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Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think that society would not be immensely simpler were women denied the right to vote and own property

285 replies

BungeeCord · 24/05/2025 12:53

The link to this article was originally posted in FWR but I think this paragraph (written by trans woman Robin Moira White) is so offensive and telling that it needs to be seen widely.

translucent.org.uk/a-supremely-poor-job/

"We could simplify society immensely by removing women from voting, property ownership, and working in the professions, but that would not be right."

How? How would removing women from society make for a simpler society? Is this what some people think of women? Clearly some people do think that, I didn't think that was an acceptable belief to hold in our society though.

OP posts:
BundleBoogie · 26/05/2025 17:15

Tandora · 26/05/2025 17:08

oh what utter tripe. Trans people don’t need anything from you except acceptance for who they are (in fact they’d really really like it if you would just leave them aline. Please). Exactly the same as gay people and any other “people” for that matter.

Edited

No. They require us to accept their own self declared version of WHAT they are.

There is a difference.

But it’s great that you say we only have to accept them for WHO they are which is easy - I am happy that everyone has a different and unique personality so I guess we’re all happy.

You are saying that I do not have to accept that a man is actually a woman because women is a descriptor of a verifiable fact which doesn’t include men. Or men who feel like they are women somehow.

Tandora · 26/05/2025 17:23

Annoyedone · 26/05/2025 17:15

Ok. So transpeople don’t need anyone using their preferred pronouns, preferred name, and don’t need access to spaces designated for the oppposite sex? Gotcha. In that case they can crack on and do whatever makes them happy. TW will be happy using mens spaces and TM will be great using women’s spaces. Yay! Everyone is happy

Baffling that you think you are entitled to address people however you like, regardless of how degrading and hurtful that is to the person, not use their name, and exclude them from public services.

And you want to pretend this is called “acceptance”.

Do you also reserve the right to call black people racial slurs and administer apartheid? And do you call that acceptance?

Not worthy of respect.

Nameychangington · 26/05/2025 17:26

Tandora · 26/05/2025 17:08

oh what utter tripe. Trans people don’t need anything from you except acceptance for who they are (in fact they’d really really like it if you would just leave them aline. Please). Exactly the same as gay people and any other “people” for that matter.

Edited

Well a transwoman is a biological man and I fully accept that he is a man. And I'm very happy to accept anything he chooses to wear (long as decent in public), any name he wants to call himself, any interests he happens to have (long as they're legal), any personality he has

But you don't mean accept them for who they actually are, do you? You mean accept them for what they want to be seen as. That the part where gender ideology impinges on others. None of us can force others to see us how we wish to be seen.Gay people don't need me to see them as gay, to be gay. Christians don't need me to recite the catechism, for them to be Christians. Transpeople need me to pretend they are the sex they're not, or it all falls down.

Tandora · 26/05/2025 17:26

Tandora · 26/05/2025 17:23

Baffling that you think you are entitled to address people however you like, regardless of how degrading and hurtful that is to the person, not use their name, and exclude them from public services.

And you want to pretend this is called “acceptance”.

Do you also reserve the right to call black people racial slurs and administer apartheid? And do you call that acceptance?

Not worthy of respect.

Edited

We have clearly moved well beyond what could be considered a reasonable conversation. Wish you all a good afternoon.

Annoyedone · 26/05/2025 17:26

Tandora · 26/05/2025 17:23

Baffling that you think you are entitled to address people however you like, regardless of how degrading and hurtful that is to the person, not use their name, and exclude them from public services.

And you want to pretend this is called “acceptance”.

Do you also reserve the right to call black people racial slurs and administer apartheid? And do you call that acceptance?

Not worthy of respect.

Edited

How is using sexed pronouns comparable to racial slurs? Do tell. You’re the one who said transpeople didn’t need anyone using their thing from me so I assume that means validation of their identity? Transpeople are not excluded from public services. Don’t be so silly. They’re perfectly welcome to use their preferred pronouns public services and other facilities designated for their sex. As is every other person. Everyone has equal rights.

BundleBoogie · 26/05/2025 17:29

Tandora · 26/05/2025 17:23

Baffling that you think you are entitled to address people however you like, regardless of how degrading and hurtful that is to the person, not use their name, and exclude them from public services.

And you want to pretend this is called “acceptance”.

Do you also reserve the right to call black people racial slurs and administer apartheid? And do you call that acceptance?

Not worthy of respect.

Edited

Using the correct pronouns for someone’s sex (rather than identity) is not the same as using a racial slur. HTH.

Nobody is excluded from public services if they are not allowed to access services for the opposite sex.

Nameychangington · 26/05/2025 17:31

Tandora · 26/05/2025 17:23

Baffling that you think you are entitled to address people however you like, regardless of how degrading and hurtful that is to the person, not use their name, and exclude them from public services.

And you want to pretend this is called “acceptance”.

Do you also reserve the right to call black people racial slurs and administer apartheid? And do you call that acceptance?

Not worthy of respect.

Edited

Annnd were back to comparing men who want to be called women to racism and apartheid.

A man is a man. Calling a man a man is not an insult. Expecting me to pretend he's a woman, is expecting me to pretend to believe in a religion I don't believe in. Thats not tolerant, or diverse, or inclusive. I don't have to believe in your religion.

BundleBoogie · 26/05/2025 17:32

Tandora · 26/05/2025 17:26

We have clearly moved well beyond what could be considered a reasonable conversation. Wish you all a good afternoon.

Edited

That’s only stuff you are making up in your head though.

Swiftie1878 · 26/05/2025 17:38

BungeeCord · 26/05/2025 14:54

I've never deliberately bookmarked a post before but I'm bookmarking this one.

Love this too.

potpourree · 26/05/2025 17:41

Tandora · 26/05/2025 14:45

You and whoever produced this diagram has a lot of work to do understanding what being trans is.

Even you would have to recognise that this is a bit rich coming from someone who has been unable to explain what you mean by every term you find problematic.

You say it's wrong to say that a woman is differentiated from a man by their body or personality, but won't say what it is differentiated by.

You say that having a sex isn't the same as being male or female but won't say what you think it is. You thought having a sex implied 'recognising that you are that sex', which it doesn't.

You said that sex was a social construct but could only explain what you meant by that by referring to how we label things in language.

You say that biological essentialism is something different from the widely recognised term and this led to a lot of confusion.

Well for a start being trans isn’t an ideology it’s just something someone is.

When I said that about sex - that is just IS - you said that was 'assuming my meaning of being female and declaring it to be self-evident. It isn't'. But you wouldn't say what it - being 'female' - is when you use the term.

potpourree · 26/05/2025 17:43

Well for a start being trans isn’t an ideology

Do you accept that the definition of trans (people whose gender is not the same as, or does not sit comfortably with, the sex they were assigned at birth) requires believing that there are gender identities that either match (i.e. are the same as, or sit comfortably with), or do not match, each sex?

If you don't think any sexes match any genders, who would be trans?

potpourree · 26/05/2025 17:49

I see we did not get an answer to this, so I think that about sums up the logic of the arguments given today:

Biological essentialsm: a belief system that suggests certain characteristics, behaviors, or abilities are inherently linked to one’s biology or genetics.

Me: One's biology has nothing to do with one's characteristics, behaviours or abilities.

Poster: These are the same views.

-- now actually, sanluca came up with an interpretation of what Tandora might have been getting at - "that by saying women are slower with regard to sports, or more impacted by menstruation cycles or menopause, or uncomfortable in mixed sex changing rooms or overall more vulnerable, that in Tandora's mind is showing weakness and she is strong so hence she doesn't want this?"

Tandora hadn't presented any of this position herself, so I have no idea if this is what she meant, but it's true that 'abilities' in my post above might not be accurate. Mental abilities I don't think have anything to do with one's sex. Physical abilities - yes you are more likely to be limited by being female in some measures. So I take back an aspect of that - one's biology does in some way relate to one's physical abilities, although the variation is huge within one sex class. Just thought I'd clarify while I was repeating this post from earlier!

FlirtsWithRhinos · 26/05/2025 23:21

Tandora · 26/05/2025 16:37

Right. You do think being trans is an ideology. Thats the truth of the matter.

It’s like saying- I accept that being gay is a thing but only in the sense that gay believe they have feelings of what they believe is same sex attraction. Actually of course they are straight and what they are feeling isn’t sexual attraction at all. But I’m not saying being gay isn’t real, and I’m totally up for supporting dignity and inclusion for gay people, honest!!! We can do that without accepting they are same sex attracted!!! That’s just ideology!!! 😂😭

Edited

Oh @Tandora I am disappointed. I genuinely thought you were smarter than this.

Firstly, please re-read my original post. The issue is not and never was what trans people believe about themselves. It is that genderists go beyond that into redefining everyone else.

The ideology is in taking that self belief beyond the personal and making it into the definition of all women and men, keeping the existing social groups but taking their meaning away from simple observed biology (because yes, DSDs notwithstanding, for 99.9999lots of the population including almost all trans people it really is that simple) into some sort of mental characteristic(1) regardless of whether the people being redefined recognised themselves in that or not, in order to claim that trans people's self image is an actual, objective reality and therefore justify reorganising society around it.

Do you see that? The ideology is not the right of trans people's right to define themselves, it's the need to redefine everyone else to make their subjective "truth" into a universal one, something to justify the TRA demand to reorganise society around it.

Secondly, you seem to have got the idea from somewhere that "ideology" is a criticism. It's not. It's a description. Feminism is also an ideology - it's both the systen of thought that seeks to understand and explain the experiences of women (OFM) in society and a belief that a better society is one in which women are not structurally disadvanatged. It's absolutely an ideology, one I wholeheartedly sign up to.

Do you know when ideologies are dangerous? It's when they hide. When they pretend to be "just the way it is", "just progress". If a movement is trying to change society and also trying to pretend it's "just a natural next step", "just doing what the people want", "just the way young people think and that's progress", be afraid. People who want to change society for good reasons should be happy to stand up and make the case for why.

So, to that old worn gay analogy. I'm afraid you really are barking up the wrong tree (and incidentally maybe betraying a little bit more than you intended about how you think, hmmm?).

If a person believes they are same sex attracted, they are same sex attracted. That's it. They feel the attraction, they can name it as such from their own self knowledge. No one else is redefined. The people they fancy don't have their own sexuality redefined simply because someone the same sex happens to fancy them. All society needs to do to accomodate gayness is to say "ok, that seems fine to me, find someone who fancies you back and be happy!"

But when a person believes they are the opposite sex in some inner, ineffable way, that their place in society is not with the others of their sex but with the opposite sex as one of them, sharing their privacy, adopting their language, defining their reality and their social identity, that is not simply a person describing their own reality, that is a person imposing their own beliefs and prejudices about their own sex and the opposite sex onto everyone else. For society to accomodate that, it has to agree that those ideas about men and women are real, that the fundamental, most meaningful difference between men and women that leads to all the different gendered outcomes is not that we have different bodies and deal with different social constructs but that we are fundamentally different in our minds, and that it is right and proper that anyting that is usually restricted by sex, whether that is language or privacy or rights or intimate touch, should be made available to membeer of the opposite sex based on a gender they can claim to have and their targets cannot challenge or deny having themselves regardless of whether they do in fact experienece this alleged similarity of mental gender.

Accepting that, accepting that redefinition of every single fucking human being that exists, a definition that I am telling you unequivocally is NOT how I and many many other people expereince ourselves, is a hugely different proposition to simply accepting the utterly uncontroversial observation that some people fancy people who are the same sex.

And frankly I'm aghast that you could consider the simple fact of same sex attraction anywhere near as fundamentally redefining to society as replacing every single human's self knowledge with an unevidenced and pretty damn sexist system of gender identity.

(1) I say "some sort of mental characteristic" only because this is the best guess I have as to what you actually believe, because despite being very very certain this thing is so hugely important we need to destroy women (original sex based meaning)'s rights, protections and political voice, belie our history and invalidate our language and our own lived experience to accomodate it, you are apparently unwilling or unable to say what it actually is. And who knows, if someone would just bloody tell us what this apparently simultaneously totally obvious and utterly unsayable thing we supposed "cis women" and trans women have in common is, we might evern recognise it and all this would turn out to be a huge huge miscommunication and we could skip off hand in hand into the pink and blue sunset. But how can that ever happen, how can we see our error, if no one can ever be clear about what it is we are supposed to be feeling that would make all this make sense? Why does it have to be done as an exercise of power and dominance and "you will accept this" unless the reason is there is no reality, only the exercise of power?

Tandora · 27/05/2025 08:09

FlirtsWithRhinos · 26/05/2025 23:21

Oh @Tandora I am disappointed. I genuinely thought you were smarter than this.

Firstly, please re-read my original post. The issue is not and never was what trans people believe about themselves. It is that genderists go beyond that into redefining everyone else.

The ideology is in taking that self belief beyond the personal and making it into the definition of all women and men, keeping the existing social groups but taking their meaning away from simple observed biology (because yes, DSDs notwithstanding, for 99.9999lots of the population including almost all trans people it really is that simple) into some sort of mental characteristic(1) regardless of whether the people being redefined recognised themselves in that or not, in order to claim that trans people's self image is an actual, objective reality and therefore justify reorganising society around it.

Do you see that? The ideology is not the right of trans people's right to define themselves, it's the need to redefine everyone else to make their subjective "truth" into a universal one, something to justify the TRA demand to reorganise society around it.

Secondly, you seem to have got the idea from somewhere that "ideology" is a criticism. It's not. It's a description. Feminism is also an ideology - it's both the systen of thought that seeks to understand and explain the experiences of women (OFM) in society and a belief that a better society is one in which women are not structurally disadvanatged. It's absolutely an ideology, one I wholeheartedly sign up to.

Do you know when ideologies are dangerous? It's when they hide. When they pretend to be "just the way it is", "just progress". If a movement is trying to change society and also trying to pretend it's "just a natural next step", "just doing what the people want", "just the way young people think and that's progress", be afraid. People who want to change society for good reasons should be happy to stand up and make the case for why.

So, to that old worn gay analogy. I'm afraid you really are barking up the wrong tree (and incidentally maybe betraying a little bit more than you intended about how you think, hmmm?).

If a person believes they are same sex attracted, they are same sex attracted. That's it. They feel the attraction, they can name it as such from their own self knowledge. No one else is redefined. The people they fancy don't have their own sexuality redefined simply because someone the same sex happens to fancy them. All society needs to do to accomodate gayness is to say "ok, that seems fine to me, find someone who fancies you back and be happy!"

But when a person believes they are the opposite sex in some inner, ineffable way, that their place in society is not with the others of their sex but with the opposite sex as one of them, sharing their privacy, adopting their language, defining their reality and their social identity, that is not simply a person describing their own reality, that is a person imposing their own beliefs and prejudices about their own sex and the opposite sex onto everyone else. For society to accomodate that, it has to agree that those ideas about men and women are real, that the fundamental, most meaningful difference between men and women that leads to all the different gendered outcomes is not that we have different bodies and deal with different social constructs but that we are fundamentally different in our minds, and that it is right and proper that anyting that is usually restricted by sex, whether that is language or privacy or rights or intimate touch, should be made available to membeer of the opposite sex based on a gender they can claim to have and their targets cannot challenge or deny having themselves regardless of whether they do in fact experienece this alleged similarity of mental gender.

Accepting that, accepting that redefinition of every single fucking human being that exists, a definition that I am telling you unequivocally is NOT how I and many many other people expereince ourselves, is a hugely different proposition to simply accepting the utterly uncontroversial observation that some people fancy people who are the same sex.

And frankly I'm aghast that you could consider the simple fact of same sex attraction anywhere near as fundamentally redefining to society as replacing every single human's self knowledge with an unevidenced and pretty damn sexist system of gender identity.

(1) I say "some sort of mental characteristic" only because this is the best guess I have as to what you actually believe, because despite being very very certain this thing is so hugely important we need to destroy women (original sex based meaning)'s rights, protections and political voice, belie our history and invalidate our language and our own lived experience to accomodate it, you are apparently unwilling or unable to say what it actually is. And who knows, if someone would just bloody tell us what this apparently simultaneously totally obvious and utterly unsayable thing we supposed "cis women" and trans women have in common is, we might evern recognise it and all this would turn out to be a huge huge miscommunication and we could skip off hand in hand into the pink and blue sunset. But how can that ever happen, how can we see our error, if no one can ever be clear about what it is we are supposed to be feeling that would make all this make sense? Why does it have to be done as an exercise of power and dominance and "you will accept this" unless the reason is there is no reality, only the exercise of power?

This whole “redefining others” is another complete nonsense. Trans people being trans says absolutely nothing about who you are, any more than gay people being gay says anything about who you are. You could say that being gay “redefines” sexuality. There’s really no difference.

As for ideology being bad? Of course it’s not. For example, when I say it’s fair to say my belief that trans people should be included in society is an ideology, I also think that’s a positive thing. But calling being trans an ideology is harmful and false- just as it’s harmful and false to call being gay an ideology (which of course homophobic people used to do). It’s a means of dismissing what is actually a fundamental characteristic of a person- suggesting it’s somehow false or make believe. “Trans ideology” is anti trans terminology invented by gender critical feminists and others who share the goal of trying to make trans people disappear.

Tandora · 27/05/2025 08:23

potpourree · 26/05/2025 17:43

Well for a start being trans isn’t an ideology

Do you accept that the definition of trans (people whose gender is not the same as, or does not sit comfortably with, the sex they were assigned at birth) requires believing that there are gender identities that either match (i.e. are the same as, or sit comfortably with), or do not match, each sex?

If you don't think any sexes match any genders, who would be trans?

@potpourree i was briefly interested in engaging with you, until it was clear that you are just another poster who will read your existing point into anything I write, regardless of what I actually write , and repeat yourself ad nauseam.

I see you have now turned this into “I see we haven’t got an answer to this”. Typical tactics.

Tandora · 27/05/2025 08:38

Here is the biological essentialism “they will be female , regardless ” you are assuming your understanding / meaning / knowing of “being female” and stating it’s self-evident / determined because of biology.

Your understanding of personality or behaviour isn’t essentialist, but your understanding of femaleness is. You have failed to appreciate that being female is itself a social construct. That’s not to say that biology isn’t real.

BungeeCord · 27/05/2025 08:39

@Tandora but redefining others is the whole point that we object to.

Transgender people and allies seem to believe either that transgender people have changed sex or that things that were segregated based on sex should actually be segregated based on gender.

If you're saying that spaces should be segregated based on gender then you're asking everyone to define themselves as someone who believes in gender. And if you believe that trans people actually change sex then you're asking everyone to define themselves as someone who believes that changing sex is possible.

OP posts:
BungeeCord · 27/05/2025 08:40

Tandora · 27/05/2025 08:38

Here is the biological essentialism “they will be female , regardless ” you are assuming your understanding / meaning / knowing of “being female” and stating it’s self-evident / determined because of biology.

Your understanding of personality or behaviour isn’t essentialist, but your understanding of femaleness is. You have failed to appreciate that being female is itself a social construct. That’s not to say that biology isn’t real.

I agree with this totally - being "female" as in the gendered sense is a social construct. But biology is real. And the reason we have sex segregated spaces is because of biological sex.

OP posts:
potpourree · 27/05/2025 08:42

Tandora · 27/05/2025 08:23

@potpourree i was briefly interested in engaging with you, until it was clear that you are just another poster who will read your existing point into anything I write, regardless of what I actually write , and repeat yourself ad nauseam.

I see you have now turned this into “I see we haven’t got an answer to this”. Typical tactics.

Ok, so it's a personal thing rather than caring about the actual points being made or trying to communicate what it is you're trying to say. That's absolutely fine!

I fully accept i may just be too stupid to understand what you're getting at. I'm not neurotypical, so I'm used to it.

I hope you find yourself able to think about your questions in your own time, and maybe one day you'll be able to articulate your views in a way that even people like me can grasp instead of getting angry that they don't understand.

I would love to know, so that I can learn, what was wrong with my post that you quoted, if you can specify?

potpourree · 27/05/2025 08:45

Tandora · 27/05/2025 08:38

Here is the biological essentialism “they will be female , regardless ” you are assuming your understanding / meaning / knowing of “being female” and stating it’s self-evident / determined because of biology.

Your understanding of personality or behaviour isn’t essentialist, but your understanding of femaleness is. You have failed to appreciate that being female is itself a social construct. That’s not to say that biology isn’t real.

The question I asked you that would help me get to where you are in understanding this was this - you chose not to answer.
That doesn't mean a "win" for me, at all, so it's not a tactic, but it means the clarification I need isn't there so I'm none the wiser.

Does that make sense?

"So tandora when you talk of bodies being female, do YOU mean something other than, as you put it, "being born with a vagina/ xx chromosomes etc " ?
If so, what?"

Tandora · 27/05/2025 08:46

BungeeCord · 27/05/2025 08:39

@Tandora but redefining others is the whole point that we object to.

Transgender people and allies seem to believe either that transgender people have changed sex or that things that were segregated based on sex should actually be segregated based on gender.

If you're saying that spaces should be segregated based on gender then you're asking everyone to define themselves as someone who believes in gender. And if you believe that trans people actually change sex then you're asking everyone to define themselves as someone who believes that changing sex is possible.

I think it’s really important to distinguish two things.

The first is what being trans is. The second is how we should organise society to include trans people. Anti trans sentiment so often conflates the two - as questions about policy start from a position that being trans is not really legitimate or real, that it is simply a false (and harmful) ideology.

The fact that some women are trans, says nothing about who you are: it does not redefine your person in any way. You are still the woman you were before, with the characteristics you had before, for the reasons as before. Just as someone being gay says nothing about who you are or what your sexuality is. Yes you could say that recognition of gay people redefined understandings of sexuality - it expanded our understandings of diversity - that not everyone was straight, that differences exist, but it didn’t redefine straight people. This is exactly the same for recognising trans people.

Tandora · 27/05/2025 08:47

potpourree · 27/05/2025 08:45

The question I asked you that would help me get to where you are in understanding this was this - you chose not to answer.
That doesn't mean a "win" for me, at all, so it's not a tactic, but it means the clarification I need isn't there so I'm none the wiser.

Does that make sense?

"So tandora when you talk of bodies being female, do YOU mean something other than, as you put it, "being born with a vagina/ xx chromosomes etc " ?
If so, what?"

I didn’t “choose not to answer” I continued to answer you but you didn’t engage in any way with what I wrote.

potpourree · 27/05/2025 08:49

Tandora · 27/05/2025 08:47

I didn’t “choose not to answer” I continued to answer you but you didn’t engage in any way with what I wrote.

Shit sorry! Thread moved fast and i missed it. I'll go back and look.

Tandora · 27/05/2025 08:51

potpourree · 27/05/2025 08:42

Ok, so it's a personal thing rather than caring about the actual points being made or trying to communicate what it is you're trying to say. That's absolutely fine!

I fully accept i may just be too stupid to understand what you're getting at. I'm not neurotypical, so I'm used to it.

I hope you find yourself able to think about your questions in your own time, and maybe one day you'll be able to articulate your views in a way that even people like me can grasp instead of getting angry that they don't understand.

I would love to know, so that I can learn, what was wrong with my post that you quoted, if you can specify?

Hey @potpourree i don’t think you are stupid. You are right I got pissed off and could have done better. After I wrote that post tbh I regretted it- and then went on to try and answer your question.

I apologise. Tbh im definitely embittered by some of my experiences engaging with posters about trans issues on mumsnet. My fault of course as for some reason I continue to try!

Thanks for being respectful.

potpourree · 27/05/2025 08:53

Tandora · 27/05/2025 08:47

I didn’t “choose not to answer” I continued to answer you but you didn’t engage in any way with what I wrote.

I can't see a direct response to this post at 12.55 yesterday - could you copy and paste the response you're talking about?

If you're joking with me then sorry, I'm not great at detecting what's a joke and what's literal Smile

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