Mumsnet says Trans Rights are Human Rights!

[ool0n]

I always assumed Mumsnet were not the biggest supporters of trans rights, given the stories about them. But this is a good statement on Twitter, "of course trans people exist, and of course trans rights are human rights"
twitter.com/MumsnetTowers/status/1367071394870276099

Also I thought using terms like cisgender or cis were against the rules, this isn't true either -
twitter.com/MumsnetTowers/status/1367080005193318401

So can I get a trans rights are human rights, trans women are women, trans men are men and non binary people are valid!

@Waspnest

Well said. The thing that I often ponder is that I have no way of knowing if what I feel is femaleness or maleness. Since, I wasn't born male, what 'being male' or a male identity feel like is unknowable for me.

TransRightsRCool if we all agreed with your definition of "woman" and then called ourselves female and campaigned for female only spaces (no men or women, just females) would that be acceptable to you, or transphobic?

"t doesn't mean that though. It's a loaded question that is set up to ensure the respondent validates the notion of gender identity and the reason this is done is to ensure that persons of the opposite sex can identify into the category too."

@OvaHere, it's not loaded, that's all gender identity means in my defn. I know many here say it also means "stereotypes" or "roles", but thats not how I define it or any trans people and allies I know define it.

MN is possibly the only place on the internet where women can discuss feminism without having to constantly genuflect to Big Gender Identity. Practically impossible anywhere else to discuss anything solely related to female biology/reality without having to glue on a little 'of course trans women of colour have it worse!' quote even when it's totally irrelevant.

Why does woman have to be defined anyway? Wouldn't it be better to leave it undefined? So that you don't have to look and dress and be a specific way to be considered a woman?

You already don't have to do anything in a specific way to be a woman. You just have to be an adult human female.

@UhtredRagnarson

please point out where i used the term female in reference to myself?

You didn’t. As I said, you called yourself a woman so I assumed you are a female because women are female. You do have a sex, it will be either male or female and you used the descriptor for an adult female. Are you male? In which case which gender do you have that matches your male sex?

well you get the prize for picking out one sentence and ignoring everything else the post said.

if you can't extrapolate my biological sex and matching gender identity from my post thats entirely a you problem.

@PurpleHoodie

Some UK women are getting as much as £50 000 back payments!

Wonderful news.

I wonder why they deliberately identified into being underpaid in the first place? Why did they simply not identify out of being underpaid? A true mystery...

Come to think of it, how did they know the people they were underpaying were actually women? They didn't do one of these genital inspection thingies I keep hearing about did they? 😱

(Joking aside, it is great news!)

Why does woman have to be defined anyway?

How privileged you must be to even be able to ask this question. If you cannot identify a group, then you cannot protect the rights of that group. Women need certain rights and protections in society. They fought for them so that they could partake in public life. Women in the West have made great gains in their rights over the last few decades, but, as we have seen, those rights are apparently very fragile.

As I said before, you people will not be satisfied by whatever definition of woman I provide. It'll always be too circular for you.

What do you mean by 'too circular'. People have explained why 'a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman' is useless.

@PurpleHoodie

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

Restated here too, although you do know it has nothing to do with "biology" and a few elder states-trans-women will be affected too? The DWP defines woman as a category that includes trans women.

Check the GRA, trans women are just as eligible for widower's pensions as cis women. As they're women according to the state, so are just as effected by state misogyny.
www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/pdfs/ukpga_20040007_en.pdf

if you can't extrapolate my biological sex and matching gender identity from my post thats entirely a you problem.

Well no it isn’t really. You have claimed there is a gender identity that matches your biological sex (which will be either male or female) I’m interested in knowing which of the hundreds of gender identities it is. Why are you unwilling to say?

bigotry The reason that this forum has developed it's reputation is the suggestion that those sudo-philosophical debates provide any justification at all for the removal of human rights and legal protections from trans people in the UK.

Sorry What? Where does this forum try to remove human rights or legal protections from trans people?

All it tries to do is to protect the rights of women, and wrt trans people that means not expanding the definition of women to include transwomen. I've never seen it written for example that transwomen shouldn't have normal protections to employment, protection by police, or whatever, just that they shouldn't encroach on female single sex areas.

You are grossly misrepresenting things, and it does your argument no good.

Trans rights are human rights. But no group should have their rights usurp another’s rights. Including transwomen in women’s protected spaces: change rooms, refuges, prisons and sports which directly breaches women’s human rights to have spaces free from biological men. Trans people deserve respect and their own sports teams, change rooms prisons and refuges. There is a huge number (and growing) of cases of men who claim to be transwomen who have committed violent and sexual crimes against women and children. And a high number of men deciding to be trans after convicted of a crime. These men can never be included in women’s spaces irrespective of their gender identity as they are a threat to women. Here’s all the cases in the U.K.: transcrimeuk.com/
There is nothing transphobic about identifying men who are deliberately using trans rights to flout the system in order to have more lenient punishment and to continue to have access to women to abuse. It is basic safeguarding and a women’s right to protect ourselves from violent men. Even men who claim to be women.

That would be individual to the person. There is no right or wrong way to be a woman, last I checked.

So does that now mean I can now define woman as I wish without being accused of being transphobic? I really don’t understand 🤷‍♀️

The NSPCC also pulled out of a live webchat because of this too, correct?

Wasn't there some controversy around the NSPCC having an employee who was posting up pictures of his penis, whilst wearing rubber under his clothes, in the toilets at his NSPCC workplace?

Not sure if was the same NSPCC employee who took videos of himself wanking in a travel lodge whilst on a work conference, uploaded them to a porn site and shared on social media.

It wasn't great publicity for a child protection organisation at the time though that's for sure. Well it wouldn't be would it. I expect they would have coped some flack coming on to a parenting website for a webchat after that.

I don’t need your endorsement, bigotry. Be in no doubt: I am every bit as gender critical as most of the other women here. Also, just an aside, Biological essentialism is the concept that being a woman somehow disposes one towards being nurturing, motherly, submissive. It does not mean knowing that a penis is not a female sex organ, I’m afraid.

Why does woman have to be defined anyway? - maybe so we can continue to indulge in such fripperies as making sure pregnancy discrimination doesn’t happen, or abortion rights aren’t removed, or ending female genital mutilation? All these things that happen to women and girls because we’re women and girls...

The reason that this forum has developed it's reputation is the suggestion that those sudo-philosophical debates provide any justification at all for the removal of human rights and legal protections from trans people in the UK.

In what way are their legal rights and protections being removed? Can you tell me what rights exactly they have had removed?

That's fallacious, there are lots of words that are defined in a circular manner.

Not words that are essential to policy and protection of rights.

Can you not see that it's offensive to compare the word 'woman' to 'chair' when women have been excluded from full participation society because of their sex?

When my grandmother was born British women did not have the right to vote. When my mother was born women in France didn't have the right to vote. When I was born women in Switzerland didn't have the right to vote. When my daughter was born women in Saudi Arabia couldn't even drive a car. And you are talking about chairs?

I identify as intelligent, creative, and crafty.

I happen to have a reproductive system that can grow a human infant, suffer from an autoimmune condition, and deal with multiple allergies. Just because the labels of female, autoimmune patient, and epi-pen carrier apply to me, does not mean they are part of my identity.

We all have equal human rights. I do not recognise ‘cis’

In what way are their legal rights and protections being removed? Can you tell me what rights exactly they have had removed?

Yes, this needs to be explained.

yourhairiswinterfire

Yes. Fantastic news

@Erkrie

The NSPCC also pulled out of a live webchat because of this too, correct?

Wasn't there some controversy around the NSPCC having an employee who was posting up pictures of his penis, whilst wearing rubber under his clothes, in the toilets at his NSPCC workplace?

Not sure if was the same NSPCC employee who took videos of himself wanking in a travel lodge whilst on a work conference, uploaded them to a porn site and shared on social media.

It wasn't great publicity for a child protection organisation at the time though that's for sure. Well it wouldn't be would it. I expect they would have coped some flack coming on to a parenting website for a webchat after that.

Gotta love it how any time a company pulls out of an advertising contract or a webchat with Mumsnet, some members will (instead of taking a moment to think about why these companies are pulling out) look for reasons to try to discredit all these companies. As if you're trying to say "There's nothing wrong with what we say about transwomen, it's just everyone else's fault we lost those contracts".

[quote ool0n]@9toenails - "And, if so, are you a big enough person to admit it and try for another, non-circular, definition?"

That's fallacious, there are lots of words that are defined in a circular manner. That doesn't make the definition less valid. They're also rather ill defined or have multiple defns as you can see here

1. Is ill-defined and wooly
2. Is circular

... But we can all manage to identify chairs and understand the word www.dictionary.com/browse/chair[/quote] Women! Don't be so ridiculous, of course you are not being erased!

Define woman? No, sorry, can't do it, there's no such thing....

As has been said many times before, if you cannot identify a group, you cannot give them rights and protections.

Throughout history everyone knew who were the men and who were the women. There was never any handwringing or discussion about who to deny a vote to, an eduction, an abortion, about who to murder at birth, who to rape as a weapon of war, who to deny a promotion or a job to.

But now? Now that women in the West have so many rights and protections that they would like to hold onto? Suddenly its oh so hard to decide who is a man and who is a woman? Women are difficult to define... Just like chairs!

Please... Give me fucking strength, the misogyny is off the scale.