Until we organise as well as the transactivists we're not going to stem the problem

[dorade]

Everyone, regardless of race, creed or sex is entitles to the same human rights.

I have three issues with much of the current trans ideology:

1. The erosion of women's spaces, sports, achievements and quotas by biological males who wish to identify as females.

1. The transing (and therefore subjection to lifelong medical treatments, invasive surgery and potential sterilisation) of children for failure to comply with societally-imposed gender norms.

1. The erasure of lesbians, either by transing of potentially lesbian girls or by transwomen claiming to be lesbians.

The trans lobby is vocal and well funded. They have found an enormously soft target in schools/government/social care, all of whom unsurprisingly associate transgender with gay and lesbian issues and don't want to repeat the bigotry that gay and lesbian people were (and are) subjected to. Identity is not the same as sexual orientation. A person's sexual orientation treads on no-one else's rights. The same cannot be said for gender identity.

When articles, such as the recent transgender rapist one, appear in the press, the vast majority of comments show that the public is not fooled. Yet people keep quiet so as not to appear bigoted, thus allowing the movement to steamroller on at the expense of women and children.

I believe that the main target for opposition should be in our schools. Organisations such as Gires and Gendered Intelligence distribute material that promotes ideas such as pink and blue brains and that any child can choose whether to be a girl or a boy to impressionable children, backed up by teachers. Opposition to this is needed and it is not happening in any concerted way. I think a backlash has every chance of succeeding as there is huge latent support for it.

The average person in the street knows little to nothing of trans issues, but is likely to believe that a transwoman will have had his penis removed. The fact that in 2 weeks' time the Government is going to be debating replacing sex with gender identity as a protected characteristic is way off the radar of 99% of the population.

Mumsnet is brilliant in debating these issues, but we need to take it to the next level.

I'm a bit late to this party but up for some online activism (I'm not in the UK, so can't get involved in person)

Please can someone post an idiot's guide to setting up an anonymous Twitter account, bypassing the need to give mobile details?

I can try to answer questions about Parliament, legislation, lobbying MPs, policy documents etc

@Iris65 well if you read my earlier post you'll have seen that someone in my office is doing just that. Women on some days (expecting all rights that go along with that inc using the FEMALE bathroom) and a man for other days. Feel free to call me a liar but the reality I'm actually living in.

Not going to engage with you further on this thread.

I've been PM'd by someone asking for my TERF Twitter account if you are genuine sorry but I'm not linking my MN acct to my Twitter.

If I don't recognise the NN from these threads I'm going to assume you are a TA troll.

If the Twitter account you link to is non existent or not openly gender critical I'm going to assume you are a TA troll.

I've sent the CPS the following feedback. Feel free to use some or all of it:

Hi, in your LGBT Teacher pack (www.cps.gov.uk/publications/docs/cps_lgbt_teacher_pack.pdf), you describe the seven protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010 as:
Protected characteristics
The Equality Act general duty requires that in respect of students, schools must have due regard for seven protected characteristics: disability, ethnicity and race, gender, gender identity, maternity and pregnancy, religion and belief and sexual orientation.

However, this is not what the Equality Act 2010 says. While there is currently a Bill being debated in Parliament to change one of the characteristics TO gender identity, it is not currently a protected characteristic, and gender is not mentioned at all.

The protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 are as follows:

1. Types of discrimination ('protected characteristics')

It is against the law to discriminate against anyone because of:

age
being or becoming a transsexual person
being married or in a civil partnership
being pregnant or on maternity leave
disability
race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin
religion, belief or lack of religion/belief
sex
sexual orientation

(source: www.gov.uk/discrimination-your-rights/types-of-discrimination).

I would be grateful if you could ensure that this error is corrected, and the rest of the teaching pack compare to neutral, scientific or legal sources rather than those prepared by pressure groups.

I look forward to your response.

In response to a request upthread, here is my letter to my MP. It's not perfect, but I based it around various ideas from various places. Please feel to mangle, criticise and adjust it as you see fit. In fact, the more it is altered, the stronger it will be, because if an MP gets several identical letters, s/he is going to twig, and think, ah, someone's just cutting, pasting and signing off.

Dear [Name of MP]
I am contacting you as I am deeply concerned about the review of the Gender Recognition Act 2004. On 24th March the House of Commons is due to hear the second reading of the Gender Identity (Protected Characteristics) Bill. The issue that troubles me is that, if this bill passes into law, the only criterion for somebody being declared to have changed their gender would be self definition (exactly how this would work in law is not yet clear; it appears that it would be necessary to sign a legally-binding declaration). It would sweep away the current controls on the process, which require a person to have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, to have lived as their desired gender for a minimum of two years, and to intend to continue to do so for the rest of their life.

I fully support the right of transgender people to live their lives without facing bigotry or discrimination, and I have no objections to sharing public toilets and changing rooms with postoperative transwomen. However. I have deep concerns about gender self-identification becoming binding in law, because this would almost certainly have negative consequences for women and girls, particularly those who are already vulnerable.

What is often not known is that a significant proportion of transgender men are attracted to women, and also do not have surgery. This, coupled with the fact that any man with doubtful aims could claim that he had decided to ‘live as a woman’ (whatever that means), would put at risk women in prison, in psychiatric wards and in women’s refuges. We are already facing the situation where the case of a man charged with two rapes and a string of sexual assaults, and sentenced in absentia, is discussed in the following terms by The Daily Telegraph:

'"Last night, Crimewatch covered the case of Lisa Hauxwell: a sex offender who could be living as a either man or a woman. On the run from a 14-year prison sentence, the offender has not been seen since being convicted of a string of rapes and sexual assaults committed between 2001-2002.

"It has become, sadly, typical to hear of appeals for information on male sex offenders - yet when the perpetrator is female, it always seems much more shocking. "
(See www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/truth-female-sex-offenders/)

The article is illustrated with a photograph of Hauxwell in make-up, with shoulder-length blond hair and elaborate earrings.

Hauxwell is not a woman. Hauxwell was charged as a man (Craig John Hauxwell). Yet, in this article, it is implied that he is ‘female’ and nowhere is it made clear that he is, in fact, biologically male: one can only deduce that he is if one is aware that, in British law, rape requires the use of a penis. This obfuscation can only serve to skew both public perceptions of crime and (depending upon how such things are recorded) the crime statistics themselves. It also implies, should self-declared gender identity become the yardstick of a person’s legal sex, that Hauxwell would be sent to a female prison, despite the fact that he is a dangerous sexual predator who molests teenaged girls (according to the initial BBC Crimewatch page, which is no longer available: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/vz0g2KwjxYsG1dDFGQGlWx/lisa-hauxwell). One wonders to which prison Hauxwell (who has now been caught) will be sent.

Moreover, such a redefinition of what is meant by the word ‘woman’ would allow people who remain anatomically male to compete in women’s sports. The International Olympic Committee has already ruled that transgender athletes can participate without surgery. One might as well abolish women’s Olympic teams completely, since the vast majority of women are shorter, lighter and less strong than the vast majority of men, and hormone therapy (which the IOC does still require) will not completely change that. Indeed, tranwomen athletes will be allowed to compete with levels of testosterone three times higher than the female average (www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/rio-olympics-caster-semenya-how-does-testosterone-affect-athletic-performance). There are also situations (such as wrestling) where the imbalance in physique could be extremely dangerous to female competitors faced by a transwoman.

I would ask you, therefore, to oppose the proposed legislation on the grounds that it would effectively erase ‘sex’ as a protected category in law, and ask for a full equality impact assessment of the proposed changes on women and girls.

Yours etc...

Dana could forward that elsewhere? Equalities minister (fk wit I know) or Caroline flint or press?

wobbly I'm having a think. But feel free to use it yourself too. It's strength of numbers that's going to get us noticed and hopefully stop the proposals in their tracks.

I think we should use sex role stereotypes when talking about gender, this makes it clear they are just stereotypes allocated to people because of their sex. So when people say gender we can say 'oh you mean sex role stereotypes', this allows the innateness and mythical definition of gender to be challenged very early on. I have found even those previously supportive of trans ideology understand it quite quickly this way.

I also think if we are talking about having extra facilities in addition to male and female, they should also be referred to as unisex. I think we need to go back to using sex to mean sex and make it clear that gender = stereotypical roles.

I also agree that the emphasis needs to be on boys/men accepting sex role non conforming boys/men into their spaces not girls/women having to accommodate them. There is no avoiding this as that is what ta's are pushing for and what all their activism is about; forcing girls/women to shield them from boys/men they don't like or fear.

I think we need to make it clear that we are all for males (and of course females) not conforming to sex role stereotypes. We also understand that some people genuinely feel like they are the opposite sex. However, that cannot possibly be down to anything, but internalising stereotypical beliefs about what a woman or man is.

There is no escaping having to say this, because they are relying on either sexist "brain sex" nonsense, co-opting intersex conditions, or the strength of their feelings to make this ideology legitimate. From this of course all the problems result, and if anyone challenges these concepts ta's use the poor me narrative to try and guilt and shame us into giving into them. There is no way around it we have to challenge the ideology and the people who use these arguments. We have to do this with the facts about biological sex and by pointing out the idea that stereotypes and feelings make someone the opposite sex is deeply misogynistic.

birdyblue
Please come out of the playground.

I'm not going to call you a liar.

Your experience has nothing to do with the gender legislation or the CPS education pack.

Your managers have chosen to accept that someone uses both toilets.

I am not sure why it is an issue for you though? Is it the toilet thing? If it is you must find it very difficult in restaurants and cafes that only have one loo. You have my sympathy there - especially if you have 'urgent' needs.

Or is it the clothes? I don't like the way some dress either, but eh, we all have different tastes.

Your story makes a nice example though for the narrative on these threads.

Oh, another fun fact.

Its not actually illegal for either sex to use a toilet labelled as a mens or womens toilet.

So actually - whisper it - a man can already use the toilet in a women's facility. He cannot however peep, record or otherwise abuse others in the toilet or around it.

Fuss? What fuss?

WitchingHour666

'Sex role stereotypes'. I love that. Does exactly what it says on the tin and eliminates all the special snowflakery around the word gender.

I wrote to the CPS about the Schools Pack discussed in the transgendertrend blog. www.transgendertrend.com/cps-schools-project-the-erasure-of-sex-and-the-silencing-of-girls/

I specifically wrote about the fact that the Equality Act 2010 was misrepresented (i.e. the protected characteristics are wrongly listed). In reply I was told that these schools packs are currently in the process of being updated. I think right now would be a great time to contact the CPS with any concerns about the impartiality of materials they are providing for schools.

"I also think if we are talking about having extra facilities in addition to male and female, they should also be referred to as unisex."

I think you're almost there. I think we should actually refer to these facilities as 'mixed-sex'.

In contrast to single-sex.

PlonitbatPlonit

Mixed sex. Yes. Yet another word that makes it sound less cool than unisex.

Brilliant post WitchingHour666

'Sex role stereotypes' - perfect.

Thanks Stop for the Twitter names. I've followed them all and a few more.

Witching - or they have vagina envy. Where's freud when you need him??

You should be able to use email to create Twitter accounts instead of a phone number.

I've just took a screenshot on the sign up page and there's an option to use email instead. If you select that the. You can sign up via email instead of phone.

If you don't want to use regular email address then creating a gmail is easy.

I'm just about to start writing a thread and will link here once done.

Bev dr lise elliot 2015 meta analysis of over 60 or 70 odd peer reviewed studies proves that are birth, before the effect of hormones and lived experiences on use dependant brains, male and female brains are functionally exactly the same. Just Google her name.

There are tones more expert names in the field, but a meta analysis in comparison to the pink/blue brain 'evidence' of non peer reviewed handful of small studies where males had already taken female hormones for a considerable period of time is hard to ignore.

We could also contact Dr elliot & her colleges to see if they would offer support or a voice

I hardly every post these days but wanted to voice support. Some fantastic lucid, reasoned posts here, and on other threads, thanks for all the work you are doing to make more people aware of the issues and prompting me to think about ways of taking action/ spreading the word.