TWAW

[Billi77]

Thought it might be an idea to start a thread for women who support TWAW. I understand ‘Feminism chat’ should also include us and give us our own space?

I support trans women because their death rate , abuse rate and suicide rates are the highest compared to any other group

I would love to see your statistics for the UK on this. I have seen some of these claims debunked completely. Particularly the murder rate. And the suicide rates.

Yes, the suicide rates are high but not apparently higher than other 'groups'. Who is collating these into 'transgender statistics?

Not only that, but you then get the Psychiatrists from the gender clinics reporting that not only is it their experience that this is untrue, but that the rate is just as high after transition. And this rate then encompasses people who realise it was not the fix they were led to believe. And most importantly, the push for transition meant not enough was done to discover co-morbidities which could have meant a happier life without transitioning.

So, where do you collect your statistics from please? I have not yet found a reliable source that separates out these co-morbidities and now with the conflation of sex and gender, it is really hard to find accurate statistics too.

and they deserve to be protected, respected and allowed their own spaces/ integration of space. You won't get disagreement on this. They deserve all the protections that they need as long as it doesn't impact on others. Including their OWN spaces, but not acceptance into single sex spaces needed by females for safety, dignity and privacy.

Inclusion is about accepting that everybody has different needs and may need different facilities not that everybody is the same and should be able to access the same facilities. Is it against inclusion to provide disabled toilets only for disabled people or should non disabled people protest. Should I protest that no-one is including me in prostate screening tests just because I dont have a prostate to examine?

It really gets me how its constantly women being made to be unreasonable and unwilling to budge when weve constantly come up with fair suggestions for everyone. TW agree with us. It is the TRA/MRA that are refusing to compromise and are actually damaging trans people who are seeking out a more balanced stable lifestyle by managing their own personal growth and being selective about role models and are working on self awareness.

I'd be really interested to know @Billi77 on what grounds you argue for transwomen being women?

And how do you think we should balance the rights of those who've undergone gender reassignment (with the requisite GRC) and the rights of women - both groups covered by the 2010 Equalities Act?

OP, just out of interest, do you believe that if a person has never been convicted of rape before that's a guarantee they won't rape anyone in the future, if placed in a situation that would make it rather easy for them to do so? Because if not your suggestion RE prisons needs to be thought through a bit more.

Karen White was put in a women’s prison because that’s what the guidelines said should happen and not doing it would have been discriminatory

Canada put self-ID and TWAW into law. is a horrific account of what it is like to be prisoner looked up with these people. Because legally the courts have to send any man who says he is a woman to the female estate.

And you have my sympathy, OP, that you have put forward an opinion that we all disagree with and nobody else agrees with. But maybe think about why that is. We are not ganging up or "mansplaining", we are all telling you why we disagree respectively, asking for you to engage.

Unfortunately though when men transition their offending rates remain the same as non transitioned men.
This means though the vast majority of transwomen will not be offenders obviously, but some will be violent towards women and allowed greater access to them.
As Lang Clegg said on another thread some time ago, protecting one group of men and giving them special status hasn't gone so well for safeguarding women and children in the past:
ie Catholic Priests
Muslim men in Rochdale
TV personalities etc.

It's no good pretending that there won't be further female or child victims because of this movement; Karen White is always discounted as an outlier but there is also a trans prisoner in Illinois who raped a female prisoner and was told not to report it, and Heather Mason is an ex-inmate in Canada who writes about women being terrorised by trans inmates there.
www.lifesitenews.com/news/violent-male-convicts-claiming-to-be-trans-are-terrorizing-women-in-all-female-canadian-jails

That's just the prison sector there are similar very real concerns allowing trans people into all women's spaces, changing rooms, rape shelters, etc. without writing off the female victims as collateral damage.

Floralbunting

Thank you for providing such a great example of twisting the argument and my points to put your own points across.

I am not basically saying anything you say I’m ‘basically saying’.

so what are you saying then?

I mean, it's not like people haven't asked you to explain your position, OP. If you can't then that's not our fault.

Thank you for providing such a great example of twisting the argument and my points to put your own points across.

How? What is it you actually think, OP?

I have explained my position.
You have the tone of a proper bully btw.

I just want to chip in on the death rates, OP.

Transrespect Versus Transphobia Worldwide produce the statistics for Trans Day Of Remembrance. I assume, therefore, that you accept their data and do not regard it as being biased?

They say that 9 trans people were killed in the UK between 2008 and 2017. So, averaging one a year. The trans community is conservatively estimated at 200,000 people. So the risk of being murdered for a trans person is around 1 in 200,000.

The total UK murder rate is a little over 1 murder to every 100,000 people. That means trans people have half the average murder risk.

Transrespect v Transphobia say that 28 American trans people were murdered in 2017/2018.

If the US trans population is 1.4 million, which is the presently accepted figure, that means 2 trans people are killed for every 100,000 trans people in the population.

The statistic across the whole population in the same year was 5.4 people killed for every 100,000 people. That would mean trans people in the US are more than twice as safe as the average.

If you read the Trans Day Of Remembrance lists - which I have done - you will realise the vast majority are sex workers in south and central America. Their deaths are hideous and appalling, as all murders are, but women sex workers in the region are also killed in horrifyingly large numbers and nobody's interested in remembering them.

In terms of suicides: the famous 48% figure is kind of interesting. What happened was someone did an online survey for youth mental health. It was advertised widely, with a prize draw as a perk. It asked for young people who had had struggles with mental health, and there were no checks and balances to see whether someone might have completed it multiple times, to increase their odds of that prize. Out of all of the responses - self selecting, without any probability weighting, which is known as the worst way to obtain such data - 26 young people said they were trans, and I believe 12 said they'd tried to kill themselves in the past year.

Interestingly, the young people's Gender Identity clinic at the Tavistock, GIDS, who have been arguing for a long time that that isn't true, and harms the children in question (telling people they're at risk of suicide increases risk - that's well known) released their own stats. They see in excess of 2700 young people a year, and by definition, as a tertiary referral centre, they are the most in need. Not an easy cohort. They have one suicide attempt per year, with no actual suicides. When you remember these are kids in the care of mental health services, and almost half are autistic, that's actually very low: autism is strongly predictive of a range of mental health problems, largely due to being neurodiverse in a neurotypical world.

Abuse, and I would agree. Women also suffer abuse, however, and I'm afraid I doubt it's worse. I think men punish males who don't adhere to the gender binary, and I also suspect that the discrimination in work and housing, and some parents being vile to transitioners, creates emotional and social vulnerability. I agree that we need both laws and provision to support with that. But I don't agree that co-opting women's is the way forward, either.

You haven't, though. You could if you chose answer some of the questions people have asked.What's the point of the thread otherwise?

Again, if you are unable to articulate a clear position that's nobody else's fault. People are also not being cruel by not agreeing with you. If you would like a thread where only people who agree with you respond then all you have to do is say so.

@Billi77

I have explained my position. You have the tone of a proper bully btw.

What kit does?

Please and thankyou

Floralbunting said 'So when you suggest that TWAW, therefore they should access everything a woman can, you are basically saying 'A man may take space from a woman if he sincerely believes he should be able to'.

To be honest. After looking at this issue for the past eight months, I cannot see how anyone who says 'TW AW' doesn't not understand that this slogan means exactly this.

Please do tell us what you believe the slogan means to you? That way, you might find there are a few more people who will agree with you and come along to discuss it.

You haven't explained your position. What did Floral say when she said "basically" that you disagree with? What special gatekeeping are you using?

* 'A man may take space from a woman if he sincerely believes he should be able to'*

What about your TWAW position is that untrue for?

Again, if you are unable to articulate a clear position that's nobody else's fault.

Think it's that pesky cognitive dissonance again.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

Thank you for providing such a great example of twisting the argument and my points to put your own points across.

How? What is it you actually think, OP?

I'm really sorry you feel bullied. I think it was brave of you to post, given the strength of views here, and I respect you have a different view - may not agree with it, but thank you for coming and trying to discuss it.

I have friends who think as you do. I respect their views, and I respect yours. Don't share it - but unless people talk, nothing will improve. I do feel strongly, but I should probably remember that one person feeling strongly is one thing - a dozen is a wall of angry argument.

The problem is, there aren't many places women with these views can voice them. I'm afraid plenty of posters would be rather more than bullied if they dared say anything openly - look at Rowling.

Ugh, it keeps quoting posts I didn't mean to quote! Sorry, that's really weird. I'm just typing on the box!

I support trans women because their death rate , abuse rate and suicide rates are the highest compared to any other group and they deserve to be protected, respected and allowed their own spaces/ integration of space

But actually they don't have the "highest" rates compared with other groups

I think the highest rate of suicide is to be found in men
Women suffer the highest rate of domestic violence and abuse: 2 women a week, on average, are murdered by their domestic partner/ex-partner

Yes of course transpeople should have their own safe spaces. BUt not women's spaces.

Maybe your ire should be directed at men who are the abusers, rapists, and violent assaulters of transwomen.

*Karen White was a rapist and pedophile with severe mental illness . Karen White was masquerading as a trans woman in order to rape more women. Karen White should never have entered a womens prison.
*
This is exactly why separate spaces and womens rights should be upheld instead of eroding them for transwomen. Nobody till date has been able to tell us how to distinguish predators from transwomen and make the laws this that the predators stay out.

I'd like to hear your viewpoint in this. So many people call mumsnet transphobic, but actually we are scared of opening the doors to predators, which the TWAW debate is making possible. You don't want to discuss a rapist, but actually that is exactly what we need to discuss here.

I just think the arguments are so very poor, and no one has ever said anything to convince me otherwise. Why biological sex isn't a meaningful category. What is "gender". What is a "woman" if not adult human female. Why some males are women. Why women should give up our rights to female only spaces.

Just mantras and slogans, unquestionable ideology and propaganda.