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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

What are T***s and why has Cambridge's Student's Union publishes a guide to spotting them?

115 replies

frazzled1 · 02/11/2019 12:42

www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/how-to-spot-terf-feminism-17183102

CambridgeshireLive seems to have been made aware of the CUSU guide www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3546628-Cambridge-Students-Union-Womens-Campaign-How-to-Spot-T-f-Ideology.

This form of feminism excludes transgender people

Do you know what a T* looks like and how to spot one?

Cambridge’s University Student’s Union (CUSU) has published a guide to spot T Excl Radical Feminists (T**) and their ideologies. But why, and who are they?

Transgender issues have been a hot media topic in 2019, and with it came a rise in hate crimes. In 2019 in Cambridgeshire alone, transphobic hate crimes have risen by 271% since 2015.

The guide is to ensure movements in the University are safe and inclusive for everyone - and has full endorsement from the Cambridge University Graduate Union executive committee as a stance of trans solidarity.

CUSU’s guide was written with the collaboration of the CUSU Women’s Campaign and the CUSU LGBTQ+ group in the hope to call out and combat risky arguments that can lead to real endangerment for transgender and non-binary people.

So arguments are risky now..... Hmm

OP posts:
PencilsInSpace · 03/11/2019 22:11

Can you explain why not, Frack?

Ereshkigal · 04/11/2019 00:31

Bad people will do bad things, but it shouldn't stop us trusting people as a whole.

But it's not just about trusting people not to do harm, its equally about respecting women's rights to privacy and dignity. Are you aware that women in prison have been forced to shower naked with males??

traceyracer · 04/11/2019 01:16

" In 2019 in Cambridgeshire alone, transphobic hate crimes have risen by 271 per cent since 2015."

Regardless what your views of transpeople are, hate crimes can't be tolerated and perhaps this is why the student union is doing what it's doing?

CharlieParley · 04/11/2019 02:47

"Regardless what your views of transpeople are, hate crimes can't be tolerated and perhaps this is why the student union is doing what it's doing?"

Please explain, what in your view is the causal connection between transphobic hate crime and campaigners seeking to uphold the existing legal rights of women?

And then could you please explain in what way hate crimes being committed against people who identify as trans by perpretrators unconnected to and on the whole ignorant of the arguments made by women's rights campaigners is the fault of the latter?

And whether it is ever justified to pulish a propaganda piece which grossly misrepresents the feminist fight to assert and defend women's sex-based rights as well as the objections made against transgender ideology and legislation by them and others? I mean it's a fact that almost all of the violent rhetoric and indeed the only physical violence involving campaigners on this issue so far has not come from them but the other side, so I'd truly love to know.

CharlieParley · 04/11/2019 02:53

In all fairness I should add that the police have stated that the increase in hate crimes against people who identify as trans is in their view due to better reporting and recording and not to any significant increase in the crime itself.

JellySlice · 04/11/2019 06:38

I just think it's a bit weird to focus all campaigning on this one tiny group.

It's not just about this 'one tiny group'. Their insistence on have their wishes and their ideology prioritised over everything, disenfranchises half the population. Not only that, it puts at risk children, the elderly, hospital patients, pretty much every vulnerable group in society.

Bad people will do bad things, but it shouldn't stop us trusting people as a whole.

Trustworthy people are required to have DBSs, and ensure that they are witnessed/chaperoned in certain situations, and do likewise for others. Trustworthy people understand why this is done and accept it. Trustworthy people do not prioritise their 'right' to be trusted over others' rights to safety, to asserting their own boundaries, to equal participation in society.

JellySlice · 04/11/2019 06:46

FrackOff, sorry, I posted without taking into consideration the whole context of your post. What happened to you was utterly wrong. I am not in any way criticising your attitude as a result of your experience. I was commenting purely on those two phrases.

CharlieParley · 04/11/2019 09:54

Men are statistically more likely to sexually assault children than women are. But we don't prevent male teachers from taking up their positions, do we? We aren't campaigning to remove men from primary schools. And nor should we. Bad people will do bad things, but it shouldn't stop us trusting people as a whole.

Let me also start by saying that what happened to you was terrible and that it should never have happened, FrackOff Flowers

I would like to address your statement, because for me that represents an upside down way of looking at the issue of male sexual and physical violence.

Abusers often choose professions that allow them to target the most vulnerable of their preferred type of victim by putting themselves in a position of power over them. This is well known and documented, with many cases having been tried at court.

Male offenders make up about 98% of sexual predators, this is also a documented fact.

To protect vulnerable people, we have put into place systems, rules, regulations and practices aimed at a) preventing known abusers from working with such groups and b) minimise any opportunity that could be used by abusers for their own purposes.

You're right, we're not stopping all men from becoming teachers, but we have put measures in place seeking to stop those men who are abusers from becoming teachers in the first place and if that fails we're seeking to stop them from being able to exploit vulnerable situations.

Safeguarding doesn't work by putting one safety fence up keeping out the bad guys because every fence has its weak points. Instead, as another Mumsnetter said, we're using a Swiss cheese approach by layering many different safeguarding measures on top of each other. And like a block of many slices of Swiss cheese, eventually all of the holes are covered.

Sex segregation where we are vulnerable or in a state of undress is one of these layers. It is one of the most effective tools we have in protecting ourselves from male predators. The taboo of a man entering certain female-only public spaces used to be so strong, even domestic abusers for instance would stay outside the door to the ladies. Because he could be sure to be challenged and stopped from going in. Not just by other women, but also by other men.

There is no evidence that a male who identifies as trans poses less of a risk to females than any other male. There is a lot of evidence that the former poses the exact same risk as the latter.

This is why we oppose turning female-only spaces into mixed-sex spaces by allowing males who identify as trans access. This is why we insist on applying normal safeguarding rules to them.

Please note that now absolutely no changes at all are required from males who wish to claim a trans identity and with that access to female-only spaces, services and facilities.

No name changes, no pronouns, no presentation, no clothing, no behaviour - no "living in role" at all. No medical diagnosis. No proof required.

The only thing a man called Kevin, who looks exactly like any other man you have ever met, needs do is to utter the magic words "I identify as a woman" and we must then accept Kevin is a woman.

Given this new dogma, and the fact that we cannot identify any abuser by looking at them, it is even less logical to exempt such males - any males - from the safeguarding frameworks set up to protect us from male violence.

And yet, we are being asked to do just that. How do you justify such an approach?

FrackOff · 04/11/2019 11:21

Thank you @CharlieParley and @JellySlice for your empathy re my experience.

I do think that the majority of us who are thinking through these issues are coming from a similar place. I was speaking to two good friends recently whose thoughts on trans women come from the GC end of things. We have been talking through this stuff together and trying to understand each other. It's not easy- there are some big feelings underpinning all of this. So we came to talk about where those feelings come from. All three of us have some knowledge about and personal experience of the neurology of trauma, rooted in experiences of male-perpetrated sexual assault. And one thing we agreed on was that this trauma has lifelong impacts, including on our fears and beliefs about physical safety. I really do empathise with the fear carried by people who are concerned about their daughters being in changing rooms where male bodied people may also be. I have two daughters, and I want them to be safe. I have a 6 year old son too, and there is no way I'd allow him into the men's toilets alone.

I do understand @CharlieParley's Swiss cheese analogy, which includes sex segregated space as a safeguarding layer. Where we differ is on the perception of the impact of the legislation which allows for self-declaration.

First of all, the Equality Act 2010 has allowed self-dec for a while now, with no associated spike in crime perpetrated against women. This is replicated in other countries with similar laws.

Secondly, men who commit violent or sexual crimes against women don't need to claim womanhood to do so. Male pattern violence does not lend itself to self-emasculation: if a man wants to exert power over a woman, it's unlikely that he'll do what he would perceive as debasing himself by claiming to be one.

Thirdly, the Equality Act 2010 does have protections in place for sex-segregated space. Schedule 3, Part 7(28)and Schedule 23(3) allow for the exclusion of trans women from a women's space such as a prison, a psychotherapy group or a women's refuge where that exclusion amounts to “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim” (this protection is in place where someone has a Gender Recognition Certificate, too).

The Karen White case is a good example of an institution failing to follow legal protocol. They should be conducting risk assessments in these sorts of cases. Judicial review would be possible and would rely on whether the prison authorities had due regard to the protections in the Equality Act.

What I don't want to see is these institutional failures being used as a justification for the removal of the rights of trans people.We should be holding powerful institutions to account. Pathologising the individual is a great way to take attention off the institution.

Ereshkigal · 04/11/2019 13:03

for the removal of the rights of trans people

Invading women's spaces against their consent isn't a "right". It's not just about safety, it's about privacy and dignity. As you are aware there are single sex exemptions in 6 different areas in the EA and without a GRC MTF trans people are legally male. As Center Parcs are doing, it is legal to exclude males from single sex female changing rooms and other facilities.

CharlieParley · 04/11/2019 13:49

First of all, the Equality Act 2010 has allowed self-dec for a while now, with no associated spike in crime perpetrated against women. This is replicated in other countries with similar laws.

This is incorrect on all three claims.

Firstly, the Equality Act does not permit access to single-sex provisions on the basis of self-id. On the contrary, it explicitly allows exclusion even of persons in possession of a Gender Recognition Certificate from such spaces.

Secondly, sexual crime is on the rise, and the undermining of existing safeguarding measures has already had a notable impact on the statistics. As FOIs have revealed, the risk to individual women is about nine times higher in mixed-sex facilities. As mixed-sex facilities rise in number, so does associated crime.

Thirdly, there have been countless reports of problems in every single country and region that has introduced self-id, including a rise in crime against women. Furthermore, some countries like Ireland have very strict privacy provisions and much more generous legal options for excluding all members of one sex from opposite-sex provisions which means they don't have what the UK government was proposing at all.

Male pattern violence does not lend itself to self-emasculation: if a man wants to exert power over a woman, it's unlikely that he'll do what he would perceive as debasing himself by claiming to be one.

This is also incorrect on several counts.

The psychology of male violent offenders has been researched extensively. Results have shown that the number one paraphilia rapists, murderers and abusers have in common is transvestism. There are a number of other sexual fetishes, but dressing up as a woman has been found to be the most common one in violent male offenders, well beyond its natural prevalence of between 4 and 6% in adult males. (Some of the studies suggest a prevalence of almost 100%)

Moreover, as I have already stated, no man has to debase himself in any way to declare himself a woman. The words are enough and require a lot less effort than an awful lot of other things abusers do to gain access to their victims - such as train for the priesthood or study to be a doctor etc.

Additionally, it is simply incorrect to assert that sexual predators wouldn't be pretending to be women since we have hundreds if not thousands of examples of men doing just that. And that's only the ones who got caught.

They should be conducting risk assessments in these sorts of cases.

No, actually. They should be using the sex-based exemption to exclude all males from the female prison estate.

The phrase "case by case" does not in fact refer to to individual cases in terms of people but to each specific service (i.e. despite claims otherwise, a blanket-ban is legal once the case for excluding all males has been made). So a refuge for abused women can legally exclude all adult males regardless of their identity without having to risk assess each individual male asking for access.

The risk assessment in the case of the female prison estate should not be "does this individual pose a risk? but "do we put women at risk, will there be negative impacts by putting males in with the women?". The answer to the second question is yes, so no individual case should even be considered after that.

PencilsInSpace · 04/11/2019 16:23

The Karen White case is a good example of an institution failing to follow legal protocol. They should be conducting risk assessments in these sorts of cases.

They should be keeping male inmates out of the female estate altogether. 'This one's not very likely to actually rape or physically attack the women' is far too low a bar. Women's mental health, their emotional wellbeing, privacy and dignity are all important as well as their basic physical safety.

We should be holding powerful institutions to account. Pathologising the individual is a great way to take attention off the institution.

Absolutely we should and we are. The upcoming judicial review is against the government policy as a whole, not against the placement of any specific trans prisoner.

AryaStarkWolf · 04/11/2019 16:27

I see someone has already addressed this a bit but this claim here :

and with it came a rise in hate crimes. In 2019 in Cambridgeshire alone, transphobic hate crimes have risen by 271% since 2015.

What do they actually mean by "hate crime"? is it actual "literal" violence or is it misgendering someone?

FrackOff · 04/11/2019 16:51

We are fiddling around with statistics here. From what has been said in the thread above, I still can't see the proof you'd need to formally exclude trans women from women's spaces.

Do we have specific UK stats comparing numbers for five years before and five years after the Equality Act 2010 regarding:

  • sexual assaults agains women prisoners by people identifying as trans women who have been placed in a women's prison?
  • sexual assaults against residents in women's refuges by people identifying as trans women who have been placed in a women's refuge?
  • sexual assaults against girls or women in women's changing rooms in swimming pools by people identifying as trans women?
  • sexual assaults against girls or women in women's toilets by people identifying as trans women?
PencilsInSpace · 04/11/2019 17:31

No I don't believe we have those stats.

'Women's spaces' are single sex spaces. There is very strong evidence that tw are not the same sex as women. That should be enough. Where are your stats to show tw present the same level of threat as women and not of men? Why weren't those stats forthcoming before opening up women's spaces to males? Where is your research on the effects of this move on women's mental health, emotional wellbeing, privacy and dignity?

Oh that's right, nobody gave a shit Hmm

How many women should we be prepared to sacrifice while we run this experiment?

FrackOff · 04/11/2019 18:40

We don't need to now. It's done. So if you want to make your point in order to exclude trans people, you're going to need to collect the evidence.

CharlieParley · 04/11/2019 18:48

Please provide your stats for males who identify as trans being attacked by males under all of these aspects.

Because Chesterton's Fence applies to this situation, those who seek to change existing safeguarding must prove that their proposals do not increase risk to those being safeguarded.

So, where are your stats proving that women habe not been attacked by males identifying or claiming to identify as trans?

My local supermarket is one where such a male committed a sexual assault in the ladies, under specific circumstances that would not have happened if the Eqality Act was being followed, so I'm singularly unimpressed both with your refusal to even link a single study and your demand to provide statistics you know we cannot provide precisely because the police is recording males who identify as trans in the crime statistics as female. We do have statistically significant increases in sexual crimes recorded as female crime though which will eventually be shown to be due to males.

Anyway, let's focus on the real issue with your demand:

"Do we have specific UK stats comparing numbers for five years before and five years after the Equality Act 2010"

You still don't seem to understand how the Eqality Act and the sex-based exemptions within it work. It did not give permission to persons identifying as trans to use opposite-sex facilities.

Nine years ago anyone referring to males using female-only facilities was talking about post-op transsexuals. This group is still widely assumed to be the one being debated today. But your very own choice of words shows that's not who we are talking about - yet the Eqality Act made no provisions at all for those claiming a trans identity.

It refers explicitly to transsexuals (those with a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria and seeking to, undergoing or having undergone a medical transition). So, demonstrably, the Equality Act only allowed access to opposite-sex provisions to those who had changed their legal sex on the proviso that even they could be excluded from single-sex provisions if this was necessary.

So this assumed access by males purely on the basis of self-id, which underlies your demand for statistics did not happen back then. It is increasingly discussed now because only now is it happening in any significant numbers.

MoobaaMoobaa · 04/11/2019 18:49

it's not done though, Self ID is not the law. Although lots of guidelines have been issued already.

The law is still sex based.

You may be interested in this thread. these are things that we are told will never happen.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3348290-It-will-never-happen-resource-thread

CharlieParley · 04/11/2019 18:51

We don't need to now. It's done. So if you want to make your point in order to exclude trans people, you're going to need to collect the evidence.

Ooh, unlucky there. If laws have been misused, misapplied and misrepresented, we do not need to argue the original case again. We merely need to show the law has not been followed and we're in the process of doing exactly that.

FrackOff · 04/11/2019 19:22

Self id is already law.

Look, we can find correlations all over the place. Why not ban men from pubs? Or from primary schools? Far more women are hurt by drunk men than by trans women. Far more children are hurt by men in jobs where they have access to children.

And if we ban trans women from places, we have to ban trans men too. Who you see as women. Should they suffer because of a fear of trans women?

CaptainKirksSpikeyGhost · 04/11/2019 19:23

Self id is already law.

No it's not.

Ereshkigal · 04/11/2019 19:26

Well yes, it's law in the sense that it's not illegal.

CaptainKirksSpikeyGhost · 04/11/2019 19:28

Well yes, it's law in the sense that it's not illegal.

That doesn't make it law. Self ID being enshrined in law means sex segregation would exist, and it does.

But no it's not illegal for someone to claim to be another sex, but no one is claiming it is.

CaptainKirksSpikeyGhost · 04/11/2019 19:28

wouldn't**

Ereshkigal · 04/11/2019 19:30

And if we ban trans women from places, we have to ban trans men too. Who you see as women. Should they suffer because of a fear of trans women?

Firstly it's not a "fear of trans women". It's an assertion of the rights of women to female spaces when they are vulnerable. This is both for safeguarding and also privacy and dignity. Which I've said. You're like a broken record.

Secondly, no one is advocating banning anyone from places they should be in. So FTMs are entitled to use women's spaces, as they are female.