[quote Appledrop]**@Wobblyhousehunt
All I ask is for you to just go and do a bit of research, maybe then you will understand where all the women on here are coming from. Can you do that?[/quote]
I'd second that.
For the record, I started out where you are, @Wobblyhousehunt. I went and did masses of research so that I could dismbowel these horrible, hateful women and put them right, using solid data.
The difficulty was, the evidence all supported them, and not me. Transwomen have male patterns of offending - women have very, very low ones comparatively. Males are thousands of times more of a risk, which is why they're excluded from women's spaces: not because all men are rapists, but because almost all rapists are men. And women have to have language that describes us as a group, or we can't coherently and logically defend our rights, because there is no real collective noun by which to do so - we start defending each right piecemeal and we can't name which group of people (women) are subjected to harms because we are women, and then the whole ability to organise as a group with allied rights and needs starts to disentegrate. The right to access women only refuges, rape support services and women's groups is erased. Women are told not to talk about abortion rights at a Women's March, because it excludes transwomen. We can't say women are affected by sexual violence exponentially more or that's biological essentialism (facts don't matter, apparently, if there's a catch phrase to throw at it). And once I started thinking about this, I began to ask why I assumed a male person saying, "I am a woman" would change the fact that their bodies are sexed in every single cell. That sex can't change, and therefore what did a claim to be a member of the opposite gender really mean? What is a woman, anyway, if it isn't biological sex, and it isn't stereotypes? And why can't a male person wear dresses and anything else he wants, and be whoever he feels is authentic, without being a man?
Gender dysphoria as a medical condition is genuine, and I feel real compassion for anyone suffering. I feel less compassion for a cross dressing man who simply likes to access women's spaces. And Stonewall now place a transvestite in the same category as someone dysphoric from earliest childhood, even though they have completely different drivers for their presentation.
It's a complex issue with two simple facts at the heart: women need single sex provision, and humans can't change sex. And it is perfectly possible to retain sympathy for the infinite variety of the human experience, without closing your eyes to the basic facts that women are vulnerable to male violence, and that the only way to reduce that vulnerability is to provide spaces that exclude all men. However those men may feel about themselves.
It would be hateful to want trans people denied their own groups, services and provisions, but on the contrary, women I know recognise that everyone should have access to peer support. What we do not accept is the suggestion that there should be no such support, on the basis of sex, for women.
I'm serious. Read Trans. It's calm, clear, and well evidenced. And then see what you think, because even if you disagree, at least you will understand the opposing position - which should strengthen your hand in defending your own, yes?