Are women in Scotland aware of how bad things have got?

[Leafstamp]

I hang out on the Feminism board a lot, and I know not all MNetters care for that section. Which is fine. But I am continually appalled at how bad things are for women in Scotland - compared to England.

For example, this, from Feminism thread:

www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/01/the-thought-police-are-here/

To briefly summarise:

• Mridul was born male

• Mridul is legally male with no GRC

• Mridul is the CEO of Edinburgh Rape crisis

• Mridul claims women who want female only rape crisis services are bigoted and should 'reframe their trauma'

• The CEO of a domestic violence charity Nicola Murray stopped referring women to Mridul's rape crisis service due to Mridul's misogyny

• Mridul reported Nicola Murray to the police for committing a hate crime

• The police actually visited Nicola Murray to question her thinking

Please can any not-particularly-feminist women share how you feel about this?

[quote visitingagain]**@Rheopecticfluid* @Rhannion* @Scianel the language used in that post is disgusting and I am not going to repeat it. It's not factual. Being trans does not mean that you have a deviant sexual orientation as you are implying.
But says everything about the view you take of all trans people.
[/quote]
It is well researched and documented that some (note some does not mean all) freely admit they have a kink. It's not some big secret.

You do seem to like making stuff up that isn't there though don't you, in order to reach your conclusions. Do you take this approach in all areas of your life? Or is this one just particularly close to your heart and must be defended at all costs. Even if it means lying and false accusations?

However women have the right to have our boundaries respected, our needs considered, and our lives and our right to freedom of speech respected.

If men abuse this legislation, that's a separate issue. It needs to be addressed if it happens. And it has been addressed as in the case of the guide leader

If men abuse this issue?
You do realise that the rate of male pattern offending remains exactly the same when a born male identifies as a female?

Are you of the belief that transwomen are less of a risk to women in sex segregated spaces?

understand that a large amount of trans people just want to live their lives safely and in a normal way just like anyone else, just like women do.

Yes I'm sure they do. So opening up women's spaces to transwomen makes women less safe. Considerably less safe.

They work for you does it?

Because it doesn't for me. Or my daughter.

You want to protect transwomen? Then campaign for third spaces. Rather than removing women's spaces.

Anyway, at least this thread is helpful for those lurkers from Scotland who don't know what changes to women's rights are on the table.

Back in real life, a TRA screamed 'witch' in the face of a woman peacefully protesting outside the Scottish Parliament.

Your comment here 'Strip out trolls and bots, but also consider that TRAs actually feel that the gender critical movement doesn't even accept the validity of their existence- and reconsider their comments in the light of a view that if they don't even exist - how can they be a threat? That's where they are coming from, inspired by the likes of Malcolm X' sounds depressingly like you are trying to justify and condone rape and death threats.

It's a wearily repetitive argument that women 'don't believe trans people exist'. Of course they exist and should be protected against discrimination and violence. What women believe is that the single sex spaces, services and categories, legally accorded to women to ensure safety, dignity and fairness, should continue to be single sex.

@Rheopecticfluid I'm not making anything up or lying. I'm not willing to accept such language being used in this context- basically generalising an entire group as deviant.

@sparklefarts I don't know if all Edinburgh schools are the same, but our cluster schools are now basing their teaching on

rshp.scot

@Rheopecticfluid @Rhannion absolutely no to third spaces. I don't believe trans women are a threat to women because they are (legally) women.
Please don't lump me in with all this safe spaces garbage. If you mean woman's refuges, where are abused trans women meant to go.
As for swimming pools and toilets and prisons, I couldn't give a shit, that's a non issue. You want to remove the status quo and repress people please go ahead, but don't dress it up as feminism and don't put it in my name.
The threat to women is from male violence. That is the threat.
Some sad TRAs shouting on a protest do not make them all deviants.
I don't condone threats of violence and that wasn't my intention, merely to give some context.
But feeling that they should be eradicated by feminists who they have always considered allies, must cause anger.

@Rheopecticfluid what changes to women's rights do you have in mind? Women retain all their rights. Trans people have additional rights in law.

There are several exemptions in the Equality Act 2010 in which transwomen (even those who hold a GRC) can be legally excluded due to their sex. There is currently a massive drive to ignore or remove these exemptions. These are the women's rights which are being eroded.

I've quoted the legislation and the examples given -

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/notes/division/3/16/26/1

'Examples

• The need for authenticity or realism might require someone of a particular race, sex or age for acting roles (for example, a black man to play the part of Othello) or modelling jobs.

• Considerations of privacy or decency might require a public changing room or lavatory attendant to be of the same sex as those using the facilities.

• An organisation for deaf people might legitimately employ a deaf person who uses British Sign Language to work as a counsellor to other deaf people whose first or preferred language is BSL.

• Unemployed Muslim women might not take advantage of the services of an outreach worker to help them find employment if they were provided by a man.

• A counsellor working with victims of rape might have to be a woman and not a transsexual person, even if she has a Gender Recognition Certificate, in order to avoid causing them further distress.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/notes/division/3/16/20/7

Examples

738.These exceptions would allow:

• a cervical cancer screening service to be provided to women only, as only women need the service;

• a fathers’ support group to be set up by a private nursery as there is insufficient attendance by men at the parents’ group;

• a domestic violence support unit to be set up by a local authority for women only but there is no men-only unit because of insufficient demand;

• separate male and female wards to be provided in a hospital;

• separate male and female changing rooms to be provided in a department store;

• a massage service to be provided to women only by a female massage therapist with her own business operating in her clients’ homes because she would feel uncomfortable massaging men in that environment.

Gender reassignment:paragraph 28

Effect

739.This paragraph contains an exception to the general prohibition of gender reassignment discrimination in relation to the provision of separate- and single-sex services. Such treatment by a provider has to be objectively justified.

[quote visitingagain]@Rheopecticfluid what changes to women's rights do you have in mind? Women retain all their rights. Trans people have additional rights in law.[/quote]
The additional rights transwoman want are women's rights. The right to:

Use women's changing rooms
Use women's refuges
Participate in women's sport
Be on women's short lists
Be in women's prisons

As transwomen are born male, and the rate of offending / sexual violence does not reduce on transition, for transwomen to have the above rights means the removal of women's.

To put it simply, if born males are in women's sex segregated spaces, this means womens spaces are now mixed sex. This puts women at risk.

Those who campaign for the removal of these safeguards for women are either doing so for nefarious reasons, or they are particularly hard of thinking.

If you mean woman's refuges, where are abused trans women meant to go.

Take as an example Edinburgh Rape Crisis who provide rape crisis services to many different groups, including transgender people. On the face of it, brilliant.

But they now offer no single sex services at all. Which means that women who need a single sex service due to trauma response, have no services available to them at all. There is enormous amounts of anecdotal evidence that these women are now self excluding from the service they need. Women aren't asking that single sex services are the only service offered but simply that is offered.

@visitingagain

I think this should go on the feminism/ gender critical board because this is one kind of discussion that really brings mumsnet into disrepute. So if you want to talk about it let's limit it to the one board where everyone who has an anti trans agenda can hang out together.

You're doing your best to derail it to get it over there aren't you. Fucking transparent.

absolutely no to third spaces. I don't believe trans women are a threat to women because they are (legally) women.

Males are a risk to women. Transwomen have the same bodies as men. There's a reason for that. They present the same risk to women as men do.

Please don't lump me in with all this safe spaces garbage. If you mean woman's refuges, where are abused trans women meant to go.

They can campaign for their own spaces if they need them. Not make women's unsafe and no longer fit for purpose. Women use these spaces to find refuge from male violence. See point above. In case it didn't sink in the first time.

As for swimming pools and toilets and prisons, I couldn't give a shit, that's a non issue.

I don't care that you don't give a shit about women's safety. About the fact that women are far more likely to be sexually assaulted in mixed changing facilities. I'm not appealing to your better nature. It's not as though you're the decision maker is it. I'm posting for the lurkers in Scotland. So they know what's happening. And the sort of abusive mindset women are up against. Know your enemies, as they say...

You want to remove the status quo and repress people please go ahead, but don't dress it up as feminism and don't put it in my name.

Although clearly you are happy to repress women for the sake of born males. Grim behaviour. Shame on you.

The threat to women is from male violence. That is the threat.

Yes it is. And transwomen are born males. If they weren't, they wouldn't be trans. Would they.

Some sad TRAs shouting on a protest do not make them all deviants.

Are you insinuating some of them are deviants? 🧐

I don't condone threats of violence and that wasn't my intention, merely to give some context.

Maybe you should go check out some of the 'suck my lady dick' threats. As jk Rowling pointed out, she's had enough threats of violence / death threats, to paper her whole house with.
That work for you does it?

But feeling that they should be eradicated by feminists who they have always considered allies, must cause anger.

Males who seek to destroy women's safeguards are not allies of women. Fairly typical that they still expect women to be their support horse though. Innit. Nothing changes.

If a trans man has male genitalia in a refuge for women who are traumatised, how do you think they will feel sleeping and showering , talking openly near a man with a man’s physical body and genitalia? Even if that man identifies as a woman?

Hi @Rheopecticfluid @Waitwhat23 @Leafstamp
I absolutely do want this thread to go on the feminism boards, yes. No derailing at all.
All the examples you have given are just that, examples and exemptions.
They are not rights.

Trans women should actually have access to all these things because otherwise you are weirdly creating a third gender assignment in law which is incredibly problematic and discriminatory. And new. And basically tells trans people that they aren't real.

So the example about single sex fathers would include fathers who are trans men, because it's about access.
The Muslim women could still have their space and it would be inclusive for all women. Including trans women.

Women's sport is a huge minefield. Why do we have women's sport rather than flyweight, heavyweight etc.?
For further information
www.forbes.com/sites/dawnstaceyennis/2021/11/16/olympics-to-abandon-testosterone-criteria-for-trans-women-athletes-announces-framework-on-fairness/?sh=52dbdb566742

@Rheopecticfluid you have been singularly unpleasant on this thread to anyone who challenges your views. As for your view that all trans women are basically predatory men, you don't speak for me, or for @MumsnetHQ or for any of the many posters on Scotsnet who have perfectly reasonable views and even if they may disagree with the GRA do not agree with you.

@Waitwhat23

Transpeople using single sex spaces is really not a new thing

I've never understood how this could be considered a good argument. Women's single sex spaces have always been used by people who don't care about women's boundaries so let's open it up to all?

I was attacked by a transwoman in a women only dorm in a youth hostel - 20 years ago now. The YHA policy then was that transpeople got their own private rooms, but this person deliberately booked into the single sex women's dormitory, and punched me and threw all my belongings out of the room when I turned the light on and started to get undressed to go to bed. I was told by the police that this person was fully biologically male, and was later caught exposing themselves to a little girl in a women's public toilet. They (in those days) just about passed as a woman. They abused women's public spaces then, so they should be given the legal right to use them now?

[quote visitingagain]**@Rheopecticfluid* you have been singularly unpleasant on this thread to anyone who challenges your views. As for your view that all trans women are basically predatory men, you don't speak for me, or for @MumsnetHQ* or for any of the many posters on Scotsnet who have perfectly reasonable views and even if they may disagree with the GRA do not agree with you. [/quote]
Actually I believe it's you that has been spectacularly unpleasant, derailing the thread, false accusations, trying to get the thread moved because you don't like it here.

And I see you're doing it again. Making shit up. Not once did I say all transpeople were predators. It's not all men. It's not all transpeople. It's some men. And some transwomen. Not all. But enough that it would be utter insanity to open up women's sex segregated spaces and wave them in.

Trans women should actually have access to all these things because otherwise you are weirdly creating a third gender assignment in law which is incredibly problematic and discriminatory. And new.

Fact: allowing transwomen to use these spaces destroys these spaces for women. Spaces are segregated by sex not gender. Stop conflating the two. This is incredibly discriminatory towards women. There is no third gender. There are two sexes though.

And basically tells trans people that they aren't real.

That doesn't even mean anything. Do you mean I don't accept that transwomen are biological females? They're not. I don't manipulate the truth just to be kind. Clearly they are real though. Otherwise, they wouldn't be here. Would they.

Women's sport is a huge minefield. Why do we have women's sport rather than flyweight, heavyweight etc.?

Holy wow. Why do we have women's sport? Seriously?

Eggsplanation I'm sorry that happened to you.

@DomesticatedZombie

Women's sport is a huge minefield. Why do we have women's sport rather than flyweight, heavyweight etc.?

Holy wow. Why do we have women's sport? Seriously?

Ah - is this because an 8 stone woman is just as strong as an 8 stone man? Did someone mention something about denying reality?

Trans women should actually have access to all these things because otherwise you are weirdly creating a third gender assignment in law which is incredibly problematic and discriminatory. And new. And basically tells trans people that they aren't real.

Human beings are a dimorphic species and sex is immutable. This isn't a value judgement or denying that transpeople exist. Just simple fact. Transwoman cannot access single sex female spaces because their sex is male. That's not transphobic. It's reality. If you feel that statement is transphobic, then please report it to MNHQ, who take actual transphobia very seriously.

In terms of your comment about women's sports -

www.bbc.com/sport/58732146

'It says the governing bodies for each sport should work out their priorities, and choose whether they will focus on inclusion or "competitive fairness" - and safety if relevant - within the current format of their sport.'

So women's sports can be 'inclusive' or fair. Not both.