AIBU to feel concerned for my ordinary trans friend

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She transitioned years ago, is well known in certain circles not for being trans but for her professional achievements, gently supports other trans people but wouldn’t tell a women’s group what their agenda should be nor attempt to speak on women’s issues.
And yes chopped off her male genitalia and endured lots of ops
Has spent years rebuilding family relationships and is happier
Would prefer to use the women’s toilet and would feel unsafe in the men’s (has been attacked/had stuff thrown).

Where does this polarised debate leave ordinary people like her?

Formerly - that's a lovely story. I hope that the doll gave her happiness and peace and kept her just a bit grounded amidst the beast that is dementia.

The really silly thing was we had a compromise system that worked pretty well most of the time - if you had dysphoria and were serious about presenting in the way society associates with the opposite sex, you could get a GRC. And most women were pretty polite and accommodating towards transwomen in, say, toilets

Have we been or it’s just that we haven’t really said anything becuase we felt we are being rude but still felt uncomfortable

See it’s that issue girls/women being uncomfortable when on a safe space and that’s irrelevant of how that transsexual/transwomen opinions becuase we are unlikely to know them unless we get into some sort of discussion

And who judges if they pass which is a very delicate and sensitive subject not one I would want to make

I do feel sympathy and sadly we do have a trans lobby that is no doubt making life more difficult for some trans people

I do feel for your friend op, it's people like her who the TRA are also throwing under the bus.

I imagine she is very saddened at what they are doing.

Have we been or it’s just that we haven’t really said anything becuase we felt we are being rude but still felt uncomfortable

I was completely comfortable in toilets with transsexual women and spent a lot of time in clubs and pubs where I was a lot.

But I didn't have a DD at the time and wasn't expected to have HCPs whose sex I didn't know. I know that accommodation was working in homeless shelters, where natal women were always centred and consulted about any accommodation. But I can't speak for anyone else.

I'm sorry for your friend.
Truthfully, I think medicine and the law have failed transpeople by humouring and facilitating the idea that sex change is possible and is a solution to gender dysphoria. Rather than allowing the legal fiction to be created, with surgery and a GRC, that a man can become a woman, there should have been a better structure from the start. I believe these loopholes were created in full knowledge that this is a bad idea, but with the optimistic hope that bad law, and bad medical practice can be tolerated if it is statistically miniscule. It's a stubborn refusal to follow a path to its logical conclusion that has led us here.

And now here we are.

The solution should never have been to facilitate a fictitious change of sex. Medicine should not have trodden that path.

Law could have been structured to preserve the rights of people with dysphoria to live as the sex they are. And should have been.

GRCs produced an exception to a rule that was always inevitably going to end here.

This will now go one of two ways: the law will be forced onwards until it is meaningless and neither sex nor gender are concepts which can be defined or protected. Or, the law will be revoked, sex reverts to being what it is in reality, and the idea that people can be 'trans' will become a historical blip. Hopefully the law will then restructure itself to protect male people who wish to be perceived as female (and vice versa) without actually validating that belief or compelling others to.

Where humanity is concerned, we are all humans.
Where sex is concerned, none of us are anything other than our own biological sex, from birth to death.
Where rights are concerned, both sexes should have equality.

I have one good friend who is trans, plus two acquaintances that I'm friendly with, who are also trans. None of them are TRAs. None of them support self-ID. All of them fear what they see as an inevitable backlash when the extent of the misogyny and homophobia of the current iteration of transactivism can no longer be hidden.

I do feel sorry for them.

BUT - I have also had fairly blunt conversations with all three. Unless they speak out and unless they organise to create a strong alternate voice for trans people and stop allowing the TRAs to speak for them or leave the handful of who are speaking out to bear the brunt alone, they will have to assume some of the responsibility for that fall-out.

I know it's scary. I know the TRAs are vicious. But we women are in an existential fight. And it's MORE scary for us. We are being doxxed, threatened, reported to our employers, campaigns to no platform us and expel us from political parties are rife. We can't fight for them as well.

Even the nicest, most genuine MIT, is still male. What gives them the right to call themselves women and use facilities designated for women and girls?

If they think they might be harmed by TRA, then they should do something about it.

It really shouldn't be the role of women to protect MIT, certainly not at their own expense.

Yes, this shit harms genuine transsexual people as much as it harms women. Whats really annoying is that before this new brand of transtrenders/MRAs appeared, things were ticking along rather nicely and compromise was on all sides. The activists today have made it so that..there have to be hard lines in the sand as give an inch and a mile is taken. It harms everyone except the activists, and men.

TheButterflyOfTheStorms

I think there is a big difference to how many of us would feel if we are somewhere that we are mixing or know of transsexuals/transwomen are around clubs etc

That is very different to let’s say at a station late at night using the toilets and you are the only one in there and someone walks in that you are not quite sure and then can easily lead to feeling in danger I just don’t feel girls and women should have have to feel that way in a space we should feel safe

I think there is a big difference to how many of us would feel if we are somewhere that we are mixing or know of transsexuals/transwomen are around clubs etc

Absolutely. I was recently in toilets down a looooong corridor with a bloke quite close behind me. I did think, "what will I do if he comes in the Ladies after me?" Because WFT can we all do if self-ID hits?

@TransPortFormerlyCherie excellent example about the doll..... I knew you were going to say burning building before I got to that but. Really good.

I also think women do a mental test of what they can tolerate, and they imagine the least threatening scenario. Shop loos, somewhere like John Lewis, broad daylight, lots of people around. They crucially imagine a single male vs themselves, perhaps with plenty of other women around.

What they don't imagine is the late night, deserted, scenario. And they don't imagine several men (cos, what are the odds, amirite?) and them alone, in the minority.

women do a mental test of what they can tolerate, and they imagine the least threatening scenario.

I also think people are envisaging able bodied women, healthy women, strong women and women who haven't already been traumatised by assault.

They're also imagining grown women.

I've already stopped using shop changing rooms because I'm no longer confident of being able to challenge men's presence and I feel physically vulnerable, albeit still feisty. Feisty isn't much protection if you can't run and you can't fight back hard.

Lots of women will stay out of public spaces much more, if they don't feel safe.

A hundred years of progress deleted;

www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/womens-right-work-toilet-bathroom-victorian-london-wwi-factory-protest