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.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

Statistics show that 99% of sexual offenders are male.

88% of victims are female. Public provision that excludes sexual assault survivors disproportionately affects women. This is discrimination on the basis of sex, another Protected Characteristic in the Equality Act 2010.

So why is making single-sex areas mixed-sex fairer than creating additional provision?

Do you have a link to those stats?

I knew the 99% offenders were male, and I know it disproportionately impacts women, but I hadn’t seen that exact stat (& I like sources, doing lots of arguing with schools about this stuff currently, and probably for the foreseeable future, and sources help).

I'm not sure that any argument that starts off "be kind" and finishes with " well you will die soon anyway" is worth that much consideration.

But it reminds me of the eternal hope of the left that Labour will definitely be voted in once the older Tory voting generations die off.
Some how failing to notice that once people own property, pay more taxes and raise dc for better or worse their priorities often change.
Not always of course, many don't but enough to make a JC sort being coming PM unlikely.
My views on what is safe for a teenager to do are very different now I have a teen dd compared to when I was a teen.
Likewise my views on the trans debate have moved since I stopped the more youthful focus on what I was comfortable with to the more adult focus on what works for people more vulnerable than myself.

I'm not sure that just waiting for people to die is going to produce the hoped for change of some posters.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

So. Someone persuade me. Why is it better to have transwomen using historically female-only facilities, than it is to create additional unisex provision in buildings up and down the land?

Why is it better to risk excluding an unknown number of women? A past poster has suggested that the women affected are disproportionately over 40, so we're going to be indirectly discriminating against people on the basis of age.

Age is a Protected Characteristic in the Equality Act 2010.

How can you be in favour of that?

Other protected characteristics under the same legislation include race and religion. This is going to impact women from minority faiths, who are also members of ethnic minorities.

If you're in favour of that, you're not the nice, progressive person you think you are. And I find it ironic that trans activists claim keeping female-only spaces is like keeping white-only spaces, when they are supporting policies that will push brown and black women out of public spaces! Is it okay so long as you don't admit what you're doing? Or do you not know?

Add women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, because there’s a number of reasons they might find any male in their space uncomfortable or unsafe.

And women with disabilities. Like pp example of her mum on the wheelchair needing help to access a toilet in the women’s because no disabled accessible toilet available. Or my daughter with autism who the idea of men in girls toilets is terrifying and humiliating. Or any number of other disabilities.

That’s two more pc on top of us ‘just’ women one.

@WendyYourExcellency

I’m a children’s SW too - and many of us are quietly worried about this, though not able to speak up at work due to SWE’s stance. I find it outrageous that our profession has an ‘affirmational’ stance and I truly worry about the huge numbers of children who are looked after who are presenting as trans.

You know there’s huge safeguarding implications but don’t speak out?

Would it be ok to stay silent about any other safeguarding risk?

DraintheBlood

Do you have a link to those stats?

I knew the 99% offenders were male, and I know it disproportionately impacts women, but I hadn’t seen that exact stat (& I like sources, doing lots of arguing with schools about this stuff currently, and probably for the foreseeable future, and sources help).

Ooh, I hope this comes in useful for what you're doing.

www.womenarehuman.com/transgender-sexual-offending-context-is-all/

[quote PurgatoryOfPotholes]DraintheBlood

Do you have a link to those stats?

I knew the 99% offenders were male, and I know it disproportionately impacts women, but I hadn’t seen that exact stat (& I like sources, doing lots of arguing with schools about this stuff currently, and probably for the foreseeable future, and sources help).

Ooh, I hope this comes in useful for what you're doing.

www.womenarehuman.com/transgender-sexual-offending-context-is-all/[/quote]
No idea. But I’m keeping records of any link that might be useful. So thanks.

@Alonelonelylonersbadidea

The thing is presumably the only thing the transwoman was qualified to talk about was being a transwoman. Unless I missed something, they are just a trans talking head. And this is fair enough. We almost can't expect them to talk about the rights of women and girls because that is almost offensive. Like getting a white person in to talk about the experience of racism in the POC community. I think this training is only worthwhile if you then have a woman talking about women and a POC talking about POC.

Agree: ask for training with regard to the other protected categories under the Equality Act 2010. Otherwise this is unfair/biased training

Yes but in forty to fifty years there will be significantly fewer of you

#Beeeeekind in action as always, I see. We aren't dead yet, though, are we? Most women want female only space when they need privacy.

The speaker immediately before was Dr Jessica Taylor, who I was incredibly impressed with- I felt relieved we had a speaker highlighting the persecution of women within the field of mental health and beyond. Who reiterated the impact of mens power over women and how women are consistently victim blamed.

To follow with a speaker who (I felt) completely disregarded womens perceptions and right to our own spaces within society felt some what contradictory

Yes but in forty to fifty years there will be significantly fewer of you

As if women are not mothers currently teaching their kids that no, teaching girls not to have inconvenient boundaries is not a good thing, it's not ok, and explaining repeatedly why females need sex based rights? And why all females should be included in single sex spaces, regardless of inconvenient characteristics, and not taught that they must surrender their rights if their rights inconvenience a male person?

No, we've got that covered thanks. More women are waking up all the time, and as women are repeatedly explaining: sex based rights are something you realise the need for as you get older .

A hell of a lot of the currently cool and naive females are going to realise the issues for themselves and will also then take their turn standing up for the next generation and for the more vulnerable females among them.

Dr Taylor is extremely pro-women’s rights, and not trans rights at the expense of women’s rights. She has been quite clear about her views and does not appear to have come unstuck. Good for her.

I was heartened to see some of my colleagues asking about having further training specifically with her wendy

Incidentally, male services and resources are inclusive of all males. They are not allowed to refuse males entry based on any protected characteristic, so we are talking about male people who want an alternative space for reasons of choice, feelings about privacy, dignity, safety, identity, bodily consent.

You cannot say that these feelings matter and should be supported in males when at the same time you say that females with the exact same feelings should shut up and be ignored or have to self exclude. Not and expect to be taken seriously.

I see what you're getting at here, but I think the linking of men's single-sex spaces and women's single-sex spaces is dangerous, as it suggests that it's the same (or at least a similar) issue, and it's not. Women have different bodies and experiences from men, and women's rights to set their own boundaries shouldn't depend on men's views on how they see their own single-sex spaces.

It might be fine for men to have single sex spaces, or they might decide to open them up. But men's decisions regarding their own spaces should have no bearing on how women should view single-sex spaces or on the rights that women should have to set their own boundaries.

There's a danger with looking to equivalence in men's spaces that if women have been relying on the fact men are successfully maintaining single-sex spaces to shore up their own argument for women-only spaces, then it weakens their argument if men change their minds.

Also, I think it's important to remember that it's not a double standard for women to have different needs from men. The whole point is that women have different bodies and experiences, so what men are doing with their own spaces has absolutely nothing to do with women's spaces and boundaries.

@BilindaB

toilets and changing rooms, that is.

You are aware of the rapes and sexual assaults that trans women have committed in women's prisons in the UK I take it? They often occurred in the showers.

I am sure you are also aware of the recent case in Loudoun County, Virginia, USA?

In a local high school, a trans girl (although they may have been "non-binary") entered a girls toilet and forced a girl to perform fellatio on them and then they anally raped the girl.

At the time, this actually occurred back in May but is only now being reported, it was hushed up and the trans girl was moved to a different school where they then went on to sexually assault another girl.

Yes, trans women, of all ages, can and do rape and sexually assault women.

CRB checks (now DBS) were brought in around the time of the Soham murders in 2002 and were given a lot more funding as a result of them.

Nobody reasonably claims that DBS checks are in any way evidence of being "anti-men" (well, except maybe for some lunatic men's rights groups, but I doubt even they oppose it) as it represents a legitimate aim of protecting vulnerable people.

Likewise, trans women generally have the same patterns of offending as non-trans men and there is a real, documented risk of them committing sexual assault.

Yes, of course, NATWALT (not all trans women are like that) just as much as NAMALT. But, the fact that there are some that are like that means that it is a legitimate means of providing safety to women that males, however they identify, should be excluded from female spaces.

Sorry, forgot to say in that US case. The school superintendent who tried to hush it all up later came clean and is reported as saying:-

He apologized for 'misleading' them on June 22 when he told a crowded meeting that there had been no sexual assaults on campus by transgender kids, and that predatory transgender people 'do not exist.'

'I regret that my comments were misleading and I apologize for the distress they caused families,' he said.

'To the families and students involved, my heart aches for you. I am sorry that we failed to provide the safe, welcoming and affirming environment that we aspire to provide.

While we are discussing statistics. Maybe posters such as Bilinda will be surprised to read this statistic from Alice Sullivan’s UCL).

In law, only a male can commit rape, but analysis by Professor Alice Sullivan of University College London shows that between 2012 and 2018, a total of 436 people prosecuted for rape were recorded as women.

The Home Office confirmed that police forces are to be given new instructions on recording the sex of criminals more accurately.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10124021/Priti-Patel-orders-woke-police-stop-recording-offences-trans-women-female-crime-stats.html

There is only one way for these statistics to be registered as rapes. They include a penis.

So… we should hand wave away 436 rapes that have been recorded. And what is the fraction of rapes actually reported? How many do you think have gone without being reported?

Link us again to that evidence that tells us that transitioned males commit sex crimes anywhere near the rate of women, and that there is ANY decrease in the rate compared to all males.

No? Tell us why we should be taking any notice of your pleas to do this out of kindness or because you, who won’t believe police statistics mean anything, are ok with it?

On recording of crime stats using sex, for those who haven't signed yet, there's a petition for this, to which the government wrote an initial response last week (as it reached 10,000 signatures).

Highlights from their response (quotes in bold):

The Government does not plan to require biological sex to be recorded across the criminal justice system

Currently, the Home Office does not centrally mandate how an offender’s sex or gender identity must be recorded by police. It is for each individual police force to decide what information to record.

N.B. The Home Office and most police forces pay Stonewall to review their policies so sex doesn't exist as far as they're concerned.

Officials have noted that ‘biological sex’ has not been defined in the petition. If ‘biological sex’ is defined in terms of anatomy, or chromosomes, then there would be both ethical and logistical challenges for the police or the HMPPS in determining this for every arrested suspect or prisoner. For instance, it would not be appropriate for the police or HMPPS to physically examine every suspect/prisoner in order to determine ‘biological sex’ if it had one of these meanings.

Interesting that they manage to determine biological sex for the purpose of determining whether or not it matches someone's gender (and presumably for healthcare provision?), but are apparently completely stumped when it comes to recording that same information for crime statistics.

Also, in their transgender policy document (included in their response), their risk assessment for women's safety includes consideration of physical size and genitals, but these same factors can't be used as indicators of biological sex for statistical purposes. Which also begs the question: are they actually even doing the risk assessments they say they're doing, if it's too mean to check prisoners' anatomy in the first place?

The trans policy document is also an interesting read in its own right - one of the criteria that provides "strong evidence" that the person is transgender is that they consistently use gendered spaces.

Although the government appear to have changed their minds in the last week (presumably due to Nolan investigates), IMO it's still worth signing the petition while it's open, especially with all the flip-flopping going on.

I'd also suggest writing to the Home Office and the police forces who are tied into the Stonewall definition of sex=gender. They're listed on the Sex Matters website. They need to stop paying Stonewall to lobby them into this madness.

@LonginesPrime

On recording of crime stats using sex, for those who haven't signed yet, there's a petition for this, to which the government wrote an initial response last week (as it reached 10,000 signatures).

Highlights from their response (quotes in bold):

The Government does not plan to require biological sex to be recorded across the criminal justice system

Currently, the Home Office does not centrally mandate how an offender’s sex or gender identity must be recorded by police. It is for each individual police force to decide what information to record.

N.B. The Home Office and most police forces pay Stonewall to review their policies so sex doesn't exist as far as they're concerned.

Officials have noted that ‘biological sex’ has not been defined in the petition. If ‘biological sex’ is defined in terms of anatomy, or chromosomes, then there would be both ethical and logistical challenges for the police or the HMPPS in determining this for every arrested suspect or prisoner. For instance, it would not be appropriate for the police or HMPPS to physically examine every suspect/prisoner in order to determine ‘biological sex’ if it had one of these meanings.

Interesting that they manage to determine biological sex for the purpose of determining whether or not it matches someone's gender (and presumably for healthcare provision?), but are apparently completely stumped when it comes to recording that same information for crime statistics.

Also, in their transgender policy document (included in their response), their risk assessment for women's safety includes consideration of physical size and genitals, but these same factors can't be used as indicators of biological sex for statistical purposes. Which also begs the question: are they actually even doing the risk assessments they say they're doing, if it's too mean to check prisoners' anatomy in the first place?

The trans policy document is also an interesting read in its own right - one of the criteria that provides "strong evidence" that the person is transgender is that they consistently use gendered spaces.

Although the government appear to have changed their minds in the last week (presumably due to Nolan investigates), IMO it's still worth signing the petition while it's open, especially with all the flip-flopping going on.

I'd also suggest writing to the Home Office and the police forces who are tied into the Stonewall definition of sex=gender. They're listed on the Sex Matters website. They need to stop paying Stonewall to lobby them into this madness.

Surely all police forces should be accurately recording the sex of suspects for h & s reasons also?

If a suspect is in custody and something goes wrong and they need to call an ambulance they need to tell paramedics the persons sex otherwise risk their life. They don’t even need to claim it’s for accurate records, they can say it’s for the prisoners benefit.

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

loneLonely "they are just a trans talking head"

That is very astute. I'm thinking about all the trans people I know - and they ALL work in something to do with trans issues.

They are professional trans people.

The whole ideology makes a lot of cash.

It's a USP.

I don't give two shits who is pissing in the cubicle next to me and most women I know under the age of forty don't either. Luckily the world is changing, despite the attitudes displayed here.

You're in a very privileged position to not be a vulnerable woman in jail sharing shower cubicles with males who said they were women when they raped and now continue to enjoy showing their penises to said women.

That's fine. You do you.

@AlwaysAWoman that's brilliant that it was Dr Taylor. She sees through the shit.

I can't help wondering if the organisers booked Jess because they were forced to book the other one.

This week's Seminar by the Baroness was all about social work and safeguarding and this and well worth a watch.

https://youtube.com/c/EmmaHarrietNicholson1

LonginesPrime

Excellent post and a chilling example of how abusers are abusing loopholes.

Although the government appear to have changed their minds in the last week (presumably due to Nolan investigates),

Apparently at least one Special Advisor was seen at the LGBA. And there was a talk about this.

''But the tide is turning.''

No it isn't.