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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

So much confusion over transgender issues

373 replies

Shockedandbefuddled · 14/02/2020 22:17

Hello - I realise I am here under a new user name.

I am now on a feminist board, having never described myself as a feminist.

My university friends would laugh wildly to hear me described as such.

I feel strongly transgender people need to be looked after and are vulnerable. I do not believe acknowledging transgender people exist poses a threat to womanhood.

However, I am scared that there are a lot of bad men, perverts, abusers and fetishists out in the world (far more than transgender people) who could abuse self ID.

I’m afraid to post this away from Feminist boards because of the backlash but am genuinely confused how the argument has become so fractured.

I think its ok to say I want full support for transgender people but it cannot be at the expense of women, kids, those of religious belief etc?

OP posts:
Justhadathought · 15/02/2020 18:19

Goodbye (for this afternoon) and thank’s for all the fish

I'm not sure what you mean by that...but I trust you are not using it in an offensive way ( 1.e the way it is used in drag).

Trans women such as yourself are surely not served by radical transgenderism? For years there has been a tacit acceptance........but what is happening now in the name of transgenderism, and under the influence of queer theory, has truly radicalised many....

Justhadathought · 15/02/2020 18:20

......to double down in protecting women and their long fought for spaces/sports and services.

Justhadathought · 15/02/2020 18:21

...meaning that what is happening now is an active form of colonisation and forced entry.

PityParty4one · 15/02/2020 18:21

Why is it a pile on when a group of women agree and assert their boundaries?

I for one am not part of any pile on.
My individual opinion is that humans cannot change sex.
There is no female penis.
Sex matters.
Biology matters.
SAFEGUARDING matters.
All trans women are male otherwise what would they be transitioning from.
All thansmen are female for the same reason.

FleetsumNJetsum · 15/02/2020 18:24

Goodbye (for this afternoon) and thank’s for all the fish.

You couldn't help yourself, could you?

ScrimshawTheSecond · 15/02/2020 18:25

Why isn't the question about how male single sex spaces be made welcoming & safe for males with gender dysphoria?

Yes. This.

Justhadathought · 15/02/2020 18:26

Why is it a pile on when a group of women agree and assert their boundaries

It is seen as a pile on...because when you knowingly come to a well known meeting place for people of similar mind ( even if strictly speaking an open forum) and then you argue against that general agreement, or run counter to that...you will inevitably meet resistance and argument from many people. But then you must know that beforehand.

The debate has become so polarised because of the radical trans agenda. Radicalism breeds radicalism. In this case a clash between ideology and material reality.

Mockersisrightasusual · 15/02/2020 18:27

"So long and thanks for all the fish" is the parting message of the dolphins as they leave the soon to be destroyed Earth in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy."

The dolphins being far more intelligent than the humans, they knew all about the impending armageddon.

"Humans believed they were more intelligent than humans because of their many acheivements: The Wheel, New York, Wars and so on. Interestingly, the dolphns considered themselved to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reason."

testing987654321 · 15/02/2020 18:31

Interesting.

  1. I have very little time for Hayton as well, they seem to want special female status because they recognise they are a man.
  1. I couldn't really care less whether transgender people are motivated by autogynephilia or not. It's not possible to change sex, that's all really.

And if it needs stating: wear frocks and lipstick and call yourself Jen, I think you should have full rights to work and housing etc, I just don't think it makes you a woman.

R0wantrees · 15/02/2020 18:38

But woman after woman has told you, on this thread alone, that they do not want someone with a penis in their space when they are vulnerable and you are ignoring every one of them by saying that we have to 'respect' the 'female penis owners'. NO WE DO NOT. Where is their respect for women? If that is you showing empathy one of us clearly doesn't understand the meaning of the word ...

Not just women but girls too.

In 2018 two girls who were 10 & 12 yrs old at the time were violently sexually assaulted by a 17 year old trans woman named Katie Dolatowski. The assaults took place in the women's toilets at two supermarkets in Scotland. One girl had gone into the store with her Dad who was waiting outside whilst she used the loo just as many Dad's & Grandads do every weekend.

Dolatowski was in receipt of long term social care/support & so was very likely affirmed in their transgender identity. Being 17 yrs old at the time of the assaults Dolatowski would not have had a GRC.

Despite being being found guilty of sexual assaults & violence against females Dolatowski was placed in a female only bail hostel with vulnerable females.

Dundee Chronicle article
"A mother has blasted the sentence given to a sex offender who attacked her 10-year-old daughter in a supermarket toilet.

The woman – who cannot be named to protect the identity of her child – voiced fury that Katie Dolatowski had been freed to serve her sentence in the community.

Dolatowski, 18, sexually assaulted the girl in the toilets of Morrisons, Kirkcaldy.

She grabbed the terrified youngster by the face, shoved her into the cubicle and ordered her to remove her trousers.

But instead of being jailed at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court, Dolatowski, who identifies as a woman but was believed by her victim’s family to be a man, was given community payback and tagging orders.

The mum felt “very, very let down” and said: “I don’t have any confidence whatsoever that he will not go out and do something equally as bad or worse.”

The girl had been sledging when the assault occurred on March 4, last year, a month after Dolatowski had filmed a 12-year-old girl on the toilet in another supermarket in Dunfermline.

When she came out of her cubicle, Dolatowski shoved her back in and told her there was a man outside who would kill her mother.

The brave schoolgirl, however, punched Dolatowski in the face, stomach and groin and ran to her father and siblings waiting just outside the toilets.

Her mother said the girl was hysterical after the attack and continued to suffer flashbacks.

She said: “This is something that will remain with her for the rest of her life." (continues)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3496984-Article-in-Dundee-Courier-about-assault-of-10-year-old-girl-in-supermarket-toilets

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3496984-Article-in-Dundee-Courier-about-assault-of-10-year-old-girl-in-supermarket-toilets

Datun · 15/02/2020 18:45

My identity is not founded in autogynephilia and the ‘experts’ who regularly post on Mumsnet to suggest that is the origin of trans women’s personal identity don’t speak for me or any of the trans women I am acquainted with.

Its certainly rooted in very many transwomen's identity. No one has says it's rooted yours. That wasn't the question, as I'm sure you know.

The question was do you think that transvestites, cross dressing fetishists and men who have AGP should also, along side you, be able to 'self identify' their way into female spaces?

A question I'm sure you are reluctant to answer, because the next one would be is how can we tell the difference? As I'm sure you know, we absolutely can't. The only common denominator is that these are all male born individuals.

Predators, sex offenders, transvestites, autogynephiles, they are either all, or 98%, male.

Hence sex segregation. Go figure.

Teateaandmoretea · 15/02/2020 18:54

2 September 2018 Independent
UNISEX CHANGING ROOMS PUT WOMEN AT DANGER OF SEXUAL ASSAULT, DATA REVEALS'

^^ it is males that put women at risk, not the changing facilities. It is tackling that imo that is the important thing, not single sex spaces per se. With children mixed space with cubicles is better, there is no doubt and personally I prefer it for the most part. The males causing issues need to be held to account but they just aren't that is the real issue for me. 'Female' spaces just disguise the problem bit like women avoiding wearing short skirts etc.

It really really annoys me though when someone identifies me as a 'cis' woman. In the words of Catherine Tate's Nan What a fucking Liberty. Men in women's prisons is Confused and sport is segregated for a reason 🤦🏻‍♀️. Female penis wtaf...? You cannot become a woman, any more than I can become a dinosaur.

FleecyMoo · 15/02/2020 19:03

release, if you read ROwantrees excellent post you will, hopefully, see what I mean about your lack of empathy for women and girls who have every reason to be fearful of allowing men into women's spaces? Do you not feel for these two girls and what they have been through? If not, then, as I said, you most certainly do lack empathy and your 'I'm alright Jack' attitude is staggering, given that you say you have been the victim of sexual assault, are the mother of daughters and do a job which involves safeguarding the vulnerable.

This is not meant as a personal attack. I am merely stating actual, known facts i.e. the objective truth about what can happen if we remove all boundaries and allow men into spaces where women and girls are vulnerable. Please try to understand my concerns. Thank you.

R0wantrees · 15/02/2020 19:07

(1) Debbie Hatton does not speak for me and her views are shared by very few trans women and found offensive by many, including myself.

Debbie Hayton rather than Hatton I presume?

There's much that I & many women disagree with Dr Hayton about so I am unsure the point being made.

This is Dr Hayton's summary position I believe in response to Maya Forstarter's recent employment tribunal findings:
(extract)
"Feelings and opinions have displaced facts and evidence in many areas of the liberal arts. This is nothing new. A more recent phenomenon, however, is the extension of this trend into the realm of biology, which has fallen victim to the idea that men can become women—and vice versa—merely by reciting a statement of belief. It is an insidious movement that combines the postmodern contempt for objective truth with pre-modern religious superstitions regarding the nature of the human soul. (continues)

I’m not sure where that leaves me, a British transgender person who agrees with Forstater. As I know better than most, sex is immutable. I may have transitioned socially, medically and surgically, but I am as male now as I was the day I was born (and the days I fathered each of my three children). As a scientist, I know this to be a fact. It’s Judge Tayler who’s the absolutist here: Under the guise of tolerance, he’s put the force of law behind a cultish movement that treats biological reality in much the same way that the Catholic Church once treated Galileo and his heliocentric ideas. Just like its medieval forbears, this neo-religious crusade demands that adherents chant an absurdist liturgy—in this case, “Transwomen are women. Transmen are men.” (continues)

quillette.com/2020/02/02/i-may-have-gender-dysphoria-but-i-still-prefer-to-base-my-life-on-biology-not-fantasy/

Mossyrock · 15/02/2020 19:09

If private cubicles are not the answer then what can we do?

We don't have to do anything. This is something for men to sort out. As pp said, women are not the default support humans.

I'd be happy to make whatever adjustments are needed for transmen (i.e. females) in female facilities. Transwomen (males) need to take this up with the men.

R0wantrees · 15/02/2020 19:15

the ‘experts’ who regularly post on Mumsnet to suggest that is the origin of trans women’s personal identity don’t speak for me or any of the trans women I am acquainted with.

The majority of women who post regularly on Mumsnet FWR (feminism & women's rights chat) are primarily discussing & speaking up for the Safeguarding of children & Vulnerable Adults and the protection of Women's (sex based) Rights.
As this is a parenting website it shouldnt be of too great a surprise. As this is a feminism board most regulars centre females.

FloralBunting · 15/02/2020 19:19

It doesn't bother me to distinguish between AGP and other reasons for a male to desire entry into spaces and rights designated for women only.

I just don't care what the reason is. The answer is no. Your reason may be creepy or nefarious, or you may sincerely feel that you are a woman inside, despite the unchangeable reality of your body. I will reserve the right to ask questions about how that kind of thing is based on stereotypes harmful to women, but I have no desire to prevent anyone living the life they choose. Fill your boots.

But your sincerely held belief, and perfectly law abiding nature and pleasant, charming personality mean exactly zero when it comes to accessing things which are set aside for women.

There is no way for a male to be a female, therefore there is no justification for them to access female rights and specific spaces.

The answer is no.

AutumnRose1 · 15/02/2020 19:26

Floral brilliant post.

R0wantrees · 15/02/2020 19:41

It doesn't bother me to distinguish between AGP and other reasons for a male to desire entry into spaces and rights designated for women only.

I just don't care what the reason is. The answer is no

This ^^

What is of particular concern are the reasons & implications for children, especially young females being diagnosed with 'gender dysphoria' which seem markedly different to adult males. Listening to those who describe themselves as 'detransitioners' or 'desisters' requires that we seriously consider how 'kind' or 'progressive' it is to prioritise the affirmation of belief in gender identities over the material reality of children & young people's sexed bodies.

January 2020 Standpoint article by Helen Joyce:
'Speaking up for female eunuchs
The woes of “detransitioners” are a warning: treating children with gender dysphoria is riskier than zealots admit'

(extract)
“I regret it all,” says a slight 23-year-old in a lumberjack shirt, hunched behind a microphone. She is one of eight young detransitioners from several European countries here in Manchester. All are lesbian. They, and many in the audience, see the doctors and clinicians who supported their transitions as the post-modernist version of those who sought to turn gay people straight—only now they are seeking to fix bodies rather than sexual desires. “Transition has been presented as so progressive, but the only thing I see is it reinforcing gender stereotypes,” says one.

“If there is a ‘gay conversion therapy’ of our times, it’s this,” says Charlie Evans, the network’s founder, who identified as trans for a decade before switching back last year, aged 28. Of the 300 or so detransitioners who responded to her social-media call some months ago, most were young and female. That chimes with the changing caseload at paediatric gender clinics around the world, which used to see mostly prepubescent boys but now mostly see teenage girls.

These young women have been indelibly marked by their quest for manhood. Five took cross-sex hormones: their voices are deep and some have receding hairlines. Five had their breasts removed, and two their ovaries and wombs as well. Those who underwent hormone treatment will not know whether it harmed their fertility until they try to have children. Those without reproductive organs know they never will.

The eloquence of a 23-year-old German who goes by “Satan Herself” (@sathananas on Twitter) prompts tears among many. She talks about the difficulty of living as a young lesbian without cultural role models or social networks, in a world that values women only insofar as men find them attractive. Meeting other detransitioners was a revelation, she says. “Where have these women been all my life? . . . It was just so normal to be a lesbian and a masculine woman and I’ve never felt that, ever.”

Between 14 and 16 she was repeatedly hospitalised with anorexia.She started breast-binding at 18, seeing a gender therapist at 19, taking testosterone a month after her 20th birthday, and had a mastectomy, hysterectomy, and oophorectomy (removal of ovaries). “I’m really glad my parents forced me into treatment for my eating disorder and didn’t let me die,” she says. “I wish someone had been there to tell me not to get castrated at 21.”

One young woman after another describes eating disorders, discomfort with her same-sex orientation and alienation from “compulsory femininity”: pink, glitter and princesses—and body-shaming and ubiquitous porn. In gender therapists’ telling, they say, transition was their salvation. “There’s a very strong narrative that if you don’t transition you are going to kill yourself,” says Satan Herself. “I genuinely thought it was the only option.” (continues)
standpointmag.co.uk/issues/february-2020/speaking-up-for-female-eunuchs/

LangClegsInSpace · 15/02/2020 19:42

What Floral said. The answer is no.

Michelleoftheresistance · 15/02/2020 19:49

There is no way for a male to be a female, therefore there is no justification for them to access female rights and specific spaces.

Absolutely.

Nor does it justify removing female rights and spaces from females to try and meet your own needs. Female things aren't something females are allowed only if the Main Humans don't need or want them.

I don't understand why the misogyny in this isn't starkly obvious.

ListeningQuietly · 15/02/2020 19:54

Out of interest, where should a person who had surgery decades ago
and pre transition was very androgynous get changed?
As they are or as they were decades ago?

Justhadathought · 15/02/2020 20:02

Out of interest, where should a person who had surgery decades ago
and pre transition was very androgynous get changed?
As they are or as they were decades ago

This is a good question - and one that has been brought to the forefront because of the radical trans agenda - which brooks no opposition and no disagreement; and cares little for the comfort and dignity of women. It would seem that now the only obvious solution is third spaces, and others have explained the impossibility of discerning what 'sort' of trans person you are; and should not be expected to, either.

FloralBunting · 15/02/2020 20:06

ListeningQuietly, I don't mean to be rude, but that really does sound like an attempt to find a loophole.

One of the most obvious answers to a male saying 'and how will you stop me entering a female space?' is to point out that this is the red flag question.

The vast majority of men do not need to be held back from entering female spaces or taking female provision. They make the right, appropriate choice to leave those spaces and provision and rights for women.

So, in essence, the answer is, whatever surgery anyone has had, they use the provision designated for their sex.

R0wantrees · 15/02/2020 20:06

As they are or as they were decades ago?

Males do not become females regardless of surgeries, cross sex hormones or having an androgynous presentation.
A person's sex is as it has been since they were conceived.