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 sit on the board for a rape crisis centre which has been effectively supporting women (including trans women) for decades.

Board members rarely have a clue as to what life is actually like for service users.

If you are unlikely to ever need a refuge (or be incarcerated) you really need to actually listen to those who are.

This is not the first time women here have noted that those taking the TWAW line are more likely than average to come from privileged backgrounds. Who gets to sit on boards? Versus who does the frontline work? Which party knows the needs of service users better?

What I don't understand is why it seemingly matters so much to (some) transwomen that other people think they are really women. I'll never be convinced of that. I couldn't care less how they dress or what they want to call themselves; I'll treat them with respect but the fact they were born male cannot be erased. It just can't, it is part of them. They do not have the full female lived experience. Why can't they accept living in a truce situation, where we all know the Emperor has no clothes but we don't point it out unless directly asked or in a situation where it causes a potential problem?

seeing evidence of the many other issues mumsnetters are campaigning about being reflected in the threads

Sorry clueless i appreciate you are a bit of a lone voice on here and I don’t mean to add to it

But honestly, Just about everyone who complains about there being too many ‘trans’ threads refuses point blank to start one of their own...apparently it’s everyone elses job to start threads on subjects you (Royal you...not you you) would rather read about and contribute to

Its tiresome

We support women who are the victims of rape. Our policy is to include trans women in that. This has never yet been a source of contention or difficulty.

That you know of or realised.

Please do look around, there was a thread by a MNetter trying with the help of the police to secretly flee from a lockdown household where she was in danger. She was told to talk to x person at a refuge, someone with a female name. She heard a male voice answer the phone, asked for the female name and the male voice said they were that person. The MNetter put the phone down. She stayed in that unsafe household, she was on a thread here seeking help as to other ways to escape. Your way is not tolerable to her. Would you rather that she died in that situation than be allowed the single sex provision she would use?

Look up the other MNetter, as far as I'm aware still sleeping rough in a tent and has done for months, because no single sex refuge was available and she was told by all refuges that she would have to get over her PTSD reaction to the TW in their care or go without help.

I get that it's really, really convenient to you to pretend or block out that some female people will never be able to use facilities or provisions that have been commandeered to provide male people with more choice and recognition of their identity, but it's the truth. You exclude those females.

How little you care and how very little empathy or equality you hold for female people is all over this thread. You wish to dictate what they may perceive, what they must tolerate, what they may or may not talk about, the validity of what they say, basically your posts are an ongoing list of your frustration with female people who will not order themselves to fit with your personal reality.

Fuck that.

Why can we not have facilities that meet mixed sex needs AND have single sex spaces alongside?

Why must some females lose ANY provision so TW can have access to ALL the provisions, all the time, without exception. Even at the cost of excluding vulnerable women from services. Why can you accept the vulnerabilities and special requirements and struggles of male born people who identify as female but extend none of that to female born people?

They don't go away just by you not looking at them, or denying that they exist, or clinging to alternative facts. They're human too. Those are the women we're here raising multiple threads about to try and protect the needs and interests of those females from those like you who don't care, don't see them and support laws being changed to erase and disqualify them.

Their crime? Heresy.

Great post Michelle

@CluelessBaker.......you have just agreed with all the women here regarding the need for safe spaces for women .
'The women we help are usually very vulnerable and need the security of having their own spaces which they can secure as and when they like ' .
We women should be able to access all areas of everyday life without having to perform risk-assessments several times each day but we can't ; we must check everything - our clothes , our alcohol levels , the back seat of our cars , under our beds .......
There are some men who for reasons of their own tell lies to gain access to women and girls and it is these men , these people with bad intentions and a fully functional penis with which they were born , that we are trying to keep out of our safe spaces .

OK –

It’s near impossible to stay up to date if you’re on my ‘side’ of the debate here.

But I’m coming to this a day later with most of the same feelings – and some new ones.

Still believe TWAW.

Yes, ‘are’. Because language is powerful and important and every individual has the right to claim their own identity. ‘Woman’ does not mean vagina, uterus, menstruation, nor does it mean a set of gender expectations like having long hair or wearing a dress. It is part of you - like a given name - and yet it is JUST A WORD that we can share in the name of progress (I know many disagree). I still believe that the Average Joe on the street would pay more attention to your legitimate concerns (concerns I share) if you weren’t so caught up in semantics.

”Another simpering demand that we BE NICE!!” I hear you shout. Bear with me…

I came here with honesty, writing respectfully and with a wish to learn. I talked about my concerns about self-ID. I’m interested.

But since my last post, I’ve been accused of being a rape apologist, “thinking the harm done to other women is unworthy of my consideration” having an ‘I’m alright Jack’ attitude, being “breathtakingly callous”, someone got out their really clever ‘klaxon’ in order to mock me, I’ve been called ‘inept’ (sorry for “testing your patience” by… asking some questions in your discussion forum), I’ve been accused of sympathising with Karen White, a ‘quitter’ with no stamina (HA – I posted yesterday afternoon, I have a job AND family, feminists). Is this the place for me to continue trying to learn? Am I a worse feminist for coming here and asking questions?

Some really engaged with me – FloralBunting, bishopgiggles (thanks for the advice!) and I did read some posts encouraging ‘non-trolls’ to stick around for the debate. To you, I’d say you are being LET DOWN by the posters around you who are scaring away posters like me who have – to quote one of you – “moderate” views and a wish to learn. Not everyone is really hardy – I felt anxious after posting yesterday.

You’re still saying: “So, we should BE NICE?” “WOMEN ALWAYS HAVE TO COMPROMISE!” I get it.

But I think yeah, maybe – compromise with your language so that don’t end up compromising with your bodies and your spaces. If you want moderates, policy-makers or anyone outside of this little corner of the internet to listen, lose the extremist edge. It’s not about being ‘nice’ – it’s about having a fucking strategy.

I may be accused of flouncing, I may be accused of being goady – in fact, I might get deleted here – but I don’t know if I’ll post again. I’m not making a grand announcement of departure, (really, I'm not, I know you have a real community here of dedicated posters and I'm just another brief voice, but I just know I’ll be accused of flouncing.) My continued interest hasn’t found a home here. I will return to JK’s essay, go to talks by people I respect like Jenni Murray and do some of the reading people have recommended here.

But, if I felt anxious and a lesser-feminist after a couple of internet posts, would I join you guys at events, protests etc? No.

The definition of woman is semantics?

What is it if it's not biological fact or stereotypes? What is it that men are claiming then if it's nothing ?.

What is it?

Words have meanings. Even seemingly insignificant ones. What's a dog? How does the dogs trust know what it's for?

What's the point in words at all if none of them have any meaning? How do we communicate if no one knows what words mean?

This thread is making me think back to when my son was born. When he was 4 weeks old I was seriously ill, I had pancreatitis and needed to have my gall bladder removed as an emergency operation, at the time I was breast feeding.

The hospital was full. The only place they could accommodate me where I could feed my baby was on a side room on the mens surgical room. I did have privacy and I didn't feel particularly vulnerable at the time but they made a point of telling me that they couldn't guarantee my safety or that of my baby on the mens ward. They could see a potential problem to a woman based on biology.

So hospitals are another area where same sex spaces absolutely need to be respected.

Nellle

Thanks for coming back. And yes, the thread has moved on quite a bit.

Just one thing though. Do you have a solution, after all your reading, on how to define women and their biological needs in laws to protect their needs?

Just pick employment law for instance and discrimination against women including the prevalence as shown in the article about Vets over the weekend of people automatically giving women the lower grade of pay.

In all honesty, how does these protections continue if the word female and woman is legally incorporating males?

TL;DR

Still no definition of "woman"?

I'll stop holding my breath?

Most legal documents (because it is really the law and the protections it provides that is the main issue here) begin with a definition of terms. Otherwise it can't be understood or followed. It is the basis of everything.

You say:

Yes, ‘are’. Because language is powerful and important and every individual has the right to claim their own identity. ‘Woman’ does not mean vagina, uterus, menstruation, nor does it mean a set of gender expectations like having long hair or wearing a dress. It is part of you - like a given name - and yet it is JUST A WORD that we can share in the name of progress (I know many disagree). I still believe that the Average Joe on the street would pay more attention to your legitimate concerns (concerns I share) if you weren’t so caught up in semantics.

So on the one hand, words are powerful and important (when it comes to trans women using 'women') and simultaneously 'just a WORD' (when it's women defining themselves)

Which is it?

It is a little contradictory, isn't it?

Also - no definition yet. What is a woman?

‘Woman’ does not mean vagina, uterus, menstruation, nor does it mean a set of gender expectations like having long hair or wearing a dress. It is part of you - like a given name - and yet it is JUST A WORD that we can share in the name of progress (I know many disagree).

This is just sexist waffle, though. It tells us nothing useful about the group being described, other that sexist waffle is something they're emotionally attached to.

Amazing that he can give a really long list of what "woman" is not

Not able to say what "woman" is

Pathetic.

Nellle can you be more specific on what you perceive as the “extremist edge” here? I have read lots of opinions but none have seemed particularly extreme to me.

You do have an I'm alright jack mentality. You're happy to give up the word woman, and all it means, to anyone who wants it, because it doesn't bother you. It bloody well bothers me. Its not yours to give away, and all that goes with it. Women's sports Women's health. Women's refuge. Women's education. Women's equality. Women's safety. Women's rights. All meaningless if women cannot be defined as adult human female.

Im sorry you felt anxious Nellie . it is an anxiety inducing topic, ive had many sleepless night worrying as public body after public body and comapny after company cheerfully erdicate the word women from existence

woman isnt just a word, the definiton of it is the basis on which all women's rights depend

Nellle

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d86b2394-b7e7-11ea-84a6-a03a9956ea0a?shareToken=c1d307e0366c6f474d970f90f32d6849

This is the article from this weekend regarding the very real sex discrimination still prevalent in UK today. (And yes, transgender people need their own anti-discrimination laws). But as I keep harping on about.... Women still need the definition to continue their progress.

Nellle, you talk of progress, but I cannot believe many females truly believe that we have achieved equality as a sex yet despite a century of fighting. Therefore, excepting males into the word 'woman' or 'female' will not mean that women will continue to progress.

If these people you wish to include believed this, why are they not fighting for 'women's rights' right there along with us?

It also not progress to call feminine men women or masculine women men. It's regressive.

None of the twaw have answered the primogeniture question.

If a man can say he’s a woman, compete in womens sports, win women’s scholarships, take advantage of women only employment opportunities, access women only spaces..

Why can’t a woman say she’s a man and inherit over a second born son..

The Masons will allow a tw to remain a Mason after transitioning. They don't seem to be confused over the tw's sex. How transphobic of them.

I think the extreme worldview is one that holds that a woman can have a penis, to be honest. And institutions are listening- this is how the proposed reform to the GRA didn’t just get waved through and is now in the long grass. Women’s voices are now in the room, where they were not two years ago, and I know many women here have had a hand in that, in real life.

I’m sorry you’re feeling bruised, OP. Any part of MN can be like that, though.

Sorry to see you move on, Nellle, I appreciate FWR is not everyone's cup of tea, but I do hope you continue to interrogate your own thinking on this.

Just thinking aloud here - in the proposed scheme of giving up the word 'woman' to accommodate the plight of the males who want in, and insisting it takes nothing away from women to do so, I noticed something.

This inclusivity towards TW means, of necessity, that you exclude TM from the category of 'woman/female'. To be fair, those TM will often be glad to be excluded from the category, which of course does nothing to end their oppression of help them get the help tailored to their sex category.

So this 'expansive' and courteous definition of 'woman' to include the men who feel like women, actively excludes all the females who do not feel like women, and so find themselves stuck in a limbo of non binary transness.

It's billed as 'widening the bandwidth' of 'woman', but in actual fact, it is a narrowing of the reality, and it's actually actively excluding many women. I don't think that's feminism, I really don't.

Lots of women have talked with great openness and self-awareness on this thread about their own journey from where you are now, Nellle, to this position of saying 'no.'

Lots of us have been where you are.

For me, the change from inclusive and accepting and being kind came from being asked that one, simple question.

'What is a woman?'

And in trying to answer it, things got more and more ludicrous until I had to give up and concede that it is just biological fact.

I don't understand your position of 'the word doesn't matter to women - concede it. It's a side issue. But the word really matter to trans women. They MUST have it.'

Try and answer the question. If you can't why can't you?