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.

@StellaAndCrow

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)

My pleasure.

We don't have to assume. Why would we ? You've stated over and over.

Women are a constellation of something so that males can appropriate the word and have access to women's sex based facilities.

Woman isn't a word that defines a sex based concept and so it is decoupled from biology in order to make biology irrelevant. Then the rights which are based on biology can be based on stuff like shifting constellations instead.

This. We see the colonising and reframing from a million miles away.

Well, I'm very glad you have found something that works. Just so long as you respect that women's peace of mind sometimes requires single sex spaces, and don't impinge on that right, we are all able to coexist perfectly happily.
I do respect that, but you have to remember that I believe I am female, so I'm going to act accordingly - just like you are.

So in terms of your request for respect for female privacy, dignity and peace of mind, I guess that's a no, Arabella. It's good to have it spelled out.

@TyroTerf

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.

I didn't want to get deleted, and speculation about AGP is very delete-worthy. But I certainly assume that is the case as soon as someone starts banging on about 'women do it too'.

I've changed in loads of communal charges at private gyms. Never once has it even crossed my mind for a nanosecond to imagine that the women changing alongside me are predatory.

It's so beyond the realms of anything I've ever experienced, I don't even know what it would look like!

Re Cornell University "study" - it's not very reliable. Like most of your links, Positrans

First, two of the studies have to be excluded. Onee^ is out because it is an attempt to mathematically model the cost/benefit of gender transition, rather than providing original research on the effects of transition. The second inadmissible entry is a Brazilian study that the project tries to countt^ twicee^. Even careful scholars make mistakes, but this double-counting has apparently persisted unnoticed for over a year. Both Cornell and the New York Times overlooked this error, as did everyone who linked to the project as a definitive answer to debate over transition and gender dysphoria. Perhaps having a stack of studies to brandish was more important than assessing or even counting them accurately.

The Five Largest Studies
Surveying the remaining fifty papers reveals significant limitations. The most obvious problem is the low number of subjects in most of the studies. All else being equal, larger samples yield better results; there are even helpful onlinee^ calculatorss^ to help researchers and pollsters determine how many subjects they need for reliable results.

Of the fifty relevant papers identified by the project, only five studies (10 percent) had more than 300 subjects, while twenty-six studies (52 percent) had fewer than 100. Seventeen studies (34 percent) had fifty or fewer subjects, and five of those had a sample size of twenty-five or less. Smaller studies can still be useful, but when a paper’s findings are presented as authoritative, it matters whether it had a sample size of 2800, 280, or twenty-eight. Unfortunately, the creators of the What We Know Project made no effort to distinguish between study types and sizes. Thus, among the studies touted as providing overwhelming scientific evidence for the efficacy of transition were a qualitative studyy^ based on interviews with eighteen subjects and a studyy^ of twenty-two trans-women (who were compared to twenty-two women as controls) that examined the utility of occupational therapy in transition. The “mounds of scholarly studies” that Frank cites turn out to include a lot of academic molehills (continued)

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/04/51524/

@Ereshkigalangcleg

Well, I'm very glad you have found something that works. Just so long as you respect that women's peace of mind sometimes requires single sex spaces, and don't impinge on that right, we are all able to coexist perfectly happily. I do respect that, but you have to remember that I believe I am female, so I'm going to act accordingly - just like you are.

So in terms of your request for respect for female privacy, dignity and peace of mind, I guess that's a no, Arabella. It's good to have it spelled out.

I'm sure most of us didn't expect anything else. But yes, it's useful to have it there in black and white.

Women's and girls' peace of mind, dignity, privacy and safety are completely expendable if you are able to deny both their existence and their experience.

Except they're not really expendable, are they? They are entirely and comprehensively necessary in order for this to work.

If all the women upped and left the space empty, Positrans would have to follow them into the next space.

It's the women, not the space.

If all the women upped and left the space empty, Positrans would have to follow them into the next space.

Quite. I wonder what would happen if we were given an "Assigned Female At Birth" space, or a "c*swomen" space?

I've changed in loads of communal charges at private gyms. Never once has it even crossed my mind for a nanosecond to imagine that the women changing alongside me are predatory.

I have never considered it either, ever. I have always been cautious about strange men. It's because I know I'm at greater risk from them. It really isn't hard. Do you expect us to pretend Positrans?

I do respect that

In what way exactly are you respecting that?

but you have to remember that I believe I am female, so I'm going to act accordingly

I'm afraid feeling powerful enough and uncaring enough to feel more important than all other women's needs and feelings and to do what you choose in the face of them is really not acting accordingly.

I’ve changed in loads of communal charges at private gyms. Never once has it even crossed my mind for a nanosecond to imagine that the women changing alongside me are predatory

Me neither. I suppose it is a variant on “well, lesbians are allowed in changing rooms, don’t you worry about them perving on you?” - people who have previously used that silliness must have twigged that it is too undeniably homophobic to wash, hence the shift to women who predate on women. I don’t know, I’m guessing here, but as someone who regularly uses communal changing rooms who has never worried about lesbians or female sexual predators, I’m really going to struggle to explain the working of the mind of someone who does...

I guess it only makes sense that that might be what a female single sex environment is like if you’ve never been in one. I further guess that it’s probably the result of having been in male single sex environments, which its reasonable to assume would be likely to have more sexual predators in them.

I further guess that it’s probably the result of having been in male single sex environments, which its reasonable to assume would be likely to have more sexual predators in them.

Yes, that's what I'm thinking Sophocles. It's projection, but it's demonstrative of how we all experience the threat of strange men.

You are not acting as if you are female

Me neither. I suppose it is a variant on “well, lesbians are allowed in changing rooms, don’t you worry about them perving on you?”

To me this is projection.

@midgebabe

You are not acting as if you are female

No they are not and they never do.

I'm hoping we get some idea of what this shifting constellation and it rules and regulations around behaviour are just so we know in the future what the criteria are for our behaviour should we dare presume we are female.

Ereshkigalangcleg

Re Cornell University "study" - it's not very reliable. Like most of your links, Positrans

It turns out not much use to describe the eleviation of the significant mental health issues of the majority of the current cohort of children and teens either.

Just so long as you respect that women's peace of mind sometimes requires single sex spaces, and don't impinge on that right, we are all able to coexist perfectly happily.
I do respect that, but

It's the 'but' that gives it all away, I'm afraid.

I am so sorry to hear of your experiences TyroTerf

The positive here is that we are in agreement that women can be rapists.

This is one of the reasons I would be uncomfortable sending my teenage daughter naked into a room full of naked strangers, even if they were women.

To be fair to Positrans here, if you're working off the definition that means 'women' have penises then I too would be uncomfortable sending my naked teenage daughter in to said rooms.

Hence the need for single sex spaces where sex means 'of the class' not a nebulous evanescence of autumnal possibilities.

not a nebulous evanescence of autumnal possibilities

If only I wrote sentences as fabulous as this. I could then call myself a writer.

That explanation actually makes more sense, humpty.

Single sex changing rooms are safer for women than single gender changing rooms, but make no difference in safety terms either way to men. They can have the same impact in terms of privacy and dignity both ways, though, as decent men expecting their changing rooms to be single sex may be uncomfortable undressing in front of young females, or seeing them undress there, no matter how they identify.