Men only job

[SuperMeerkat]

First time post, long time lurker. I spotted a job that was for men only, sexual health clinic support worker. Advert said ‘exempt under gender discrimination laws etc’ What would happen if a woman applied saying she identified as a man? Or if you were non-binary like I think Sam Smith is? I don’t want the job, just wondering really.

And I’ll add, the only reason I can see that people think that it’s ok to remove segregated spaces is because they believe that women aren’t really at risk.

However, as a woman I’m more likely to be victim of violent crime 🤷🏻‍♀️

So why not leave our spaces alone.

And create new safe spaces for trans women?

You don’t have to remove one at the expense of the other.

There are plenty of trans rights activists out there doing work but why should it be the responsibility of individual transgender people to prove they are not perpetrators? Particularly when they are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators.

Of the hundreds of women and girls I have worked with other the years who have experienced sexual abuse, I haven't met a single one who was abused by someone pretending to be transgender. I'm not saying that there aren't cases like this out there, but they are rare. I have however met many transgender women who have been abused. Is it their personal responsibility to prove that they are not sexual predators when they themselves have been raped, assaulted, attacked in the street?

Based on your personal experience alone Pineapple you yourself say hundreds of women and 'many' transgender women (I'll use your language out of respect).

Out of interest, of the transgender women you have met in your work, how many would you say have experienced sexual assault? Of that number how many of the perpetrators in these crimes men? We're there many cases of women sexually assaulting a transgender women for example, or were there many cases from your personal experience of transgender women being the perpetrator and the victim?

In the interest of discussion I'm also interested to know when would you say you started helping transgender women through your work, would you have had cases say, 10 or 20 years ago or more recently than that? And if their assaults went to trial how many were successful in prosecution, do you get told that through your line of work?

The rate of crime committed by transwomen was looked at by a study in Sweden in 2011.

The results were:

Transwomen are 6 times more likely to commit a crime and 18 times more likely to commit a violent crime compared to female controls.

But transwomen commit crime, including violent crime, at a similar rate as any other males in the general population.

fairplayforwomen.com/criminality/

This is not a question of just looking at a single example. It is shocking that people who are involved in working with vulnerable women are unaware of this study.

I work for an organisation that only employs women.

Female ones?

Pineapple, do you listen to female users of your services if they do not want to be with male (but feminine-identities) users or employees?

If so, how do you personally ensure that they feel safe, and heard, and not further traumatised? Because 'Honest, love, that's a woman' surely doesn't often cut it?

I work specifically for a charity that supports women and children who have experienced sexual violence, so every person I support has this in common. We have only started working with transgender women in the last three years so my experience is based on that. Every trans woman I have supported was assaulted by a man apart from one who was assaulted by several people in her family including women.

In terms of court and prosecution, most people I work with, across all genders, sexualities, ages, etc haven't received a successful prosecution. Most people, if they are able to report to the police, don't make it to court. I'm not sure without looking it up what the stats are around police/court process and transgender women but in my experience they are terrified of not being believed and being blamed, just like cisgender women. It can be more complicated of course because people assume transgender women are either mentally ill, perverted or both.

why should it be the responsibility of individual transgender people to prove they are not perpetrators?

Since the evidence we have (see previous post) suggests that transwomen commit violent crimes at the same rate as men, shouldn't you also be arguing "why should it be the responsibility of individual men to prove they are not perpetrators?"

Why not push for all rape crisis centres and domestic violence shelters to be completely mixed sex?

In terms of court and prosecution, most people I work with, across all genders, sexualities, ages, etc haven't received a successful prosecution. Most people, if they are able to report to the police, don't make it to court.

So nearly all rape goes unpunished, yet it's fine to only exclude males from women's prisons if they have a conviction for sexual assault? What are the odds that a fairly high proportion of males in prison might have committed sexual assault, yet never been convicted?

I have the same immense sympathy for transwomen who have been assaulted as I do for men who have been assaulted, and still think that you need to consider that the presence of either will make some women feel unsafe.

That's before we start to consider where you draw any boundary between 'man' and 'transwoman', as it seems to me an entirely arbitrary division.

Why exactly do we have to have been victims of crime to not want to share spaces where we are in a state of undress with men?

I don't strip off in front of my 20 year old son whose penis I've washes a thousand times.

I don't strip off in front of my 47 year old brother who I used to share baths with when we were little.

I don't do so as a matter of privacy and dignity with these men who I'd trust with my life so why on earth should I be expected to do so in front of random men I don't know from Adam?

The fundamental problem is not whether an individual XY trans person is a predator or not, the fundamental issue is that all XY trans people are men, not women and as a woman I should not have to pretend otherwise while half naked.

So it's only been the last three years or so, is it fair to say you might have met only a handful of transgender women as victims of sexual crimes, and that women are overwhelmingly the demographic of victims of sexual crimes, excluding those where children are the victims?

By the way, hate crime in the UK overwhelmingly targets Muslims and trans gender people are the least likely to be victims of hate crimes, according the the real numbers, not the BBC. In this study, misogyny, essentially hate crimes towards women, were not recorded. I'd personally be very interested to know what the figures would be if every-day misogyny was to be recorded, what the numbers would look like.

If you simply took the number of rapes of women and put them against the number of hate crimes against only transgender women and ignored the crimes against transgendered men, you would see a vast difference between the two, whether you looked at a day, a week, a month or a year.

Is rape a hate crime? Should the women you help, as victims of men, be asked to endure presence of men in places of your work, where they have specifically asked for female-only support? Would the feelings of a transgender woman be prioritised over the request of a woman who has been raped at your place of work?

Sums it up Arnold

Pineapple I am not a cisgender woman

I am a woman

We prioritise recovery from trauma for all our clients so if they don't want to work with or be in a group with someone for whatever reason then of course we listen. To my knowledge no one has said that they don't want to work alongside another client who is trans and I have definitely facilitated groups with trans and cis women together.

All of our staff and volunteers are legally women.

Pineapple

So the people you are helping are able to request that they are not sharing a female only space with a transwomen. If they object to this what would happen?

From what I've read about transwomen wanting access to female only spaces, this isn't being proposed as a choice for women it's being told that that's the option regardless of how you feel.

Oh holy Jesus, it is estimated that transgender people make up less than 2% of the entire population, so of course I see less trans women in my practice.

So the last few posts have essentially argued that being trans doesn't really exist. I could go into biological arguments about people who are intersex, etc but I have a feeling it would fall on deaf ears. It's pretty unbelievable that you think your limited experience and knowledge can erase the experience of other people. I'm unfollowing this post because the amount of bigotry and ignorance is getting depressing.

I sincerely encourage people to actually get to know someone who is trans, ask some respectful questions and try to educate yourselves.

Trans people have always existed and always will. As a society we're learning and becoming more tolerant to people regardless of gender but clearly have a long way to go. In 50 years you will be seen the same was as people who opposed interracial couples or decriminalisation of homosexuality. Dinosaurs.

”Your arguments are completely full of logical fallacies. So because you have read about one person claiming to be transgender who is a threat to women, all transgender people are a threat to women? So because I have read about one mother who abused her child does that mean all mothers are a threat to their children?”

@Pineapplemonkey86 - I am not saying that transgender women are a danger to women and children - I am saying that self-ID is a danger to women and children, cause predatory males will use it to get more access to vulnerable women, as KW, and the other accounts in the article I linked to, show.

I am finding it hard to understand why you want to minimise and dismiss the harm that HAS been done to women, by men claiming to be trans women. KW’s victims don’t matter enough for you to change your views. Nor does the indigenous inmate referred to in the Quillette article. Nor the women in the US at risk of losing valuable university scholarships, because mediocre male athletes are identifying as women and winning all the races - races that go towards determining who gets the scholarships. So women’s education suffering as well as women’s sports. How about the women who lost out on the business award given to the person who only puts on woman-face on a part time basis? What about the women in a refuge who have to face a male bodied individual being housed with them because they self-ID as female - and then issue gloating tweets about strutting around scantily dressed, with an obvious erection, making the women uncomfortable - I guess their discomfort, deliberately caused, is not enough for you.

I agree it's depressing.

People with DSD are not transgendered and have repeatedly asked not to be used as a tool to level the political hypothesis that sex is not binary. In the massive majority of cases people with DSD belong to one sex or the other, and many of the conditions causing DSD can only occur in one particular sex.

No one is arguing that transgendered people do not exist: they plainly do. However the right of biological females to not be forced to pretend that males can change sex, to their own disadvantage, distress, limitation of their access and freedoms, is not an ethical way of meeting anyone's needs. There are solutions that allow transgendered people to be treated as the sex they would choose to be while still retaining single sex spaces for women who need them. It is not a zero sum game. And women not wanting to lose their equal access to society and their right to not have to pretend something they do not believe in to prioritise a male's feelings over their needs, safety and own feelings, are not 'dinosaurs'. The sexism in this - which is far older than issues around decriminalisation of homosexuality by thousands of years - is hard to miss.

I looked after 2 transwomen in a medical capacity, and was friends with a transwoman who, sadly, died prematurely as a result of the hormones she was taking. I have absolutely no problems with people like those 3 that I knew well.
What I have a massive problem with is the men like Karen White and Jessica Yaniv who use self ID as a way to access vulnerable women.
This is such an obvious difference between two groups that I can't understand why there is always someone on these threads that refuses to acknowledge the difference and conflates the two.

But if we allow a male who identifies as a women into a female only space, any male can self identify not just transwomen.

Some men would take advantage of that. For awful reasons.

How would you stop that?

Plus it would be a mistake to assume that

a) posters here are not homosexual and haven't experienced the kind of discrimination and fight for legal equality you describe

b) posters here do not have friends or family who are transgendered, or indeed are not transgendered themselves.

I could go into biological arguments about people who are intersex,

The preferred and properly respectful term is DSD, disorders of sexual development. It is extremely hurtful to most people with DSD to be considered some kind of "in-between" sex, rather than the sex that they rightfully are, and to know that they and their conditions are being casually talked about this ill-informed way on the Internet, leading to further ignorance and prejudice in people they meet.

I suspect that in 50 years time this will be seen in the same way as opposing interracial couples or decriminalisation of homosexuality.

I sincerely encourage people to actually get to know someone who is trans, ask some respectful questions and try to educate yourselves.

Of course I know people who are or consider themselves transgender! Some I've known since they were babies. I like them as much as I ever did. I still know perfectly well which of them are actually male and which female, and would not consider it reasonable to have to share facilities with the male half.

Kesstrel, I thought the I in LGBTQI stood for intersex and therefore assumed it was acceptable to those concerned. Will take that on board.

I know Pineapple has gone now so I don't have a chance to respond directly (unless you are lurking still?) but I have to say some of the language used sounded strangely similar to a podcast I was just listening to with India Willoughby...

Anyway, my point was, as people who think they are the opposite sex have always existed, and that they make up less than 2% of the population in the UK, and yet the rate of sex related crime continues to rise (and end in fewer prosecutions) and if trans women are indeed women and not men, then why don't they get raped at the same rate as women, and why are they not experiencing the same need of support in rape crisis centres or places like where Pineapple works? Why is it that only a few go through the doors and that the numbers are not equal to the numbers of women who go there for help? Is it because they are not women and women get raped more than men?

Why is it that only a few go through the doors and that the numbers are not equal to the numbers of women

Well, you'd expect them to make up only 2% of the numbers, surely? Or 1%, assuming half are transmen and half transwomen?