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.

Women have been suggesting 3rd spaces for years.
It's a mystery to me as to why the likes of Stonewall haven't campaigned for them. With their financial weight and loud loud voice being thrown at it, it's likely they'd be a standard feature now, alongside single sex facilities.
I wonder what they diverted their energies at instead.....

It's a mystery to me as to why the likes of Stonewall haven't campaigned for them. Not validating enough - even if every public building in the land was miraculously to provide male, female, and gender-neutral facilities and services tomorrow the problem would still persist.

<3
I was once "set up" on a "date" with a tw. That particular individual was not a safe person for women to be around.

I was being sarcastic, so yes, I agree with you!

toastfairy
I was once “set up” on a “date” with a tw. That particular individual was not a safe person for women to be around.

Hugs and sympathy, you are not alone even though it probably feels like it.

For the longest possible time I thought I was unlucky and that my experience was rare and not representative.

I mind that if I was to go public with what happened to me it is me that would be attacked and vilified. You probably feel the same. It is a double violation.

@NameChangedForThisDiscussion and @toastfairy much rage, love and solidarity to you both. 💐💐

NameChangedForThisDiscussion <3

I'm alright thanks but even trying to write a sentence or two is so hard. Like you I can't describe the incident in words the man would approve of, so I found I couldn't descibe it at all. And then won't do so F*ck it...

An older man asked me if I had a girlfriend. I knew him in a friend of a friend of a friend kind of way, but not well enough that he had any right to 'demand' gossip about my love life. I didn't know why he was asking so answered 'no' honestly but guardedly. I had recently started going out with a guy and didn't know quite how I felt about it, I hadn't told many people not even my parents and wasn't quite ready for the trauma of coming out all over again as 'bi'.

It then became clear that he was trying to set me up on a date with his friend, who was a woman. I said 'no', I said no clearly, I said no repeatedly, I said no unequivocally. I said "I don't care how nice or awesome she is don't try to tell me how great she is, my no isn't a reflection of whether your friend is nice. I'm not looking for anyone right now, so don't set me up on a date ok?"

And then we moved on (or so I thought) now for the first time the word "transwoman" was mentioned. A lecturer at my university who was a very early stage of social transition, getting divorced (wave to transwidows threads) and having a really hard time. Now instead of trying to persuade me to go on a date he was trying to persuade me that I needed to emotionally support this poor transwoman. I knew it was sexist bullshit but I thought that this particular brand of sexist bullshit was the "it's emotional labour therefore women's work" kind. I agreed to meet in a very neutral location at 5pm to have a pint so that I could listen to the middle aged gay gay in women's clothes bitch about how hard everything was because it was the 'kind' thing to do and because middle aged gay guys and been happy to sit and drink a pint or two with me when I first went to gay bars. It seemed the 'kind' thing to do...

So sure was I that it wasn't a date that my boyfriend and best friend were in the bar too playing pool close enough that they could see the moment he turned aggressive, when I blithely ruined our "date" by asking if he had a boyfriend.

I'll skip over the wording of the ensuing verbal exchanges, but as he got more and more agitated I was able to mutter the magic words "I have a boyfriend" and point to him. Boyfriend had clearly seen exactly what direction things had turned in and had quietly wandered over from the pool table (still holding the poll cue) and was silently watching for him to lay a finger on me. Angry man made eye contact with my boyfriend in disbelief, it was absolutely apparent to both me and my boyfriend that he wanted to hit me, wanted to hurt me, and he was seriously considering doing it anyway, before deciding that he didn't like his odds.

I was traumatised and sickened. And there was no doubt in my mind that this guy was a walking disaster just waiting to happen to someone. The guy who set me up thought it was hilarious, I left the university shortly after.

I think that was the wimpish argument used when abused women set up refuges and people with disabilities were demanding accessible toilets, ramps, access onto public transport etc etc etc.( still a way to go with that one, ) but if you don’t ask demand, you don’t get. As a pp mentioned, if the trans community was putting as much effort into sorting their own needs out instead of using their energy trampling on other peoples rights they would start to make progress.

And they might even find that they got sympathy and support .

Toastfairy, that is absolutely appalling. I'm so sorry you were put through that, and that you had to leave uni. What horrific people.

NameChangedForThisDiscussion <3 Absolutely, it adds insult to injury.

I was a teenage student and he was a lecturer at my university, and if he was telling this story I would be the foul villain and he the victim.

OP, my view is that this is a problem which has been created by the rather extreme position taken by Stonewall and others promoting this particular and very recent gender ideology. When 'trans' meant transexuals, when it meant people with gender dysphoria who genuinely needed to be perceived as the opposite sex as a way to manage their gender dysphoria, nearly everyone did not have a problem with sharing facilities.

But this ridiculous positioning by Stonewall et al, whereby literally any man can identify as a woman - which means they are literally in every way a woman, just on their say so, and do not need to in any way 'present' as female or be perceived visually as female, has created the problem. This is clearly a major safeguarding loophole, which lets literally any man walk through it without question. And all of the rest of the problems we are seeing with data collection, with language communication, which is removing the ability to speak about women as experiencing the world differently from men and the consequent ability to address problems if you cannot name or identify them.

So the dilemma has been created entirely by the position taken by extreme position of Stonewall et al. Any women are being blamed to pointing out the very real flaws and problems in their position.

<3 Thanks Beloved
He 'identified' as the person who got to decide whether we would be having sex that night. Disagreeing made him violently angry. If I had gone alone, had we been somewhere less public, I would not have got off so 'easily'.

The bepenised individual who raped you is not a eff'n woman, name change <3. I'll be the bad guy so you don't have to. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and rapes like a fucking duck it's a eff'n duck right.

Generalising about trans people is clearly wrong. And I don't - at all. I just don't see how men like them have anything much in common with gay men who identify as trans women or indeed women.

name change - I'd hug you until things better if I could.

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

8The comparison you make to hypothetical crime statistics doesn't work, because when it comes to male violence the traffic is all one way8

Quite. And because we don't segregate women from men in society in general, We only segregate in cases where women are particularly vulnerable, such as when they are undressed, sleeping, performing intimate tasks, or in services to recover from male violence, for example.

Your comparison doesn't work. It refuses to recognise the 'one way traffic' of the crime, and it refuses to recognise the particular nature of services which are (or were) sex segregated and why they were. The nearest comparison i can think of to your example would be if people of colour wanted to set up a support group for people of colour to talk about their experiences of racism. And I don't think anyone would seriously object to that and say that white people must be admitted. But yet, women are told there is a problem when they want sex segregated services.

The problem with the "comparison " is that we can't think about segregation on racial grounds dispassionately

What I am trying to say is that we might well happily segregate on race without qualms if there was a good reason to do so

But picking on race as the competitor is nasty because so much unjustified racial segregation has and is being done

A better comparison would be with age - we do treat the young and very old differently - one group isn't allowed to drive and the other group has more regular checks on their ability to drive

The comparison with race feels like a gotcha but absolutely isn't

The ways society treats people differently based on their sex falls into 2 categories. Sexist bullshit & a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. Feminists (imho) should be for the elimination of the sexist bullshit. They should also (imo) be for women being able to take a full and active part in society in general and political debate in particular without fear of threat, harassment, intimidation, assault, rape and death and actually being raped or murdered.

Right now we're still working towards that. To apply the same ideas to race is that you can recognise and remove as much racist bullshit as humanly possible but still do stuff like print signs and information posters in a range of community languages, because that isn't racist bullshit it's thoughtfully considering barriers to participation (for some people) and taking appropriate steps to include them.

This is the all lives matter of 'clever' debate points.

sorry rape and death... threats... and actually