I’m new too. My kids have left home now but I’m still a mum and therefore interested in issues which affect mothers, families (whatever their shape or form) and women with or without children and regardless of sexual orientation.
However I am currently becoming interested in how women are defined as women and how we do still need, perhaps more than ever, access to some female-only spaces (men have them too so not asking for anything unique or ‘special’).
I was lucky enough that after the breakup of my abusive marriage I was able to access a women’s refuge centre, not as a resident, but for weekly, subsidised (I was almost destitute) counselling sessions. This wonderful place helped save me, and I wasn’t even half as much in need as the women living there. They were very protected from ‘visitors’ like me even though we were all women and I never went near the residential areas or saw any of the residents unless they were the more settled ones who sometimes helped in the reception area.
I believe so strongly that these sorts of female-only points of refuge must stay that way and not be open to men who identify as women because, as a good friend of a transgender female and a colleague of a transgender man, I know that they do have their own support systems, communities and ‘places.’
I have a child who is gay and seems to be having some current gender confusion. I would die for this child - my love for them is even stronger than for my other two children because of the vulnerabilities and confusion.
I am only saying this here and now because it seems important to show I am not coming from an area of inexperience or predudice in these matters.
But everything is so politicised that if you want to talk about thus or have a view that is not the current orthodoxy, you are deemed a hater. Mumsnet seems to be one of the few places where open debate and support of women is tolerated.