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.

That's really interesting BuggerBugger, can you explain why?

Ireland has effectively legalised indecent exposure, harassment and voyeurism in women's private spaces. It's transphobic and possibly a hate crime to report such problems.

This is overblown. There's no indication that such issues have arisen en mass since the legislation was introduced. As I've said before the numbers of transgender people in Ireland is very small and, for whatever reason, much quieter in terms of media profile etc.

Much, if not all, of the changing rooms in this country in shops etc are cubicle based. I haven't heard of many young children who transition and thus create issues in terms of changing spaces in schools but in general PE in schools involve children going in in their tracksuits that day and they don't change. Not sure what happens in the team based sports as they get older but it hasn't yet come to attention as an issue.

I think it likely that there isn't the same 'pathways' for children in terms of access to hormone treatment, that appears to be easier to access in the UK. It would seem most transgender young people here transition in early adulthood.

@TERFragetteCity

I always hated changing in front of anyone else when I was at school. I totally agree with you on this one.

Same sex / opposite sex. We should look at the needs of the kids on this.

It's the social presentation that maintains 99% of our interactions with other people not the biologiocal.

Most of the time I relate to people as humans. I have no reason to distinguish between anybody on the basis of sex, behaviour or presentation and generally I have nothing more in common with a woman than I would have with a man. That’s the basis anti discrimination law.

However, sometimes people need different rights and services. That is why it is illegal for me to discriminate against people with disabilities, but also why it is fair that I don’t have a blue badge for my car.

It’s pretty near impossible to protect rights and services if you don’t have a name for the people who need those rights and services.

So answer the questions then DonnaBe.

Do you think rapists should be transferred to female prisons?

Do you think five-year-old girls should be expected to do their own risk assessment in terms of sleeping arrangements?

Do you think 14-year-old boys should sleep in the same tent as 10-year-old girls without those girls' parental consent?

Do you think men should compete in sport as, and against, women?

Can you make any suggestions as to how to make a distinction between transsexuals and autogynephiles?

Do you think a male person should be accepted as a woman's officer?

Do you think lesbians are trans-phobic if they exclude transwomen from their dating pool? (Bearing in mind that sexual orientation is another protected characteristic).

I don't know how old you are, Donna. In the seventies, men could wear flowing, floral outfits and have long hair, women could wear denim trousers and have short hair. Glam rockers wore make up. In the eighties, men could wear make up.

It's only since the 90's that men have been shoehorned back into very gendered clothes. Reclaim the clothes and make up, wear what you like, sleep with whoever you want/will have you, no one cares.

Don't mis define 'woman'.

Different societies treat genders differently. The gender roles we see in modern western society are not universal either historically or geographically.

Oh gee, thanks for pointing this out. No, really. Feminists had never noticed that gender roles aren’t universal, or theorised about it. Thanks for helping us get our silly little woman brains around the idea of gender construction....

*“I don't ignore reproductive systems. They are important.

When I meet someone I know, I don't say "How's your womb?" I say "Hey nice jacket!" or "Hey, that hairdo really suits you!".

Most of the time we relate to people socially. Not biologically. It's the social presentation that maintains 99% of our interactions with other people not the biologiocal.”*

Are you 12? You are missing the point spectacularly. Women’s oppression due to our biology doesn’t manifest itself in how people greet us on the street (though it does crop up sometimes sadly in terms of everyday harassment). You do really need to educate yourself.
Why do you think there even is a gender pay gap? I’m not talking about the equal pay gap as equality of pay is supposed to be illegal. Why do you think men occupy the positions of pay and power? Do you think it’s because they are more clever, or could it just could it possibly be due to biology?

I always hated changing in front of anyone else when I was at school. I totally agree with you on this one.

So did I. But I'd have hated changing in front of a boy so very much more.

Ah yes Ireland - sooooo good at protecting woman’s rights.

Seriously, this is getting old now. The abortion referendum is next month and the scandals of the past are well aired at this point with a general sense of horror across the country at what went on.

Stop painting my country as a backwater of misogyny where women are subservient hapless servants to the men.

To deny society is make women prisoners of their biology and to consign us to being brood mares and drudges

Oh wow. Did you really just include yourself with the reproductive capabilities of women?!

Also, what’s with all the new poster who have changed their minds lately. Maybe if my brain had really fallen out after I’d had babies, I’d be buying it, but on the heels of all the Cambridge Analytica coverage try to show a modicum of subtlety. Any self-respecting MNer who is in fundamental disagreement with the prevailing FWR discourse it to found in AIBU grumbling in the “not another trans thread FFS!” thread ir in Site Stuff asking for a new topic. They don’t try to tone police discussions in FWR. 2/10 for effort.

Gender is a construct of both biology and society. Which one we are determines how we behave and how we are treated.
Different societies treat genders differently. The gender roles we see in modern western society are not universal either historically or geographically.

I think what you are trying to say here is that gender is a social construct based on reproductive roles? If so -yes I agree. But the reproductive roles themselves are obviously not socially constructed.

To deny society is make women prisoners of their biology and to consign us to being brood mares and drudges. And it is evidentially wrong.

You’ve got this completely back to front. What you are calling society here (I think you are meaning the social construct of gender?) is the way that women are oppressed! It is the harmful expectations and behaviours that are hitched to the biological function that are the problem, not the function itself.

Do you really think that acknowledging the fact that women give birth is harmful to them? Just that fact with no judgements attached? Can you not see that it is the judgements that are attached (gender) which is he harmful bit?

And im not sure why you use ‘us’ when you talk about being consigned to being a ‘brood mare’. That will never happen to you.

I do find it fascinating that you are openly wedded to the social construct of gender being the important bit. Others like you try to deny this and say that gender is internal (and so somehow biological). It’s unusual that you admit it is socially constructed.

That's been one of their/your psycological warfare tactics for a long time.
Hmmm.... if you're looking for such things, you'd do better to look to some of the very active TRAs.

As James Kirkup wrote in The Spectator recently:
"Second, the people responsible for the fear and abuse these women suffer are not representative of transgender people as a whole; the transgender population must be assumed to contain as wide a distribution of vice and virtue as any other group. Indeed, some of those involved in this debate suspect that at least some of the real authors of that fear and abuse are not transwomen but men intent on frightening and diminishing women. Certainly, some male supporters of transgender rights seem to take a certain pleasure in the anxieties of women who question that agenda."

We should look at the needs of the kids on this.

You keep saying this @DonnaBe but not explaining specifically what you mean, particularly in specific cases where the requirements of a boy who wants to transition may be in direct conflict with the rights of girls.

Transitioning boy says - I'm a girl now. Don't other me. I shouldn't be made to change for PE with the boys, they'll be horrible to me (quite likely tbh). I have a right to take part in normal school life and to do PE.

Girls say - I've known transitioning boy since I was 5 years old, he's a boy. I don't want to get naked in front of a boy. I have a right to take part in normal school life and to do PE.

Who's rights take priority?

"Most of the time we relate to people socially. Not biologically. It's the social presentation that maintains 99% of our interactions with other people not the biologiocal."

We judge people very quickly on how they appear - but the judgements formed are coloured by the societal ideas that surround us.

A society that keeps women in their place by using their biology as justification, or by using their biology as a means to limit them (eg. not having facilities to change sanitary products - therefore limiting how long/where women can go out in public)

The stereotypes and expectations are very much a part of this system. One where women, due to being the childbearing sex, are expected to be nurturing and selfless - putting others before them and being the ones to make space. Even in small ways like women being the ones to move over when walking, while men will keep walking straight - including walking into women who don't conform to this expectation.

Pretty much every expectation/stereotype foisted on women can be traced back to ways to control us via our biology.

So no, social interactions are not completely separate from biology. And funnily enough, a clearly male bodied person - no matter how good their makeup - will not be lumbered with the same expectations as some clearly of the childbearing class.

boatyard

Spot on.

But Donna

No one woukd really give a shit if needs of kids were being considered. Or women.

No-one actually cares what you wear or how you present or what make you have yourself or what you do to yoir own body.

It's only because it's happening just how you are denying that people have a problem

Just Google Lila Perry and Lily Madigan who sued schools to use the womens loos.

Scholarships lost by girls because of boys.

Sports
Services
Changing rooms
Jobs
Hospital wards
Guiding all happening right now because everywhere us assuming it's law already.

If you can't see that's a problem you are just being deliberately goady.

@Bumblebzz

The majority of our lives where we interact with other people are social. Not reproductive or bilogical.
Yes, the different reproductive roles have historically disadvantaged women. That has been changing over the last century for the better. And we should keep up the fight!
But it's society that allows those changes. Social structures have developed that negate the effects of biology and allow women a much better life. If you deny the role of society, all you have left is biology.
I was born in the 1950s. I saw how women were treated when I was young. Things are better now. But the domain of the fight is society. Not biology.

But biology matters ffs society didn't invent prostate cancer or ectopic pregnancy.

And no one can identify out of rape or fgm or cancer

An excellent #peaktrans thread

But we should all tell the truth

Ermmm....

Also, what’s with all the new poster who have changed their minds lately. Maybe if my brain had really fallen out after I’d had babies, I’d be buying it, but on the heels of all the Cambridge Analytica coverage try to show a modicum of subtlety. Any self-respecting MNer who is in fundamental disagreement with the prevailing FWR discourse it to found in AIBU grumbling in the “not another trans thread FFS!” thread ir in Site Stuff asking for a new topic. They don’t try to tone police discussions in FWR. 2/10 for effort.

Quite! Intellectual capacity and subtlety of tactic are not hallmarks of this movement, are they? I suspect they can only identify at most half a dozen talking points at one time (and then only by use of buzzword) and are not very good at research.

" Social structures have developed that negate the effects of biology and allow women a much better life. "

We're in the middle of a massive backlash, most women are worried about our rights being rolled back before our eyes and this is your take away?