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 poked a needle into my shirt to sew a button back on a few days ago, does that count?

Apparently so, Private! Womanfeelz are a powerful thing indeed.

Any needle prodding should be reported to MNHQ, especially if it's in the face.

Who's delivering Fae's packages, the Incredible Hulk? Because otherwise I'm not seeing the problem.

@AngryAttackKittens
Spoonless, you realize that you're being every bit as aggressive and impolite as the people who you seem to think are being unacceptably rude to you, right?

You're putting words into my mouth. I have never once complained about unacceptable rudeness. On the contrary, I have explictly said that I don't mind - I don't take offence - at what I perceive to be aggression, and, you'll have to take my word for it, but I am kind of compunctuous this way and I don't lie in writing, so I mean what I say.

I'm honestly saying that my experience today has been me repeatedly trying to communicate and repeatedly failing to be understood. It's a little bit wearing. Now, you consider this to be a failure of competence in me but if you just staggered the context slightly you would be calling it gaslighting. I am not. As I say, I put it down to incongruous perspectives.

I've only been dipping in and out of this thread - and I'm assuming the deleted posts are either about Ted, the Navy, or misgendering?

Not actual aggression. This isn't Twitter, and I've whilst I've read a few aggressive posts all over MN, (always deleted), they never come from the radfems. Maybe radfems say things people don't want to hear - but I've never read a threat written by a true radfem.

We are supposed to believe that all deleted threads are Feminists being transphobic. At least that was what I gathered from someone who said we did it all the time and they reported it all the time and there are pages of deleted comments to prove it.
It was TED 2, the right wing infiltrator.

This is an example of what people mean when they say you're communicating poorly, spoonless.

"staggered the context"

This doesn't make any sense. Maybe you mean shifted the context, who knows, but as is most people reading it are going to go "wait, what?". If this is an ESL issue then I apologize for mocking it earlier, but even if it is the fact remains that what's happening here actually is you communicating in a way that other people can't understand, and not because they're deliberately trying not to. It's not "incongruous perspectives", it's confusing language.

Sorry. I misspoke. Not threads but rather comments. Deleted comments.

I've always been very feminine and sensitive. I like doing traditionally female activities such as cleaning, ironing, cooking and washing up. The emotional intimacy of love-making has always been more important to me than the physical side.'

From the Jane Fae article

We call that scut work at my house.

Wait, so is the extremely violent porn that Fae supports "the emotional side of lovemaking"?

Guess so.

According to an article Jane Fae has recently lost three stone because they say: 'It's OK being a fat middle-aged bloke, but not a fat middle-aged woman."

"I like doing traditionally female activities such as cleaning, ironing, cooking and washing up."

Guaranteed to piss most women off. No woman I know likes ironing.

This is absolutely an anti-feminist backlash - reinforcing the gender roles we want to break down.

I like doing none of those activities, so I guess I better change my name to Dave.

Staggered is a synonym of shifted so yes, while shifted may have been a more accessible term I don't think that staggered is any sort of insuperable barrier to comprehension.

OK, I give up. Spoonless, if you're determined to communicate in the most obtuse way possible then have at it. I tried!

I tried too.

@DonnaBe

I'm posting here as the post I made last night has been quoted a couple of times (and it's odd how defensive it made me feel, even though no-one said anything derogatory).

I think you have been very brave, and exceptionally considerate in your tone, entering this arena to debate; but I'm glad you have. There needs to be more calm discussion where possible.

I'm a woman (not cis, don't like that term at all). You say you're also now a woman. Maybe to you and many others you are? How do I know? I've never had that experience or thought process you have.

I have a vagina, womb, periods (just, about to go into menopause), have given birth and so on and you haven't. Does that remove, reduce or stop your need to be accepted as a woman? Clearly not. You are you.

Back in the late 90s I ran a community project next to the local LGBT office. On a Wednesday they had a sort of transsexual (that was their term) night where men could come and dress and, I suppose, be who they wanted. They used the ladies toilets next to my office to change. When working late I'd often come across a 'change gathering' when I nipped to the loo. Every time they were so apologetic and embarrassed and I did what I could to make them feel less awkward. I didn't feel threatened or anything like that. I just thought 'you poor sods, what sort of life do you have ahead of you'. Sorry if that's patronising in today's world, but there you go.

I suppose the current movement is for the new generation coming through, so they don't have that fear of embarrassment or (let's face it) pity. I get that.

I know I'm a woman for all the biological reasons listed, but also because of years of social conditioning particularly around safety from men. Such as how I dress, where I can walk, career choices that don't upset men, talking too loudly, disagreeing and seeing the flashes of anger and on and on, I think you'll get that lovely experience too now with some additional crap on top.

What is my point now after all the waffle (it's late and my womb hurts, honestly).

How can something so divisive find a way forward? Are there any reassurances that can be made? And how have I ended up on the opposite side to those 'poor sods' back then who I supported when other (mostly male) offices tried to ban them plus 'all the gays'?

I didn't bother joining in - there's no point when everything that is said in response to OP plus others who support their view is dismissed, downplayed or obfuscated. Their post seemed to indicate their stance from there start. Don't feed the …...
And we're supposed to excuse their inability to express themselves coherently, in their defence. Right /s

Other trans widows talk of their husband's wanting to be submissive sexually after transition.

They're rejecting toxic masculinity.

Sorry, I have to take issue with this. Men who 'put on womanhood as a costume' (as you rightly describe it) for sexual gratification are NOT rejecting toxic masculinity. They are the personification of it.

Agreed. Woman = fuckthing is as misogynistic as it gets. Notice that those men never seem to identify with being a carer, or doing everyone's laundry. For the middle aged men transitioning it's usually about sex.

So it's pretty clear that 'opposing views' is the real translation of 'aggression' and 'literal violence'.

As for the belief that MN 'civilians' need rescuing and 'would I get out alive' in regard to a woman's place meeting.... tin foil hats come to mind. Also that line from Return To The Forbidden Planet about jettison hyperbole.

So do you think 'taking on the Mumsnetters' was perhaps an attempt by the OP at winning a badge of honour from fellow 'soldiers' fighting the 'war'.

I have to say I found the term 'civilians' quite bizarre.