Transman wins lawsuit agains school board (Virginia) [Title edited by MNHQ at poster's request]

[SusannaM]

bit.ly/3sV3ib0

Not sure if this has already been posted (link is to The Insider). Transboy took a school board to court because he was excluded from boys bathrooms.

Gavin Grimm said he wants those passing anti-trans legislation to know: "Slowly and surely we're coming for all of them."

Grim indeed.

Franca123 absolutely pro-choice here.

@Franca123

A quick poll on how many contributors to this thread are anti - abortion would be interesting! I highly doubt many if any are?! In my social circles it's virtually non existant. Even my very Conservative mother is very pro abortion.

I believe I'm much more anti-abortion than the average poster on these boards. However, I do take the view that it needs to be legal up to a point. For me, it's a matter of conscience.

However, I wholly disassociate myself from the pro-lifers of the American right, whose concern for unborn babies does not extend to maternal health care, infant health or maternity leave, and whose 'pro-lifeness' does not extend to abolishing the death penalty or providing contraception to women.

It's an odd position to find myself in, where I disagree with almost everyone for different reasons.

@Barheim

Good for him! Shame he's getting none of the funds out of it, though.

Would be absolutely devastating to be a trans kid in school and have to go through the humiliation of being forced into the wrong gendered spaces.

Gosh. Think it would be more devastating for girls to have those of the opposite sex exposing themselves in changing rooms etc. Whether semi-erect, or not, like in the Wi Spa. Also to have those of the opposite sex who wish to come into girls' changing spaces and being given the opportunity to view girls in vulnerable positions.

Opposite sex would have been devastating for me. What's gender really? And what does it change in any meaningful or material way?

I find this 'assigned gender at birth' thing bonkers. My boy clearly had a penis at birth and my girl clearly had a vulva. We observed their sex. Of course there's an outside chance that one or both of them has a DSD but that's very rare. I don't know why people say 'assigned'. Clearly it's observed. Not one person asked me what gender we had decided to assign to our children.

Ah but on this thread it’s not assigned, it’s been changed to “associated”.

It means a child who's gender is different from the one they were associated with at birth.

Leaving aside the grammatical error of who’s instead of whose, I think this means when a baby is born, their gender just hanging around with type, but later it hangs around with another. Or something .

@NotBadConsidering

Ah but on this thread it’s not assigned, it’s been changed to “associated”.

It means a child who's gender is different from the one they were associated with at birth.

Leaving aside the grammatical error of who’s instead of whose, I think this means when a baby is born, their gender just hanging around with type, but later it hangs around with another. Or something .

The obvious solution is to stop associating people with genders, then.

But this is what "gender critical" means and those are bad words so we can't possibly consider doing that. Far easier to give kids hormones and surgery and insist spaces are separated by gender, for some reason.

Would I have been allowed to register my baby with a penis as a girl? What would happen if I had done that?

Would be absolutely devastating to be a trans kid in school and have to go through the humiliation of being forced into the wrong gendered spaces.

Would be absolutely devastating to be a kid of whatever biological sex and have to get undressed infront of people of the opposite biological sex at school.

@CovidCorvid

Would be absolutely devastating to be a trans kid in school and have to go through the humiliation of being forced into the wrong gendered spaces.

Would be absolutely devastating to be a kid of whatever biological sex and have to get undressed infront of people of the opposite biological sex at school.

Precisely. It can't be either/or, there has to be a solution that enables everyone to get changed with privacy and dignity. It's too simplistic to say it's transphobic to segregate on sex. Facilities are segregated this way for the safety and dignity of the majority of users. You can't simply throw that out. If it's decided not to segregate this way you have to consider if the facilities are still fit for purpose.

@Franca123

Would I have been allowed to register my baby with a penis as a girl? What would happen if I had done that?

I'm waiting for someone to try and do this. Claim that they sensed their child in utero was assigned the wrong gender. We've gotten as far as trans toddlers so it can't be far off.

We've gotten as far as trans toddlers so it can't be far off.

Trans babies even, according to Diane Ehrensaft. Babies who are capable of sending a pre-verbal 'gender message'.

@OldCrone

I don’t intend to waste my time arguing with the new wave ploppers and disruptors. They’re not bringing any new talking points or arguments that we haven’t already dissected thousands of times.

Alongside the ploppers and disruptors I expect a lot of people who simply want to know more about these issues will find their way here. The posters seeking to disrupt the discussion give us an opportunity to explain some of the facts.

By asking questions of the disruptors which they appear unable to answer, new lurkers can also see the weaknesses of the TRA position. Posters like Barheim are actually quite useful in this respect.

But perhaps Barheim will surprise us all and come back with coherent answers to questions like:

What does 'being trans' mean? (Not what it's not, we want to know what it is)

What is a 'gender identity'? (Not what it's not, we want to know what it is)

Why have adult trans people fought to avoid compulsory sterilisation for adults who want to be recognised as trans, but at the same time are advocating for treatment for so-called trans children which will leave them sterile?

You make excellent points. It is very tiresome to have to keep retreading the same ground, but we must not lose sight of the lurkers.

Franca123
A quick poll on how many contributors to this thread are anti - abortion would be interesting! I highly doubt many if any are?! In my social circles it's virtually non existant. Even my very Conservative mother is very pro abortion

But would anyone know if people were telling the truth.

People say to you that they are pro choice because that is what people want to hear.
The nastiness when someone says they aren’t means you are never going to know if people are telling the truth.

Seems to me the "feeling inside" crowd have a very naive understanding of the human mind.

The human mind is shaped by its environment. Our concepts of man and woman, girl and boy are learned not innate. We aren't born with any concepts attached to words in the English language. If some people don't hang those concepts on observed biology, their "internal sense" is being informed by some other associations that they have with the English words man and woman. What can there be except stereotypes?

Our sense of biological male and female on the other hand is quite strong - as animals we evolved that way to be able to identify the opposite sex to breed.

I'm waiting for someone to try and do this. Claim that they sensed their child in utero was assigned the wrong gender. We've gotten as far as trans toddlers so it can't be far off.

I was on here (I think) talking about sex-selective abortion. A poster was bemoaning the number of embryonic transmen who were being aborted. They weren't joking.

Bythemillpond. Of course you may be right. I've just never got the sense that it's much of an issue in the UK. I know in America it's hugely contentious. I would have to look up attitude polls on it to be sure. I guess my wider point was just that I don't recognise the popular view of mumsnetters or gender critical femists as an archetype. Especially not one wearing 'sweat pants and a pony tail'.

It's too simplistic to say it's transphobic to segregate on sex. Facilities are segregated this way for the safety and dignity of the majority of users. You can't simply throw that out. If it's decided not to segregate this way you have to consider if the facilities are still fit for purpose.

Quite.

If someone states, for their sense of privacy, dignity, safety, identity, beliefs and comfort they do not wish to have to change in front of or shower with people of the same sex then absolutely that should be respected. No one should ever be forced to undress in a situation they feel uncomfortable and pressured in: safeguarding 101.

The answer is to absolutely provide them with alternative private facilities, no fuss, no problem. That's inclusion. That's diversity.

For a person to say for reasons of their sense of privacy, dignity and comfort they insist on being permitted to undress alongside students of the opposite sex who will have to change and shower alongside them regardless of their sense of privacy, dignity, identity, safety, beliefs and comfort.....? And I don't care about their consent?

No.

That is not inclusion, that's something else entirely. Other people have rights too.

And how much would they have claims if they had used the men’s facilities and been sexually abused?

It sure is a good thing that trans people have repeated over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and OVER, that this has nothing to do with being trans.

I have never reads any article on trans children (including on the Mermaids Charity website) that doesn’t rely on stereotypes.

However it’s true that some adults who identify as trans seem to have a definition of trans that defies objective categorisation because they appear to be gender conforming.

‘Trans’ seems to be a subjective category that can mean anything, which is a bit of a problem when people talk about trans rights.

If you assume that butch women are being attacked because people are trying to attack trans women using the proper bathroom, ergo your own group, you're correct.
I've clicked on these links and all these women are obviously female. Until you can disprove homophobia, and unless there is some proof this hostility has increased recently, this is just an appeal to emotion.
I'm a very butch lesbian, more so than the women in these articles* and I have experienced women being initially shocked by my appearance in a public toilet. At a second glance most women relax, because they can tell I am a woman and not a man. Very occasionally I will get some homophobia.

*the woman who is referred to in two of these articles as having had multiple issues is reported by PinkNews without mentioning she is "Associate Director of Policy & Research at Stonewall"

You can’t be looking very hard or you can’t tell a ‘butch’ woman from a girly girl. Really - you must just not be looking or hearing.

What?

The 'when you keep male people out of your single sex spaces it hurts women who don't follow feminine stereotypes' is just one of many ways to try and coerce women into surrendering their privacy.

I have a relative now in her 80s, who has all her adult life been out and very much following the 'bulldyke' style, often in leathers and with a shaved head. She has encountered some homophobia, but women haven't been confused as to what sex she was and this isn't a problem she recognises.

Part of me has doubt as to how real this very recently mentioned issue actually is, and how much it is serving a useful purpose in trying to shame and bully women into giving up boundaries against males.

Another part points out that until it became, very recently, a situation where female people began to encounter male people with a sense of entitlement to be in their single sex spaces regardless of impact on them, female people never had to worry about the difference between a masculine expressing female or a male person.

This does not make the need of female people for male people to respect their boundaries and sex based needs go away.

What is a girly girl?