Can't make this add up.

[MVDC]

I've been writing this in my notes for several days because I'm really struggling to get my thoughts straight on this.

I'm finding myself completely tangled up in my own brain here. I've read a LOT on MN about gender critical views and I agree with a great deal of it - the unfairness of trans women in women's sports, the importance of single sex spaces from a safety perspective, the potential for abuse inherent in self-ID, the growing social contagion, the ridiculousness of gender stereotypes, the huge safeguarding risks of early affirmation and transition, etc etc etc, all of this makes total sense to me.

But i find that so hard to parse with the lived experiences of my trans friends. I know a fair number of trans men and women, all of whom have endless stories of the ways in which society victimises and sidelines them on a daily basis, and it's undeniable that policy centring GC views would make their lives worse. Trans women are not welcome in female spaces, but also aren't safe in male spaces. Being continually misgendered on various admin systems, the many barriers to medical transition and the huge hoops that need to be jumped through in order for them to live authentic lives - all of these things mean that my friends are living with a huge burden every day.

I can't get my head round it. Keeping trans people safe comes at the cost of women's safety. But keeping women safe puts trans people at risk. Of course, at the heart of the matter, when you get right down to it, men are the problem, but knowing that doesn't actually give us any solutions! How do we square this circle?

I don't know what I'm expecting to get out of this, because if there was an easy answer we'd have it already, but does anyone else feel this same disconnect? It seems like there's no way to align the common sense of GC views with considerate safeguarding of genuinely trans individuals.

NecessaryScene · Today 15:55

I've heard a fair few trans people talk about the "Transphobia 2.0" they now get where people are afraid to interact with them because they assume that being trans they must be some sort of crazed sex-denying ideologue just itching to jump on anyone letting slip the slightest indication that they can tell their sex.

I don't have to interact with trans people very often if at all... but we have got to a point where I am afraid of interacting with trans people because I cannot abide being polite to people who hold repellent views (for example people who are racist or homophobic or misogynistic). I am also afraid of people who look like they might be SJWs. It is not a fear or hatred of trans it is a hatred of bigotry, and when I see a trans person or SJW nowadays my reaction is "you may well be a hateful bigot who I do not want to be polite to. I want to know what you think ASAP so I know whether I am willing to engage in a chat or whether on principle I refuse to give you a second of your time." Given it is a bit rude to ask people beliefs first thing when you meet them, I'd rather not meet trans people or SJWs.

Thank you, lots of food for thought here. I can't say I agree with all of it - the supposition that trans women are in fact safe in male spaces is something that I know to be untrue, for instance - but there have been lots of interesting points raised and I appreciate everyone taking the time to share. Debate continues to be the most important thing.

the supposition that trans women are in fact safe in male spaces is something that I know to be untrue, for instance

Can we ask why you know this to be untrue?

Do you have any evidence that trans women are less safe in men's spaces than other male bodied gender non-conforming people. Should effeminate gay men be allowed to use women's spaces for safety reasons, or just TW?

In my experience many big (tall and strong) young men find themselves the target of aggressive behaviour from other young men who want to prove themselves against someone who looks "alpha." What are we going to do to help big strong men stay safe from male violence, and what is tangible that means that TW deserve more support from women than big strong men deserve?

It’s the same people. They’ve managed to get us all to fight amongst ourselves

Not quite.

I am very much uncomfortable with ANY male however they present in any female single sex spaces.

That includes transitioned males which your statement seems to include.

It is not the 'same males'. It is males .

If Stonewall, & all the other groups who used to campaign for LGB rights before they went homophobic, focused their substantial budgets & influence towards making male spaces safe for all males who identify as trans or nonbinary that would make a huge difference.

The likes of Owen Jones, Billy Bragg, Pink News etc could be pushing for greater acceptance & support from men instead of throwing abuse at women. Hashtag #YesALLMen or #YouCanPeeWithMe.

@MVDC

Imagine this as a thought experiment.

You are a man who is far shorter than average. You hate this; it makes you feel inadequate every single day. You feel that you should be a tall person and run a successful campaign against "shortophobia", as a result of which everyone is obliged to pretend not to notice that you are shorter, or that you are wearing massive platform shoes, or to bend their knees in your presence to ensure that they don't make you feel uncomfortable with their additional height. You encourage others to victimise people, including really tall men or women, who state height preferences on their dating profiles. You feel less safe in male spaces, in case bigger men attack you or ridicule, so you campaign to be allowed in female ones.

Does this make you a victim, or a bully?

I know this isn't the same as being trans, btw, but have written the above to illustrate the effect on others.

You also get your medical records amended to state an incorrect height and campaign to get anything that references height recategorised because it is triggering and people like you feel suicidal when reminded that they are short. Etc etc.

It's not a perfect analogy, but....

@MVDC are you going to address that some of those trans women are the predators? Obligatory NATWALT

It is not the females that are the problem, why is it us that are expected to protect males from other males?

Or is that too inconvenient for your earnest attempt to solve the problems for males ?

the supposition that trans women are in fact safe in male spaces is something that I know to be untrue, for instance

Anyone is going to be safer in a female-only space than in a male-only or mixed-sex space.

But, logically, only females can be put into female-only spaces.

You can imagine as some sort of "witness protection programme" some carefully-vetted and traced number of men could be allowed into some otherwise-female-only spaces. That's kind of the scenario the GRA2004 was founded on, although there was no real vetting. (No-one really considered women's rights on that seriously).

But how do you justify keeping other men out of that space? Answer is - you can't - hence the calls for "self ID" to let any man into the space.

So you end up with just have a bunch of mixed-sex spaces, and no-one is safe or happy.

This whole idea of "letting some special men into women's spaces" is something we call a "social construct". It's not some law of nature, it's something we've decided to do - with good intentions but bad thinking - and we can decide to stop doing it.

Other cultures with "third genders" look at us as if we're mad. The Samoans are outraged at us entering our Fa'afafine into female competitions, pushing out their female competitors. They're sophisticated enough to know that Fa'afafine are male, whereas we're apparently stupid enough to try to treat them as female.

Try and be as sensible as the Samoans, not as stupid as the Americans.

Brilliant - I really want to see this!

It seems to me the first priority in sorting out this mess is to get back to telling the truth.

For human beings, there are exactly two sexes; changing sex is impossible. (Logically, metaphysically, scientifically impossible.)

OK, some people really - no, really - want to be the other sex. They can't. So what to do?

We should, of course, accommodate such people to the very best of our ability, socially, legally, medically, morally, personally ... in every way, so long as such accommodation does not deleteriously impinge on others or involve accepting denial of what we know to be true.

Framing the matter in this way, it seems to me, is much more likely to help us get to grips with matters in a sensible way rather than colluding or paying lip service to (often absurd) falsehoods such as that anyone who says he is a woman thereby changes sex and all the rest.

"Tell truth and shame the devil." Not, perhaps, just because ex falso quodlibet, although that certainly ought to inform our determinations. We will be better off thereby, or so at least it would seem. No?

all of whom have endless stories of the ways in which society victimises and sidelines them on a daily basis

I'm sure they have this perception. So do many women, if anyone bothered to listen.

You fundamentally can't base any rights claim on the insistence that the circle is a square. You have to admit that it's a circle, and then deal with any remaining issues.

Well said, Necessary.

Lots of types of males are bigger targets for other males, gay males, males with severe learning disabilities, shall we let them all take haven with females?

My child from 8 years old had to change in the male changing rooms without me at our local pool because that is the rules, is a grown adult male in any presentation more vulnerable than a child?

Elective surgery for able bodied people is noone elses right on the NHS yet it is the right of this group. Everyone else has to manage their expectations.

'Authentic self' I assume to mean, among others, sartorially presenting in way which draws attention. I wouldn't walk down the street in a bikini - it would draw attention. Furthermore, women are told/warned not to wear/present in certain ways because on men.
It shouldn't be this way but is is. THATS LIFE

The question is why do women have to sacrifice their safety for men? Take this up with men. I really really don't care about the safety of men who identify as women. They are not our burden to shoulder. And I'm tired of the essentially be kind message. It's not 'kind' to have women in Edinburgh and Brighton unable to obtain male free counselling after rape in order to prop up validating people.

Cognitive dissonance and critical thinking.
Two important things and it's good you're questioning, wherever you decide you ''lay''

I suspect there are lots of people who are more divided on the issue than you see necessarily represented on the boards here.
i don't think though that Transwomen want to be in women's toilets/single sex spaces because of safety reasons primarily though - true transwomen (ignoring the sexual perverts!) want to maintain their gender identity and going into women's spaces is necessary for that - i think its a bit disingenuous to make it a safety issue- other than for mental health.
i struggle with some of the debate (and I hate the passive aggressive response that in some way i'm conditioned to be kind to dismiss my concerns)- it is difficult to argue why for example because men are more likely to be violent etc than women it is right to segregate everyone- we wouldn't apply this more general eg if the crime stats said black people were more likely to commit crimes than white would that mean we could have racially segregated facilities, and supporting single sex on religious grounds (eg muslim women need single sex etc) concerns me as i don't see why i should pander to a religious belief any more than a gender view... BUT that is more a debate on why we have single sex facilities at all - I do think that where we have single sex facilities the division has to be on sex

I spent time during the last ten years thinking of possible solutions to this clashing rights question (which the TRAs don't even now admit to exist), and I had some before I knew what the scope of the demands from those activists is.

As far as I can see, though, the demands are pretty much to redefine 'women' so that the biological female sex stops to be something we can even mention and to allow any man who feels like it, for whatever reason, to self-identify as a woman without perhaps changing anything in how he presents, without taking medications, without having surgery, and in some cases only identifying as a woman on some days and not at all at work (to get the higher earnings). Even without the question of how to diagnose children correctly with respect to if they are trans or not and the demands that children's self-diagnosis should be the only diagnosis, resulting in surgeries and hormones, this is not a plan I can accept.

It would wipe out the embodied identities of millions and millions of women (and men, should the project ever get round to attacking men), it would wipe out all single-sex spaces for women, it would make the very concept of 'woman' a mostly meaningless category referring to certain personality types or identification with sexist stereotypes about femininity, and, most frighteningly, it would make fighting sex-based oppression almost impossible.

"But keeping women safe puts trans people at risk."

Why?

Is the OP coming back to define genuine trans individuals ?

Because if those are the people she wants to help it would be useful to know how she defines this ? and how the rest of us know who they are?

I would say a third space surely is less costly than making acceptable unisex spaces?

I'd say a third space is less costly than losing a significant proportion of a businesses female customers. I know I wouldn't spend a penny, of either kind, in a place with gents bogs but no ladies.