I found this slightly reassuring - re girls IDing as boys

[QueenPeary]

Until recently despite engaging in the gender debate a lot and having a VERY full-on TRA family member, I hadn't had much direct experience of trans-IDing children.

But recently 2 of my DD's female classmates (year 6), one a close friend, have started IDing as boys, have boys names etc and this is being embraced by the school. My DD knows my GC views and we discuss it, but I have agreed to be respectful in using the right names etc (though I avoid using he pronouns).

Anyway - what I found reassuring is that both have discussed it with my DD and said they know they are not actually boys, and are not interested in taking drugs or having a penis. So despite the school being captured and going along with the full TWAW/TMAM etc, the kids (sometimes) aren't. They seem to realise it's an identity to try on, akin to a fashion or music tribe, and so maybe - I hope - there's a way in which girls (and maybe boys too) can go through this without it having to involve the long-term risks to their health.

I still don't think they are a "he" and I don't think it's going down a very healthy or feminist path to ID as a boy instead of just being a girl of whatever type you want to be. But I am kind of heartened that maybe this trend could default back to something more akin to good old 80s "gender bending" and away from the idea of actually changing sex.

Of course many kids still are at risk of both harmful medicalisation and anti-science ideology and I'm not minimising that – but wondered what people thought.

Making someone who identifies as female, looks female, use a male bathroom is just gross to me. If they choose to then fine, but trying to declare it should be, actually trying to declare it is some kind of law, is just inhumane to me.

So their feelings matter so much they should get to use the female toilet - but women in the female toilet who don't want males in there, their feelings don't matter at all - why is that? When males who look female attack women in toilets (we can't know if they identify as female - we can't read minds and can never know) at a far greater rate than females would, and women suffer that, why doesn't that matter?

Why do the feelings of someone who is deluded about their sex matter more?

Or if they are not deluded about their sex, why can't they respecy a same sex space?

To me the only fair solution is to make sure there is always a unisex toilet open to everyone, but a single and lockable cubicle. Or, if there's space, separate male and female toilets and then separate unisex toilets for all those who feel sex doesn't matter.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

I just don't get the fake naivety in this thread. If someone is acting inappropriately in any setting, of course they should be removed immediately. There are shitty people everywhere. There are people who work very hard to be in positions where they are around vulnerable people.

It doesn't mean we can discriminate against an entire demographic. Right wing racists in the US do this, by quoting figures such as the 13/50 statistic or whatever, against black people.

We must always work to separate valid concern from bigotry, and should always try and treat people with compassion. In general. Using specific examples of tragic cases where this has gone wrong is ghoulish. It doesn't bolster your argument the way you think it does. Bigotry is not borne of hate, it is borne of perceived threat.

We should always try to respond to threats posed by a certain type of person in a measured way, to ensure we are not performing abstraction and applying it to the whole community.

Yeah, I do accept that cis women suffer discrimination and disempowerement, often imposed on them because of their sex. It is not strictly because of biological sex though, as trans women face much of the same discrimination, and many of the same issues.

Really? Could you cite the issues and discrimination that transwomen face that are the same as what women face?

TheFairPrincess - approximately 1.5 million women in the UK have experienced either rape or attempted rape. Millions of women are part of religions that place restrictions on their exposure to people of the opposite sex.

Surely it is not hard to understand that many of these women have very valid reasons for not wanting penis bearing people in spaces they expected to be women only?

It's important to see that other people's comfort levels may not be the same as our own.

It is also about the fact that whether or not a male person is the most lovely male person ever, and absolutely safe, male presence in female only spaces excludes some females.

Radio 4 last week, a woman running rape crisis services: two women on her caseload at present who cannot come to the centre or access services because they are mixed sex. As the woman said: this is inevitably going to end up in a woman dying because she was not able to use a mixed sex space.

You're bending over backwards to try and justify the absolute support and care for the feelings of male people in this situation, the uniqueness of their needs, the importance of their sense of self and dignity. Why do you have not a single grain of empathy or care for the female people in this situation? Why are you so dismissive of them?

It doesn't mean we can discriminate against an entire demographic.

You said upthread that you disagree with mixed sex toilets. You are discriminating against an entire demographic - men.

If someone is acting inappropriately in any setting, of course they should be removed immediately

should Katie Dolotowski have been removed before or after he assaulted a little girl @TheFairPrincess ?

how could he have been removed before?

They're not "mythical", are they? They are male. Male people are responsible for most sexual crime and therefore there is a certain statistical risk we need to bear in mind, when any male people access spaces where women and girls are particularly vulnerable.

Most toilets have single lockable cubicle surely.

Most people just pop into toilets and pop out, we have to be realistic and proportionate. I used to go to a popular LGBTQ bar in my town lots of weekends, the toilets were unisex and there were no issues. Never felt threatened by the copious trans women in there.

Assuming everyone is uncomfortable in the presence of trans women all the time is just bizarre.

You're bending over backwards to try and justify the absolute support and care for the feelings of male people in this situation, the uniqueness of their needs, the importance of their sense of self and dignity. Why do you have not a single grain of empathy or care for the female people in this situation? Why are you so dismissive of them?

This. It's callous. Again, this is not any sort of feminism I recognise. I can think of things I would call it, but I'd better not.

Most toilets have single lockable cubicle surely

yes, that was the case in the toilet where Katie Dolotowski assaulted a little girl. it helped him actually because once he'd pushed her in there he had privacy

I believe this is incredibly hyperbolic and not at all how the vast majority of women feel about public toilets

So minorities don't matter, and aren't worth making provision for?

Right, this debate is sorted, as the "minority" of female people who need female-only provision is going to be bigger than the minority of male born people who identify as women and wish to live as women.

We'll put the urinary leash on the transwomen then.

[quote TheFairPrincess]@Ereshkigalangcleg I don't agree and I don't believe that only these mythological predatory trans people use toilets that match their gender. Indeed, I'm sure there would be issues if that was the case.

Making someone who identifies as female, looks female, use a male bathroom is just gross to me. If they choose to then fine, but trying to declare it should be, actually trying to declare it is some kind of law, is just inhumane to me.[/quote]
Why is your solution (in toilets and any other sex-segregated arena) to a male-bodied woman having issues with other males, for female people to budge up and make space for non-conforming males rather than for male people to sort their bloody house out?

Moving anyone male that the default males don't like or who doesn't like the default males into the otherwise female group does nothing to address the actual problem here - it just sticks a band aid over it. It goes away as far as the males are concerned but it becomes a problem for the females to deal with.

Is it because female people are easier to dominate?

*I just don't get the fake naivety in this thread. If someone is acting inappropriately in any setting, of course they should be removed immediately. There are shitty people everywhere. There are people who work very hard to be in positions where they are around vulnerable people.

It doesn't mean we can discriminate against an entire demographic.*

But we DO. We discriminate against men on exactly this basis, even though some persistent men get past the laws, even thought not all men are predatory. That is why sex-based protections still exist in law.

If you cared so much about discriminating against an entire demographic, why haven't you objected to non-trans-identifying men being excluded? In fact, the reason often given for TW needing to use women's toilets is because of the risk posed by men. But surely if a TW avoids a male toilet for that reason, that's discriminating against a demographic, right?

Can you see why discriminating against a demographic - male people - is necessary in certain situations to uphold women's safety and privacy?

So we've gone from a conversation about children cos playing the opposite sex to hanging around the lavs again. All from the misdirection of 1 poster who doesn't know the difference between a cock and a hen?

Come on we can do better that this.

If someone is acting inappropriately in any setting, of course they should be removed immediately

Applying this thinking @TheFairPrincess would mean the abandonment of proactive safeguarding principles wouldn't it, and leave us reacting after the fact?

@BernardBlackMissesLangCleg probably before. I don't know the story.

I personally have on many occasions peed in a bush at Glastonbury.

It doesn't mean I don't understand that other women have different boundaries than mine, or that their reasons for having them are valid and sex based.

"I used to go to a popular LGBTQ bar in my town"

I'm guessing not many kids, frail old ladies or muslims?

Most toilets have single lockable cubicle surely

And I don't know about you, but in pubs and clubs the lock frequently doesn't work.

[quote TheFairPrincess]@BernardBlackMissesLangCleg probably before. I don't know the story.[/quote]
I'll help you then.

Katie Dolotowski was out with his carer. They let him go off and use the women's toilets at a supermarket because it matches his gender identity

once in there he grabbed a 9 year old girl by the face, pushed her into a cubical and ordered her to take her trousers off

how could he have been removed before this?

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine

Yeah, I do accept that cis women suffer discrimination and disempowerement, often imposed on them because of their sex. It is not strictly because of biological sex though, as trans women face much of the same discrimination, and many of the same issues.

Really? Could you cite the issues and discrimination that transwomen face that are the same as what women face?

Sexual harassment, sexual abuse, discrimination, government attempts to restrict bodily autonomy.

You seem to think trans women are treated as "men" by society, as "fellow patriarchs". They are not.

The story Bernard has repeated several times on this thread.

Not being funny but how can an individual's comfort be factored into law at a population level.

These threads always seem to end in circular conversations about toilets. Literally always.

*Most toilets have single lockable cubicle surely

yes, that was the case in the toilet where Katie Dolotowski assaulted a little girl. it helped him actually because once he'd pushed her in there he had privacy*

Oh I hadn't realised that :(
But what I meant was the whole toilet is one single lockable room. Like in a cafe where there's just one toilet and it has just the one door and one person goes in at a time, rather than a "ladies" which is a room full of toilets. Of course that wouldn't prevent all crime either but I think it would be better.