understand - I see lots of women who take offense to phrases such as 'pregnant people' and I just don't understand the offence. I'm a person so this applies to me, I'm not offended at being referred to as a person?

Not trying to be argumentative or say you're wrong just would love you to expand so I can understand

Yes you are”trying to be argumentative“. Single sex spaces, sport, awards etc exist because women were treated as second class citizens. Not because “all men are rapists”, but because all rapists are men. All people who give birth are female. Not all people can give birth. Do you think that girls should accept fully intact trans woman just because they say they are women? In that case, girls should just shut up and accept all males into their spaces otherwise they are discriminating against males who are not trans.

If a person claiming to be trans wanted to use the female changing room of say a gym, there is nothing stopped them going in and watching women dress.

There is nothing stopping a lesbian watching a women dress either though.

@Ghosttile

’then the potential problems are because of men, not because of trans women. So surely there are better ways to address our issues with men committing crimes than to make sure trans women are excluded from certain spaces? Aren't there other ways we as a society can address the prevalence of crimes against women?’

I’d love to hear your ideas on that

Of course theres no problem! Male sexual predators who self declare as trans women to access female spaces ( refuges, prisons changing rooms) walk around with massive neon signs on their head and are completely different from someone who has decided they are trans and has self declared as trans despite having no surgery at all and still being in possession of a functioning penis.

@chickenyhead

The biggest risk group for biological women is biological men. Not transwomen specifically.

Why does this have to be twisted in to something other than not discriminating against women by sex?

Trans women ARE biological men though, try looking up how many trans woman prisoners that are in the female prison estate are convicted sex offenders - over 70%. Most of whom only “came out” as trans once convicted and placed in the male prison system, what conclusion can you draw from that!

Also, if that IS your issue with allowing trans people into female only spaces, then your issue isn't with trans women, it's with men. If you're worried about men entering the space by 'pretending' to be trans, then the potential problems are because of men, not because of trans women. So surely there are better ways to address our issues with men committing crimes than to make sure trans women are excluded from certain spaces? Aren't there other ways we as a society can address the prevalence of crimes against women?

You're right my problem is with men, ie; people who are biologically male and have a penis. I totally think they shouldn't be in female only spaces. I'm sure some trans individuals, the majority even, are very nice and would no way want to harm a woman.

But there are biologically male people who do gain access to female only spaces and cause issues.
Whether they are men pretending to be trans women or whether they're trans women I have no idea.

Stonewall bleat on about full acceptance, no exception so I suppose we have to say they are trans women. To say they're men pretending to be trans women would be considered transphobic which I'm sure you;re not OP.

Whatever you wish to call them there are documented cases of people with penises entering female only spaces and attacking and raping women - inc in female prisons. That is the truth so please don't say it doesn't happen. It does.

The there are cases like the WiSpa incident, someone with a penis naked in a female only space where there are young children. Is that appropriate? No. What about Muslim women, any woman who has been attacked/raped previously, should we say they can't go in female only spaces now because they don't feel safe when a male person is there?

There is nothing stopping a lesbian watching a women dress either though.

Are there huge numbers of lesbians sexually assaulting women? What an offensive comment.

Have you googled 'Barbie Kardashian'?

Try starting there.