Help a brother out

[Glinner]

Hello, you coven of squints far right Nazi witches!

I'd like to collect some anecdotes about when and why you first became involved in the debate about gender ideology and activism. I've also asked on Twitter but thought this might be good for longer answers.

Please tell me your stories!

Also, it rather begs the question of why we are changing laws, customs and protocols for 0.6% of the population. Where did you get that figure, by the way? I thought it was far lower.

I am trans. I would put the proportion of trans people at around 0.1%, around 40,000 people in the UK. It's very hard to get figures of how many people actually transition, but I got that from the Government's LGBT survey. Roughly, a tenth of the trans people there surveyed had a gender recognition certificate, so multiply the number of GRCs by ten. It's a very rough guesstimate, but I think I have the order of magnitude right.

One thing I noticed on this thread was people saying the trans women they actually knew seemed alright, but then they read about stuff they found offensive. I worry that one in a thousand people don't have that big an effect on society, but it's the ideas, or the principles, which are winding people up. Caitlyn Jenner offends people, and yes choosing nail colour is not the most difficult part of women's lives, but her life is as unlike mine as it is unlike other women's. She is part of the Kardashian clan, and the attention paid to her, and what she says, is Kardashian more than it is Trans.

Our experiences are different. I am 5'10" and over fifty, so the bloke coming on to me on the bus was irritating rather than scary. It's not the same as for a teenager. And when a bloke shouted "Slut!" at me in the street I was relieved- he was being abusive, but I thought he would be more abusive if he read me as trans. Talking face to face, I think I could probably find a lot of agreement with many people here, but where we go on line polarises us.

And some have met a trans woman they found did not work hard, or was offensive. But we don't all share the worst characteristics of the worst person you've met.

Trans acceptance is extremely important to me. It's my whole life. If we really are one in a thousand, it is less important in the day-to-day lives of others. You won't come across us that often. But people here say they read something, then they discuss it on message boards, and get angry.

Clare, I can try all I like to be kind and accepting (and as I'm a crap feminist, I don't battle my socialization to do so), but a 5'10" male person knocking around the loos when I have my pants down is just instinctively alerting and it would make me less safe to lower that instinctive wariness.

Sorry. Not something I plan to 'accept' lightly. Please accept that women's caution around males is going to remain.

Trans acceptance is extremely important to me. It's my whole life.

Me, me, me. It's all about MEEEE, and wanting everybody around me to validate my feelings, capitulate to my wants. Damn those pesky women and their own wants and needs. How dare they not accept me exactly in the way I demand.

You've articulated exactly what the problem is. And you are part of it.

what dodo said.

About a year ago someone on twitter posted a link to a website which was for men who get turned on by the sound of women urinating. There were 260000 members. So that’s potentially over a quarter of a million men who could take advantage of the current trans movement to fulfill their fetish - they could be in the stall next to me, you, my gran, my niece, Gladys down the road. Why can’t genuine trans women understand than this is our fear? Why are they not on our side?

ClareFlourish

It being important to you to make women lie and relinquish their boundaries and consent, is exactly the problem.

It's not surprising that most women avoid transwomen who want this. Which is why the ones they know aren't like that.

yup. men and women are segregated in a small number of very specific situations for the privacy and dignity of both sexes, and the safety of women.

humans can't change sex. men who feel compelled to comply with typically feminine gender stereotypes have the same rate of violent and sexual offending as all other men.

Our experiences are different. I am 5'10" and over fifty, so the bloke coming on to me on the bus was irritating rather than scary. It's not the same as for a teenager

You mean woman. Including women over 50, ffs.

And when a bloke shouted "Slut!" at me in the street I was relieved- he was being abusive, but I thought he would be more abusive if he read me as trans.

This is you telling everyone that you pass as a woman. Even though you are 5 foot 10 and a late transitioner?

No women are relieved when a man shouts slut at them.

Datun

There's also a nice side order of, "Hey, I get abuse from men just like any of you, BUT being a spweshul trans lady means I am more vulnerable and oppressed!"

Someone needs to go read a fucking newspaper.

Trans acceptance is extremely important to me.

It's important to me too. Men should accept the non-conforming members of their sex much more readily than they do currently. They should not be palming them off on the other sex.

One thing I noticed on this thread was people saying the trans women they actually knew seemed alright, but then they read about stuff they found offensive.
Have you actually RTFT?! It appears not. Nice way of framing things to make it sound as though all the women here are ignorant little pearl-clutchers though. Many of the women here were very 'live and let live' until they had their boundaries transgressed or were abused by a transwoman. In any case, however nice some transwomen may be is irrelevant to the rights of women to define themselves and their own boundaries. You sound rapey.

You have a set of ideas. Some of you meet a human being and find that human being is alright, really; but you read about Caitlyn Jenner in her privilege, her corset and her varnished nails and she repels you. So you discuss the ideas, then imagine being in a loo cubicle next to mine and imagine your repulsion. One in a thousand people is not a problem, compared to, say, the pay gap; but you make it a problem, when you think about these things so much.

There's all this campaigning energy, and it is directed, say, against the Labour party, for allowing trans women on women only shortlists; and against the Women's Equality Party, for being trans inclusive; and against Women's Aid and Rape Crisis for being willing to support trans women, and against Diva and Stonewall, which support lesbians as well as trans folk. Who benefits? The Heritage Foundation, the Koch brothers, and Rupert Murdoch, among others, funding and promoting the circulation of these ideas. So they "peak-trans" more women, and the campaigning gets directed against the Left.

Clare, it's nothing to do with you personally.

It's about the fact that no matter what sexist stereotypes you comply with, no matter what cosmetic surgery you have, or hormones you take, your sex remains unchanged

women don't want to share a small number of very specific spaces with males

it's not personal - deal with it

clare

Aowing a 14 old boy to share a tent with a 10-year-old girl guide without her consent or her parent's knowledge, letting teenage gymnasts of the opposite sex shower together, telling girls that they must have boundaries and their consent is important, unless a boy or man says some magic words, are a complete annihilation of safeguarding protocols.

You can claim it's about Caitlyn Jenner's nail varnish, all you like.

Rachel McKinnon telling women who want a female to do their smear test to shut the fuck up because they're transphobic, also has nothing to do with Caitlyn Jenner's nail varnish.

I'd like to collect some anecdotes about when and why you first became involved in the debate about gender ideology and activism.

This is the OP.

It is very rude and pretty offensive to be using a thread to undermine the personal accounts requested by it, Clare. I find this intervention of yours to be very inappropriate. The thread has a clear purpose. Please stop hijacking it.

The left need to start actually standing up for women then, don’t they?

I don’t give a flying fuck about Jenner, for the record.

'One in a thousand people is not a problem, compared to, say, the pay gap; but you make it a problem, when you think about these things so much.'

You are spectacularly missing the point. It's not 'one in a thousand people' it's all men. If we see a person who looks male in a female only space, how are we supposed to know if he's female in his head?

How are we supposed to know that he he's one of the 'safe' transwomen, not one of the predatory males like Karen White, etc.? How do we know? Can we ask to see their GRC or what? Are you going to challenge someone who makes you feel uncomfortable? What about children? *If a man is strutting around the changing room with his 'lady penis' on show, is he a flasher or a woman?

It's so stupid.

*Yes this happens in a town near me where they have changing 'villages' and my little niece and nephews have to look at penis every time they go swimming.

Ya think that's ok?

You have a set of ideas. - aren't women allowed to think, then?

Some of you meet a human being and find that human being is alright, really; but you read about Caitlyn Jenner in her privilege, her corset and her varnished nails and she repels you.
Stop trying to demean the lived experiences and rational objections of women to gender ideology and forcefully having our sex-based rights removed. As this thread testifies, women from all different walks of life have been alerted to the threat of trans ideology and the transgression of boundaries for a whole host of reasons. You seem to like belittling women a lot for someone who claims to be one.
So they "peak-trans" more women...
Honey, you're doing that all by yourselves. Your basic argument is that women shouldn't be allowed to criticise the left when the left shits all over them. That's not how it works.

And when a bloke shouted "Slut!" at me in the street I was relieved- he was being abusive, but I thought he would be more abusive if he read me as trans.

I think this post by ClaireFlourish absolutely hits the nail on the head. I see so many statements of this type from transwomen, and I think there's a reason for it. And that reason is that someone born male, who lived as male before transitioning (whatever sort of transition that was), has no real idea at all of how women are treated, routinely, every day. They have no idea of the lengths many women have to go to navigate their own safety - and how many women don't even notice how these measures are extraordinary, so ingrained are they. So, when someone born male starts to present as gender nonconforming in any way, and they are treated in a way they see as worse than the way they were treated when presenting male, it's a real unpleasant shock to their systems. And since they never really grasped at all how routinely women are treated as lesser, inferior, less human than men, they jump straight to the conclusion that they, as transwomen, are the most oppressed group in the universe.

And all the evidence to the contrary - see, for example, the way that the government, political parties, police forces, charities and companies have rushed to prioritise the wishes of a relatively small group of transwomen over the needs of the entire female population - doesn't dent that firmly-held belief that they are the most oppressed group in the universe.

I don't imagine you in a loo cubicle next to mine and feel revulsion ClaireFlourish. Wrong emotion. I feel AFRAID. I feel ALERT. I feel UNSAFE. I have spent my whole life being told that I have to moderate my behaviour, language, appearance etc to avoid being a target of predatory men. We are taught from childhood as women that we should be afraid of all men, we can't tell who are predatory or not. These warnings are reinforced by life experience, years and years and years of being teased, mocked, touched, insulted, viewed as sexual objects, not taken seriously, ignored, abused, raped, assaulted, attacked, yelled at in the street. If anything happens then the chances of getting justice are incredibly slim.

How are we to know that you are safe?

Your presence in that space means my friend, a Muslim woman cannot use that space. It means women who are vulnerable, abused, traumatised cannot use that space. You trample merrily over their boundaries, my boundaries, every woman's boundaries without discussion, by force and cajoling, by appeals to my female socialisation. By including you, we are excluding them and that is not acceptable to me.

Your presence in that space means my friend, a Muslim woman cannot use that space. It means women who are vulnerable, abused, traumatised cannot use that space. You trample merrily over their boundaries, my boundaries, every woman's boundaries without discussion, by force and cajoling, by appeals to my female socialisation. By including you, we are excluding them and that is not acceptable to me.

This. Any transwoman who uses a women-only space must accept that they are deliberately excluding many women from using that space - they are stealing women's resources, and contributing to the exclusion of women from public life.

Not to mention the many many women who will self-exclude on the basis that it's just not worth the risk, fear, or discomfort. Men have absolutely no idea just how crippling their presence can be or how girls and women have to risk assess absolutely everything, every single day, from when they're young and for the entire duration of their lives. What I'd give to have only had someone shout "slut" at me once in the street.