I do not believe in gender identity.

[SernieBanders]

There are two sexes: male and female. Occasionally, that matters.

There is no such thing as an innate gender identity—no internal essence that makes someone more inclined to wear dresses and sip wine, or football boots and down pints. Those are cultural stereotypes, not proof of some mystical gendered soul.

The idea of gender identity is sexist, misogynistic, and regressive. It reinforces outdated norms instead of challenging them. Women do not need an inner feeling of womanhood to be women. Men do not need a gender identity to be men. Sex is real. Stereotypes are not.

I hope with the flurry of cultural changes, legal challenges, scientific findings and executive orders in the last ~12 months, more people feel able to stand up and be counted, and say - No More.

Hi
Like, obviously we disagree, but yeah, that's my view. Innocent until proven guilty, etc. we disagree but at least we understand each other's view and I think that's genuine progress. We mainly disagree with how to manage risk, and whether segregated spaces are worth the loss of freedom (because to me, being put in a space marked woman forever, feels like that would be a loss of freedom, an inequality, even if it's to "protect" me.)

Sorry handmaids tale, we disagree on the concept of innocent until proven guilty.

Yes I feel for them. People are being dogmatic about there being only 2 sexes and so only 2 spaces to accommodate all of us, but it leaves a minority vulnerable. As a society we need to come up with some compromise solution.

It's not enough to just say 'there are only 2 sexes' because these single sex spaces need to be comfortable and safe for ALL users. If we are going to say men are the predatory, dangerous sex, then how do we accommodate those who appear - on any level - as being female?

No they aren't a third sex. But they can't always safely and clearly identify as one or the other.

I think we just have really different ideas of how to do justice/safeguarding. Preventative and heavy handed and segregated, or something more responsive. If women were genuinely prey animals (chickens with foxes kinda deal) I'd feel differently I promise, but we are adult human beings equal to men, with opinions, voices, choices, etc.

I can believe in sex the way you put it, and disagree with segregation as the default.

I am not feeding baby mice to a blender I'm suggesting adult humans interact and find a better way to police each other's behavior.

I agree that in terms of SEX there are only 2 BUT it is not always clearly and unambiguously identifiable.

And then we get into 'how do we determine which one a person is?' and "what criteria do we use?' and then 'what if they have been raised as one sex and are now told they must become the other?'
Nice if it can be ID'ed at birth but it's not always, no matter what Trump says.

"Johnny was brought up as a girl because he had no visible testes or penis and what appeared to be a vagina."
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34290981

It’s based on the fact that of the sexual and violence crimes that occur, males commit 98% of those crimes. So no, we are not ‘equal to men’ and it’s why safeguarding measures have to be put in place as a result. But you understand about safeguarding 😐.

1 No necessarily. Some don't produce either.
2 So surgery may be required? https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34290981
3 I agree.
4 and those for who it is not ambiguous at birth but only becomes apparent at puberty? https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34290981

I agree, it is not a large number plus it is confounded by the trans folks, but it is not helped by Trump-like rabid insistence.

It’s not handmaids tale. It’s based on statistics and evidence. I think everyone, women especially, would love it if everyone posed the same amount of risk, preferably none at all. But this isn’t the world we live in.

Males are the cuntier sex class, and until those stats and evidence change, safeguarding measures have to be put in place. Trying to prevent something from happening in the first place. You know like how you are very unlikely to be burgled but I bet you still lock your doors at night.

Should sport be sex segregated? Don’t think you addressed that.

The one FTM person I know of (not know, but just know of) was married and had 2 children. She transitioned at 45YO and now claims to "have been a gay male all my life". He is very vocal re trans rights in NE USA.

25 years ago she was very polite and respectful of everyone and their rights.

10 years on testosterone shots and he makes obnoxious, sexually suggestive comments about men he fancies (public figures, to be clear), and some comments are sexually suggestive to women around him too. I certainly would not want to be sharing a 'safe space' with him, just because of 'natal sex'.

Hence I am wary of 'natal sex' as a determinant. I am a good deal more concerned about hormones. Testosterone is a strong hormone. That's why I think removal of the balls followed by oestrogen is a significant commitment of male to female transition.

And I def see the addition of testosterone to an adult woman as making her female to male transition a pretty serious change. I don't want someone like that in women-only spaces.

1 I don’t personally. The medical experts do. The lack of gamete production does not make them less able to have their sex determined. And again, often their particular difference of sex development (not intersex, that is not the medical term used) is only experienced by people of one sex.

2 You are again leveraging people medical conditions in a way to score political points. The few people who fit into this category have had their bodies politicised enough and yet you are doing it again here. They are still male people, they most likely know this by adulthood.

4 And yet, we allow children access to the single sex spaces they don’t technically belong in all the time. Your point being?

Here is the answer to number 3 that I already addressed to you on the other thread.

By allowing female people to react the way we used to react whenever any male person entered the space that they should not be entering. As I said.

There are plenty of ways that we used to do it. The thing about all safety issues is that we are never perfectly safe despite taking even the best available steps to prevent harm from happening. That is unrealistic. Burglars will still get into your house despite the locks that we put on doors and windows.
Making the statements you did is like saying to someone, well, you may as well not even bother closing your front door because you will never be 100% safe. We can only make spaces as safe as possible within reason.

Having law changes and policy changes and making sure that these are very well publicised for an extended period, having signs up stating that a space is single sex etc is a start. We have to undo all the expectation that some male people have that they should be in those spaces.

I mean, another great start would be to have the very opposite of the signs that have popped up in some areas in the UK where they say that women and girls should not question people who look like they should not be in those spaces, and to re-educate girls and women that they should indeed leave if they feel unsafe, that leaving is not a offensive act but it is a valid reaction if we feel concerned and uncomfortable.

But the reality is, this new
'education' that has happened over the past years needs to be reversed. Female people should most definitely feel confident to leave a single sex space (or any) when a male comes into it.

But there really is quite a few things that can be done. However, nowhere will be 100% safe. That should not stop us from having those single sex spaces though.

There is no need for your predicted ‘license changes’, or genital checks. There never was. If someone needs an alternative third space, those should be sought.

I think you'll find that your expectations of being safeguarded from the sex that commits 99% of sex crimes will be a lot less realistic than being safeguarded from the sex that commits 1%.

You sound extremely privileged and clueless. The women actually facing this situation are not so stupid.

Glad you confirmed because frankly, I thought it was a bonkers take on my behalf. But you have confirmed that you think that safeguarding is to be thrown away and your personal choice of letting everyone loose used instead.

I think in your model, you have just exposed millions of female people and children (because you know we use the same safeguarding principles to protect children too?) to a dramatically increased risk of harm in your belief that justice will prevail.

In an era of where so many rapes and assaults don’t even make it to court or are even reported. Where trust in our police force is at a low point.

All because you want strict equality. Pure Egalitarianism is a great ideal but it is not ever going to be able to be achieved due to things like prison and sport and allowing female people to heal from male abuse and trauma.

Most Feminists were not after female people being treated as if they were equal in body. They were after equality of opportunity usually through strategies to achieve equitable outcomes.

And part of that equitable outcome is to have single sex spaces to allow female people to access public life and to have space to recover from
those abuses done by male people. Meaning, that they act for the now rather than putting female people in danger just to be able to live an ideal as you are suggesting.

Frankly, your complete disregard for the needs of female people who rely on single sex spaces is remarkable.

Your ideal might never be workable. In the meantime, we have to deal with what we are living in reality today. Which means single sex spaces.

I’d love to think you’re right, but I genuinely think the “true believers”, really really do. This Beth Upton guy maybe, everyone on Reddit!

@JeannetteBlue you have not answered the point about sport. You know full well if all sport was mixed sex women would be out in physical danger and 99% of awards would be given to men.

Im not sure how you can support this argument tbh

Anyone supporting this simply doesn't care about women's opportunities.

They couldn't.

Your suggestion is that we allow any male person in that has had surgery.

What is the difference between a male person who elects to have their penis and testicles removed based on their philosophical belief in their identity or a male person who has their penis and testicles removed due to injury or disease. And thinking further, what about male detransitioners? Why should one get access to single sex spaces for female people and the other doesn't?

You never did answer these questions. Maybe you will here on this thread.

And why should female people who would be distressed by male body cues in single sex spaces be harmed?

Just having their penis and testes removed doesn't mean that these male people change their bodies to have female body cues.

There is no evidence at all that any male person in the UK at any stage of transition has a lower risk of committing a sex or violent crime compared to the general UK male population. What you are arguing for will still allow female people to be harmed because it is statistically expected that the same % of those males your suggestion allows into female single sex spaces will harm the female people using the space.

If a person from the group you have been leveraging in your determination to allow male people access to female spaces - those male people who do not produce the testosterone their bodies produces - doesn't wish to use the male provision, then they can find a safe alternative. Likely if they are phenotypically female as they have not processed any testosterone that they produce, they will use the female toilets if they have always done.

There ARE only two sexes. That is a well established and provable scientific fact. It is not being 'dogmatic' to understand that there are only two sexes and that sometimes the sex your body is, is relevant.

'If we are going to say men are the predatory, dangerous sex, then how do we accommodate those who appear - on any level - as being female?'

Male people are the category of people who are committing sex and violence against female people at a significant rate. Just because a person 'appears' female is not any reason to include a male person in a female single sex space.

If there is a need for a campaign to make male single sex spaces safe for all male people, this needs to happen as a matter of priority.

The 'compromise' solution is one of third spaces. This solution has been suggested for decades now. Not removing single sex spaces but adding a mixed sex space.

Your continued 'whataboutery' leveraging people's medical conditions where they have a difference of sex development can be accommodated for under exceptions to the laws and policies. As they already are.

However, your leveraging of people with differences of sex development in the way that you have now on this thread is you making their situation directly comparable to a male person who has elected to surgically remove their penis and testes. Is that what you are intending to do?

Then you clearly don’t understand what ‘safeguarding’ is - its about preventing harm by reducing the risk. It’s achieved by not putting women and children into vulnerable settings with the opposite sex. If you insist upon opening the door to let the wolf in, how do you expect the world to protect you from it when it gobbles you - or someone else - up? By then it is too late. THAT is what safeguarding is about - ensuring foolish people do not let the wolf in.

being put in a space marked woman forever, feels like that would be a loss of freedom, an inequality, even if it's to "protect" me

Except many/most of us here advocate for 'third spaces' (which any woman can choose to use), and for sports to have a female and an 'open' category. So that loss of freedom wouldn't actually exist. (Prisons obviously would only ever be male and female but I doubt any sane female criminal really wants the dubious freedom and equality of being incarcerated with men.)

Do you understand that it is likely that a male who has had their testes removed still has to take exogenous testosterone at a level high enough for them to protect their health?

Because male people need to have an amount of testosterone in their bodies for good health. Female levels of testosterone in their bodies is not good for their long term health.

So people who disagree with you are 'Trump-like' and 'rabid'.

Besides which, I don't recall you asking the question of which single sex spaces those male people who don't process testosterone at all or produce it should access. I believe you simply insisted that they defied the sex binary.

But now you are making their needs comparable to those of male people who have transgender identities?

Female people are not 'prey animals'.

However, there are some male people who treat female people as 'prey animals'.

You can idealise all you wish to. Your suggestions leave female people at significant risk of harm so that you can live your ideal life. I wish we could live in your utopia. But we don't.

If we were to let male people into women's prisons, presumably we'd have to put female people into male prisons. People who think this is fine and dandy because "safeguards" (?) have evidently never been inside a prison. I have worked in prisons for over ten years. Ive worked with extremely high risk offenders, infamous household names, men who've done terrible things to children, women, other men, you name it. I am safe as houses while i walk around my prison, i laugh and joke with the men, i sit in rooms on my own with them. But, i would never ever want to be locked up into a tiny cell, where i dont have the means to get out.

A prison cell is about 10x8. It has one or two bunks, a sink and a toilet. If you were locked up with a male, you would be using the toilet, changing your tampon, washing yourself etc, all while that male was lying on his bunk watching you. He'd similarly be washing, peeing, pooing, masturbating, in that same space. Genuinely, how safe would you feel?

I have no doubt that if a woman prisoner was raped by a man she was sharing a cell with, there would be prosecution. But at the end of the day, you've still got a raped woman, who should have been safe from rape at least in prison.

Why the hell do you think Elizabeth Fry said that women and men should be kept separately in the first place?

This is true and needs to be remembered.

Just like it needs to be remembered that removing penises and testes doesn't mean that male person still cannot sexually abuse or sexually assault or act violently toward female people.

It is like these surgeries are being held up to be some kind of magic boundary that simply is not there. It is known to be a falsehood that this magical behavioural boundary exists, yet some people double down that it somehow makes a difference.