Please can someone who thinks that TWAW..

[BertrandRussell]

...explain to me the intellectual process that got you there? I promise -and as far as I can I promise on behalf of other people - not to challenge or argue and only ask clarification questuons. I just want to understand, even if I don't agree.

BrownPaper

You are asking us to be nicer about how we state our beliefs. That rankles a bit, to be honest. Because all we want to be able to do is assert our boundaries, and state material reality, without being accused of anything.

If you have been on here a lot you'll have seen the arguments, but here's a good introductory thread if not:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me

What Rat had done here is show that TWAW only if we all totally disregard the meaning of W.

I’d say the only times you really wouldn’t be able to tell would be on those who have been transed before puberty, which is surely still very rare, or on those who have had vast amounts of surgery. 99.9% of the time, it’s pretty obvious - with MtF anyway.
You can generally tell just from looking at the back of a person, their stance and hip alignment.

Personally i don't think 'feeling excluded' is a reason not to engage on something important.

As I keep saying, nothing that is in place to protect those with certain characteristics can include everyone all the time, because it makes it all completely useless. In a situation where women are being ordered to include people against their will, why shouldn't they call it out?

How do you define a woman? Really the only answer that works is "has XX chromosomes". Because if you start to add in any other biology it doesn't apply to all women. So does that make those women not women? Clearly not.

It is very easy......the human species exists because there are two sexual reproductive roles- producing large gametes or small gametes. Everyone belongs to one of these two classes. The effectiveness of their capacity to produce one or other of these gametes does not influence which class they belong to.

No. We are what we are. We can't just 'identify' as something else and become that that thing! That's an absolute nonsense.

When I was a child I loved cats. I wanted to be a cat with all my heart. I watched cats. I observed the way they moved; they way they curled up and slept; the way they arched their backs and stretched after a nap; the way they lapped milk; they way they 'verbalised'... And I practised and recreated it and, in my head, I was a pretty authentic looking cat. I assumed that all those looking at me would see that I was being a cat. I coveted and idealised the life of a cat.

But I wasn't. I was a 6-8 year old girl. I didn't identify as a girl. But it didn't matter because I identified as / was a cat. But even in those moments when, in my head, I was 100% feline, and assumed others would recognise me as such, and sometimes treated me as such, the absolute indesputeable fact was that I was 0% cat and 100% female human. Walking like a cat; purring like a cat; lapping milk from a saucer like a cat; curling up like a cat; stretching like a cat did not make me, in any sense, a cat.

And I cannot see, for even a nanosecond, how TWAW is any different to FFHIAC (FlowerpotFairyHouse Is A Cat).

The idea that we can't tell the difference between men and women is just absolute bollocks.
We all know, even babies can tell.

even babies can tell

And dogs.

@PenguinSaidEverything you're confusing women and feminine. Women is the biology. Feminine is the gender. Women is not one word for two things.

It's not just you. Seems to be a lot of people getting this mixed up.

Men smell difference too. Pheromones etc. Male sweat smells very different so you can tell.

I get what you’re saying rat but as no one is advocating for the genital police it can’t really go anywhere.

More people don’t ‘pass’ than do, especially when looking at the trans umbrella, because apparently the goal isn’t to pass, it is to be who you say/think you are. If non passing trans people are emboldened to use the facilities of their internal gender are they more or less likely to be abused? If a non passing trans umbrella person goes into a female toilet/changing room after your 7 year old daughter has gone in alone and you’re a dad what do you do? Celebrate diversity or go in after them to make sure your dd is ok?

I knew my ds was a boy at 14 weeks gestation because of genetic testing. His sex was not assigned at birth, it was there long before he would have been able to have a conscious thought. It just is and there’s nothing wrong with that.

If your definition of 'woman' allows a male bodied convicted rapist on to a psychiatric ward you need to have a rethink.

And I agree with this.
The whole issue of self ID is an enormous mess. Clearly, other than outside of an academic argument, it doesn't work on any practical level.

But nor, as far as I can see, does the argument that your natal sex defines you forever in a world where we allow people to live as the opposite sex.

Developing the argument. A trans woman should not be allowed to work in a woman's refuge or rape crisis centre because they are male, no matter their exterior appearance.

Therefore the argument must follow that a trans man is allowed to work in a woman's refuge or rape crisis centre, because they are female regardless of their exterior appearance. So a person with a beard, who calls themselves Brian can work in a woman's refuge because when they were born they were called Daphne?

This is where I get lost. As a woman I wouldn't be comfortable with that. I wouldn't want a man in that situation yet this "man" isn't a man. He's a woman.

How can this be avoided unless we argue that trans women are men, because they were born male, and trans men are men, because despite being born female they identify as male?

If there’s a room full of 1000 people, the number of women and number of men in that room is a fixed fact before I enter the room, and is n + 1 after I enter the room. What I perceive has nothing to do with it.

"We" do not use the word women to mean anything other than women. Adult human females.
YOU have decided that "we" mean anyone that says that they are a woman.

But it's never enough.
TWATW becomes TWAW becomes TWAFemale becomes rapists in female prisons and here I am being told I don't know with any certainty that my husband and son are male, or myself or my daughter are female.

“you have to acknowledge that "woman" in everyday life is not used to describe those with the confirmed characteristic of being of the female sex. It just isn't.”

Why do I have to acknowledge this? I use ‘women’ in everyday life to describe those people of the female sex. I know who they are. Everyone does. There may be people who ‘pass’, and who I wrongly describe as ‘woman’. That doesn’t mean that the definition now includes them though. That just means they have managed to be miscategorised.

If your room of people had a bar in it, the bartender knows not to serve those under 18 because we can tell from lots of visual and auditory cues about the rough age of people. If the bartender isn’t sure, she will ask for ID. This works well. And age is actually a spectrum and much more difficult to determine accurately that the simple binary of sex. Yet it is still perfectly possible. Of course there will be those that manage to hoodwink the bartender. Just like there are those who ‘pass’. That will alsways be the case. But it is still illegal to serve them. And it doesn’t mean that the definition of being 18 now includes them.

Sorry - thread has moved on a bit, but the video is painful isn't it crackpots?

It shows that no one actually believes that TWAW but many people have been socially conditioned to think it's correct to perpetuate this lie, but not equivalent ones.

The question is how this happened and why.

I think a male presenting, testoterone-filled, beardy woman would traumatise women in a rape crisis centre, yes. That is a muddy area. I think that I'd assume that women would be senstive to that and wouldn't seek to traumatise other women. I might be wrong about that

Absinthe

The girls who said something along the lines of: "It's not my place to tell people they are wrong or apply boundaries'

Aaaargh; she's been female socialised good and proper. I'd worry about her

@brownpaperteddy
You said that you want everyone treated with respect and be able to live their lives & if we don't allow self ID how can they do that.

At the moment, in order for a person to change their gender formally (including having their birth certificate changed) they can do so. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it means filling in a long & complicated form. Yes, it may feel intrusive. Yes, it means living as your preferred gender for 2 years and being able to prove that. But it is possible.

Personally I think that if a person is going to change their birth certificate it should be difficult. You are effectively re-writing history. Re-writing a biological fact. Trans people complain that complete strangers make decisions about them, that the form is long. Well, government forms are. Applying for benefits is complicated, and decisions get made by people who don't know you. And that's 'just' for claiming some money.

If self ID is allowed, then all a person will gave to do is declare that they are the opposite gender and intend to live in that gender. Yes, a legal process, but very easy.

There are people who have changed gender who now want old criminal convictions to be erased from their record. So that when they apply for jobs working with vulnerable people & children no one will know that in the past they raped someone when they were a man. There is a court case about to happen involving this.

So. If you were a man who had a previous sexual offending history, which you'd like to be deleted, what can you do? If self ID happens, you could declare you are a woman. Maybe you then apply to have your 'male' conviction of rape removed under your right to privacy laws. So you now have a clean criminal record.

'It'll never happen' is what TRAs will say.

Like a person with a penis being put in a women's prison and then assaulting the women there. They said that would never happen. It just did.

Predatory men will go out of their way to be able to assault & rape women and children. Self-ID would be a gift to them.

My definition of a woman is "an adult human of the class that produces eggs" Not does, or can produce eggs-of the class that does. Nothing to do with clothes, or gender roles or hair length or interests or affinity with the pink and sparkly. Just pure biology. There have always been men and women who don't accept the gender roles society puts on them. But that does not mean they are not still men and women. They could be feminists, or non gender conforming or transmen
and transwomen, and we need to make sure society makes room for them.

I haven't got to the end of the thread, but I'd like to thank RatRolyPoly for giving it a go.

Room full of people, I pick out all the women. Truth is I don't know what's in their pants or what chromosomes they have, you might say I do because someone's dog always barks at their brothers or some such, but the bare truth is that I don't.

Same room of people, I ask people to tell me whether or not they're a woman. Those declaring themselves women may or may not be the same people I thought were women, and whilst they certainly know better than I do what's in their pants, we're not going to be asking them to prove it any time soon.

I once said on here (got quoted on the BBC too, preens) that I'm fully in favour of transwomen being treated without discrimination and in a dignified way in the 99% of cases where biological sex doesn't matter - it's the 1% where it does that I'm worried about.

And in a sense, that 1% boils down to the small number of situations where it becomes apparent or matters what is in the person's pants (or where, given what we know about how people view their own bodily autonomy, it ought to be apparent to the trans person that even if they pass this is one of those situations where it matters to the other person).

So - communal changing rooms where people get naked.

Overnight accommodation, whether shared voluntarily (e.g. sleeper berths), compulsorily (closed psych wards, prisons), or somewhere in between (e.g. homeless shelters, where women aren't compelled to stay, but don't exactly have a choice about alternative accommodation).

Medical examinations of genitals/breasts, where, if you have an ounce of empathy and compassion (surely a pre-requisite in an HCP), you'd realise that a woman would feel very differently about the situation if she realised you had a penis under your surgical scrubs (and in fairness, she may well realise, because you may well not pass as well as you think you do).

(There is also the further issue of discrimination, and affirmative action to overcome discrimination, and whether one thinks that discrimination has its roots in recognising people as biologically female, or as conforming to gender stereotypes. Or, TL:DR Pippa Bunce. But that's probably for another post once I've read the rest of the thread.)

You are asking us to be nicer about how we state our beliefs. That rankles a bit, to be honest.
I am not asking for anyone to do anything. You must all do and behave how you judge best.

What you can't control is another person's reaction to your behaviour.

If that person switches off and refuses to engage because they are upset by your behaviour how has that advanced your cause?

We can discuss until the cows come home the biological definition of sex.

But irl how will this be applied?

The only way is that some sort of sex police will examine us before allowing us into the toilet.

I can't believe that the 'genital policing' argument exists in good faith.

Very few things are 'policed' in the way people use this phrase in trans discussions.

Other than international travel, I can't think of when I am required to evidence specific attributes which permit me to engage in restricted activities. Whilst I could be asked to show proof of age (buying alcohol), or evidence of qualification to drive (having a driving licence) this rarely happens.

It is not difficult to understand that 'not being able to tell' what is in a person's pants need, in any way, restrict having rules that are based on 'what is in people's pants'. The onus is on each person to follow the rules according to which genitals they have.

Well I hope you are not switched off by me.

I am on the fence on this subject. No of course I don't want abusive men, in any sense of the term, allowed unhindered into women's spaces

But then if we say that trans men and trans women use the spaces of their own biological or natal sex I can't see how that even begins to work

As women we may still have a person who appears very male ie dresses male, looks like a man, has a beard etc coming into the ladies toilet or changing room? I find that very odd

Equally a trans woman has to use the men's toilet? Even though no one would even give them a second look if they passed them in the street?

In these instances all that I can see is that they would be harassed and therefore the statement made by the OP that they do want trans people to live peacefully and unharassed is unrealistic

I think you have some fair points there. The going to the loo is a bit of a red herring and a side issue.(personally I would much prefer if all loos in public buildings and offices were floor to ceiling cubicles opening out to an open area than the horrible flimsy partition affairs most single sex loos have)

I suppose this comes down to how well they pass- Buck Angel for example would get no odd looks in a male loo but I doubt any woman would think he should be in the ladies. Blair White on the other hand (as far as I can tell from YouTube) looks like a woman even with no make up , hair hidden under a beannie and wearing masculine clothes.

Mind you at least one of these examples is no help to support TWAW as Blaire White doesn't take that stance. She agrees she is biologically male and refers to herself as a trans woman.