Row over women-only sleeping berths on trains; Men V Mumsnet!

[SuitedandBooted]

Would anyone like to try and put some comments on this story - I don't seem to be allowed!

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5565999/Row-female-compartments-transgender-people-pits-Churchills-grandson-against-Mumsnet.html

Giving transwomen a single berth seems a pragmatic way of enabling them to feel safe too

I don't follow this comment- anyone can get a single berth if they pay for it.

I am very sorry that any woman feels uncomfortable in a mixed dorm. But the reality is that this is their preconceptions, and their choice to avoid. Not that all men are predators.

So a male bodied transwomen can say they don't want to share with men because they are afraid of attack. And we all need to listen to this and change legislation accordingly.

But if a woman voices that same concern then tough shit because that is just her 'preconception' and she will just have to avoid that situation?

Right, got it.

Because I believe most trans-people are not perpetrators, but simply (like my gay friends) people trying to be who they feel themselves to be, and expressing that.

I believe that too. It's the predatory buggers who PRETEND they're trans in order to assault that worry me personally. And they exist. Don't kid yourself they don't. And they are doing a massive amount of damage to the genuine trans community.

No one here is anti-trans. We're anti fake-trans-in-order-to-gain-access-to-women.

It's not just about cost. For example if I wanted to leave London late on Sunday night (later than the last flight) for an early morning meeting in Edinburgh, the sleeper would be the thing to do. But I don't think the argument about other options is actually relevant, having said that.

To me the relevant issue is two people in a confined and lockable space. I'll happily share almost any space with a trans woman, but I can definitely understand why some women would be very uncomfortable sharing a sleeper compartment with a trans woman, unless they know her personally perhaps.

Can we stop conflating standing by the scientific fact that trans woman are biologically men (often with their genitalia intact) with homophobic or racist beliefs? It’s utter tripe and will end up landing you in court.

As I understand it, the sleeper train has the normal seated carriages as well? With seats that are cheaper?

I hope anyone with a booking that wants a refund due to the new policy will get one. I can't see how anyone else has an interest.

As I understand it, the sleeper train has the normal seated carriages as well? With seats that are cheaper?

Yes, it does, although travelling in one of those seats while trying to get any kip is absolute hell. I think I got about 30 minutes of sleep once over the whole night doing that!

I can't see how anyone else has an interest.

Because some of us might still need to travel on the sleeper before October, perhaps?

This kind of shruggy dismissive "well I don't know the details of any of this, but regardless of that I'm sure you're just making a fuss about nothing" response is really not helpful to anybody.

As I understand it, the sleeper train has the normal seated carriages as well? With seats that are cheaper?

Sigh - I said that several posts back.

The London to Scotland sleeper train has sleeper cabins which you can book as a couple (no idea what they cost) or as single occupancy for £140- £170 or shared occupancy for £100 -£125. If you book the shared occupancy you might be lucky and get a cabin to yourself because most people book single occupancy and even if you are willing to share there may well be no-one else willing. If you are unlucky you will share with a strange woman if you are a woman or a man if a man.

The seated carriages are mixed and are £45-£65.

What you were doing allington was making a false equivalence.

The accurate comparison to a woman being afraid of being in a confined space with an unknown male is a black person being afraid of a white person, not a white person preferring not to share with a black person because they think the black person is subhuman. This is just a fact. The racism your daughter has experienced would be more closely equivalent to a male mistreating a female, if one insists on making a racial analogy here.

As I understand it, the sleeper train has the normal seated carriages as well? With seats that are cheaper?

I know a lot of people who have their tickets pre booked for them by their workplace.
So they have shared cabins.
Presumably those work places would no be liable as the single sex provision is no longer being met.

When actually, given the last few centuries of history and societal power structures, the appropriate comparison would in fact be a black person who was afraid to share with a white person. I'm never sure whether people doing this are being disingenuous or if they're simply experiencing an honest failure of understanding.

I am never quite sure if it is because people believe the zombie lies that never die or simply DARVO.

The anecdote, by the way, was a case where my fears and perceptions turned out to be my own mindset, not the actions of others.

As were mine once when I slept in a shared cabin on a train between Singapore and Malaysia. Other women have not been so lucky though, and having read news reports of those after doing it (I was young and fearless) I don't think I'd do it again!

I'll be happy to share intimate spaces with men, just as soon as they stop being almost universally bigger and stronger than me, and have learned, as a class, to control themselves so that they're not using that extra strength to visit violence on each other and on women.

The sleeper was a godsend when travelling from London after work to see DH in our courting days. It helped me get to and from my Mum (who was in her last weeks with cancer) without missing work and losing money. DD and I used it recently to visit friends in London.

There is not always an alternative if you live in remote corners of Scotland.

The day train means a whole day travelling (6.30am gets in at 5.30pm)

It is 4 hours and 2 buses to Glasgow Airport. Then flight.

You are all right. All those trans-people are nasty men planning to rape women. We all have the right to a comfortable bed (in a single compartment) whenever and wherever we chose to travel. Unlike the 99% of the rest of the world...

Allington
Why do you think the cabins were set segregated in the first place?

Sex*

I am right, yes.

Your analogies are all impressively inaccurate, though, and the fact that women are treated worse in many other places does nothing to assist your argument.

When in doubt retreat into straw-manery.

"All those trans-people are nasty men planning to rape women." said precisely no-one, ever.

What we have said is transwomen are, biologically speaking, men. That's just a fact. Damn that biological reality for being so transphobic.

Also, women are, understandably, often very wary round strange men. We have good reason to be. One in four of us will be raped or sexually assaulted at some point in our lives, 98% of sexual offences are carried out by men, round about 6% of men will admit to behaviours which meet the legal definition of rape.

If I am offered single sex accommodation by a train company overnight in a confined space with just one other person, I expect that accommodation to be exactly as advertised - single sex. Not single "what gender I feel today."

And funny you should bring up the other 99% of the world. You might want to read up on the campaign for women's toilets (not women plus third-sex men, women, as in the people with vaginas) in India. There is a massive problem with women in India not being able to participate in life outside the house safely because they have nowhere safe to go to the toilet.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28039513

All those trans-people are nasty men

Oh FFS allongton. Of course they're not. But the ones who ARE nasty don't have that fact tattooed on their foreheads so we can conveniently avoid them.

However nice most men are, a significant number of women don't want to sleep or share showers or whatever with them. Even the nice ones. And that's ok.

Well, no. I have pointed out that I had slept in the same space as unknown men numerous times. That being able to easily and cheaply visit family whenever you want is not a human right. That the travelling you all refer to is a luxury not available to 99% of the world.

A single sex berth (however you define it) is not a Universal Human Right.

You are all right. All those trans-people are nasty men planning to rape women.

Like I said Allington how come when transwomen say they don't want to use the men's for fear of attack they don't get NAMALT thrown at them?

Women get told all the time that they need to keep themselves safe: don't walk home alone, don't get too drunk, don't wear too short a skirt, don't get in a taxi on your own etc. All things which only curtail the woman's behaviour of course. Because you never know when there will be a rapist lurking somewhere and if a woman does get attacked its because she didn't protect herself.

But when women take other steps which might stop a man doing what they want to do (eg. not going up for a drink with a date, insisting on sex segregated spaces) suddenly NAMALT and women are paranoid that there is a rapist lurking somewhere. They have to 'get over it' and 'deal with their preconceptions'.

It's a tale as old as time sweetie.

That the travelling you all refer to is a luxury not available to 99% of the world.

yeah, I don't think 'starving children in India don't even have trains!' is the most compelling argument you could make here.

Feminists are always getting told that we're being spoilt and trivial and ridiculous to care about our rights over here, when women over there have it so much worse.

Again with the straw-man stuff.

No-one has said it's a universal human right. We have said that if a company advertises a single sex service it's reasonable for its customers to expect a single sex service.

And we've argued that a woman's desire for a single sex space is every bit as valid a desire as that of a man (who deeply wishes he was a woma)n to be placed in what was, up until his arrival, a single-sex space.

Unless of course you want to argue that the trans-identifying male has universal human rights to enter women's single sex spaces based on his sincerely felt desire to be a woman, but women have no universal human rights to have those single sex spaces due to biological differences between them and men. Which I presume you're not, because that would be an utterly incoherent position to hold.