T

[DonnaBe]

Mumsnet has been invaded by a small group of people who are giving out wrong information about the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act.

They claim that women’s spaces are being invaded and women are being silenced. Please read this and make up your own minds!

A gender Self ID law – like the one proposed in the UK - was recently introduced in Ireland. To change your gender on government records, you need to sign a Statutory Declaration in front of a solicitor and declare that you are living in your acquired gender and intend to stay that way. This is a legal document.

Self ID has not caused problems in Ireland. This is the kind of thing that is being proposed in the UK. It's about making a statement under oath about your acquired gender.

It has been claimed that anyone will be able to claim to be the opposite gender whenever they want. Not true. Nobody is proposing that big blokes with beards can say “I am a woman today” and have legal protection to use women’s loos. If they were, I would be campaigning against it. That is absolutely not what is being proposed

The group behind this campaign are not new. They have been conducting anti-trans campaigns for many years. I don’t think their agenda is women’s welfare so much as expressing their hatred for trans people. The self id proposals have given them an opportunity to attack trans people. Again. They claim they are being silenced, but their views are regularly aired on TV and in the newspapers. And on Mumsnet. They have a right to speak, but I wish they’d tell the truth.

Believe it or not, this all starts with a discussion about marriage. Before 2004, trans people could not marry or stay married because there was no legal way to change the gender on their birth certificates. There was no same sex marriage back then.

The Gender Recognition Act of 2004 introduced the ability to stand in front of a Gender Recognition Panel (cost £140) and get a Gender Recognition Certificate which allowed you to change your birth certificate and get married! This is a bureaucratic arrangement that involves an element of body policing which is not nice.

The proposal now is to replace the GRP / GRC arrangement with a legally binding statutory declaration. Or something like that. That’s all. No whimsical notions like “It’s Friday. I’m a woman today.”

In fact, you can now get married if your transgendered under same sex marriage legislation. So getting a GRC is less relevant. I don’t know if there’s any research on this, but my feeling is most trans people don’t bother getting a GRC anyway.

So this is how things stand today:

There is no law banning men from women’s toilets and changing rooms. There’s only an unwritten rule. The recent Man Friday campaign where women invaded men’s toilets could have the contradictory effect of weakening this rule and end up harming women. The logical conclusion of their campaign is body policing with guards on women’s toilets and women will have to prove their gender before having a pee.

Trans women already use women’s toilets and changing rooms. I do. Nobody notices. I don’t make a song and dance about it. There is no slackening of the law defending women’s spaces because there is no such law. We get on fine without it.

The Gender Recognition Act makes exceptions for things like women’s refuges. These exceptions should be used where appropriate. Already law. Not changing.

You can live in your non-birth gender already. If you pass as that gender well enough, you just do it. You don’t need a law or certificate to do it. Thousands of people live this way and nobody is harmed by it.

Donna: so you accept third space is the answer?

Transactivists don't. You sound respectful of boundaries in that post. Do you accept that some will misuse this potential right the transactivists are demanding? If you do, we are on same page after all,

By all means shut out the chancers

Such an interesting phrase. You acknowledge there are chancers? You acknowledge that the system can be exploited?

I thought it was all lies.

Female Fact No.3

Women gestate and deliver babies. They then produce milk to feed them. This milk is produced through a combination of hormones produced by the body and triggered by the birth.

Not always successfully. Women breast feed successfully, or not. If you can breastfeed successfully and for the recommended full year it means that you have to be available to your child to feed and limits the ability to work, go out or spend time away from your child.

Men cannot naturally breast feed. They are not biologically tied to their children. Fathers can be wonderful and help in many ways, especially if the couple decided to formula feed. This biological act is so tied to being female that society places the onus of successfully feeding an infant entirely on it’s mother, even if she is formula feeding.

If you haven’t been pregnant or had a child you can’t even begin to understand the pressures around the topic of infant feeding. All of it aimed at the mother.

We're not pushing the idea that women are identified by their reproductive organs. That's just how you identify women. At birth.

Or actually before. I knew my dd W's a girl when I saw her 20 week scan. Didn't have to ask. Didn't need to not see a penis. She was a girl. Right there.

8 billion people do this effortlessly every day. They see people and put them into two classes - male and female. Occasionally they might need a moment longer to check. But really it's completely innate.

I'm sorry if you find that upsetting or 'triggering' or feel it to be some kind of denial of your right to exist. It's not. And you're not going to train those 8 billion people out of it so you may as well make your peace with the sexual dimorphism of the species you find yourself part of.

By all means shut out the chancers. But most of us are genuine. Don't shut us out too.

Donna this is the whole crux of the issue. I don't doubt you want to get on with your life and I don't assume you want to cause anyone harm. I feel for you being stuck in no man's land. I want you to be as safe and comfortable as anyone else going about your life.

How is it that you tell the chancers from the genuine though? Should women be prepared to set aside something which makes them feel safe to make you feel more comfortable when that puts us at risk of a chancer doing harm?

Also can you understand that even if you mean no one any harm at all, that a proportion of women might still feel uncomfortable with you being in their sex-segregated spaces, simply because some women have had horrible experiences at the hands of other men?

I thought one of the greatest changes to women following the 1950's was the introduction of the pill which allowed them to control their fertility which is directly linked to their biology.

@NannyOggsKnickers

What you say is true. Trans women cannot get pregnant and have children. This is a fact that saddens me as I always wanted to.

I also want to reach out to with cis women who also cannot have children of their own.

That's not what we want.

Unfortunately the TRAs on Twitter DO want exactly that, and THAT is what we're fighting against.

Fun Female Fact No.4

Some women can’t have children. Some women have one and find they can’t get pregnant again. Some women loose babies during pregnancy, to miscarriage or still birth.

Some women don’t want children and have to put up with endless questions about when they’ll have children and why they don’t want them.

All of this is part of the female experience. It is the raw and basic for of being female. It’s what we’ve been oppressed with, struggled with, grieved over and cried about since the beginning of time.

Our bodies and the way the control and betray us are an essential part of the female experience. All the gender crap is just layered on top.

Being a woman does not make us lesser then men in intelligence or capability. It makes us different. Accepting that men and women can sometimes have different strengths and weaknesses is not ‘biological determinism’ it is looking at reality and assessing the impact.

Women are held back by gender roles. But we are empowered by our sex.

I also want to reach out to with cis women who also cannot have children of their own.

I am not sure thats a good idea

At all

Seriously...really bad idea

How is it that you tell the chancers from the genuine though? Should women be prepared to set aside something which makes them feel safe to make you feel more comfortable when that puts us at risk of a chancer doing harm?

This is the equation isn't it. You're asking women to take on the risk, so you don't have to. You could go into the mens change, you could campaign for unisex - ie. you could put yourself at risk/discomfort, but instead, you choose to go into the women's change and potentially make those women uncomfortable, and campaign for changes to the law which will put those women at risk (I mean a communal you rather than just you - obviously one person has to be very determined to be able to make a difference alone!).

That's actually a tell of male socialisation - because it's much more feminine socialisation to put other's comfort ahead of your own.

Thing is, I've been brought up to believe the sexes are equal, and actually I did get a real sense of that. I have no idea what it is to feel like or be a woman UNTIL my sexual biology shouts up - then I remember that I'm/ how I'm /what makes me a woman.

Which includes how men react/ respond to my biology.

I'm still waiting for the OP to tell us what the lies are.

@DonnaBe

Why just infertile women (please don’t use the prefix cis, it is offensive)?

I have secondary infertility after a pretty horrific miscarriage. What have you got to say to me about the similarity of our experiences?

It's uncomfortable for you in the ladies' changing rooms because you are pre op? Do you have any idea how uncomfortable terrifying that would be for us? Male genitalia in a female changing room? An isolated space, a person who can very easily harm me?

Damn.

I also want to reach out to with cis women who also cannot have children of their own

Ohh. err. no, don't do that!

They lived their lives, raised to expect their female bodies to be able to carry a child, and have discovered they can't - it's a complete re-working of what they had imagined their life to be in many cases.

You on the other hand are probably perfectly fertile, just not female - it's a completely different issue.

And you can have children!!!!!!!!!

cis?

I prefer to be called a woman. Please respect that.

By all means shut out the chancers

OP this is all so-called TERFs want to do. Yet you have bought into the strawman that we want to take away rights from transpeople.

We are not the ones calling for the erasure of the other side. We are not the ones calling for TERF scum to be rounded up and executed, to have their throats slit.

So address the lies and hatred on your own side first.

By all means shut out the chancers. But most of us are genuine. Don't shut us out too

The old (honour) system made this distinction pretty well don't you think?

The new proposals prevent us from making the distinction and therefore force us to shut every male person out if we want to be safe and comfortable.

"Don't shut us out too"

Well don't shut out all the women who cannot use a space if you are in it!

DonnaBe both my (male) partner and I are childless as a consequence of my gynaecological cancer... Being able to share the impact of this is for many people much needed.
if you want to reach out though I would urge you to consider how utterly inappropriate it is to start from a position stating 'I am also a woman who doesn't have ovaries or a uterus'