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[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.

Mumsnet has been invaded by a small group of people you mean women? there's rather a lot of us, not a small group, more like half the population and most of us won't be identified out of calling ourselves women in place of cis-anything; we reject the growing crowd of strapping transwomen competing at high level women's sport to the point they're taking the place of female bodied athletes; we won't agree that someone is a woman because they choose skirts and painted faces and nails; we won't agree that just anyone can go into a female changing room or women's refuge; and we simply laugh at the notion of a female penis.

If you pass as a woman and don't make a song and dance about it congratulations, women generally don't make a song and dance about being women either. But then you probably don't speak for the violent male offenders who want a place in women's prisons, or deviants who want to work with vulnerable women. Women who have no political voice, and definitely less of a voice & financial backing than the trans lobby. Passing as a woman is one thing but the law is another matter, the law doesn't care who is a nice friendly transwoman and who is a violent woman killing nutcase, it doesn't distinguish, it includes everyone. The notional belief system of gender is set to take the place of biological fact in law is unacceptable.

As for women and Irish laws! Where to begin? But the trans lobby isn't interested in women is it?

Go broaden the definition of what it means to be a man! You'd be doing so much good in the world.

Okay genuine question for you @DonnaBe

If you were to look for signs that you are having a heart attack, would you follow the list for men or women?

There's even been posts trying to convince people that the woman who shot people at the You Tube HQ earlier this week was trans.

I can actually see why a trans person might think it was an attempt at a smear.

But actually, as a woman, I read it as that people were just plain scared. There's been all this blurring of lines between men and women. It's now recorded that 6 women committed rape last year (I think last year? Anyone?) when to rape you need to own a penis.

Women are frightened. TRA's have successfully intimidated us. When people read about a woman shooting people, there was an air of, is this actually a man and is it being falsely reported and being attributed to a female? That matters if it was the case. I suddenly didn't trust the journalists reporting the story. If the crime had been committed by a man, it would have been really important that that was reported. I looked at photos of the shooter and it was genuinely quite hard to tell what sex she was. She had a prominent Adam's apple in one photo. I don't ever want to go down the road of trying to judge women for how masculine they look because some women don't look stereotypically feminine but if we're suddenly living in a world where any male can identify as female then for my own safety I'd like to be able to tell which women are actually men. If there is an increase in female violence, that is a separate issue and needs investigating.

Men are responsible for 98% of violent crime. They mustn't be allowed to slip under the radar and be recorded as women if they kill people.

Isn't this post just 'mansplaining'? Sorry if this has already been said, but really...
You really can't have much respect for women if you think that you need to come on here and enlighten us all.
Re changes to the GRA - this is only part of the picture. We don't like the whole picture.
The 'small group of people' who have 'invaded' us is in your mind. People can see nonsense when they are presented with it - most people aren't aware of what is happening because nobody is allowed to talk. Mumsnet has let us talk.

Sadly I can't link more photos but they are endless.
The reasons we wanted to know if the shooter was trans by the way is because women almost never commit crimes like that and we don't accept male crimes being reported as carried out by women. The shooter has described themselves as trans several times online.

DonnaBe I'm involved with a lot of women who have had similar gyny cancer... some of them are younger women who had hoped to have their own family. As well as dealing with the life-threatening cancer, most will have both massive surgery (radical hysterectomy etc) and chemotherapy. The consequence of which is surgical menopause... some might be able to take HRT to lessen symptoms and protect against osteoporosis and reduce the risk of heart problems but deciding whether to do so requires consideration of the possible increased risk of other cancers. I trust that you are able to step back slightly and consider the impact this may have on their life, relationships etc? Can you begin to imagine how your statement earlier (as a similarly childless women by dint of not having ovaries and a uterus) would be received amongst this group of women for example?
I've heard oft repeated by some TRAs that 'as some women don't have uteruses this means trans women are women'. It brought me to this board... it speaks volumes

donna

You seem to be missing something really important about our point of view. The definition between sex and gender.

We think that gender is not innate, it’s not something inside us like a soul but it’s a regressive and oppressive system inflicted on us as a form of dominance. We reject gender entirely.
Our ideal world would be one where men and women were free to express themselves exactly as they like but we still had protections for the differences in our biology.
We are Male and female but these terms are meaningless except for reproduction and protection.

Anyone can wear a dress anyone can ride a motorcycle or run a company or marry whoever they want or call themselves whatever they want, they can even have surgeries if they would like to.
But we need to get rid of ‘men are like this and women are like that’

Trans ideology is regressive as it still supports the idea that there is a way for a man to be and a way for a woman to be it’s just sometimes our bodies don’t match that so we need to change our bodies.
We’re saying change your body if you like but it’s society that needs to change, throw out the whole system not conform in another way.

My concerns about self ID have never been about trans. It's about the violent men who would waltz right through theassive loophole in order to access women and children.

If you can come up with genuine cases of trans women forcing themselves on lesbians, I would love to know

Trans activists are creating a climate where its unacceptable for lesbians to refuse to have sex with someone who has a penis.
If lesbians haven't discussed this with you, it could be because they are scared of your reaction. Its homophobia dressed up as progressiveness.
Being told you're a bigot for your sexual orientation creates a climate of fear.

The Cotton Ceiling Isn't About Lesbians - It's About Transphobes
''If you date women and won't date any trans women ever, it just means you're transphobic.''

Your dating "preferences" are discriminatory | Riley J. Dennis

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

And yet you are on here telling us women are the problem.

I'm living in a female role. I cannot use male changing rooms.

Why not?

Yes, I would like to know the answer to this one too.

If the cohort 'women' contains a large number of people who aren't women, how do we track and report on those harms?

If people who will never, can never be pregnant are counted as women, how do we identify if having a baby can damage your earning potential?

"large number" ? Really? Doesn't it already contain a larger cohort of infertile and childless women?

Scientific studies are actually pretty discriminating, you know. They do exclude misleading factors.

I'm not into doing things the old way myself. The old way they taught girls at school? When you grow up you can be a secratary or a man's wife? That was the teacher's attitude whan I went to school in the 1960s.

That's the very opposite of gender critical feminism. Why do you have such a blind spot on this?

Fencing is right.

A conspiracy has arisen because we no longer trust what is told to us.

It might be a woman. But we don't trust that now. We look around with suspicion instead. We fear there is something more that the authorities are complicit with and don't want us to know.

Previously if some was trans we could always trust it would be reported as such. It could be dismissed as just a violent person. Lets move on.

Instead, people are worried about violent crimes that they perceive to have details covered up in some way.

That affects trust in institutions of the media and in the police, which isn't healthy in society. It heightens fears and suspicions rather than removes them.

Its more likely to force women, particularly in conservative communities, back into their communities where they know everyone. It means the idea of a stranger - any stranger - is looked upon with more suspicion.

Far from liberalising society and increasing social inclusion it just polarise it and make it break apart further.

You can not force this by law. It has to be a gradual social that brings people along. Attempts to legislate will do more harm than good.

donna

I'm sure you're quite capable of googling cotton ceiling, Michfest, do the other things I mentioned.

Or google antifemale receipts and go to the section called leshobia.

( see screenshot)

But, if, you, like many other transwomen say that this is being confined to dark corners of the Internet, I've also included two out of quite a few, threads started on here explicitly about the persecution of lesbians.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3146166-Transactivism-and-the-lesbian-community

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3199220-Lesbians-and-the-Trans-debate

*or the other things!

I am not "anti trans" ffs.
I am totally supporting of trans people everywhere to be free from fear and repression, and have the same rights as everyone else.

I have been on MN for many years, so def not an invader.

I have a problem with being made to lie by law.

I have a problem with penises, no matter whether they are encased in y fronts or french knickers, being in safe spaces for women.

I have a problem with the transing of children, effectively sterilising them.
I have a problem with gender non conforming gay children being pressured into transing with long term health issues as a result.

I have a problem with a world where men commit 98% of violence but we are supposed to magically tell the difference between violent man in dress and nîce men in dress.

I have a problem that some of my young lesbian friends are being coerced into having sex they don't want for fear of being labelled transphobes.

I have a problem, as a gender non conforming woman (I wear mens clothes, shave my hair, don't remove body hair, hate make up) being told I'm doing "woman" wrong, by men who could have literally no clue about my experiences with periods, a life threatening pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding.

I have a problem with "woman" being reduced to a set of narrowly defined stereotypes, that reduce us to mere fluff.

I have a problem with being told to "die in a fire" because I refuse to agree with a lie (trans women cannot be actual women....sorry)

I have a problem with transwomen violently attacking women on picket lines and at meetings, with no provocation, and then claiming victimhood.

I also have transsexual friends, who completely agree with me.
And on that note I notice you conveniently ignored yetanothertranswomans posts.

@RedToothBrush

It's more than about words and ideas. It's about my life and the lives of thousands of other trans people.

I've been the subject of attack and ridicule all my life. Growing up, the only corss gender role models I had were pantomime dames and the guy who stabbed Janet Leigh in the shower in Psycho.

But until the last few months I've never been the victim of a concerted well organised and infulential smear campaig before.

Trans people are fighting for their lives.

Trans people are fighting for their lives.

And so are women!

So why do you think any man should be allowed to access female only spaces without being challenged?

Trans people are fighting for their lives

In what way?

And what does that have to do with Mumsnet posters?

*But until the last few months I've never been the victim of a concerted well organised and infulential smear campaig before.

Trans people are fighting for their lives.*

There is no campaign against trans people.

There is a campaign for women.

Where are the cases of the violent feminists of Mumsnet physically attacking trans people? Nowhere. I'm sorry you feel besieged but you are resorting to hyperbole.

And you still haven't answered the hard questions.

@LanaKanesTerfyVagina

There are hundreds of posts. I can't answer them all.

I think you are.

If you think this attack is coming from gender critical feminists you are very much mistaken.

I’ll say it again even though it’s been said a million times.

We support trans people.

We support you to dress as you like, to live free from persecution, to live free from violence, to have a family, to not be discriminated in your job.

I was brought up by lesbians and we got homophobic abuse so bad when I was a child that the council had to move us.
I would never support that happening to anyone else.

But support doesn’t mean just rolling over and giving up all your rights not to hurt your feelings.

Women are fighting for their lives too and statistically women are far far more likely to be murdered or attacked than a trans woman in the uk.

You are fighting the wrong people.

Why are you not fighting to be free of violence and fear of men??

We are not smearing you.

We are stating facts and truth.

The issue here is men.

Why not fight for men to be more accepting of gender non conforming men/trans??

Why not fight for a society where none of us have to define by arbitary gender roles, and are free, as men and women, to dress and behave as we please??

80,000 rapes a year, commited by men.

98% of violence commited by men.

Why cant you see that no matter how it's dressed up, men are the problem here??

Not feminists speaking scientific and societal fact??

Where in my post have I been "anti trans"??

I fully support trans people in their struggle for rights.

I do not support them taking rights away from women and girls.