Passing privilege

[DamnCommandments]

Just filled in the GRA consultation and it got me thinking... Trans people face uncertainty every time they need to use single-sex faculties like toilets and changing rooms, right? 'What if I'm challenged? What do I say?' But no one is going to carry their birth certificate around with them. And even if they do, and they have had it changed to match their acquired gender, once they've been challenged, it's too late - they already feel shite and have had to justify their existence.

Presumably if they have the privilege of passing, this stuff happens less. Fewer challenges, less time feeling like shite. So the people who have most to gain from the GRA are the people who already have least trouble - people who pass in their prefered gender but just want a little extra confidence. (People who don't pass will still spend their time being challenged, not having their birth certificate and feeling shite. No GRC is going to make a 6'4" transwoman with a visible Adam's apple blend in.)

And predatory imposters who want to gain access to women's spaces. They'll gain too, of course.

Funny I could have sworn I recognised your turn of phrase

Why should I take a hint and be bullied off here because I won't agree with you? Many female posters have already commented about 'the clique' on here who all descend on those who disagree with the 'accepted view'.

And then you go on other social media sites and wonder why you get insta-banned and why everyone won't 'shut up and listen'.

I'm actually leaning towards being anti-self ID but I like to understand things rather than blindly follow the crowd.

Funny I could have sworn I recognised your turn of phrase.

Perhaps because I was quoting from the other thread...

And what does it matter who I am anyway. It matters little in this discussion.

Whether you hang your head in shame is none of my business. I don't care how men as a class choose to reform themselves.

Not my circus, not my monkeys. But when a hefty load of you think that women's rights and boundaries don't mean shit, and that they can either be ignored or shrugged away because 'who cares?', I will quite happily tell you your opinion is as necessary, welcome or relevant as Peter Andre on Question Time.

Personally I don't have a problem with men taking part in these discussions, but "mansplaining" is a very apt description of what you're doing here, Scott, assuming you are a man. You come across as clueless and don't seem to take anything on board. And what's worse, you seem to think that all transwomen support self-ID. They don't - for the same reasons some of us have repeatedly explained to you. It really is insufferable. It would be great if you could read some of the stuff published on transkids.us - if you're actually interested in a range opinions from the TS community.

I'm well aware that some trans people disagree with self ID. There are several who post on here.

I've no issue with trans people of either sex being in my changing room, but I just know they probably don't want to be there and many men won't feel the same as me.
And sending them to women's dressing rooms along with the bandwidth men, Karen Whites and all those trans who want to keep their male genitals solves the problem?

Nearly all my girlfriends in the last 4 decades who have all been natal females have been stopped usually in motorway service stations, with the excuse me sir ........the gents is ........oh I am so sorry madam

but I know many gay men who look very pretty , even in just jeans and t shirts who get told , when going into the gents the ladies is next door love

The men who murder their wives and girlfriends are not just violent drunks from broken homes

If men don't want to share facilities with transwomen, then it's up to them to negotiate that with them. It's not up to women to sort out the problem. The very fact that the default is for women to suffer the consequences demonstrates exactly why women need single sex spaces

Yy. Swiss cheese model

And if you sense some negativity on the board, I will admit, I am torn between thinking you are a man trying tonunderstand or you are an MRA waiting to strike

The thing is, being honest? Even if one man finally understanding was the result, it's really not worth the time and effort expended by all the women here. One dude's enlightenment just isn't that important, and the women could all get much more done if they made the quite rational decision not to bother with the dude and his endless toddler tugging at mummy's hem behavior.

If it's your actual child, sure, but some random on the internet? Nah. Let him remain confused, if confused he actually is.

AAK That's my view too and I've started taking the same approach in real life. Apparently this makes me rude and dismissive .

I'm fascinated by the sense some men have that they're entitled to women's time and attention.

Oh, and I'm another person who has been punched in the street by a random man. He was just walking by and decided to attack me. He didn't even look angry or threatening before he hit me. This was years ago but it was quite shocking at the time. He hit me so hard I needed surgery. So even if NAMALT, I know from personal experience that it's impossible to tell which men are going to be violent arseholes in a public place.

Pissed off bloke - "Why are women so emotional and so rude?"

Women - "Hey, mate, we're not the ones punching randoms in the street."

One dude's enlightenment just isn't that important, and the women could all get much more done if they made the quite rational decision not to bother with the dude and his endless toddler tugging at mummy's hem behavior.

Indeed.

I've been away for a few days so hadn't read this thread through. I recommend it as a lesson in goalpost moving and gaslighting from the male element of the discussion. It's been fascinating to see it unfold outside of real time. From racist tropes, to women's bodies are merely property, to male violence is women's problem to solve, homophobia, the 'why can't you just be nice to people who I don't want to have to deal with?' and all the way to 'my voice is just as important as women's in feminist discussions so

The same derails as were going on ten years ago.

Frankly, I've been hugely amused by the dangling carrot tone of our male visitor "Actually I am leaning towards agreeing with you, but you're going to have to be a bit nicer to me first."

It's such a fun intellectual discussion with the wims, consequence free for him.

I think this discussion has moved on but anyway.

A throwaway comment from the CIA Chief of Disguise, Joanna Mendez:

With women you have a broader range of what you can do [to disguise them]. You also have one extra step: you can turn a woman into a man... It’s almost impossible to turn a man into a woman.

From . (Which is kind of interesting anyway but that comment amused me.)

Talking to the likes of Scott here and IRL has made me realise something. There are too many people, men and women, who don't understand what the umbrella term transgender encompasses these days. When it's explained to them, they refuse to discuss it. Some are too desperate to be woke, others too prudish to talk about things like fetishes. Like Scott here, they revert to "I just want to be nice", "but what about the genuine transwomen", etc.
It's already gone too far. I wouldn't trust decisionmakers to get this right, because the terminology is so muddled, and how would you differentiate between the people we politely call "genuine transsexuals" and the rest of them?
And more importantly, why am I trying to accommodate transsexuals at all?
I would like to apologise to my fellow women, including those who have posted their experiences in this thread, for prioritising the feelings of men who have gender dysphoria, and I thank you for your patience with the likes of me who think that my arbitrary acceptance of some transsexuals trumps your discomfort.
No more. It's a blanket NO from me.

if only we lived in a world where women had to go out of their way to monitor men's conversations in order to get a continuous running commentary on male opinions 

Just catching up, love this!

Frankly, I've been hugely amused by the dangling carrot

They always do like to dangle their carrots in these debates. It's very predictable.

I am surprised that it took over 100 posts before NAMALT was mentioned.

The two deviants spoiling it for the rest of us argument completely misses the point that there is a societal and entrenched behaviour towards women. It sets the bar pretty low, does it not, if the measure of success is that it's 'bad' if a woman ends up dead - does everything else 'go' then?

'Mansplaining' is a bit of a reductive term, but that doesn't mean that it loses all relevance when used in the appropriate context. I stand by using it when being carefully lectured by a man in a women's space which is specifically for feminists. I should not have to - and won't - justify or explain my argument about women's experiences to a man that has zero comprehension of what these actually mean.

Please understand, Scott, that when I say 'zero comprehension' I mean in the sense of actually having experienced it. I dislike the term 'lived experience' but it is appropriate here. You aren't female. Therefore you have no idea what it is actually like to be on the receiving end of male privilege and behaviours. You can read what we have written, you can appreciate the theory and the intellectual elements of it, but you will never sit on a bus late at night with every tiny hair on your body standing on end and your adrenaline pumping because a drunk man, who is significantly bigger, heavier and stronger than you, has decided to pay you some attention.

You'll never understand what it truly means because you can't. And it's for that reason that feminists like me don't take kindly to being told what we should be doing and thinking, because we believe that men can never be feminists because they are part of the oppressing class. Men can be allies though. And good allies recognise when their voices shouldn't dominate a conversation, and wait to be invited for opinions, views and contributions.

A throwaway comment from the CIA Chief of Disguise, Joanna Mendez:With women you have a broader range of what you can do [to disguise them]. You also have one extra step: you can turn a woman into a man... It’s almost impossible to turn a man into a woman.

That video was fascinating as is the above quoted comment. I've yet to see a man who has transitioned who truly passes. But I really think they should be trans and proud rather than trying to be something they're not.

'People who want to stroll in with a big beard etc are surely a different matter, and surely they wouldn't even be meeting the criteria of 'committing to living as a woman' which is necessary to get a GRC in the first place?'

No they wouldn't. But you sound a bit like someone saying that unless someone has gone through the process of a GRC, they should be excluded from women's spaces. That someone who has just self-identified as a woman and has not got a GRC shouldn't be in a woman's space. Erm, well, I'd agree with you. You mentioned that very few people have views that are trans-exclusionary, earlier in the thread, that it's a tiny minority that hold them. And yet it seems that you are one of them?

I'll agree mansplaining as a word is overused and can be sexist. But when a man explains that transwomen wouldn't be comfortable in a toilet alongside 'masculine blokes like myself' and that the comfort of transwomen should be prioritised over the comfort of women, because, erm, not sure, I'll take it as an appropriate term.

DAMMIT. Talking about toilets again. I actually care less about public toilets as a trans issue than any other. I don't think it's an accident that so many discussions seem to be directed this way.