DEBATE NOT HATE: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT GENDER

[blackistheneworange]

Sorry if this is on here already but just seen it on twitter.

It's this Wednesday in Brighton which may be too short notice for me but you can book here. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/debate-not-hate-we-need-to-talk-about-gender-tickets-38129665857/amp

On Self ID. The consultation has not started.

I heard of a prisoner who claimed to be trans so that his searches had to be conducted by women prison officers, to whom he was offensive. I consider he should be disciplined for that. He was not in a women's prison, though.

Generally I feel that only people who transition will seek a gender recognition certificate. Why would anyone else want one? The claimant would still self-certify: I had to have my GP and my psychiatrist say that I had transitioned, and was likely to remain expressing myself female for the rest of my life, but claimants under streamlined rules would have to assert that themselves. I provided wage slips as proof of having used my female name at work for two years. Society can still be protected from people pretending to be trans without the intrusive and expensive medical certification.

It may be your genuinely held belief that only men who are trans will want to self ID, but people who work in Rape Crisis and domestic violence know that men will go to extreme lengths to get access.

Oh and don't forget the prison service flagging up the huge number of applications for transition that hugely disproportionately represent serious sexual offenders.

Clare I agree with a lot of what you say about gender, I think it is harmful to both sexes and puts people in boxes they do not wish to be in.

You say that you believe a world without gender would be the best situation so that people can present however they wish without discrimination. I agree with this too.

Where I disagree is how to reach that point, I believe that the GRA, rather than freeing people from gender, actually enshrines gender, implying that if you don't fit the man both then you must be a woman and should erase your history and change your paperwork to hide any evidence that you were otherwise. I find this really sinister; this isn't accepting people how they are. I think it is fine to be trans and you shouldn't have to hide this fact away like it's some dirty secret.

I believe people should be free to present how they wish however they were born. I think the best way to do this is to have laws to protect gender non-conforming people in all shapes and forms not by denying people's history's.

I also think we need to have the language to talk about the things that happen to females because they are female - nothing to do with identity. Female infants killed at birth, girls who die in menstruation sheds, who are denied an education, who have their clitoris' cut off, who are forced to give birth, lose jobs because they are pregnant, don't get jobs because they could possibly become pregnant.....
We need to have unambiguous words that describe these people as a class to be able to name the problems. Biology and its effects isn't something females can identify out of in most situations.

So we're back we started. Transitioning helps alleviate symptoms of gender dysphoria. Everyone understands that.

The consensus is gender dysphoria is exacerbated, if not caused, by strict gender stereotyping. Got it.

Transitioning and claiming you are the opposite sex reinforces gender stereotypes.

Clare I do not agree with your assertion, nor do I share your confidence, that men will not exploit this law. They are doing so already, in droves.

Do you seriously think that every predator, rapist, paedophile in the country wouldn't merely say they are trans? Paedophiles spend literally years on targeting victims. They wouldn't have to do anything. They wouldn't have to dress differently, act differently.

Every time a man commits a crime, he is taking a risk. He is risking arrest, conviction and incarceration. Every single time. These people are not risk averse.

The men who hit Maria at speakers corner looks exactly like young male thugs. Claiming they are women.

Do you really not think these people are salivating at the chance to intimidate women everywhere.

It takes a very specific outlook to not see this from a female point of view. And that outlook is male.

Women get harassed, intimidated, groped all the time. In public, on trains. Women are ejaculated on, for heaven's sake. We get followed by creeps into bathrooms all the time. But at least, at the moment, we can object.

If this goes ahead, it will very swiftly become completely commonplace for men to enter women's spaces. It will just be accepted.

I'm sure you don't want to do any of the things I mentioned. But it's profoundly frustrating when, just because you don't, you think no one else will.

And yes, men are being transferred to women's prisons. Martin Ponting just recently is the latest.

Women's sport will be pointless.

The word woman has no definition. How can women fight for sex protections and rights when the word woman now includes men?

When crimes committed by men are being recorded as being committed by women?

No one fails to understand your reasons for transitioning. Given our gendered society.

But changing the law to eliminate the biological categories of men and women is devastating to women.

Ponting or Whitfield is now in segregation. The BBC said there are about eighty trans prisoners. Whitfield had psychological assessment and some treatment, but not genital surgery. I don't know what to do about prisoners. I read of male staff coercing women prisoners into sex. I don't think the possibility of having a trans woman prisoner transferred there is the biggest threat to women in prison or the biggest scandal about women's prisons.

It's nice that you are so cavalier with women's boundaries and safety Clare. Some people are walking on eggshells around you here, but you really appear to me as self absorbed as most other transactivists. Appreciate the willingness to dialogue but I don't really think you're making much effort to understand from our perspective.

I have been abused in the street, propositioned and sexually assaulted more since transition. A man held out the possibility of a job I wanted, but he only wanted sex, and would not take no for an answer. I think such experiences would be worse if they started when I was 13. I don't deny any of this. I don't think the answer is to prevent transition, though. Possibly extending Equality Act protected characteristic status to non-binary, while maintaining women's space for women, would improve matters.

Yes, I'd support that. As long as woman = female.

Why should gender identity be a protected characteristic though? It’s entirely subjective and objectively meaningless.

I agree. But as a compromise, if women's (female) rights, spaces, scholarships etc are safeguarded, I'd be ok with it.

Same as protections for religious reasons for dressing or behaving a certain way, maybe, Adelind?

Meanwhile: Dear Labour party, I would like your 'Women in Leadership' representatives to be actually female.

If gender identity is a protected characteristic, everyone will be forced to use the pronouns du jour, lest they commit a hate crime.

Currently gender reassignment is the protection.

I, for one, am deeply against being forced by a law to call a man a woman. I do it out of politeness.

How is it possible to protect gender identity when no two people use the same definition? What would protecting gender identity mean in practice? Is it the right to wear whatever clothes you want or be seen as the opposite sex?

It shouldn’t be a protected characteristic for the reasons above. I’m not willing to accept a law that says I have to use female pronouns for men or call them women. Religious people don’t force me to type g-d or go to church do they?

clare

All your experiences are what women have to put up with on a daily basis. And have done for millennia.

If the law changes, this will only increase and objection will be utterly silenced.

There are very many transwomen who find harassment validating.

The unequal power dynamic between men and women is always underpinned by the knowledge that they are far more vulnerable and weaker. It's not in the slightest bit validating, it's incredibly threatening.

I'm sorry for your suffering and I wish you didn't have it, but I agree with a pp that there are very few transwomen, who aren't instantly prepared to sacrifice women for the sake of their mental condition.

There are lines in the sand. Redefining the word woman and all that it implies is one of them.

I have no idea Bob, the consultation documents have not been released.

I'm sure they will not be validating 71 different genders identities, though.

It will be just transgender.

Since there will be zero criteria, and being trans is unidentifiable and unverifiable, it's going to be the biggest stick with which to beat everyone that men ever possessed.

I've been wondering why the trans narrative is very keen to keep including non-binary in everything they say and do.

I'm wondering if it's got anything to do with changing gender reassignment to gender identity.

Could it mean they can chop and change on a whim, and we all have to comply?

So someone is a she on Friday night, but a he on the Monday morning.

I have been abused in the street, propositioned and sexually assaulted

Me too. It's a common experience for women, in fact there's an article today about young women being so used to being groped that they regard it as just part of a night out. I'm not keen to line up for more of it, or have women only bathrooms removed. I've seen my share of women crying in bathrooms in clubs, bars and other places where they've escaped from an abusive man. If this legislation goes through the man will just follow them.

I don't think the possibility of having a trans woman prisoner transferred there is the biggest threat to women in prison or the biggest scandal about women's prisons.

It's not exactly going to help, is it? Saying it's not to you the biggest threat or scandal is a nice way of dismissing and invalidating the conversation. As I said above, the prison service themselves are concerned about the sudden, very sharp increase in men referring themselves as transwomen, the massive majority of whom are serious sexual offenders. They have collected from the men themselves the reasons for this, and two of the big ones given are easier access to victims and the privileges attached to trans status. As for 'serious sexual offenders' - are you aware of how serious a sexual assault or rape has to be to get a conviction at all, never mind a prison sentence?

Datun I suspect it will be rather like the transwoman in the article about how feminists fighting objectivication of women was transphobic, because they craved being objectified. However they added perameters around it that they should only be objectified when they wanted to, ie when out clubbing at the weekend, and not when they were trying to work or were busy.

Women don't get to choose. They don't get to put limits around it. They don't get a say at all. It's called oppression.

Biologically born men do not get to appropriate the bits of women's experience that suit them, while keeping and using their male experience to set boundaries and limits and not bother with the inconvenient bits - and meanwhile legally rip away biological women's rights to even talk about this never mind resist it. It's using women to facilitate, enable and empower men.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

LadyChatterleysKnickers

The new boss is worse. It's the old bus with knobs on.

Everyone of these threads which "debate" this issue, reads to me like a group of grown women attempting to negotiate with a toddler holding a marker pen. And the child is loving all the attention.

I'd support extending protected characteristic status to non-binary as long as woman = female, and where there is a conflict the presumption is that women will be given the preferential treatment (eg it is not criminal to only employ female bra fitters; women can refuse to receive intimate care or medical treatment from a TW without breaking the law)

I've been reading but not commenting and the overall impression I get from their posts is that Clare appears to put womens needs, wants and safety secondary to trans womens. Even trans women who are male bodied rapists.

And we're to believe that Clare is an example of a transwoman with moderate beliefs? Hmm.