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.

I’m not transphobic - I want trans men and women to be safe

but the women only spaces argument is the same one we’ve been having with men for years. When I worked for organisations like Rape Crisis or Refuge we where constantly met with the ‘but what about men’ argument - my reply to that is the same now if men, trans women/men want specific services do what women had to - get off your arse and campaign, fund raise and set it up - I’ll 💯 support you.

what you don’t do is look at the things women have battled to set up and say ‘yeah we want that now let us in’

Valid point, they only care about their rights

Transpeople do not have the right to use single sex services provided for people of the biological sex they are not

Who is going to stop them / police them though, If you saw what looked like a trans woman walk into a female only toilet would you say something to them, probably not and they could also deny that they are not trans even if it was quite obvious

A surprisingly high number, due to the demographic of young people that I work with.

All the female trans identifying people I know tend to want to use the female toilets, because they don't feel safe in the men's. All the male trans identifying kids also want to use the female loos because they don't feel safe around men. Isn't it funny how everybody wants in on the ladies loos?

I can foresee this ruling meaning that more trans identifying people use the disabled loos, and the inevitable problems for disabled people that this will create. Grateful that in my workplace we have 10 fully enclosed unisex stalls complete with washbasin, so at least the bathroom conversation isn't a problem at my workplace.

You may have no boundaries of privacy around strange men but many of us have. Thankfully you are not in a position to unilaterally give away our spaces.

It's fucking crackers that the clarification of the legal definition of a woman should cause such uproar.

Lots of things had been allowed to slip and progress too far before this clarification was made, and that's the reason people are upset about it now. It wouldn't have been so bad if this clarification had have happened 10 years ago.

It seems you are thinking this through OP and realising that your real concern is less about not knowing which side is right, and more about how people are going to react to you when it becomes clear which side you have picked? (That isn't a criticism BTW, it's good to work these things through).

As I said in my earlier post, people who believe that TWAW will find your position inherently transphobic. There is absolutely no way of avoiding this - they are approaching the issue from a set of core beliefs which are fundamentally and directly opposite to the facts yours and there is no middle ground, no compromise, no way for you to express your viewpoint in a way that will be acceptable to them.

So you have two options, really. Express your personal opinions gently, respectfully, but firmly and unapologetically. Or keep quiet.

Many women have had to keep quiet for too long, not because of social conditioning, but because of genuine fear for their jobs, livelihoods, reputations, families. Hopefully now the tide has turned and there is nothing holding us back from speaking freely except our own discomfort with upsetting people.

I don't want to continue derailing the thread, but it is absolutely not pointless if it's an ongoing situation. I'm also going to mention it to back up how important it is that this ruling is comprehensively and rigourously implemented.

Regarding whether "for the convenience of clinicians" can really be said to be the same as "in the best interests of patients", I guess it depends how fluent you are in NHS management speak.

I’ve travelled to many countries with a variety of cultures through my work and have seen precisely zero mixed sex facilities. How strange.

I feel quite similarly to you in some ways OP. I think it feels uncomfortable because it is complicated, and it's also very fraught and very tense.

You don't have to pick a side or get involved in arguments or debates about it if you don't want to. Your opinion isn't going to change the world. You can just accept that it's complex and that can be your position. You are allowed to say that it's a bit murky/ grey because it is - this isn't a black and white thing and you don't have to have a fully formed point of view on it.

I actually think it's people who are so bolshy and certain one way or the other and cannot see the nuance and complexity who cause a lot of the problems.

In what way does the decision make trans women “unsafe”?

There's quite a few French places where there are cubicles (sex specific) reached by passing through the area with the urinals... Mostly rural France and not major tourist regions but I've seen a few (including 25 years ago). Was slightly shocked...

Is this the 'are you going to do genital inspections' question in a new frock?

This clarity means the reinstatement of the social contract we've always had, ie that single sex spaces are for one sex only and the other sex (unless they have bad intentions) stay out.

Previously, if a man came into a women's single sex space she could raise the alarm and feel confident of help. Recently, she was too afraid to raise the alarm because so many institutions were captured and had been trained by Stonewall and others that men with special feelings had the right to women's spaces and the women who complained were bigots. Like the hospital policy I quoted upthread. Now, we can go back to having confidence that if a man comes into a women's single sex space, the law says he cannot be there.

Is it perfect? No. Will it prevent men with bad intentions from coming into women's single sex spaces? Also no, nothing ever did. What it does is gives us legal backing to fight institutions who are breaking the law by allowing men to self ID into women's provision.

I've seen those (France has one of the highest levels of unisex toilets) plus in part of Spain where it used to be very common to have a male and female doors that both opened out into the same open space with urinals! Bit of a shock the first time!

Also it's fucking weird that your (commendable) concern for your trans identifying friends translates to you wanting to eradicate single sex spaces, @CatsChin. I find that such a weird leap to make.

It's perfectly possible to have sympathy and concern for trans identifying people whilst acknowledging that single sex spaces are also important and needed.

I'm not sharing a communal changing area with a pre-op trans identifying person who has a penis and balls, thanks. I sure as hell don't want to see women playing rugby against somebody whose genes cause them to have an unfair advantage in anatomy and physiology. I don't want women who have been raped and who want to find a support group, to be told there is no choice but to accept somebody who doesn't share their biology there. I don't want to be forced to accept male sexed people into spaces where I get and I give support around menstruation, menopause, being a mother, a daughter, and so on. And I don't want female prisoners to have to share an under funded and dangerously under resourced prison with a sex offender who shows their penis off in lycra.

"They will break the rules anyway" is not a great argument IMO.

You are not transphobic OP, you are a normal woman. I too have been through the gamut from being desperate not to upset people, to the awful realisation of what they have done to us, to getting insulted, harangued and banned on social media (when I was the least controversial person ever), to falling out with friends, to knowing ever more strongly that I am right and even if I was literally the only person left on the planet with my views it doesn’t change how right I am.

Stay strong and learn that it’s ok to speak the truth.

Totally agree, I’m just wondering how it’s going to all pan out

I can honestly see some trans women still using women only facilities and women being to afraid to say anything.

I’m 5’3’’ and honestly doubt that I would approach a 6ft trans woman in a women only toilet and ask that they leave

OP I apologise for contributing to derailing your thread. This is a subject about which I have strong feelings.

When you boil it down, there is no way for you to be true to your own feelings and keep everyone happy in this scenario, because it sounds like one side at your workplace has been accustomed to having everything they demand, and this ruling is effectively saying no to them for the first time. It's easy to say but I'd be considering my future at a workplace so toxic.

I feel sorry for kids that were sold the lie that you can change sex. You can't. Your biological sex is in every cell of your body as Professor Winston said. You can lop bits off (97% of men who feel they are women don't though), add bits, take drugs, wear an array of clothing, wigs, dangly earrings and lippy, you are still and will always be your biological sex.

There is statutory guidance that says if the man claims he is a woman, his presence in a female only ward does not have to be reported.

I’ve got a feeling that this was very recently revised in some way but it’s very much still policy on most hospitals.

Womrn have literally had treatment halted and been booted out of hospitals for asking nicely to be moved away from the bloke.

"Why bother having laws, after all some people will break them?"

It's worth pointing out that saying that spaces labelled single-sex have to be single sex isn't saying that other types of spaces can't still exist. Spaces that group trans people with people of the sex they identify with aren't forbidden!

A big community pub or organisation could easily decide to make its two nicest sets of toilets ones for "women and trans women" and "men and trans men", if it wanted to, and two smaller sets of toilets into the single-sex ones. The only thing it can't do is not provide single-sex (truly single sex) toilets at all.

The same goes for other things. There's nothing stopping someone creating a support group for women and trans women, or men and trans men, the important thing now is that it's also OK for someone else to create a support group that's only for women, or only for lesbians, and to say that it's single-sex and have that respected.

I'd be happy to support campaigns for better services for trans people - much happier to do that now that those services wouldn't just replace single-sex services for women, but would exist alongside them, not instead of them.

I won't be able to avoid discussion around it I don't think due to my work.

Why not?
Can you not just say ‘I’m not getting into this discussion’

That wasn’t my point, see my latest update

Who is going to police this and what consequences will there be if rules are broken?