How should we treat trans people?

[coffeeplease16]

I have been browsing the feminist thread with interest and been reading lots of arguments that accepting trans = encroaching on women’s rights and women’s only spaces. If you yourself believe that you can’t change sex, and being a women = having a vagina - how do you think we should include trans people in our society? I am genuinely interested, and not meaning to be goady. What is the ideal - how can we protect the rights of women without ostracising trans people from our society?

What is the ideal - how can we protect the rights of women without ostracising trans people from our society?

Topic of the thread.

So I would like to put far more funds, time and energy into supporting people with gender dysphoria and those who suffer debilitating anxiety and illness related to gender.

Scrap the GRA and the legal fiction that conflates sex and gender.

Work harder to break down harmful sex stereotyping in our society and promote a culture that accepts and embraces difference.

I just don't like the sneery "well none of them pass anyway" derrogatory comments that some posters seem to take delight in posting.

I don't think it's sneery or derogatory. Exasperated and annoyed, yes. You can only frame "they never pass" as derogatory if you think there's something wrong with not passing. I think most of FWR would concur with me that there's nothing inherently wrong with not passing and being visibly trans. Miranda Yardley doesn't pass, is out as transsexual (his words, and yes he encourages us to use male pronouns), doesn't use female spaces, and accepts biological reality. There's nothing wrong or bad about Yardley not passing. He's not somehow worth less as a human because I can see that he's male. In fact, I respect his honesty with himself and others.

As to the "some always pass" vs "none ever pass" argument:

Sexual violence causes trauma and hypervigilance. A woman who has been raped or molested, and is hence extremely wary of men and hypervigilant as to their presence and behaviour, will notice tiny details that other people won't even notice. That woman might not even be aware that she's noticed the details. There's a case history in "The Gift Of Fear" (content note: rape, rather victim-blamey) where a rape victim realises that her rapist plans to kill her and runs, saving her life, and it's only later that she realises that she had subconsciously registered him closing the window. No trans person will "pass" to that hypervigilant woman, even if they pass to others, because the tiny inconsistencies will stand out to her like neon lights. This is one of the reasons why "case-by-case" exclusion of transwomen from rape centres and DV shelters based on "passing" ability is a stupid idea: the TW might pass to the shelter worker but won't to at least some of the traumatised women fleeing male violence. In those cases, we need to be able to apply a blanket ban.

Even in cases like a guy at my workplace, where I'm only 80% sure he's a transman and not 100%, the inconsistencies I noticed within seconds of first seeing him are what led me to question his sex and make more careful observations that lead me to strongly suspect that he is actually female and on testosterone with a binder. If I'm still asking myself what a person's sex is more than ten seconds after seeing them in the flesh for the first time, then they don't pass because I am not reading them as the sex they want to be seen as, I am reading them as being of unknown sex. I will at that point consciously default to an assumption of male because that's the failsafe assumption when considering my desire to avoid rape.

If I'm not seeing inconsistencies, it's because they aren't there to be seen. My sexual assault history and consequent trauma do not allow me to miss them.

I just don't like the sneery "well none of them pass anyway" derrogatory comments that some posters seem to take delight in posting.

This is an attempt to exercise control over what other users can say an even what they can think and I don't like it at all. People shouldn't be forced to pretend to see something they don't, and stating what you see isn't derogatory.

You took my comment about the age of criminal responsibility in the UK, twisted it every which way and somehow conflated it to mean that it was a green light for people to abuse children and made out that's what I was meaning????

I took your comment claiming that the low age of criminal responsibility should mean that children aged ten should be able to consent to all manner of harmful medical treatments and pointed out that a child's alleged ability to consent in other contexts has been used to acquit paedophiles. I did not "twist" your words, I deliberately quoted them back to you. There is no conflation involved: if a ten year old is deemed capable of consent to being essentially a medical test subject when there isn't even a physical illness to treat, how can we claim that the same ten year old cannot consent to giving "uncle" a hand job? This may not be what you are meaning, but it's a foreseeable outcome of what you are advocating. The genderist SJWs are usually the first people to remind us that intent isn't magic and a harmful outcome is a harmful outcome, no matter what the intent was.

You have conspicuously ignored my point from the same post that "criminal responsibility refers to knowing the difference between right and wrong, not the ability to understand complex and lifechanging medical procedures". We expect ten year olds to know not to kill or hit other people, it's a very simple concept to understand. Most ten year olds can't even pronounce "osteoporosis", let alone understand what it means nor be able to imagine themselves having it in twenty years time, twice their lifetime away.

I really question whether 10 year olds are capable of making decisions about whether or not they will in future want to have kids of their own either. It's just not something that most kids that age will have thought through, or should have - just not on the radar yet. But if they sign up for trans treatments the ability to change their mind later is gone after a certain point.

Ops question
How should we treat Transpeople
As any other person, I'll treat people with respect until they show themselves to not deserve that respect.
I'm interested in a debate about the reasoning behind giving children unregulated drugs, but that's a whole other thread.
I'm also really not bothered about whether Transpeople "pass" that's their problem and not mine. I'm not on this earth to make others feel better about themselves.
I'll treat men that want to present as women with courtesy until they invade my personal and private space, if they cross that line then any courtesy and respect from me has fucked off and left the building.

Courtesy and respect generally operate in a reciprocal way in most societies. Invading women's spaces when you are clearly male is neither courteous nor respectful.

What is the ideal - how can we protect the rights of women without ostracising trans people from our society?

Increased "third space" provision that's designed around families and doesn't infringe on disabled people's provision:

• family toilets, showers, and changing rooms that accommodate a parent with a buggy and children would reduce the parenting burden on mothers by allowing a father to take his daughters to the loo or pool and could also be used by trans people.
• family dorms at hostels and other budget accommodation could be used by trans people travelling with friends, if those friends were willing to share with the trans person.

Increased single-occupant provision and an expectation that trans people will use it, with any additional costs born by all of us:

• example: a solo trans traveller at the youth hostel is allocated a single room to ensure the right of other guests to single-sex dorms, but charged a lower rate as if they were in a dorm. I've talked on here about the unfairness of the "rape tax" paid by women who book a single room for safety sooner than brave a "single gender" mixed sex dorm. It would be similarly unfair to impose a "trans tax".

Improved funding and staffing of all mental health services:

• to alleviate and manage the mental distress of women and girls, targetted to tackle post-abuse trauma, sexual objectification, and body image problems. This will help women's health.
• to alleviate and manage the mental distress of men and boys, targetted to tackle the mismatch between reality and men and boys' expectations about both themselves and about women and girls. Examples of mismatch. This will help men's health and help them to respect women's rights and challenge myths about "real" manhood that are the root cause of homophobia, misogyny, and transphobia.
• to alleviate and manage comorbid mental illness in people with gender dysphoria and manage their expectations about life post-transition, to improve trans health.

Education reforms:

• pshre to be mandatory, no opt-outs, and to include consent, respect for others, and resistance to the anti-woman messages in porn. respect for others to include respecting people with differing views, respecting people who dress and present in unexpected ways (e.g. cross-dressing, males in makeup, religious or national attire), and respecting the rights of others. pshre to cover the difference between rights infringements and hurt feelings.
• critical thinking skills to be a mandatory and assessed curriculum component.
• a ban on the teaching of creationism, queer theory, or any other faith-based stance as "truths" or "alternatives" to accepted theories like evolution. This ban to apply to any kind of diversity training that frames gender identity as something everyone has instead of something that some people feel that they have. It's one thing to be taught that some people have a strong sense of gender identity, quite a different matter to be told that most or all people do (and actually marginalising as fuck for the many people who don't have one).

I think women spend way too much time thinking about third spaces for transpeople or acceptable provisions.

I am so exasperated with the vast foolishneds of this movement I will say what I really think.

A very small proportion of people are affected by bodily dysphoria which expresses itself as a conviction they are the other sex. I believe the root cause of this is commonly childhood trauma and such people should be supported with appropriate mental health treatment to alleviate, if not cure, their distress. It is absolute nonsense to pretend such beliefs are anything other than neurological or psychological damage.

The vast majority of the rest of this movement are chancers, kinksters and misogynists. They are participating in a socially-approved movement which aims to roll back women’s rights. They pretend to be women for sexual thrills, for the ability to bully women without sanction and to insert themselves into women’s sports, short-lists and spaces for their own gratification.

This movement could not have arisen without the complicit approval of all levels of governance, threatened by women’s increasingly successful participation in all aspects of society.

I think women spend way too much time thinking about third spaces for transpeople or acceptable provisions

So do I. Here on the feminist board, I'm interested in solutions that are good for women and child protection. This well funded movement with establishment capture can find its own solutions. So long as they don't conflict with women's rights or child protection, I couldn't care less what they are.

I see another thread about to go to forty pages of endless repetition.

MNHQ should really get to grips with this.

Why is it just the small number of people on here you disagree with that you constantly accuse of repetition? Don’t you do exactly the same, thread after thread?

Women can’t be men
Males don’t belong in female spaces however they identify
This is experimentation on children
There’s no such thing as gender identity
There’s no such thing as gendered souls
Transgenderism is is an ideology
It’s not misgendering it’s correct sexing
Putting a child on puberty blockers is child abuse
Forcing us to lie about what we see is gaslighting and coercion
Sex is fixed at conception and observed at birth
You can’t change sex
If I identify as a millionaire it doesn’t make me rich
It’s all based on stereotypes
Allowing TW into our spaces puts women and girls at risk
No one passes. I can always tell.
You don’t affirm anorexia so why affirm this?
Etc

So, Field, third spaces, women's single sex rights and provisions protected? Did you want someone to say it again, or were you hoping for a long, irrelevant rabbit hole of negotiation around that firm, clear and fair line that women have set out here?

No. I wasn’t.

Right then. Seems like it's a fairly overwhelming consensus on the thread, really. Unless you have anything you'd like to counter it with, as you're suddenly such an affable and articulate contributor?

I really question whether 10 year olds are capable of making decisions about whether or not they will in future want to have kids of their own either.

I didn't think about it until aged 13-14, and decided pretty swiftly that I didn't want them. However, even that late on and with the certainty I felt (and still feel) about child-freedom, it would have been wrong to remove that option from me via elective medical treatments because I was still a child.

At the age of ten, I was navigating periods, breasts, and sexualisation from adult men and boys alike. Having kids wasn't on my radar even with that going on.

I'm forced to wonder who benefits from children being sterilised? The kind of people who want to do acts that could make children pregnant and for whom that pregnancy would be inconvenient, perhaps?

So what, then? We'd all suddenly change our minds in the face of your brilliant counterarguments?

No thanks, I’ll leave it there.

Jolly good. Go well.

Earlier field said: "I’m not trying to change any of your minds. I can see the logical consistency in your arguments."

You know the arguments. You accept they are logically consistent. But you disagree with the conclusion(? My assumption - not actually sure what your conclusion really is). Is there a premise you find to be false?

(Apart from the more minor ones we've already discussed in this thread).

bye 👋

The only thing I really got out of the last 20 pages was "look most trans people pass, OK? for real, and this is important somehow".

Which, like a. not really, b. Specsavers, and c. even if true still wouldn't address the issues of child sterilization, sports, etc.

Why is it just the small number of people on here you disagree with that you constantly accuse of repetition? Don’t you do exactly the same, thread after thread?

You know perfectly well that I'm referring to the small number of posters who filibuster threads to forty pages over and over again: not any and all posters I disagree with. This is an abuse of the board and not good faith "debate".

Other threads here include disagreements but aren't filibustered to forty pages with repetition, faux misunderstandings, DARVO nonsense and misdirections. I'm not complaining about them.

If this board was moderated to the benefit of the board and not the control of feminists, this issue would have been dealt with already.

Well, I guess it just sticks in the craw of some people to have a thread with nearly every post demonstrating that the women here are all saying 'third spaces, retain women's sex based rights', so they like to throw in their strangely pointless ponderings about whether males can look female or if hormones and surgery are appropriate responses to children's mental distress.

I know Field has gone now, but I'll say it again - women's sex based rights protected, and third spaces for those who don't like male spaces.

*I see another thread about to go to forty pages of endless repetition.

MNHQ should really get to grips with this.*

Fairly typical, don't like what women have to say so you silence them.

Loads of threads on this site go to 1000 posts, subjects as diverse and Shamina Begum, abortion, fat people on aeroplanes and Meghan Markle. There is a lot of repetition there, and the subject has often been done to death in previous threads but I bet you don't want these threads shut down.

Read two posts up. I'm not saying it twice.