Is any one just a little bit gleeful right now?

[Appalonia]

After so many years seemingly howling in the wind, FINALLY the MSM are taking the issues , seriously, it's on front page news, discussed in Westminster, BBC, ITV, C4,it's all over Twitter, even the bloody GUARDIAN is reporting on it, and, by the outrage over Adam Graham, the convicted rapist being put in a women's jail, it looks like we are on the right side of history after all...

I suspect that the third category option is extremely unappealing to many TRAs. It requires an acknowledgement that you cannot ‘live in the acquired gender’ or ‘change sex’.

Especially when the third category option will often end up being a protected space within the provision for their own sex. There won’t be entirely separate trans prisons or refuges or whatever. There will be small units for TW in male prisons and TM in female prisons. They’ll get a small, designated area of specialist male or female hospital wards - or there will simply be one, small generalist trans ward for everything.

They’ll get small trans sports competitions that no one will give care about in any way. The audience for it will be minuscule, and any prize money or sponsorship will reflect that.

It won’t give them access to the opposite sex spaces and competitions so it won’t be appealing. After all, who wants to be a third category?

Tbh it's only a personal view but I've never thought third spaces was a particularly reasonable way forward in most cases. Trans people aren't a separate species, aren't disabled and have no special needs beyond the usual ones common to all human beings (privacy, dignity). The 'gender neutral' solution, where properly thought through, is imo the right one.

If thinking eg about public toilets, since the TRAs seem to, that absolutely does not mean eg making the women's toilet the 'everyone' toilet. Instead imo it means at least one separately accessible and complete stall. It doesn't need the additional space of a toilet for people with mobility or stoma needs, it just needs a separate entrance, lock and basin.

Likewise in sport, the solution is to have a gender neutral 'open' category and a female category, not imo a third 'trans' category. And I'm keen on mixed sex sport if everybody is honest about their sex.

Prisons are different as there, transwomen do have an extra vulnerability in men's prisons and that absolutely should be recognised within the men's estate. And I agree with all those who campaign for a huge reduction in prison use. I'm not an abolitionist but it should be a last resort and sentences should generally be shorter.

I work in Scottish Government and colleagues are now coming out as gender critical left, right and centre. Up until section 35 I wouldn't have dared, suddenly it's out in the open.

That is wonderful news. It appears people have had enough!

There will be small units for TW in male prisons and TM in female prisons

I’m not sure it’s necessary to hold TM separately within the female estate. They aren’t targeted for abuse by female prisoners and they aren’t an obvious safeguarding risk to the other prisoners as they are female sized and have female strength (barring the handful of bodybuilders who’ve made the most of T being a performance enhancing steroid!)

Only a teeny fraction get a surgically built phallus and a smaller fraction still have an erectile device added, so they don’t really need have weaponisable genitalia the way men do.
Plus biological female = lower risk for sex crimes anyway.

And there are so few TM prisoners that a separate unit will risk being de facto segregation, which is against their (genuine!) universal human rights.

So the awkwardness is that TM will have to be ‘outed’ because their fellow prisoners will need to know they are definitely, absolutely, biological women, even if they have beards

And that is a problem IF they have a GRC, because while the public aren’t sworn to secrecy, official bodies are.

So actually, reform of the GRR has the potential to shit all over transmen in prison, because if you are legally forbidden from telling the women on the wing the transmen are also women, the prison service would be left with the choice of de facto segregation or chucking them in the male estate (and you wouldn’t even be able to put them on the vulnerable prisoners wing because they are biological females, who almost always still have vaginas, so locking them in with a whole wing full of male nonces is out of the question, unless it’s the plot of a horror film).

Once again, trans activism reveals itself as a Mens Sexual Rights Movement, because what is good for men who say they are women is shit for women who say they are men.

Oh, I don't think "third category" will really please anyone (and I'm sure most TW won't like it at all). I just think that it's probably what will happen in practice.

The "rapist in women's jail" (etc etc.) shows that a literal TWAW line is going to end in tears, but the fact is that we have now got a lot of people who have done a lot of stuff to their bodies that is going to be pretty much impossible to reverse, even if they wanted to; and I can see why those "early transitioning androphilic" TW who "pass" extremely well might not be comfortable in men's facilities either.

Some sort of awkward fudge is inevitable, IMO, even if the logic ends up being a bit contorted.

Fabulous!

Male sex hormones do make women stronger. That’s why they are banned from elite sport.

There's a certain amount of satisfaction, but I don't feel gleeful. I feel upset that it's taken a man being actually housed in a women's prison for people to finally wake up, rub their brain cells together and realise the obvious.

I'm especially upset that it is a fellow woman, Nicola Sturgeon, who has been both the greenlighter and (inevitably by proxy) responsible for the political and journalistic focus of this case.

It disturbs me profoundly. I see that there is no collective sense of togetherness among women about women's basic safety.

Even last night I heard some stupid clip on twitter somewhere of some women effectively saying "Oh but..but, but, but....if we can somehow weed out those we know to be violent, then all be well with letting menz into women's prisons and single sex places, because...because it's not fairz to discriminate against innocent menz...you see? Innocent menz who haven't done anything. We can't go along presuming they will be dangerous! So, so...lets come up with a way where we can tweak the system so that their feelingz won't be hurt and innocent menz who are women (dissonance upon dissonance) * *can still be included in with the women"

So naive women, and naive women in power.....maybe because they've never experienced assault or abuse from males, are frankly happy to throw vulnerable women under the bus. That's very disturbing to me and I now feel that naive women in power are a threat to women's safety aka Nicola et al.

Also male sex hormones cause ‘roid rage and make people more aggressive and dangerous.

Push for third space won't ever happen, if it had ever been acceptable then that's what TRAs would've asked for in the first place.

the whole point is that men want access to women's spaces and nothing less will do.

I’m pretty sure that in the original EQ10 guidance the access to spaces for the opposite sex was based on something like ‘being indistinguishable [from the sex they wanted to be] in every way’ in other words, actually looking like, and behaving like, a biological female.

Certainly no one with an ‘appendage’ as the wonderful Kate Colman said on GB News.

Eg not Tiffany, or Paris, or Isla, or Katie, or Sophie (and definitely not the bloke at Sarah’s support group for female rape survivors).

Of course, this invokes the verboten concept of ‘passing privilege’ and the teeny tiny handful of male transsexuals who have that are the ones the activists invariably call ‘truscum’.

FWIW, I believe there are multiple ways to develop gender dysphoria/a belief of oneself as trans and I don’t accept that there is such a thing as a true transsexual.
However I do accept that there are going to be growing numbers of young adults whose bodies were subjected to permanent pubertal blockade via childhood medical intervention and thus have never developed the secondary sex characteristics that make the sex of human adults so bleedin’ obvious, even when clothed, even at a considerable distance. We will need humane and practical solutions for these people (not suggesting that the solution is just ‘budge up, ladies, mind you!) Jazz Jennings is a prominent example - I personally think Jazz still has a boy’s face and a boy’s gait but I accept that if Jazz was not famous I might just assume there was something ‘off’ about that ‘girl’.
Of course, if puberty blockers are started at the ‘wrong’ time you end up with super tall, very leggy natal males with disproportionately sized skulls, a result far more akin to the historical eunuchs castrated in boyhood than to female humans. I’m not sure anyone knows exactly how to prevent the eunuch appearance, and if they do, the truth is probably that it’s starting them SO early that even most genderbelievers will baulk, so no one talks about it.

The sooner we stop administering these drugs to gender distressed children, the better.

The 'gender neutral' solution, where properly thought through, is imo the right one.

So, @PermanentTemporary , are you saying you believe in gender? How do you define gender?

If we allow people to define their identity on the basis of feelings we're still stuck on this gender identity merry-go-round.

Biology is good enough. Men's, women's and an open third space/ category for whoever doesn't want to use facilities based on their sex.

I’m pretty sure that in the original EQ10 guidance the access to spaces for the opposite sex was based on something like ‘being indistinguishable [from the sex they wanted to be] in every way’ in other words, actually looking like, and behaving like, a biological female.

Really? Here's the Equality Act 2010: can you find the part you mean?

True.

Not sure if women who say they are men are routinely prescribed doses high enough to cause ‘roid rage, but if they are, at least that’s a variable that can be somewhat controlled in the prison environment (as the prison docs will be providing the medication)

Although obvs all sorts of drugs get smuggled into prisons, so it’s not completely controllable.

At the moment, loads of the younger transmasculine crowd are into ‘micro dosing’ or stop/starting, so they can better control their aesthetic outcome, which is in some ways pretty horrifying (it’s discussed almost as casual as other young adults discuss injectable fillers) but in other ways, at least it’s less testosterone than the standard dose, not more.

It’s in the guidance, would have to check Hansard to find out if the same words are used in the act itself:

www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/core-guidance-businesses

Here’s a screenshot from the EHRC website, it’s tucked away under this drop down tab (also screenshotted!)

I would interpret this to mean that you can’t just fire or otherwise discriminate against a person with a gender reassignment characteristic in day to day, mixed sex spaces and services (regardless of their appearance or stage of transition) but you don’t have to let them use single sex spaces unless they actually ‘pass’ and even then you could still refuse access as long as you had a jolly good reason to justify it.
Of course, I am not a lawyer, but this document is ‘core guidance for businesses’ so it’s written with normies as the intended reader, not for lawyers.

Sinead Watson (TM who has detransitioned) has said that she became a nightmare on testosterone after transitioning. Her sister mentions it here in this article:

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10685753/Becoming-man-huge-mistake-DID-doctors-allow-Glasgow-woman-asks.html

I'm a lesbian and I know several lesbians who have experimented informally with testosterone. I know one lesbian marriage that has ended over behavioural problems arising from this it. I have a contact who goes through periods of taking testosterone and identifying as NB but has always stopped and reverted to being female and lesbian again. You can tell when she's on T. Subtle, usually, but she's more difficult to get along with.

I'm sure in the future experimenting with hormones will become pretty normalised. I don't think we can go back to where we were 25 years ago. Everything's available on the internet now. I'm currently in my early 60s and wishing I'd jumped aboard the HRT train a decade ago — just one example of how using hormones has become pretty standard.

Thank you. That needs to be looked at, doesn't it? It will be good to raise it with Akua Reindorf this weekend at the Women's Place event.

I would interpret this to mean that you can’t just fire or otherwise discriminate against a person with a gender reassignment characteristic in day to day, mixed sex spaces and services (regardless of their appearance or stage of transition) but you don’t have to let them use single sex spaces unless they actually ‘pass’ and even then you could still refuse access as long as you had a jolly good reason to justify it.

That's really interesting, just reading the EHRC guidance for business. I'm surprised at the mention of essentially "passing". It's definitely regarding gender reassignment as a lot more than the self id nonsense that Stonewall have been promoting.

It's also surely highly transphobic for someone to be treated differently based on how well they pass.

Same here! Cautious optimism is more my thing, but let’s celebrate when we can.

I've been thinking about why that advice is so bad, and it's because it's based on individual perception. A lot of TW seem to think they pass when they clearly don't. Does anyone else remember the trans woman in the audience at BBC Question Time who complained that people kept calling him a man when he was clearly a woman? He was a big masculine-looking man in make-up and women's clothing who could never, ever pass as a woman — yet he genuinely seemed to believe he did.

Some people are more observant or visually aware than others. We can tell sex by gait, by hand and feet size, by facial bone structure. I'm a lesbian and I'm good at spotting butch lesbians. Other people aren't: they see a short haircut and someone in what seems like male attire and make assumptions.

The EHRC has got it badly wrong here and I'm going to make sure that Sex Matters is aware of the existence of this 'advice'.

I'm not gleeful but relieved. PIE was abandoned before I had children. BUT I now have young grandchildren so am concerned about their education and exposure to the latest push by bodies I find deeply concerning and deceitful. I would like to see the education authorities saying no more.

"The 'gender neutral' solution, where properly thought through, is imo the right one"

@PermanentTemporary, this is a genuine question - what is your definition of "gender"?

'Visually' indistinguishable?

Why 'visually'? We have other senses. And radio is particularly revealing.

Doesn't gender neutral mean castration of everyone. Guess it would solve the population problem if we were all asexual, we'd die out and leave the planet to start all over again