#notalltranswomen

[BadasIwannaB]

An argument people often make when women voice their concerns about women only spaces:

‘Well hang on a second, I know quite a few trans women and they are just considerate nice people who just want to get on with their lives etc.’

Why can’t people see that this is spectacularly missing the point in just the same way as arguing ‘well NOT ALL MEN are [rapists/sexual harassers/misogynists/a danger to women]’?

I mean, I’m friends with a lot of men - they aren’t all bad. I’m even in an intimate relationship with one. But would that be a legit rebuttal to the arguments that women should have protected spaces without men? Clearly not! I’m not insulting my (or your) friends who are men, or implying men are all rapists etc. by agreeing that women should have protected spaces without men in them.

Similarly, then, why think that those who argue that these protected spaces should not be available to trans women must be assuming that all trans women are rapists/sexual harrassers etc., and must be saying something that’s terribly insulting to their (or your) friends who are trans women?

You're living in a dream world, Garden.

Bowing out of this thread now.

Helpful (and brave) thread here:
twitter.com/JustAngryBird/status/1017444210591567872
(hope that works - if not you can go direct to Angry Bird's twitter account)

Just marking my place and having a read. Thanks GardenGeek for telling me about this thread.

Didn't really follow your point there, Garden, tbh.

I still don't think it's a flyer. Unless you define terms clearly, and you really can't do that with 'gender identity', then you don't solve anything, you just open the door to a myriad of unintended consequences.

There is no chance I would be picking any sort of gender identity - what are my options, masculine and feminine? Have we really not come any further than that in recent decades, should we not precisely know that it is impossible and discriminatory to lock individuals into just a few categories which are meant to sum up their personality??? In my view gender is the fluid and ever changing concept, whereas sex is permanent. You cannot legislate on the basis of a fluid concept.

If trans people need any sort of special legal rights and protection, then they are a category separate from sex. It is like the 'disabled' category for example, a disabled person may be male or female, but as a disabled person they have specific rights - eg access in wheelchair to a toilet.

What is it specifically they want the most, I'm not sure? Protection from male aggression in public toilets? Prisons? Refuges? Are there other ways of doing that?

But you can't write a law with the words 'gender' and 'sex' in them, say they are different, and not define what sex is and what gender is.

'typically'? No wiggle room there at all, is there?

I think any gender qualification should have to use different words to woman/man/boy/girl/male/female for clarity.

So, a transwoman would be recorded as (sex) M (optional gender) transfeminine (or some such).

But Gardengeek the gender definition is based on nothing in reality. And what laws do you imagine could be passed based on whether you feel in a state of maleness or femaleness?

There is no answer beyond ‘you’re mean’ and ‘trans women risk being attacked by men’. So do gay men, black men, gender non conforming men. Nobody has ever suggested that they go in female spaces as a means of protection.
I couldn't have put it better myself. No, wait, transwomen wear dresses, so they should go in women's spaces. After all, only women wear dresses.

Sometimes I do a lot of DIY, I manage my own finances, I take the rubbish out, I like a pint of lager down the pub - does that mean I should choose male for my 'gender identity'? Or am i missing something.

I tried to argue something similar on FB the other day GardenGeek.

It turned into a total dog pile by six woke non trans goth types - & I was called a 'monster' & told I was basically saying the equivalent of 'black people aren't human'.

By someone I've known & been friends with for 20 years.

The handmaidens ain't buying it. Sorry.

Garden, fwiw, yes, take 'typically' out, and it is adequate on a broad level. But how does it apply legally? As a shifting culturally defined spectrum?