Reconciling competing rights

[GaspingShark]

Let me start by saying I do know what it's like to have my experience disbelieved, invalidated and gaslighted on an large scale, though not as a trans person or a victim of sexual assault. I don't have PTSD but I do know what it's like to have triggerable sources of distress, again, not as a trans person or a victim of sexual assault.

For me, equal rights must include the right to define your own experience, without gatekeepers, and to be very hesitant to consider people delusional.

So I am unsure about this. I would be ashamed of trans friends seeing me saying stuff such as "I err on the side of including them as much as possible", because I don't think that kind of recognition is mine to confer.

OTOH, I don't know if therefore that means I'm not recognising sexual assault survivors distressed by the fear of male people in women-only contexts.

Is this reconcilable, or does it mean one side just has to grin and bear it? I'll read this thread carefully but due to my bad management of a health condition I can't promise to tend it beyond the OP atm.

Because it might be a hierarchy now but if it's set to change you might miss it if you were, say, overly concerned with, say,

Doesn't look like it's set to change any time soon.

Why would a man (with no understanding of or interest in the meanings and mechanics of feminism and gender) come on to a feminist board and ask women to share their experiences of feeling unsafe in toilets?

I did not say I had no understanding or interest in the meanings and mechanics of feminism and gender. What I have is no definite answers.

But I am a cis female. I can show you my chromosomes. And I respect the women who have shared their experiences.

On the internet no one knows if you are a potato.

Also too and besides, there is no such thing as a cis female.
There is no other side to female, and we are not isomers, we are human beings.

On the internet no one knows if you are a potato.

True! I too 'read' the OP as TIM (and why thebewilderness used the pronoun 'they') - because it would be breaking the rules around here for 'misgendering'. How on earth we are supposed to guess in many cases, is beyond imagination.

Some great comments above from RunRabbit, Barracker, Terf and others. Before the ploppy sound started up.

It is very hard. Trans people have my total sympathy, but whereas gay rights, for example, can't be said to have any impact on the rights of heterosexuals, I can see the point that trans rights can have an impact on the rights of cis women in terms of having what they feel are women-only spaces.

Talking to friends who have survived abuse, I can see that they are not transphobes or TERFs but find it violating to expect to share what they have seen as safe spaces with people who have lived as men (whether they wanted to or not). One survivor friend commented on FB that she had spent her life worrying about whether every man she encountered was 'safe' or not, and to be told that, as she sees it, she doesn't get to decide who is a man or not is very frightening.

One one level the answer might be to have abuse survivor groups specifically for trans people, or have mixed and cis-only groups, but the latter is still asking trans women to have a 'second class' identity and I can't see that as fair somehow. Trans-only groups also mean there's no infrastructure to care for trans women outside major cities.

One one level the answer might be to have abuse survivor groups specifically for trans people, or have mixed and cis-only groups, but the latter is still asking trans women to have a 'second class' identity and I can't see that as fair somehow. Trans-only groups also mean there's no infrastructure to care for trans women outside major cities.

No one is asking them to have a "second class identity". It's just that they are male. You can't actually change sex. You're also ignoring the possibility of abuse. I wish I could find the link, but I once read an account from a woman whose rape support group was attended by a trans identified male who was mimicking the women and using it as a way of building their "story". Yes it's an anecdote, but it was a pretty compelling one. Why should traumatised women have to be made uncomfortable when they want a female only space?

Can you tell me, at what point did those among you who feel unsafe in toilets and other women-only spaces begin feeling unsafe there?

I don't feel unsafe. I don't see the relevance to the question of competing rights though. I wonder why you asked this. Is this what you think people like me are worried about: trans blokes coming into the ladies loos and assaulting me?

Some men want to have access to female spaces. When I say female spaces I am including the words woman, she, her, the category female in data collection, as well as physical spaces like prisons and refuges.

The men say they have the right to that access because they feel like they are women and they feel distressed when people treat them like men. Therefore it is their human right that they should be treated exactly like women.

No. Just no. There are no competing rights here.

People don't have the right to demand that others play along with a falsehood. The obvious parallel is religion. In this country we stopped telling people what they are allowed to believe hundreds of years ago. A lot of people were burned at the stake before we decided that religion is for a person's own heart only and nobody can force their beliefs on other people. This was a good decision. We should stick to it.

Yep OP is male I intuit - Australian at that. You see I have these powers of knowing lol!

Many many women who have been abused by men don't want men in their recovery groups - they get harmed by that. So why should women trying to heal be harmed?

And yes I have seem TIMs in women only spaces mimicking women so they can pass better - it's like being peeped upon - it is very harmful.

TIMs having their own healing groups is not geographically limited - that's a phurphy - we have the internet these days and plenty of tech savvy TIMS as well as services

And how exactly where are the stats proving this mythical crowd of TIMs needing spaces - we're talking about 0.1% of population at most. Being raised as men mean most will not have been abused. So give me facts and figures for how many need refuges etc before coming up with spurious arguments that they are in any way in comparison with the deluge of women abused as children and adults - 51% of the population. And no one is denying their rights but it needs to be put in perspective.

And yes I have seem TIMs in women only spaces mimicking women so they can pass better - it's like being peeped upon - it is very harmful.

It strikes me as a narcissistic perspective that other people are just props in your life. Their only function is to provide narcissistic supply. No empathy there.

But I am a cis female. I can show you my chromosomes. And I respect the women who have shared their experiences.

On the internet no one knows if you are a potato.
Also too and besides, there is no such thing as a cis female.

Yes but if I just said if "I'm a woman" or female you would have accused me of being a man who thinks that they are a woman, wouldn't you?

I haven't seen anyone accuse you of anything.

Let's see your chromosomes then

That's a joke, btw, for anyone hard of thinking.

But I am a cis female. I can show you my chromosomes. And I respect the women who have shared their experiences.

On the internet no one knows if you are a potato.
Also too and besides, there is no such thing as a cis female.

Yes but if I just said if "I'm a female" you would have accused me of being a man who thinks that they are a female, wouldn't you?

@womanformallyknownaswoman.
I'm an Australian male? How did you arrive at that?

Rat

It just comes down to this: why should my 13 year old daughter have to change her tampon in a toilet cubicle while a TIM is stood outside?

He needs to get his dick over to the men's urinal where it belongs!

Sorry for cross posting myself. Why do we not have a better forum interface here?!

@BarrackerBarmer just wanted to say the same as everyone else. Brilliant brilliant post

Can we go back to your first post on this thread, which as I read it says:
1 - you believe in recognising peoples right to self id, so for e.g. you think male people who self id as female have the right to use women's spaces
2 - you recognise that males in women's spaces can be distressing for women who have experienced male violence
3 - you want to know whether it's possible to be 'inclusive' of males in women's spaces without causing distress to women who find males in their spaces distressing.

Or, in your words, "does it mean one side just has to grin and bear it?"

So I'd like to ask you - do you think either group has a greater right to women's spaces, women or males who id as women?

Which of these groups, in your opinion, should be told to "grin and bear" not having access to women's spaces?

Outside of a feminist perspective on gender and sex, the OP's question is salient. Politically the transgender debate is about competing rights.

As a general point of view, I support oppressed groups. I wouldn't want to see any transgender teenager or adult humiliated, excluded, sexually assaulted, beaten up or forced to resort to suicide. I wouldn't want to see women face the same.

Where the rights of both groups comes into conflict is in women's-only 'spaces': bathrooms, refuges, shortlists, awards and so on.

The question is, should women accept TW into their groups or does that threaten their rights?

When we answer this question, as a person or as a society, we must be clear. We favour one at the cost of the other.

When we answer this question, as a person or as a society, we must be clear. We favour one at the cost of the other.

Although I agree with you that it's a zero sum game, I don't accept the basis of gender dysphoria as a reason for allowing males into female sex segregated spaces. I think a third space is preferable and the recognition that women are a disadvantaged sex class is critically important.

I don't accept the basis of gender dysphoria as a reason for allowing males into female sex segregated spaces I agree with you because my position is the rights of women out-trump the rights of trans.

As I see it, trans want to share many of the women's spaces out of a desire to be accepted as 'real women', they fear rejection (rather than oft-quoted fear of violence, death and persecution in the men's/neutral spaces).

Women want to preserve their spaces from trans because of sex-based oppression. Trans threaten to take women's places in sports, awards, parliament. Trans who've not had surgery threaten women because they have penises in spaces where women are vulnerable (toilets, changing rooms, GG tents, dorms).

Yes but if I just said if "I'm a woman" or female you would have accused me of being a man who thinks that they are a woman, wouldn't you?

I do not generally make accusations against people here. That would be a violation of the talk guidelines.
I am not going to report this hypothetical hate crime you are accusing me of because I think it ridiculous and also too and besides unlike you I try to avoid logical fallacy.

YY Flytipper.

It is very hard. Trans people have my total sympathy, but whereas gay rights, for example, can't be said to have any impact on the rights of heterosexuals, I can see the point that trans rights can have an impact on the rights of cis women in terms of having what they feel are women-only spaces.

Go back a few decades and you'd absolutely have gay rights having an impact on the rights of heterosexuals in terms of having what they feel are heterosexuals-only spaces violated.

Me, personally, I'm in fact not an Australian TIM, I'm a 5'4 female woman-type-creature partaking of the gay who comes across about as threatening as a sort of scruffy duckling, really. I'd be inclined to give way if anyone was so timorous as to be scared of me, but I know much bigger butcher women who are as read as males and have a miserable time of it, and this is why my own answer is still I don't know. But keep going you're convincing me.