So much confusion over transgender issues

[Shockedandbefuddled]

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?

has passed an enhanced DBS check

A clean enhanced DBS check confirms a person has not been convicted of crimes & there is no relevent police intelligence being held.

Its not a guarantee that a person (of either sex) hasnt committed a crime.
With regards sexual assaults /rapes people should be well aware that the percentage of successful prosecutions is at an all time low.
One can reasonably conclude that there are many males who have perpetrated violence against girls & women who would have clean enhanced DBS checks.
(this is not to suggest that they arent a relevent & important part of the Safeguarding framework)

Betty Bowers: An absence of ethics is exhibited by calling the absence of ethics "controversies" instead of an absence of ethics.

This is what I am seeing here in the constant search for special accommodation by women of men's desires.

Be barred from being around girls? ( do you mean girls or women? Girls sounds a little pervy given the discussion so far )

No more or less than any other Male. So generally, no they should not be barred but in some situations they should accept that they are different and that they are different in a significant way.

I will take you suggestion further and suggest that not only has the person had surgery, but also that they were unusually small and weak for a male, with severe lifelong testosterone depletion.

Even in that case. it's about dignity, boundaries, feeling safe , not being triggered.

in practise,in many cases especially where the transitioner is believed to have severe mental health problems many women would let them pass, but the more this is turned into an expectation on women rather than a choice they can make, the more push back you will find. I might feel ok, other women might not and I will defend their right to feel safe.

ListeningQuietly
They are male. They have always been male. They will always be male.

How on earth is treating a tranwoman like any other male taking away rights?

Do you think men have less rights?

More hyperbole.

This is about the needs of female people. That's all I'm interested in talking about and protecting, and that takes all the time and energy I have at the moment. Specious searching for ways to get females to surrender their privacy and needs and right to define themselves as a class for the benefit of males isn't something I agree with, regardless of how upsetting males may find being asked to respect female people and their consent.

Other solutions. Taking provision and rights from females isn't an acceptable answer.

is it not arbitrary to decide they are men again

As a matter of fact, they were never not male. Sex is immutable.

As a matter of opinion, they were never not men.
Men who live as women are still men, imo.

Those like the person I'm thinking of just want a quiet life as the individual they now are the militants have poisoned the whole discussion

ListeningQuietly, I may well agree on one level, and as a liberal sort, I do have sympathy for such a predicament. I agree with others that a third space seems like a sensible option for trans people to pour their campaign energies into.

What tends to happen is that the naysayers, who wish to push this boundary of women's consent aside, firstly consistently downplay the need for single sex spaces, and then insist that males with this issue are too vulnerable to violence to use male only provision, and then discount third space solutions because they are basically mixed sex.

You do not need to be a logical mastermind to follow the contradictions in that argument.

So, I truly have sympathy for someone who has sunk their life into the fiction that they can change sex, going as far as surgery. I especially feel for the individuals who just want to get on with their lives in peace and never wanted any of this.

But all I can suggest is third spaces, because of everything I have thus far posted on the thread, and as others have well expressed, women are not responsible for men - either for stemming their violent tendencies as a class, or for providing cover for those of them who have gone to great lengths to change their appearance for mental health reasons.

I know this feels harsh and unkind, but feminism is for the liberation of women, and we cannot afford to dilute it's mission by defaulting to solving every problem in the world (which is why you will hear some of us say often 'I'm not your mum!') particularly problems men cause for each other.

Stop asking women to solve male problems, ListeningQuietly.
We've got enough of our own to be going on with.

You want to support transwomen? Go and talk to men on men's forums about challenging ideas around masculinity and femininity, and about broadening ideas around what it means to be male.

It is not up to females to come up with the answers for this. They're not the default mummy service for the human race, and females have enough to do at the moment standing up to anti-woman activism now openly stating on tv that women meeting to discuss their rights is an act of hate.

Womens issues here. That's what we do.

(If you have TM needing support therefore, we've got the kettle on.)

Oldcrone
Fair enough.

midge
I used the word girls because the DBS was to do with working with children.
TBH the person I know is indeed quite loopy but that's a whole other story - and no they are not at all small or weak, even now living as a female in a stable relationship

The key safety issue as I see it is the self ID block and tackle brigade who are overtly misogynistic and homophobic
and have sadly taken over two of England's main political parties

Cross post with Floral and Jane who said it much better.

Fay Presto, Jan Morris : is it not arbitrary to decide they are men again ?

Jan Morris didnt deny being a transsexual male.
Jan Morris was open about being a transsexual male.

When Safeguards are sex-based to protect females it is that a person is male which is relevent.

OP have you seen the film “Pride”? One thing they discuss if that people insult them, or try to, they will own the word themselves.

So I’m a TERF. The labour leadership candidates would have to expel me if I were a member.

I used the word girls because the DBS was to do with working with children. TBH the person I know is indeed quite loopy but that's a whole other story - and no they are not at all small or weak, even now living as a female in a stable relationship

If a male TS is working with children then they should be following the same Safeguarding policies which apply to all males. If they believe they are 'living as a female' (which of course they are not) I would be concerned that they might disregard the neccessary sex-based boundaries which exist to protect both girls & male workers.

The key safety issue as I see it is the self ID block and tackle brigade who are overtly misogynistic and homophobic and have sadly taken over two of England's main political parties

Do read the 'Lets Go back to 2007' thread I linked previously.
The current situation is a direct consequence of effective cross-party lobbying behind closed doors many years ago. Some of those who played key roles in the 'regulatory capture' & shaping legislation would be described as 'old school transsexuals'.

Its a myth to think the problems people are aware of today are due to current 'militant' trans rights activists who have not undertaken surgeries etc.

is it not arbitrary to decide they are men again they were adult human males before during & after - there is no again.

I did read the 2007 thread
but I could not slot my friend into it at all
and yes, the regulatory capture has to be fought back against.

It has to be hoped that if Keir becomes leader of the Labour party he will stop some of the insanity in there

If I don’t understand what it is to feel female in anything other than a biological concept I don’t really understand how a man can.
Because he cant. A man can feel uneasy about being male. That doesn't mean he feels like a biological woman. He can't.

but I could not slot my friend into it at all

Im struggling to understand what this means.
Your friend is your friend, why the need to 'slot them in' anywhere?

The thread is an insight into the history of trans rights activism in the UK

Safeguarding frameworks aren't made to accomodate the wishes of a single individual adult male or the wishes of their friends.

ListeningQuietly the problem is that women did not give their permission 30 years ago. We did not give permission back in the 50s and 60s when male sexologists first started telling their patients to go off and 'live as a particular gender', including the use of female spaces, as a qualifier for hormones and surgery.

Women were simply never asked.

If you read the Hansard records of the debates in parliament prior to the GRA becoming law in 2004 none of it was about TWAW. Instead, the case was made that as there were only about 5000 trans people in the UK, and as they were suffering terribly, we could make this exception just for them and women should not mind encountering these poor unfortunate male people in our spaces because it wouldn't happen often.

They basically decided that women should be kind.

But nobody asked us, just as nobody asked us what we thought of the changes to the Sex Discrimination Act in 1999 which, for the first time, required organisations to treat some male people as if they were female by law.

They changed the Sex Discrimination Act without consulting women. Think about that.

And the people who pushed these legal changes through, both the Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations 1999 and the Gender Recognition Act 2004, are people who have 'lived as a particular gender' for decades, and who have had all the surgery and all the hormones. And they deliberately did it quietly, under the radar. They deliberately kept media interest to a minimum.

They told the government that this concerned around 5000 people who were suffering greatly and it was the kind thing to do. At the same time, amongst themselves, they were discussing far greater numbers of people and they were already talking about self-ID. And they were talking about self-ID as a stepping stone to removing sex as a legal category altogether.

There are links to most of this stuff on the Let's Go Back To 2007 thread that R0 has linked.

Other important threads:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3212371-Where-are-all-the-trans-men-An-Answer

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3756530-Beaumont-Society

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3388967-Illuminating-Twitter-thread-about-the-origins-of-the-Gender-Recognition-Act

The answer is no. The answer has always been no. We were just never asked.

They changed the Sex Discrimination Act without consulting women. Think about that.
Accepted.
I shall have to have a long think
and focus on supporting the 50%

TBH its the pre surgery self ID folks who are the problem.
Those like the person I'm thinking of just want a quiet life as the individual they now are the militants have poisoned the whole discussion

I think you are right. Plus, now one needn't even have dysphoria to 'be trans'; nor surgery; nor any intention of surgery......and anyway - surgery should be the absolute last resort...and we really don't want to see this being imposed on to children for the sake of adult agendas.

Fay Presto, Jan Morris : is it not arbitrary to decide they are men again

Maybe, but they are not women, either......

I think you are right. Plus, now one needn't even have dysphoria to 'be trans'; nor surgery; nor any intention of surgery.....

The case which set the precedent to move male TS into female prison estate was over a decade ago & was to facilitate 'gender reassignment surgery' for a prisoner with a GRC who had been convicted of manslaughter & attempted rape of a woman.

STILLTish article discusses the case
'HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON?'
(extract)
Biological Males in the Female Prison Estate.
It came as a shock to find that pre-operative “transgender” males were being housed in the female prison estate. Given the jaw dropping idiocy of the policy I assumed, wrongly, this was a recent phenomenon, a temporary loss of State Sanity. I was wrong. While high profile cases, which resulted in sexual assaults on female inmates, (see Karen White and Paris Green ), have only just penetrated the public consciousness, it is not a recent aberration. It is policy. This has been going on since at least 2009!" (continues)

The prisoner had been granted a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) in 2006. Thus, only two years after the Gender Recognition Act (GRA)had been passed, a bodily intact, biological male, who would go on to commit attempted rape, was recognised as a “woman” for all purposes. Because of this legislation the prisoner was allowed to mount a legal challenge to his incarceration, in the male estate. Let that sink in. " (continues)

gendercriticalwoman.wordpress.com/2019/08/11/how-long-has-this-been-going-on/