OP, in further support of your reluctant position, here is a selection of comments of mine from the past few days. It doesn’t necessarily all come together seamlessly because they’re pulled from various threads on different topics within this discussion, addressing varying nuances. But hopefully they form a coherent train of thought:
Firstly flowers to you and the person you care about. You’re speaking from a very personal perspective with a weighty emotional burden on behalf of your loved one and of course that will inform the words you use and the arguments you make for your position. I am speaking from my lived experiences and the weighty emotional burden of generations of women who have gone before and will come after, including my mother, myself and my daughters. My very personal perspective is no less powerful a motivation, nor any less valid, than yours. And sadly, there will always be some tension between the two positions, and between the rights of various groups and individuals existing within them. That is how rights and protections work: It is a balancing act.
I obviously do not agree with nor endorse any of those threatening, violent and abusive actions. I can’t comment on the specifics of each case because I wasn’t there and don’t know the context, and I wouldn’t wish to pronounce on something that isn’t in my direct experience. I also can’t make any in depth comment on the overall factors that might have played into it because I don’t know the sex or the chosen gender of that person, which does also have some bearing on where I would go in the broader discussion. But let me just say straight out that of course no one should face abuse or violence or intimidation simply by virtue of how they choose to present.
I’m also sure you realise that in fact many people who say they are feminist or think they are feminist are no such thing. Thus they absolutely don’t speak for me, we don’t stand together and I have nothing to do with their individual acts or behaviours.
And secondly, going back to the original discussion, women as a class come at life, from each individual experience right up to their cumulative life experience, from an extremely precarious position, far more dangerous to them than that of men as a class, and for that reason if they feel it necessary to protect their own interests with firm, angry, challenging voices and actions, that must always be okay. Whether that is in higher level discussion, or right down in the grassroots of life, where, yes, those words and actions might potentially be hurtful to individuals.
I’m sure you understand that there are many cases where it is right and valid for women and girls to be able to challenge who is in their space and why they are there. I’m sure that might painful for those who mean no harm. But women have a right to be safe. And since women are by far the most vulnerable class which is most often subjected to violence and rape, I will always argue for their right to be vocal and open about perceived threat, with an absolute right to challenge it.
No one has claimed that no individual women are abusive, violent or otherwise, that is clearly a ridiculous thing to say. [Instances are vanishingly rare, and not in any way comparable to instances of nor degree of violence or abuse by males] But as we are having this discussion on feminist issues here and the class of men vs. the class of women in this specific arena it absolutely is not right to make the assertion you did. I do not appreciate my position in this discussion being likened to, and in fact straight out stated to be the literal and moral equivalent of the violent, abusive and dangerous agenda which I am against and which I challenge on behalf of women and vulnerable people of both sexes and gender identities on a daily basis. It is extremely offensive to the women here, who are not the women who said and did those things. Do not set me up as being for something which I am not in any way supportive of nor in any way implicated in simply by virtue of being a woman who is a feminist. We are not a hive mind, we do not all automatically stand together.
*Again, as I’ve stated elsewhere, I always come into this discussion with the utmost compassion for anyone who is on the other side who is legitimately suffering. That pain absolutely is acknowledged.
But I must address the comment you’ve made above as sensitively as possible, whilst still trying to be succinct.*
Whilst I understand what you’re saying about the type of transgender individual you are referring to, and I agree that the way their position has been coopted is hugely unfair to them, it is not equivalent to comparing one type of woman who is a feminist to another and conflating them both and presuming that they stand together. The two situations are vastly different for several very important reasons, which I sadly can’t go into now. But I think if you look at the two positions as dispassionately as you can, you will know what I mean.
They also simply cannot expect, and should not expect, for many wholly valid reasons, access to existing sex segregated spaces. There is a very good reason (many, in fact) that we must be allowed to preserve our status as biologically female based on biological fact, and our hard-won safe spaces that women fought and died for, and all associated legal rights and protections. Regardless of how painful it is, and how difficult it is to accept that fact when you genuinely mean no harm, that is how it has to stay.
That does not in any way take away from their own rights to safe spaces, acceptance as individuals and protection from harm. Nor their own need for tailored help and support.
It is not feminism as I espouse it (although I fear that the term has been coopted to the extent that I may soon have to reject it altogether) nor feminism as a whole as evidenced by the vast materials on the topic here on MN, that has set these things up as mutually exclusive. One of these is absolutely not like the others, for a start. Transgender individuals’ rights to peacefully exist without fear of harm are just as important as women’s (and in fact all humans’) rights to those things, but they cannot be gained by appropriating women’s spaces.
Let’s also address the elephant in the room, because sadly, it needs to be said...
’Your average transgender individual’ is no longer your average transgender individual. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the vast majority are necessarily of the type that just wants to exist peacefully and go about their own business.
There is hatred and vitriol overwhelmingly from one side of this ‘debate’ here (hint: it’s not actually a debate). Please don’t try to claim that there is any kind of equivalence, because there isn’t. If you can’t see that you need to do a lot more reading.
If any of you who are new to this discussion want to know what current trans ideology looks like, perhaps read up on what behaviours apparently fall under this umbrella.
There is a reason why women are having to push back so forcefully on this.
Women did not cause this. Women are not to blame for this.
It’s not about those men who aren’t being ‘arseholes’ as you put it (I would say who aren’t predatory, rapists, killers). It never is.
Tens of thousands of women and girls in this country are harmed in some way by men every year. Millions and millions throughout the world. Those men should not be allowed into women’s spaces, regardless of how they identify, what they feel like, what they want, how they look or choose to dress, or what title they have thought of to describe themselves, or misappropriated.
As there is absolutely no way of sorting the good from the indifferent from the very bad indeed, all men must be excluded.
Even if there was a way to sort and define and establish that all the relevant men were good, decent, kind men, they still should not be allowed to enter women’s spaces, because a male presence, however benign, is very directly harmful to a certain number of women. A male presence, however benign, is not comfortable for women and girls in their very private, vulnerable spaces. Decent men all know this. Which is why they do not want to be in women’s spaces.
It makes no difference what the individual thinks or feels or wishes to be true. It does not make it true. It does not negate biological fact, nor material reality.
It does not matter how they dress, what they look like, whether they have taken hormones, had surgery (very few do, in fact) or whatever else the case may be.
Sex matters. Biology matters.
Women do NOT have to have suffered sexual abuse, predatory behaviour, violence, rape or in fact any harm at all, in order to be entitled to protection from potentially suffering those things. It is enough to say no, I am not okay with this. I do not consent. My daughters do not consent. My sisters, my mother, my friends, women I don’t know and will never meet, do not consent. NO.
Women do not want men in their spaces.
The vast majority of men do not want to be in women’s spaces.
That does not take away from the rights of transgender individuals. They have every right to live peacefully without fear from harm. But they cannot gain that end by appropriating spaces that are sex-segregated in order to protect women’s dignity, privacy and safety.
I must stress that even if you no longer have a penis, you are biologically still a man. That truth might be painful, but we all have to deal with many painful truths.
You are entitled to a safe space; you have a right to peaceful existence without harm or fear of harm.
But you are not entitled to my safe space, nor that of my daughters, nor that of any other woman.