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 worked in male-dominated lab environment in the 70s, where pin-up pictures of Page 3 girls and such like were par for the course. So as a surreptitious protest, my friend and I bought a copy of Playgirl and pinned up the (relatively) tasteful shot of a naked man in our lab.

Surprise, surprise, an edict went round some days later, asking for all such pictures, male and female to be removed.

And I disagree. Men are a very real threat to transwoman. I lived in Brighton for many years and witnessed first hand the aftermath of gay and trans people getting beaten up, I saw transwoman getting abuse shouted at them in the street and getting assaulted in pubs.
Male violence to transwomen is very real and not all transwoman get off on the idea of being a submissive woman or are hulking great bruisers who can stand their own against a gang of men.

I stand by transwoman in standing up to male violence. However I feel that it needs to be recognised that transwoman are still men and need to have different spaces to women.

@SimonBridges

Thankyou for those comments

If the needle thing was about electrolysis, take it up with the patriarchy. Women have been subject to the same bullshit expectations about feminine presentation since forever. Just be thankful you’re only having to start in your 20s/30s/whatever. I’ve been shaving, epilating, waxing and Imaccing since I was 12 and I relish the winter months when I get to grow out my leg hair and bikini line. If I was being a proper little woman I would have tamed my gorilla-style arm hair, but I can’t be doing with the level of required maintenance it would entail.

Just been trying to catch up on this thread after a family do, yesterday. It seems to have exploded, but, please someone direct me to anything I missed in my scan through.

Did DonnaBe ever come back and address any of the points I asked her to consider about her apparent unwavering support for self ID in my post on here yesterday lunchtime?

As I could not find any reply.

I notice, too, that justanothertranswoman has added similar thoughts since and I did not spot any replies to her either.

Now Donna you can think what you wish and call transphobia as many on here as you want and you might genuinely believe it.

But Donna, we are two transsexual women who have been there and done all this. We are not transphobic of anyone, are we?

And we have these views about the problems with self ID as these problems are, to us, very real, not imaginary.

And whilst they might in reality turn out to be few in number, the concerns that women have that they might not or that they might be at the centre of the one case that does happen because the door was opened are entirely genuine.

To be truthful I feel them too. I do not want the prospect of a sex offender self identifying the day after leaving prison and having no surgery or hormones and turning up next to me in a changing room or toilet.

That is not transphobic either. It is called self protection, which, after you have 'lived as a woman' for more than a while you might come to see is not all sweetness and light.

Women deserve at least a proper reply and counter argument as to why the current GRA system is not good enough for you to go through.

There has to be a reason why both justanother and myself, as transsexuals, were perfectly willing to get help and try to find out why we had this problem of dysphoria and follow a proper course of assessment and treatment.

And then and only then go through the huge upheaval of changing gender after very careful thinking.

We are perfectly fine with being checked every step along the way to ensure it was the right thing and for us and that we were mentally stable and able to fully integrate and contribute to society. Not be a threat without our understanding or realising why.

For us the process involved outlined in the GRA is there to help both women to feel reassured that no one with less than honest motives or who has mental issues and does not realise it is using it to transition. And that it is for those with genuine need only.

As otherwise that would clearly be unfair.

That is what the GRA was set up to do. To let us integrate and be ourselves without fuss. The checks and balances are there for mutual assurance and benefit because trust is a two way street.

Now, if you are suggesting these checks are too onerous, and do not need to be more than signing a form tell us why.

Transpeople are asking a big thing of women here and we should be willing to do a little more in return to earn that respect than merely self declare.

On the other hand, if your argument is that transition today is not like it was decades ago and you do not want to have to 'really' transition in any physical way - just self express as you choose within society and dress as you like - then, fine, I have no problem with that, as such.

Gender roles might need changing, but they have not yet and right now society operates on a more sex based reality where what is under your nickers matters more to most people in a toilet or changing room than it might do to you.

Yes, that is putting it bluntly, but it is a reality of day to day life that cannot easily be brushed aside by saying this is the 21st century not 1960. I have been told that several times by young trans women after my post on here yesterday that horrified them.

Seemingly I am the one out of touch. So IF I am please help me to see why, because nothing I have said here seems unreasonable.

So - if you feel that gender transition now should be simple - then why do you feel that merely expressing how you want to dress entitles you to BE accepted legally as a woman if you are not willing in return to have someone at least check that there is nothing wrong somewhere?

Or you see no reason to reassure women who might give you the benefit of the doubt if you showed willing to be reviewed and monitored first.

Legal change of gender is not like going out and buying a new outfit to make you feel better. Changing your entire legal status might male you feel better as well, but, unlike a new dress, it impacts on other women's lives day to day not just yourself.

Because of the cracks in the door it widens for anyone to walk through who is less honourable in their intent or less mentally stable than I accept that you feel you are. And may, indeed be.

Bu, if it matters so much to your future, why not follow the rules as exist and show us all that and EARN your passage to acceptance rather that ask the rest of the world to hand it over because....?

Would just like to echo others

Hope you are ok moving forward yetanothertranswoman

And jayceedove and donna

And anyone I've missed

Great post Jaycee.

weezel

Sounds like our parents were similar

Except my dad was shit at plaiting my hair or pony tails

He was worried about pulling it to tight or brushing it too forcefully

My mum wasn't worried about that at all...seriously! Im sure my head is a funny shape cos my pony tails were too tight

Sorry that was another long post. I know it will annoy some of you. But Donna needs to ask herself these things and, if she can answer them reasonably, try to tell us.

Oh, and sunflowers, ref your post a page or two back, I imagine that the men you were talking about whop had a night where they came as men, got dressed in women's clothes and then went home as their male selves were transvestites, not transsexuals, as you called it.

There is a major difference. Just think of it as 'tites' like to put tights on underneath their business suits, but that is on top and what they usually live day to day as. And 'sexuals' want to modify their body towards the opposite sex as far as possible and live that way permanently.

Most transvestites fancy women and want to stay physically male. Most transsexuals fancy men and want to transition as far as possible.

There are, of course, exceptions, but these are common points of difference.

Jaycee Yetanothertranswomen The words 'Thank you' seem so inadequate considering all you've experienced, all you've shared and your solidarity with other women, but they are all I have.

Thank you, Jaycee for such an articulate post. I sincerely hope that serious thought is given to the points you raise.

Weezol, thank you. But no thanks are needed for speaking common sense which is all this seems to me to be.

If there are good answers other than, other countries have done it already, or it's a social issue not a medical matter, which are the only ones I have seen raised, then we need to hear them.

Because up to now it WAS very much regarded as a medical matter and the current laws are built around that fact and the small numbers involved.

Society was impacted by those changes, of course, but not drastically.

Whereas if someone, somewhere has now decided there is no medical issue involved, which I find hard to grasp, and it is just a question of self expression of personality - meaning many, many more people as a consequence now want in, then the existing laws cannot remain because they were not designed to deal with such a massive shift in legal status.

You change one thing you have to adapt the other as unintended consequences are bound to follow such a significant alteration.

This needs more, wider, broader discussion and not just ministers chatting to a few trans activists. More people have a stake in this than have yet been even asked to comment.

That is surely now the first step to take.

Absolute respect and allyship to those trans people who are principled and courageous enough to identify with women rather than as women, as Debbie Hayton puts it, and to say so in the current climate

@Jayceedove

Just to clarify as you referenced my previous post. The group I observed was about men wanting to be women on a permanent basis, not being a transvestite. I knew one of them vaguely from another area of life, a young man with a stutter who at 6ft 2 and huge build was never going to 'pass'. Felt sorry for the lad and have wondered after posting yesterday what became of him.

I didn't get the sense any of them were undertaking this lightly. Tortured souls really.

Just my experience of that moment and not meant to be representative on the whole.

Simonbridges post is important. There are transwomen who suffer very real persecution and violence and they deserve protection and safety. TRAs are not the trans community as a whole, by a long shot.

I stand by transwoman in standing up to male violence. However I feel that it needs to be recognised that transwoman are still men and need to have different spaces to women.

Thank you Yet and thank you Jaycee for putting it so articulately and from the perspective of a transwoman.

Of course violent transphobia exists as surely as violent misogyny and violent homophobia

I also suggest that all these things are related: the violence the 'real man' doles out to 'non-men' to assert his dominance. This is one reason why I have such a problem with the whole 'non-man' concept. Men are not defined by their dominance and they should not be.

Sunflowers, thank you for clarifying. I had over 30 pages to read so I probably misunderstood. Apologies.

There are transwomen who suffer very real persecution and violence and they deserve protection and safety. TRAs are not the trans community as a whole, by a long shot.

I'd happily donate to campaigns to address MALE violence against all trans people. But the moment they accused women of being to blame, or threaten us, or doxx us - was the end for me.

Male violence against TIMs is more akin to violent homophobia and not like MVAWG. It’s not at all the same as the experience of being a woman.

"Male violence against TIMs is more akin to violent homophobia and not like MVAWG. It’s not at all the same as the experience of being a woman."

And that's why it gets frustrating when the discussion gets dominated by male on male violence. It's less time spent discussing and trying to improve the lives of women and girls.

Male violence against TIMs is more akin to violent homophobia and not like MVAWG

Men aren't that much of a threat to TIM

I thought you said that transwomen didn't have much to fear from male violence.

And that's why it gets frustrating when the discussion gets dominated by male on male violence

Florafox said that .Men aren't that much of a threat to TIM

Personally I disagree. Having experienced a lot of male violence.

There is some serious gaslighting and projection going on on the twitter thread
It's part of the fetish/delusion to be in a weak position. Kellie Maloney was the same on the C4 (I think) 100 women programme. Simpering about a twitter row and woman's place being mean to Kellie
Who has the power. Not women that's for sure and women can't even meet now without having to allow men in
Every TV programme about women or womens rights has a trans woman on it
Trans women must be over represented in politics
They have trans health watch, trans media watch. They are well organised and funded
Yet they want to be the poor little woman
Delusion and hard of critical thinking

Apparently this thread was aggressive and insulting , and the dogma and abuse left the OP 'feeling sick'.