Don't know how to explain how I feel about the SC decision

[Stripeysuitcase]

Hi,

Sorry if this is the millionth post on this. I am struggling with articulating my feelings about yesterday's verdict, and I'm struggling to discuss it with friends. I am pro womens rights but also pro trans rights, and I can't see how to articulate how I feel succinctly.

To put it very briefly I think anyone should be comfortable in being who they want to be, but not at the expense of someone else's fear/discomfort around who they are. I have been sexually abused and support women's single spaces. I have also been negatively affected by working in male dominated spaces. I feel very clearly that my life would have been far easier and happier had I been born a man.

I can't explain how I feel in that being a woman is about growing up as a woman, millions of little decision I make and have made is influenced by the fact that I am and have always been a woman. That is around fear, discrimination, complexity of emotions, different biological experiences (like periods, strength, body shape) etc etc. I feel that these are mine because I'm a woman, and they can never belong or be properly understood to someone who has grown up as a man.

I don't know why this is so important to me. I feel like I have and want to validate this, to defend it, to be allowed to have my experiences and feel the fear, sadness and pain that has been - and still will be in my future - associated with being a woman.

At the same time I often work within the trans community and they are also completely valid in their experiences and probably feel the same - Not included, disadvantaged, looked down upon. For not the same reasons, but with the same effect on them.

Please, does anyone have any advice as to how to articulate this to friends, family and peers? I really struggle with my words sometimes and have a lot of social anxiety. I am terrified of having any conversations around this.

I feel like I have to pick a side. I don't want to pick a side. I want everyone to be supported in the best way and I don't know how to do that.

Women's struggles and transwomen's struggles are both completely different types of struggle. One cannot possibly understand the other, going both ways.

Genuine question, why do you have to pick a side? Why do you have to have a discussion about it? FWIW, I think you’ve articulated yourself really clearly and you’re allowed to be happy with the supreme court decision and still recognise it’s caused angst to the trans community - they’re not mutually exclusive viewpoints!

I don’t have any advice im similar to you. I’m relieved women are protected and have the right to women only spaces . But I feel for trans women who also have a right to safety. There needs to be more done to recognise and protect trans peoples place in society but not at the expense of anyone else.

This

Trans rights shouldn't be at the expense of womens rights, trans people should be supported and accepted but should have their own set of rights, not step into ours.

Thanks both. I won't be able to avoid discussion around it I don't think due to my work. When I talk about picking a side, I think what I mean that my view on trans women not being allowed in women only spaces can very easily be interpreted as anti trans, and I don't know how to counter this and answer it succinctly. I am not anti trans. But my answers kind of are if that makes sense. Because there is no way for both people to have what they want.

I feel genuinely sorry for young trans people who have been caught up in this mess.

They were let down and lied to by Stonewall who went out to businesses to 'sell' them EDI schemes which misrepresented the Equality Act. The fact is that they should never have been in single sex spaces for women.

This feels like a loss of rights to them but it isn't. It is restoring the status quo for equality to all.

Trans people still have the right to exist and express as they want they just don't have the right to be treated the opposite sex when it comes to single sex spaces. They are protected from harassment in employment and in housing as they should be.

We are going to have trans rights activists talk about stolen rights but this is a lie. it was women's rights that were stolen to start with.

When I talk about picking a side, I think what I mean that my view on trans women not being allowed in women only spaces can very easily be interpreted as anti trans, and I don't know how to counter this and answer it succinctly
« I believe transwomen deserve a third space, this way women retain the right to single sex spaces and transwomen have to right not to be forced in a space for men »

@MissWishaw this is how I feel. But it comes across as very defensive and very like 'this is mine and you can't have it'. I'm not saying it is this, I'm saying this is how some people can interpreted it as anti trans.

@lifeturnsonadime some of your words are helpful. I think being understanding and validating whilst putting the emphasis on lack on trans support (e.g. a third space) and away from women's rights is the way to go.

I'm just not sure how to put it into words, I feel caught off guard. I am mostly struggling with my partner and a male friend who has a cross dressing gay brother. They don't understand, because they can't.

Or: transwomen should campaign for a space separate to the men’s space. I can’t be the women’s space but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a space at all.

Why do you have to 'feel' anything? It's a legal decision based on existing legislation. If you think the decision is wrong then write to your MP and ask them to introduce legislation to overturn or amend the Equality Act 2010.

If you're not comfortable articulating your views then just listen to people and nod sagely. Not everything is a press conference. As an adult you encounter many people who don't hold all the same opinions on everything. Presumably if you work with the trans community you are used to being judicious in how you speak?

I don't think you have to pick a side. Sometimes in life there isn't a solution or decision that will keep absolutely everyone happy...

If even half the energy and money spent trying to dismantle women’s sex-based rights was instead used to create safe, separate spaces for trans people, we’d be in a much better place as a society.

But instead, women—often survivors of male violence—are being told to open the doors of their spaces or be branded bigots. That’s not fairness or inclusion—that’s pressure and erasure.

Single-sex spaces exist for a reason. Women fought hard for them. According to UN Women and the WHO, one in three women globally will experience physical or sexual violence in her lifetime. That is not a small number. It’s massive—and it’s why boundaries matter.

The data just doesn’t support the idea that trans people are the most at-risk group overall. In terms of gender-based violence and oppression, biological women still bear the brunt—by far.

That doesn’t mean trans people shouldn’t be protected. Of course they should. Everyone deserves safety and dignity.

But rights aren’t about one group overriding another. If "trans rights" require taking away women’s rights, then we have to stop and ask: is that equality, or entitlement?

And then there’s the stuff no one wants to fucking acknowledge.

A 2023 study in the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology found that trans-identifying males commit sexual offenses at higher rates than biological men.
In Scottish prisons, half of trans-identifying male inmates were there for sexual offenses—far higher than the general male prison population.

These facts matter when we’re talking about who gets access to women’s prisons, shelters, and changing rooms.

This isn’t about rejecting anyone’s identity. It’s about saying: women exist. Women matter. And we shouldn’t have to apologise for protecting what little safety and dignity we’ve carved out for ourselves.

Trans people deserve support—but not by trampling over women to get it.

If someone’s liberation requires women to give up our own protections, then their motives are absolutely worth questioning.

Gender dysphoria is a mental illness. They absolutely deserve to be helped, but validating and enabling mental illness is not kind and it is not effective.

Gaslighting the most oppressed group of people on earth (women) and bullying them into submission is just an expansion of our misogynistic, patriarchal society.

Seeing so many women feel conflicted about this ruling is absolutely tragic.

Ah ok, I’d explain that it’s not possible for both women and transwomen to get what they want and you support the principles of a third space as the best (or least worst) option.

And I've seen a lot of posts on social media accusing those in favour of this ruling as hating trans people....you can be absolutely in favour of this ruling and not hate anyone or wish anyone harm.

If you ever feel uncomfortable with two competing needs, it helps to take a good old swipe at capitalism.

With money and time, all solutions are possible.

But it suits the ultra rich and ultra powerful to gobble up resources, and encourage ordinary people to fight over what little is left.

They can afford to give everyone everything they need and STILL be ultra wealthy... Except they can't. They need us to be poor and fighting for scant resources to enable them to hoard them and exercise control.

We have no fight except the one capitalist false-scarcity gave us.

I agree with the ruling.

Trans women do have a section to protect their rights in the equality act, so this shouldn’t change much. I do think it’s important that activists in the women’s movement take heed of the judge’s caution about there not being winners and losers, and definitely we should not gloat. Seen a bit of this today, unfortunately.

Sometimes saying “this is mine and you can’t have it” is the right thing!

The ruling clarifies the law, that’s all. There are situations where sex matters. We can’t have legislation about that if the words aren’t clear.

That’s all this law says. Without this clarification, the likes of Isla Bryson can end up in women’s prisons.

This decision clarified that trans people have additional protections under gender reassignment, as well as under sex.

Without this decision, women would have no protection.

It’s very unfortunate that so many people misrepresented the law so that men thought it gave them the right to use women’s changing rooms etc. Or that male rapists with certificates were legally female. Of course resetting all that nonsense is going to be a shock. It’s a shock that the law is actually intended to protect women’s safety, when we had been told the opposite.

Of course, OP, if the transwomen you know demand access to women's spaces to get validation of their view of themselves as women, then you may have a problem.

If Stonewall and their ilk had spend their time and money on campaigning for safe spaces and services for transpeople, instead of trying to force women to give up the rights and protections which were ours, we wouldnt need to be here now, but here we are. Women and some transpeople have ended up collateral damage in a fight that didn't need to have happened, but here we are.

Miranda Yardley and Fionne Orlander (both transwomen) started a campaign some time ago for third spaces for transpeople, why didn't Stonewall or any of the other organisations getting big donations for trans rights support them? They could have.

Because for a lot of the loud voices in this, it was never about safety - and there are actually no recorded incidences of transwomen being harmed when using mens single sex spaces or services, btw. There are quite a few examples of women being harmed by transwomen in women's single sex spaces and services though - Google Katie Dolatowski, Karen White, Sarah Summers off the top of my head. This isn't really about two equally vulnerable groups, nor was it a fair fight when women had to crowdfund to take on the actual government, as well as big businesses, the NHS the civil service etc tonight for rights we were entitled to in law and which has been denied us.

Women exist, and are not human shields or the world's mum here to make everything better. We're actual people too, not NPCs here to validate other people's ideas about themselves.

I feel like I have to pick a side. I don't want to pick a side. I want everyone to be supported in the best way and I don't know how to do that.

The ruling only clarifies the existing law. Nothing has been taken away, no rights stripped. However Transmen have gained a right which should never have been taken away. Rejoice in that.

Transpeople have exactly the same rights as women, or men. They always have. This ruling just clarifies that single sex spaces refer to biological sex. Transwomen who used to be men can no longer go in women's spaces or on women's shortlists which is only fair because those spaces were created for specific reasons, ie privacy and safety. Transmen who used to be women actually gain pregnancy and maternity rights, again that is only fair.

I repeat. This has clarified the existing law. Organisations and government departments have been breaking the existing law. Everyone should be VERY angry about that.

I think you need to start with an actual definition of ‘trans’ as this covers several very distinct groups of people and consider what rights you think they don’t have.

People stating a trans identity range from vulnerable young girls trying to avoid male attention, young homosexual people suffering from internalised homophobia, vulnerable autistic people who like ‘trans’ as an explanation of why they feel like they do, older heterosexual men with families with a sexual fantasy of themselves as a woman, men who literally acknowledge that it’s because they have watched too much ‘sissy’ porn, men who wish to have access to peek at and sexually assault women and I’m sure there are more identifiable types.

The men demanding access to female spaces have no ‘safety’ issues with using mens facilities and they refuse to use third spaces when they are provided. They just want to use women’s spaces for *reasons (like the man on a women’s hospital ward who was convicted of viewing images of CSA in the ward).

They all have exactly the same human rights as everyone else (with some special rights like being able to permanently hide their identity even if they are criminals). What else do you think they need?

The answer is that he’s trans people are valid, but they have nkt changed sex. Transwomen are men. This can be true whilst also saying they should be respected and protected as the men that they are