Genuine question: Male & Female segregation

[Fandangoes]

Why were toilets, changing rooms, sports, prisons etc segregated for men and women in the first place. What was the original logic for this happening?

Nah, I won't be reporting anything as I mostly believe in free speech, even if it's a bit tonedeaf at times, like white posters propounding their views in Black Mumsnetters despite continual pleas to the contrary, and the GC crowd ignoring the section that was created specifically for them and instead deliberately posting in the section that was supposed to be freed up for more general discussion.

I'm actually firmly on the GC side but I don't use the labels 'GC' or 'feminist' because they seem to often encompass elements additional to one's specific views on the topic. I often see in the GC contingent the same monomaniacal attitude that I see in the crazier side of veganism/religion/feminism/etc.

The belief that your views are so incredibly important that it's not unreasonable to force them on other people. Which is what we see in these threads that often pop up in AIBU etc. It tars genuinely poignant topics with the bonkers brush unfortunately.

Blimey. No one is forcing threads on anyone. No one makes you read them past the headline and the opening of the first post. No one makes you post a response. AIBU doesn't have an approved list of topics. Neither does the main Chat topic. How anyone can get so bothered by seeing a thread title they don't like "in the wrong section" is beyond me. Especially when there is a specific facility to get any forbidden threads moved! So precious.

TBH I don't recall a genuinely poignant thread in AIBU but okay.

I am told that TWAW and also need to be protected against male violence.

TW are not women. In any way. That some males need to be protected against male violence in no way leads to the logical conclusion that women need to be exposed to it.

the GC crowd ignoring the section that was created specifically for them and instead deliberately posting in the section that was supposed to be freed up for more general discussion

Oh, this again.

You aren't able to fence off bits of this website and declare that anyone you don't like isn't allowed to post on it. Sorry about that.

The original logic for sex segregated facilities like prisons was less likely to be the risk of sexual assault per se, and more likely to be the reality that sexual violence often ends in unwanted pregnancy.

They could get away with treating women pretty badly in prisons and psychiatric hospitals; but creating unmarried mothers, and extra mouths to feed among the poor, feckless and criminal classes would have been a moral dilemma.

As for public toilets, men didn't hold with them. They burned the first women's toilets to the ground.

Oh noes.... did a thread escape from captivity?

You aren't able to fence off bits of this website and declare that anyone you don't like isn't allowed to post on it. Sorry about that.

Some might say the same about toilets. 😂

The answer is it's a combination of protecting women from male sexual harassment or violence, with historic causes also being rooted in morality and modesty.

In the modern world it's obvious why. If you spent 30 minutes of your life as a woman you'd understand why, as lovely as most men are, you wouldn't want to be locked in a jail cell with one.

And there is a significant difference between a male entering a female single sex space, and women talking uncontrolled on a parenting forum.

But hey. Each to their own.

It's more like, what reasons do you have to believe it's safe or reasonable to have no single sex spaces anywhere?

What do you think consequences would be?

What do you think the benefits are of not having any single sex spaces?

OP, I also agree that TW need to be protected from male violence.

However, I don't believe the solution is to desegregate women's spaces.

I understand the difficulty and I don't want anyone to be hurt, or feel othered or misgendered.

But the unavoidable truth is that desegregating single sex spaces means that men can identify as women and gain access to single sex spaces.

Do I think trans women are a threat? No. But can this be exploited and has this been exploited by men? Yes. It's not fair to ask this of women.

No policy, unless also extremely harmful and emotionally scarring to trans women, would work unless it directly disadvantages and risks women. The only possible attempt would result in somebody somewhere arbitrating what trans women are "trans enough" to be allowed into single sex spaces. And how is that right or fair?

It's not an argument of disregarding trans women, because there is a solution (third space, single occupancy spaces) which does not put women at risk of exploitation of a system that can't ever be truly operated fairly to everyone.

I think the conversation should be more about how being a trans woman is a legitimate experience in itself and how you are experiencing womanhood in your own way, and facing your own challenges.

Trans women being excluded from single sex spaces isn't about saying you're not a woman, it's about saying you're not a cis woman. It doesn't or shouldn't detract or diminish or invalidate your lived experience as a trans woman.

They're just 2 different things and in the case of single sex spaces, we need to prioritise sex over all else, because of the reasons that single sex spaces exist in the first place, which is massively to do with women's biology reproductive systems in so many ways (having a vagina, being able to get pregnant, periods, being physically weaker etc).

Apologies - I was t aware there was a separate section to discuss topics like this. Like I said, I am fairly new to exploring this subject so haven’t been a frequent visitor of these boards until recently. I know people are questioning my motives but my question was genuine and I have had some brilliant answers amongst the doubters.

Fair enough. You've nothing to apologise for. I just thought it was one of those faux innocent questions that keep popping up to try and attract attention.

Feminism Chat was once a thriving board but it became totally hijacked by trans threads to the point where mumsnet created a different section for them. Sadly, a lot of posters had gone elsewhere by then which is why this board is now pretty much dead.

This is a public board, of course, and you'd expect the content to reflect the topics people are most interested in (which was the argument gender fixated posters were making). However, the reality was that a group of regular posters were deliberately creating loads and loads of trans threads, which meant that they started to vastly outnumber the other threads which were just being created in the typical more organic fashion with no agenda - I remember one day where literally every single thread bar one or two was trans related.

I do agree that the whole gender thing is an important topic but it just irked me a bit when the whole Irish abortion situation was going on and the few threads about it just kept getting buried by the continual trans spamming - the abortion issue was one that could genuinely have benefited from the awareness and support of women who didn't know much about it.

I remember a few posters commenting that they were a little disappointed on how little discussion there was around the abortion issue, especially considering that it had the potential to affect so many women and was at a critical stage where women's voices could potentially make all the difference. Amongst the responses were women saying that they no longer visited this forum as it was 99% trans threads nowadays, and others saying that they'd not noticed the abortion threads amongst all the gender topics.

I guess it just frustrated me because the abortion situation affects a lot of women in very real ways. The trans situation is also important but IMO it's more an ideological battle as in reality you're extremely unlikely to bump into a transwomen in the toilet, which is why the issue isn't even on most women's radar.

It just became annoying how gender stuff was shoehorned into every topic, no matter how tangential the link was, and even when the OP had requested it didn't turn into yet another trans thread. All you had to do was mention your tomboy daughter and suddenly it was all about gender etc even if the OP wasn't focusing on that.

The gender section is thriving whilst this section has pretty much never recovered, which is a shame. That's why some of us get a bit sick of seeing yet more trans topics in here. It reminds us of what was a big factor in killing off one of the most thriving feminism board around.

I'm on the GC side myself and understand the importance of it but god am I sick of reading the same threads over and over again. I'd ignore them and just read the ones that interest me, as people suggest, except that there aren't many nowadays because most of the old posters have left.

Sorry, which threads have you started here about your preferred topics in order to help this board become thriving, @FlorenceAndTheVendingMachine? It is so pointless to complain about other people not discussing the right topics and not using the right topic when you're not taking any kind of action to promote your preferred topics yourself.

Feminism Chat was once a thriving board but it became totally hijacked by trans threads to the point where mumsnet created a different section for them. Sadly, a lot of posters had gone elsewhere by then which is why this board is now pretty much dead.

Well this is revisionist crap.

Quite.

OP, and anyone else who didn't know about it - Mumsnet got bullied into creating a 'naughty step' for feminists who were committing wrongthink (according to some).

It's still a pretty busy board - far busier than this one, at any rate:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights

No it's not. People were getting sick to death with all of the stealth trans threads. Bet I can find loads of examples within a few mins.

Oh, knock yourself out, pet, I'm off to bed.

It is putting me off visiting MN, and it seems to be here to stay so I'll prob visit and post less.

Here's a thought - why not just not click on a trans thread? There are dozens of topics I'm not interested in and I avoid them by not opening the bleeding thread!

The problem is there's loads of threads which look like they're not trans related until you open them, it's too late by then. Or (even worse) threads which don't seem trans related... Until you read up to page 4 by which time it's the usual bunfight.

Ah Topanga, if only it was that simple. But it's not.

Tonight I went onto what I thought was a Make-up thread. I have recently bought some make-up, not something I do often. Ooh, says me to myself, I should look at this thread and perhaps contribute my musings on buying/wearing the make-up wot I bought. So I opened it. And was it about make-up? Was it fuck! It was another cunting Fuck Trans thread pretending to be something it wasn't.

Just set up a trans section so I can hide the whole fucking lot. I am sick to death of nearly every thread having some bloody mention of it.

Yes. It's not like anyone has anything new to say. Please.

I hide any thread title which has the merest mention of trans. The whole thing is boring the tits off me (which is a tad ironic).

Trans issues needs its own topic! It has been mentioned many times before but the request is always ignored.

I am sick to the back teeth of trans issues sprouting up everyone and taking over active conversations. Give it its/his/hers own topic so that those of us who couldn't care less can hide the topic and go back to enjoying MN.

That being said, there will invariably be threads ins Chat or AIBU "for traffic". Hmm

No. No. No. No.
No fucking "For Traffic". No, "oops it cropped up accidentally on this thread"[fake blush bullshit].

Just 4 threads. That's all that's needed because let's face it, it's the same shit on every trans thread in Active, in FWR, in AIBU, in Chat and in Site Stuff.

I'm sick of the whole bloody trans this that and the other. Give them their own topic so I can hide it. Pushing an agenda doesn't help anyone! Thanks for starting this thread.

Like when one of my Exs used to pretend to sing/play a good song but turned it into Mull of Kintyre 6 bars in.

Can it please be put in a separate topic? That way those who are interested in discussing it in great detail and declaring they are Spartacus etc can do so without bothering everyone else, most of whom don't give a toss.

Agree with PP that single threads don't help - they get full and then you get thread 2, 3 etc. Please just give the trans/anti-trans lobbies their own topic to discuss it ad nauseum.

There should definitely be a trans topic. It's like whack a mole at the moment

There's like 25 pages in the thread the above came from, mostly agreeing. It's not like mumsnet created a separate section just for the hell of it.

Surely you can see why some people might get annoyed reading the same old threads and same old points even after a dedicated section was created.

Yes, it's a public forum but that doesn't mean it's not poor form to ignore the general sentiment. I bet some of the posters in here are the same ones who go into Black Mumsnetters and post "as a white woman my view is..." on the threads where the OP has specifically stated she wants to discuss the topic with other WOC.

Transplaining is a real thing!

You can jog on with that nasty little dig about people posting on the Black MN topic btw.

And your long list of extracts is pointless. Your version of what happened is wrong. None of those people who persistently harangued for a split of the boards post in this Feminist Chat section. There was no hoard of correctly thinking feminists desperately waiting to post their own threads in their own "safe space". They got what they wanted which was other women siloed and the ability to have threads removed to the silo at their request. And then promptly buggered off never to post again.

Yeah! That's right. We spent weeks arguing with MNHQ about the split and the stupid name it was given; we were told endless times that it had to be done because 'operational reasons'; we had The Monitors coming and telling us they had enjoyed their success; MNers like Florence telling us our pro women stance is endlessly transphobic, that they were unable to scroll on by because summink summink summink

The upshot is NOT that we asked to be segregated but that MNHQ was bullied into it by those who lobbied their advertisers, losing them revenue and turn created The Naughty Step. Why do you think we call it that?

So @FlorenceAndTheVendingMachine pop back to any other space you feel safe in and leave us to our evil brand of defending women's rights. You won't be forced to join in. You can even hide the entire forum.

Yet, after the split this board is like a ghost town and hardly a single one of those vociferous posters started any threads about any of the apparently much more important and relevant topics. What a shock!

I'd like to see more posts about more topics such as sexual exploitation, surrogacy, VAW, reproductive rights, the feminisation of poverty, how the Tories are fucking over the NHS/welfare state and so on but women only have so much energy and this is currently being invested in protecting women's spaces and right to define who we are as well as halting a gender ideology that harms children and young people - all crucial issues.

I'm deeply angry about this but I see this as the 'fault' of the issue and those pushing what I see as a fundamentally misogynist and anti-woman agenda, not feminists. I'm angry because having to fight for our very existence (so to speak) is sapping our energy and preventing us from fighting other vital causes that we have been chipping away at for decades.

It all feels very obstructive and in the realm of backlash.