For the Attention of Posters in the "bloody terf" thread

[PurgatoryOfPotholes]

So we can stop disrupting the OP's thread, and continue the discussion here.

@seventyfits

If you are so entrenched in your view that you cannot admit the dissonance that prisons allowing males into the female estate causes because we have actual rapes that have happened to some of the most vulnerable women in this country while being housed in prison

I've had this discussion IRL and been told I need to check my privilege because transwomen are far more disadvantaged than 'ciswomen' and we need to expect some disadvantages in order to 'level up'. But when I asked if that meant we need to accept more women being raped in prisons and hospitals by other inmates/patients, I was being ridiculous and over-dramatic.

I think this is basically what we are up against. Women are 'privileged' so any bad consequences of sharing our spaces are OK because transwomen are worse off than us. In a sane world both groups would be banding together to ask why we're both underprivileged and at danger from male violence, but that's the thing that goes unsaid most of the time, so you have to wonder who's pulling the strings.

It's the 'sin of Eve' in a modern frock.

Women must expect to suffer in the name of righteous for those more important than them. Misogyny on crack, the only thing lacking as this point are the robes, bells and candles.

No. Women are equally human and not put on this earth to serve males, equality and inclusion does include females even when this is really inconvenient, and there are plenty of ways to meet these male needs without harming women.

So let's get on with talking about the real issue, which is why the suffering and subordination of females is the 'absolutely neccessary, can't possibly compromise on' bit.

ArabellaScott

Thanks Arabella

That Dora Callisto nails it! She very often does though.

Women must expect to suffer in the name of righteous for those more important than them. Misogyny on crack, the only thing lacking as this point are the robes, bells and candles

In the same conversation I mentioned where I was told (by my friend's daughter, age 25ish) to check my privilege, I also asked her what she thought of Emma Corrin posting photos of herself with breast binding tape. I said I found it quite shocking and irresponsible, like masochism and self harm were being presented as playful fashions. Her take was that fashion is just fun, self expression, anything goes (implication: only dinosaurs like me look for a political dimension in everything).

But your point is exactly what I was very inarticulately trying to say to her. That there's a long history of women harming themselves and being harmed in the pursuit of purity, acceptance or some kind of greater good, and the Emma Corren photos are not outside that context. I feel like young women are often either unaware of women's history or being told that it isn't relevant. We need more of what we used to call consciousness raising, but if they've been successfully convinced that the sex category 'women' doesn't exist or isnt relevant to them, then that can't happen. We're just at a 'new' and 'cool' stage in history where the dinosaurs are dead and we can start again with all new categories. It's a disaster (or advantage, depending on who you are) that the blank page starts at a time when we are a long way from equality or even safety for women. I really despair for what the future holds for young women and girls.

You're quite right. This naive arrogance is going to be paid for. It's being paid for now; witness the thread running today of frantic trying to suppress and silence the young women daring to say 'this isn't working for me and is a bit awful actually'.

Funnily enough those who pay for it will all be of the same sex class, and how they identify won't help much.

It won't be the sex class that has the luxury of saying sex doesn't exist and benefitting from the expressing of this idea.

@SpookySeason77

Would it be disrespectful in your view for a trans woman with F on her ID to use women's bathroom?

Apologies, I missed this question earlier.

In the context in which it was asked, which is If it was generally accepted that a particular space, protection or opportunity was female, single sex only based on physical sex, and person of physical sex M but with a legally altered document that recorded her legal sex as F felt entitled to use it then yes, that person, in deciding that their needs or desires outweigh those of the actually intended users, would be very disrespectful.

If you are asking the wider of question of here and now, when a trans woman who has legally transitioned (of which there are not yet many) is generally expected to use women's facilities, is it disrespectful, that is more interesting.

The TW herself may intend no disrespect and her behaviour as an individual may be absolutely fine (as would be the case for any decent human).

However, she is still aligning with and benefitting from a social movement that equates lived female experience with a male state of mind and believes that female people who want to speak, congregate or organise with just their own sex in some contexts are problematic and should be prevented. That in itself is fundamentally reductive of and disrespectful to female people. So for that reason I can't say she is entirely respectful even if what she is doing is to some degree socially acceptable.

But with all that said, (and speaking for myself only) I would very much like to explore how society could reorganise to accommodate trans needs and female needs more fairly than simply making every pre-existing and originally single sex female provision mixed sex instead, and I understand that means compromises on both sides.

One of those compromises might well be to redesign some currently single sex provisions to properly support mixed sex genders.

And if the exercise was undertaken openly and fairly, with an honest desire to do the best possible for both groups, I actually think it would do better for trans people as well, because for all the talk of "not forcing people into boxes", there are no boxes for mixed-sex women-by-gender yet. The women boxes we have were all designed assuming single sex and that's why there's so much angst about including trans women without any other adjustments being made, because we are making them mixed sex without checking whether that affects how well they meet their origibal purpose.

Trans women, having been misunderstood and unrecognised for so long, surely deserve better than that. For such a huge social change to something that has been fundamental at least in Western cultures for thousands of years, trans women just as much as female people deserve a ground-up rebuild. We both deserve more than just the old stuff with a new sticker slapped on the door.

thanks @WeeBisom - I find that the more I read and try to find a logic to it, the more I feel my heads will explode.

I have only recently started to be more vocal about this and have already been called a terf and a dinosaur