Sending love to trans people on MN and beyond

[cassandre]

This isn't an AIBU. I just wanted to send love to trans people, in the UK especially, and to other members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

This hasn't been the easiest week for trans people, but there are a lot of us out there who accept you for who you are. We have your backs and we believe that eventually, tolerance and compassion will win.💖💖💖

Love from a longtime MNer and trans-inclusive feminist.

I would support a campaign from trans people to request a separate unisex toilet cubicle is provided in work places etc in addition to male and female toilets.

( edited to add - I can understand why some trans people would feel vulnerable using a male toilet and it should be possible to provide a fully enclosed and secure toilet cubicle that can be used by either gender )

Please understand that you are not the arbiter of which male people should and shouldn't enter the female only spaces.

You seem to be judging these male people on sexist stereotypes that are irrelevant to the needs of others. Just because you judge them to be 'female' looking, doesn't mean that female people will not correctly identify the sex of these male people

Well look here's a pic of Fionna Orlander, who I personally think is a very pretty transwoman, in a men's toilet. Fionne has written about never once having any issues with using men's facilities, the most that happens is a man will double check the sign on the door and Fionne will say 'yeah it's the men's I'm a guy' and everyone will go about their day.

There are no recorded instances of transwomen being harmed in mens single sex space. None. There are lots of women and girls being harmed by transwomen in women's single sex spaces.

Your friend will be fine in the men's space, or is welcome to campaign for third spaces (as Fionne did, with no support at all from Stonewall or any of the other organisations making money supposedly promoting trans rights). Women are not human shields for men who are scared of the gents, however nice and harmless they are, we have the right to our own spaces.

https://www.change.org/p/boris-johnson-a-plea-for-third-spaces-for-transgender-men-and-women

Third spaces are the answer.

Thank you namey. Fionne's petition's failure was really quite eye opening for me. It took me a while to understand that safety was not the actual issue at all, despite being the reason stated, for male people to be using female spaces.

Once I understood that it was not safety, but it was validation in a variety of different aspects that was the purpose for many male people and for some, sadly, it was for abusive reasons, I can never go back to finding credibility in the 'safety' argument.

And we could have had them by now, if Stonewall and their ilk had put all their money and political clout into that, instead of aggressively trying to force women to give up ours. Fionne Orlander and Miranda Yardley started that campaign in 2019, we could have had safe third spaces everywhere by now. But no. Because it was never really about safety, for TRAs; it was always about using and controlling women.

@Helleofabore - I agree with Women and with the new Laws and I agree that I don't speak for other women and I agree it could be a bit tricky regarding advising any transwoman to use the female toilets. It seems then that the best thing that my young neighbour can do is to stay home.

As for what I regard as women and their feminity - mate you have got me very wrong on that - I've broken the 'social mould' on that one many times and still do. I can hardly believe how slowly the ideas of women being being bricklayers, etc has moved and that's down to women themselves.

nb: this is the only trans thread I've ever posted on as they're so vitriolic and heated and did so because it's a 'kindness' thread and I thought that some 'transwomen' might be feeling a bit down after this week's ruling.

Not wanting to dodge out of the conversation - but I won't get anything done today if I stay. And there's heaps of very unfeminine DIY stuff to do.

Why would you ask him to use the women's toilet when you know that the majority of us don't want him in there? You know very well that you cannot consent on behalf of other people! Why are you so disrespectful to women?

No. the best thing is NOT for your neighbour to stay home. That is really the type of thinking that is flawed.

They are a male person. There are facilities in place for them in a male toilet or they can do what many female people with transgender identities do, and find unisex provisions.

What you have just done is apply a catastrophising absolutism to your neighbour's situation that is based on your neighbour's philosophical belief in their identity that doesn't reflect material reality. And you then by mentioning 'vitriol' and 'heat', I can only assume that you consider anyone pointing out that you are wrong falls into that category.

There are options available to your male neighbour that are not available to the female people who need their toilets to be single sex. In fact, that all or nothing scenario that you applied to your neighbour's choices is actually the situation that your advice would lead to for those female people who don't have another option.

Of course, people notice. Women are just too polite to say something when men are making them uncomfortable.

Indeed. Shameful behaviour, deciding for all women that this is ok because you’ve given your personal seal of approval!
The utter cheek of it.

And brain shrinkage is not related to the sex hormones as far as I know. So I do wonder about that article. What kind of education did the people who did the peer review have?

I was trying to understand what that poster meant by saying there are brain changes - as women's brains (as are our hearts) are smaller than men's, according to this article, I was asking did she mean their brain's became smaller, as that seemed rather unlikely...

Brain-imaging studies indicate that these differences extend well beyond the strictly reproductive domain, Cahill says. Adjusted for total brain size (men’s are bigger), a woman’s hippo­campus, critical to learning and memorization, is larger than a man’s and works differently.

How men's and women's brains are different | Stanford Medicine

I think the one confident thing I can say about Bakker’s (as she has been mentioned here on the thread as an expert to watch) work is that she is highlighting the impact of hormone treatment on children.

I think that the studies need to be considered only as discussion starters or the springboard to other studies. For instance, when she studied the impact of gender dysohoria on adolescents, she only included adolescents on puberty blockers or adolescents without gender dysphoria. There was no group of adolescents with gender dysphoria but not on puberty blockers.

I am not going to simplify the arguments here.
There are functional (blood flow) differences, for example

BTW female brains are not smaller in every aspect

So when a brain is forming how does it know that in a few years time it’s “occupant” is going to have tastes and preferences that fit in with stereotypes of the opposite sex?

For the record, I never said that brain size is correlated with intelligence. And female brains are bigger in some areas. Some of the most intriguing brain differences are only revealed by fMRI. These oversimplifications of work in the area do the work a disservice

Bakker’s work will have been reviewed by peers: people who hold relevant PhDs or medical doctors at consultant level. Some hold both qualifications.

No, they aren't. Some of them have been wiped away. I share a loo and dressing rooms with her. She is supposed to now rejoin the men. Should she end up on a hospital, she could be put in a male ward. If she transgresses, she will be searched by a man - even imprisoned in a male prison. I don't think that is looking after her rights. Humiliating a person is not protecting their rights. Yes, we won't be able to say anything nasty about her, or pay her less than someone else on the basis of her situation, but that is not something that will come up, day in, day out. My friend is very lucky - genuinely, no one will spot her (I knew her for months before someone told me, and I had spotted nothing) - but she will still feel like she's doing something wrong when she goes to the loo in public - and we're back to experiencing shame.

I understand completely that some trans people have done some truly terrible things, but they are overall far more likely to be a victim of crime. Some people with schizophrenia have committed utterly dreadful crimes, but they are also vastly more likely to be a victim. We wouldn't seek to group and punish people on the basis of their mental illness, so I don't see why it is OK to tar all trans people with the same brush, reducing their rights to dignity in the process. Dignity is a right. And this ruling is supposed to be a simple triumph for womankind, but the trans issue has been there throughout. It cannot be separated.

Yes you are pushing things on to women. How do you know no-one will notice? Many women are simply too intimidated in that situation to say anything. Women have not consented to men in their spaces, why can't you respect that?

This person never had the right to access opposite sex spaces in the first place. Any confusion around this has now been clarified.

And no it is not 'humiliating' a person to require them to stay away fro opposite sex spaces that don't belong to them - just as everyone else is required to do.

Does it? Are there prenatal factors driving a trans identity? Or does the brain change in response to hormones, or the expression of genes coding for trans, or other factors?

This is one reason people do brain research! Not just in this area but in many areas. Eg the brains of people with longstanding or severe depression also look different. Which came first? Do different brains predispose them to depression, or does the depression change their brains?

This chicken and egg question drives a great swathe of research in neuroscience and psychiatry.

Nothing was ‘wiped away’ by the judgement. The law didn’t change. It was just clarified.

I would support a third unisex space for your friend.
I understand that your friend doesn’t present a threat to women but opening up women’s spaces to anyone who identifies as a woman is a threat to us all. So in order to protect women your friend needs to lobby for a unisex space ( separate to the woman’s space)

It’s fascinating that so many trans ‘allies’ on this thread (and even the purpose of this thread) have zero interest in the fact that the ruling actually benefits ‘transmen’ with a GRC and gives them full protection in maternity and abortion law that they wouldn’t have had if it went the other way.

You call yourselves trans allies but you are not. You are men allies.

Interestingly, in the area of law where this ruling SHOULD have meant a gain for ‘transwomen’ - inheritance and primogeniture, nothing has changed at all. Guess why? Because the men who call themselves women involved in the drafting of the GRC already sorted themselves out at the expense of a gain for ‘transmen’. They had it written so that the GRC changes sex for ‘all purposes’ EXCEPT for inheritance. So a man with a GRC to say he is female will still inherit land and titles as if he was a man and a woman with a GRC saying she is male won’t. We’ve seen it happen in real life.

And as an aside, consider which class of men will have had inheritance and titles as their top concern? These are privileged and wealthy men, not the poor little oppressed beings that you seem to imagine.

That’s how much of a male supremacist movement you are all supporting.

@poetryandwine @cassandre - thoughts?