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?

I was mistaken for a boy regularly when I was young, even though I had long hair. Possibly because as soon as my mum stopped having any control over what I wore, I was straight into sweatshirts and jeans and people don’t always look beyond the presentation. Nobody asked me though. They just called me ‘son’ a lot🤣 Then ‘oops, sorry’ when I corrected them. No big deal. My eldest DS had long hair for a couple of years - age 13/14 - and he was asked regularly whether he was a girl. I mean asked outright. Sometimes he was asked if he was a trans girl. And also whether he was a trans boy! He took it all in his stride for quite a while, but eventually it became very wearing and it started to make him feel uncomfortable and unhappy. If he had been born when I was, he might have been casually mistaken for a girl, but there wouldn’t have been this insistence that he announce himself as one thing or another. I felt a bit sad when he had his hair cut, but I couldn’t blame him. He was still asked whether he was a trans boy for a while, even with the short hair, as he has quite fine features, but that tailed off as he got older. Shame they couldn’t just mind their own bloody business and let him live his life.

This is exactly right.

The problem is, we’ve seen so many incidents in the news that a lot of women just don’t trust TW.

I think a lot of women are like me. If 50-year old Dave the ex lorry driver had a full on sex change, we’d go “alright then, they’ve made a massive effort, clearly want to be a woman, we don’t mind them in our space”.

It’s Dave who chucks on a dress, a wig, some strap on 40H boobs and stilettos who would never think of taking hormones or any surgery that is the problem and needs to be spotted at all times. We don't want this Dave in our spaces, or near our DC.

Dave A is not a threat
Dave B clearly has some weird fetish that they want to live out in public and don’t give a shiny one about women

Personally, I don’t want either Dave in women’s spaces?
They’re both men.

Me too.

Damn. That's a lot of deletions

Protection from discrimination for being of a childbearing age.

Have you never heard anyone suggest they’d never hire a woman who is fertile because they might go on maternity leave?

But women are protected from this - provided it’s done overtly.
There’s little any legislation can do when it’s just a non provable thought in someone’s head?

Never heard of this year's ago, why now.

Dave A could still be a threat. It has been shown that males even after surgery retain the same male patterns.
Personally I wouldn't want either.
The majority of men aren't violent but we can't tell who is or isn't a threat so the only solution is to keep all men out

I know one. Fully transitioned, trains with my trainer. I met her in the women's changing room once, had a chat about nothing in particular, as you do.

I feel very sorry for her because despite the surgeries, there's nothing that will make her 'pass' as a woman up close. She's no threat to me or any woman (because she has had penis removal surgery) and as far as I'm concerned is welcome in the changing room.

Any man who feels like a woman will never be permitted in the women's changing room and thank god for the Supreme Court ruling and the ladies from Scotland who got it done.

I don't know any trans. And yes, of course you can tell, despite some in this thread trying to convince us otherwise.

I think the trend will pretty much die out now anyway since the Supreme Court has seen sense and ruled that men can never be women (thank god).

Previously banned poster perhaps.

This person is a man who feels like a woman. Penis or no.

@LyingWitchInTheWardrobe men without penis can still be a threat to women. They need a penis to rape but they can still attack or sexually assault

Don't be ridiculous.

And I don't want males in changing rooms with me for reasons of dignity, not just safety. A bloke could be gay or paralysed or chained up and therefore no threat, I still don't want to be in my knickers in front of him.

Why don't you care so much about toilets? It's all part of the same issue.
Single-sex public toilets (in offices, shops, sports centres, hospitals, libraries, restaurants etc etc etc) are used by vast swathes of the female population every single day.
And if those single-sex public toilets are rendered non-single-sex by virtue of self-ID, they're a gateway route for all those other spaces/groups (that you, quite rightly, care about very much) to become non-single-sex, too – it normalises something that then migrates to those other spaces. For many people, toilets are the first touch-point on this issue.

Self-ID means women's toilets become, by default, unisex, and unisex toilets result in much higher levels of sexual assault on their female users than happens in women-only toilets. And the victims of those assaults might well want/need a sexual assault survivors group (ie one of the spaces that you mention) that is women-only. It's all interconnected.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html

That's why I said for me. My example relates to a specific person who has changed their life (not their sex) and for myself personally, I will bend my very rigid thinking on that.

Men are stronger and that is the only reason that this person is a potential threat, there is no other.

I don't disagree with you, I was answering the thread question because whilst I've seen many trans-women, this is the one that I know who has had the surgery and I have compassion for her. I know that she is not a woman but I also know that she would like to be afforded the dignity of being not thought of as a man. Bad grammar(?) intended to illustrate my point.

What is there to feel sad about, after the ruling?

Well, in fairness, the ruling does make it clear that the law of the land does not in fact consider them to be real women.

That must be a bitter pill to swallow, after having been told the opposite for so long (in many cases by the same people who passed that law).

You know what’s so fantastic? Women have been called bigots by men for so long because they want to use their basic legal right to exclude men from single sex spaces and women’s sports that the term no longer has any power. TRAs can froth and shout through their stupid megaphones, and howl about transphobia and women NO LONGER CARE.

I don't think 12 or 14 yo children can be described as trans anything. They are experimenting with their identity as is a normal part of adolescence.

I think you are correct about trust being lost. I used to be one of the many women who didn't mind the idea of Dave A using women's spaces and for many years that accomodation existed with few problems. I accept that other women were less happy with the idea but still there were not enough problems to gain support to change things.

And then self ID crept in. Trans activists and campaigners such as Stonewall lied about the law and people thought self ID was the law and even when there were incidents which highlighted the safeguarding problems with self ID we were called transphobic for pointing them out.

When a violent convicted male sex offender raped two women in prison we were told he was one bad apple.

When another convicted male sex offender entered the female part of a spa in LA and exposed his semi erect penis in front of a 9 year old girl we were told you should teach kids not to look at other people's genitals.

When a New York drag queen who had participated in DQST was found to have been convicted of sexual offences against children and people said we perhaps needed to rethink the whole DQST we were accused of smearing all trans people. And who could forget dildo butt monkey - move along, nothing to see here you transphobic bigots.

And when we expressed concern about a man boasting about wandering around a womens refuge, naked, with an erection, and posting photos to prove it we were accused of trying to deny transwomen access to domestic violence services.

And we were still transphobic when a man took more than a dozen immigrant women to the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal because they refused to wax his balls. The same man had quite a history of expressing interest in teaching young girls how to use tampons and posted pictures of himself in public toilets with a group of young girls, who were on a school trip, in the background.

And then women were being denied healthcare and access to support groups if they wanted women only spaces because the mighty penis was more important.

So I trusted and now I don't. No men, whatever they call themselves, in women's spaces ever. You had your chance and you blew it, that is not my problem.

I’m not sure, the older one I’ve known since birth and he’s always spoken about being a boy etc from a young age, always demanded to have short hair (as he was a boy) etc. I’m not an expert, but it doesn’t feel like he’s just experimenting

But you need to be careful - if minorities are perceived to have a completely disproportionate effect on laws and everyday life then it can be counter-productive and lose them sympathy.

Tolerance, education, acceptance, accommodation - great.

But when small minorities seem to take priority over the vast, vast majority, people understandably get grunty.