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.

[quote SillyStrings423]@PickAChew
Sure, when it comes to private spaces, you can choose who else is accompanying you.

In public spaces, however, that's where you don't really get to pick and choose. There were plenty people who felt uncomfortable with people who looked different using the same bathroom, and they eventually had to just get over it.[/quote]
Why do I, as a biological woman, have to 'get over it'? Why can't the transwomen just 'get over ' their discomfort at using male facilities? Why can't men get over their discomfort at having trans women stand next to them at the urinals?

Why is it only me who has to get over it? You bloody get over it!

You do however seem to almost savor your victimhood in a way.

What a nasty thing to say. I savour nothing from the sexual assaults I've suffered. Recognising the basis of victimhood - and the differing motivations for different types of victim making - is not savoring victimhood. What do you actually mean by this.

You are simply extremely up in your ass about being the biggest victims, and lashing out as if acknowledging other groups as marginalized creates a "competition".

oh dear

@PickAChew

It's not just about toilets. Females should not be forced to share hospital wards, prison cells, domestic violence shelters, dormitories etc with males, however they identify. They should not be forced to accept males, however they identify, as their rape counsellors or in their support groups.

Any male, however they identify, who thinks they have a right to be in those spaces, has proven themselves to be untrustworthy on account of their refusal to accept that no means no.

If a person on disliking the man box demands access to women’s boxes despite plenty women saying we don’t consent to that, then they are the exact type of person we shouldn’t let in the women’s box.

Quite literally the words themselves, paired with the painful combination of social and physical dysphoria.

Ideally, I'd find myself simply wake up with the kind of body I want, but the next best thing is to simply reshape my own body and identity over time, using the means avaliable to me.

And I'm sick of authoritarians trying to restrict my ability to do so..

I don't think I'm alone in having a great deal of sympathy for anyone in your position.

And I find it really disappointing to know that people going through what you're going through feel that anyone who believes in biological sex is trying to prevent you from changing your body or living however you want to live. I shouldn't have to denounce my own scientific beliefs because someone else doesn't agree with them.

My issue is with being told that your predicament means that mine has to change, and being told (and receiving daily messaging from society) that if I speak up and disagree about my legal protections being altered, I am unreasonable and abhorrent.

you don't seem to identity with women much if I may say so @SillyStrings423, for all that you're very sure you identify as one

you don't seem to like us much

@SillyStrings423

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

Oh give over. You are calling us authoritarians because we won't agree to only use the words you want.

Meanwhile, this is my OP from one of the most recent threads I started. Read it and get a grip about your self-pity

Today is the UN's International Day of the Girl. Unless you're a committed feminist, you probably won't have heard about it. The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street didn't put up any lights, and there won't have been any promotional traffic crossings.

Here's why there should have been something, especially this year. The International Day of the Girl is intended to draw attention to the issue of forced marriage, or, to put it another way, sexual enslavement, and thanks to Covid, that issue is now worse than ever.

The COVID-19 pandemic is profoundly affecting the everyday lives of girls: their physical and mental health, their education, and the economic circumstances of their families and communities. Changes like these increase the likelihood ofchild marriage, and over the next decade, up to 10 million more girls will be at risk of becoming child brides as a result of the pandemic.

data.unicef.org/resources/covid-19-a-threat-to-progress-against-child-marriage/

The two biggest worldwide killers of girls aged between 15-19 are

1. complications of pregnancy and childbirth, and
2. self-harm.

Both issues are intimately connected to the forced marriage of girls, but we'll focus on the first.

FAIRFIELD, Conn. (Oct. 10, 2021) — More than an estimated 22,000 girls a year are dying from pregnancy and childbirth resulting from child marriage, new analysis from Save the Children released on International Day of the Girl reveals.

(continues)

Although nearly 80 million child marriages globally have been prevented in the last 25 years, progress had stalled even before the COVID-19 pandemic—which has only worsened inequalities that drive child marriage. With school closures, health services under strain or closed, and more families being pushed into poverty, women, and girls face an increased risk of violence during lengthy lockdowns. A further 10 million girls are now expected to marry by 2030,[1] leaving more girls at risk of dying.

President and CEO of Save the Children Janti Soeripto, said: “Child marriage is one of the worst and deadliest forms of sexual and gender-based violence against girls. Every year, millions are forced into wedlock with men who are often much older, robbing them of an opportunity to keep learning, be children, and in many cases, to survive.

“Childbirth is the number one killer of teenaged girls because their young bodies aren’t ready to bear children. The health risks of children having children cannot, and must not, be ignored. Governments must prioritize girls and ensure they’re protected from child marriage and premature childbirth-related deaths. This can only happen if girls have a say in the decisions that affect them.”

Continues:reliefweb.int/report/world/child-marriage-kills-more-60-girls-day

Over at the coverage herewomen.ncr-iran.org/2021/10/10/the-iranian-girl-child-is-the-youngest-victim-of-cruel-discriminations/

the writers say"Iranian girl children commit suicide due to forced marriage. Early and forced marriages are among the reasons for suicide among young women and girls in Iran"and list some of the girls under 19 who have died from suicide as a consequence of being subjected to forced marriage.

Save the Children has this list of aims.

1. Raise girls’ voices by supporting their right to safe and meaningful participation in all public decision-making.

2. Address immediate and ongoing risks of gender-based violence, including child marriage, by putting girls’ rights and gender equality at the center of COVID-19 and humanitarian responses, development policy, and broader efforts to build forward better.

3. Guarantee the rights of all girls, including those impacted by different forms of inequality and discrimination (including on the basis of gender, race, disability, economic background, etc.), by developing inclusive policies and programs. Safe and ethical data collection must also be improved to better understand and respond in real-time to COVID-19’s impact on existing economic, climate, and conflict-related crises.

4. Ensure the safe and unrestricted participation of female humanitarian staff in all humanitarian response efforts, including needs assessments and the design, implementation, and monitoring, and evaluation of all humanitarian services at every level.

5. Join the Generation Equality movement, working to deliver on the Global Acceleration Plan for Gender Equality, which set a target to prevent nine million child marriages in five years.

What do you think?

You are simply extremely up in your ass about being the biggest victims, and lashing out as if acknowledging other groups as marginalized creates a "competition".

Actually as a white, not disabled woman, I don;t see myself as the 'biggest victim'. I do, however, recognise that the discrimination faced by black people is not the same that I face as a woman. Could we not equally say that you are up your ass about being the biggest victim?

[quote SillyStrings423]@PickAChew
Sure, when it comes to private spaces, you can choose who else is accompanying you.

In public spaces, however, that's where you don't really get to pick and choose. There were plenty people who felt uncomfortable with people who looked different using the same bathroom, and they eventually had to just get over it.[/quote]
Women who don't want share intimate or vulnerable spaces with males need to 'get over it'? Get over it?

Does this work both ways then, or is it just males who are allowed to tell women what they should and shouldn't put up with?

Is it OK for me to say to transwoman to 'get over it' that they are not and never will be women? If not, why not?

22 girls under 18 get forced into marriage, i.e. forced sexual relationships, every minute.

60 girls under 18 die from complications of pregnancy or childbirth every day.

For some reason I have Common People stuck in my head. Such a great song, a bit of an earworm....

🎶Cause everybody hates a tourist
Especially one who thinks its all such a laugh🎶

@Whatiswrongwithmyknee

No trans person ever said a man can't be feminine and still a man, but stop acting like it's some sort of "duty" for trans women to do the same when the fact is, they simply do not want to be "men" at all, even if the societal expectations were magically poofed away.

What does feminine mean?
If being a man is simply about names and pronouns, what does 'simply not wanting to be a man' mean?

Also @SillyStrings423

what’s a masculine name?

How do you not know that all the male born people from the beginning of time called Greg, were not in fact actually transwomen? And all the female born people named Jessica weren’t actually all transmen?

So if born male Greg transitioned to become a transwoman and chose the name Jessica he would just be discarding his feminine name in favour of a masculine one would he not?

But it's not pushing someone into a box to say they are male, any more than it is pushing someone into a box to say they are human, black, or 75. They just are. And if they don't feel like they are, or they don't want to do whatever is stereotypically expected of a category they belong to, that's fine.

But those categories still do exist and still do matter to other people. And if you think one person's feeling or "identity" that they are something they are not should be taken as reality and important, then why don't anyone else's feelings matter, like women who are upset by males in their hospital ward for example?

There is a debate to be had about how to balance rights and what counts as a feeling that matters. For example, I would argue that if you don't want to sit next to someone of a particular race on the bus, you shouldn't be pandered to – because that's purely prejudice as there is nothing about a person of a particular race that makes them any different from you or endangers you.

But, women wanting single-sex spaces is different as males do pose a much greater threat than other females, not just of physical harm but of causing distress and intimidation, so I would argue that is a right they should have.

If you want a male's feeling that he "is a woman" to be taken into account and acted on, you need to explain why clearly and give good reasons. Just saying it's not nice to put people in boxes or "restrict" their "identity" isn't good enough, if you are prepared to put other people in other boxes, like white, or under 18, for example, Like male and female, these boxes are based on material reality. They often don't matter, but sometimes they do and we don't get to just override that because feelings.

I'd heard that MN was transphobic but never seen anything apart from the odd troll post - yet now I've seen sillystring denying the trans existence I see what people mean.
Do better, silly.

@BernardBlackMissesLangCleg

You do however seem to almost savor your victimhood in a way.

Bitter that recognizing trans women as facing many of the same forms of oppression will somehow make your own victimhood feel less "exclusive" and "special".

deary, deary me

That’s utterly fucking disgusting.

I’m big on flippant humour as my preferred coping mechanism but anyone thinking those of us victim of male violence against wag are somehow gate keeping and exclusive club is the exact reason we have single sex spaces.

What an abhorrent thing to say @SillyStrings423

@SillyStrings423

Reading up, I see you were talking about medical risks, but I still have never said that medical transition somehow cancels those.

You are simply extremely up in your ass about being the biggest victims, and lashing out as if acknowledging other groups as marginalized creates a "competition".

Born male is not a marginalised group

Women who don't want share intimate or vulnerable spaces with males need to 'get over it'? Get over it?
I assumed silly was saying that trans women who don't want to share their spaces with male men should "get over it" - was that not what they meant?

If they call themselves "women", then that is their gender identity. The label itself is the gender identity. Not "associated gender expectations" or whatever.

The problem with this is that the label is also the key to the formerly (and properly given their intended purpose) single-sex spaces, rights that female people need, not because of their "identity" but simply because of their bodies.

It is disingenuous in the extreme to say on the one hand "gender is just which label you want to use" then on the other demand access to very specific spaces and rights based on that label.

Genderists seems to think these single-sex spaces fell from the sky, that sex-specific provisions exist for no other purpose than as a way to really emphasise ones womanhood.

That is why, simplistically, they think that the only criteria for access is whether one can lay claim to the label "woman".

But the reality is, every single-sex provision came into being as a response to a real risk, physical need or social disempowerment experienced by female-bodied people. These spaces very existence speaks to the real differences, physical and social, between Men and Women in the sex sense of the words, and how they disadvantage Women.

It is beyond insulting to have someone believe that their simple choice of a label is equivalent to and interchangeable with the reality of living from birth in a female body.

So my challenge to the Genderists is:

Imagine there had never been women's sports, women's toilets, women's prisons, women's officerships, women's changing rooms, or any of the other social and legal protections that women have today.

In your world, where womanhood is just the label you want to use, what is it about a woman that would necessitate these spaces to be created?

And, if you can't answer that question, why do you think that a definition of woman that you cannot use to justify them should nevertheless give you access to them?

@Blibbyblobby this is the best most coherent explanation I've seen of this issue, thank you so much! My brother is skeptical of my views as he's still quite TWAW but I might show him this to help me explain!

But you defined the sex class by the ability to produce eggs? If producing eggs isn't what defines the sex class, what is it? What is a sex class?

If my hoover is broken and I can't use it to hoover the lounge, is it a hoover which has a technical fault or is it a cabbage?

the mask always slips in the end doesn't it?

just another male who doesn't like women very much. I truly hope that this person finds a way to live that makes them happy. but I don't think that I need to sacrifice my privacy, dignity or safety to make that happen

Do you think a passing trans woman

Vanishingly rare.

Bitter that recognizing trans women as facing many of the same forms of oppression will somehow make your own victimhood feel less "exclusive" and "special".

Did Sillystrings say this (can't find it, was it deleted?)

Anyone who says this can have no idea about what it's like to be on the receiving end of oppression as a woman - either because they are male, or else mindbogglingly privileged and sheltered.

The constant alertness. The checking. The carefulness. The second-guessing. The fear. The feel of the gaze and potential grope on your body and knowing that if a man chooses to attack he will have the advantage. The knowing you are going to get the shit deal because it's your body that gets pregnant, menstruates, is weaker. The exhaustion. The fury when you are ignored, sidelined, gaslighted and slapped down by men. The sheer fucking frustration of it all.

And I'm a lucky, white, middle-class, single, self-supporting, western women. Millions of women have it so, so much worse. Beaten and/or raped every day. Forced out of education and work. Forced to bear and raise children even if they don't want to, to drudge for men, to have everything about their lives controlled.

Now I like being a woman for a whole host of other reasons and have no wish to "identify" as not a woman, but don't fucking tell me I like my "victimhood" because it's exclusive and special. That is the view of someone who fetishises a warped idea of womanhood that is a million miles from women's actual lives.