Is it only white middle class women who are GC?

[Ziegfeld]

I recently summoned courage to have “the talk” with an old friend who is gay. I wanted to know his current thoughts on sex based rights, and I thought (as we are old friends) even if we disagreed we could have a civilised conversation about it.

Unfortunately I think he called me transphobic about five minutes into the conversation when I asked, so if we say let’s have self ID, how do we tell whether someone genuinely believes themselves to be a TW or is a man simply announcing he is a woman solely for the purposes of accessing women-only spaces for bad intent. ( His answers to that were “well we need safeguarding” and “there are hardly any TWs, this isn’t a real concern” and “well ideally we should all just have gender neutral changing rooms”)

Some more things were said by both of us which I won’t go into here because I am sure we’ve all heard them before.

But then he said that it’s only white middle class women (like me) who have a problem with self ID and allowing TW access to women’s spaces. He said that working class women and women of colour have no problem at all with it.

I don’t think this is true - look at Allison Bailey for example. But I would be interested to know what other MNers think. Is this a race and class issue? Or is it that white middle class women tend to have more platforms to speak out than other women?

Define trans woman though. If it’s ‘who I say I am’ then can’t you see the problem there?

@Yesindeedydoodey

Actually:

"To take people opposed to men demanding access to single-sex womens spaces at their word..."

how to police whatever laws were hypothesised to be introduced on the issue.

Yes, policing this is very difficult once you have a system where there are men who actively want to get into women's spaces as validation, and those who want to take advantage of that.

It used to be that a very small number of male transsexuals were tolerated on the basis that they knew they weren't really female, it was rare, they usually made a huge effort to to be clocked as male nor to make women uncomfortable. I have to say I never really understood why it was OK even then, or why men who wanted to be women never seemed to emulate normal women. But it was a relatively minor issue and if anyone had tried that and then visibly got their cock out it would have been clear that that was not OK.

What we have now is a TRA movement that features many MRA-like aspects and involves a lot of men who just want to be in women's spaces to intimidate, as a power trip, as a turn-on or even worse nefarious reasons, like sexual assault - and that is being encouraged. So of course it's bringing out the worst in any man with that tendency.

In the past, societal pressure and not wanting to be seen as a perv kept most men out of women's toilets unless accidentally. Now it's like a fun challenge. I read a think by a teenage girl in the US who said the girls' toilets at school were full of gangs of boys staring at and harassing the girls then just saying "I'm non-binary so you can't do anything".

But the fact that it's hard to put that regrettable situation back in the bottle does not mean it's OK for women and girls.

sorry that should be not to be clocked as male

If a man wants to be predatory, he'll do it, I'd suspect, without worrying greatly (or even at all) about the minor crime of using the wrong toilet in order to commit the major crime of being preying on a woman.

Do you take the position that as Safeguarding cannot ever completely mitigate risk we should dispense with it all together? The loopholes in DBS and identity checking systems for those working with children and/or Vulnerable Adults which were exploited by predatory male sexual offenders is subject of current thread. There is obviously no suggestion by any sensibly-minded adult that we should stop using DBS and identity checks
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4303105-Sex-offenders-free-to-abuse-children-after-changing-ID

And ... secondly ... a transwoman will prioritise her physical safety over getting caught committing the minor crime of going into the wrong toilet or using women's changing room. Who wouldn't?

'I was sexually assaulted in a women's prison... by a fellow inmate with male genitalia'
(extract)
"Jail should have been a place free from the predators who had sexually assaulted and raped her in her childhood, but the terrifying presence looming over her suggested anything but.

'The look in her eyes was frightening,' Amy says, her voice quiet but assertive. 'She leered at me before lunging forward and grabbing my breasts hard. She squeezed them and I cried out in pain. I was terrified she would rape me.'

The prisoner who sexually assaulted Amy — we cannot legally identify her, so we shall call her J — is a transgender woman, with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), and therefore referred to by the female pronoun, but still had male genitalia.

Amy was equally well aware that J still had male genitalia because she often intimidated her and fellow female prisoners at HMP Bronzefield in Ashford, Middlesex, by exposing them.

Moreover, J was serving time for a serious sexual assault on a child and was clearly a danger to other inmates. Yet she had secured a coveted job as a cleaner at the prison gym where Amy also worked. And it was while she was in the gym's lavatory block that J assaulted her in 2017. (continues)
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9819631/I-sexually-assaulted-womens-prison-fellow-inmate-male-genitalia.html

current thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a4304592-DM-article-interview-with-female-attacked-in-prison

Why should woman and girls not prioritise our physical safety as well as privacy and dignity by insisting that all males are excluded from female single sex intimate spaces?

the real fear is of predatory men, not of transwomen

Well yes. Of course the real fear is of predatory men, but a) how are you supposed to be able to tell - policing someone's inner thoughts is even harder than policing their sex. So these policies mean predatory men have carte blanche to enter any space previously reserved for women for protection from exactly those men.

And b) depending on your definition, it's possible to be both a transwoman and a predatory male. Look at all the TW who threaten GC women with rape and murder.

If a man wants to be predatory, he'll do it
That may be the case, and no I can't stop a determined predator from entering a woman's space - but generally everyone knowing that's not OK makes it harder - staff, police, women in a group, other, decent men are likely to step in. Predators are less likely to try it, knowing all this. Changing policy so it's officially allowed is a huge problem because it's now basically an open invitation and staff and police are being trained to take the man's side.

And again, it's a shit argument. If a burglar is determined to burgle my house they probably can. If a murderer is determined to kill me they probably can. Does that mean we should therefore give up all laws against these things, security and measures to protect ourselves? No.

Going into the wrong toilet/changing room is never going to be considered a major crime by most people.

Mainly because voyeurism isn't taken seriously by most men.

Oh and lastly, it's not just about the risk of attack. It's about having a safe space away from potential attack, discomfort, intimidation and just the presence of unknown males, which for most women heightens anxiety and fear. And for some is not allowed in their culture/religion so they are absenting themselves and missing out. I'm not even in that category but I'm also absenting myself from women's activities that say TW are welcome, because it's not the same. Women as a class are in danger from / have generally had bad experiences with men as a class, and a female-only space lets you relax. Transactivism demands that even talking about female-only experiences with a TW there is condemned, so that's out too.

But hey what do women's feelings, fears, need for safety and community matter. Not a jot when there are male demands to consider.

"The majority of women of colour at the time had to wait another ten years to get the vote."

I think the lag between the 1918 and 1928 Acts related to age and class rather than ethnicity as such. In 1918 women had to be over 30 and either own property of a specific value or be married to a man who did.

Ethnic minority women would most likely be over-represented among those who didn't meet the property qualification - though the minority ethnic population was small and male-heavy at the time (seamen from China, Africa, West Indies).

But the primary determinant was class: prominent Asian women involved in the suffragette movement included Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, the daughter of the last Maharajah of the Sikh Empire.

@QueenPeary

You must be mistaken.

Yesindeedy has told you what you really mean, and what women actually want.

There should be a word for that.

I don't have a problem with it. If a man has an evil intent he'll access women only spaces without asking anyone's permission.

My point is that we need to fight evil men not TW.

@QueenPeary makes the critical point though: it’s freedom from the need to worry that’s so important.

Pigletjohn :o

My point is that we need to fight evil men not TW.

And what do you do if and when the "TW" IS the evil man? Because it's now open season for any evil man to do that. Can't you see that?

@BaronMunchausen

Within that 'asylum seeker not coloniser' metaphor, men as a class are the oppressive regime that's being fled.

As a man, he's part of that regime: tell him to sort it.

Exactly, and I did. He agreed that men (well, “men with toxic masculinity”) need to sort themselves out, same as we need nuclear disarmament and world peace. But in the meantime women should let in the asylum seekers.

I think where he is coming from is:
a) he is not a man who catcalls or gropes or
flashes at or hits women and feels no fraternity with them so he feels slightly aggrieved at being lumped in with those kind of men and told to fix the problem. My ex who is not gay does too - he feels very threatened and gets quite aggressively defensive about it whenever I talk about GC feminism.

2. He was a gay man alive during the 1980s and the Section 28 battles, and he sees parallels between the way back then that gay men were viewed by some people as weird perverts who shouldn’t be allowed near children, for example, and what he sees now as white middle class women’s suspicion of TW as dangerous people who shouldn’t be allowed near their children. He feels solidarity with TW as a marginalised minority.

the real fear is of predatory men, not of transwomen

This is nonsense. The real fear is of male violence.

At what point does a man become a transwoman? How do you write that into law and policy? It's nonsense.

And in any case, the real fear of male violence isn't the only issue. The issue is women's privacy and dignity and desire for a place away from men, however they identify, whatever stage of soi disant "transition" they are at, and regardless of what men think about that.

When we safe guard children we accept that the majority of men are not a risk.
However since we also know that the majority of those posing risk are men, we take a broad brush approach.
The vast majority of men accept this.
They don’t seek to be in those spaces where children are at risk. They are aware it is wrong even if they know they lose no threat.

But that logic/respect is now being eroded.

@Bolets

In my relatively small sample of working class/ethnic minority friends, the idea that TW are literally women and TM are literally men is so out there that the concept of it being legal is borderline conspiracy theory. I had a hard time showing them that this was actually happening - "if you have a dick, you're a man", "no penis in prisons, that's obvious", and "if this is happening, why haven't I heard about it?" were the main responses.

I had the same thing trying to explain to DH that he was literally expected to believe men were now women and vice versa.

Interestingly, the kids don’t tend to criticise him or call him transphobic for expressing the exact same views I have. I think they just roll their eyes and think he can’t be expected to understand, poor old chap.

I need to go and do other stuff - but one more thing. It's not just about evil men and whether they would or wouldn't enter women's spaces anyway.

It's about society, how people react, and what would happen. In the past, if I'm in the women's changing room at the gym with women wandering around undressed, chatting etc, and a male comes in waving his dick at us, what happens? We quickly react, women protect girls, stronger women protect weaker/more upset women, we quickly alert staff, staff quickly do something, ultimately police will be called and arrest/charge man.

Now, at least in many places and in the transactivist utopia that is being inflicted on us for fear of bigotry, what happens? While some women may object, they will be called bigots. Staff will hesitate to do anything because the male might be "a woman" and they'll lose their jobs for bigotry. In fact, he only has to say he is a woman at that moment, and that's all it takes. Police are on his side and potentially arrest the female bigots who called him a man. Women and girls get to be flashed at - which used to be a crime, and supposedly still is, and is known to be a gateway crime to worse sexual offences - and it's fine.

It's not just about this mythical, rare, "evil" man who would do this anyway. It's about any man now being let off the hook for all the intimidating, pervy, aggressive, harrassing behaviour that many, many, many men are prone to. We used to understand why this was bad.

Yes @DodoPatrol the whole thing is so ludicrous that normal people just don’t believe it!

Anyway, back to the topic of the thread. I think it takes an awful lot of privilege to be able to distance yourself from the realities of lesbians who just want to be left in peace, women in prisons, women accessing refuges etc, girls and women with any kind of athletic ambition and women who's religion / culture stops them from using facilites when men will be present.

Not to mention the fact that any space that is mixed sex the males become dominant purely by human nature.

I can only imaine the people who make the assertion that WoC and working class women are happy for men to take their spaces don't actually know and WoC or working class women.

@Vitallyli

My point is that we need to fight evil men not TW.

Safeguards work because they appplied to all in a particular group who would have power to abuse/exploit a more vulnerable group rather than just the small number who have nefarious intentions. This is because with perhaps the exception of Layla Moran MP, noone can see into people's souls to risk assess accurately for 'evil' intention.

"I see someone in their soul and as a person. I do not really care whether they have a male body." - Layla Moran MP (in a debate about violence against women.)
Hansard hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-11-21/debates/BE06C5D4-E549-4F94-87B1-9B77F32EA155/Self-IdentificationOfGender

All teaching staff are required to abide by DBS checks etc and Safeguarding/Child Protection policies. Safeguarding policies and boundaries that are based on sex should apply to all those who are male sex in order to protect girls and women who are female sex.

It would be extremely foolish to suggest that a particular group of adult males represent no/lesser risk to girls and women. The consequences of doing so are well-recognised.

LangCleg wrote Thu 21-Feb-19

"How did the scandal of TV entertainers grooming and exploiting children get so bad before anything was done?

How did the scandal of Catholic priests grooming and exploiting children get so bad before anything was done?

How did the scandal of on-street gangs grooming and exploiting children get so bad before anything was done?

Because if you create a sacred caste of any group and silence anyone asking questions about individuals on behalf of the sacred caste, abusers will see, infiltrate, and groom and exploit children. That''s how."

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3512177-Julia-Long-asking-Munro-Bergdorf-about-child-exploitation?pg=12

Women and girls get to be flashed at - which used to be a crime, and supposedly still is, and is known to be a gateway crime to worse sexual offences - and it's fine.

And then we'll be told tis never happened, those women are liars and random aspect of the woman's life makes her not worth listening to anyway.

If a man wants to be predatory, he'll do it

Do you lock your car? Your front door when you go out?

If you seriously believe that people born female may only be granted consideration for their voices, feelings, needs and issues around privacy, dignity, safety, experiences, inclusion, faith, culture, disability, and all the rest of it from the dregs of what is left over after all male needs and desires have been met.....then aren't you just rampantly sexist to the extent of really pretty much male supremacism?

Women were permitted single sex spaces until it began to inconvenience people born male. They were permitted to be homosexual until it began to inconvenience people born male. Can you really not spot the main issue here?