To think the world has gone fucking mad

[Startrekkeruniverse]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c07ev1v7r4po

There's a park where I sometimes walk my dog which has a fenced-off children's play area which explicitly says 'No Dogs.' I can't imagine saying 'Well, I think of my dog as a toddler and I treat him like one and he absolutely loves playing with children, he's smaller than a toddler so, if you think about it (stupidly), actually more vulnerable than they are, and he'll be safer in there because there are no big dogs inside, so I'm going to take him in.' and then getting angry when the parents are hostile and the children curtail their own freedom because they should all just know that my dog is really friendly and wouldn't bite anyone. I just couldn't do it because I know the space is there so children can play freely without having to worry about toxic dog poo or vicious dog attacks and I've got the whole of the rest of the park or plenty of other places in which to walk my dog (even though he'd love to be where the kids are at and it would be nice to walk him somewhere with a really secure fence and no big dogs).

I had to use that scenario because although there are situations where men wouldn't like women to be present I couldn't come up with one where men would feel intimidated by female presence.

Yes exactly! I see they won't post as they are clearly the minority- thankfully only a small proportion of humans are insane.

That dog analogy is spot on. Am sure most dogs are lovely but some places are just not for them - why is this so hard to accept and upsetting for this particular group? There are certainly sinister undertones to this whole aggressive movement.

In law, you just have a sex. In some countries, this can be changed. In others, not. In the ones where it can, the criteria vary (and, obviously, can be changed, if the lawmakers decide to). Whether this is mad or not is obviously a matter of opinion.

Where this stuff's concerned, biology is not (necessarily) the same thing as law.

This is a slight digression but, I feel, shows a real life implication.

I recently visited a pub in the gay quarter of a nearby city.

As I walked in, there were two signs next to each other on the door:

Ask for Angela. Online date turned out not to be who they said they were? Etc (we've all seen them).

And next to it a trans inclusive sign saying that, if anyone was made to feel feel 'unsafe', they were to report to staff for support/assistance because intolerance would not be tolerated.

I was reminded of the stories I've read of lesbian women who have arranged a date, arrived and discovered that their date was a TW.

Who would the pub support? Who is the 'victim' in this instance?

The lesbian who has arrived to discover their online date was not who they said they were?

Or the TW who was made to feel 'unsafe' when the lesbian woman correctly identified them as male and cut the date short?

Because I know who should be the priority in that scenario but I also know who I believe would receive the support.

It's stuff like this that concerns me. There is a real risk that a woman would not be able to receive support in a potentially vulnerable every day situation because of this nonsense.

There was a case in San Francisco where a trans identified male flashed a woman in a woman's loo. She got thrown out because she misgendered him when she reported it to staff. I read about it quite a while ago so can't remember the details. I think it was a gay bar.

Wow...

Reminds me of the Wi Spa incident in LA where a man claiming to be a woman exposed himself to women and young girls in the women's changing room. The woman who complained was told he was a woman and she was shamed by the staff and online for complaining - including by the Guardian & Owen Jones - repeatedly on the wrong side of this one.
Of course the transwoman turned out to be a serial sex offender and was subsequently charged.

www.spiked-online.com/2021/09/07/the-wi-spa-scandal-is-worse-than-we-thought/

And the woman who was banned from a gym in America (Planet Fitness?) for complaining that a man was using the women's locker room. The man in question wasn't a member of the gym and wasn't even using the gym. He just entered, left a bag in the women's locker room and collected it later. Turns out his online presence showed he was a man who referred to himself as a man but who had a fantasy about being forced to be a female Polish sex worker and who also had a fetish about women who were into fitness.

IIRC, the woman who was banned brought a legal case against the gym ...... which she lost. In-fucking-sane!

There certainly are.

My take is, if such individuals and by extension entire trans movement don't want to be taken for fetishistic, creepy, narcissistic, coercive, abusive, sex offending men who pathologically hate and envy women and want to dismantle all the rights we fought so hard for historically, then it would better if they didn't CONSTANTLY behave as if that is exactly what they are.

Yes, while "doyennes of post-feminist feminism" such as Judith Butler busied herself writing articles for her fawning audience about how such women were clearly Nazi bigots aligning with the far right.

I seem to remember one feminist protestor outside the spa getting surrounded by shrieking, aggressive activists who intimidated and threatened her physically. So kind and righteous and totally the "right side of history".

Yes, I remember that one.

I think the reason the pub one stood put to me was because online dating is such a normal everyday occurrence for so many people. And because it always carries a risk of the person not being who you think they are. Women are always being reminded to tell friends where they are going, to meet in a public place, share contact details etc., to tell someone of they don't feel safe etc.

A scenario where attention to women's safety is generally actively recognised could so easily turn against a woman who needed protection because of the 'gender identity' of her date.

It was realy the juxtaposition of the two posters next to each other. I wondered whether any of the staff had even considered the possible conflict.

I was really tempted to ask what would happen in that scenario but I was also really hungry and didn't want to get kicked out. So I didn't.

If ever there was ever proof that we are 'second class citizens'...

My take is, if such individuals and by extension entire trans movement don't want to be taken for fetishistic, creepy, narcissistic, coercive, abusive, sex offending men who pathologically hate and envy women and want to dismantle all the rights we fought so hard for historically, then it would better if they didn't CONSTANTLY behave as if that is exactly what they are

Yes, I've been saying this for so many years now.

My take is, if such individuals and by extension entire trans movement don't want to be taken for fetishistic, creepy, narcissistic, coercive, abusive, sex offending men who pathologically hate and envy women and want to dismantle all the rights we fought so hard for historically, then it would better if they didn't CONSTANTLY behave as if that is exactly what they are.

Agree. They seem to have forgotten that by your deeds you will be known.

I want to like this more than once because it’s absolutely spot on.

On the legal change of status, one analogy that's sometimes used is adoption. Legally the child becomes the child of the adoptive parents with all the usual legal rights that go with that. But obviously biology is not changed by legal paperwork.

In fact it's not a great analogy for situations like the Tickle controversy, because there's nothing about the biology of an adopted child that would make that person's inclusion in social groups inappropriate.

I think of it as being like adulthood - a biological thing in a sense, but also a legal category. I mean, if we were talking about animals we'd say they are adult when they're able to breed. But we're not going to let 12 yr olds marry or vote or buy houses. And most countries set the age of adulthood at 18, but it doesn't have to be that way. (Science tells us bodies and brains keep maturing til about 25....).

I suppose adoption could affect inclusion in a few social groups. Like succeeding to titles / monarchy...? And we've all seen the posts on here from people saying their dc's grandparents don't consider them real grandchildren etc. Then there's inclusion in at least one or two religions - Judaism's by bloodline, through the mother. I'm sure there are other parts of the world where you're not a real member of your tribe or whatever if it's not by blood. It's all human constructs, and different places (and times) are always going to come up with differing ones.

Yes.