what does it mean "live as a woman"?

[vivariumvivariumsvivaria]

I gather that in order for a male person who believes themselves to be feminine they have to "live as their acquired gender" for 2 years in order to get a GRC.

Is there a definition of how women live? Because I don't think I qualify.

I've been reminded of this great article by Glosswitch. Very relevant to the issues around young female transitioners, whose needs get obscured by the voices of more socially prominant male transitioners.

InHunger Strike, Susie Orbach describes how recovery from anorexia is seen by many as having been achieved “when the normal weight is reached and appropriate sex role functioning is achieved”. It is not just a matter of “being healthy” or “looking normal”; gaining body fat means, for a woman, gaining hips and breasts and having to contend with the gendered expectations that accompany this. A female with hips and breasts has a job to do, a role to perform, both sexually and reproductively. I did not want this role. It was easier to change my body than to ask the world to accommodate my humanity.

There is a way in which I understand force-feeding and coercive eating disorder management as a form of conversion therapy, an attempt to impose gender conformity on an unwilling subject. The problem is not the anorexia sufferer’s refusal to eat; she is absolutely correct in assuming that by gaining weight, she will be expected to give up something very personal and meaningful to her. “I have gained weight, but lost myself,”writes Nancy Tucker of her own recovery. “How can I explain that inside I remain an anorexic, but trapped in a fat suit?” How can one be seen as human being while looking like a woman? The anorexic must struggle with this conundrum, at least if she wants to live, but it cannot be hers alone to solve.

I first became ill in 1987, aged 11. I’d been an early developer, already wearing a bra at primary school. I did not want to be that person, the fat girl, the slag, the one who got her breasts groped, her bra snapped, pushed into corners, the one who ended up playing that role anyhow, because it’s less shameful to be a slut in a slut’s body than it is to be a blushing eleven-year-old prude with tits. I tried it for a while, a good eight months, then I gave up and stopped eating. Such a pattern is not uncommon.Eating disorders are more prevalentin those of us who experience an early onset of puberty. I knew, absolutely and without question, that the body I had acquired was not the one I was supposed to have. I wanted to be one of the skinny, straight girls, the ones whose bodies were indistinguishable from those of the boys. Better still, I wanted to be a boy, to never have to gain hips and breasts, or to bleed, again.

Had I been born thirty years later, starvation may not have felt like my only option. By which I do not mean that the situation for pubescent girls has improved. My groping male classmates interpreted female bodies through the lens ofPlayboyand page three; the harder, faster, crueller world of online porn was yet to come. I mean I could have said I was not a girl. I did not feel like a girl. I was not a girl, not that girl, not that bleeding, stinking body I had become. It would not have been a lie. If I were going through what I went through thirty years ago today, perhaps I would not have needed to flee puberty all alone. I could have asked for help. Instead of having to face down my force-feeding adversaries, I could have found adults willing to support me in my efforts to sculpt a body more in keeping with my sense of self.

For instance, recent advice given to UK schoolson how to accommodate the needs of transgender children includes information on chest-binding. According to Cornwall Council, binding can be “hot, uncomfortable and restrictive – but very important to [pupils’] psychological wellbeing”. Teachers are nonetheless told to remain aware of the risk of “breathing difficulties, skeletal problems and fainting”. Lancashire County Council offers the following advice:

“If you have young people who bind their chests, monitor them carefully during physical activities and in hot weather. It may be necessary to subtly offer more breaks.”

I’m perfectly aware that one is not supposed to question guidance of this nature. But I think, just for one moment, we should be honest about what we are witnessing. Young people who hate their breasts, absolutely loathe them, would be willing to take a knife to them and slice them off, would be practically suicidal if someone told them that these breasts were with them for life. Young people who know without doubt that their inner selves, their very identities, are wholly incompatible with the ownership of breasts. Young people who, in other words, feel exactly as I did. And instead of challenging this self-hatred – instead of acknowledging the pain (which no one did for me), but also recognising that it is not caused by the body itself – grown adults are accepting this narrative without question. Because it’s easiest. Because yes, a child still suffers, but the ends (not looking female) are deemed to justify the means (physical pain and possible long-term damage).

Pink Newsrecently described the drawing of comparisons between anorexia and certain narratives of transgender experience as “insulting”. It was not made clear who was being insulted, but I’m guessing it was not anorexia sufferers; after all, they’re the mentally ill ones. While I have no desire to get into a long discussion on the arbitrary nature of definitions of sanity, I think it is perfectly possible to acknowledge the cultural, political and gendered meanings of anorexia without going all-out pro-ana and suggesting it is not an illness at all. It is an illness that operates within particular social settings, in response to and interacting with particular cultural influences. “The world gets harder and harder,”writes Hilary Mantel on self-imposed starvation. “There’s no pleasing it. No wonder some girls want out.”

The female-to-trans narrative offers a different way of framing the same impossible dilemma. We know that there are countless individuals who have always had this sense of not-belonging. It is now being suggested that contemporary trans politics is granting them to access the language and treatments they have needed all along. But another way of putting it might be that a vocabulary and treatment protocol have been created precisely in order to accommodate rather than challenge the relationship between gender and hatred of one’s own sexed body. What we are seeing remains a symptom, not a cure.

Continues: www.newstatesman.com/politics/2016/08/anorexia-breast-binding-and-legitimisation-body-hatred

"no"

"...but...I'm special...you're mean...shit science..."

"no"

"we've always seen you, but we now see you as dangerous because male people who push our boundaries, ignore our no's and impose their male bodies in our spaces and on our rights and IN OUR BODIES all look the same to us"

@ArabellaScott

Ah, is it that one needs to try and convince oneself of the thing, as much as other people?

Believe three impossible things before breakfast!

Tut, tut! Such half measures.

SIX impossible things before breakfast

I'm trying to determine the inflection point where femaleness is defined. It's clearly extremely important to posters on this thread! This seems like it lies at the very core of the issue being discussed here - how do we define femaleness? Is it genetic? Primary sex characteristics? Socialisation? The combination of all three?

The female sex in humans is characterised by XX-chromosomes, ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, vagina internally and a vulva externally, with breasts normally developing in puberty. There's no inflection point (the point in a curve after which it changes direction) for femaleness because when you plot males and females in humans, you're not plotting curves but separate bar graphs with a whole universe of nothing in between.

Might I recommend Peachyoghurt's excellent video here, since you seem to believe that a member of the female sex not being equipped with all of those things somehow invalidates the whole category and qualifies males to enter it:

You say the matter is complex - I agree! It's extremely complex! I'm trying to find a workable definition we can use in discussion.

We have a workable definition, thank you. How about you apply that female socialisation you say you cultivated for yourself and accept the definition we're using, which is the biological definition of woman, as used in UK law?

Which is: a woman is an adult human female. Female denotes the sex capable of producing ova and bearing offspring. (I described the equipment that this typically includes above.)

You have sadly misunderstood the points we were making about socialisation completely. So to be clear: socialisation does not have a bearing on an individual's sex but only on their personality, as expressed in preferences, dislikes, behaviour, mannerisms and so on. Socialisation does not determine sex. That's because sex is determined at conception and observed at birth. Socialisation only starts after birth.

A thought experiment:

Take twin children, a boy and a girl, and subject them to opposite-sex socialisation. In puberty, which of the two will you talk to about the possibility of falling pregnant when having sex?

Obviously, we both know the answer to that.

Our point about socialisation is not that it determines the sex of female individuals but that it determines our behaviour to such an extent that it is extremely difficult for male people to successfully pass as female when they interact with female people in real life. Female socialisation comes with a lot of attributes that male socialisation does not. It is hard to unpick and even harder to convincingly mimic precisely because it requires us to do so many things to fit in that male children are simply not expected to do. To use your words, our minds are encoded from birth with self-negating attitudes and behaviours that boys' minds are not. That's why many male transgender people give themselves away as male even when their outward appearance does not obviously do so.

Like the prettily dressed male who pushes past the queue in the women's toilet, or the male panel member on an otherwise female panel on women's issues who dominates every time despite having little real understanding of the issue. (The latter for instance hammered home sex in a way that appearance didn't for an audience who mostly didn't know the speaker was trans.)

It's often a combination of complete or partial ignorance of women's experiences growing up female in a male-dominated world who now as adults still navigate the same issues coupled with male entitlement which manifests as that unshakeable belief that what men say is worth listening to, that they have a right to speak and a right to be listened to, that what men do is worth doing, that they have a right to do it and a right to keep on doing it, regardless of what women think. And so on.

And I'm not saying your behaviour on here proves you cannot successfully pass in real life. I don't know you, and we're having a debate where we're on opposing sides that wouldn't be happening if you didn't feel in some way that you were right and wanted to find agreement that this is the case. That alone tells me very little about your actual behaviour in real life.

The one thing that raises doubts in my mind though is that you are not clear here - are we having this debate because you wish to carve out an exception for male transsexuals who have fully transitioned, or only for those who are fully or partially puberty-blocked and fully transitioned or for all who sincerely believe themselves to be female, who may or may not be able to transition? I mean who are you arguing for and to what purpose?

As for 46, XY - you know better than that ButterflyHatched. People with DSDs are not a gotcha to use in this debate. That's for teenagers (like mine when they think they're being clever. It doesn't work for them either).

Furthermore, 46, XY covers about 17 or so different conditions, which result in children born with clearly male, clearly female or ambiguous genitalia. When the latter happens today, the child and its parents are referred to specialist doctors who investigate what condition the child has, how it may develop and what specific healthcare needs he or she will have throughout life.

An 46, XY child born with female genitalia is obviously female-bodied and will therefore be registered and raised as female. If you remember that chromosomes are merely the starting point of sex differentiation and not the end point this will make much more sense to you.

The starting point are XX and XY chromosomes. If everything goes right, the end point is a female-bodied child or a male-bodied child respectively. If something goes wrong along the developmental pathway, the end point may be a male-bodied child and a female-bodied child respectively. And this is how these children will be classified. Their personal circumstances do not change the sex categories in humans though.

Which is why none of that has any bearing on the sex of male adults who wish to be female. Or validates the claims of those born as phenotypically completely unambiguous XY males to have changed sex.

Take polydactyly. It happens in 1 in 500 live births. (Ambiguous genitalia are observed in around 1 in 5000 live births. 46, XY females are estimated to occur at a rate of 6.4 in 100,000 live births.)

The fact that 1 in 500 children are born with more than ten fingers and/or more than ten toes does not invalidate the fact that humans come with ten fingers and ten toes as standard. The human blueprint doesn't change just because there's been an error in production. It stays the same.

This is also true if we look at people born with DSDs. Yes, their bodies differ from the human blueprint. No, that doesn't mean the blueprint is no longer valid. Because the blueprint is valid for 99.98% of us. Given that the human blueprint including ten fingers and toes is only valid for 99.8% of us and we're still not throwing it out as valid for fingers and toes, we're most definitely not going to throw it out for the sexes.

HTH

@Runningupthecurtains

I'm trying to find a workable definition we can use in discussion. You are trying to find a loophole that admits you to womanhood, the problem is any loophole that admits you also admits Dave the 6'6" bearded, shovel handed trucker with a string of DV convictions. If you actually think and feel "like a woman" you know instantly why this is totally unacceptable. That fact that you don't seem to be able to make that leap tells me that however extensive the "treatment" you have had, however well you think you pass, however female you feel you are not a woman.

So herein lies the problem! I can and do make that leap. I do it subconsciously all the time. I get that same fight-or-flight turn-to-stone freeze reaction to seeing people who have obviously spent most of their lives under the effects of testosterone and male socialisation in a place where their presence is perceived as unusual/inappropriate. I hear the voice; see the frame, the subconscious body language, and all my twenty years of 'don't be alone with him' 'cross the road now so you don't have to do it next to' 'he is still behind you isn't he, would it be more dangerous to turn and check or just keep walking faster?' 'next stop and walk back' 'does he realise how loud he is?' 'call me when you get home' 'please just get a taxi' 'oh god he's stopped and turned' instantly kicks in. That primal, desperate fear - that exhaustion, that 'please for god's sake, don't let me become another miserable statistic; another sacrifice upon the altar of men's desperate need to control and own our bodies and brutalise us for daring to defy them; for daring to even exist in their presence' silent prayer.

I'm acutely aware of it, that my perspective of other trans people is horrendously subject to the same social conditioning factors as anyone else. I hate it. I hate it so much. It makes me feel so incredibly uncomfortable, on so many levels. The weirdest combination of guilt alongside all the usual fears and oppressions we live under every day as women. Like I'm subconsciously throwing other people under the bus. I should be supporting them, right? Accepting them into spaces that have been as much mine as any other woman's for my entire adult life. But supporting them comes at a cost. It involves raising a target above your head; opening discussion on points of definition which you stand to lose the most over. Threatening a sacrifice of that refuge; that sense of safety that I've hugely benefited from. That I'm not even sure I could live without.

Am I 'one of the good ones'? One of the 'safe' ones? How? Why? Because I have small hands and a soft voice; because I sorted my shit out quickly enough, at a point in history early enough but not too early, that I dodged the worst effects of an unwanted puberty? Is that what we're reduced to? Because I've been using single-sex spaces for twenty+ years alongside my friends, most of my partners, my mother, my sister, my cousins, my female colleagues... and my suddenly stopping using them would be utterly, perplexingly incomprehensibly nonsensically bizarre. Not a single person who knows me, who has shared public facilities with me, who has shared those awkward glances and knowing looks and 'seen; got your back' subconscious tells, had the 'do you want me to walk with you?' veiled threat-management conversations, the knowing looks across a bar or a dancefloor or on the tube or bus at night; had to pretend to be in a relationship just to get -that guy- to go away; has watched aghast as we are talked over, interrupted, dismissed, mansplained at, reduced to collections of biological functions and bags of organs over; has had pithy reductive, axiomatic statements weaponised against in order to sneer and demean and deny - not a single one would think that it would be appropriate for me to use what is obviously the wrong set of spaces.

Nobody wants that. I think. I think?

I'm not asking how you define femaleness to catch people out with tricky, obfuscatory word games so we can open the floodgates and let the men into our refuges. I'm not trying to be clever, I'm not trying to tear apart the definition of 'woman' because I want to invade women's spaces myself or open them up to invasion.

I'm asking because I'm already a part of women's spaces. They're a fundamental part of my life. I can't escape them; can't escape the need for them. I don't think I get to be the arbiter of their use, but I am affected by decisions that inform their use. The commonly cited definitions here exclude me, and others like me, from our own places of refuge!

If we're to be the sacrifice; if there really is no way to square this circle other than to suddenly start excluding people like me who have been living our lives as part of the sisterhood for decades; for our entire adult lives, and half our teenage ones - then so be it. It seems profoundly, desperately wrong, though. I think we can do better.

Nice post Charlie.

If we're to be the sacrifice; if there really is no way to square this circle other than to suddenly start excluding people like me who have been living our lives as part of the sisterhood for decades; for our entire adult lives, and half our teenage ones - then so be it. It seems profoundly, desperately wrong, though. I think we can do better

What's this " we"

Women solved this problem. We fought fir these spaces. fir women*

When males use these spaces they no longer are womens spaces. So you removed them yourself. Thats not on us that's you amd other males who felt entitled to use them and therfore erase women only spaces.

Your beef should be with stonewall and the like because if they hadn't tried to put Cross dressers under the same umbrella then you probably could have continued to remain unnoticed as one of only 5000 or so.

Bit they got greedy now anyone is supoosed to have the right to self ID in ajd we are saying NO. Blame them not us

Cutting through the self serving, self describing, pity me hyperbole...

I'm not asking how you define femaleness to catch people out with tricky, obfuscatory word games so we can open the floodgates and let the men into our refuges. I'm not trying to be clever, I'm not trying to tear apart the definition of 'woman' because I want to invade women's spaces myself or open them up to invasion.

There is no WE here. And every word you utter to the contrary is you tearing apart the definition of woman, is you justifying your invasion fo female single sex spaces.

I'm asking because I'm already a part of women's spaces. They're a fundamental part of my life. I can't escape them; can't escape the need for them. I don't think I get to be the arbiter of their use, but I am affected by decisions that inform their use. The commonly cited definitions here exclude me, and others like me, from our own places of refuge!

Nope. For you they are a choice. One you made many years ago and for all of those years have used on sufferance of the women also using those spaces. Single sex, female spaces are NOT your spaces, not your refuges and you most certainly are trying to be the arbiter of their use. Every word you utter here, including yourself does that very loudly.

If we're to be the sacrifice; if there really is no way to square this circle other than to suddenly start excluding people like me who have been living our lives as part of the sisterhood for decades; for our entire adult lives, and half our teenage ones - then so be it. It seems profoundly, desperately wrong, though. I think we can do better.

Sacrifice? Ye gods! For decades I, like every woman I know, made no movement on seeing a transwoman in a female single sex space - fear, indoctrination etc. You were NEVER part of 'the sisterhood' becase many women were/are wary, nervous, scared of you or simply just don't want you in those spaces.

You mistook reticence for acceptance.

And yes, we can all do better. And for transwomen, transmen too, that includes an honest re-evaluation of all that has gone before; an honest acknlowledgement that all that went before may not have been as you thought; an honest and concerted effort to doing what women had to do - make your own safe spaces, get legislation passed that keeps you safe WITHOUT taking something from anyone else!

I don't think I get to be the arbiter of their use, but I am affected by decisions that inform their use.

To revisit that bit.

Currently yuou are not in any way affected by women saying no. Because you are ignoring us. You haven't taken on board a single word that has been said to you, you are just rebuffing us all, re-stating your own perspective.

Not all transwomen do that. I know a few, on here and in real life, who don't do that. They may have done in the past but for some years now have heard women say no and have chosen to make other choices, ones that do not involve using any single sex female space at all.

They re-evaulated their lives and, sad as they are, hurt, confused, annoyed and angry as they are, they have heard women saying no!

To be truthful I think some of this is a little harsh

Yes butterfly had a choice , but how free a choice was it ?

Without the right mental health support , but with plenty of encouragement from homophobes and people who want to force strict gender roles , we see many youngsters making the same "choice"

I see ( almost ) all those who have surgically transistioed as a type of victim. It's impossible to change sex , virtually impossible to pass as the opposite sex, yet these people are encouraged to follow an impossible path.

I therefore don't think it's to be expected that she can give rational snd logical answer to many of the questions

Third spaces however is the only pragmatic solution I can see

Without the right mental health support , but with plenty of encouragement from homophobes and people who want to force strict gender roles , we see many youngsters making the same "choice"

Its like that saying though isn't it. " how many bad things can a good man do before he can no longer be considered a good man"

There are 2 choices within everyone's control and they are that they can stop blaming women fir saying no. And fighting with us. Desperately trying to find a " way in" that can not nor ever will realky exist.

Or they can choose to continue to do the work of said homophobes and help create more of the same.

When that secind one is chosen any sympathy goes out the window fir me tbh.

Yes butterfly had a choice , but how free a choice was it ?

I was talking about the choice to use single sex, female spaces, especially in the face of female opposition. The choice to continue to tell women that transwomen are as female as we are. The choice not to re-evaluate those decisions.

The decisions around transing - I make no comment as I just don't know, have never experienced it and wouldn't want to presume. That and trans friends speak of it as an unbearable compulsion...

Yes I do think that transitioning actively supports the notion of gendered roles that perpetuates the harm such notions cause

( and I can always get the wrong end of a stick )
( but if I can others can, so the clarity is useful )

And until third spaces are readily available, the choices are perhaps too restrictive

I suspect the unbearable nature of the desire is propped up by it being an option

I realised I wasn't as clear as I should have been, so thanks for the heads up and oopportunity to clarify.

I think, and I am guilty of this, that we forget that at the root of all this are people who are being pulled from pillar to post.

Some of the things trans individuals and organisations are asking for are wholly justified. As a GC women I have, and have seen many others here, discuss this at length. But it boils down to the repeated rejection of third spaces:

Transwomen are women, so why do they need to use a different space (I'd include transmen but there doesn't seem tot be as much shouting about it from them, or men!).

Third spaces don't validate choices made. That is what Butterfly is demonstarting here. No matter how often women say no the need to be female overrides us. Third spaces are not acceptable

And that's why we are still here arguing about it.

Women say no
Transwomen say yes

And the law, governments, organisations have not, yet, stood up and made a decision. Scottish parliament, and Welsh, is trying. Sadly their 'fix' is to agree that human beings can change sex and that male bodies people can go anywhere they like.

Which takes us back to

Women say no
Transwomen say yes

I would assume that if say, the Tories say no and support women then we will see more

Transwomen saying no
Women saying yes

But the roundabout remains the same, regardless of the direction it turns!

Of course not all women, not all transwomen.

I find that post very manipulative, butferfly Because it doesn't make any sense. So I'm not buying it

If you pass to the point where no one can tell, you wouldn't give a monkeys.

Certainly not spend day after day on here trying to redefine the concept of sex. Why would you care so much about changing the concept of sex, if you are accepted everywhere purely on the basis of the way you look?

And if, as you seem to say, you have both feet firmly planted in the woman camp, to the extent that you empathise them on every level, you would be starting posts on here campaigning for a third space. One that wouldn't harm you and wouldn't harm the women you claim you feel so much like.

A third space for women who don't mind, men who don't mind, and everyone who is trans and feels uncomfortable in a sex segregated space.

You trying to force women to accept a definition of sex that exclude women from their own spaces because it includes a whole subset of men, is the opposite of having an affinity with women.

And again, honestly, what is the point? If no one knows you're male what on earth is the point of all this?

Such male behaviour, Butterfly. Take what you want, knowing that women have been culturally conditioned to give way and be nice.

Good posts, Charley and Datun.

I have to agree with Datun. I find it hard to believe that someone who claims to be and feel so totally like a woman spend so much time trying to include males in the definition of women.

I had a coffee morning with mums from my DDs school yesterday. There were a lot of mums. Insecure mums, “cool” mums, working mums, stay-at-home mums. Some too busy to stay long, some keen to fit in, some keen to arrange certain play dates for their children. School mums can be vicious and excluding but do you know what they all have in common? They don’t give a second thought to the fact that they are women. They were born women and they remain women. They are all different personalities, some get along, some really don’t. But all have biology in common, all (at this morning) have at least one child, worry about said child/children, all worry about menopause. But absolutely nobody tries to prove that they are women. Because they are women.

And one more thing. What Stonewall has done in schools is not a good thing for the trans community. I really feel sorry for the transwomen trying to go about their lives. The mums in my school are to a large extent immigrants. They never cared about anything of this before. But there were talks in school last year about transgender issues. It included sex stereotypes and was very confusing for the children. These non-political, “going about their lives” mums are actually angry. Because they came for their children. White privileged (mainly male) people came for their children. They said their husbands are angry. I really did not expect this. Neither this being brought up at a coffee morning, not the anger.

I've dipped in and out of this thread, and I do appreciate Butterfly's posts - whatever they reveal they are more welcome (to me!) than the 'your all biggots' that we often get. But I admit I've not read every post.

What comes across, and is something I've noticed far more than I thought recently, is how much 'being a woman' / being accepted etc comes down to REALLY believing it and REALLY looking like x/y/z.

Butterfly, there are lots of people in the past few years who have been arguing that having gender dysphoria should not be a requirement to be classed as trans, and that appearance is irrelevant.

Do you agree with either of these? I must admit I'm not sure how the first one works, as most people - I would have thought - see 'being trans' as almost synonymous with having some degree of gender dysphoria. (As to how that is diagnosed/assessed, that's obviously fairly reliant on stereotypes and is clearly problematic- but that's not really what I was focusing on here).

As for 'appearance' / passing - the current line is that gender is a feeling inside and one may or may not choose to alter their dress/appearance etc but that shouldn't be expected/required. (Again, most people seem to perceive TW as trying their hardest to look stereotypically overtly feminine, whereas I'm not sure this is in line with the Twitterati).

If we're to be the sacrifice; if there really is no way to square this circle other than to suddenly start excluding people like me who have been living our lives as part of the sisterhood for decades; for our entire adult lives, and half our teenage ones - then so be it.

Sacrifice? You mean - if it requires males to be excluded from female spaces to keep women safe - you mean you consider female safety to be an optional luxury, that you will consider bravely sacrificing your preference for using female spaces for?

How noble.

'The sisterhood' -

What is this 'sisterhood', please?

Look, we can make all sorts of concessions and considerations to help trans people with their dysphoria, accommodations, etc.

But males won't ever be female, and there is no way on the green earth that people can be convinced to agree that they can be, I'm afraid. Even if I was going to be convinced by sympathy or forced teaming or a desire to be kind, to pretend to agree, there is no part of me that can be cajoled, manipulated, persuaded, brainwashed, convinced, bullied or argued into actually thinking that males can be females.

And even if there WERE and I genuinely was made to believe that was a truth ... it still wouldn't be true! Because it's impossible!

When it comes to dysphoric males, there is a good solution - you can fight for third spaces. Fionn Orlander and Miranda Yardley have done great work on that subject. And/or, they have 'expanded the bandwidth' of being male.

What you're asking, for males to be women, is just flat out impossible. I'm sorry that anyone has led you to believe that it's not, I appreciate that it sounds difficult for you, but it might in the long run be best if you tried to come to terms with that.

I would have thought that anyone who was genuinely part of the sisterhood - someone who actually identified with women - would understand that as a male "woman" they posed particular issues for the sisterhood, and understand that any sort of demand to let males into women's spaces threatened the vast majority.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

I like to think that if I was in Butterfly's position, I would not act like that. Maybe it's easy to say, as someone without gender dysphoria, but if I did feel some need to live "as a woman" I would not extend that to an insistence that I need to use female spaces while being male.

I find it hard to even envisage feeling that entitled. I guess I just identify with women too much.

This thread has made me change my mind. I used to believe that hospitals, prisons, shelters etc needed to be single sex.

I also used to believe that I personally would be ok with a transwoman who had gone through SRS in the toilets but that it wasn’t my call to make.

I can categorically now say that I think all women’s spaces, including toilets need to be single sex for everyone. People who are born male do not listen to women. And they do not accept when women say no. This is exactly what we need to keep out of women’s spaces. NO.

@BatmansBat

This thread has made me change my mind. I used to believe that hospitals, prisons, shelters etc needed to be single sex.

I also used to believe that I personally would be ok with a transwoman who had gone through SRS in the toilets but that it wasn’t my call to make.

I can categorically now say that I think all women’s spaces, including toilets need to be single sex for everyone. People who are born male do not listen to women. And they do not accept when women say no. This is exactly what we need to keep out of women’s spaces. NO.

A wiser woman than me once said when you meet a man for the first time and you want to know his character, tell him no. About something fairly innocuous, but a firm no.

And watch his reaction.

It's exceptionally good advice.

That's an interesting idea, Datun. Hm.

Yes, Batman. That male entitlement doesn't disappear with the testosterone, does it.