Equality gone

[creeeepy]

Over the years many of us fought for equality for women.

Equal rights financially so we could have our own mortgages, bank accounts, credit cards and own our own property, to ensure our property wouldn’t become our husbands upon marriage.

Equal rights educationally so we could attend further education, be plumbers, be carpenters, barristers even judges - perhaps professors in universities

Equal rights sexually so we could be in control of our own bodies, rape could he reported whether in marriage or not, the right to contraception and abortion (whether you agree or not) it was not in control of anyone else but ourselves.

Equal rights in the workplace, so we could be paid the same money for doing exactly the same job, so our rights were the same as men, so that we didn’t have to leave our jobs when we married so we received the same pension at the same time as men (quite rightly for men who were penalised for many years)

so many things had to be fought for, they’re not all listed here

but now

Women aren’t even recognised as being deserving of
the right to their own changing rooms
the right to female own hospital wards
the right to female on female searches
the right to female only nurses/doctors
the right to their own female sports teams
the right to their own toilets.

etc.

AIBU to think equality for women has taken a HUGE backward step?

For context I’m a very happily married woman who thinks men are wonderful.

YANBU. It’s depressing seeing it all written down.

Yanbu

It must be at least 20 minutes since there's been an anti-trans thread...

YANBU but I thought things were improving since the ruling in the spring that female meant sex [at birth]. Have I missed something?

If you think that wanting to keep any of those rights is anti-trans then you have to admit that trans ideology is anti-woman, no?

Fancy, women wanting to talk about things that affect women, on a website primarily used by women.

Do I? I am not bothered in the slightest about trans women (aka women) using women's changing rooms or joining sports teams etc

And that's the crux of the argument. Trans women are not also known as women - they are trans. Deserving of their own rights, but not in place of them.

and that's great you aren't bothered about women's rights being trampled on, however many of us are very concerned that they are.

The crux of many of those rights is a woman's ability to decide for herself instead of being forced to defer to males, having to ask permission as she wasn't deemed adult enough to know what was best for her. Not coincidentally, "what was best for her" would be what the man in charge wanted.

Yet here you are, deciding on behalf of women that they should take their clothes off in confined spaces with random males. If you want to do that, go ahead. If you want to force other women to do it, you certainly are opposed to women's rights.

~ Note: 'woman' in this post is used in its legal meaning.

I believe that women are entitled to protected spaces but I don’t see the relevance of mixing the trans issue with women’s rights like owning property etc, and I don’t think posts like this help the argument tbh. Trans people are not a threat to any of those things. It all just comes across as a bit crazy feminist which makes it easy for others to dismiss. There are valid reasons why trans women shouldn’t be in female
sports of prisons etc, but they have nothing to do with rights to abortion, equal pay and all the rest of it.

Boring ...can't you keep this you the correct topic area

Its absolutely insane OP, agreed. Yet we have women themselves cheering it on.

You may not be. And you can hang out in unisex spaces and play unisex sports if that's what you want. But it doesn't mean you get to give away other women's rights and opportunities.

OP, you are spot on.

The worst part is that there are so many women supporting it.

I appreciate all the men who are fighting with us/for us.

Perhaps not you 'BigYellowBus'' but what about the ones who look like a Red Ferrari ?

I was wondering if the rights women fought for and won are in the process of being eroded.

This was a genuine question that had nothing to do with trans women, but as you brought it up …… it seems they can pick and choose so get the best of both worlds.
.

Well. Let's see: How do you define sexism, sex discrimination, if you can't clearly define sex? Why should an employer not discard women who menstruate and might get pregnant if they can hire 'women' who definitely don't?

Who needs women's rights if women are just people of either sex with a certain inner feeling? People's rights should be enough, surely?

Hmmm. But then we look at the multitude of hard data showing women have the worst economic outcomes, housing inequalities, health outcomes ... how to address this? Women are an indefinable cohort now.

There are massive differences in the types of crime perpetrated by, and suffered by, men and women. How to even track this, let alone deal with it, when men and women are just people with different inner feelings? The crimes & victims fall into two broad categories by body size & composition but, hell, the police are expected to compile data on this before we can start to look at the problem??

It's only about 15 years since the medical establishment started noticing that women's bodies don't work like men's. Shortly after this occurred, the medical establishment started asking men at checkups if they're pregnant. Now it's offensive to ask someone's birth sex - while knowing they might lie anyway - it's getting even harder to be take seriously as a patient with a female body.

Where this inevitably leads ... is to a nominally unisex world, in which the female half eventually notices it's losing rights, freedoms and protections. These people will then have start all over again, establishing social and legal frameworks to claw back rights for 'reproductively female people' or 'menstruators', 'ovarians', 'birthing parents' etc, with extra clauses to allow for female people who don't ovulate.

It was all so much simpler when we had discrete words for the two sexes of humans! We have them for all the other animals, or are you now asking the foxes in your garden how they identify their gender?

This is not even a complete exposition on why I'm so relieved the Supreme Court ratified the existing legal definitions of 'woman' and 'man'. Still got a fight on our hands, though, QED.

So you’d be ok with a non cis man using your changing room, but wouldn’t let a cis man use it? Why? What is the difference between a cis man and a non cis man thst makes one ok to use female facilities?

Errr…. This is Mumsnet. This is the correct topic area miss judgy pants.

I know right? How bizarre.

Agree that female only spaces need to be protected but YANBU to think that work, education, financial freedom is at risk as a result. As with racial, homosexual equality I don’t think that can ever be withdrawn in reality, although Tate like misogyny is terrifying in relation to sexual equality and safety.

Ok this makes sense, there is a risk, but surely it’s not likely given the trans shit is mostly dying a death now? Although need to remain vigilant as TRAs will be looking to exploit any potential relaxation in the pro-women movement.

How will it affect women's work opportunities? If you're a bit misogynistic to start with, why would you hire/promote/give a decent salary to a woman when you can hire a man in a wig?
How will it affect women's financial opportunities? Earning power and job dictate what you can borrow e.g. for a mortgage. The vast majority of people need a mortgage to get a house.
How will it affect women's educational opportunities? Giving uni places to men in wigs as part of the quota of "women" means fewer women getting those educational opportunities.
This is rolling back women's rights across the board because every time someone is required to give any opportunity at all to a woman for "diversity" to widen access in our patriarchal world, they can just give the opportunity to a man in a dress and pretend they've helped womankind.
And it's relevant now (again) because the NI HRC just claimed self-ID is a good idea.

But that means allowing men in which removes single-sex protections for women. You can be fine with it but you can’t consent on behalf of other women.

Exactly.

The fact that there are a tiny minority of people who were born male but now appear female and might be in a public toilet with me is nowhere near the top of my experiences of sex based inequality.