Legal self-id - what are the problems?

[SarahAr]

Legal self-id - what are the problems?

Assuming that the government goes ahead with legal self-id in-line with its announcement that it only intends to change the Gender Recognition Act to simplify the process and demedicalise it, but it does not intend to change the Equality Act.

And also assuming the legislation is no more permissive than the legislation in Ireland, which requires a statutory declaration stating that the individual intends to live as a women for the rest of her life. This is a safe assumption given the far right government in power today.

What are the problems with legal self-id? More specifically how does it help predators to prey on women and how does it impact women's rights?

This is not intended as a goady post - I genuinely cannot see the problems.

There's a good post about prisons by @admiralroland on the Laurie Penny thread.

@changeypants: people change the whole pattern of their lives around this stuff. it can affect every single interaction with a person of the opposite sex.

YY this, for me as well.

i speak from experience.

however what is it about the voices of women like me that is so easy for you to disregard? can't you see beyond your own experience?

It's because we are women, and therefore don't count. If TIMs were actually treated like women, no one would pay them any attention.

Consult with women on the proposed changes to the law:

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/214118

If TIMs were actually treated like women, no one would pay them any attention.

This. It's so blatantly obvious no one really sees them as women.

I don't mean to be flippant, but honestly it's like some people have never shared the world with other human beings before.

absolutely we do share the world with other humans. i'm sure 95% of my ordinary day i don't require sex segregation. why is it such a problem that, for the small amount of time that i do, i get to exercise a degree of consent over who i share with?

It's because we are women, and therefore don't count.

I know - women have an overwhelming socialisation of "be careful" - be careful who you go out with, who you meet, how you get home, don't walk home alone etc etc etc. Don't make yourself vulnerable. Every single rape or assault victim - if their case even gets to court - women are disbelieved, asked what they were wearing, how much they had to drink, told they're making it up.

But now there's a sudden change in attitude - we don't need to fear men coming into women's spaces at all. It's an irrational fear we're told (like a fear of escalators). Told there is no way any predatory man could possibly take advantage of self ID legislation to access vulnerable women because "they'd get an extra 2 years on top of their sentence". Well, ha ha ha. Bullshit.

But now there's a sudden change in attitude - we don't need to fear men coming into women's spaces at all

As someone said on another thread, that isn't how it would pan out in practice. Women will get, "what did you expect, going to unisex toilets on your own at night"?

And yes it is utter bullshit.

And of course their fears aren't at all irrational.

Yes - so many cases have shown that if you are drunk and near men you are on your own as far as the law is concerned.

"what did you expect, going to unisex toilets on your own at night"?

Yes of course, any feasible way to hold the woman somehow responsible for her own assault/rape....

Remember Eamonn Holmes saying to the rape victim "you'll get a taxi next time, won't you?" - except not Worbuoy's black cab, hopefully.

Remember Eamonn Holmes saying to the rape victim "you'll get a taxi next time, won't you?" - except not Worbuoy's black cab, hopefully

Exactly. I do remember. Stupid man.

We're seriously talking about legislating what feelings women may have in public spaces. This.

Also, I'd like to remind everyone that John Worboys chose a career path and created a raping toolkit, just to commit rapes. If men will choose their career just to be able to rape, what's to say they won't fill out the self-id papers just to rape and ogle and harass? Absolutely nothing. Proponents of self-id are basically saying "women, trust all men not to abuse the self-id system" when we know already that 6% cannot be trusted around women.

Legislating for a man's feelings of "identity" over a woman's physical safety.

Why don't transpeople just identify as transpeople. Which is, after all, what they are.

Statistics could be recorded accurately, there could be transgender sports and transgender changing facilities, transgender shortlists, etc.

This would be the easiest, simplest and fairest way to ensure that everyone gets the legal rights and protections that they deserves.

They are only trans gender, not transsexual.

There is a difference and until that is acknowledged there is no true acceptance, just a lot of very damaging virtue signalling which is confusing everyone imo.

So much naivety on this thread and posters who don't actually understand what it is like to be a woman. The reality of day to day life is so far from the 'just tell the management/police' rubbish that is spouted on this thread.

Some of the responses from PPs about how there won't be any problem if open changing rooms are replaced by individual stalls etc concern me - it's been my experience that it actually helps support healthy body image when we're exposed to other women's naked bodies; I'd hate to see it become normalised that the only same-sex naked bodies we're exposed to are the fetishised norms of pornography etc. It should be safe & ok for women and girls to change openly around each other, but that can't happen if those born male are admitted, regardless of how they 'identify', or whether they have a GRC or not.

Get the feeling I'm not making my point particularly well, but it was an experience I had a few years ago in Morocco of all places that perhaps best illustrates what I'm trying to say - me & a friend took our 3 teenage daughters to a local Hammam (not the upmarket spa kind of experience, but a local community one in the heart of the medina). We'd gone prepped with our swimming costumes & bikinis, but were basically laughed at as we started to awkwardly try to change out of our clothes into them, with the otherwise rather fierce seeming women from reception giggling like crazy as she lifted up her jalaba, exposing that she was naked underneath, and using her hand to emulate a penis swinging between her legs, and repeatedly saying 'no, no, NO...' - in other words, we didn't need to wear anything, as no-one with a dick would ever be getting past her! The next couple of hours were unlike anything I'd ever experienced in our supposedly more liberated culture - a few dozen women & girls of all ages & body shapes completely comfortable in each others' presence, scrubbing & washing each other down, rubbing oils into each others skin etc. - it was such an incredibly liberating experience. I was scrubbed down by a woman who must have been at least in her early 70s - she lay me across her naked lap as she defoliated pretty much every centimetre of my body. We all left there wishing that our own culture had similar traditions that enabled women to be as comfortable in our bodies as we'd experienced in that hammam - while recognising the many other ways that women in that country / culture are oppressed, it really did feel that that was something they'd got very, VERY right...

Why don't transpeople just identify as transpeople. Which is, after all, what they are.

Because that doesn't get men who have AGP aroused. They have spent a disproportionate amount of time watching pornography which directly translates to a boner if they can present as women, and force other people to participate.

They are only trans gender, not transsexual.

Exactly. Which is why most transsexuals are not TRAs.

To me, the implications of legal self-ID are as follows. Currently whether we rent or have bought our house, nobody is allowed to walk in off the streets and enter our property apart from in certain circumstances (police with a warrant, landlord who has given appropriate notice etc). Self-ID is akin to the government deciding to scrap trespassing laws and allow anyone to wander in to your home at whim, the only thing they're not allowed to do is attack or steal from you. In order to get strangers out of your home you have to wait for them to commit a crime against you, and then you're allowed to contact the police.

This is self-ID, it puts women in a position where we can't request help until during or after a crime has been committed against us. If we see a man enter the women's changing room we can't summon a member of staff, we have to suck it up and wait to see if they're there with ill intent, and then we're allowed to complain Apparently this is a completely reasonable solution and TRAs are surprised women aren't falling over themselves to endorse it.

In particular, we will not see gangs of pantie-eraring perverts queuing up to get into ladies loos

No, but what we did see when it was announced that the loos were unisex at one formerly sex segregated public venue was men going in to the women's and standing around occupying it the way they used to do on street corners.
These changes expand the spaces where men will put on male dominance displays with impunity.
It is hard to believe that people do not know why girls and women had guardians in the past, by social custom, and in some countries currently by law. Solitary women and girls were free to be used and abused by any men who chose to.
At a time when the UN is promoting single sex facilities so that women and girls can participate in the pubic sphere the so called "first world" countries are stripping women and girls of those protections in the name of equal rights.

Are you kidding me? Six decades of drumming it into me that I'm responsible for my own safety and that if something bad does happen, it's probably my own fault. And now you say I should let down my guard and, if there is a problem, call the management?

You're having a laugh, Sunshine.

@saratree [the hammam] was such an incredibly liberating experience.

Whilst we were not hands-on in the sauna I used to attend, we were topfree. Being able to enjoy your own skin away from the male gaze, with no fear of rape and no fear of objectification, is incredibly liberating and I suspect that the women who support TRAs have never experienced this. If they had, they would fight to the death to keep it.

Because that doesn't get men who have AGP aroused. They have spent a disproportionate amount of time watching pornography which directly translates to a boner if they can present as women, and force other people to participate

Oh Datun, come on! That's such an inflammatory image and you've stitched it from so little fabric it's untrue. And you're a smart cookie, you know you're doing it.

AGP is the theory of arousal experienced when imagining oneself as a woman. It has been tested by using a really ropey questionnaire asking (I paraphrase), "how sexy do you feel imagining yourself going out for a date all dolled up?".

The thing is, someone got a load of women to answer this little questionnaire too and guess what? Turns out like 98% of women have AGP too.

Sooooo... it's AGP if you're a kinky cross-dresser, it's AGP if you're a post-OP transsexual, it's AGP if you're a no-OP transwoman... but it's NOT if you have the requisite two X chromosomes?

Give over if you can't see how utterly useless that is.

Thing is, self-ID means bugger all for AGP. The one of those groups mentioned above that might be watching all that porn and getting off on calling themselves a woman, they're also the only one of those groups not likely to want to change their legal status for their entire everyday life to that of being a woman. I don't think we need a huge great big study to know the obvious, in that AGP kinky cross-dressers rather tend to be men living their everyday lives as men, rather than the ones who want the documents required to live every single second of their lives as a woman.

PS nice to see you back on the threads :)

AGP kinky cross-dressers rather tend to be men living their everyday lives as men

How do you live your life as a man?

IF you want to see the damage AGP does, go read the trans widows threads.

There is a considerable body of work on AGP. It’s not some fringe theory.

I am not happy with having my rights and protections and those of children removed to make a male paraphilia societally acceptable.