Single sex spaces

[Notcreativeatall]

Genuine question here
is the support for single sex spaces - and not allowing trans people in on their chosen sex rather than their biological sex - different if the trans people were narrowly defined- ie would people think it acceptable to allow someone who has had all the surgery etc access to a female only space? A lot of the arguments is against having male-bodied people in however they self identify- but if someone has fully transitioned are they arguably no longer a threat?

I think there are some very mixed up ideas about consent in this outing stuff.

No woman challenges them. Assume it's because they pass not because of women's fear of repercussions.

No woman challenges them. Assumes everyone is happy with their invasion and takes silence as compliance.

As far as I am concerned consent should be enthusiastic and obvious.

Taking silence as consent is a bad road to go down and blames the victims.

And there are plenty of victims, even discounting the trans women who have raped or attacked women, by crossing boundaries uninvited they've harmed women and taken away their right to consent.

As far as I am concerned consent should be enthusiastic and obvious.
Yes and I would add that you cannot give consent when you were never asked in the first place.

I honestly don't think third spaces would solve the problem.
I think most trans women think as Butterfly does, that they are actually women, have a right to use use women's facilities and spaces, and that not doing so is either "outing" or suggests somehow that they are now women.
I think massive amounts of money would be used to create these hypothetical third spaces, and I also think in the vast majority of the time they would lie empty (or at least empty of trans women).
The whole attraction and point of using women's spaces is to include themselves in the "women" category. The validation that they are women. And that takes OTHER females in that space to do so.
Again, it's not just about the space itself, the physical room.
It's about the presence of other women there ACCEPTING their "femaleness".
We have seen that Butterfly does not want to use third spaces where they already exist. I'm not sure that spending millions building more of them is going to change the minds of trans people who firmly see themselves as their chosen sex.
But - I'm not sure what the answer IS either.

*suggests somehow that they are NOT women

The answer is going to have to involve insisting that where female people require female only services or spaces that this is respected by male people as part of those female people's equality, access and inclusion.

The same way other boundaries have to be enforced by law when there would be no voluntary respecting of other people's needs and rights by someone who wants something.

Just sitting back and letting female people go on being excluded and harmed so that male people don't have to face things such as female people being people too, with equality of rights, is not an option. The word 'compromise' was used. Females have already compromised to breaking point. This is where male people must start taking some of the load.

@Artichokeleaves

The answer is going to have to involve insisting that where female people require female only services or spaces that this is respected by male people as part of those female people's equality, access and inclusion.

The same way other boundaries have to be enforced by law when there would be no voluntary respecting of other people's needs and rights by someone who wants something.

Just sitting back and letting female people go on being excluded and harmed so that male people don't have to face things such as female people being people too, with equality of rights, is not an option. The word 'compromise' was used. Females have already compromised to breaking point. This is where male people must start taking some of the load.

I totally agree. But how would it ever be policed?

And in situations such as the current Brighton Rape Crisis one, where there is an LGBT+ group, a men's group AND a mixed sex women's group, the flat refusal to tolerate just the existence of a female only group even in another building in another part of the town because it means something existing that is a bit of womanhood that male people can't have? And it's better for those raped women to go unhelped than male people face up to this?

Get a bloody grip. I have no sympathy left for appallingly selfish and sexist behaviour like this. Other people have needs too, and males are not the gatekeepers of whether or not they gift female people permission to have help when they're raped, or on hospital wards, or some bastard ex tried to strangle them last night, or they're fourteen and not going to school today because they have a period and can't change san pro there.

But how would it ever be policed?

Someone wanting my tv and any spare cash has a passionate want to be in my house. They have no care for my feelings or rights or who's property it is, or what their theft may do to me.

The law and the police and society however do their best to make this seen as a lousy thing to do to others, to make it difficult to do, and for their to be consequences for those who would do it anyway.

Without those things, anyone who felt like it would steal what they wanted when they wanted, because why not?

@RVN123

I honestly don't think third spaces would solve the problem. I think most trans women think as Butterfly does, that they are actually women, have a right to use use women's facilities and spaces, and that not doing so is either "outing" or suggests somehow that they are now women. I think massive amounts of money would be used to create these hypothetical third spaces, and I also think in the vast majority of the time they would lie empty (or at least empty of trans women). The whole attraction and point of using women's spaces is to include themselves in the "women" category. The validation that they are women. And that takes OTHER females in that space to do so. Again, it's not just about the space itself, the physical room. It's about the presence of other women there ACCEPTING their "femaleness". We have seen that Butterfly does not want to use third spaces where they already exist. I'm not sure that spending millions building more of them is going to change the minds of trans people who firmly see themselves as their chosen sex. But - I'm not sure what the answer IS either.

I wonder if there can be any answer when the system based on an unwritten contract where most people obeyed the social convention that toilets are segregated by sex is now to be scrapped.

Other than replacing all public toilets with mixed sex toilets with long rows of completely closed individual cubicles opening to some large, lit and well-monitored space (real human guards).

But that would be very expensive, too, and unlikely to be acceptable to trans activists.

@Artichokeleaves

But how would it ever be policed?

Someone wanting my tv and any spare cash has a passionate want to be in my house. They have no care for my feelings or rights or who's property it is, or what their theft may do to me.

The law and the police and society however do their best to make this seen as a lousy thing to do to others, to make it difficult to do, and for their to be consequences for those who would do it anyway.

Without those things, anyone who felt like it would steal what they wanted when they wanted, because why not?

Again, I totally agree. But in a real practical sense, for the TW who firmly believes they are a woman and have every right to use the ladies toilets, who is going to stop them? Short of demanding the cliched "genital inspections" or a chromosome "pass" at the door, how do we stop them? They have already said they don't care about women's privacy and dignity by using these spaces. Some are pretty gleeful about it online as you know, filming themselves in female spaces and gloating about our inability to do anything about it. In the society of old, it WOULD have been seen as unacceptable just on the grounds that decent men don't DO stuff like that. But now? Lots of people have proved that they couldn't give a crap about societal "rules". They do what they want. There are no consequences. In a world where even those who run the country cannot say what a women IS, I'm struggling to see how we will ever get to a place where we can keep biological men out of our bathrooms.

Feeling quite defeated these days.

how would it ever be policed?

How have we kept men out of women's spaces up until now? It only fell apart because someone managed to convince people that it was OK to let some men in and it spiralled from a few post-op TW into any man who say so and from public toilets to all women's spaces. If someone had asked 10 years ago how to keep male prisoners out of female prison cells you would think they were crazy because no-one would have dreamt of putting a male criminal in a woman's prison. We go back to that. We say no. We draw the line.

RVN123, why can't it be policed like it's always been? If you have a doubt, you ask them. If still not reassured, ask them to leave. If they don't leave you get security or other authorities involved.

It would probably help if you're menopausal woman who doesn't give a fuck anymore and prepared to die on this hill, but what's wrong with that?

Think about the level of anger and panic at EHRC and Boris saying that female rights and spaces matter too and should also be provided for.

Think about the absolute desperation of Stonewall to get that exception out of the EqAct2010. Its not nearly as 'over' as they market it as.

Unfortunately the transwomen that continue to insist they will use women's single sex spaces even when they know it will result in distress to women are just continuing their male entitlement. W9men are not real people, just support humans to validate the transwomens fantasy of womanhood.

I have so much respect for transwomen and non stereotype conforming males that use the male facilities and continue to be allies to women.

I used to think fully transitioned people might be acceptable in womens spaces but the entitle TRA's have shown that it has to be all of nothing, so it has to be nothing.

Again, I do actually agree with what you are all saying.
But I don't think there IS any way to go back to what we had before.
And I honestly don't think the average woman (I include myself in this) would feel comfortable / be brave enough to confront a transwoman in their bathroom/changing room.
What if they say they're a woman? You get the security guard involved and they still say they're a woman? Then what?
It still comes down to proof.
Maybe I'm wrong.
I definitely wouldn't have the nerve to confront them. And I do realise this make me somewhat complicit by my silence. But I'm not prepared to put myself in danger by confronting a man in my space.
Like many of you, I also can't actually believe we've got to this point.
We can ASK them not to use our spaces but we've already seen that this means nothing to them.
I'm not actually arguing with anything that's been said. I just don't see how a) we go back to what we had before b) how we police it in the real world.

If the places were it can be policed (crime figures, prisons, hospitals etc) are returned to woman meaning adult human female and we stop buying into Stonewall rhetoric that it's "all very complicated and no-one can tell the difference between men and women " We can certainly roll thing back. We make it unacceptable for the blindingly obvious unmedicated males to enter female spaces. We make it so that if you report that there is a penis in the womens area of the the spa that the penis (a the bloke it is attached to) are removed and preferably arrested rather than saying it's a lady penis. We can go back. This isn't inventing the wheel.

I'd also add that if you're buying into the narrative of sit down and keep your little ladymouths shut, it's too late, exclusion is now the biological burden of being born female, then you're doing Stonewall's work for them.

@endofthelinefinally

A relative, now retired, used to plan public buildings. About 10 years ago he was in charge of a refurb of a university. He was told to put in all gender neutral washrooms and loos. He ignored that as he thought it ridiculous and put in 3 lots in each space. Male, female and mixed. Such an obvious solution.

Not really because when that is an option men still use the women's, because they would say that they are a woman

OK. Sorry MNHQ I obviously cross the line mentioning some content of Butterfly's previous posts. I cannot quite remember what I posted, but maybe some people did not like such close scrutiny of previous words posted on a public forum.

I have been thinking through some of buttflys posts and there are some more issues I wanted to address.

I don't think trying to split us into good trans and bad trans people will help in any meaningful, lasting way - this kind of 'hierarchy of acceptable deviance' just seems to create more unhelpful ways for scared people to lash out at those around them in order to claw some temporary respectability points, and drives dissonance and rivalry within marginalised groups.

Why is this poster telling us that we should not be able to consider that there is 'bad' trans people? Or am I missing something here.

Is there no 'bad' trans people then? We can never consider that any male has the same propensity to commit sex crimes as the other males because of some sacred sub-grouping?

Is forcing me to humiliatingly and potentially life-threateningly dangerously out myself to every single person in a public space every time I need to go for a piss, at great cost to my own mental health and wellbeing, a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim?

I am pretty sure this has been covered on other threads with this poster. But maybe not and it is important to say on new threads.

When male posters post about toilets they clearly show their complete lack of the knowledge (or if they have the knowledge, any empathy) about the female experience with toilets.

Hands up any female who has only ever used the toilet for the purposes of 'pissing' or to keep the vernacular 'pooing'?

There are a great many females have flooding period issues. I know of at least two women who have miscarried in public toilets. And I personally have used public toilets with morning sickness issues or blood issues or just baby sick where I have had to take off a shirt to clean it and semi dry it under the hand drier.

Then there are the times where I had to deal with flooding periods (the type with diarrhoea ) with a pram stuck in the door trying to quiet an upset infant.

Or helping my elderly mother because there was no accessible toilet available to go to the normal cubicle with a wheelchair.

No! Females do not just use the toilet for 'pissing' and it clearly shows just how little these posters get out of their bubbles if they cannot acknowledge this.

And not being able to acknowledge it shows exactly why we don't want males of any gender in those toilets. Because personally, my humiliation at each of these instances was lessened because there was just other females who had a higher chance of understanding these issues walking passed.

@RVN123 I have already posted this upthread and it agrees with Runningupthecurtains comment.

We can go back. This isn't inventing the wheel.

Just wanted to re-up a classic and (I hope) prescient Barracker post with advice to a wellknown TW about how women ended up asserting absolute boundaries because of the trespass and encroachment.
[Start quotation]

The landscape is changing. I can't say how long it will take, but people are starting to assert absolute boundaries and reject the legal and ethical principle that a person can change from male to female and vice versa.

This will not reverse. It will grow, and it will reach an inevitable conclusion. The UK is looking very likely to be the fulcrum of change, and then the balance will shift back everywhere.

You can't stop this. All you can do is look to the future. It would be in your best interests to view this short period of history where we as a society mistakenly allowed a lie to temporarily be forced upon others, as a short-lived and unsustainable 'faux-solution' to a problem. That faux solution will be replaced with something else based upon a real and ethical foundation, and society will no longer accept 'sex changes' in any way.

Your best bet is to align yourself with what is coming. That so called
[ legal fiction ] sex changes are a finite blip in history, that they obstruct a real solution to inequality, and that they should be self limiting, and should be drawn to a close.

If you support the end of this era of forced pretending, and work with those who are ushering in a new era of real women's rights, then I think it is possible that the few individuals who have already gained legal recognition as the opposite sex will continue to be honoured as their legal status. A grandfather clause is a real possibility, one that accepts those men are a product of their time, but draws a line behind them and does perpetuate the problem further.

I think this is a concession that might be negotiated from women, perhaps, if we saw that the door was finally closing on the redefinition of women and their rights.

It's just my opinion. But this is where I think we'll end up.

Whether that grandfather clause will come to pass or not I cant know.

I know what I would do in your shoes. And it isn't doubling down on 'I'm prepared to negotiate women's own boundaries with them'. It's 'I get it. It needs to stop now. Where do I go from here' [Italics my addition for clarity.]

[End quotation]

@Helleofabore

I have been thinking through some of buttflys posts and there are some more issues I wanted to address.

I don't think trying to split us into good trans and bad trans people will help in any meaningful, lasting way - this kind of 'hierarchy of acceptable deviance' just seems to create more unhelpful ways for scared people to lash out at those around them in order to claw some temporary respectability points, and drives dissonance and rivalry within marginalised groups.

Why is this poster telling us that we should not be able to consider that there is 'bad' trans people? Or am I missing something here.

Is there no 'bad' trans people then? We can never consider that any male has the same propensity to commit sex crimes as the other males because of some sacred sub-grouping?

Helleorabore I think Butterfly is saying we can't say yes to fully surgically and hormonally transitioned but no to anyone else. We aren't allowed to say that Butterfly who started to change their endocrinology before completing puberty (and therefore claims that no-one has any idea that they are not female) is far less likely to trigger vulnerable women who fear men in womens spaces than Sam, a 6'5" bloke with a beard who identifies as a woman two days a week. In short Butterfly is better at womening than actual women but not better at womening than Sam, who is absolutely no different on "man days" than they are on "women days".

Runningupthecurtains I think at least one of my deleted posts referred to the very essence of what you are saying there, if I remember correctly.