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.

Oops it posted my reply twice.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom that is an excellent approach, thanks.

What I want to do is avoid a panic or situation where I upset someone through the misinterpretation of my words.

You sound as though you are bending over backwards to accomodate everyone else’s views and opinions without considering that your views and opinions are equally valid.

If the topic comes up with them, I'd just point out that the Supreme Court has confirmed that it is both legitimate and legal for women to have single sex spaces and services in which they are not required to include trans women, and that if they have a problem with that they are welcome to campaign for a change in the law. However, you think that men campaigning for women not to have these things is not a particularly good look, and if they care so much about trans people then campaigning to ensure that trans people have separate but equal access to equivalent spaces and services is probably a better use of their time and energy.

What you're talking about there is bullying behaviour in the workplace. There isn't going to be a way of expressing your perfectly reasonable views if this is the behaviour that is tolerated in your job.

As has been said, perhaps restrict your comments to the legal ramifications. If people can bear these to be articulated then you have a very serious problem indeed.

The safety of 51% of the population must come above the desires of a fractionally small number of men.

Whatever view I take, I understand that it's such an emotive topic and just the wording used can cause upset.

This is why I no longer tend to discuss the issue and how I feel about it under my own name unless I know the person I would be discussing it with holds similar views to mine. I find ways to avoid saying anything on the subject - a polite but distracted "mmm" and finding something else to do/talk about/somewhere else to be, is my strategy.

I'm conflicted about it - the interpretation of the law needed clarifying, but if that now means that my trans friends are terrified of leaving the house because they can't nip into a toilet, that's grim.

I'd like to campaign for the eradication of all single-sex toilets and changing rooms, personally! Or make it compulsory that if you have them, you need a unisex space as well.

Luckily, you don’t have to pick a side.

The SC has clarified that women have rights and that trans people have rights. They are distinct rights and neither supersedes the other.

There should be nothing controversial or upsetting about this, unless you really object to one of these groups having rights.

Of course they can use a toilet. They are protected from discrimination using a male toilet, which is correct for their sex. You can’t advocate for the abolishing of single sex toilets because your trans mates don’t want to use the males. That’s absurd.

Had Stonewall etc lobbied for wider provision of properly designed unisex facilities instead of making millions by traducing legislation and following their stated aim of removing sex based provision entirely, trans individuals wouldn't now be in this position.

Whilst men continue to avail themselves of women's facilities I can't and won't spare any emotional energy on ttans identified men and their wants.

We haven't won anything yet. In many ways the real hard work, getting Stonewall Lore, gender ideology put of schools, NHS, corporations and organisations etc starts now.

They can go to the toilet for their own sex and yesterday’s clarification confirmed that they have the legal protection to do so.

Third spaces are absolutely an equitable solution.

However, your dismissal of female people's needs of single sex toilets and changing rooms remaining as they were always supposed to be, single sex, is an opinion that I don't believe is equitable to female people.

You want to get rid of single sex toilets? Because your friends feel that they cannot use the toilets that correspond to their own sex?

Single sex toilets offer female people greater usability than mixed sex only. There were and are still very valid reasons for having single sex toilets. Just because you, personally, don't see the point of them doesn't mean that they are not the best solution for other people.

The SCs decision doesn't take away any trans rights, it just protects women's rights, which needed protecting.

Trans rights also need protecting, just not at the expense of a different cohort of people. The next step is making sure those are protected without taking away anyone else's.

^This.
How many trans people does anyone on this thred actually know? 0-1 is probably the most likely answer.

OP, I suspect your discomfort stems somewhat from your female socialisation to take responsibility for the needs of others and put them before your own. To erase yourself in order to centre others, who are probably mostly male. To endure discomfort yourself rather than allowing others to experience it, especially if you feel that you have personally done anything to cause that discomfort, or not specifically gone out of your way to protect them from it.

This is one of the very many reasons why we needed to have this verdict in law. To remove the responsibility for moving over, making room, smoothing ruffled feathers, managing male emotions and entitlement from women's shoulders. To establish clear legal and social boundaries.

We're allowed to want our own spaces. We're allowed to know who we are and what has shaped our experiences and the way we interact with the world. We're allowed to use our own voices to speak up for our needs and not apologise. It's important to you because it's important, full stop - not some niche, extremist view. Women are the most marginalised, oppressed, victimised demographic in the history of human existence. We don't need to feel ashamed of wanting to have human rights, or apologise for being given them.

Honestly, I have never given the tiniest shit about having female toilets. I don't care who I wash my hands with. Other countries have always had mixed toilets. It's a weird British thing.

Also all of these responses assume my friends are transwomen. I work with transmen, all of whom pass as men. The idea that they are now going to using women's toilets is crazy.

It's not about washing your hands. It's about being in a place you're quite vulnerable (pants round your ankles) or that are quite isolated in some places and feeling like it's a safe space.

In reality there's nothing stopping a man following a woman into a public female toilet and assaulting them if they really want to. But by making all these spaces mixed means that there's much more opportunity, making women feel (and actually be) less safe.

You carry on not giving a shit about it for yourself. But don't pretend you can't understand why women may not want to share these spaces with completely unknown men.

So because you don’t care everyone else shouldn’t care either. Right.

If your transmem pals want to continue to use the men’s they should. Men haven’t made any noises about not wanting to share toilets with them as far as I’m aware. If they have any problems they can speak up.

Unfortunately women and girls are more likely to be sexually assaulted in mixed sex toilets and changing rooms. I'd be interested to know what your friends actually fear - violence from males towards a transwoman (who is also a male) in public toilets? That seems quite unlikely to happen - do you have any stats on reported offences?

Sadly there are multiple transwomen who have been convicted of sexual & violent offences - look up Katie Dolatowski or the Borders transwoman who kidnapped and repeatedly raped a young girl. In order to reduce male (including transwoman) perpetrated violence against women and girls they have to be kept out of women only spaces.

Another issue with this is that you can only be the victim of a hate crime on the grounds of race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity.

So if you are raped and murdered by a man who admits in court that he did it because he hates women, you have not been the victim of a hate crime.

Whereas if you are trans and someone spray paints "I hate trannies" on your front door, you have been the victim of a hate crime.

Once you understand this point, it's quite easy to see why trans people are so much more likely to be the victim of a hate crime. Because if you are not trans, you can only be the victim of a hate crime if you are the victim of a crime motivated by hostility towards you based on your race, religion, disability or sexual orientation.

Straight, white, able bodied women are therefore rarely the victims of hate crimes, even though they are frequently the victims of violent crimes motivated by misogyny.

Hating women doesn't get you any extra time in jail though.

That's nice.

You use the gents, then, since you don't mind, and leave the women's toilets to the majority of us who do want them.

So, you lack the ability to understand that female people have need of those spaces that you dismiss so you would be keen to have them removed.

I think it is great that you are so honest about it.

"I am alright Jack!'. How lucky are you that you don't need single sex spaces!

However, it would be very harmful to remove female toilets as single sex spaces. It would result in female people self excluding because of no decision that they made. Whereas your friends made very deliberate decisions about changing their appearance to one that may cause distress if a female person did not realise that they were another female.

It is good to know that you would dismiss female people's needs so readily.

Well I guess now that nothing is stopping any cis-gender man from walking into a women's toilet and claim he's a transman.... 🤔

So basically, you care that your trans woman friends would feel uncomfortable using the men's, but couldn't care less about women and girls who feel vulnerable in shared facilities. Do you think that's a pleasant attitude to have? Or is that something else you couldn't give a shit about?

@CatsChin you want a 14 year old girl on her own to share a toilet with a drunken stag party? And an 11 year old to have her first bra fitting in front of an unknown man?