Thank you

[CAPTCHAchacha]

I’m a guy (i.e. snips and snails and puppy dogs tails, as opposed to a shifting constellation of whatever), and I’ve been around mumsnet long enough to know that’s usually the wrong way to start a post, but I figure it’s relevant. I found my way to FWR earlier this year, and credit it with helping me make the escape from the fiendishly addictive but ultimately unsatisfying AIBU.

While this board wasn’t my introduction to trans issues, it was the first place that showed me why it might be a good idea to start paying attention. I’d never had to consider how women are being affected. Between you, Magdalen Berns, and the thousand links I’ve probably followed by now, I consider myself reasonably well informed.

After the latest epic thread (the one where I’d wager a certain someone probably climaxed to have gotten those particular last words in), I just wanted to say thanks to all those who put so much work into their posts, particularly when you can never be certain your contributions won’t disappear should the thread take a wrong turn.

“The real world will always frustrate you if you refuse to see it for what it is,” said the cat in the hat, and I couldn’t agree more.

Although, positrans, it appears to be only you and Shon Faye describing women as shifting constellations. So if you're basing rights on that description, it might only be you and Shon who get them.

Someone else might describe woman as a compilation of saucy stiletto-hood. Or the unmistakable tang of autumnal promise.

You'd better start a list.

So many brilliant posts from brilliant women on a thread thanking them. Very fitting.

Unfortunately Datun, you forget unwomen also think women are formless.

Remember back in March they tweeted this.

Women are multifaceted, intergenerational, international. They are limitless, formless ... women are the world.” - @aaronphilipxo, model & disability rights activist

Maybe Faye and this other activist inspired one another.

And Mary w’s statue was a formless mass too.

Why is it necessary for women to be suddenly ‘formless’ or ‘shifting’? Of course, to allow the accommodation of male needs.

They hate it when we say ‘no’.

the unmistakable tang of autumnal promise

The only formless and shifting part of me is my arse.

JustSpeculation
Wow, thank you for the info about Esref Armagan - that is awesome! (as the thread's moved on, for others, he's a completely blind painter who understands colour. Mentioned as someone was trying to say that explaining gender identity was like explaining red to someone blind)

No I don't think all transwomen have ulterior motives. It is generalising to suggest that.

I just see no evidence at all that I should interpret them any different to any man

Please be reassured that It's nothing to do with a person being trans anything.

Thanks midge something else I forgot to clearly explain in my little rant.

It isn't a trans thing its most definitely a man thing!

Yes "CuriousSamphire* if a trans woman were really a woman, or had any empathy at all, they would not want to force themselves into women's spaces when they KNOW they are causing distress, discomfort, or fear.

An actual woman with a male body would understand why there was a problem bringing that male body into female spaces.

Although I guess if that woman had never had a female body they might have difficulty grasping it, I suppose. But quite a lot of people with male bodies seem to be able to figure it out regardless.

@Winesalot

Unfortunately Datun, you forget unwomen also think women are formless.

Remember back in March they tweeted this.

Women are multifaceted, intergenerational, international. They are limitless, formless ... women are the world.” - @aaronphilipxo, model & disability rights activist

Maybe Faye and this other activist inspired one another.

And Mary w’s statue was a formless mass too.

Why is it necessary for women to be suddenly ‘formless’ or ‘shifting’? Of course, to allow the accommodation of male needs.

They hate it when we say ‘no’.

We're going to need a considerably longer list...🙄

@CuriousaboutSamphire

I haven't intimated any of that and don't think that any of you think that. Nor, as a feminist, do I. But you have. You asked those questions, apparently in all seriousness. Why ask if you didn't think they were possibilities? Poor distraction technique, at best!

I do think that a lot of you assume that any trans woman by default has a sinister ulterior motive, hence your use of the word "intimated" and the narratives you construct about my motivations. Well, from my perspective any man who says "I believe I am a woman and therefore I am" is tramping over the opinions, feelings and lived experiences of every woman who hears him. Every woman HAS to wonder why any man acts as he does. In many circumstances it is what keeps us relatively safe from physical harm. Most of us learn that at a young age, often pre-puberty. From being hugged by male relatives, friends etc to being groped by our peers, leered at, pinned into small spaces, grabbed, kissed, tweaked, fingered and raped ... by men.

Basically you are asking every woman you ever meet to discard decades of personal experience and safeguarding in order to avoid make you feel uncomfortable. And you wonder why many of us say No!

It REALLY is that basic. The cohort of human beings that are male pose a sadly ever present threat to the cohort of female humans. And we, the female cohort, have every right to protect ourselves from that!

All this TRA crap has just added to the ever present fight against sexual assault and rape, the casual, every day shit as well as the worst. From chance meetings to the CPS not prosecuting, from entitled boyfriends to men like Weinstein, from passers by to men who lurk... it is an absolute travesty that any part of TWAW was ever accepted. It only harms women.

Not forgetting the cohort of men who fetishise women's oppression. Or see it as validation. Those who claim objectification is a turn on. Who like getting treated as 'pieces of meat'. Who was that transwoman who expressed bitter disappointment when they went clubbing and no-one sexually harassed them?

Instead of arguing with the women here, Positrans, why don't you address those individuals?

Aye! The list grows...

You mean it wouldn't count as rape if it happened to an old lady who clearly wasn't at risk of pregnancy

Nah, no woman could be this bloody stupid. This is just pisstaking now. Not very funny

Funny how woman is formless, biological sex is many, many undefined things and yet the one thing that is rock solid and absolute is gender identity even though it means different things to different people cannot be defined and is enacted in a myriad of ways, female equally becomes definitive and very definitely not male when someone decides they are one and calls themselves one.

Well, I am wondering if we are all formless, loose, shifting constellations why we are bothering with sex segregation at all. Presumably the end goal of trans-ideology is mixed sex everything and the removal of all sex differentiation.

I am going to ask, even though I suspect I won't get an answer.

Positrans if woman, man, male and female are such undefinable, shifting, formless categories how have you come to the conclusion that you are female? According to you neither male nor female has any definitive meaning or criteria and is therefore meaningless but you are determined that you are female so you must be applying some criteria to this formless mass that you have decided you fit into, so what are they? do they change from individual to individual? are there some shared criteria amongst those who are female that are not shared with those that are male? if so, what are they? and if there are specific criteria how can they be formless and ever changing as you have previously asserted?

@MaudTheInvincible

I think it's juvenile wankery to derail a Thank You thread, but both the act and the content illustrate male privilege beautifully.

Positrans is a gift, just not in the way Positrans thinks. Annoying AF but illustrating beautifully what our more patient posters are saying.

@Datun

Gosh, first they were embarrassing, then they were full of predators, and now they're horrific?

Don't worry, positrans. Your fictional daughter is not going to be entering a mythical changing room, full of imaginary female predators.

You can stop being quite so preoccupied by it.

Is this possibly a sissification trope or fantasy, that one could be overwhelmed by big, mean sexually predatory women in the female changing rooms? It’s the only way I can get my head around the concept. It’s so alien.

RedDogsBeg

are there some shared criteria amongst those who are female that are not shared with those that are male?

I asked a similar question on the previous thread. The answer I received was no - there is nothing all female people have in common that all male people do not (male and female taking Shon's constellation definition, rather than the dictionary definition). I think Positrans' reasoning was that we need to stop seeing things in binary terms.

However, like you, it does make me wonder how someone can identify as a woman rather than a man when there is nothing that apparently differentiates the two.

I am genuinely interested in the answer - honestly, I don't intend these questions to be 'gotchas', I am trying to piece together the logic. We are being asked to change laws on the basis of this ideology after all.

However, like you, it does make me wonder how someone can identify as a woman rather than a man when there is nothing that apparently differentiates the two.

the closest we got previously was that Posit's 'femaleness' manifests in their gender identity which I'm afraid didn't really help my understanding much. Maybe they will be back to expand in a bit.

And maybe answer Sophocles great question - if some trans children may be able to pass in adulthood without needing blockers, that would surely be an excellent thing.

I am genuinely interested in the answer - honestly, I don't intend these questions to be 'gotchas', I am trying to piece together the logic.

There isn't any. We would have heard it by now.

The logic doesn't exist that says men are women and here's how. Or that sex segregation should include some of the opposite sex, just because they want you to.

it.
Is this possibly a sissification trope or fantasy, that one could be overwhelmed by big, mean sexually predatory women in the female changing rooms? It’s the only way I can get my head around the concept. It’s so alien.

It's certainly fantasy. There is no such thing as changing rooms full of predatory women.

I see this trope again and again on FWR threads. Male individuals insisting that women are at risk of sexual assault by other women in public loos, changing rooms etc. While us women know that we well, aren't. Is it the same individual posting or is it a common porn trope? Some men think man-made porn are documentaries about female behaviour.

Is this possibly a sissification trope or fantasy, that one could be overwhelmed by big, mean sexually predatory women in the female changing rooms?

Just asked the ex (who as I'm sure everyone knows by now is a self-identified agp) - he says the being overwhelmed by big, mean sexually predatory women bit in a variety of contexts is very much a common fantasy within his fetish.

He is under no illusions that real changing rooms are anything like this, however. Not that he'd know, as he never goes in there.