Can you all just lay off trans people

[cjferg]

There is a difference between sex and gender. Some people's align, other people's don't. Some people are biologically female, and their gender doesn't match that and vies versa. Some people don't have a gender. Why do you care so much?

One of my best friends in school was biologically a female. When he 'came out' to me as trans and explained how he had never felt comfortable in his body all I thought (and anyone who knew him) was that I wasn't surprised and that it made a lot of sense and we all got on with our lives. This was about age 17 and he said he had known this since he was a kid (not saying that any kid who says they want to should be able to willy nilly block their hormones, etc, btw)
It wasn't just about 'presenting as a male'. He was actually a male in a female body.
Yes, when he started presenting as male he felt a lot better. I remember he didn't want to go to our prom because of all the dressing up, etc. until we suggested he wear a tux, and it was amazing to see him so comfortable.
But still he hated having tits and having to wear a binder (can be done safely if you get a proper binder and don't just use bandages or w/e so don't even start)
It wasn't enough to just stuff the front of the trousers.
I repeat, he was a man trapped in a woman's body. Not just a cross dressing woman, not just in an experimental phase.

I have another friend who is biologically a female but they don't have a gender. They are known as 'they' not 'he'or 'she' and knowing them you would in no way think that they are either male or female, again not just about looking a certain way.

I also see a lot of people on here ranting about trans people and they literally only care about transwomen. Genuinely, what has happend to you that you feel so threatened at the thought of someone with a penis being the same gender as you?

Stop ranting about how men are going to use it as an excuse to perv on your kid in a changing room. I'd bet quite a lot that more women will perv on your kid in a changing room than men pretending to be trans will.

Gender is evolving all the time there are no definitive rules to being a man or a woman.

For every thing that you think being a woman is, there will be a woman who disagrees with you.
You say that being a woman means having a uterus - does that make people who've had theirs removed for medical reasons not women?

If being a woman means the ability to have babies then does that mean infertile women aren't women?

If you think being a man is the ability to grow facial hair does that mean that men who can't aren't men?

I read about a woman who had poly cystic ovaries and had a luxurious, thick beard and moustache as a result. Does that mean she is a man or less of a woman? Or should she have continued to try and shave and wax it off and be ashamed of it rather than accept herself the way she was and rock the beard?

Seriously, we've come a long way from being a woman meaning you're your husband's property and having to squirt out babies and clean your whole life. Why are you so determined to go backwards?

Stop using the teeny possibility of a man pretending to be trans to invade women's spaces as a vehicle for your hatred and open your mind enough to at least try and understand the issue, because it might be your kid. It might be your dad. It might be your bff 4eva. If that were the case would you ostracise them from your life and declare them a fraud, or have a little empathy and try and support them through something potentially life changing.

drops mic

Because biology is actually all that does define you as a woman. And how others treat you based on biology.

Biology defines a female. How others treat you defines the gender construct of a woman. There is a third thing for some people; they are aware of something inside them which is "man" or "woman" (usually). I don't think they're all lying that this is their reality.

There is, for most people, absolutely no 'internal sense of womanhood'

Not sure about that. MN Feminism board is not indicative of "most people".

Women know they are women because they have a female body. Not because of some soul or something.

Maybe you're right, but you can't prove it. Maybe you're wrong, but I can't prove it. Neither of us has a right to impose our views on the other to the exclusion of the others' reality.

I shouldn't have mentioned that Jack Monroe thread, it's too easily a distraction. Unfortunately for me I have a habit of "stream of consciousness" writing sometimes.

It just seems to me that the amounts of both these people (women pervs and men pretending to be trans in woman's changing rooms pervs) are so tiny, and surely shouldn't be the basis of any argument as to whether trans people should be allowed into woman's changing rooms.

Transwomen have used female changing rooms for years.

The problem is that recently there has been a huge push for self identification. If all someone has to do to change their gender is simply fill in a form then why wouldn't every perv and creep take advantage of it?

There are a lot of Catch 22 problems such as transwomen not being able to use women's bathrooms because they may not pass amazingly well and not being able to use the men's because they are wearing a dress

Again, transwomen have used female toilets for years. Why do people find this so hard to grasp?

Also, why would a transwoman automatically be wearing a dress? A lot of women don't wear dresses and even those who do don't wear them every day but that doesn't mean they aren't women. It's shit but if transwomen are concerned about being judged and abused for wearing a dress then they could simply not wear one. They're not compulsory.

Over a thousand years of men declaring women to be subhuman and women insisting on our humanity and people still argue that woman is a separate feeling, distinct from feeling like a person.
Most people feel like people in spite of being told they are not.

cjferg

One thing you haven't addressed is the fact that many women such as Muslim women, cannot use a shared space with trans women.

Intersectional feminism either includes those women or tells them to stay at home and make way for someone with a penis. It cannot do both.

The not passing Catch 22 has been talked about for years. That's why we've been fighting for singer user unisex facilities for decades. There is even a TEDx talk on it. We've been shouting about it because as I said in a previous post most dysphoric people will never benefit from any bathroom laws. Either way, we're fucked, the only people who benefit are those who can muscle in anyways.

The idea that my dysphoria is like being an amputee is...I'm not sure what to say beyond the fact that the most recent treatments for phantom limb sensations is to use a mirror to trick the brain then retrain the brain back to reality. The end desire is to reconnect to reality, not pretend it's there, the brain thinking it is there is what is causing pain.

Brains are weird complicated things that are far easier to convince into all sorts of bullshit than most people think. Our brains are terrible at correctly identifying what is causing certain emotions and we attach those feelings to whatever is convenient. Sometimes that is our sex characteristics. Personally, I think there are plenty of dysphoric people writing about our experiences that we don't really need non-dysphoric people coming up with odd analogies from completely unrelated disabilities. If you're going to compare, ones that dysphoria is co-morbid with like PTSD might at least be a better place to start.

Rat

You don't think your thoughts through to the end.

"But as with all of these things I'm not prepared to write-off the hundreds of thousands of people who are saying it is real. I believe that, if nothing else, it is real for them and whilst they should not impose their reality on me I should not impose my reality on them. It's a question of tolerance; much like you say about religion. You have to allow people as best you can to live in such a way as reflects their reality; you can't force everyone to be religious but you can't ban religion!"

Firstly, I just love the tolerance argument. It's always "you have to be tolerant of me, but I don't have to be tolerant of you". Plenty of women saying they really don't want others in a few select spaces that should be for us. You say no, no, how dare they, they need to be tolerant. The hypocrisy is real.

Secondly, yes, you're very right, you can't force people to be religious, and yet trans are effectively doing the same as forcing religion on people. By forcing women to accept them, they are in fact forcing women to accept trans reality. Something that you said you think is wrong.

Male predators who pretend to be trans in order to get into places like women's changing rooms definitely aren"t the regular subject of newspaper reports.
I know! They are reported in the media as women, until the last paragraph where the fact that they are male is sometimes disclosed.

Seriously, bewilderness? I've got to say I can't remember when I last read about any attack in a woman's changing room by a man or transwoman against a woman. OTOH, a friend of mine was attacked in one by a group of women.

Again, transwomen have used female toilets for years. Why do people find this so hard to grasp?
Trans identified males have also used male toilets for years without a problem. Why do people find this so hard to admit?

I don't have a womanly soul either

Now I'm being told this means I don't fit the criteria for being a woman. So what the hell am I? I can't be a man because I don't have a manly soul and also I do unmanly stuff like menstruating and breastfeeding my babies

Am I a person at all?

I've got to say I can't remember when I last read about any attack in a woman's changing room by a man or transwoman against a woman

Because they aren't reported as such. They are reported as being committed by women and the fact they are trans is usually left out of the story.

At some point the request for tolerance becomes a demand for submission. That is where we are now.

It just seems to me that the amounts of both these people (women pervs and men pretending to be trans in woman's changing rooms pervs) are so tiny, and surely shouldn't be the basis of any argument as to whether trans people should be allowed into woman's changing rooms.

What on earth do you think legislation and statutory safeguarding obligations are for? The large number of people who don't present a risk? Or the small number of people that do present a risk? I'll give a you a clue - it's the latter.

Nobody is objecting to fully transitioned people using facilities for their acquired gender.

People are objecting to self-ID being the threshold to access women's facilities and also to any male-bodied people accessing women's facilities.

Here are some truths for you:

1. fetishistic cross dressing is the most common paraphilia among male sex offenders

2. male sex offenders go to incredible lengths to access women and children - they spend lifetimes as Catholic priests; train to become teachers or gynae HCPs; volunteer in orgs and charities

3. if you make spaces for vulnerable women such as refuges, changing rooms and the rest easy for male-bodied people to access via self-ID, these are EXACTLY the places where male sex offenders will go

4. this is bad for women and children. It is also bad for dysphoric people who have transitioned. You know - the ones your ludicrous OP thought it was defending

Page after page of people actively denying any personal, internal EXPERIENCE of their womanhood that wasn't either the reality of their bodies or their treatment by other people.
What's your personal internal experience of womanhood not based on your body or treatment by others?
And how do you identify that as womanhood not personhood?
Genuinely interested. Being a woman to me is literally just plumbing.

PleaseDont, the post I replied to implied that there are frequent reports in the papers of attacks on women in changing rooms. But there really aren't, whether they are reported as attacks by women, transwomen, or men.

Silly ladybrains banging on about material reality instead of their fee fees.

Thank you for this, OP. It amazes me how people on this website say such horribly transphobic things and then, as soon as someone calls them out, they deny all knowledge. They claim that they are 'suffering' because of rights being afforded to trans people, when the trans people are the ones suffering. It amazes me that people can be so selfish and uninformed.

Male predators who pretend to be trans in order to get into places like women's changing rooms definitely aren"t the regular subject of newspaper reports.

At the moment, the potential "risk" to a perpetrator of entering a female space is quite high. They can be challenged by potential victims before they offend.

"Increase the risk" is one of the five basic crime prevention principles.

Self identification will reduce the "risk" to the perpetrator, because, female spaces will, in effect, become unisex, and it is less likely that a potential perp will be challenged 1) because there will be more people who present as male using the facilities, and 2) because potential victims will be less likely to challenge a male presenting person as male-presenting persons will have legal protection to be there.

Sex segregation was introduced to reduce the risk of people without penises being the victims of perps with penises.

There is no evidence to suggest that risk has reduced.

So why are we proposing to remove the crime-prevention methods that have been put in place to mitigate the risk?

YY MrGHardy it's all a bit one way isn't it?

But as with all of these things I'm not prepared to write-off the hundreds of thousands of people who are saying it is real.

... and at the same time all the women answering Jack Monroe were 'banging on' about their vaginas and clearly just lacked self-awareness. Oh and MNers are some strange sort of outliers if they don't have the ladyfeelz

But women don't claim that we feel like women, we just are.

Well aside from the fact it is expected that you are a woman (in the innate sense) because of your biology. If the two were at odds you might find the idea of expressing yourself much more pressing!

What is a really dangerous way to go is having a protected characteristic of 'sex' and then emptying it of all meaning. This is what happens if you say it's possible to be a woman in a male body. Every sex based protection in the equality act becomes meaningless.

Sex is sex is sex, is male and female, not a problem with that. But "woman" refers to gender, which isn't sex, so can protect people on the basis of either, surely?

A man might feel 'he is a "woman" in a male body' but it is demonstrably true that he is not, in fact one.

Except it isn't. You cannot demonstrate categorically that there is no internal gender and that it's possible to have a female body and a male internal gender. You just can't.

Seriously, read up on the mind body problem. You can't even prove that other people have minds.

we must believe transpeople's claims as Gospel and do whatever they demand'?

Nope, we just have to try to find a way to allow them to live within their own reality that doesn't impose that unduly on people who don't share it.

I'm all up for debating how that comprise might be achieved in each specific circumstance.

It amazes me how people on this website say such horribly transphobic things

Such as?

They claim that they are 'suffering' because of rights being afforded to trans people

What rights did trans people not have previously that they have gained recently? More importantly, what rights do they not currently have that they will gain if/when the law changes?