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.

I'm living in a female role

The problem with that is that you aren’t, because there is no such thing as a ‘female role’. In a society without discrimination, as somebody with a male anatomy, you could use the men’s toilets however you presented and nobody would care. The problem is that men’s desire not to share a toilet with somebody who is gender non conforming is overriding women’s need for single six spaces.

Perhaps the solution is something similar to the changing villages you get at leisure centres where there are a large number of unisex changing rooms and single sex spaces.

What is completely unhelpful is to pretend that no additional amenities are required, because sex is just a matter of identity.

So this is yet another 55+yo 'genuine old school transexual' coming onto Mumsnet to tell us we are all being hysterical because most TiMs are 'lovely and stunning and brave just like them so what is all the fuss about'?

You are out of touch with your community, OP.

The majority right now are not just like you claim to be. Haven't been for a few years now.

How about you stop lecturing us and actually go read what it means now to be Trans?

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

why? the reasons you cannot gestate a baby are not the same as the reasons an infertile woman cannot gestate a baby.

Also, unless you are infertile you still have the capacity to have a child as you have said you're pre-op.

The shark has been jumped!

@FencingFightingTorture35

The thing is, trans women are always defined as the problem. The real problem is male behaviour (particularly violence and agressive sexual behaviours) in relation to women.

But instead of men being the problem, somehow transwomen have become the problem.

Debbie Hayton gets it better.

"I identify with not as a woman."

It's not physiological for a woman to identify as a trans woman. They may identify with, especially as its likely to be male misogyny and patriarchy that oppressed both.

It's not physiologically possible for a trans woman to identify as a woman, only with.

I think many transwomen can very much still (father) children, given many have their penises still. Even if you wish to go through SRS, you can delay it until you've banked your sperm.

And granted, it might cause some distress not to be able to physically carry children but as a woman who can't have them full stop, I really can't bring myself to feel that much sympathy for them.

Women's refuges: Some transgender people are also vulnerable and need refuge. They should not necessarily be assigned to a Women's refuge.

I agree with you. That's not what we want. That man was clearly faking it and should not have been allowed into a woman's changing room. He was misusing the system.

By all means shut out the chancers.

But the rhetoric is that if a person says they are trans, they are trans. If a man says they are a woman, they are a woman. On their say so alone.

That's certainly the position of everyone's favourite Labour Women's Officer and Jeremy Corbyn and the WEP and various other prominent speakers and politicians.

And the position is also that anyone who suggests that transwomen should not be treated exactly the same as women, that some of the men claiming to be transgender might be chancers or misusing the system, are terfs.

You are as much a terf as the rest of us!!

Please do stay around.

I was really irked by your first post but I think you've just fallen for the line that women/feminists asking questions are angry, men hating, anti trans, blah blah. Which couldn't be further from the truth.

Fwiw, upon reading your subsequent posts, I suspect you are genuine, and coming from a genuine position, but with every post you write you are, probably unintentionally, revealing just how much you are not a woman.

Men are the problem. Yes. We agree. Um...

The thing is, trans women are always defined as the problem. The real problem is male behaviour (particularly violence and agressive sexual behaviours) in relation to women.

Exactly. Identify with us. Not as us.

The real problem is male behaviour (particularly violence and agressive sexual behaviours) in relation to women

Yep. Male behaviour, trans or not.

Again though, thank you for debating, this is very brave if you bar the cis

Don't call us cis please

Donna there is literally no way to distinguish between 'real' trans (like you, aiming for genital surgery, not sexually attracted to women, wanting to 'pass') and trans trenders who are literally men who will violently assert that they are women.
We cannot keep the second lot out of our spaces. We are not allowed to.

@DonnaBe

I can see that in a way you mean well. But being born without the capability to carry children and spending years and years trying, with apparently the right equipment: temping, charting, taking clomid, having hundreds of doctors appointments, having invasive procedures and finally accepting (with utter heart break) that it isn’t going to happen, are two different things.

How often have your family members asked you when you are going to have a child? How often have you cri d yourself to sleep on the day your period arrived- despite the fact you’ve convinced yourself that it had happened this month? How many blood tests for ovulation have you had?

Telling infertile women they are the same as trans women is insulting. We are not men.

Well OP, you maybe coming across as calm and engaging, but why are you avoiding, answering

justanothertranswomens post and posts like Today 09:26 Cliques?

You wouldn't be cherry picking would you?

And please do not use cis here.

The thing is, trans women are always defined as the problem. The real problem is male behaviour (particularly violence and agressive sexual behaviours) in relation to women

I absolutely agree with you. The real problem is male behaviour. But trans women are male, however much society might want to be kind and play along with the idea trans women are female.

I don't doubt many trans women are lovely and wouldn't hurt a fly. I mean that very sincerely. I feel for anyone who is unhappy in their own skin and who is taking private steps to make changes to their life so as to feel more at ease with themselves. But how can you have laws which give trans women the legal status of women and which prevent predatory men from doing harm?

A penis is not a female sex organ. Women only spaces and services are needed for a reason.
Please respect that and ask for your own.

But instead of men being the problem, somehow transwomen have become the problem.

Because rather than face up to the others of their sex, they decided to try and hide behind all the nice ladies in the women's toilets, they expected women to move aside and look after and accommodate them - and once it became a demand rather than a polite request, those women have realised that they need to remind them that they were just being nice, and that niceness can be withdrawn.

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

Oh Lord, Donna, no!

If a woman can't bear children it's because her reproductive function has been compromised. It's a uniquely female experience.

You claiming you can't bear children because you have a male reproductive system is not a female experience.

Trying to sympathise with women over a delusional shared bond is quite frankly a little nauseating.

Especially as You. Can. Have. Children.

@TinyRick

There's no need to be rude. I haven't said anything of the kind. All I pointed out was that there is a campaign of misinformation about proposed changes to legislation. And that I'm happy to discuss.

I try not to use rudeness to shut down debate. The acronym "TIM" is a bit of an insult. I could call you a "TERF" but I'm not here to sling insults around. I prefer not to use reductive derogatory terms like that.

Lets discuss things like adults.

I think you came here under a misapprehension, Donna, that we have all somehow reflexively reacted without consideration, and just need a nice transwoman to explain that we've fallen for hateful lies.

Well that isn't so. We've argued with each other long and hard, read newspapers, watched what people on both sides say and do, and come to a conclusion. You don't like that conclusion. But hard luck- you don't get what you want just because you want it.

It's grossly ignorant but their view that trans women aren't women, I think, comes from a place of insecurity

. Did you read back these words and see how ridiculous that sounds. Of course transwomen aren't women. I'm more than happy to respect people in their chosen gender and address them however they wish, but really, biology shows that transwomen can't possibly be actual natal women. They just can't. You get that right? Doncha?

Trans women cannot get pregnant and have children.

Caitlin Jenner has, I think, 6 children.

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

As a woman who has conceived, gestated, delivered and breastfed all the children I wanted to, but also as the friend/colleague/relative you hasn't I very strongly suggest that you don't do that.

Your body was never intended to do what mine has. Theirs were.

They won't find any solace with you.

Oh and don't call me/us/women cis.

Don't misgender me and I won't misgender you. Deal?