If you're pro Self ID for trans people please could you explain it to me?

[ReluctantCamper]

I have never debated with anyone who's pro self ID because they invariably post 'transwomen are women' on threads and never return.

When I have arrived at a thought out position I'm keen to debate it with others who think differently to test my reasoning - that's how I feel now.

I know we have a number of pro self ID lurkers - anyone feel like explaining to me why it's a good idea?

I promise to carefully read what you say and take it seriously, I don't promise to agree.

Come on, it's my birthday, someone treat me!

No requirement to 'live as a woman'; no requirement to present as a woman whilst they are identifying as one; no requirement to undergo any physical or hormonal change. They will be unchanged physically. The biological sex aspects of them that led to us securing sex segregated spaces in the first place, will be unchanged.

I say this because I've often read the argument "Do you really think men will go to all this effort/have a sex change/humiliate themselves by dressing as a woman just to gain access to female safe spaces"

I think people in support of self ID need to be really clear that this is not what will be expected of them.

They can turn up looking for all the world like a regular bloke. There's no need for them to make any commitment at all to being a woman.

And they will be no less trans in the eyes of the law than anyone you might ordinarily think of as being trans.

Ok @glitched, when the UK government moves from not only proposing self ID gender to self ID Britishness I’ll accept it’s a remotely valid analogy.

In fact, the government is incredibly strict about who it will grant British citizenship to, as you well know.

You will also well know that we do not currently have (quite rightly) any ‘Britishness’ segregated protections akin to sex segregated protections.

I mean, there’s sport. Maybe some Brazilian footballers could self ID as British and we could win something. There’s maybe security services - hell, why not let foreign spies self ID as British and infiltrate?

Like that idiot on that pic upthread - apparently a woman despite the turkey giblets clearly on show. But yes, he's a woman :s

Perhaps we could look at other countries that have self Id laws implemented and learn from them in terms of what has worked and what hasn't.

The problem is, we wouldn't know.

Once they have self id'd they are known by their new name and their new gender/sex.

There are no records and, in the countries where it has been rolled out, it is illegal to 'misgender' or 'deadname' people so no reference to them being trans can be made. There is literally no way of knowing.

And, as Ova said, is covered by some of the safeguarding that some people have been asking for. But so far, all efforts to open a dialogue on this whole matter have been shut down with cries of "bigot" "transphobe" "terf" threats of physical violence, women being excluded from political parties and sacked from their jobs.

Yes, Tinycitrus, that's pretty much how I feel about it too.

I would like to know the definition of woman. One that incorporates trans people in a way which ensures that medical necessary screening is able to be conducted correctly- no smear test appointments taken up with people wanting validation and no missing of potentially fatal ectopic pregnancies to to false information. And no prostate cancer missed.

I would like the question answered how do you plan on stopping women in contact sport getting badly injured playing against "women" twice their size.

I would so like a definitiom of woman that stops 53 year old men being able to play high school basket ball and what part of a lipstick I need to wear because if I asked to join a highschool boys football team complete with my naked male breasts and vagina in the changing room id probabky be considered some kind of predetor

@Justanotherzombie it is great you feel able to share this but can I follow this logic for a minute. Imagine for a moment that you felt this deep sense of belief in yourself as female, blind deaf dumb whatever, as you say, but in reality you were male.

Should your sense of self belief override the reality that others experience? Should you and your make body and your female belief be able to go and shower next to women? Even if you caused them distress?

Does what is in your head override reality?

Look at how blasphemy laws in Pakistan have blighted the lives of so many. Whatever we believe in our heads cannot be used to beat others over the head.

@MrsKCastle it is good that you are debating and I commend you for that. However it's not just radical feminists who feel that woman is a biological reality.

@Justanotherzombie Thank you for debating this. Of course not all trans people are criminals and vice versa, but what when one person is both. Where does this make and his penis go to shower? Alongside vulnerable encaserated women apparently. How can this ever be excused?

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/outrage-transgender-prisoner-living-woman-12022675

male Not make, apologies, autocorrect!

And are you just confining this to people who are trans? Or any man? And how do you tell the difference?

How do you tell the difference is the question I think I would like those who support self id to answer the most, tbh.

That and "how do I know I'm a woman?"

I also see that much of what is being proposed in the GRA is already happening- transwomen are already accepted into some women’s refuges, into women’s prisons, into women’s sport.

So is there there any work being done on the effects of this, prior to the introduction of the act? Or is this a case of individual’s rights superseding any critical examination? what about children/young people? What are they being told about biology vs gender? And who is informing those discussions?
No one with power seems to want to ask these questions because they fear being branded a bigot and their political career being ended (on an echo of the way many women feel at work when confronted with this issue)

Maybe this is all a storm in a teacup and it will be ok?

I think that the current system is fine and find it crazy that self-id for gender is prioritised in a culture where people have to fight to get medical diagnoses and justify them at assessments to get PIP and practical help like Statements at school. If TM wants to expedite the identification (diagnosis) process for a group of people, she could have picked a less trendy group like new mothers or children waiting for a dyslexia assessment.

Also, sex offenders are a small class of men, I think they should be dealt with separately regardless of what gender they present as. I think it’s truley terrifying to have a sex offender have access to vulnerable women in prison but that is the case in male prisons. Surely the argument is to police them better for everyone’s sake.

Sex offenders are not a small class of men. They are part of the class that is men. Trans women are from the class that is men and so therefore cannot be excluded.

You have already acknowledged that someone from the class of men self Id as a women to gain access to women's estates is 'terrifying'.

The police, prisons and parole board already spend millions of pounds addressing the issue of sex offenders. The answer is that men should not feel entitled to sex offend and it is up to MEN, as a class, to address the issue, not women and not the tax payer.

Sorry meant to add my italics on the quote and it was addressed to Noni

I think that the current system is fine and find it crazy that self-id for gender is prioritised in a culture where people have to fight to get medical diagnoses and justify them at assessments to get PIP and practical help like Statements at school. If TM wants to expedite the identification (diagnosis) process for a group of people, she could have picked a less trendy group like new mothers or children waiting for a dyslexia assessment.

YY

It's taken 8 years to get an EHCP for my child (who got top tier funding btw when the system finally agreed to go through with assessment)

The idea that other groups are not subject to worse gatekeeping is laughable and insulting.

I think it is hard to fight our own social conditioning, that overwhelming ‚‘BE NICE‘

Once you spot that for what it is, the scales fall away.

"I think that the current system is fine"

I don't think it is. I think women and girls are been silenced, made to feel uncomfortable and abused by the current system, but nobody is acknowledging it.

The current system is for the benefit of trans individuals, not the good of women and girls. GRA and GRC recognises persistence, not femaleness. Who has been given the power to change 'women' and 'female' to 'men who consistently claim to be women'?

There is no reason why a man needs to be labelled as a women.

Just to be clear sex offenders accessing the vulnerable in male and female prisons is terrifying. They shouldn’t be allowed to access anyone ever. I feel that getting to gender argument is a distraction from the reality that we do not deal with sex offenders adequately.

But what is what self id will mean, Noni.

Those people will have access to vulnerable women, or just any women, and children.

And we don't deal with sex offenders adequately, so why not tackle that first?

And they're not sex offenders until they offend, so why make it easier for them? Or for opportunists?

"We don't deal with sex offenders adequately" is not an argument for self ID.

Just to be clear sex offenders accessing the vulnerable in male and female prisons is terrifying. They shouldn’t be allowed to access anyone ever.

Male prisons have separate facilities in which they can accommodate those who pose the greatest risk to fellow inmates. Women's prisons don't. In a women's prison, those men would be amongst the other inmates.

Women's prisons don't have the facilities to protect the female inmates from these men.

Just to be clear sex offenders accessing the vulnerable in male and female prisons is terrifying. They shouldn’t be allowed to access anyone ever. I feel that getting to gender argument is a distraction from the reality that we do not deal with sex offenders adequately.

You're in denial.

Cross dressing is the most common paraphilia in sex offenders.

Under self-ID (and in current trans ideology), cross dressers are as trans as anybody else.

Under self-ID, trans-identifying sex offenders will, by law, go to women's prisons.

Under self-ID, cross dressing sex offenders will have unimpeded access to all spaces where women and children are vulnerable.

This is not difficult logic to follow.

Make an argument as to why you believe this is ok? Because if you support self-ID, this is what you support. No amount of prevaricating from you can escape this. This is what you support. So tell us why it's ok. And make us believe it.

YTho

Datun, I'm just trying to think of reasons why some people don't seem to have an issue with self Id. Maybe if it came to that, in your examples the letters could be send to anyone identifying as woman or maybe registration forms would separate gender from sex. Sports might end up with other categories based on physical differences rather than sex. Etc. That's why it would be handy to know what other countries are doing about these issues.

No you are finding a way to form a rational argument. And I appreciate it.

Separating gender from sex is good idea. Unfortunately it's relentlessly pounced on as transphobic.

Sport being based on other physical characteristics would also be transphobic. The idea is not to separate out people into categories of likely performance, but into categories of sex, except allowing meant to be absorbed into the category woman. There is zero validation for a sportsman, who is not very good, being put in the men's team. And anyway, he will fail, amongst men.

And we can't look at how this is working in other countries, apart from what people are saying, either anecdotally or in newspaper articles, where they are allowed to talk about biological sex. Because men identifying as women, are recorded as women. In terms of statistics.

Hell, the debate has been shut down here to such an extent, that most people don't even realise this is going on.

In New York City you can be fined $250,000 for misgendering somebody.

How the hell can you talk about the problem of not being able to talk about this, when you can't talk about it!

www.google.co.uk/amp/amp.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/18/de-blasio-fine-businesses-wrong-gender-pronouns/

As a female the way I would deal with sex offenders is to not allow men into all female spaces. That would be my response to the problem, which is not my problem, it's a male problem.

If someone believes that transwomen are women then what does women mean?

I see what’s happened. I don’t support self ID. I think the arguments are about different things. There’s nothing stopping people wearing what they want and I haven’t seen any argument for people not being allowed to do something they want. I don’t agree with hacking off body parts but that applies to nose jobs and skin peels too.
And we do know who sex offenders are. We (society) just don’t really care. I watched my dear old dad fight for the prosecution of those who protected people. Please don’t assume I am naive to this.