In an ideal world...

[Whyistheteacold]

I'm not sure how to say this in a way that will make sense to others, so I hope what I am saying is clear! If not, please ask questions for clarification 😅 A year ago I was 100% on the TWAW side of thinking. I've followed a lot of the threads on this board and since having my own daughter, while I fully support transwomen and believe that if someone truly feels they were born in the wrong body they can and should be able to transition and have equal rights, I also understand and agree that women should be able to have their own private spaces without fear of being labeled a bigot. I feel that if someone genuinely identifies as a woman this should be allowed, but I also believe that women should be able to have a born woman examine them in a smear test for example. Largely because I care for the future safety of my daughter. And I hate that the word "woman" is slowly being cancelled in favour of offensive terms like "birthing body" or "bleeder." I hate that we are being reduced to our functions... I feel so conflicted and confused about protecting genuine transwomen, and also protecting the safety of women. So in an ideal world, how would you balance the rights of transwomen and the right to be a woman in a safe space in your opinions?

I don’t understand this deletion. It was a very clear post, IMO within the rules. What gives?

What was wrong with what Barracker said?

The right to be able to express themselves, to be safe, to live without fear of being attacked and so on. I do agree with you about differentiating between rights and demands, I guess that is what I am struggling with.

In the spirit of helping you think it through, I'll run through the dread toilet conundrum and show you how rights balancing works.

This particular subset of males is a) vulnerable in the gents' on account of being read as gay and b) suffering a mh condition that means they find it unbearably distressing to use spaces marked for males.

There is a good case for accommodating their mh condition by providing them an alternate space that is not labelled 'gents''. An appropriate right to grant these people is 'the right to alternative, non-sex-based facilities'.

What is not a right is 'the right to violate others' single-sex spaces' and so offering up the ladies' as the alternative provision is not balancing rights but removing from one class to give to another.

The solution which balances our sex-based rights with the right of dysphoria/dysmorphia sufferers to have their mh condition accommodated, is a third, unisex loo.

In an ideal world, these males would not have to insist they are literally female in order to escape male violence and abuse. In an ideal world they would be able to dress as they please without being policed by other males. In an ideal world, the protected characteristic would be gender non-conformity.

No one, or no way, has been able to convince genuine transsexuals with intense gender dysphoria that they are not, or should not be, the opposite sex.

Miranda Yardley would beg to differ.

@JellySlice

I don't really know what it means to be a woman but I know that I am one. I imagine that for someone who is genuinely transsexual, they strongly feel the same?

A person with anorexia may strongly feel that they are fat, may know that they are fat, but that does not change the material reality that they are actually so under weight that their body cannot function.

Would you consider it appropriate to support them in their belief? To accept it as fact because they believe it?

Would you welcome them at Weightwatchers?

@JellySlice that is a great comparison, and a really interesting point, of course you wouldn't support them in their belief.

I'm not sure why @Barracker's post was removed? Was it reported? it wasn't offensive to anyone.

Miranda Yardley would beg to differ.

Indeed. Miranda Yardley says he’s a man. Lives as a man. I’m not sure how or why he meets the diagnostic category of transsexual. Having surgery and then regretting it or saying “I’m really still a man!” doesn’t make you a transsexual. It just makes you a man who has had surgery.

Also there are many different types of trans people as you know. OP was talking about someone who was born a male that genuinely feels they were born in the wrong body, and truly feels they are a woman.

That does not describe (the fascinating and always interesting) Miranda Yardley.

@TyroTerf This In an ideal world, these males would not have to insist they are literally female in order to escape male violence and abuse. In an ideal world they would be able to dress as they please without being policed by other males. is sad but true.

That really is the crux of it isn't it. I strongly agree with this, and I believe they need a safe space too. I just don't feel it should be at the cost of women's safe spaces. It's creating such a cognitive dissonance for me

Tried really hard, as always, to stick to talk guidelines. I didn't break any of them in that deleted post.

No person living or dead was individually referenced, no person was 'misgendered', no derogatory words were used, nothing failed to be 'in the spirit'.

I simply talked hypothetically about men, and women, the impossibility of changing sex, and the ideal outcome for everyone of untangling life choices from the reality of sex, coupled with people receiving proper mental health support. Because mental distress over wanting to be the opposite sex IS a mental, not physical condition, and providing mental health support is a positive thing.

No matter how positively I frame my words, however much I try to write with integrity and honesty, without any malice or hatred, my posts get censored.

I can't even write a hypothetical conversation with a hypothetical man about the reality of sex and the prevailing misconceptions of what it is to be a woman.

I can't discuss mental health support - not even in an idealised hypothetical scenario.

This is a feminism board. For female people to discuss female lives and female rights.
Please MNHQ. You're deleting female people for discussing our female lives and our female rights because members of the opposite sex object to how we describe OURSELVES.

Just let us speak.

Yardley was diagnosed with dysphoria which proved intractable, as a result of which he was considered a suitable candidate for surgery.

If you're trying to claim he was never "genuinely trans" then the NHS has clearly been fucking up the diagnosis and giving transition surgery to the wrong people for a lot longer than we'd thought!

“For sustained and severe gender dysphoria, hormonal treatment and sex reassignment surgery may offer the best chance of bringing the patient peace of mind and an improved quality of life.”

Maybe so, though the evidence is not strong. IIRC there has been a lack of follow-up with these patients, and there is growing evidence that, in the long term, physical transition does not reduce suicide rates.

Nonetheless, if these patients choose physical transition it is still about them and their acceptance of themselves. It is not women's job/duty/role to accept these males as women. We can have compassion for them with making ourselves doormats for them.

It's creating such a cognitive dissonance for me

It does, if you take what everyone says about their own internal experiences at face value. The trouble with mh conditions though (and with people in general) is that we're absolutely arse at figuring out what's really going on in our own heads, and we've only really got direct access to the top layer of our minds.

There's always a lot going on under the surface that we're not consciously aware of and certainly can't put into words.

And what people think they need is so often not what they actually need.

It really is worth looking back - find transsexuals' own accounts of their experiences from previous decades, read what their therapists had to say (and remember the therapists had their own sexist biases). There are clear patterns, which allow me to delineate this ideal world further: in an ideal world, no child would be sexually abused, no child would be bullied for failing to conform to sex stereotypes, no child would be exposed to inappropriate sexual materials, no one would use gay or girl as insults. These are all common ingredients in the emergence of sexed-body dysmorphia and sex-stereotype dysphoria.

We can have compassion for them without making ourselves doormats for them.

It's important too to look at confounding factors with any purported outcomes.

Person X is happier after surgery so long as society continues to validate them in their identity is VERY different from
People XYZ are still happier after surgery in a changed society where women's sex based rights are discussed and considered unbreachable, and where no societal validation about changed status is forthcoming at all.

In short, society's willingness to validate what is not true is changing. How much of a long term happier outcome for X is actually dependent upon external validation, and does happiness persist without it?

Agree with everything you said Barracker I can’t imagine why so many of our posts are removed. Always clear and thought provoking... have you asked the reason? Totally Unfair.

I think that I base it on the fact that I strongly identify as a woman (I am a born woman). And I imagine that if other people started telling me I was male, it would piss me right off,

You don't have to "identify" as a woman do you? You simply are one because of your biology.

And if people told you that you were male they would be factually wrong.

I can't see any reason why a man, who is male, should get annoyed when people tell him he is not a woman.

It's so bizarre that objectively wrong thinking has become something we should pander to.

It's a bit like the fury bad singers express when Simon Cowell tells them they are awful. No-one else dared tell them the truth.

I wish the mods would sometimes tell us why they removed a post - maybe it would help us understand what we shouldn't write about.
The consensus here seems to be that there was nothing wrong with it, so perhaps mumsnet could explain or reinstate?

In an ideal world, gender dysphoria would be easily and permanently treatable with a course of Chemical X, and no-one would give a hoot about gender stereotypes.

Of course, then transwomen would be feminine men, and nobody would need to be trans anything.

To be more down to earth, unisex third spaces alongside single-sex provision is surely the ideal way to go (then you've got non binary people covered, too).

If people with gender dysphoria benefit from medical/surgical changes, then they should crack on and I wish them the best. But that doesn't change their sex. And if we need to all pretend it does, then it's not really medical/surgical changes that are beneficial.

There was a time when I was happy to go along, but the Ada Wellses, Jessica Bradleys, Alex Drummonds, Aimee Challenors, Morgan Pages and all the rest have make me think twice and thrice and on and on.

When you've got no-dysphoria, no-hormones, no-nothing "transwomen" beating women at sports, any hope of an approach based on tactful white lies has long gone.

Please MNHQ. You're deleting female people for discussing our female lives and our female rights because members of the opposite sex object to how we describe OURSELVES. Just let us speak.

I agree with Barracker. Please do the right thing, MNHQ. Please don’t give in to men who demand the right to silence women. It’s important.

The consensus here seems to be that there was nothing wrong with it, so perhaps mumsnet could explain or reinstate?

I hope they do - I was fortunate enough to have left this thread open on the desktop when I buggered off to MN on the doorstep with a fag, so I was able to save a copy of Barracker's post, and for the life of me I cannot work out what's wrong with it.

I think that I base it on the fact that I strongly identify as a woman (I am a born woman).

The thing to bear in mind here is: you didn't come out of the womb with this knowledge. You learned, through your experience of the world, that genitals come in two basic types, and that the people who have the inny type are called "women" and the people with the outy type are called "men", and you incorporated that fact into your psyche going forward.

If you'd learned that inny type genitals people were called "men" then you would now be telling us that you strongly identify as a man.

Some people, who by their own accounts have generally experienced pretty shitty gendered and sex-based abuse, find it intensely difficult to accept their sex-class membership. It's an understandable psychological response to ongoing traumatic events. It has no bearing on what sex they objectively are, because what sex you are is not affected by your mind.

If it were, we'd have three 'sexes': woman, man, and sexless corpse.

An appropriate right is 'the right to alternative, non-sex-based facilities'.

Absolutely. With proper enforcing of the existing laws against discrimination, and assurance of privacy, dignity, and a case by case approach based on personal needs/preference for the sex of any professional providing personal or intimate procedures or care. No one should ever be in a situation where they need to undress in a situation where they feel unsafe, at risk, humiliated, uncomfortable to use a provision.

I just believe that female people have these rights too. This is why gender and sex need to be kept as separate things. It cannot be acceptable to exclude some females from female provision and therefore from any provision in order to allow male humans to have better freedom of choice between all the provisions. Sex based reality isn't something female people can opt out of, no matter how much it is a longed for solution.

Further to Michelle's post, I believe female people who suffer with dysphoria&dysmorphia matter too.

Speaking as one of them, I believe I should have the right to access facilities and services in a manner which does not exacerbate my complex mh issues.

The inclusion of males in stereotypical "woman" attire in female-only spaces reinforces my stupid brain's ridiculous notion that I'm not a proper woman because I can't do the girly shit - because their inclusion tells me that the important, defining feature of woman is the bit I can't do.

In an ideal world, society would not deal with the problem of male dysphoria by exporting it to females.

Hello @TyroTerf,

would you mind PMing me what Barracker said? I'd love to read it. Cheers

Will do when I'm back on the desktop.

Thanks TyroTerf

@Barracker: what an excellent post. And no, I don't see why it was removed.
I can see why it might upset some people, but I couldn't see anything that wasn't true and verifiable.

Mumsnet, you should really have a think before doing this sort of modding. I understand you have a difficult job and you'll never please everyone, but I cannot see how that deserved deletion. Hard truths are still truths.

I visited Northampton uni before all this came on my radar (I had heard of transsexuals of course and more recently non-binary but I wasn’t aware of all what was happening) and I noticed that they had not only the men’s and ladies’ toilets but also ‘gender neutral’ ones. Looking on their website, they say:
The move has been taken following consultation with the LGBTQ Society and specific members of the student population who have visited the Students’ Union.
Their provision will see a space they feel comfortable in using, that does not infringe upon the comfort of any other person and should aid in reducing the stress these students have felt on a daily basis.
The University has made existing single cubicle disabled toilets gender neutral, which means there will be no situation in which two people of any gender identity will be in the same room, ensuring they can feel comfortable using the space. This differs from gender-neutral toilets at some other universities in the UK, where entire bathrooms have been designated gender neutral. This is a solution proposed by the students themselves, discussed and agreed at the Union’s Student Council.
www.northampton.ac.uk/news/university-introduces-gender-neutral-toilets-on-campus/
They seem to have taken everyone’s views on board and discussed it fairly