Q&A thread for New Posters

[CharlieParley]

Welcome to the FWR board and welcome to the debate. If you're new here and have been told your questions might be better on their own thread, but you're not comfortable starting your own, then please feel free to ask your question here.

I'll try my best to answer and some of our other regulars might pop in too.

Cracking explanation, Datun.

I am feeling particularly ball breaking this morning due to stuff, so that’s really speaking to me right now.

I think it helped me to know that their is a difference between gender and gender identity. This is used by academics in presentations I've seen:
Sex is biology
Gender is social
Gender identity is psychological

Today it seems a lot of people are talking about gender identity, that is their personality. You can't legislate for personality that would be dangerous and unworkable.

@WhatWouldPhyllisCraneDo

I'm not reading the message like that she says the US bathroom bill "did not end well for cis women of colour" I took that to mean the modern bathroom bill. Not that it was a a comparison to the 60s? I'm obviously misunderstanding it.

There is a thoroughly disgusting, racist trope used by trans activists that single-sex toilets, changing rooms, etc. are bad for black women because white women think they look like men and get them thrown out.

It tells you everything you need to know about the mindset of “woke women” that they are not ashamed to spout this racist shit. Presumably, by virtue of reading racist bullshit like “White Fragility”, they have acquired a special superpower that enables them to distinguish between black women and black men.

It’s very sad that your friend has been brainwashed in this way. Take care not to try to accept this nonsense out of solidarity with her - it is pure brain rot and ultimately psychopathic.

We weren't accepted into university.

And I don't think this is a relic from 100 years ago. I'm happy to be corrected but I think that until the mid 1970's most Oxbridge colleges were single sex, and the vast majority were men only.

Like it or not, an Oxbridge education is still a route to power, and just in government, the men who benefited from this are still MPs and still sitting in the House of Lords.

You can't legislate for personality that would be dangerous and unworkable.

Although there does seem to be a wide spread belief that the government does record gender identity and that people have a right to have their gender identity recognised. It's not clear why.

@SophocIestheFox

Cracking explanation, Datun.

I am feeling particularly ball breaking this morning due to stuff, so that’s really speaking to me right now.

Ditto that. Nice and clear explanation, @Datun

Thanks @MoleSmokes that was what I thought she meant based on what Google told me. But she's usually so lovely, and totally un racist that I thought I'd misunderstood. :(

So how do trans-activists who claim black women suffer more square that with the Muslim women (some of whom will also be black) who aren't allowed to use mixed sex spaces/can't remove their hijab if they need to due to men being there? Or do Muslim women not matter now?

@WhatWouldPhyllisCraneDo

Thanks *@MoleSmokes* that was what I thought she meant based on what Google told me. But she's usually so lovely, and totally un racist that I thought I'd misunderstood. :(

So how do trans-activists who claim black women suffer more square that with the Muslim women (some of whom will also be black) who aren't allowed to use mixed sex spaces/can't remove their hijab if they need to due to men being there? Or do Muslim women not matter now?

They don’t matter because they are religious bigots, according to the woke mindset.

Seriously, none of this makes sense. It is an illogical pseudo-reality that they inhabit, full of contradictions that do not bear close inspection.

This woman’s mannerisms irritate me but this is a shortcut to some of the issues with woke ideology:

They don’t matter because they are religious bigots, according to the woke mindset.

But note, different rules apply for men...

Just to head back to the toilets topic for a moment...these threads always attract a certain amount of whatabouttery surrounding toilets. But what about post-op TW? But how do you know what someone has in their pants? But male-born people have been ‘passing’ and using the Ladies for years, why is it a problem now? But toilets don’t have security anyway, how do you propose to stop anyone using them? But but but.

You don’t have to work out answers to any of these questions because the very asking of them tells you one fundamental thing about the questioner: they don’t respect women, they don’t respect women’s rights and they certainly don’t respect women’s boundaries. They’re not interested in answers to the questions; they’re just demonstrating women’s powerlessness in the face of people who will ride roughshod over women’s safety, privacy and dignity.

When the person asking the questions is female, I feel sorry for them that they’ve internalised so much misogyny and social conditioning that says women need to be support humans and solve everyone else’s problems before their own. When they’re male...well, there’s a word for men who force themselves (and their penises) past women’s boundaries even when the women are saying “no”...

@OnlyTheLangoftheTitBerg

Just to head back to the toilets topic for a moment...these threads always attract a certain amount of whatabouttery surrounding toilets. But what about post-op TW? But how do you know what someone has in their pants? But male-born people have been ‘passing’ and using the Ladies for years, why is it a problem now? But toilets don’t have security anyway, how do you propose to stop anyone using them? But but but.

You don’t have to work out answers to any of these questions because the very asking of them tells you one fundamental thing about the questioner: they don’t respect women, they don’t respect women’s rights and they certainly don’t respect women’s boundaries. They’re not interested in answers to the questions; they’re just demonstrating women’s powerlessness in the face of people who will ride roughshod over women’s safety, privacy and dignity.

When the person asking the questions is female, I feel sorry for them that they’ve internalised so much misogyny and social conditioning that says women need to be support humans and solve everyone else’s problems before their own. When they’re male...well, there’s a word for men who force themselves (and their penises) past women’s boundaries even when the women are saying “no”...

Quite right. Solutions are neither sought nor required. They are just going to do it, and what are you going to do about it, eh?

Control.

Even on this is very thread. At this current moment in time (I'm predicting it will all change soon) women being able to ask and respond, without the narrative being twisted to suit the opposite sex, it's refreshing by its rarity.

@OnlyTheLangoftheTitBerg

Just to head back to the toilets topic for a moment...these threads always attract a certain amount of whatabouttery surrounding toilets. But what about post-op TW? But how do you know what someone has in their pants? But male-born people have been ‘passing’ and using the Ladies for years, why is it a problem now? But toilets don’t have security anyway, how do you propose to stop anyone using them? But but but.

You don’t have to work out answers to any of these questions because the very asking of them tells you one fundamental thing about the questioner: they don’t respect women, they don’t respect women’s rights and they certainly don’t respect women’s boundaries. They’re not interested in answers to the questions; they’re just demonstrating women’s powerlessness in the face of people who will ride roughshod over women’s safety, privacy and dignity.

When the person asking the questions is female, I feel sorry for them that they’ve internalised so much misogyny and social conditioning that says women need to be support humans and solve everyone else’s problems before their own. When they’re male...well, there’s a word for men who force themselves (and their penises) past women’s boundaries even when the women are saying “no”...

Yes, the @What about “post op” TW?” question.

I think JY has very publicly demolished “true-trans” gatekeeping. I’ve started a new thread on the latest antics and disgusting behaviour:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4167243-For-all-those-who-are-happy-with-TW-in-single-sex-spaces-if-they-have-had-the-op

merrymouse
"We weren't accepted into university."
And I don't think this is a relic from 100 years ago. I'm happy to be corrected but I think that until the mid 1970's most Oxbridge colleges were single sex, and the vast majority were men only.

I think it may be important to remember that the vast majority of males were equally unaccepted by universities before WWII. Fewer than 5% of the population went to university in the 1930s, which obviously meant most men didn't.

On the other hand my grandmother was accepted into the University of Edinburgh before 1900, and my mother took not one but two degrees (Oxford and Edinburgh) in the 1930s before starting war-work on graduation. (Just in time to be working in a factory in Coventry when it was bombed: bad call there Mum.)

For a long time all universities had curfews in the halls of residence after which a member of the other sex was not allowed in your room. If the domestic staff found anyone sleeping on your floor at eg Lancaster there was trouble. In the late sixties Oxford colleges not only had curfews, they locked their students in overnight, just as they had in the thirties. (In theory: climbing the walls and getting in and out through second-floor windows was a sport, just as it always had been.) Student pregnancies were deemed to be a Bad Idea, in those years before the Pill was available to all.

Here is a useless factoid: Kent University was built on the boundary between Canterbury City and Kent County authorities, and one offered free birth control while the other did not. The boundary ran smack dab down a corridor in one of the halls of residence, and women on one side of that corridor swapped rooms with men on the other side so that they would be living in the authority which provided free birth control. All very Puckoon, except not really funny at all in the days when an unwanted child rather finished your chance of a degree.

Thanks for putting into words why the toilets and changing rooms arguments make me so uncomfortable.

It feels like a bloke staring you down with a smirk saying "No? So how you gonna stop me luv?"

Prison and sports have male-dominated rule makers and enforcers. The smirker knows he will be forced to obey them. Toilets, gyms, changing rooms have no powerful males on enforcement duty.

The argument that it was OK in the past made me think "Yes it was OK, what has changed for me to make me so uncomfortable now?"

Fifteen years ago I would frequently shared spaces with people who would probably be called trans or non-binary now (like obvious males dressed as a sexy lady, very butch women, people maximising the androgynous look). It never bothered me much. I think because people cared about making each other feel comfortable and who was encroaching on whom.

For example, I was mates with a drag queen, if I had told him (he called himself him mostly) the women were uncomfortable with him using the ladies (we did go clubbing with observant religious women - modest dress, no drink, lots of dancing) then he would have asked what he could do to make it OK and would have gone to the gents or waited until the loos were empty in a heartbeat no bother. Absolutely no entitlement, no smirking, no "Screw you, I'm coming in anyway".

Some vocal recent incomers seem to feel entitled to take, to push women aside. If we say we wouldn't feel comfortable with you in there they don't say "I'm so sorry, I'll use the gents or wait until nobody else is in here, what would work for you?" they say "no point making that rule sweetheart, I'll do whatever I want and how you gonna stop me?"

Then we end up talking about how we can only have a rule if we have a fierce enforcement method (genital checks!!!).

It's all about ignoring women's "no" unless there is a big man to enforce it.

@WhatWouldPhyllisCraneDo

I've copied and pasted the relevant sentence in her message...

"The government has opened a consultation on toilet provision that seems to be moving towards bringing in an abhorrent "bathroom bill" type deal like they bright in in some states in America.... it did not end well for trans or gender non conforming people or cis women of colour....."

How are "cis women of colour" affected by sex separated bathrooms? Or have I misunderstood the "bathroom bill"?

Your friend is mistaken. US-style bathroom bills would not be legal under UK law. The Equality Act makes it clear that reasonable adjustments must be made for those protected under the gender reassignment characteristic.

The Equality Act does not say people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment have a right to access opposite sex provisions, but for service providers and employers it does make two things clear:

1. they must not be excluded from the single-sex provisions of their own sex and
2. they must not be forced to use the single-sex provisions of their own sex

Instead, they must be offered alternative solutions, if they do not want to use the provisions of their own sex.

US-style bathroom bills fall foul of the second position, hence they would not be lawful under UK law.

It might be useful to think of female-only provisions not as

all female people must use female-only spaces

but instead as

only female people may use female-only spaces

@WhatWouldPhyllisCraneDo

I've copied and pasted the relevant sentence in her message...

"The government has opened a consultation on toilet provision that seems to be moving towards bringing in an abhorrent "bathroom bill" type deal like they bright in in some states in America.... it did not end well for trans or gender non conforming people or cis women of colour....."

How are "cis women of colour" affected by sex separated bathrooms? Or have I misunderstood the "bathroom bill"?

They aren't.

This is an American template totally irrelevant to the UK.

Sex segregated toilets would never be used as the thin end of the wedge to introduce race-segregated toilets here. Americans have racial segregation well within living memory and have millions of people who would like to bring it back. Totally different to the UK.

The UK is much less violent than the US. The UK is much more accepting of flamboyant eccentric people. Trans and GNC people don't get murdered in toilets here for looking different.

In addition, the police are more responsive to that kind of hate crime in the UK than in the US. If men started beating up transwomen just trying to pee in UK public toilets there'd be action and outrage.

In the UK the problem with keeping toilets sex segregated is that it makes some males feel uncomfortable because in the dysphoric it forces them to acknowledge the difference between their gender identity and their sex while in fetishists it removes a source of thrill. Neither are good enough reasons to stop sex segregation.

I think it may be important to remember that the vast majority of males were equally unaccepted by universities before WWII. Fewer than 5% of the population went to university in the 1930s, which obviously meant most men didn't.

I don’t think that is relevant to the point. The fact that men were also disadvantaged for other reasons doesn’t change the fact that they still dominate powerful institutions.

It matters that women aren’t represented in government, as we have seen over the past few months when the impact on women - emergency contraception, employment - have only been considered as an afterthought.

I was I think saying "the past is a different country" and that judging today (when more women than men are accepted for university places in the UK) by what was happening fifty years and more ago might not be entirely useful. A lot has changed, and until recently the change for women has mostly been for the better. Far too slowly, but for the better.

Until this most recent outbreak of male dominance roleplay, that is.

I was I think saying "the past is a different country"

Except 40-50 years ago isn’t.

Plenty of men who graduated in the 60s and 70s still hold power in society and they certainly held power in the 2000s and 2010s.

Since we can''t change it having happened, should we not get on with stopping it from continuing or happening again? Much more fruitful as an ambition.

(I don't have a time machine; if I did there are quite a large number of people in history whose lives would not be safe.)

Since we can''t change it having happened, should we not get on with stopping it from continuing or happening again? Much more fruitful as an ambition.

Feminism analyses the causes of inequality. The practical impact of past inequality is felt now e.g. on pension provision.

Women's state pension provision has been altered to match that of males. Women used to get a better deal through their pensionable age being five years sooner in their lives, now they don't. That's an inequality which was sorted out, isn't it.

That's an inequality which was sorted out, isn't it.

Not if women’s ability to qualify for a pension is disadvantaged because of earlier lack of access to education and employment.

As far as I am aware, the state pension does not require any earlier qualification whatever, either of education or of employment. Apart from having paid your stamps for a set number of years.