To think that if a man has had bottom surgery they should be put in a woman’s prison?

[Bex5490]

Genuinely interested in this and not trying to goad just want to understand.

When people talk of the threat of a man in women’s spaces, I assume the danger is because of their penis.

So if that’s gone then should they be categorised as a woman?

I’m kind of of the opinion that if you’re willing to put that much effort in (as in penis removal) regardless of your chromosomes, I’m happy for you to be called a woman…is this wrong?

Doesn't mean that you cannot explore it further. Because it is in looking at the discussion from many angles that has meant that some of us have reached positions that some have called 'unpleasant', and others have called 'disrespectful'.

Because when you do remove the emotional element and discuss it without the emotion, there is very little about this philosophical belief that actually stacks up to the claims that then influence the decisions.

Also it’s a reflection on where we are in terms of gender stereotypes, superficiality, a culture obsessed with cosmetics, conformity etc

If we were more accepting of people being different, men wearing heels, women being builders etc then I think the transgender thing wouldn’t have become so prevalent.

I absolutely agree and I don't think the answer is to enshrine sexist stereotypes in law and society, on pain of legal consequences or social opprobrium, that a woman is a person who likes long hair and makeup, and a man is a person who likes short hair and action films.

Sesame Street understood this decades ago!

I agree. I doubt you will find many people disagreeing that that is a source of the issue. But it is only one source.

Another source is that under the guise of being 'tolerant', an imbalance of power has been allowed. Another source is a disenfranchised group of male people (see the transmaxxing up thread). Another source that probably also comes under 'tolerance' is that people's fetishes and paraphilias have been pushed into the public eye as something to be tolerated.

There are many sources, and much of it is misogynistic in nature.

I actually don't think it has much to do with gender non conforming adults.

The vast majority of trans people fall into one of three categories.

1. Biological males who decide to transition to "live as" women in adulthood.
2. Biological males who experience gender dysphoria and wish to identify as girls from a very young age, usually before puberty.
3. Confused teenagers, mostly biological females, who start to present with gender dysphoria during puberty.

Those in the first category are generally heterosexual, have often been married to a woman and had children, enjoyed male privilege and been completely gender conforming until they suddenly decide to transition. They often admit that they get a sexual thrill from presenting as a woman. There is little, if any, crossover between this group and actual women in terms of how they present and behave. The ones who are convicted of sex offences invariably fall into this category.

Those in the second category usually grow up to be homosexual, and there is often evidence of them growing up in a homophobic environment where being gay was completely unacceptable, and/or (increasingly common these days) having a parent who has thoroughly embraced their role as parent of a "trans child" and sees it as some sort of status symbol. We can only speculate about what would have become of these children if they'd grown up in an environment where being gay was totally accepted and where their parents neither tried to force them to be gender conforming, nor encouraged them to identify as trans, but I suspect they would mostly have grown up to be completely ordinary gay men.

The third category are generally gender conforming throughout childhood until they hit puberty, which, combined with other characteristics which they commonly have such as autism, a history of sexual abuse or being in the care system, and the prevailing climate where every other child is suddenly identifying as trans or non binary, causes them to choose this path. These are the same girls who, twenty years ago, would have found "pro Ana" communities on Tumblr and developed eating disorders. It's just the currently fashionable way for troubled, vulnerable young people to self harm.

I don't think any of this actually has much to do with gender non conformity.

A man who has chosen to become a eunuch has nothing in common with women and so should not be put in a women's prison. Women are not mutilated men and to suggest they are is misogyny.

Maybe feeling like a woman is a tangible thing compared to ‘I feel different to everyone else and want to do things I’d probably get bullied for if I didn’t have this frame of reference.’

But I generally just believe in treating people with compassion. For those who genuinely feel like this, I imagine life is pretty rough. And made worse by sexual predators, men in wigs etc who use this as a disguise to commit crime.

I completely understand the need to protect women’s spaces and I get why people are so passionate.

I think the memes, name calling, abuse on either side is wrong and unhelpful.

Hopefully there can be an ethical solution that works for everyone and keeps everyone safe - stranger things have happened 🤷🏽‍♀️

Another element of this though is people's boundaries. Some parts of society have got lower boundaries around acceptable behaviour than others. Some of that is sexual behaviour. Some of that is behaviour relating to supporting a person's identity . Some of it is about supporting different philosophical beliefs.

When people insist that their philosophical belief is to be prioritised above the materially real needs of others, such as when sex matters it should only be about the sex a person is and not their philosophical belief about themselves, then it has to be asked, why? Why should this be accepted.

If people have had their boundaries lowered through messaging from sources they trust or by other means, they may not realise that they have these lower boundaries. That they are now accepting of something that ends up harming other people, but that 'something' has been designated somehow as being kind and an absolute necessity when there is no material evidence to support that.

Hence we are at this point where posters are judgementally labelled 'unpleasant' or 'disrepectful' because they have higher boundaries than others around certain concepts and beliefs. Such as not using the opposite sex pronouns for someone, or such as not calling a male person a 'woman'.

What if his experience of being trans is not feeling like a man? How can a woman know how that feels to him?

Women don't need to understand whether or not a man feels like what a man is supposed to feel (according to who?) to know he has zero claim to be a woman. I don't claim to know what he feels, just that it doesn't have anything to do with women.

I think the memes, name calling, abuse on either side is wrong and unhelpful.

Again, death and rape threats and mocking memes are not comparable and it's disingenuous to present them as such in a false claim that it is a "both sides" issue.

Biology is literally what makes a woman. I'm a teapot in every way except for being a teapot.

😂 This ^^

I agree. I doubt you will find many people disagreeing that that is a source of the issue. But it is only one source.

Another source is that under the guise of being 'tolerant', an imbalance of power has been allowed. Another source is a disenfranchised group of male people (see the transmaxxing up thread). Another source that probably also comes under 'tolerance' is that people's fetishes and paraphilias have been pushed into the public eye as something to be tolerated.

There are many sources, and much of it is misogynistic in nature.

Precisely. Of course women are going to push back on that.

I have read this study.

The findings are misrepresented so often here.
Dhejne herself spent some years trying to set the record straight, as in this interview in the Trans Advocate: www.transadvocate.com/fact-check-study-shows-transition -makes-trans-people-suicidaln15483.htm

Here she is correcting misinformation about the study's findings on violent crime:

"Dhejne: The individual in the image who is making claims about trans criminality, specifically rape likelihood, is misrepresenting the study findings. The study as a whole covers the period between 1973 and 2003. If one divides the cohort into two groups, 1973 to 1988 and 1989 to 2003, one observes that for the latter group (1989-2003), differences in mortality, suicide attempts, and crime disappear. This means that for the 1989 to 2003 group, we did not find a male pattern of criminality."

In the study the trans women studied are divided into two cohorts, one who transitioned between 1973 and 1988, and one that transitioned between 1989 and 2003. Transgender women who transitioned after 1989 did not show a male pattern of criminality and this is always left out when quoting this study.

What changed in 1989 to make transgender women less dangerous? No idea. But something did.

Are there people claiming to be babies who want to sneak into nurseries?

Yes, it is a thing.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5089529/amp/University-failed-male-student-baby-role-play-fetish.html

• The former director of human rights at a university on Vancouver Island has filed a harassment complaint against the school
• On one occasion the student, a man in his 40s, submitted an essay that included a photo of himself wearing nothing but a diaper
• He would also ask professors to speak in a baby-voice and read children's stories
• The fetish sees wearers becoming sexually aroused by such activities as wearing diapers, eating baby food, and having their diapers changed

There seems to be much confusion about what being trans is, even amongst the activists.

We have some activists saying that sex and gender are different things and for the life of me I can't work out why that should mean that male people are demanding access to single sex spaces reserved on the basis of sex, can anyone please help me with that?

Then we have the @Lostcat school of thought with the argument that there is some strange way in which some male people can claim the sex of women based on the 'clownfish' argument or another undefined notion of Sex which has nothing to do with the material reality that humans and all other creatures, as demonstrated by Fond of Beetles wonderful thread on twitter, know to be true.

Neither is a compelling argument for -

Putting rapists in women's prisons and making all other spaces and sports mixed sex, especially when the statistics demonstrate that trans women are at least as likely, if more likely to be predators than any other male.

Or for that matter putting vulnerable young people on puberty blockers. If @Lostcat is right then there is no need for medical intervention - we just simply don't understand biology. So not needed.

If the other activists are right and sex and gender is different why do people need to modify their bodies to look like the opposite sex?

The problem is when you break it all down, none of it makes sense.

@Bex5490

I agree 3rd spaces would be best but I'd put money on you gaining no traction with the trans community if you put this forward as a solution citing concerns for female safety and them not being female sex as the reason.

In fact you'd probably receive some abuse.

Here she is correcting misinformation about the study's findings on violent crime:

It isn't "misinformation" it's her own study's findings. I don't think the study should be relied upon either way by either side because it's such a small sample.

But the study said what it said, that transitioning males were much more likely than women to commit violent crime. Her statements were obviously a sop to TRAs.

This is an excellent thread debunking @Cheesytoastie claim.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3761578-Long-Term-Follow-Up-of-Transsexual-Persons-Undergoing-Sex-Reassignment-Surgery-Cohort-Study-in-Sweden-2011-clarification-by-lead-researcher-Dr-Cecilia-Dhejne-2015

Excellent find 334bu

"If one is only interested in transwomen data is only available for the whole period."
Yes, that is what I had already found combing through the paper and the supplementary materials. As had many others.

So she is admitting that the paper shows exactly what it explicitly says in the paper, which she previously tried to sort of deny, that transwomen "retained a male pattern of criminality".

I have to admit, I think that her attempts to obfuscate on this are pretty appalling.

Yes the ethical solution is to retain single sex spaces and services.

This ensures we remain compassionate towards women and girls.

Third spaces, sure, but the men with lady feelz don't want them, they want what we have.

The original study clearly states that only the pre 1989 cohort had a male pattern for criminality. Pointing this out to people who are only quoting half of the study is not misinformation.

The original study clearly states that only the pre 1989 cohort had a male pattern for criminality.

You're not just referring to the original study, so neither am I. Here is further clarification for you from Dhejne on a Reddit AMA.

"Regarding criminality there are only results from either both trans women and trans men and displayed for the whole period 1973-2003 and for the periods of 1973-1988 and the 1989-2003. If one is only intrested in transwomen data is only available for the whole period. For only assigned med who had transition 1973-2003 they had committed more crimes than cis women and more violent crime than cis women. The number of transwomen who had comited crime durin gthis period was 32, and the number who had comitted violent crime were 14. Most likely some of the 32 transwomen who had comitted a any crime had also comitted a violent crime sop you can not add the numbers. Having a male pattern means that they did not differ regarding any crime or violent crime if compared with cis men. However even if I can't say how it is for trans women specific one could see that if the whole group (tran women and trans men) are displayed together there is a very postive time trend. So after 1989 the transgender men and women together did not differ from cis gender men and women regarding comitting any crime or violent crime. This means that the trana population was not more criminal then the cis population after 1989. The actual number of any crimes for the transgroup is for 1973-2003 600, for 1973-1988 388 and for 1989-2003 222. The numbers of violent crimes are for 1972-2003 144, for 1973-1988 100* 1989-2003 4."

She's just scrabbling around for a spin to obfuscate the clear, obvious findings that men have a greater propensity to violence than women, regardless of "gender" feelings.

If anyone is interested, please read the thread I linked which discusses this. Not much professional integrity on show here from this supposed scientist.

Explained well by @anotherlass here on the thread I linked (my bold)

The point is that in the early group transmen adopted a male pattern of violence, and in the later group this effect disappeared, so their violence level went back to normal levels for their sex.
We only have figures for transwomen for the whole period, and their level of criminality was normal for their sex.
If you add them together, trans people as a whole have a raised level of criminality vs non-transitioned people of the same sex only in the early group. (Due to the raised level in transmen)
She has constantly conflated the two issues in order to say things that are obviously deliberately confusing on this. But whether she likes it or not, her own data shows what it shows.

And the author said this:

"The difference we observed between the 1989 to 2003 cohort and the control group is that the trans cohort group accessed more mental health care, which is appropriate given the level of ongoing discrimination the group faces. What the data tells us is that things are getting measurably better and the issues we found affecting the 1973 to 1988 cohort group likely reflects a time when trans health and psychological care was less effective and social stigma was far worse. "

They hypothesise that mental health care may have been an influence and it may have been. So, according to this, if a male person with a transgender identity does not receive mental health support they committed crimes that were at least at the rate of all other male people.

Can you point out where they then controlled for this in the wider male population, please?

Because you seem to be keen in drawing conclusions from data that is not really showing what you want it to say because the sample sizes are very small and/or the researchers have not controlled the study appropriately to be able to make the strength of the conclusions you are drawing from.

What I draw from this study is what the author says in the document published:

"This indicates that they retained a male pattern regarding criminality. The same was true regarding violent crime. "

and then further down

"In this study, male-to-female individuals had a higher risk for criminal convictions compared to female controls but not compared to male controls. This suggests that the sex reassignment procedure neither increased nor decreased the risk for criminal offending in male-to-females."

I believe that they have had to make these statements because they could not control like for like with mental health treatment. And to put this into the perspective for the UK crime statistics, is this even relevant considering the lack of mental health treatment available to so many male people living in the UK. Whether they are male people with a transgender identity or without a transgender identity.

Can you please explain what you believe that this study conclusively shows?

Plus can you then point to how it was misrepresented based on the published study?

Because I cannot find any correction to the study published, therefore there is not 'correction' to the study. And looking at the conclusions drawn, no correction was needed as crime was not included in the 'conclusions' which were:
Conclusion
This study found substantially higher rates of overall mortality, death from cardiovascular disease and suicide, suicide attempts, and psychiatric hospitalisations in sex-reassigned transsexual individuals compared to a healthy control population. This highlights that post surgical transsexuals are a risk group that need long-term psychiatric and somatic follow-up. Even though surgery and hormonal therapy alleviates gender dysphoria, it is apparently not sufficient to remedy the high rates of morbidity and mortality found among transsexual persons. Improved care for the transsexual group after the sex reassignment should therefore be considered.

I think you're where many of us were a few years ago in this debate.

What you need to realise is this.

In order to treat women with compassion, it is necessary to respect their right to single sex spaces which do not include any male people. Otherwise women's spaces are no longer inclusive of any women who do not feel comfortable sharing these spaces with the opposite sex and feel forced to self exclude. When it comes to prison, it is even worse. Because women cannot choose to self exclude from prison. So unless you keep all male prisoners out of the women's estate, with zero exceptions, you are forcibly locking vulnerable female prisoners (most of whom have been victims of male violence in the past) up with male criminals.

The position of most trans activists is that third spaces are not the solution. Not because they generally don't exist. (Because where there's a will, there's a way.) But because they are "othering". Because excluding trans women from women's spaces is not respectful of their gender identities. By excluding them, you are saying that they are not real women.

So there is an unresolvable conflict here. What women need is spaces without any male people in them. And what trans women (who are male) say they need is to be in women's spaces with women.

This conflict cannot be resolved in a way that pleases everybody.

My position is that the rights and safety of the female half of the population quite obviously ought to trump the desire of a tiny number of male people to be validated. Any other conclusion is rank misogyny.

But that is where we currently are, at least in the western world. The wants of this tiny, self selecting group of male people are more important than the rights of four billion women.

Which proves, more than anything, that they are men.