Trans unpeak moment

[Sunflowersforever]

Have really been tuned into the whole self-Id issue and subsequent discussions through mumsnet, and appalled at the encroachment into women spaces and the silencing of women's voices. Was so glad to have read Hadley Freeman's article and how she summed up concerns in such an articulate way that reflected my views.

Ok. Here is the unpeak trans bit.

On HFs twitter feed, someone posted about selfid saying. "It means swearing a statutory declaration that you are living as a woman (and there are legal consequences if you lie), changing your name and documents, telling friends, colleagues, family".

Is that correct? If it is, I didn't know that and it changes the whole 'any man can enter a woman's space unchallenged' argument a bit as surely documented proof can be produced if challenged?

Someone else also said Ireland had adopted this law with no consequences? Really?

Anyone aware if any of this is true?

I've found that being treated as a woman in a social setting means alternately having men attempt to stare down my cleavage or mansplain things that I know more about than they do to me. Occasionally they escalate to a grope instead of a stare, or a slur instead of just being patronizing. I am always happy when this does not happen and I'm instead treated like a person in a social setting.

If trans women would like to be treated as described above they're welcome to my share, but I'm not sure how I or anyone else am supposed to ensure that that happens.

AreYouTerfEnough I think it is a good thing that not all trans people experience distressing dysphoria (I am not convinced you think this is a bad thing!).
Smiths where does your position lead you to in the case of male-bodied people and entitlement to access provision for female-bodied people?

I've been flip-flopping around all over the place in the past couple of weeks.

I think that the flip-flopping is something few people DON'T do. It is RIGHT that you should do. Its is part of a healthy process. It is more alarming if you are not, because it represents critical thinking. Critical thought is an essential part of any functioning democracy. Any attempt to stop it is a bad thing.

I continually am moving where I am on this. It is most generally affected by whether I've just had a good dose of the latest batshittery of the likes LM, Mermaids, LD LGBT, HP etc. Their nonsense tends to actively provoke a reaction which is hostile and makes me lose sympathy for any trans person. This is not a good thing, is why I am very angry about why political parties are aligning and giving platform to those trans activists who are representative of more extreme views within the community.

I am also torn because I know if I have this feeling others also will do too. These people are actively part of the process of setting up a rather nasty backlash because there is no moderation and no conflict resolution going on. This affects my family and the last thing I want is a really nasty right wing backlash.

Above all else I think the absolutism from either side isn't helpful though.

I think the best way to describe where I stand on this is:
a) Rights have been conferred on trans people. I am very wary about any suggestion to remove them. Not least because this isn't really possible without amendments or repeal of the HRA or leaving the EHCR. There are individuals who would be very affected by a roll back of what has already happened. There needs to be care made here, and suggestions to do so are actually a real threat to the trans community and must be seen as such. It does not matter if you agree with being trans or not. That is just the way it is.
b) I do see issues with documentation in certain circumstances. A passport protects individuals in countries where the law is different for example. But at the same time the amendment of documents where there is no record of the original entry I also see problematic for other reasons. There needs to be a balance stuck here and ways to access original documentation under certain conditions where it is necessary or for there to be certain conditions where declaration of original status is perhaps a legal requirement.
c) I think there are real danger with the lobbying and encouragement of concealment of biological sex. This has implications. This is not always merely a private matter. There are situations where it affects others: eg participation in medical research, organ donation etc. It is certainly not confined to issues over toilets.
d) You can not force these types of changes through law and thought policing without consequence. You have to bring people along with you. This requires some self awareness and some honesty, even if this is sometimes painful. This is not 'justifying your existence', it has to be framed more as 'helping by sharing your pain'. I do believe that even framing the issue in this way would help ease some problems. If you fail to do this, you contribute to ignorance and that makes fear persist.
e) There has to be a proper debate about things on subject by subject basis. It has to be methodical and thorough, instead of just reverting constantly to bloody toilets. Both sides have to be taken through this, and have it explained why there is a need for x or y. The emotion has to be taken out of things to do this. Encouraging the emotion, is harming all concerned.
f) This is not purely about trans issues. Its is also about integrity and commitment to democratic process. When and where this is undermined must be called out straight away when it occurs.
g) Much more needs to be made of the difference between a support group and a lobby group. A support group has to be working and include all groups and provide multiple approaches - this includes trans people, desistors and their families. Affirmation only is deeply problematic on a number of levels - not least because we are not seeing a monolithic type of presentation here. There does seem to be various groups lumped together in a very clumsy way. This needs to be seen and recognised. Lobby groups should not be allowed in certain situations.
h) Stats and abuse of stats. Notably the suicide thing. I want to also tackle here considerations in how we measure harm.

I will give the example from women's health. When we talk about harm to women in child birth we measure out comes in terms of unassisted birth, assisted birth, planned cs and emergency cs. This is very crude and actually not always that helpful. Notably we don't record harm done which might be psychological in the same way. Nor do we record whether a planned cs might have been done for mental health reasons. Instead we tend to think of all cs as 'bad'.

In terms of the trans debate, we are not measuring harm relating to desistance. We are not recording harm relating to women (which might present in any number of different ways). We are not recording harm to family members etc. Which we know is there but is very much under the radar and unconsidered.
i) This isn't section 28. The comparison is a great big red herring. Comparisons in politics and history are only useful if you also look at differences too. You have to judge every situation on its on merits not the merits of something else. You can use them as guidance and an argument, but unique situations require unique consideration.
j) There must absolutely be an acknowledgement of conflicts of interests and practical implications. The law and practical reality are different things and are both important. Example: There is no point in saying transwomen should have access to women's shelters if those shelters can not accommodate the unique needs of that community. Other specialist shelters have be cut and services are limited to existing minority groups. Women are being sent 600miles to get a space in any shelter. It makes far more sense to set up a specialist trans shelter under those circumstances, for both women and trans women alike. This doesn't even take into consideration the emotional state of those women. This isn't phobic, its doing what is best for both in a difficult practical situation in the real world. Threatening legal action is just plan abusive in that context to me, because it is about threatening the very existence of any service at all.
k) Language is a powerful weapon. It is being used against women to promote 'equality'. It is dehumanising and reduces women. They are not in control of it. Sensitivity is one thing, but it has to be challenged when it gets out of hand. It can not be projected onto others as this can become misused as a means of control. Political parties and institutions should be aware of this, as they use it as part of propaganda and promotion. That they are not, smacks of something sinister and nasty. Neutral language does not mean redefining everything and making everything gender neutral.

What outcomes come from that, and my exact position with in those areas does move. That I am not free and able to fully explore those ideas and concepts, IS the heart of the problem.

#NoDebate MUST end.

@Sunflowersforever

On HFs twitter feed, someone posted about selfid saying. "It means swearing a statutory declaration that you are living as a woman (and there are legal consequences if you lie), changing your name and documents, telling friends, colleagues, family".

Is that correct? If it is, I didn't know that and it changes the whole 'any man can enter a woman's space unchallenged' argument a bit as surely documented proof can be produced if challenged?

It's not correct. The proposal made by the trans equality inquiry and agreed with by the government minister also includes abolishing sex-based exemptions, including for sports at all levels and employment.

The assessment for this was made based on transsexuals (specifically those who have transitioned medically) but with self-id this will include men like Ibi-Pippi. That's the Danish man who lives as a man and looks like a man but who has legally changed gender using a self-id law in Denmark and now shocks the Danes with his demand to get into women's spaces - which he is mostly denied btw, despite his entirely legal status as a woman.

The proposal does not allow for a legal distinction to be made between a post-op transsexual and a weekend crossdresser. Both can self-id and there are no safeguards. It is illegal for organisations to ask to see someone's GRC (and this will apply to the self-id declaration), that's why in practical application this means that all organisations must adopt a self-id policy that accepts anyone is a woman who says they are. Again, there are no safeguards included in the proposals.

The wider implication is that when organisations up and down the country adopt a self-id policy that accepts anyone's claim they are a woman, that weekend crossdresser for instance doesn't even have to fill in a legal self-id declaration because they no longer need it to access all women's spaces.

Challenging a man's presence anywhere becomes impossible in this situation - you could be running the risk that that bearded giant in biker gear* actually has filled in that online form. The way the law is being written as of now looks like challenging such a person may be a criminal offence.

Someone else also said Ireland had adopted this law with no consequences? Really?

This is a popular claim about all countries with self-id. In practice, Canada has had it longer at regional level and there's been a number of problems, from a transwoman suing a rape crisis centre because they said they can't employ a biological male as a rape councillor to a self-id transwoman who is suing a women's refuge for denying access (this person was kicked out for being drunk and aggressive by a men's shelter and then demanded to be let into a women's one that has only one large sleeping space for the women) to the notorious case of a transwoman gaining access to two women's refuges and sexually assaulting several women while there. Plus prosecutions for thought crime (I do not know the outcome), a rise in voyerism offences, sexual assault and the rise of other, co-occuring self-id nonsense (as an ethnic minority or as a different age).

Ireland is more difficult to ascertain as it was only brought in two years ago. They have mostly single-sex schools for instance and the current provision for transgender kids looks like they stay in the school of their sex but are allowed to express their gender. The guidelines speak of gender-neutral facilities where possible and that single-sex activities and sports are to be reduced or eliminated. Which is exactly what critics of self-id have raised as an issue - girls cannot compete with boys after puberty sets in, and the result won't be good for girls.

However, if self-id was only ever accessed by those with gender dysphoria it wouldn't be such an issue. The incidence rate for transsexualism is 1 M2F in 14,000 people; 1 F2M in 38,000 ppl and 6 transkids in 100,000 kids (which is why in the UK there are still fewer than 5000 ppl with a GRC).

The trans community however is estimated to be as large as 1 in 100 people. Without any conditions attached that means self-id can and will be accessed by a huge number of people who do not suffer from gender dysphoria. Yesterday, there was talk of 10 girls in one school transitioning together. That school has 200 pupils and their incidence rate therefore equates to 5000 in 100,000 not the 6 in 100,000 that is normal (according to empirical evidence from over 40yrs of research).

Politicians honestly believe self-id will make life easier for transsexuals suffering from severe gender dysphoria. But that's not actually who is pushing for it. On the contrary, many transsexuals reject this policy because this push to convince the public that being trans is totally normal and not a medical and mental health condition isn't beneficial to those for whom it is just that and seek help on precisely that basis (and those are the truly vulnerable trans people).

*extreme example - I used to ride a bike and hang out with bikers and on the whole they were lovely people.

Also, with the 'things are fine in Ireland' idea, I don't believe this is so. An Irish woman messaged me to day a 'resistance' - her word - movement is starting over there.

‘Living as a woman’ is a key question,given that no one need have any mdical or surgical intervention at all. Let alone change in appearance.
And we dont have to hypothesise about what could happen,because it already has happened. Assaults, voyeurism, taking space on AWS,sports and so on.
In most cases it would be illegal to challenge or ask to see any documents anyway.
And as has been said, most gatekeeping to spaces that are mor casual use,such as toilets,changing room,is by convention and norms. Or a perseeing someone hanging about or going and alerting security /police. That will not happen because how would anyone individual know or more importantly have the self confidence to take the chance and challenge? Its reversing the staus quo. An assumption that a bloke with exceptions,has no place there, to one of they do have a place with exceptions. Unfortunately for women or girls,the reversed status quo puts us at risk and when its shown to be the case,it means something has already happened.

I don't honestly know if self-id will be a problem because there has been no real debate. Women have not been consulted. Women who question the consequences are shouted down. This is the root of the problem.

@Datun we mightn't have the same extreme overt transactivism in Ireland but they are definitely politically motivated. A transactivist organisation called TENI is largely behind our original GRA and the proposed reforms to it, which will include extending self-id to underage children. Which seems pretty political to me. They have been largely getting what they want because it's so polarised here. If you're a secular liberal you're prone to blindly accepting anything that won't make you look like a conservative Catholic bigot.

Very early days though.

Whatever the legalities of the proposed changes to the GRA, there is still the ever encroaching view that a man can be a woman just because he says he is.

If you are happy to throw away what it means to be a "female woman" (FFS I can't believe I have to write that) then go ahead. I know that means I'm a bigot and a transphobe and should go die in a fire, but I'm simply not prepared to let "woman" go to appease a tiny minority of navel-gazing stampy-footed narcissists.

do you know people in Ireland who have encountered problems

You really can't compare Ireland with England, it's much much smaller. That makes a difference, as it's not really possible to be anonymous.

The reason trans campaigners are pushing so hard for self ID is that they know that it currently isn't normal, common behaviour for males to access female spaces and vice versa (see manfriday). They know and they benefit from the public thinking this is about gender dysphoria. It isn't. This is an attempt to conflate sex and gender identity. It's an attempt to undermine the recognition of sex based categories and demedicalise "gender" so it can be a personal choice, whatever your motives, which facilities you use. It's ultimately narcissism without checks and balances. And anyone else be damned.

If you're a secular liberal you're prone to blindly accepting anything that won't make you look like a conservative Catholic bigot.

Well put. Seems like every second ad has to have either transwomen or drag queens in it, which I find insulting. I realise a lot of other women don't find it insulting, but I'm sure there are people who see nothing wrong with blacking up either.

Really interesting thread.

This affects my family and the last thing I want is a really nasty right wing backlash.

I agree. Because such a backlash might well be bad for trans (whatever their position on the activist wing) but it will also be bad for the LGB, feminists, and women generally. None of us have anything to look forward to if this comes to pass. And transactivists will come to wish that they had found common ground with feminists.

I am seeing, for example, this issue creeping into more and more focus on UKIP websites and forums. What if this becomes the issue to rejuvenate them now that the EU referendum has been won? What then?

I also agree wholeheartedly with you that politicians are badly letting us down. On my, Labour, side of it, I'm looking not only at the fully paid up pomo enthusiasts like Stella Creasy, but also the I'm going with the zeitgeist because I want to be elected like Dawn Butler and Angela Rayner and the sexist men who put women at the bottom of the pile like the Magic Granddad Jeremy Corbyn, but also at the women who are almost certainly gender critical but won't speak up - hello, Jess Phillips et al.

No one wants to name the elephant in the room - Trans is an artificial construct made for vested interests. It's nothing to do with "rights", gender, sex dysphoria and so on - it's to do with money. Who benefits?

Everything was fine before - they should roll back the GRA until time has been taken to consider fully it's implications. What happened before Trans? There was non of this crap. I don't mind if there needed to be a tightening of protections for trans but in the scheme of things, they are a tiny minority - why are they so special when women (51% of the population) have been waiting for more accomodations for them that keep disappearing over the horizon.

Really this is a huge smoke screen. Name who benefits and it's not the genuine transsexual folk, it's the money market, Big Pharm and MRAs/TIMs - all of whom relish making more money, getting more power and many of whom are sadists so love trashing women and their spaces - Cluster Bs the lot of them.

The rest of the stuff is like the FB scandal - it's unscrupulous bad actors manipulating the democratic process to f* women over and make money in the process - because they worked out they can and wouldn't get caught…… It's Mercer and his cronies all over again

Thanks Pickle - now subscribed to the terrific Rose of Dawn

How can children safeguard themselves if they are taught they have no right to consent to undress in front of the opposite sex?

I agree. I read this today, based in the US I think. A PE teacher has a number of girl students who do not wish to change in the girls changing room as it's used by a student who identifies as a transgirl. The teacher was looking for advice as currently a number of girls are opting to use a different room to change and space is limited. I didnt read all the replies but there were a few discussing how the rights of the two groups are effectively pitted against each other, and one person said that legally the trans student rights take priority.

amp.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/89g8j7/cis_girl_locker_room/

The idea that trans people have brains mildly resembling their preferred sex and that this means they're not deluded like someone believing they're Napoleon seems like a silly one ... If a brain scan showed that someone in a psychiatric hospital had a brain closer to Napoleon's brain structure than the average man's, would that mean he probably really was Napoleon after all and not deluded?

There aren’t massive differences between the brains of the sexes anyway, and most of what there is can likeIy be explained by plasticity (brains change over time depending on what they’re doing - little boys encouraged towards eg gross motor skills will get better at them).

Have no position on whether genuine dysphoria could be caused/cause a brain structure change, but I am giving some serious to the position that my brain as a woman is “designed to run on oestrogen” (as I have seriously been told).

Causation? Correlation?

According to that stonewall survey 50% are self reporting as disabled.

How? Why?

Its important.

@WombOfOnesOwn

he idea that trans people have brains mildly resembling their preferred sex and that this means they're not deluded like someone believing they're Napoleon seems like a silly one ... If a brain scan showed that someone in a psychiatric hospital had a brain closer to Napoleon's brain structure than the average man's, would that mean he probably really was Napoleon after all and not deluded?

I don't think there is any evidence suggesting that trans people's brains have similarities to those of the opposite sex. Overall, their brains are like those of their own sex.

There is evidence for physical differences in one specific area of the brains of people with diagnosed gender dysphoria compared with those without that condition. Interestingly, it is in an area of the brain associated with body perception. So people the 1% of trans people with diagnosed gender dysphoria may have it a physical condition either underlying, or associated with, their belief that their gender is 'wrong'. Obviously that doesn't make them the opposite sex.

If you make legislation that endorses the existence of gender without being able to define gender objectively, the legislation is nonsensical. Currently many politicians (Stella Creasy) are trying to publicise the existence of the gender pay gap, while also endorsing an ideology that believes that you can't actually define what a woman is. It is bonkers.

Jess Phillips reads out lists of women murdered by men in parliament, but women who express concern about men entering women's spaces are told by Paris Lees that they are just silly and transphobic and might as well be scared of escalators.

Existing legislation is nonsensical because 'Living as a woman' is completely meaningless, so I can understand why people are asking for change. However, the point of the legislation was to make it easier for people who are gender non-conforming to live their lives in a society that demands conformity. It has never been possible to change sex.

Instead of questioning the existing situation, and perhaps thinking about why it is so hard to live outside gender norms, all political parties appear to be endorsing legislation without being able to explain what it means. This is frightening. The bar for the success of self-id should not be "has any woman been horribly murdered yet?", it should be does it make sense?

This is the abstract of the Swedish study on brain differences

"Both transgenderism and homosexuality are facets of human biology, believed to derive from different sexual differentiation of the brain. The two phenomena are, however, fundamentally unalike, despite an increased prevalence of homosexuality among transgender populations. Transgenderism is associated with strong feelings of incongruence between one’s physical sex and experienced gender, not reported in homosexual persons. The present study searches to find neural correlates for the respective conditions, using fractional anisotropy (FA) as a measure of white matter connections that has consistently shown sex differences. We compared FA in 40 transgender men (female birth-assigned sex) and 27 transgender women (male birth-assigned sex), with both homosexual (29 male, 30 female) and heterosexual (40 male, 40 female) cisgender controls. Previously reported sex differences in FA were reproduced in cis-heterosexual groups, but were not found among the cis-homosexual groups. After controlling for sexual orientation, the transgender groups showed sex-typical FA-values. The only exception was the right inferior fronto-occipital tract, connecting parietal and frontal brain areas that mediate own body perception. Our findings suggest that the neuroanatomical signature of transgenderism is related to brain areas processing the perception of self and body ownership, whereas homosexuality seems to be associated with less cerebral sexual differentiation."

Currently many politicians (Stella Creasy) are trying to publicise the existence of the gender pay gap, while also endorsing an ideology that believes that you can't actually define what a woman is.

^^This. And the rest of your post. How can we hope to fix situations where women are disadvantaged if there is no agreement on what a woman is.

Accurate data IS important, this is an interesting article: Using Gender Statistics Crucial for Realizing Sustainable Development Agenda: www.un.org/press/en/2017/wom2112.doc.htm

ShotsFired

Yes, it was one of the questions. Colloquially called spousal veto. I may have used up my quota of words on that one!

smithsinarazz

Yes, that sounds highly reasonable. But will get you death threats. And a man with gender dysphoria isn't delusional he's got gender dysphoria. He's delusional that it makes him a woman.

Excellent posts from Charlie and Red.

If we could confine the legal status of women to men with gender dysphoria, that would go a long way to easing the problem.

I disagree profoundly with anyone other than a biological female being called a woman. But, the number of men with genuine gender dysphoria is, indeed, tiny.

The very fact that it is a minuscule amount would mean the effect was negligible.

Which is how it was originally envisaged.

Now, every other person can call themselves trans, as well as a huge cohort of sexual fetishists for whom it is vitally important.

Rather than abolishing the criteria for a GRC, the gatekeeping should be intensified.