Feeling sad & weary that feminists & trans women are constantly pitted against one another?

[SmiledWithTheRisingSun]

That's it really.

Instinctively I feel very protective of feminism and all that those incredibly brave women before us achieved. Thanks Nanna 💛

I totally support the idea of protecting women only spaces and don't obviously want a bunch of women-hating rapists in female prisons etc

BUT... surely there's a happy medium to be found ladies?!

Surely there must be reasonable people in the trans community who understand the need to protect all that feminism has achieved?

The same way that I'm a white middle aged woman who doesn't feel the need to demand entrance to a black feminist group. I can support their right to exist without being undermined by it.

What to we call these feminist / trans sympathisers? Please enlighten me wise MNERS.

Love from,
A middle aged feminist who wishes you all peace and love X

Trans people say this is an humiliating & intrusive process. I can see their point

Good post, Not It isn't right for example that transwomen are forced to perform femininity to the nth degree during this process to be validated. Women aren't generally held to those standards on a day to day basis, a choice to live as a woman isn't tested on your capacity to run for a bus in high heels or whether you wear a skirt often enough.

If the process isn't right, then the first step is to look at that process and improve it rather than just abandon there being a process. And there needs to be a balance between weeding out the genuinely inappropriate and insensitive elements and understanding that having a process is a necessary check and balance on the system.

This doesn't however deal with another key issue: the GRC is based on two medics agreeing that a person suffers from gender dysphoria. However the trans lobby position is that gender dysphoria is not necessary or relevant to identifying as trans, it is not a medical condition and this is about choice and feelings. I can't find a reference but I believe the information is that people with gender dysphoria are only a proportion of the trans population; many others would not currently qualify for a GRC. Therefore they would prefer self ID to replace the need for one.

This on one hand becomes part of personal freedom: you are who you are today, and enact the gender role you feel. On the other hand it means the legal rights of being trans are also extended to AGP men and others for whom dressing as a woman and accessing women's spaces is a sexual fetish. They are validated in that choice the same way as someone who is transsexual and has lived all their life with the effects of gender dysphoria. This necessarily means that women are non consenting participants and even props within someone else's sexual fantasy in changing rooms, dressing rooms etc.

This opens up a whole new can of worms and precedents.

If we're doing away with intrusive and humiliating processes, I look forward to the renewal of my PIP next time.

The GRC process hasn't been right for bloody years though. All it does it cement gender stereotypes and insist people jump through stupid hoops. I have a friend who went through the process years ago who I discussed with at the time, and s/he was very insistent that in giving up hobbies and behaviours that relate to socially defined 'masculine' roles (motorbike racing etc) because s/he felt it would cause problems with the GRC. I did point out the utter stupidity of the system then (and of her swallowing it hook, line and sinker, because she would ask me about nail polish colours blah blah blah.) It's actually a particularly insidious form of holding trans people to a higher account than any old ordinary woman, which sort of does play into the whole 'transwomen are better women than women are' stupidity. Unless you work at a make-up counter or for a 1980s airline, most women haven't been tested on their ability to wear heels or apply make-up, or simper. We are in no doubt how we are SUPPOSED to behave, and we might receive societal disapproval for not doing so (blah blah hairy legs blah) but we don't have to prove we are women because we just are.

I assume originally the GRC was a way of weeding out the pervs and the part timers - if your mental illness/ alleged gender dysphoria withstands the pressure of the GRC system, including therapy etc, then there is a reasonable chance that you really do believe you should be a woman, and aren't really likely to be much of a danger to the real female populace. So you may as well 'live as a woman' with no real detriment to society.

I understand fully that transwomen are pissy because they currently have to 'prove' they really do feel like a woman, whereas actual women don't. We just are. But that isn't actually a reason to just forego any tests that investigate the depth of mental illness and dysphoria that an individual is suffering from. What getting rid of the tests will do is allow open season for everyone, including the ones with nefarious intent, and it WILL have serious repercussions for society.

The GRC is a bit 'damned if you do, damned if you don't'. The intent (to maintain societal status quo in terms of sex) is good news for protecting the vulnerable and bad news for cementing stupid gender roles.

But I have no idea how you can determine if an individual man claiming to be a woman is a danger to women at either a micro or macro level without some sort of test/ legal ruling. And it's any sort of test that TRAs are fighting against. And winning.

I'm no fan of the insistence that gender roles are maintained, which is why I struggle with the idea of a GRC (because fuck knows, most of the women I know would 'fail' the test) but I am a huge fan of there being a structure in place over a long enough period of time, so that people claiming to be suffering by being called a man can be properly evaluated and given the help they need. I'd be quite happy for gender to implode. But not sex. That doesn't even make any rational sense.

I think I've seen it all now, a woman claiming to be a feminist but isn't bothered about the erosion of women's rights. Welcome to their brave new world where woman doesn't mean woman and feminist doesn't mean feminist.

How does woman having to prove damage to either physical or mental health and have to get two doctors to sign differ from this as an humiliating and intrusive process? Also doctors can opt out of being involved in abortions.

Not wishing to conflate another highly contentious and emotive issue. Just thinking out loud.

There a lot of human rights that woman in this country STILL don't have before I even get started on globally.

It isn't right for example that transwomen are forced to perform femininity to the nth degree during this process to be validated.

AFAIK this is not required these days. The evidence the panel looks for is 2 years worth of documents in the new identity plus two medical reports.

The two medics who provide reports do not have to agree that the applicant has gender dysphoria. You need one medical report that says you have gender dysphoria and one that includes details of any treatment you have had.

the first step is to look at that process

I absolutely agree with this. I would encourage anybody thinking the GRA needs reform to thoroughly aquaint themselves with what is currently required both in law and in practice.

f we're doing away with intrusive and humiliating processes, I look forward to the renewal of my PIP next time.
Well, quite. There’s a level of narcissism in some of the trans activists’ rhetoric.

And we read here on MN frequently posts from women frantic and scared about this, or the intervention of the DSS with their children. Maybe transwomen really do need that 2 years of “passing “ to understand the regular usual not-always-benign interventions of the State in women’s lives

Brilliant thoughtful sensible post @blacksoggotmytongue

it must be within our powers in this country - with its great traditions of materialist philosophy and pragmatic democracy- to work out a way of ensuring there is safety for all, and clarity about sex/gender roles.

Personally I’d rather we invested as a society in expanding what it means to be “male” and lifting the constraints of masculinity from men. Poor things

There a lot of human rights that woman in this country STILL don't have before I even get started on globally

Absolutely. It sort of suggests that transwomen have a rather limited idea of the realities of women’s actual lives

My problem with this as a model yo aim for in all circumstances is that communal changing rooms are one of the few places where young children (of both sexes) and young women actually get to see real women's bodies. Even before I became aware of the current Issues I was concerned that the move away from communal changing was a real loss, with young women being left with no counterbalance to the increasing pornification of young people's lives.

I wholeheartedly agree. It's crucial children see normal adult female bodies. Having done so as a child kept an eating disorder just about in check when I was a teen. It made a huge difference.

The whole thing is wrapped up in stereotypical bollocks and nearly always from the male perspective of what being a woman means.

I tend to agree that trans women have a rather limited idea of the realities of women's actual lives. They simply can't have an idea of the reality of periods, PMT, developing breasts, worrying about getting pregnant, worrying about not being able to get pregnant, unplanned pregnancy, planned pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or menopause because these are things that you need to have a female body to have.

And these are just ordinary, run of the mill issues for women. Then we have PCOS, endometriosis, side effects of hormonal birth control, infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, terminations, SPD, birth complications, pelvic prolapse, mastitis and so on and so forth, which affect many women during their lives. Because they have a female body.

One of the most insidious effects of the GRA is to have elevated gender to somehow be seen as more valid and important than sex, which has paved the way for the ridiculous situation we have at the moment, where people genuinely state a position that sex is all in the mind and can be changed at will, whilst gender is somehow intrinsic.

And here is the esteemed Shon Faye explaining how he 'renounced his masculinity' whilst women were doing the cleaning in the Opus Dei house that he lived in.

He seems to see no irony in the fact that wearing sequined tops, earrings and lipstick are the parts of 'femininity' that you can opt in or out of (he opts in), whilst domestic labour isn't (he opts out of that, strangely enough).

www.vice.com/en_uk/article/kwxjn9/living-with-opus-dei-student-390

Shon Faye is a nob.

Who ARE Shon Faye and Paris Lees and why on Earth are they given so much attention by the media?

From my limited knowledge they both just come across as extremely unpleasant individuals.

If I need to do my own googling/homework please just tell me

These two particular individuals are, I think, mostly given media attention because they are trans and 'pretty' (though the latter is debatable if you look beyond still images in both cases). They are useful for showing actual women where we are doing womaning wrong. They are feted because they make the effort to look pretty and do completely nothing to challenge men's attitudes about women, while at the same time being part of the most opprestest oppressed group ever. For your average brocialist dude what's not to like?

BatShite
Fistbump of solidarity for being on myriad block/Do-Not-Reblog lists circulating in MRA and Trans identified male spaces on the interwebs.

When I was a child I had a deep yearning to be a boy and felt sad I wasn’t one. I have grown up to be a very stereotypical female and realise now that the reason I wanted to be a boy is because of the influences around me, films like Stand By Me, The Goonies, E.T and numerous other films where boys seemed to have so much adventure, comic books where nearly all characters were male. I believed boys had more fun. Thankfully gender dysphoria 'treatment' wasn't available to children at that time.

Being a woman is not just physical, it is how society treats us and how we internalise that. The experience of being a girl going through puberty and to woman adulthood just cannot be imagined by a person born male. All they have is the male perspectives of being a woman. If they are transgender they have that experience, which I imagine could be very difficult, but it simply is not the same, no amount of frilly knickers or lipstick will make it so.

I think in Lees case, it helps with their profile with the lefty dude-bros that they say that sexual harrassment is validating and empowerfulising. What a fabulous get-out-of-jail-free card for the lefty dude bro who quite fancies being able to continue to pat women's bums and make sexist comments in the workplace without finding their actions subsequently attached to a #metoo post on twitter: "Look, I can't be a bad guy because this fantastically sexy looking (trans)woman says it's okay to behave like this."

The 10th rule of misogyny is that the worst thing about male violence is that it make men look bad.

DharmaLovesDrarry
In answer to your question, yes, here in the US most of the court cases brought by Trans organizations have used teen girls who identify as boys to assert the right to use the restroom and changing room of their choice. This has had varying results in different states.

I think in Lees case, it helps with their profile with the lefty dude-bros that they say that sexual harrassment is validating and empowerfulising.

Did Lees actually say that?! What exactly did she say?

So they've not actually done anything useful for society then? They're famous for being famous?

There must be trans people who have actually achieved something?

And I mean achieved something as a trans person, not IW who achieved as a man and then transitioned?

Lees' article for Vice: "I Love Wolf-Whistles and Catcalls – Am I a Bad Feminist? I get the stuff about 'power imbalance' but it just makes me feel sexy."

It's all a bit 'Hugh Hefner was a feminist'.

I get the stuff about 'power imbalance'

Stuff? And power imbalance in quotes?

No mate, one thing you don’t, is get it.