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.

Where did it go wrong?
Biology deniers
Rapists in prisons
Indoctrination of children
Medical transition of children
Being banned from forums and other social media sites for speaking the truth of biology
Erosion of women's sports
I know you said upthread Butterfly, that most trans women just want to live quiet lives. The experience I've personally had has not been this. They want very public validation, almost wanting to be challenged to make a point.

I think those are some of the issue where it has all started to throw light onto the subject.

One of the reasons I do not want this trans woman in my female toilet at work is because I am in a senior position - which puts me in the age range of menopause. Senior male employees don't need to deal with menopause, and I don't think they, or any trans woman will have insight into what can happen.

I had a "surprise" period at work - the kind that you can't get off the toilet because blood and clots are pouring out. Doesn't matter how many pads you put on, you soak through them within half an hour - by which I mean the blood is wicking into the arse of your suit - which is not a good look for a senior manager. I was stuck in there and evenetlaly a female colleague came in and asked "are you ok?" I could say, without embarrassment "It's like Carrie in here. It'll take me an hour to sort, can you bring me my phone, I'll have to work from the pan". And she did, she brought me phone, extra loo roll, extra pads and offered to nip to M+S to get me new knickers and tights - because she understood what it was like. No shame, just "FFS, being female is shit and your timing is worse, these deadlines have to be met, thank goodness the wifi reaches here"

That wouldn't work if the toilets are mixed sex. Even if it is a nice bloke, even if he has a DSD, even if it is Butterfly , being asked "are you ok?" by someone who is male is threatening when I am birthing plum sized clots out of my vagina.

I don't want to be in the situation at all, but if I am in a female only space it is manageable. ANY man coming in there ruins that space for me and for the majority of other women.

It's not about TW, or males with DSDs, or nervous males, it's about me. It is my space, it is given to me to meet my needs because my needs are biological or societal or traumatic - but they all stem from my female sex.

No.

Butterfly, I do feel quite sorry for you because, yes, I think the relationship between women and trans women has deteriorated due to the aggressive, non negotiable tactics of trans rights activists. I used to be very accepting and compassionate, and could do the clucking mother hen role with the best of them. But unfortunately all of my good will has drained dry, and it has become apparent that if women are to retain our substantive legal rights we can’t just roll over and allow the concept of women to be redefined to encompass any male who feels like a woman.

I imagine it must really suck being caught up in this, and it must be sad to realise that the acceptance of you as a women is entirely contingent on the goodwill of women. We are required to validate trans identities, and this is why I don’t understand why so many trans activists treat women and potential allies like absolute shit.

Now we are told any male person who says he is a woman is literally a woman. They are demanding access to our spaces and abusing us if we express discomfort. It feels very different. It doesn't feel safe.

And there is no way to make it safe.

Number one, you can't make a distinction between a man who's going make you feel uncomfortable, or attack you, and a man who isn't.

Number two, many women will exclude themselves from a space based on the fact that there's a man in there, no matter what they're like. Harmless or not.

Anyone who advocates for this, like butterfly, is not helping women.

And make no mistake, it's the most vulnerable women that we have.

Prison inmates, mental health ward patients, rape victims, homeless women.

Their presence is essential. It's not the space that's important, it's their presence in the space. Its crucial. They are being served up. To validate males.

If they all left the space, the space will be unappealing, and the new space, where they all congregated, would be the focus.

These women are being used as resources, tools. The most vulnerable women we have. To validate the feelings of men.

Quite frankly I don't give a fuck if someone disagrees with me, because it tells me everything I need to know about them. And it demonstrates everything I'm talking about. If a woman wants to sacrifice the most vulnerable women we have to validate men, then let everyone hear it and make up their own mind.

Great post Datun👏👏👏

“If a woman wants to sacrifice the most vulnerable women we have to validate men, then let everyone hear it and make up their own mind.*

👏👏👏👏👏👏

Absolutely this.

Agree, Datun

I used to swim at a women's only session - only because the timing of it suited my week and a group of school mum chums were going as they were Muslim. It was done really well - there were only female guards and changing room staff on and they had big curtains to pull over the windows.

I loved it, and enjoyed seeing my friends there.

Inevitably, a trans woman wanted to join. To be fair, the TW asked the pool if they could and they said yes.

TW turns up in a bikini and had a swim - this person wasn't threatening or being inappropriate in any way, other than this person was a male in a space being used by females.

And guess what happened? The Muslim women didn't come back. They didn't complain, they didn't email, they just left.

And now they don't swim.

That is not ok.

WeeBisom I'm the same.

I USED to be welcoming and inclusive.

Stonewall did this, Stonewall told me lies and gas lit me and stole what belonged to me - my words and my spaces. In doing that Stonewall has harmed people like Butterfly just as much as they have harmed the women that Datun writes about so eloquently.

Yes.

I've kind of had it with being expected to be a prop in male persons' fantasies about what they are. I've had it with the most vulnerable women in our society being expected to validate delusional males with their bodies. I've had it with the language we have available to describe ourselves being utterly bastardised for the sake of male fantasy. I've had it with children being poisoned and butchered by stupid doctors at the alter of the gender gods and again male fantasy.

We women are fucking whole human beings... not non-player characters in a sick game for narcissists.

We aren't a fucking avatar you can select to play either.

Reality is a bitch. It's about time she barged in here and broke up the fucking party.

I'm trying to work out when and where we went wrong. What changed?

It went wrong the minute men autocratically decided that some men should go into female only spaces because those men deemed they felt like they were women or should be. The door was opened a crack and now it's been kicked fully open. Some people spoke out about this at time and predicted this would happen, they, just like posters on here, were hand waved away with the it'll never happen trope. It HAS happened, it IS happening.

Males taking spaces in female sports to the detriment of females
Males taking female roles at Rape Crisis Centres
Males who rape being incarcerated in the female prison estate and then going on to rape and sexually assault those vulnerable females who have no route of escape
Language being mangled and obfuscated to assuage the feelings of males
Males on female hospital wards, even if they have a history of sex offending
Males being placed in locked psychiatric wards with females where they then go on to sexually assault and rape the females locked in there with them

All the above HAS happened and IS happening and it WAS predicted.

Because I'm a feminist and I believe it's worth striving for the liberation of all women

You are not a feminist, your version of feminism excludes swathes of women - it excludes me because I do not believe nor accept that you are a woman and have a right to be in female sex segregated spaces and services.

Your version of feminism excludes the vulnerable women in the prison estate who are facing rape and sexual assault at the hands of male inmates who claim to be women.

Your feminism excludes women who desperate to escape from a violent, abusive marriage put the phone down when they hear a male voice on the end of the crisis line.

Your version of feminism excludes women who need a refuge to escape to and can't access it due to the refuge including males who say they are women.

Your version of feminism excludes immigrant and religious women who can't and won't share single sex spaces and services with males.

Your version of feminism excludes women who have experienced trauma at the hands of males who can't and won't share single sex spaces and services with males.

Your version of feminism leads directly to the Karen White's and Katie Dolatowski's of this world.

How is your version of feminism going to 'liberate' those women when they are excluded from the very spaces and services they need because you are insisting on not only you being included but also any other male who declares themselves to feel like a woman?

because I think we can do better, because I think it's cowardly and woefully unfair to pull the ladder up behind me just because 'I've got mine' and don't want to rock the boat, and because the policies that get made off the back of the views formed and crystallised over discussions like this have the potential to cause immense harm.

Immense harm HAS been caused to women and girls and IS being caused to women and girls and yet you are still arguing that males be allowed to access female only single sex spaces and services.

The answer is to go back to the drawing board and back to single sex spaces and services being exactly that - single sex, alternative arrangements will need to be made for males who declare themselves women and do not want to use the single sex spaces and services allocated to them, that is the only way forward. To do anything else will just result in more women effectively removing themselves totally from society and more women and girls being victims of violence.

So I ask you Butterfly what is the tipping point? How many women and girls need to be harmed? How many woman and girls need to be excluded?

Some very long posts there Butterfly and I believe the length is a deliberate tactic.

I'm going to sum them up, by paragraph. Tell me where I'm going wrong, won't you.

11:16
1: I'm scared too
2: I'm scared of transwomen too and if I support them I'm a target
3: am I OK because I pass? My friends think so
4: don't open the floodgates and let all men in #notallmen
5: I'm already here anyway
6: and if you don't let them in* you'll have to throw me out too
(* presumably the floodgate men?)

18:02
1: question
2: be kind, sex based policies are harmful
3: transphobia exists and I am lucky
4: invisibility is a penance, my transness is erased
5+6: I care about the transwomen who don't pass
7: be kind, my friends are kind
8: gender dysphoria is real
9: case by case basis is sometimes right* also I'm kind
10: be kind
11+12+13: don't be mean, meanness is bad
14: my friends are kind
15: I pass
16: be kind
17: #notallmen, floodgates again
18: be kind
19: something something not mutually exclusive

(* Nobody wants to have to argue on a case by case basis)

“If a woman wants to sacrifice the most vulnerable women we have to validate men, then let everyone hear it and make up their own mind.

This! Exactly.

19:04
1: gender dysphoria is real
2: I have it
3: I don't have it any more
4: I'm still trans though
5: dunno about blockers without dysphoria
6: I'd be sad if I didn't have them
7: non-passing transwomen are valid
8: butch women exist
9: so complicated
10: you don't need to have gender dysphoria or be feminine to be a transwoman
11: I respect pronouns if I'm told them
12: I'm scared of men
13: trans people should make an effort, also women are kind
14: why pick on me now?
15: it's all very mean now
16: link

I, and other women, are not put on this earth to validate you, Butterfly or Dave the 6'5" trucker who dresses as a woman and calls himself Davina on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We were also not put on this earth to be human shields or collateral damage.

Enough.

It's clear to me that it's important to try; I don't think it's unreasonable to kindly ask people to do so.

And it’s not unreasonable having kindly asked, to accept them saying “no”. I say “no” to my daughter sharing private spaces with male children transitioning in her school, I say “no” to adult men in my gym changing rooms, I say “no” to counselling for trauma visited on me by men being offered to me by a man, I say “no” to intimate health exams being carried out on me by a man.

You can kindly ask, I can kindly say “no”. Your wish to “live as a woman” does not trump my lived experience as a woman, doesn’t negate my experience of abuse at the hands of men, doesn’t negate my right to autonomy over who I share private space with.

Your vulnerability and oppression doesn’t take precedence over mine. And I do mean that most kindly.

I think we can do better, because I think it's cowardly and woefully unfair to pull the ladder up behind me just because 'I've got mine' and don't want to rock the boat

It's an interesting way of putting it. 'I've got mine'.

What does that mean?

'I've got mine'.

Your what?

Thoughts, feelings, "causing harm", dressing a certain way, asking others to budge up or (shudder) be kind...tiresome, and ignorant of reality.

I knew I was pregnant within a week of conception, not just because of the physical changes but because the feelings of "look what I've done". I did not want to be pregnant and knew I wouldn't carry to term, but every day I wanted to carry a sign and wear a T shirt proclaiming "I have done something spectacular, and done it better than any other woman ever".

The feelings were unexpected and profound. Had social media and hashtags existed I suspect I'd have posted a picture with #yayme and #ta dah.

There isn't a force in the universe, no thoughts or desires, and no amount of hormones that will ever allow any natal male to experience those feelings, and with that a woman's physical presence in the world as a reminder of what she can do has been a stick used to beat women since the dawn of time.

No more. Enough is enough. We are no longer going to allow this.

Woman - adult human female.
Man - adult human male.
Human sex is binary; humans cannot change sex.
Transmen are women.
Transwomen are men.

Unless those facts are understood and acknowledged, any discussion will be pointless as it will be built on a foundation of lies. Single sex spaces and women's rights must not be set aside for any reason as has been allowed to happen, because women will no longer accede to being second class citizens.

Women and men with gender dysphoria deserve and should have the same safe passage through life as anyone else, but there will be no exceptions made for them. The rules - see the facts above - were set long before any of us were born and as such they are part of the guiding principles of how to get on in the world today.

There is only one way to "live as a woman" and that is to be born an XX female.

Your version of feminism

In fact, it's a version of feminism in which people born male organise 'female' and 'female' people to their own advantage while subordinating females and female interests. No. That isn't feminism, that's something else entirely.

There is not much point in insisting on inclusion and being the same when it is very clear that in this 'all women together' utopia there is one kind of women who must accept exclusion and subordination if their needs or feelings don't fit and just co operate, and another kind of women who have the right to make the rules, define everyone and everything to their own needs, be included and have their feelings matter as no one else's do, and to put their own needs first with no responsibility to anyone else.

And how do you separate the members of the group who expect to lead and control from the members of the group expected to be compliant? That little matter of sex, that wasn't supposed to be important.

No. The answer is just no now. Women have tried this experiment, they are realising in increasing numbers what absolute doormats they have been.

Completely agree, Chewton.

I believe it's worth striving for the liberation of all women

On this subject, I've lost count of the photos of signs I've seen at abortion access marches (and even the vigil for Sarah Everard) saying "no t**fs".

Do the intersectional pro-TRA feminists think rapists don't kill women who reject the concept of gendered souls? Do we not deserve to control our fertility?

But yeah they're the ones who support "all women". Yeah right

Don't make the mistake of thinking you speak for all biological women

Poor HarlanPepper. Reduced to describing herself as biological.

MildredsMoustache

Just to note, athough I quoted you, my post upthread wasn't directed at you! It was directed at HarlanPepper.

Better than cis!

Marginally

Let us make this blunt. If Sarah has sex with Mark, this does not mean she can consent on my behalf for me to have sex with Mark. I say NO to sex with Mark. Simple enough, yes?

If Sarah and I share a flat, she cannot invite Mark to move in to our shared flat without my consent. Because she cannot consent on my behalf.

Let us suppose we are flatmates again, but it's multiple occupancy- there are 5 women in the flat. There is a vacant room. Fred wants to move in. Four of us, including me, are all right with Fred moving in and being our sixth housemate.You aren't. Do you know what that means? It means Fred doesn't move in, because it is your flat too. The alternative would mean Fred's rights to become a tenant were more important that your rights as an existing tenant in your own flat. Even if you are outnumbered, your no cannot be overruled.

Consent is not transferable. You can't tell your current sexual partner that I'll sleep with him/her because you do. Nor can you tell transwomen I'm happy to share a hospital ward with them because you are.

Nor can you declare who should enter single-sex toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, prisons, and who should be able to apply for a job performing personal care for my grandmother. Nor can anyone consent on the behalf of the entire female population!

@Datun I got that, don't worry!