Questions from a liberal feminist to the rad fems

[daimbars]

Questions from a liberal feminist to radical feminists.

Inspired by this thread:
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3244342-Has-anyone-else-just-discovered-that-they-are-a-RadFem

I have a few questions for the rad fems. I do get the concerns with self ID and the discussions around that.

The questions I have are for those who have posted comments such as:

You can’t argue with biological fact / trans women are men / being trans is a mental illness

My questions are:

Are you saying the current Gender Recognition Act should be repealed?

If so, are you suggesting withdrawing hormones from those who have already transitioned?

Do you think a fully transitioned trans woman with a GRC to ‘prove’ she is a woman (eg Nadia from Big Brother) should use the men’s loos and be in a male prison / care home / hostel?

Do you think TRAs who say things on Twitter like ‘suck my ladydick’ and 'enjoy your erasure' are representative of transgender people as a whole?

Do you feel transgender people threaten your safety and well-being as a woman? If so what personal experiences (not what you have read on Mumsnet / Twitter / Reddit) have made you reach this conclusion?

Do you think current exceptions in the Equality Act (eg it is legal to exclude trans women from competitive spots and certain job roles such as rape crisis counselling) are sufficient to protect women? https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/gender-reassignment-discrimination

If your male child repeatedly told you they were female from the age of three, wore dresses, played with girls etc and were very distressed at the thought of male puberty, how would you help them?

My answers are no, no, no, no, no, yes. The last question I would struggle with the most but I would try to support my child to live the life they need to live as best I could. I guess this makes me a lib fem.

Are you saying the current Gender Recognition Act should be repealed?

If it was up to me, yes. It is a sledgehammer to crack the nut of one subset of sexual fetishists and fantasists who demand that the law reflects their desires and delusions (to be seen as women)

If so, are you suggesting withdrawing hormones from those who have already transitioned?

This does not follow from a repeal of the GRA.

Do you think a fully transitioned trans woman with a GRC to ‘prove’ she is a woman (eg Nadia from Big Brother) should use the men’s loos and be in a male prison / care home / hostel?

Nadia from big brother looks like a man in drag with fake tits. If he is so concerned about how other men might treat him then he needs to campaign against that. "Safer men's spaces for all" kind of thin.

Do you think TRAs who say things on Twitter like ‘suck my ladydick’ and 'enjoy your erasure' are representative of transgender people as a whole?

How is it not representative ?

Do you feel transgender people threaten your safety and well-being as a woman? If so what personal experiences (not what you have read on Mumsnet / Twitter / Reddit) have made you reach this conclusion?

The sabotage of women's health services, refuges, rape crisis, women's sport, lesbian spaces, the threats and abuse, the attacks trying to shut down posts on mumsnet, the silencing, threats, targetting of families and livelihoods, the abuse of children, the push for corrective rape of lesbians, the epidemic of sudden onset transing of teenage girls, the taking over of women's shortlists and grants .... it just goes on. How is this not a threat to our health and well-being ?

Do you think current exceptions in the Equality Act (eg it is legal to exclude trans women from competitive spots and certain job roles such as rape crisis counselling) are sufficient to protect women? www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/gender-reassignment-discrimination

The act needs repealing

If your male child repeatedly told you they were female from the age of three, wore dresses, played with girls etc and were very distressed at the thought of male puberty, how would you help them?

Very difficult in the current climate where even the medical profession seems to have lost their collective marbles, and have bought into the born into the wrong body nonsense.

But CharleyParley how can we ignore intersex people when we are defining people by sex? Apparently the same proportion of people who have red hair are intersex so it's a pretty large demographic.

@daimbars That's a very misleading statistic. Can you break that stat down? Is that the number of people who have red hair in the UK, or globally? 2% of the worlds population have red hair but in the UK the stat is much higher. Scotland boasts the highest percentage of natural redheads, with 13% while Ireland has 10%. You hear a stat like that and it sounds like that's a lot of people because it's quite common in this country.

Define intersex. According to some TRA women with endometritis are intersex. Intersex communities have repeatedly asked for TRA to leave them out of their campaign. Nobody is denying that intersex people exist. The problem is when people who are 'non-binary' claim this justifies their special status. They're NOT intersex they're just gender non-conforming. It's NOT the same thing.

Again you seem woefully uninformed. Disorders of sexual development in the vast majority of cases cause problems with sexual development at puberty (hence the name) and are then medically treated.

Actual intersex conditions are extremely rare. That vast majority of children with a disorder of sexual development are not only recognisably male or female at birth and therefore go undiagnosed at that time, they also grow up to be recognisably male or female (although almost all of them are infertile).

And whatever DSD they have, they suffer from an unquestionably real biological condition with a well researched and understood basis in molecular biology, not from a subjective feeling of a (trans)gender identity.

What you are alluding to with your claims of grey areas and all that stuff are those rare cases of classical intersex conditions that have ambiguous genitalia at birth. The prevalence of these classical conditions is fewer than 2 births in every 10,000. Not 2 in 100.

According to some TRA women with endometritis are intersex

I think it's PCOS they think is intersex, rather than endometriosis.

When intersex organisations repeatedly ask to be left out of the trans debate, how bloody dare anyone try to drag them in to use them as some kind of proof for a nebulous point of argument

it would be better to remove gender markers from identification so people's transition wasn't outed on their passport.

Sex, along with date of birth, place of birth and full name, is a really important bit of information in helping agencies to ensure that they have the right person. It has been looked at a number of times, and the international agency that sets standards for passport design does allow "X" instead of "M" and "F" (I think Canada and Australia will issue "X" passports if requested). But you can bet your bottom dollar that when Interpol circulate a description of a wanted person it will say something like "Bob Smith, male (born female), Caucasian, 52, believed to be travelling alone on a Canadian passport number 1234567 with gender neutral marker".

I think it's PCOS they think is intersex, rather than endometriosis

Yeah, endometriosis is just women enjoying their cis privilege, innit

SuperMatchGame
Oops weaponising pedophilia (and murder) again.

Perhaps you would prefer to comment with regards transgender prisoners and the female estate on a recent article discussing the issues surrounding the need to move Sophie Eastwood and Alex Stewart?
www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/transgender-killers-kept-apart-after-12493525

(extract)

"Despite their new female identities neither have had surgery, and fellow inmates complained that they felt intimidated around the pair because of their behaviour.

A source said: “It got beyond the joke. No one has a problem with transgender people. But they do have a problem when they suspect that the transgender identities are being used as a way of getting a cushier time in prison. It totally undermines real transgender prisoners.”

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3242178-Transgender-killers-split-up-by-prison-chiefs

Perhaps you would prefer to comment with regards transgender prisoners

“It got beyond the joke. No one has a problem with transgender people. But they do have a problem when they suspect that the transgender identities are being used as a way of getting a cushier time in prison. It totally undermines real transgender prisoners.

Yes R0wantrees happy to comment. This ^

The intersex=red hair percentage is a totally bogus stat.
It is hugely inflated with any disorder of sexual development. DSD.

My partner was born with hypospadias , he is both amused and horrified that he is officially intersex. He is undoubtaby male. I have three friends who had baby boys with hypospadias. These babies are all male . I have a friend with Klinefelter's , he is male.

Most people think of intersex as an ambiguous hermaphroditism condition with a mosaic of male and female body parts.
The public are not that knowledgeable about DSD, intersex, trnssexualism and transgenderism and this allows nonsense stats to be thrown around.

Permission
Having someone pretending to be a member of the opposite sex does.

They're not pretending. Nowhere in any legislation or medical guidance does it refer to people 'pretending to be a member of the opposite sex'. That statement in itself when applied to genuine transitioned trans people is transphobic.

At the point of interview, when face to face, it would it probably be the time to disclose your sex

The law specifically prevents this from having to happen in most situations including interviews, not just in the UK but as specified by the ECHR.

They need to balance everyone's needs, because sex is a protected characteristic.

And you not being able to know someone's former sex in the majority of employment situations is also a protected characteristic. Do you realistically think that is likely to change?

In informal situations it is probably going to be a bit tedious, but at the point you realise someone has been deceived, for instance they are flirting with you or sharing themselves openly or being close with your personal space is also the time to disclose if you want the interaction to continue.

If you believe you are the sex you are affirmed as, legally and medically, at what point would that actually register as deception and what would it feel like?
Are there any other things you think a person should disclose in any of those social situations that you mention?

SuperMatchGame

So you acknowledge the very real issues that already exist (prior to the possible changes in GRA to include self id) when some male-born people are able to access what were previously single sex spaces?

I have heard it often reported that with regards transgender prisoners, individuals are assessed on a case by case basis.

I would anticipate that the prison service would have more information available to them (by way of pre-sentence reports, risk assessments, time and resources etc) than a women's refuge.

REALLY interesting thread here @daimbars

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3246528-Why-did-the-whole-tone-on-trans-issues-change-here?messages=100&pg=1

R0wantrees
So you acknowledge the very real issues that already exist (prior to the possible changes in GRA to include self id) when some male-born people are able to access what were previously single sex spaces?

Yes I acknowledge there are very real issues when some male-born people are able to access what are single sex (female) spaces.

I have heard it often reported that with regards transgender prisoners, individuals are assessed on a case by case basis.

Yes, sounds sensible given that not all transgender prisoners have committed sex crimes or are a risk.

Ian Huntly is not in a female prison. And that horror is not a woman.

especially when those transwomen are Ian Huntley.

It was the ease with which 'tranwomen' was aligned with 'Ian Huntly' that I was commenting on.

especially when those transwomen are Ian Huntley.

Oops weaponising pedophilia (and murder) again.

10th rule of misogyny: The worst thing about male violence is that it makes men look bad.

And that horror is not a woman.

Not even if he says he is? Your time would be better protesting Stonewall's definition of transgender and what all your lovely TRA friends think than arguing with MN feminist women.

SupermatchGame
Yes I acknowledge there are very real issues when some male-born people are able to access what are single sex (female) spaces.
Yes, sounds sensible [that individuals are assessed on a case by case basis] given that not all transgender prisoners have committed sex crimes or are a risk.

& yet significant issues have been demonstrated recently using what you believe are sensible assessments by the prison service.

(& to repeat my point)
I would anticipate that the prison service would have more information available to them (by way of pre-sentence reports, risk assessments, time and resources etc) than a women's refuge.

And that horror is not a woman

Is that not transphobia?

Yes, sounds sensible [that individuals are assessed on a case by case basis] given that not all transgender prisoners have committed sex crimes or are a risk.

Why do women have to have them in their area, though? Why can they not be in a safe area of the men's prisons? I just don't understand the thinking, that if a man feels something, it's up to women to make him feel safe. It's up to the prison authorities to make him feel safe, and to keep women safe.

If people are the gender they say they are then why is Huntley not a woman? I mean, I don't think he is, but if you generally support the idea that only the individual can know their own gender and we should believe them when they say what it is then how do you justify making Huntley an exception?

Oops weaponising pedophilia (and murder) again.

Paedophilia and murder are already pretty fucking weaponised from where I’m standing.

Is that not transphobia?

No. And if he does go in a female prison, I'll peak trans.

but why isn't it transphobia not to believe Ian Huntley (we're all 'dead naming' him btw, I believe he has selected a new, female name)?

it's transphobic not to believe Jane Fae.

It's transphobic not to believe Shon Fay.

It's transphobic not to believe Paris Lees.

I'm not likening any of them to Huntley. But, presumably if he has come to a considered decision that he is, actually a woman, why can we disregard his decision process but must take others seriously?

why is Huntley not a woman?

Because we've no evidence he is saying he is, or even applied for gender treatment. The media reported he was wearing a wig and using a female name. They also reported that he's likely trying to either get a transfer or preferential treatment.
And it's not just what the individual says, it's what the mental health professionals say during assessments over a period of time as part of a process (as you know). As far as we know he hasn't even done anything like that and I don't believe he will.