Changing gender without any medical care/advice/opinion - just saying 'I'm a woman' and it being so

[Oscha]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40692782

I feel so naive right now-I didn't think this would really get to this point: So they actually want to make it possible to turn around and say, 'I am a man/woman' without any kind of doctor's confirmation of gender dysphoria?

What the fuck is this going to do to women's prisons? How many female criminals will end up abused, raped, killed by MEN in what should be safe places for them?! This is nothing to do with trans people-this is just going to be taken advantage of by predatory men.

I don't know what infuriates me more: the proposal itself, or the fact that the government is only planning to consult the LGBT community (for which, read 'Trans' - they certainly won't give a what lesbians think) and not the 50% of the population who will be put at risk.

MineKraftCheese

Not sure I did it tactically, but I did keep talking about it. We fell out about it and I stopped for a short time, but he is a good guy and we talk politics a lot so it naturally came up again.

I also read a lot about identity politics and the 'progressive' movement. There is a full on feminist versus 'anti' (progressive/feminist) thing going on online. I was very confused with what was going on and when my teenage son told me he didn't like feminists because of Anita Sarkeesian, I was horrified and decided to find out what the hell was going on.

Basically there is a clash of the 'progressives' who seem to actually very regressive left wingers pushing identity politics versus 'liberals' who oppose no platforming and the push for equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. The trans thing is firmly ingrained in this ideology. I discussed and debated this with DH, telling him that he was fucked because as a white, hetro, cis, educated male and was responsible for all the fucking evil in the world and needed to "check his privilege", he quite rightly said fuck that shit. Once we started talking about the movement in terms of identity politics and post modernism/post truth, it all seemed very clear, to him and to me.

I also worked out that the Anita Sarkeesian thing consisted of a long running fight she was having online with Sargon of Assad online. Turns out both of them are arseholes. My son agreed too

I used to work at a Rape Crisis hotline and have just had the most terrifying thought. Fuck me, I had really not considered this actually happening or the consequences, in anything more than an academic sort of way. Imagine a man declaring they're female and it being illegal to discriminate against them, so they can work on the line and the raped women who call up hearing a man on the phone-a man getting his kicks from it. Nowhere would be safe.

I mean, it's obvious, I know, and people here having been talking about it and raising awareness for years, and I've read along and nodded and never actually understood properly. I feel like I'm having some kind of unexpected moment of mental clarity and it's bloody terrifying.

This has already happened, Oscha thetyee.ca/News/2007/02/03/Nixon/

The MTT eventually lost, after costing the women's shelter huge legal fees. But that was before the law changed in Canada to allow self-identification. Now the women's shelter would lose.

People made this point before Canadian law changed, but of course it was only women who were at risk so no one gave a .

A good result in the end, but what an exhausting and expensive palaver to get there. And yes, terrifying to think the opposite decision would be made now 😕

"I magine a man declaring they're female and it being illegal to discriminate against them, so they can work on the line and the raped women who call up hearing a man on the phone-a man getting his kicks from it. Nowhere would be safe."

But we are told that men wouldn't humiliate themselves by pretending to be women. So we are safe

We are losing the words to describe ourselves, female, women and lesbian, as well as the means to protect ourselves from male violence. Seems many people are keen for this to happen.

I don't understand barbara findlay, the lawyer who represented Nixon and who is a major transactivist. She is a lesbian who suffered persecution in her youth, can't she see how women and particularly lesbians are harmed by all this?

Oh heck. It's all going to kick off now isn't it. My fb is still full of rainbows, love is love, and live and let live. My friends all, without exception, think that trans rights are a natural progression of gay rights.

Apart from my gay friend, who actually gets it.

I feel kind of grimly vindicated on that front Morris though I wish it hadn't happened in the first place. I was eaten alive on FB a year ago when I posted about the Olympics Committee ruling, especially by Americans, but I think a sea change is happening.

Right, I no longer consider myself bi due to being in a super long term monogamous heterosexual relationship, but for the purposes of being able to complete that survey I am owning it.

What the actual fuck have I just read?

This is horrifying.

Genuis suggestion from other thread re contributing responses

" We will have to claim that we are transmen? Or come up with some nonbinary bullshit?"

Thanks to Madre

I'm going to identify as a gay trans- man. I can keep my long hair and dress and female anatomy, but get a 15% pay rise, and not be castigated for
Sleeping around
Never doing housework
Not having children

It's a WIN, I tell you.

All straight women should just identify as gay transmen from now on.

*Baalam: i have a little girl who is on a sports talent pathway for female players.

That means shit now.*

I know - I could weep for your daughter. It is so unbelievably shit.

The next census will take place in 2021.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Census_2021

I'm putting down male as my gender then. I'm going to do it.

Forgive this mental download – I’ve recently finished writing a psychology paper on gender and I’ve all sorts of thoughts chasing round in my head.

This is a theoretical concept, by the way – it’s a “what if” series of thoughts about transgenderism and, if self-identity is inevitable and accepted by society as a whole, how it could potentially play out.

All the psychological and sociological evidence I looked at for my paper suggested that “the feminine” (as a socially constructed concept) was aligned with all the sexist character traits we’re all familiar – subservience, objectification, passivity, hypersexuality, submission. “The masculine” conversely was aligned with leadership, physicality, logic, independence, dominance.

If we take the words “woman” and “man” to have reference to gender rather than sex, what you have is a word that describes a personality type unrelated to biological sex. And by allowing people to self define, you naturally get people aligning themselves to their preferred societal role. In other words, you get people choosing whether to be the care-giving underclass or the class of leaders. Instead of these roles being socially imposed based on biology, as they have been in the past, they are consensually chosen. For some, the roles will undoubtedly be sexualized as some find it exciting to be “humiliated” by their subservient, sexually submissive role. Perhaps even they’d find it exciting to be humiliated by lower pay and more domestic work. I’ve known plenty of AG people for whom this certainly would have been the case.

Like I said, this is theoretical, because current oppression has its roots in biology, and women can’t identify out of that. But what I’m wondering is whether transgenderism has the potential to change that? What if patriarchy and/or capitalism doesn’t really care about the reason for oppression, but just wants to benefit from a sub-class. If 50% of the population capitulate to traditionally female oppression, would that satisfy it? Could society shift so that people can actively select to be in that sub-class, and if it could, would people with uteruses THEN be able to opt out of gendered violence by means of self-identification? Could it, in other words, be the route by which biological women finally escape biological-based oppression?

(Obviously I haven’t thought through prisons, shelters, changing rooms etc. Just having a brain spew).

Greypaw - I think that sort of thinking (voluntarily opt out of the oppresssed class) is what's behind the somewhat muddled thinking of a lot of biologically female trans teenagers. Unfortunately the wheels come off when it hits the buffers of male sexual violence - there was that terribly sad case of the young transman in the US who was raped by a taxi driver. According to the police they kept saying repeatedly during the assault "but I'm a man", then kept saying to the police afterwards "but I told him I was a man". It is totally tragic to picture that poor young person.

Identifying as a man will not stop male rapists raping you. It will not stop male bosses sacking you when you become pregnant. It will not stop male bosses who correctly read your non-passing underlying sex from not employing you in the first place. It will not magically make you strong enough and fast enough to get gold medals/tens of thousands of pounds a week pay cheques in elite sport. In real terms it will mean fuck all.

All it will have done is made you invisible, and stripped you of the language to even name your oppression. Because if you identify as a man you still won't be treated as a man in the areas that really matter. And if you identify as a woman (because for good and honourable and valid reasons you want to be a nurse, or a care worker, or a mother) you will be deemed to have freely chosen your own oppression, lower/no wages ('cos remember choicy choice feminism-lite is all about choices made in a social vacuum where no-one ever suffers from social pressures or stereotype threat).

One of the things that really upsets me about this possible legislation is that, statistically, initially it won't affect that many people.

Maybe in towns, cities, areas with a significant LGBT community. But the trans community is very small.

It will take time for the repercussions and implications to come to light.

And the drip, drip of cultural acceptance will be going hand-in-hand with that.

Sadly Datun I agree that this is the most likely outcome of gender identity laws. We can hope that there will be a huge backlash once the implications for women and children become clear, but it's more likely that there will simply be a slow shift of social mores, to a society where women and children are more unsafe and less involved in public life, and this becomes the new normal.

Women's rights, sex-based protections and legal and social mores around protecting children from predatory men are historically circumscribed and contingent; they haven't existed in most human societies across space and time. The only reason they exist now is because feminists fought for them. They could easily be lost, along with the political consciousness that made them possible.

Of course, the other thing that will be lost will be the ability to analyse or even name male violence against women and children. Because all the male-pattern crimes that this new legislation will enable will be recorded and reported as crimes committed by women.

Oh my god. I'm so relieved to find this thread. I don't understand this at all. And I've found you cannot talk about it without being labelled transphobic, which drives me crazy. I have no issue with trans people. But why does no one seem to consider the way some men will use this kind of legislation? Its an affront to feminism that areas such as women's sport can be essentially hijacked by men. They may feel female but if their bodies are male, their bodies are male. End of.
Regressive-left-'progressive'-sjw feminists get so het up about mansplaining and their experiences as women being minimised by the white patriarchy and all that bollocks, but seem to have no issue with men declaring that now they identify as female they experience the exact same issues that females experience. It's so incoherent.

I remember Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche getting ripped apart recently for saying a transwoman's experience isn't the same as biological woman's experience. I don't agree with everything she says but this seemed a reasonable view however she was seen as a transphobic anti-feminist bigot. Things are going crazy.

My eldest daughter tells me I'm being transphobic because of these views despite the fact I say to her that there are many trans women themselves who are very concerned about this issue, but their voices aren't heard either and that they are also considered terfs. She simply says that they are wrong.

This is so awful. And people can't see it - you can't stick your head above the parapet without being shot down and told that you're unsupportive and don't understand. I am supportive, very supportive of the people who were born into the wrong bodies and are miserable as a result, but changing gender is a huge, huge decision to make and you have to be sure; there has to be a medical diagnosis and counselling and absolute certitude, for the transgender person's sake. The solution isn't this - to denigrate women and take away our words and our identity and any right to feeling safe and secure. It makes me both sad and furious.

But the paradox is that the TRAs DON'T actually want to be the subservient underclass at all, they are extremely happy with their male privilege and the status it gives them in society, as shown by the fact they expect all their demands to be met just like that - and the fact that is actually happening.

They want to appropriate every aspect of women's identity that arouses them or satisfies them in some way, they want to invade women's spaces and take over women only services and support structures, access all the opportunities that were created specifically to redress the horrendous societal imbalance between women and men - but they DON'T want to be voiceless, powerless, shat upon and generally screwed over at every turn, as women have been for millennia and evidently still are.

It is heartening to see on threads like this though that more and more women are waking up to what is going on here, and now utterly repressive and AGAINST social justice this whole movement is.

jellyfrizz I really agree with this whole post of yours:

Changing birth certificates really concerns me. It's like trying to erase the past or the truth.

To be truly trans inclusive we should be looking for a society where people can present however they want whether or not it matches your birth cert, not encouraging people to erase their past. It's really sinister.

And gender isn't even on birth certificates. It's biological sex.

Gay rights were and are about fighting to be recognised and accepted for who you are, for not having to hide who you are in order not to be persecuted or discriminated against.

The TRA movement is all about denying who you are. Those transwomen with genuine gender dysphoria who recognise that there is an essential difference between them and women and respect that difference, the ones who are accepting of reality, they are getting such a hard time over this as well. My support is for them.