Confused

[PeakedinthePeaks]

Hi, I'm new to all the current debates around feminism and feminism itself and have lurked a lot and posted a little.
I'm confused over a conversation I had with a colleague last week discussing self ID and the concerns women are raising. Is it possible to be a feminist and have no issue with all inclusive toilets and changing rooms and to believe that trans women are women? I didn't think so but like I said, I'm new to the subject and realise the answers are probably in other posts somewhere but couldn't find a title to match my question.
I am very uncomfortable with all inclusive toilets and have been following GRA discussions.
Can you be a feminist and support the GRA?

Dakinis
How do you tell the difference between a man and a pre-op transwoman?

How do we tell the ones who are men pretending to be women and then ones who are self identified women?

Not simple, simplistic! and, as I said previously, shows complete disregard for anything anyone posts, a willful blindness to the realities of the situation today.

Dakinis - as many more astute posters have said before - we see you!

What about the destruction of girls' and women's sport, Dakinis ?

Is that all an ok by-product of self-id? Because, y'know, these people with male bodies identify as women so them entirely by-passing the reason sport is sex segregated in the first place is all right, is it?

Karen White is an example of your 'case by case' basis Dakinis. Convicted rapist, paedophile..Yup pop her (!) in a prison with women and where there are children. Why not? So, Karen had assaulted women within days of being there. Never mind, it's only a few women...

This is just the latest and there will be more, never mind the transwomen - or men claiming to be transwomen - turning up a DV shelters (it's happening), the ones entering women's sports and depriving women of prizes (it's happening), the ones on all-women shortlists (it's happening), the ones winning "woman of the year" awards (it's happened), the ones presenting themselves to undertake cervical smears on women who wanted female HPs (it's happened).

To be naive is unfortunate - to be willing to chuck women under a bus to pacify a small percentage of men demanding validation - and call yourself a feminist. Well, I suppose you can call yourself anything (after all transwomen do) but it's not a description of feminism that I recognise and I've been a feminist since my youth in the 1960s.

How do we tell the ones who are men pretending to be women and then ones who are self identified women?

Exactly the same as we do now. Because we have been living this very scenario since 2004.

This 'man wandering into the toilet for changing room who isn't 'trans' who will be "kicked out and the police called". Some questions:

1. Who is kicking him out? The girl or woman in there alone that he lay in wait for and assaulted?
2. How does the kicker-out know he's not self-id trans?

I see You still live in the land of "This never happens", Dakinis.

An apt quote from Zorba The Greek... Don't make men too bold, don't go telling them we're all equal, we've got the same rights, or they'll go straight and trample on your rights; they'll steal your bread and leave you to die of hunger.

I honestly can't tell if you're hoping to fool others or if you're fooling yourself.

If Karen White walked into a women's bathroom intending to find their next rape victim, how do you propose a woman would tell them apart from any other transwoman? Where are the police you think are going to come running to prevent that woman being raped by White if the woman manages to get her phone out and dial 999? What about if Jess Bradley pops in and pulls their equipment out to flash it? How do you identify that they need to be denied access to women's facilities what with being not only a transwoman but a leader in training and political lobbying for the trans movement?

And how do you think women feel about being asked to take on this risk and increased vulnerability and to get undressed beside male bodied people?

There is nothing in it for women. That's the end of the discussion as far as I'm concerned.

Exactly the same as we do now. Because we have been living this very scenario since 2004. No, we have not!

Since 2004 there has been a great change in who comes under the trans umbrella. No longer is the transwoman who walks into a single sex space a man who has undergone an transition whatsoever.

Nowadays Stonewall would have you in court for hate crime if you said that Bob next door, who wears a dress on Tuesdays, was not a transwoman. Yet Bob is what we called a tranny, way back in the mists of time and even in 2004. Not a transwoman, as he had no intention of a making any changes, he just like the feel of a frock!

So please, stop being so disingenuous!

Can I just point out one MASSIVE difference between this argument here on MN and the argument in the wider world....

60 comments in and not one death or rape threat, not one person has threatened another with a baseball bat, nobody has said they hope someone dies in a fire, nobody has called anyone scum/terf/other slur, nobody has threatened to get someone fired from their job just for holding a different viewpoint....

There are difference of opinion, sure and the debate is going on. But we're all managing to do it cvililly and non violently. Why is that I wonder?

Have a look at this thread, Dakinis
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3348290-It-will-never-happen-resource-thread

A: Transwomen are women.
B: What about this rapist X in a women's rapist.
A: Well not that one obviously. Transwomen are women except for X.
B: What about Y...

... and so it goes on.

I am ‘sort of’ agreeing with Dakinis that not much will change with respect to toilets and changing rooms. But I disagree that we are now in the same place we were in 2004.

There has been a very big change in society in terms of peoples understanding of who is or isn’t trans, and where people are allowed to get changed etc.

Access to sex-segregated spaces were always assured by social convention, rather than by law, and people are now generally unsure about who they could ask to leave women’s spaces. It has always been a problem that most women and girls, would be too intimidated to challenge any male in our spaces, and the current confusion is not helping, and self-id will make it worse.

What women and girls need, is strengthening of rules around safe-guarding, and a clarification for businesses, organisations and services, that they are allowed, and should implement, sex-segregated spaces.

Social conventions are stronger when supported by legal clarification.

Bah, I messed that up. Corrected:

A: Transwomen are women.
B: What about this rapist X in a women's prison.
A: Well not that one obviously. Transwomen are women except for X.
B: What about Y...

... and so it goes on.

I disagree that not much will change re changing rooms and bathrooms.

What we will end up seeing is a lot more like Travis Alabanza using whichever facilities depending on how they feel when they wake up that morning.

Stonewall of course puts these men under the same umbrella as a post op TW which emboldens them to complain if anyone tries to question them.

The way things are heading re identity there are going to be a lot more Travis's than actual transsexuals.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3080957-To-alert-you-to-the-fact-that-Topshop-just-changed-its-policy-to-let-men-into-the-womens-changing-rooms

Dakinis

I don't understand how you think we could chuck out some men, but not others. Based on what?

You're not allowed to ask to see any proof.

Man walks into the ladies, the women say oi get out. He says I'm a woman.

Then what?

The difference now from 2004 is every predator/chancer/misogynist on the planet knows about it. Hence all the targeting of women only places. Like Hampstead ladies pond, bra fitting services for adolescent girls, lesbian vegan restaurants, the sweet shop owner who put a poster for Vancouver rape refuge in her window, etc, etc.

Every last one of them being deliberately held to account for being female only, by activists.

Your 'man who transitioned 30 years ago and wouldn't say boo to a goose' is so rare as to be almost mythical.

It's also interesting that you subscribe to the longevity theory of what makes an authentic woman. Like Tara Hudson, violent convict with their '7 inch surprise.'

And not Debbie Hayton who claims that the only authentic people are those with surgery. Or India Willoughby's claim that the only authentic one are those who aren't fetishists. Or the fetishists' claim that it doesn't matter, they're all authentic.

Being supportive of a whole bunch of men sitting around trying to decide which one of them has the most right to access women and girls, and fuck what you think, is so far removed from feminism, it's not funny.

How can women tell the difference between someone who is genuine (a post-op TW with gender dysphoria and a GRC) and a dangerous transvestite. As other posters have said the current Stonewall definition of the transgender umbrella is too broad

TRANS
An umbrella term to describe people whose gender is not the same as, or does not sit comfortably with, the sex they were assigned at birth.
Trans people may describe themselves using one or more of a wide variety of terms, including (but not limited to) transgender, transsexual, gender-queer (GQ), gender-fluid, non-binary, gender-variant, crossdresser, genderless, agender, nongender, third gender, two-spirit, bi-gender, trans man, trans woman,trans masculine, trans feminine and neutrois.

This is a really useful blog which complies incidents where women have been attacked in bathrooms by men presenting as women.

randomstabbing.tumblr.com/post/144989720467/the-tip-of-the-iceberg-please-add-to-this-list

The slow drip drip drip of transwomen are women means that many women would now feel uncomfortable challenging males in female spaces. Take a look at Alex - who is a transwoman and a Stonewall spokes person. Alex has a beard. We are being told we must accept Alex in our spaces or we are transphobes. Nah mate that's a dude.

I don't think you have to be a 'radical feminist' to reject the idea that people can change sex.

That's pretty much the default for anyone who hasn't been indoctrinated.

You wouldn't call anyone a 'radical' if the rejected the idea that they are immortal beings called thetans that are reborn over and over again, you simply need not be a scientologist.

There's nothing radical in rejecting the idea your body is simply a vessel for a spirit that somehow ended up in the wrong place.

I agree transgender people are becoming more commonplace, but I disagree they are infiltrating women's lives on the scale that is claimed by Datun et al.

Aspie You can think whatever you like but publicly rejecting the GRA (for example at work) by calling a trans woman 'he' is very radical

See, still doing it!

How many women have to be hurt by someone claiming to be a transwoman before you accept that there is a real life issue.

And nobody would necessarily reject the current GRA, that's the lie so many trowel on in the hope it sticks. It is, as has been said so very many times before, Self ID that is the issue.

The fact that some men have used the mere idea of it becoming law to get themselves transferred into a female prison and then gone on to do more harm illustrates why so many women object to it!

Dakinis

Dakinis I asked about sport and who is kicking the rapist out earlier - I'd love your thoughts on these issues.