To think I can't be the only person who doesn't know a single trans person

[VioletSpeedwell]

Seriously.

The news is full of people worrying about how the SC ruling will affect people who identify as trans.

Where are they? Not in my office (large organisation), my family or social groups. I don't come across any in the village where I live or when I go into town.

DD is at university and doesn't know any trans people.

Surely, I can't be the only one?

They are just people … many of whom are trampling over women’s boundaries and wishes to feel validated, to get what they want, to make everyone go along with them.

They need to be kind. They need to think about women, not about themselves all the time.

It is very, very easy to identify a man dressed as a woman!

No, your friend Jenny's sex was observed at birth. Male/female isn't picked out of a hat or assigned to anyone. In most instances, sex is observed in utero.

And if she's a biological female, she's a woman, not a ciswoman.

Why is being unkind to trans people being discussed? Who has suggested that people should be unkind to transpeople?
If it’s as a consequence of the Supreme Court ruling, I’m thinking that people haven’t heard the highlights from the judges themselves (the verdict is easy to listen to, just 20 mins, v clear) they’ve just heard someone else’s (possibly inaccurate) interpretation of it.
The SC stated very clearly that all trans people hold rights in law NOT to be discriminated against, I think that’s what’s meant by kind isn’t it? No one to my knowledge has disputed this statement from the SC.
Unless of course to be kind all women must allow all men to have access to anything that meant for them - spaces, competitions, prizes.

Well there used to be transvestites (remember them). I think it’s been a rebranding in recent years to make it more palatable for the general public. So now it’s transgender, and definitely not sexually motivated ( or that’s what we’re supposed to think).

If you want more information, a Canadian psychologist called Ray Blanchard did a lot of study on men who dress as women and their motivations - he interviewed many of them, although this was back in the 80’s and 90’s. Also look up autogynephilia.

Beautifully put. If transwomen had grown up as women they would understand very well why biological women don't want them in their spaces.But they haven't. They're men and they expect to get what they want when they want it. I find it very interesting that transmen, even though they want to identify as men, still know very well the danger that biological men pose to them. Transmen know very well that they do not pass as men . If only transwomen would acknowledge that they don't remotely pass as women and use third spaces the world would be a slightly easier place for actual women.

This! Really hope this ruling finally puts that ridiculous term in the bin 🙏🙏

You are discounting any gender differentiation after birth which is now being recognised as happening in the brain. Also intersex or DSD conditions. Ignorant.

There have always been guys who pretend to be women. The Kinks song Lola was about one. That was early 70s. There was a lot of 'gender bending'.
As a child there was a bloke walking around dressed as a woman in my small town. He was utterly unconvincing, and he just looked ridiculous. It was called being a transvestite at the time.
I actually, personally, know four women who think they are men. All are either neurodiverse, or have MH problems. One is posting stuff about the ruling. The others have come off social media since they started transition. 3 could pass for men. The vocal one doesn't.
I've met 2 men who think they are women, one passes for a woman the other didn't, he looked like a bloke in drag. Their body size and shape is the difference. The guy who passes had a slight frame to start.
Generally women looking like men seems to work better than the other way.

This is nonsense. I have a problem with sex offenders of any gender (and they are not always male obviously) not with trans people. This is taking us back to the dark ages. It makes me sick to my stomach.

I think age and demographics have a lot to do with it. The real explosion in people identifying as trans is in the generation just below me, people who are in their late teens and 20s now. I don't know anyone in that age group. My friends are in their late 30s and early 40s, and my children's friends are under 5.

The only trans people I "know" or know of are a handful of male acquaintances who have recently decided to live as women. (Both married heterosexuals with children.) Plus a masculine presenting lesbian who has changed her name to something androgynous and adopted they/them pronouns. But I only know this through social media, they're not people I ever see in real life anymore.

If I moved in particularly arty/LGBTQ circles I would expect to know more trans people, but I don't. I have a corporate job and two young children and I barely have enough time to maintain friendships with the people I know well, let alone meet new people. The new people I meet tend to be parents of my children's friends or people I meet through work. None of my children's friends have gay parents, but lesbians only recently gained the right to have IVF funded by social security where I live. I would say I meet about an average number of gay men and lesbians though work, but I guess gay people are often less alternative than trans people and more likely to work in a corporate environment. I think my younger and gay colleagues know more trans people, but still not that many.

Thank god for that. I don't say that out of any hateful feeling, I say it because the idea of physically healthy young people self-harming with the help of the medical profession has been one of the most shocking things to me about this whole strange business. It is self-harm. Wearing binders, taking puberty blockers, taking cross-hormones and having surgery to remove healthy body parts and re-fashion others into a very crude attempt to replicate the opposite sex genitalia is all causing permanent damage to physical health and shortening life expectancy in some cases. It's been a social contagion, certainly in the case of teenage girls and very young women. 20 years ago gender clinics saw hardly any women or girls. There has been no sudden rise in the numbers of middle-aged and older women identifying as male now that the stigma against it has gone. That's telling in itself.

Transwomen ARE men, @Goingovertosusanshouse . That's the point. They are males. Fully intact with male genitals in 92% of the case. Didn't you know that? The ruling simply says that women are a biological sex, which is basic biology. That's all. Any male, whether they identify as a man or a woman, has no place in female only spaces where rape survivors like me or domestic violence survivors are. Females deserve our definition and our hard won female only safe spaces.

Exactly - women didn’t ask for this. We are rightly pushing back against encroachments on our spaces, and being vilified for doing so.
This issue has shown so well how low down the pecking order women really are - the men who pretend to be us are prioritised, even in supposedly women only spaces.

This is not accurate.

Maybe being “moderately attractive” to your eyes isn’t their main priority in life. Hopefully they don’t see your judgemental stares, and don’t need your pity.

I personally know one trans man. Three of my teenage son’s friends are trans, one of whom I have met several times. There are two trans women I see all the time. One at my local Sainsbury’s and the other out and about where my mum used to live (I’m still there a lot for various reasons.) So, currently I know, or know of, six.

The only hatred I see on here are from misogynists who hate females having any rights.

How lucky you have a "safe space", Now why do you seek to deny all females a safe space?

Have a good hard long look at yourself.

I don’t know any blind people, but I still give a shit about their human rights.

You are the ignorant one. Having a DSD doesn’t mean you aren’t male or female, and in this country testing can be done very soon after birth.

Sex is NOT assigned at birth. How do you account for the approximately 1 billion female people not existing due to sex-selective abortions if that’s the case.

What human rights do you think have been negatively impacted here?

@Coinkydink This problem would not have arisen if men didn't constantly taunt us saying they're going to violate our boundaries by hook or by crook. That they're going to brute force their way in. "Stop us if you can."

They threaten us openly because they are fully aware they are men with male strength. They don't dare pull such stunts with fellow men because they know they will be neutralised.

Masculine women have unfortunately become collateral damage in the pushback against these adversarial, boundary violating men. Jenny absolutely does not deserve that.

No, I know all about DSDs. Intersex isn't a thing btw, and DSDs, differences in sexual development are still sexed. And a simple cheek swab can determine sex for most, and in very rare case, blood tests are needed. But either way, there is no intersex or third sex. Everyone is either male or female even if on a rare occasion, their sex is observed incorrectly at birth

No-one is born in the wrong body. And body dysphoria is a mental health condition, not a physical one which is why SRS and/or hormones so rarely works and makes the dysphoria worse.

Would suggest you're the ignorant one.

And?

Trans people have all the same rights as everyone else.

I think it's quite useful to see to what length TRAs will go to argue their case. "Lies, falsehoods, half-truths and propaganda" as the saying goes.