Matthew d'Ancona in the Guardian - 3rd spaces as the solution

[rowdywoman1]

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/01/transgender-equality-women-only-carriages-caledonian-sleeper

This seems to me to be a thoughtful and reasonable article. Apart from his irritating use of 'cis' he talks about the need "to build toilets that accommodate trans visitors without making cis women feel uncomfortable." and that in rape crisis centres, trans women seeking work will have to accept that their aspirations are trumped by the rights of the horribly violated. Sorry, but there it is"

It was good to read an article which genuinely tries to navigate a way forward and move the conversation on. And slightly unbelievable to see a second constructive article in the paper that has acquired such a reputation for dismissing women as transphobes and bigots. I wonder whether he'll get the same reaction that Hadley Freeman did?

Yes, I acknowledged that three hours ago with "Everything under the sun can be experienced as a paraphilia."

Good spoonless, then we're clear, aren't we? Cross dressing fetishists exist and want access to women's spaces, so no one is "scaremongering".

I have a hypothesis that "ROGD", with its clustering of cases and high proportion of female victims, is to modern teen girls what anorexia was to my generation when I was a teen: a way of trying to control a body that is growing breasts and hips and bleeding every month, a way of trying to stop becoming the target of harassment and sexual objectification.

Agreed, except that I would add that sexual objectification is much, much worse for teenage girls now. No previous generation of girls had to grow up in a culture saturated with ultra-misogynistic pornography, nor contend with constant scrutiny of their looks and behaviour via social media.

But he is not really trusting his customers, he is requiring his female customers to trust his male customers (if they identify as female) on his say so, based on....nothing but a feeling.

So in fact he is the voice of cloth eared patriarchy!

Yes @bd67th I do see the similarities with Anorexia.

An example of a woman I'm not "comfortable" with would be Katie Hopkins, not Jane Fae. I'm fine sharing women's spaces with Katie, because Katie is a woman. Jane otoh is a man and I don't want to change with him at the swimming pool.

You may think there are more women who agree with you than with me, StillScreaming, but I suspect that's because most women know better than to be honest with you.

There is one group who tweet inflammatory things at trans people and another group, who may or may not be trans, who tweet back equally inflammatory things. For every 'chest feeder', there is a 'real women have breast' and for every 'kill all TERFS' there is a 'trains should be crucified'.

Presumably you mean "trans", as I'm not sure how one would crucify a train. Nobody is trying to nail trans people to a cross, though some of them are awfully determined to climb up there and scream about how they're being murdered with pronouns no matter how often the rest of us suggest that they get down and remind them that it's winter and we need the wood to make pizza with.

That's a lie. You tell that lie. You're a liar. Then you run off to MNHQ and moan that you're being called a liar when you're lying. It is in your nature to lie. You are not a honest women. You don't deal in the truth. You are a spreader of false rumours. Your radically interprete facts. You might not even know the truth if it hit you in the face like a wet fish. You fell out of the honestly tree and missed every branch on the way down. If you were able to present your lies without spitting while you are doing it, you could be a politician.

I'm not the only one thinking this reads like a classic example of narcissistic injury, right?

I'm not the only one thinking this reads like a classic example of narcissistic injury, right?

Nope that was exactly what I thought when I read that last night.

italiangreyhound - I've seen you post a couple of times about ROGD recently and can see this is what you want to know more about/understand better. Just in case you haven't seen it yet, Bailey and Blanchard include a large section on ROGD in one of their articles for 4th Wave Now:

4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/

I'm not the only one thinking this reads like a classic example of narcissistic injury, right?

You are not.

We have a few postmodernists/social constructionists around here and anyone who reads my posts will know that particular ideology is like a red rag to a bull to me. I can't stand it and I think it reinforces existing power relations to the detriment of all actually marginalised people (ie not white middle class males who like to present feminine).

Followers of this ideology can often keep going with the word salads on threads for exceptional lengths of time. But they don't usually lose the plot like this, even when challenged.

Someone asked about the responses on Twitter, here are a couple from someone who calls themselves Martha:

How fucking dare the Guardian publish a steady stream of this sort of transphobic shit. How fucking dare they. The idea anybody can fail to see them for the fascist apologists they are baffles me. First Hadley “I am a terf” Freedman, now this cunt. Jesus fuck.

Cis people still think -as all oppressors do, always- that they know better then those poor silly trans folks who aught to just shut up about their problems.

I've reported SS's post, too. I know that a certain amount of personal abuse is tolerated on MN but the post I reported goes way beyond acceptable.

It was an awful post. Which is why I hope they leave it.

Is a demonstration of the manic ranting that women are subjected to over this issue.

Well The Guardian dares because it is a newspaper.

Freedom of speech means freedom to be offended.

Everyone is having a go at The Guardian at the moment so they must be doing something right.

@moussemoose
Posters on here are astounded that the Guardian has published this as they have a serious record of silencing free speech - only of women of course - but they have been doing it for a number of years and as a result many of have cancelled our long held subscriptions. There have suddenly been 2 articles in the last few weeks raising issues about self ID - unheard of.
Hopefully it's a sign of them recognising that we do need to discuss the genuine dilemmas self ID throws up and highlights the end of #nodebate.

Like I said if both sides are criticising the paper they must be doing something right.

Good spoonless, then we're clear, aren't we? Cross dressing fetishists exist and want access to women's spaces, so no one is "scaremongering".

No, we're agreed up to "Cross dressing fetishists exist".

Whatever. If you want to have a good faith argument, state your case.

For every 'chest feeder', there is a 'real women have breast' and for every 'kill all TERFS' there is a 'trains should be crucified'.

MRAs have been trying for years to convince people that 93% violent male perps is exactly equal to 7% violent female perps with their patented WDIT (women Do It Too) as well as NAMALT (NotAllMenAreLikeThat) and WATM (What About The Men) discussion derailment techniques.
It simply is not true that that women harass men the same way men harass women. Not even on the internet.

I don't want an argument. I just believe that given that this is an issue of competing rights, if people are saying things like "current transactivism is an organised effort by sexual predators to invade women's spaces and gain access to potential victims", the burden of proof re AGP is firmly on them and they haven't met it.

No, if it's an issue of competing rights you need to prove there's a compelling reason for the status quo to change and that it's not a danger to anyone. And you can't prove that because there isn't and it is.

spoonless

Most women want segregated spaces when their knickers are round their ankles, they're undressing, having a smear, or have been raped. There are people born male disregarding this. You don't even have to go down the 'are they are predator' route.

Very fact that they are already refusing to accept those boundaries is a red flag. Which is quite sufficient for most women.

There are two police officers who identify as transgender. They give us an idea of where the GRA and EA are taking us.
One has a transgender advocacy organization that goes into schools and tells the students and instructors that it is illegal to deny boys who identify as girls access to the girls changing rooms. That the exceptions in the EA do not apply.
The other has come out as gender fluid and changes their pronouns with their change of garb. They expect everyone to respect and comply with their gender performance which is pretty obviously a male dominance display.
They are both abusing their authority.
I do not think that AGPs are sexual predators, but they are quite obviously abusive males. Testimony can be found in the trans widow thread or the blogs and forums where they talk about their experiences.
Men have pretended to be women in an effort to get away with criminal behavior for many years. So, while all AGPs are not predatory males neither are all predatory males AGPs.
It is unreasonable to argue that women must prove that all AGPs are predatory males to justify being concerned about predatory males behavior.

Quite thebewilderness

spoonless

It's not that AGP individuals are any more, or less, likely to predate on women in the traditional sense.

It's about fetishising womanhood and being aroused by women's unwitting participation. It's a display of male dominance that is unacceptable in women only spaces.

To understand what I'm talking about, take a look at this thread written by, and for, women who are married to transwomen. They are at the coalface of this issue.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3101834-trans-widows-escape-committee

Where rights compete, (and this is the first time it's happened in the Equality Act) it cannot be a case of one group having rights removed to benefit the other. The only answer is third spaces. The fact it's not a palatable way forward for one group still doesn't justify removing rights from the other group.

It's also time for a government consideration on what rights actually are. Human rights are specific. Legal rights are specific. To award a legal right to be entitled to resources for a protected group purely on the grounds of self ID provides a precedent for a minefield. Transchildren are already a thing. So is transdisabled. A line will have to be drawn sooner or later.