Need to vent work training- transgender talk

[AlwaysAWoman]

Today we had virtual training through work (Social Worker). We had some amazingly brilliant speakers, including a female doctor who raised very important issues relating to women and victim blame, mental health etc.

Following directly from this was a speaker on transgender issues. The speaker was listed as having female name and I was not surprised upon seeing them that they were, as they defined themselves, a 'transwoman'. (Although they did refer to themselves as woman as well).

This speaker consistently spoke about the rights of trans people, the importantance of being kind but it is protected by law etc. How NO ONE should feel scared to go in the toilet as trans people do.

Well, what the fuck about girls and womens rights to go to a toilet without a man in it? What about the girls and women who are survivors of rape and make violence and need female only spaces? Yet get called transphobic for calling this out?

What about OUR rights?

The speaker then went on to talk about how hormone intervention had been increased to 16 instead of 12 which was 'appalling' but 'luckily' it was back to being 12. Also little subtle sparky hints I imagine aimed at people who dislike the term 'cisgender'- 'it's Latin if you don't know'.

I can't really speak to my colleagues about this as have not yet identifies anyone like minded. I just feel angry.

@FitAt50

I have only been on mumsnet about 6 months, but I becoming aware that there seems to be an increasing amount of anti trans posts. This is very sad and I don't understand why?

Report anti trans posts if you see them. Mumsnet is one of the few forums where women can discuss the threat to sex based provision (refuges, hospital wards and prisons) that self id presents. That’s not transphobia.

Hello!

Under 40 here! Do you know what? I don't actually care about who is in the toilet cubicle next to me. I do, however care very much about other women being able to access toilets.

It doesn't matter whether I understand Jane from number 46's apprehension about sharing toilets, she still matters. Public toilets shod be accessible to her, and if they're not, she should be getting a tax rebate on all the public facilities that you are making mixed-sex.

Will you help with that?

As to whether women with opinions you don't like are going to die out? Well, I wouldn't bet on it. I used to be TWAW and guess what? I've grown out of it.

Meanwhile, have you checked on what percentage of women are sexually abused as children? It's not dropping, and I'd wager a good number of them will want single-sex facilities when they are vulnerable or partially clothed.

Yes but in forty to fifty years there will be significantly fewer of you and society will hopefully have advanced past transphobia.

You clearly miss the point that 10-20 years ago some of us would have been the ones prioritising males over females. I would have. Because in my ignorance of the world, naïveté in my case, I did not understand the needs of women and girls who had been abused, assaulted and raped.

As soon as I understood their needs, I understood they are also often voiceless and held voiceless by those who shame them for having those needs. So well done you!

Maybe you can also provide the evidence that transition decreases the rate of sex crime in transitioned males compared to all males? No?

Because there is none. Yet, you continue to shame women, rape survivors and those with religious need alike, for having needs.

Oh, and having had to deal with having a pram laden with shopping jammed in the door while dealing with flooding periods, I can assure you I fucking DO care whether the person who walks past is a male or a female. At least it is marginally less humiliating if it is a female.

Same with having to have my shirt off while drying it because of exploding milk everywhere.

Or my mother in a wheelchair when there are no accessible toilets (it does happen you know). To help her on and off a toilet onto a wheelchair when she is so frail. Does she deserve some dignity and privacy away from males?

Or should we all stay at home so that you and the males you wish to access the toilets can be prioritised?

Sadly I think we are going through a 20 year phase where women's opinion's just don't matter. Middle aged Jane, no longer fuckable so nobody's listening to her, nobody cares that she was raped when she was 22 and nobody cares that it's her greatest fear, that her daughter will go through this. Nobody cares. Correct. Nobody cares about women's opinions and there's always a way to silence women and there's a new extra way, ''transphobia''.

all the times women have stood behind men, gay men, stood up against homophobia, stood up in favour of gay marriage. women just have a long history of caring and being everybody else's support dogs and the favour is never returned. In fact worse than never being returned, we're labelled hateful transphobes for pausing to ask ''does this make us less safe?''

extractfrom a speech by Onjali Raúf

OnjaliQ.Raúfis thefounderand CEO of two NGOs: Making Herstory, an organisation mobilising people from all walks of life to tackle the abuse and trafficking of women and girls in the UK and beyond; and O's Refugee Aid Team, which delivers emergency aid and funds to frontline refugee aid teams in northern France and Greece.

She is a force for good in this world, filled with compassion, who has done so much to raise the profile of multiple issues in her writing.

Is she a bigot? Of course she's not! She just has compassion for even women and girls with inconvenient trauma!

extract

"As a woman of faith – whose God, may I please remind everyone, IS genderless, I have zero problems with anyone who is anything ‘other’ than me.

If you’re a man who wants to step out of the socially constructed He-Man box that is ‘man’ to make a home in the socially constructed box of ‘woman’, then go for it.

But please, please, please, don’t do so to invade a space that women are still fighting so hard for.

Create your own space – a third space – a fifth space – a seventh space – one which caters to your own unique experiences and needs too – because you will have plenty of both that we as women won’t understand or share in too.

Or better yet, take space from the men – they have lots!

And please don’t pretend that my own experiences of transforming from girl to woman – and all the millions of tiny hurts and pains and prejudices and pushbacks all women have suffered as a result of being a girl, then woman, can be shared by you either.

Whether it’s toilets or changing rooms, specialist services or a refuge, school toilets or prison cells or hospital wards, it’s vital women’s uniqueness, lives and wants be as respected as you want your uniqueness, lives and wants to be respected.

As someone working with women fleeing domestic violence and war, human trafficking rings, childhood sexual abuse and a million and one other experiences of male-inflicted violence in between, our under-funded, drastically reducing, single-sex spaces are literally our last vestiges of safety.

For women who have been punched, beaten, raped, and broken at every possible level you can conceive, to be forced to accept former men as part of their healing process, will, to put it bluntly, lead to further trauma, or worse still, a distrust and turning away from the very services they believed might help them.

And I have to ask our policy makers, our parliament, and organisations like Stonewall and basically any human being with a shred of humanity:really?

Do these women’s needs and the needs of the young boys and girls they bring with them, really matter so little to you?

Aren’t they just as important as those wanting to be granted access to our worlds? And not only access – but special rules and allowances too?

As I look around in today’s world, I see more and more bewildered women and girls feeling confused, alienated and afraid.

Women like myself and my Sikh or Hindu or Jewish friends who need single-space places to safely unveil, wash up and reconfigure ourselves; or women who are breastfeeding and lactating and needing a space to let it all hang out; or women going through the menopause or chemotherapy who need safe spaces to just be looked after, or young girls on their first ever periods or sprouting breasts who need space for support and reassurance.

Or every woman ever, who needs a safe space like this to come and meet and talk about our fears and battles, and hopefully create better policies and movements for our future women.

Even the smallest annihilation of the basic right to be a woman in the presence of other women can have dire impacts on our health and state of mind.

A case in point: three weeks ago, I took a dear friend to lunch.

All was going well, we were having a beautiful time, and halfway through the meal, she left to go to the restaurant bathroom.

The woman that came back, was not the same one who left the luncheon table: for instead of the carefree, happy being I knew, came back a pale, quiet and slightly shaken version.

It transpired the restaurant had a gender ‘neutral’ bathroom, and as she had made her way down, a very innocent man had walked out of the toilets, banging into her.

Nothing of any significance to anyone watching – not until I tell you that this friend of two decades, had been raped in her university dorm room at the age of twenty, and feared all contact with men – no matter how nice, kind, friendly, non-threatening or ‘effeminate’ they might seem."

Continues:womansplaceuk.org/2019/10/01/the-sheer-audacity-of-our-existence/

Yes but in forty to fifty years there will be significantly fewer of you and society will hopefully have advanced past transphobia

I think you’ll find that in 40 to 50 years time society will have moved on to the next thing and historians will be looking back of this period and going WTF.

I think it's great that people have identified that if you read enough Mumsnet posts you'll finally get it and start to believe it.

It describes what happened to me. I was a 'be kind' person until I read enough to understand the risks and issues associated with conflicting women's and trans rights. I now realise that I have a responsibility to protect women's rights for future generations, many of whom are too naive at the moment to realise the risk.

Penises don't belong in female prisons. That was my turning point, because it's so obvious. Once you follow it back you realise that penises don't belong in any environments where women will be vulnerable and in a state of undress.

For the boys in my family the Olympics was their turning point. It was just so obviously unfair to have a male body competing against women and they are all for fair play. They can see this far more than the fear and risks associated with the other women:trans touch points.

Just saying it's great to acknowledge that people are learning and understanding the issues from reading Mumsnet

@BaronessWrongCrowdRex

Yes but in forty to fifty years there will be significantly fewer of you and society will hopefully have advanced past transphobia

I think you’ll find that in 40 to 50 years time society will have moved on to the next thing and historians will be looking back of this period and going WTF.

This is what I hope. It will get worse before it gets better though.

Thanks for sharing that @PurgatoryOfPotholes.

I went to the loo at the Everyman cinema yesterday, there’s a female only one and a gender neutral one, I had MAD moon cup flooding. There was blood all over my fingers and hands and everywhere. I had to go out of the cubicle to wash my blood soaked hands. I don’t care what anyone thinks, I’m not doing that infront of a man, ever. Just an every day example and one of many

It’s that simple.

Maybe you can also provide the evidence that transition decreases the rate of sex crime in transitioned males compared to all males? No?

While agreeing with the general point, it’s worth saying that gender ideologists should not just have to provide evidence that transitioned males have lower rates than other males, but that they have rates equivalent to females.

After all that’s their whole schtick isn’t it? They claim that TWA so very very W that there’s no meaningful difference that would justify any difference in provisions or treatment ever.

And with sex crime is so much more preventative in males than females, a group of males could show a lower rate of sexual assault than the overall male average but still be very much higher than that of females.

Good catch Blibbyblobby.

I should preface it with, we have already very well established statistics that males commit 98% of sex crime. (Well we did, before transitioned males were included in the female stats.)

Yes but in forty to fifty years there will be significantly fewer of you and society will hopefully have advanced past transphobia.

For goodness sake.

Women: look, this doesn't work for all of us, we have needs too and inclusion is supposed to be for everyone. Can we have answers that work for all of us?

Your answer apparently? No. No one cares about you, you should shut up and suffer in this new world order, your needs and feelings don't matter, and hopefully you'll be dead soon.

Seriously.

Are you twelve? Who the hell pissed in your chips that you can be this appalling in your attitude towards women?

Yes but in forty to fifty years there will be significantly fewer of you and society will hopefully have advanced past transphobia.

In 40 to 50 years women will wonder why they allowed their rights to be eroded. They won't get those rights back, either; but at least they congratulate themselves on helping to eliminate those rights.

can congratulate

While agreeing with the general point, it’s worth saying that gender ideologists should not just have to provide evidence that transitioned males have lower rates than other males, but that they have rates equivalent to females.

And if they did prove this I would still say no.

Women only spaces are for women's privacy and dignity. We exclude all men from women's spaces, not just the dangerous ones.

Ah ....social work. I was a social worker for many years and remember the courses we went on. They tend to reflect the latest trend in anything - we used to sit there, knowing that this trend would pass.

I remember the one where we were told that using the words black coffee and blackboard was offensive to black people. The black social workers present rolled their eyes, and who can blame them.

I always find the 'transwomen have always used the ladies toilets!' argument so bizarre - it's not a good argument. You've no idea how many women were made to feel uncomfortable by them doing so and felt too uncomfortable or intimidated to say so. Politeness (under duress) has been mistaken for acceptance - again, that's not a good thing.

And the posters who say, predictably, 'I don't care who pees beside me!'. Cool. Do you care about women being raped in prisons by sex offender transwomen as a result of self ID? It's happening now - there was a recent judicial review which acknowledged that although women are being harmed, the affirmation of the convicted sex offender in with them is more important.

I think the sexism and ageism on this thread is so sad. I am just waiting for someone to be derogatory regarding disabled people. Why does this always happen?

I actually used to think that I personally was fine with transwomen in the cubicle next to me. I used to state this - but also that I couldn’t make this choice for other women. I have many Muslim friends who wear the hijab and mixed sex toilets would seriously restrict them.

However, after the incident where the “boy in a skirt” (according to one newspaper article) raped and sodomised that poor girl in the girls’ toilets and the school tried to cover it up, I am completely against it.

I don’t know if the rapist was gender fluid, trans or just wearing a skirt. The reports seem to vary. The problem was a person with a penis, using a skirt to access the toilets of teenaged girls where he/they (or whatever pronoun this person insists to be referred to as) then committed a rape.

This has to stop. All of the posters here who think that the feelings of penis people matter more than the rape of girls need to seriously think about your views here. Girls’ safety matters.

Yes but in forty to fifty years there will be significantly fewer of you and society will hopefully have advanced past transphobia.

I would suggest that in 50 years time, those who are so keen to exclude women from using toilets, changing rooms and refuges (because this is ultimately what you are doing) may well be the ones feeling worried and upset that they have to have males who identify as women doing intimate examinations on them because they feel they cannot say no because of phobic labels or, the law, changed to suit those ok.

And the argument now being put forward by TRA's appears to be 'you'll all die soon'. I mean, really? Has the door slamming and shouts of 'I hate you!' started yet 🙄

During a transgender awareness session in my work, the speaker when told that there had been women against only gender neutral toilets being installed during our office renovation the speakers dismissive sexist answer was 'if they need somewhere to do their makeup WE can give it to them'. ^^

Until men step up and actually start acting like thoughtful human beings, I want women's toilets. I want to know that if I'm in the toilet and there's some kind of emergency with me or my young one, I will call, and a woman will answer.

And yes, that's not how it should be. It should be fine that it's anyone, but at the moment, culturally, we're just not there.

I invited 2 friends + kids/partners for breakfast a couple of weeks ago. They're all lovely people who I would trust to look after my kids, and who would come if I called for help, and they'd trust me.

But even in that simple, friendly situation, it was the women who automatically started to bring plates to the kitchen, who checked on their kids in another room (except for once, one partner did actually go and look, but also said out-loud he was doing so). The men are absolutely nice men, but they still don't take responsibility in the same way women do.

"I think the sexism and ageism on this thread is so sad".

Don't forget the racism.