I would like your opinion on something...

[UnicornsRuleAll]

I am a trans-women, I was born with the male physical body, but always identified as female, did everything commonly associated with "Female" Anyway, I have been told that I should not be allowed to use the female bathroom.

I was just wondering if you agree with this? My gender on my passport is female, I'm attracted to men, I look nothing like a man, yet people are trying to force me into their bathroom regardless, what is your position on the issue?

Sorry. Touched the screen. Taking this on face value, personally I don't have a problem with post op transwomen in the women's bathroom. This doesn't mean I support self declaration as the criteria for what legally makes a 'woman', however, but I think you'd have as much to lose from any abuses of that as I would. I'm totally perplexed as to why you're surprised that feminists have different opinions on the issue, however. Have you bought into the notion that we're anything other than a pile of totally different people who want equality but don't necessarily have everything else in common? What would give you the impression we shouldn't have individual opinions?

If you pass I don't suppose I'd notice you using my toilets.

And if someone is committed enough to go through with GRS then I am happy to share toilets and changing rooms with them (my view, plenty will disagree)

But I think there are some spaces and situations which should be women only. Many TW don't pass and women have the right to have space (eg: rape crisi centres) without wondering if someone has a penis. Also, if I request a female HCP, I want a female. And I don't want to be told that any discussion of the biological aspects of being a woman are excluding you, erasing you or hurtful to you.

Personally I have no issue with you using women's toilets.

I don't believe the op or treatment can possibly level the playing field in sport though, so would support trans people competing in their own categories.

I also, like others on this thread have mentioned, have concerns about this concept of "identifying" as female or being "psychologically" female. Dysmorphia, yes I absolutely understand, and can see it must be very difficult indeed to handle. I feel sad for anyone that cannot reconcile themselves to their body.

I am extremely sceptical of the idea of 'passing' I can tell I can always tell. When I first saw Janet Mock I could tell, I am a lesbian and I have never been confused about whether or not someone is a man or woman even with the most butch masculine lesbians. I CAN ALWAYS TELL.

I think people are just being polite when they say you can pass.

It would be really great if trans people campaigned for safe, dignified, unisex facilities (of all sorts, not just toilets) for themselves instead of continually and aggressively encroaching on women's safety and dignity and calling them terfy bigots if they object.

I realise unisex facilities wouldn't really hit the spot wrt 'validating' transwomen as women but tough, really. Transwomen are not women. Women's safety and dignity is more important to me than validating someone's subjective idea of femaleness.

I guess if you imagined how it'd be for you if you were made to use the male bathrooms with men, you'd feel... unconfortable? Unsafe?

We don't have to imagine. Women are increasingly being expected to share facilities with male people, some of whom 'identify as women' and some of whom are creepy fuckers chancing it for a perv. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference, sometimes it's both. Loads of women feel uncomfortable and unsafe but they are too polite / scared of being called a bigot to object. If Maria Miller's recommendations become law they won't be allowed to anyway.

I personally do not have a problem with transwomen using women's toilets (there is a transwoman at work who does so, and I would not bat an eyelid). I am happy to use their chosen name and refer to them as she out of courtesy. I fully support transwomen's right not to be discriminated against in any form of employment open to both men and women.

However, I do not want to sleep-walk into a situation where (as has happened in some parts of America) girls have to share communal - i.e., no cubical changing rooms - with pre-operative transexuals, where there is a risk that a convicted rapist (that's penis into vagina rape, in case anyone's in any doubt) like "Davina" Ayrton can be housed in a women's prison, I don't want a situation where people with penises can demand access to women's shelters, I don't want a situation where the likes of Fallon Fox end up in the Olympics beating female competitors in, say, boxing or tae kwondo into a bloody pulp.

And I'm not prepared to subscribe to some sort of religious cult like demand that I have to forget all I know about biology and accept transwomen as biologically female, because, however sad it may be for you to try to get your head round this, you are not biologically female. To try to force me to agree to this would be akin to a Creationist trying to force me to believe that evolutionary theory was wrong or someone trying to persuade me that the earth is flat.

And as a woman who has spent her whole bloody life having to fight against sexual stereotypes (I am good at maths, map reading, a professional physicist, I climb, I play football) I am damned if I am going to buy into the crap about ladybrains.

I wish you peace and a happy life. I fully support your right to employment. Because you are post op I personally am more than happy to share bathroom facilities with you. But you can't demand that I change my view about womanhood, gained through 50 years as a woman, with a uterus, and vagina, to fit in with your need for psychological validation.

I am with Germaine Greer on this one.

When people have started transitioning prior to puberty I doubt very much anyone can tell.

Unicorn, please can you answer me and the other poster who asked...

Who is challenging you on your usage of women's toilets?

At the moment I'm assuming no-one is challenging you in real life (because you say you pass). I'm assuming you're just being challenged on the internet, because you've told people you're using women's toilets and you've found some people who don't agree with that. In which case... just stop asking if you should be allowed to use them..??? Then you won't have to get all offended and upset when people say 'no'. I don't get what and why you're asking, I do wonder if you're being goady like some others have suggested.

Feel free to express your opinion, hate me, insult me. Just don't throw bricks at me :D If you don't like me/don't think I'm a "Real woman" Or want me to die, I really have no fucks to give

Nobody here has said they hate you, or that they want you to die.

The only insult that's been directed at you is to suggest that you're a goady fucker. And hysterical comments like the one I've quoted above don't really belie that view, do they?

Toilets are not the hill I would die on.

Medical procedures, refuges, prisons, rape services, school sports and changing rooms and women's spaces for debate and power are. Why is one small group of people's 'weird and unsafe' so much more important than over half the world's population?

Who is challenging you on your usage of women's toilets?

I'd guess the refusal to answer that suggests that a discussion about toilets really isn't the hornet's nest that the OP wanted to stir up

I only meant if I HAD to pick a team, I'd rather pick the females, honestly, I suck at most competitive sports, I can't run 20 ft without getting out of breath, I only play sports for fun

^

You were male once, and that is why you'll never be considered a "proper" woman. You're a transwoman.

Why is one small group of people's 'weird and unsafe' so much more important than over half the world's population?

Because, despite identifying as female, the sense of privilege that comes with being male in a patriarchal society cannot be surgically removed.

I expect this reasoned debate isn't what the OP was after - I suspect they wanted to show what hideous TERFy bigots we are.

Sorry but this is bollocks.

Yep.

Journalist, or bored shit-stirrer.

Live how you want. But if you pass, why would anyone challenge which toilet you use? And why tell people online? Just be you.

If this is for real I would have no problems if you were in a cubicle next to me but I identify as biologically female and would not expect to share a hospital ward or a communal changing room with a biological male

"I am just like every other woman, just have that difference there, that's all."

Whoever you are, whether what you say you are or not, I would like to say this in general.

You seem to have got the rationale slightly wrong.

I was born of the female sex.

The ONLY reason I am 'like every other woman' is that I DO have that difference 'there' - I am the female sex.

The opportunity to be whatever I want to be, whatever I want to do, should be free to me to choose, as to you. People have fought long and hard to break out of the stereotypical definition of what I am as a 'woman' and what society expects me to be.

I understand your desire to be recognised in a certain spectrum of 'stereotypical people'. And most decent human people will accommodate your desire to do this as much as possible.

But please don't box me in and constrain me as a 'woman' to suit your definition of what 'every other woman is' - just because you'd like to be whatever your definition of what 'every woman' is.

Reported.

Because, as another poster said, testosterone blockers were only approved for use in children 6 years ago.
So someone's telling porkies somewhere.....

The ONLY reason I am 'like every other woman' is that I DO have that difference 'there' - I am the female sex.

Yep. The 'exactly the same, apart from the difference(s)' argument is oxymoronic.

I also, like others on this thread have mentioned, have concerns about this concept of "identifying" as female or being "psychologically" female. Dysmorphia, yes I absolutely understand, and can see it must be very difficult indeed to handle. I feel sad for anyone that cannot reconcile themselves to their body. Agree with this.

And this It's about time men learnt to accept transwomen in their toilet.

If men could accept that sometimes other men want to do "feminine" things like wear heels, make up and a dress, and there was no stigma, would as many trans people have surgery? In Thailand, don't a lot of the lady boys keep their penise's but live a "female" life anyway? Asked dp if he would mind and he said no, he goes in to pee not socialise. As do I, hate lingering in the loo when I'm out.