Experiences of a Trans Person

[invalide]

I think it might be healthy to document here the experiences of someone from the other side, and for you to pay it some mind.

I'm an early-twenties STEM student working in renewable energies, and outside of my course I'm a photographer and musician. I've travelled a fair amount and adore my home country of Scotland. Living in Glasgow, I have found a queer community of beautiful people who create a joy to everyday life I treasure.

At the beginning of this month there was a 'Let Women Speak' rally held here that some of you here attended; I have seldom felt more unwelcome and stripped of dignity than while in your crowd, carrying out my photojournalistic duties (images 1&2). While capturing Kellie-Jay Keen pathologising my friends as subhuman perverts and members of the crowd flaunting their homophobia and their use of dogwhistles (subliminal far-right messaging) I was being brazenly looked up and down, receiving steely gazes and pursed lips and hushed whispers behind my back. While photographing the first speaker after Keen, who began her piece portraying autistic people as children devoid of agency, I was approached by one of you who made it clear I looked too queer for their liking and was squaring up for assault. I made my way out at this point (captured at 8:42 here and 9:09 here).
The atmosphere your movement brought to George Square was one I've only before experienced while documenting far-right rallies in Eastern Europe, where I have been hounded through the streets and beaten up for the same reason. I assure you, your ideology would feel very much at home there.

At the other side of the square things couldn't have been more different, you were bathed in colour and music and hugs and laughter, the place is full of friends dancing and dressed resplendent in whatever camp pretty things they felt like (images 2&3).

Ours was a crowd of locals; I strained to hear a Glasgow accent in yours.

Ours is a city that at short notice manages to fill the top of Buchanan Street (image 5) in solidarity with the queer community - the last time I saw it like this was during COP26. It's one that fills George Square in a candlelit vigil for Brianna Ghey.

Your movement has meant I'm called a pervert and a groomer while going about my average daily life. Our morally vacuous, increasingly fascist political class (thinking also of Magnus Hirschfeld and of Martin Niemöller's famous poem) is picking up what you've started and they're running with it. You may not call yourself a homophobe, a white nationalist or an antisemite, but you're sitting awfully comfortably considering that those that do find your movement incredibly attractive.

yes. this

Absolutely.

Make it illegal for males to be in certain female spaces. But create the third spaces as part of that - which both males and females can access if they wish. This would prevent women self excluding or being forced from public life for other reasons.

That way we know the 'good males' from the ones who hate women and aren't prepared to compromise.

Simples.

Except of course we know the reasons the good males don't want to do this. It's about status and power and control over women not because of dignity, privacy or safety.

We do get it on MN. Its just we see through the platitudes and bullshit at this stage and we recognise the respect we are given, and the threats being aimed at us and what the implications of these are and how it affects us on a practical day to day level.

The 'good trans' narrative doesn't really wash when you have people like the OP trying to say they are whilst simultaneously using threats. That's the problem.

How do you compromise with anyone using threats like that? It's not a compromise if you are being held at gun point because your ability to consent freely doesn't exist.

Let's also make it abundantly clear that there are also feminists who DO want to let their male mates into female single sex spaces. Because they are the 'nice ones' - both the male mates and the feminists. Those feminists 'vouch' for their mates.

Those feminists don't care a jot about the women who will self-exclude.

Because those feminists have a prejudice against the loud women who clearly state their boundaries and say no.

Those feminists, as we have seen from this very thread, believe they have the answer and that those loud and fucking mean women should be sided against. Even if it means that they may seem to be supporting a male who tells us clearly that violence is fine because it is in 'retaliation'. As long as they are not seen as being the rude women who state their boundaries clearly and point out that no other woman has the right to lower those boundaries on behalf of males seeking access to female single sex spaces.

It is as it ever was.

This is the key point, and it's one that many people who self identify as the voice of reason with an excellent solution that no one has come up with yet often don't quite grasp.

you see, i don't think 3rd spaces is "an excellent solution that no one has come up with yet" - i think it is a concept that we need to push and push and push and push until it is clear that the TRAs don't want them (for reasons outlined above) and it is clear and obvious that they will not make compromises.

It is a "slow and steady wins the race" kind of thing, and i know a lot of women aren't up for that. But I've been around the block several times and what i have learned is that we will only ever make incremental gains. The point is that the pressure is kept up.

So, and this one has been relatively quick, giving TRAs and predators enough rope to hang themselves has resulted in a statement about trans women and women's prisons. It will not be done if they are convicted of violent crimes. We are part-way there. we need to keep pushing that there are ZERO male prisoners (sadly i think guards and staff will be another matter) in women's prisons. It must be up to those in charge of men's prisons to make them safe. (and i say relatively quick: Maya Forstater tweeted today, or yesterday, that it started in 2009 when a mail prisoner who wanted to transition was told by the NHS - who, frankly, shouldn't be dictating any prison policy - that he had to live as a woman and therefore must go in a women's prison). Isla Whatshername has been the final push there for violent prisoners. When these things are out in the open, people see what is going on. Not people on FWR, not people on Reddit or Twitter. But regular people who normally pay no mind.

(tbh i worry about trans men in men's prisons - anyone have any info about that? I think there are 3 or 4?)

One problem that i have seen when surveys are brought up is "yes but the majority of people accept TW in women's spaces". That is not the case.

The question "do you think TW should be allowed to use facilities alligned with their identified gender" gets a majority - Be Kind - "yes".

When that question is clarified - and it is highlighted how few of the TW have had SRS - the number declines sharply. It's all in the phrasing. I believe that most people would have a pragmatic view, if they knew the truth of all of this.

you see, i don't think 3rd spaces is "an excellent solution that no one has come up with yet"

No, me neither. But many people, particularly women who are more "inclusive" than the veterans here, appear to do so.

For me I think that the TRAs have scuppered any opportunity for 'compromise' by ruining women's sport and putting men in women's prisons / rape crisis centres and refuges.

I do think that some people who are wilfully blind to the nature of the demands that TRAs are making are those who just look at children and think there is no way that a trans girl should be in a men's loo after the age of 8 and want to protect 'their' child or their friend's child / neighbours child. This is how these children are really being used as props.

It is these mothers who are giving the rights of all women because they are seeing it through the selfish lens of their child. They are women who want no debate because debate and compromise makes their child face a reality they have shielded them from.

One problem that i have seen when surveys are brought up is "yes but the majority of people accept TW in women's spaces". That is not the case.

The question "do you think TW should be allowed to use facilities alligned with their identified gender" gets a majority - Be Kind - "yes".

When that question is clarified - and it is highlighted how few of the TW have had SRS - the number declines sharply. It's all in the phrasing. I believe that most people would have a pragmatic view, if they knew the truth of all of this.

I completely agree.

The stuff about ''third spaces' makes me twitch for another reason: having some experience of how budgets work, and planning permission works, and how forward development planning works. Where are these third spaces going to be, and who is going to pay for them? Women's loos are already too few and far between, so are hospital treatment beds, so are prison cells.

Changing your passport just changes your passport - it does not change your natal sex. There is no medical or surgical treatment that turns a male into a female or vice versa.

Yep.
Millions will be spent on this, they won't be used (by TW anyway, who will still use the women's facilities for reasons already stated, not least being validation from the women in there), the third spaces will be yet another area where men can go, ultimately leaving STILL no place that is single sex, but more options for males.

And where does it end?
What about when (wait it's definitely coming!) people with OTHER types of trans identities want THEIR own spaces?
A space exclusively for NBs, trans species?

No more ridiculous than men who say they are women.

Millions will be spent on this, they won't be used (by TW anyway, who will still use the women's facilities for reasons already stated, not least being validation from the women in there),

It was never ever about just wanting to pee. If it were then third spaces would be a viable option.

It's about validation and control and not giving a single fuck about the fact that this means that some women are excluded by their presence.

Where are these third spaces going to be, and who is going to pay for them?

well, no i think it's not always a feasible option. But it is a very, eminently reasonable proposition to make from a woman's point of view, so we should keep on making it. It is possible, for eg, that in a company like mine they say "ok, on the ground floor, where the meeting rooms are and the canteen and the reception, the 6 toilets we have there are now 3rd space and anyone can use them. And in our case that would be proportionate to the number of toilets (we don't have urinals in our men's toilets, i asked the cleaner when i thought we were getting gender neutral loos. We didn't) that are sex segregated.
Win win because actually, hardly anyone uses those ones, except if they're in a meeting or lunch. So that would be a relatively painless win-win. (specific i know)

or it becomes a feature in new builds /designs as of, say 1st July 2023. Then it just becomes a part of the regular costs and in the overall scheme of things, i can't imagine it would add much.

Because what i don't actually want are the gender free self contained ones. They always end up with skid-marks and pissed on seats, IME.

FWIW. Where i live the swimming pools have always had the same arrangement since i was a kid: one big changing area with cubicles (gap at the bottom, huge space at the top so easy to climb up and peer over) to be used by any/everyone. and a family changing room that has no cubicle area at all. And it was very common to see naked men, women and children getting ready to go swimming or go home. Having said that. Germans get naked at the drop of a hat and don't equate nudity with sex. Hence a lot of my colleagues visiting from overseas used to want to go to the mixed sauna. Pervs the lot of them.

One would think all public facilities would be wheelchair accessible by now, after decades of awareness, and plenty of available money. How is that working in the UK? In Ireland we still haven't got there (it is better than it was, but not there yet).

Then it just becomes a part of the regular costs and in the overall scheme of things, i can't imagine it would add much.

an extra 30% minimum required for something that is already begrudged and underfunded (think of all the cramped cubicles and crowded hospital wards and shared prison cells you've been in or heard of over the years) and you don't think it would add much to the costs?

Oh, I see, you want everywhere mixed sex and public nakedness. I thought the increasing numbers of German Muslims meant that particular hangover from the Nazi era was going out.

@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius I accept you can't change your natal sex and I am not advocating for it, frankly the opposite. I was pointing out that you can change your name on your passport but not your natal sex without GRS. If I am wrong I stand corrected.

An example that has already happened of third spaces not being welcomed by TRAs is JKR's Beria's Place.
The existing women's refuge space has already been co-opted and become what would be considered the third space under a third space policy. JRK's intent is to restore the missing female only space. When built this will lead to the three space policy in action, paid for by JKR.
Now go back and look at the reception it got when it was announced. This is how any third space solution will be received when put into practice. "Ohhh but males won't be welcome in the females only space!" Nope, that's why it's a female only space.
It's not the space, but the females inside they want access to.
I don't remember any TRA being happy that capacity across the board would be increased. That trans women would get more resources, because women who wanted women only spaces would no longer be using the third space.
And the reason is that some of the trans brigade want access to the women. What's the point of a sneaky masturbation in the women's changing rooms if all the women have fucked off somewhere else? Doesn't quite have the same thrill does it?

Can English people say fannybaws or would it be cultural appropriation?

I just want to correct myself. It looks like Beria's place is already up and running, when I assumed it would take time to put everything in place. JKR is a superstar.
beirasplace.org.uk/

I'll clear some things up:

• I'm non-binary, not a trans woman - I left this ambiguous out of curiosity and yes, the majority of you who address me refer to me as a trans woman. Very telling that this way - the most common way we are talked about in the gutter-rag British press - is the first in which you think of our community.
• We don't resist your movement because you are women, in fact in the times you've been out in public it's been a pretty even 50/50 men/women; we resist you because you are a political movement whose message, picked up by the media and politicians, poses one more threat to our community. We don't do this for fun.
• You have tellingly chosen to ignore the point in my photos and mentioned, sourced, over and over in my post that alt-right figures and groups, of this country and internationally, are attracted to your movement. Correspondingly, the most prominent heads of your movement sing the praises of these self-proclaimed fascists. It doesn't matter if you reject them, fact is that they see in your political movement another home.
• You misdiagnose the problem all women and the queer community face: it is not males, but the way they are socialised. It is not men but patriarchy. Feminism is not at odds with LGBT rights. We will only see liberation from this toxic gender paradigm when we recognise it as the source of the violence which women and queer people have experienced all our lives and act against it together.

While I'm here, here are some articles I hope you'll take a chance on. I can dream...

• Have we got it wrong on dysphoria?
• Data on Detransition - Frontiers in Medical Case Reports
• trans prison inmates 13 times more likely to face sexual assault in prison

You are right about third spaces.
When women flee a space and set up another one, it's always infiltrated by people who do not belong there.
I mentioned this on another thread, but there was recently a post online from a TW who was complaining that when they started using the female space (cannot remember if it was a changing room or spa or something) that the rest of the females stopped using it and used another room. TW was asking online for legal help/representation to FORCE the women to come back and use the original space and include them in it.
See also India Willoughby, who boasted online about walking well out of their way to access a designated "female" toilet instead of using the gender neutral one that was right next to them in an airport. They chose to find the protected space and insert themselves into it BECAUSE they refused the idea of a third space. These TW see themselves a complete women, and in their minds they do not belong in a third space.

The same thing has happened in the virtual word of online support groups and forums for female issues/health concerns etc. Group infiltrated by a male, women complain, women are forced to leave, set up their own groups, whole cycle begins again in the new group.

Third spaces are a giant red herring.
There are two sexes.

Two spaces.

Use the one appropriate for your biological sex.
No compromise.

Oh, non binary, you sound very interesting.

I'm non-binary, not a trans woman - I left this ambiguous out of curiosity and yes, the majority of you who address me refer to me as a trans woman.

I believe the majority of posters have referred to you as a man. Identity doesn't make much difference to innate male entitlement.

“Non binary” presumably includes the vast majority of humans who don’t slavishly conform to 1950s sex stereotypes. So just a boring normal standard person, then, eh, OP?

ooooo I love a bit of mansplaining in the afternoon.

Everyone is non binary OP. You aren't special. You just think you are.