Debbie Hayton in the Times

[Igneococcus]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/women-are-right-to-have-concerns-over-trans-reforms-5kj5k28sd?shareToken=aa090ad90f6f886db629247a0d6ca19b

Hell would freeze over before I tolerated a male person, surgery or not, in the showers with me or my daughter.

How dare you play your part in actively eroding the ability of women to eject male people from their private spaces with your talk of 'emboldening men'?

The very embodiment of an emboldened man...that we cannot distinguish ourselves from men with surgery?! You don't think women know their own bodies well enough to spot a male at a hundred yards, let alone next to them in the showers?

We know ourselves, and we know who is not female. It is YOU who is oblivious to what we are, YOU who think we are fooled by a surgeon's version of 'female' made from a male body.

What care women of the 'effort to pass'? Will lipstick magically render a man harmless, will it make our privacy and dignity no longer important to us?

Am I to tell my eleven year old daughter, strip in front of this man, he's got long hair, a skirt, so you need to be naked in this room with him, it's just the way things are.

Who are you to add layer upon layer of burden and obligation upon refuges to validate the male person in front of them who may or may not sue them? Knowing, as well you do, that a GRC alters the birth certificate itself anyway, and it is not legally permissible to demand to see a GRC?

How many contortions must women make for you, to accommodate you, to deny their own boundaries, while you soothingly tell us you'll work with us to keep 'the others' out?

No.
No.
No.

You are the others.

The motorway service station toilets are a good example, a transsexual who has had Surgery does not look anymore like a woman than a man dressed up as a woman with a padded bra. We don't want to get into policing by how well someone passes. So to enforce it has to be female only.

Im afraid regardless of how you feel personally a transwoman who has had surgery is still a transsexual who has had surgery and should not be using female spaces either. If they are not comfortable using male spaces they need to find a way to resolve it that does not require women to give up their rights. Woman often have to curtail their activities because they don't feel safe so we might be sympathetic but it is not our problem to solve.

Debbie, this isn't, and never has been about individuals. I'm sure you're a perfectly nice person, as are most people on here.

You, along with many transwomen, perfectly understand the issues.

The problem is, it doesn't matter if you understand them or not. Many women find men in their spaces unacceptable.

My concern over self ID in that context is that it emboldens men who have no intention of making any effort to pass to go in and intimidate women, and dare anyone to challenge them.

'Making an effort to pass' is something that you are concerned with. It's not something that women are concerned with. Other than to show this up for the piss taking loophole it is.

You must understand that grading transwomen, in terms of their
'authenticity' is not something that occupies most women.

Partly because it's utterly unenforceable. Being trans is unidentifiable and therefore unverifiable.

But mostly it's because men being trans is an issue confined to its constituent parts. Men, and their reasons for identifying as women.

Its got nothing to do with women. And wanting it to be something to do with women is just using them, in my opinion.

It requires a deliberate shift in focus for women to stop with the socialisation of wanting to please everyone, and say actually, you know what, no. Just no. I have the power to say it, and I am.

It's not personal. But it's no.

A year ago, around here, 90% of the posts would have been in support of Debbie and the 10% that weren't would have been subject to multiple requests to phrase their pushback more respectfully. Also a year ago, FWR was being told externally that it was a hotbed of disgusting transphobia.

A year on and women are much more prepared to assert their boundaries robustly as we see from this thread. Also a year on, the external comments are exactly the same.

I suspect that Debbie takes the same conclusions from this as I do: extremist transactivism is its own peaktransing machine. Glosswitch was right when she said you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. And transsexuals stand to lose whatever social goodwill they had gained for themselves. The pomo bubble is not the real world.

Prisons should be segregated by sex, no exceptions. Women matter. And all vulnerable prisoners - including trans prisoners - should enter a prison estate that treats them with dignity and ensures their safety. Both these things are worth campaigning for.

It's not personal. But it's no.

Exactly.

Lots of lovely males out there but it's a flat no with no exceptions. No male need take it personally or be offended. Female spaces are for females, male spaces are for males.

I might add that people who aren't women pontificating about how to redraw women's boundaries to suit themselves is not a good look.

Some transwomen are very fond of talking about women's concerns.

It's not concerns, it's instructions.

We draw our own boundaries. It's got nothing to do with anyone else.

I would be curious to hear what Debbie's grand plan to deal with the issues at hand is. They've obviously thought about the situation long and hard so let them put their cards on the table and say what they think should be the ideal scenario in terms of access to female spaces. No waffling about "it's for women to decide but I can help because I'm an intellectual". Just tell us what you would like to see happen.

I suspect it's surgery.

Baracker thank you for addressing 'the surgery and shower' comment, the audacity of that took my breath away and I couldn't think of how I could respond without my comment being deleted

When you ask me to leave I will go. Others will stay. Respectfully, I suggest that those that ignore the request to go are the ones you need to worry about.

no one should be asked to leave a public forum to discussing a issue Debbie that is just the same silancing that others are accused of. this is not a single sex space and there is not only one view that is valid.

Mumsnet is as open to you as to anyone else, and it isn't for anyone to ask you to go.

My daughter shouldn't have to ask a man to leave her changing room, and nor should I.
Women have been assaulted and abused for asking or demanding men leave their spaces. No decent person would put women through this.

Haven't you read the cup of tea metaphor for rape?

'But she didn't say No' isn't consent.

No one has asked anyone to leave Mumsnet and noone is silencing, bespin.
This whole thread is a discussion on a very public opinion Debbie has shared on a national media platform. So silencing claims are patently ridiculous.

I wish Debbie could see this from the inside, out, as it were.

Tara Hudson, and their seven inch surprise, claiming authenticity on the basis of longevity. Criticising other transwomen for their Johnny come lately status.

India Willoughby claiming authenticity on the basis of being a homosexual transsexual. Not, apparently, an autogynephile. Publically and vehemently making distinction between them and other transwomen.

Debbie, and other transwomen on here, claiming authenticity on the basis of surgery. And their intellectual understanding of women's concerns.

And all of them incredibly keen to make sure that women are on board with which ever conditions they personally feel they meet. Seemingly rather confident that their personal conditions are the most authentic.

It's so far removed from the actual lived experience of being a woman, it resoundingly comes across as an explicitly male experience.

And rather odd.

I wouldn't dream of asking Debbie to leave this forum.

Again, that's not a condition of being a woman, offering to leave.

Insightful post at 23.30, Datun.

and yet every day of our lives we continue to live it as women with no issues, nothing happens we just get on with our lives it is not a feeling or an experiance it's just one person's life.

When you ask me to leave I will go. Others will stay. Respectfully, I suggest that those that ignore the request to go are the ones you need to worry about.

If I enter a female-only space and encounter a male they have already ignored my boundaries by being in that space. Depending on the circumstances I may say something, but more likely I will just leave. It should be obvious why.

And Mumsnet is an open forum, not a female-only space.

Debbie. Whether you stay or go is your decision, we're not asking you to do either. Your viewpoint is of interest, as are many viewpoints here, it isn't more important

We are asking that you commit to doing what you have stated you do which is respect women's boundaries when it comes to single sex spaces like toilets and showers. If you refuse to do that you need to recognise you are yet another male refusing to accept women's boundaries.

I wasn't talking about the forum. I was talking about spaces. Again I come back to the pragmatic: how do you protect against transwomen who do not leave when asked because they think they really are female? So in their minds female only spaces include them?

Ok, I'm not expressing myself very well. I feel no threat from posters on an open forum, male or otherwise. Why would I? I like the debate on here.

Actual female-only spaces need to be male-free though since males can't assume the consent of all females in those spaces.

Why should it be up to a woman to risk herself by asking you to leave? Why do you feel entitled to be in a female space in the first place?

Again I come back to the pragmatic: how do you protect against transwomen who do not leave when asked because they think they really are female? So in their minds female only spaces include them?

How do women protect themselves from stronger, entitled, possibly violent men?

Far too often, they can't. Hence rape refuges, women's aid, shelters.

Which women have campaigned for.

Just like they're campaigning now.