Trans vs other protected characteristics

[Rudest75]

As somebody who has always been an advocate of both women's rights and LGBT rights I'm struggling to get my head around the recent trans debate. It seems to be an issue where you can't really support both sides, yet it's so less clear to me than is the case between most opposing ideologies like conservative vs liberal, nationalist vs multiculturalist, etc.

A common question around the bathroom debate seems to be "what rights exactly are trans people being denied?" When I try and apply this question to other protected characteristics I'm even more confused!

If we take the statement "trans people shouldn't be allowed in women's spaces because of a minority of dangerous men" how does this differ from the following examples?

"Muslims shouldn't be allowed in Christian spaces because of a small minority of terrorists/suicide bombers."

"Immigrants shouldn't be allowed in native spaces due to a small minority of rapists."

"Black people shouldn't be allowed in white spaces due to a small minority of gang members/Bloods/Crips."

I can't get my head around it!

Typo! Should say:

There's a reason why trans activists recruit women from the age bracket that has the least amount of life experience to act as their facilitators.

X-post with bee

"Each generation seems to be more progressive than the last in general, and also because they will have grown up with such concepts as gender fluidity which seem to have only come into the spotlight on recent years and are predominantly championed by the young - I.e. genderfluid youtubers/bloggers etc"

You've entirely forgotten the 70s and 80s then.

Each new generation think they are inventing everything. Music, fashion, sex, all of it.

Likening sex segregation to apartheid. Where have I seen that before? Oh, I know......hello Liam.

justanotherzombie yeah, I'm proud of her ability to believe her own eyes.

I could be wrong, but I think the younger generation will accept trans people in a way that the older generation hasn't. I know this will come as a bitter pill to many but I think it's likely inescapable tbh.

Quite possibly. They will pretend they do anyway, whilst having reservations. Like my brothers Uni frends, who agree transwomen are not women and transmen are not men, but are scared to speak up for fear of being branded a bigot. I think its usually with age that silly comments like 'you are a transphobe' for stating biologocal fact don't matter as much.

I am also possibly part of 'the younger generation' being 30 myself. Not one of my friends thinks male people should be able to access female areas (though some are of the opinion that post op people should be able to)

Zombie
But it is men wearing makeup. Some do. Good on them if it makes them happy. Just as some women wear makeup, some don't

They can can themselves woman if they want. No probs.

But noone can change sex

Who cares?

What's wrong with that?

What I'm saying is that I think many young women will welcome transwomen into their spaces

Yes, they will be bullied and threatened into it, if they have not already suspended reality to believe male people are female.

None of this would be an issue without male violence anyway.

Though I guess there would still be the problem of privacy and such. Male bodies are different to female bodies, oddly enough..that pesky transphobic biology again. So even without the threat of rape and such, segregation is a good idea IMO.

However, I'd still rather deal with the errant individuals on an individual basis than castigate the whole demographic because of them.

OK. This is a logically consistent position if you believe that being a supporter of single-sex spaces implies castigation of those who want mixed-sex spaces as standard. I don't think that any such thing is implied.

Women are far, far more likely to encounter an errant male than a dysphoric transsexual person (not the same as transgender) IRL.

I do not want to deal with errant males. Ever. Like most females, I have had to deal with plenty in my life and personally don't want to increase the already high chances that I must do so again. I don't think that other women should be required to risk errant men more than they already do.

Since science and crime stats appear to strongly support my position, my position is rational.

You want all women and girls to risk the errants more than they already do. To avoid invalidating the feelings of a small group of people with entirely different needs. I don't. I find it difficult to understand why anyone would, TBH.

There is indeed a small subset of the younger generation who see nothing wrong with it. However, most of them think it's completely daft. They just don't get involved in it.

Very, very few young people who are actively for it. Most of the time it's just apathy. Which is not unusual.

It's also fairly well documented that sexism does not tend to impact whilst you are still in your teens or 20s.

The divide becomes far more apparent if or when you decide to have children.

I can't tell you the number of Libfems were very pro, until they read more about it.

The thing is OP, the GRA was designed to help a handful of men with gender dysphoria. It was meant to help them navigate life with their condition, a little easier.

It was NOT designed in order that girl guides have to sleep in the same room as boys, or men to take scholarships from women, or infiltrate the diversity quotas. Or for men to compete against women in sport for fucks sake.

It certainly wasn't designed for cross dressing fetishists to get their rocks off in women's bathrooms.

Or for dodgy men who are 'fluid' and decide on the day they feel like girls to insist they change amongst teenage girls in High Street shops.

Helping men with gender dysphoria has been exploited over and over.

No one has a problem with a homosexual transsexual, of the old school type, who entered women's spaces on a courtesy system.

But that is not who we are talking about. We are talking about misogynistic chancers, fetishists and actual bloody rapists Who are exploiting the system.

If it means we have to keep out the old school transsexuals, then so be it.

Because I don't want every predator in the country being able to exploit this law.

And for the word woman to become absolutely meaningless.

Each generation seems to be more progressive than the last in general

Denying biology exists is not progressive. The underlying homophobia in the trans movement is anything but prorgressive, its entirely regressive actually. Accepting transwomen as transwomen, ie. they have the right to wear what they want to wear and alter their bodies if they wish to and such, yeah fine. Accepting transwomen are actually female? Nope

Each generation seems to be more progressive than the last in general

What time frame are we talking here?

There's been plenty of regression in history over generations which have favoured more authoritarian rule to their parents.

That comment is one about post-war western liberal society.

There is much evidence to suggest that era and pattern might not continue.

Each generation seems to be more progressive than the last in general, and also because they will have grown up with such concepts as gender fluidity which seem to have only come into the spotlight on recent years and are predominantly championed by the young - I.e. genderfluid youtubers/bloggers etc

I was a goth through most of the 80s and if you had asked me at that time what the most important thing about me was I'd have told you it was being a goth.

It governed what I wore, the music I listened to, what I read, how I behaved, who my friends were, where I hung out. It was absolutely the most important thing in my life.

Jump forward 10 years and all the things that had been so important then meant fuck all.

Jump another 20 years and I hardly remember that I even was a goth let alone how all consuming and important it was at the time.

It's called growing up and everyone does it who is lucky enough to be alive.

Genderfluid bollocks (and it is fucking bollocks imao) will be the same, it's the goth of our time. Believe in it if you must but it is in no way progressive or to be forced on "unbelievers" - I didn't demand that everyone wear black and listen to the Sisters Of Mercy while drinking snakebite & blackcurrant in order to validate me.

Destroy the cage that is gender instead of creating more bars.

Wading in here with my usual opinion based upon experience of my STBXH.

You say Trans, but what do you mean by "Trans"?

It's an umbrella term. My STBXH has an arousal response to dressing up as a woman, it is linked to sissy crossdressing/forced feminisation. It's a humiliation fetish. In his head being a woman, and to him that means a submissive sex doll, is humiliating. He falls under the "trans" umbrella.

Now he's the sort I don't want to unwittingly and unwillingly encounter in any scenario, whether it be a loo, or a hospital or a refuge or anywhere, because I shouldn't be forced, and no one else should be forced into participating in his arousal fantasy.

The problem many of us have, is that folk who come on here with goady questions likening this to xenophobia, seem to completely miss that legislation designed for the protection of a 14 year old person suffering from gender dysmorphia, is wholly inappropriate for his needs. Or rather to protect us from him.

But I imagine you feel you know better. (Eyeroll)

YY. Putting fingers in ears and pretending that inconvenient material facts don't exist is in no way progressive.

The young generation will be the ones left to pick up the pieces. The emotional and financial costs of lifetime medicalisation, sterility, confusion, lawsuits and detransition. They will feel betrayed. Rightly so.

Trans people can ask for a third gender neutral space or service but choose not to.

I would change this to transactivists could ask for that, but chose to impose on womens right to single sex spaces. Most transsexual people seem to be pretty happy with the third option. They were, of course, happy with using the womens on the kind of 'honor system' we had going on, but transactivists have ruined that. So transsexual people seem to be pretty happy with the third space option, as it protects women, and also protects them. Its the transactivists (and the new breed of 'transtrenders') that are the issue IMO. Not actual transsexual people.

Third space is clearly the answer here. Surely everyone can see this.

Vicxy I'd be delighted to get behind a campaign for third spaces. Absolutely. I feel bad for transsexual people. The honour system has been well and truly undermined by people who are not on their side.

In fact, personally, if this madness goes ahead, I'd prefer the removal of all sex-based segregation, because the sort of man who'd pretend to self-ID to get into women's spaces is precisely the sort of man I wouldn't want in there, and I'd actually feel safer if they were "diluted" by the presence of decent men... But that is just me, speaking from the massively privileged position of never having been sexually assaulted

100% agree with this. Except for the last bit, I haveunfortunately been sexually assaulted on multiple occasions.

But if it really did come down to this, I would much prefer everthing was unisex, so that the kind of men who would force their way into womens spaces..are outnumbered by normal men who would not, and could maybe help stop the pervs. Fuck the only option being that 'bad men' (meaning those who do not accept women have boundaries and such) get to come into the ladies.

The current adult generation in uproar did not grow up with the discussion around trans people so feel it's forced on them.

What a load of old bollocks. 30 years ago I was hanging out with GNC and trans people. I've been in more bathrooms with more blokes wearing more dresses than you've had hot dinners. I've probably snogged more trans and GNC people than most people know.

This isn't a debate about parochial, backwards, bigoted old people railing at the youth of today. We're the generation who defeated Section 28 and fought tooth and nail against the persecution of people with AIDS. Pretending that the people who were supporting the fight against Apartheid are bigots is to fundamentally misunderstand the question.

A better question is why women who fought those things, and continue to fight injustice, poverty, exclusion and bigotry are saying this. Isn't it more likely, rather than us randomly being bigots about one issue, that the issue is more complex than our prejudice?

Exactly pratchet
I remember there being a massive falling out in my mams lesbian group about whether a trans woman could join and that was twenty years ago. At the we were all on the trans woman side because ‘what harm could it do?’
Oh how you live and learn

What part of making a law that if passed would literally make it illegal for women to have a club or space without allowing men to be present progressive?

You have drawn parallels between sex segregation and other groups that we do not segregate by sex

And in fact, it's pretty easy by recourse to history as well as biology to see that "race" and "religion" are cultural constructs (much like gender), whereas sex is a definable biological difference at the level of chromosomes.

"race" is not a real thing - it was invented in order to enslave people from other countries.

Top post @MrsTerryPratchett

I'm a raddled old hag, but I remember partying with GNC and gay me drag queens and scary butch dykes in the late 70s. The current crop of transgender are quite vanilla in their conformity to stereotypes we were all kicking over, 30 years ago.

Yup, Deadly I hold my hands up and admit that the twenty something me was shocked when my teen hero, Germaine Greer, opposed the appointment of Rachel Padman to a science fellowship in a women's college. "What harm could it do?" God how wrong I was. (My undergrad college has now gone mixed. There isn't a single maths, science, engineering or computing fellow who is female now.)

Germaine, I'm sorry. And I'm now entirely on your side.

The TA's have actually managed to do what the PIE tried to do in the 70's - ie. jump on the back of the LGB movement, to make their movement socially acceptable.

The PIE failed - consent with children is unthinkable. Yet the TA's movement seem to have made it acceptable to provide puberty blocking drugs to prepubescent children, as well as surgery. They will be the ones on the wrong side of history.