Grey area on trans rights

[Spyrothedragon23]

Reasonably new and learning about be trans issues / community. Happy to learn more but my request as it’s a hot topic for people to keep it adult and polite.

Just wondering if it possible to be a bit grey on the area rather than black and white? Alot of people on these boards feel very strongly about the movement and in some ways I understand.

This is where I am a bit grey:

I don’t agree with anyone with the sex they are born with being in the opposite sex sports / jails etc it’s just wrong and not fair. There’s a biological advantage if some is male and moves to female for sports.

However I don’t have an issue with someone wanting to be the opposite gender if it makes them happy. As long as it doesn’t affect or
impact others (see above statement about sports / jails etc). If it was a friend I would happily call them by a different pronouns or name.

Is there another area of this movement I’m missing? Are some people a little more grey rather than black and white?

I'd also like the parallel with how we treat modern day religion to extend to allowing physical damage to children's bodies. In the past it was possible for young boys to have their bits chopped off in the name of God so they could maintain their unbroken voices and sing castrato in the church. That's been banned for more than a century now. We don't allow female circumsission (FGM) even though it's a cultural and religious norm in some communities So we should not be allowing drugs or surgery to damage children's bodies and physical development in the name of trans beliefs.

I can't add much to the toilet debate here - it's all been clearly stated already, but I will add the vast majority of men who claim to be women are fully intact. Have you never walked by a male public toilet? Experienced the absolute stench? Why do you think that is?

Unisex toilets are often really disgusting. Even if we didn't have all the other, very sobering, reasons to not allow ANY man who claims he's a woman in the women's toilets, this is another.

It's a no from me.

I was about to say similar. The focus is always on toilets. The whole 'they just want to pee!!!' thing.

And not,

• Rape crisis services (many of whom no longer offer single sex groups)
• Domestic abuse services (many shelters no longer provide single sex shelters)
• Prisons (as seen here in Scotland, convicted male sex offenders being placed in the female prison estate on the say so of the Scottish Trans Alliance)
• Hospital wards (which under NHS policy should be single sex but a woman was raped on one and gaslit by the Hospital for a year that it was single sex, when it wasn't)
• Breast and Cervical Screening (the 'six words' amendment and the rape survivor who had her letter requesting a female examiner passer around a Hospital Trust as an example of 'transphobia')

Etc etc.

Try reading the www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me thread.

I realised that something needed to be done and I coudn't just sit prettily on the fence after this incident summarised here and worse, the fact that it didn't stop anyone else in their tracks. In the original House of Lords debate (see Baroness Winterbourne at 1.15am) the peer from Stonewall didn't think that the guidance which led to the incident needed any change at all. What's a hospital rape more or less, followed by months of denial that such a thing could ever have taken place, when set against the rights of TW to a place in a women's ward on their own terms? That pissed me off.

For a long time there was this slogan called "no debate". That meant no questions asked, no shades of grey, so if you saw anything except TWAW and that's lovely you'd have to shut up or be called a transphobe. If you saw untested treatments followed by massive health problems and said anything then you were pushing young people to commit suicide. If you saw women being sexually bullied in prisons and punished for complaining and said anything then you were calling transwomen liars and perverts. And so on, and on, and on. That silenced any kind of nuanced discussion. Now some debate is possible but the inevitable result of being stifled for so long is that it is utterly polarised.

Good luck with trying to bit a bit grey.. I would like to be a bit grey, my own view is quite nuanced though it might not seem that way here because it's impossible to get all the yes-buts and no-buts into a post and still make sense.

You'll probably find that when you say something you think is pretty realistic or a bit grey, other people will say is mad and evil and very black or white indeed, or if not you personally, then you are giving support to other people who are mad and evil and what to kill people or whatever. Good luck!

"I’ve been on this board and some of the things I’ve read are awful. "

There are words you don't like to hear and there are organisations facilitating Lia Thomas type situations and Katie Dolatowski type situations. I know which of these is more hurtful.

It’s been suggested many times that the Mens toilet should be unisex, keeping the Womens toilet for biological women only.

Ask yourself why they reject that solution.

Yes I read one comment last night saying that they would be happy if women were bricked for standing up for their rights.

Of course if we had ever said that about a trans person [or any person] we'd have been banned for life. Doesn't quite work the other way when they say it about us though.

You understand that people can't change SEX but that you are happy for them to be the opposite GENDER?

Can you define gender?
If they haven't changed sex why is their imagined gender identity or dress sense relevant to single sex spaces?

A man with dysphoria is a man with dysphoria, not a woman.
If they don't have the mental illness of dysphoria then it's a lifestyle choice or a fetish. Either way, they are still men.

The issue is that a small minority think that their appearance or feelings somehow entitle them to things reserved for the opposite sex and give no shits about the damage that causes to everyone else. That this magic inner gender essence should be prioritised above all else.

Are you finding these responses helpful Spyrothedragon23? It's quite stark to see it all written down isn't it.
We all have our lines in the sand. Mine is the awfulness of grooming children to believe they're in the wrong body and their subsequent mutilation and life long drug use. I will never forgive those adults allowing this to play out unchecked.

It seems that prisons in Scotland were targeted early on:

From: MurrayBlackburnSA2019LosingSightOfWomenRights.pdf (ed.ac.uk)

"James Morton (Scottish Trans Alliance) has commented, ‘We strategized that by working intensively with the Scottish Prison Service to support them to include trans women as women on a self-declaration basis within very challenging circumstances, we would be able to ensure that all other public services should be able to do likewise’
Morton, J. (2018). ‘A Scottish History of Trans Equality Activism’ in (ed.) Burns, C. Trans Britain. Our Journey from the Shadows. Unbound: London

I'll leave it to you to figure out whether "very challenging circumstances" means "an easy way in because no-one cares that much about female criminals and no-one employed the prison service can speak out in public".

But you know what, I'm a bit cross about all this. Fans myself, decides it must be time to take some deep breaths and do something else with the day

I think the separation of the words sex and gender has contributed to this issue - people are either male or female. People may have feminine or masculine traits or characteristics but you can't change whether you are male or female

I'm pretty much in agreement with your stated position, OP. I'm open about my views at work, not particularly because I'm brave, but because I'm near retirement. For saying the kinds of things you've said I've been accused of bigotry, and a host of word-salad things like cis-supremacy and bio-normativitity. TWAW is an extremist position that brooks no dissent.

I don't much care how people identify if it makes them happy and their lives better. But I do care when some activists (and I accept not all trans-identifying people are activists) demand that laws and policies are changed to reflect TWAW and anyone with any objections has to shut up. That's a very standard GC position - it's compassionate, moderate and democratic. We're already in the middle ground, or the grey area as you put it.

If you want to remove sex segregated spaces, be honest and campaign for that. Theres differences in having single sex spaces, no sex segregation and pretending we have sex segregation but not really. Why lie and have woman on a door when men have every right to be there?

What is gender? If you mean clothes, why is it anyone else's business? Why is the state recognising someones clothing choice?

If it actually means more, again, lets be honest about what that means. Are we saying that presentation, name changes, drugs or surgery changes something fundamental about a person, enough for the state to recognising that fact. And what does that mean?

The truth is that everyone has a sex that cannot change, but some want everyone else to embrace their gender, ignore their sex even in sex segregated spaces.

Why arent we just stating whats going on - men want to be seen as women and use women only spaces? If theres no problem with that, why isnt that been said clearly?

I went to a ‘women’s liberation in education’ day at a university not long ago. It was a really thoughtful, interesting day of talks and workshops about women’s rights and safeguarding in education. Attended by women from all walks of life. (I was sitting between some young Muslim students and an older Lesbian couple. Really diverse and really, really interesting hearing lots of different women talk).

Outside, all day, was a group of trans rights protestors. They were banging on the windows and screeching through a megaphone ‘Die terf scum’ and ‘scratch a terf a Nazi bleeds’.

This, for me, just sums it up. A group of women having quite sensible discussions about the grey areas versus the same old male entitlement and threats of violence. They don’t even want is to think or speak. Just roll over.

NO!

want US to think or speak

The issue is that people have been giving so many inches that we've now reached the point they've taken not just a mile, but, well, everything.

For example, from the Telegraph today:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/26/transgender-athlete-research-rejected-professor-called-trans/

Transgender athlete research has been shut down after a professor called trans women "males".

Dr John Armstrong, a scholar at King's College London (KCL), applied to carry out a survey of elite athletes and volunteers on whether trans women, who are born male, should compete in women's track and field categories and whether they felt they could express their views.

However, the university's ethics panel rejected his application last week citing equality and diversity concerns, in what has been labelled an attack on academic freedom.

In a rejection letter, the university said: "The language is not sensitive and the misgendering of athletes is not appropriate... there is obvious bias in the language and there is very little scientific reasoning underpinning the hypothesis."

KCL took issue with how Dr Armstrong had referred to trans women as "males" in his research proposal.

Dr Armstrong's application had said: "The principle aim of the project is to find the views of athletes and volunteers on the question of when males should be allowed to compete in the female category in athletics."

...

KCL's panel also said "there is a risk that some participants might be unhappy or distressed by the questions that are being posed to them" and asked Dr Armstrong to "please contact the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion team to seek input on the wording used".

you say you aren't bothered about opposite sex people in toilets but you don't really have to the right to give away the rights of ALL women to have single sex toilets. Most women prefer single sex toilets

This. Hope that answers your question, OP.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html

"I’ve been on this board and some of the things I’ve read are awful"

Me too.
Reading about children abused by men who claim to have gender identities,

or women being forced to share prison cells with fully intact rapists

Or women being told in rape crisis centres that the feelings of men who need validation for their identity matter more than them getting help for their trauma

Or the Muslim women being threatened and doxxed by men and having her daughters school run route put online because she dared point out the obvious behaviour of a prominent trans activist.

Or JKR getting thousands of threats from 'women' who wish to rape her with their penis or kill her

Or reading the heartbreaking stories of young detransitoners who have been permanently damaged because of people pushing gender batshit.

I'm always a bit puzzled by what the 'I've had a brilliant idea that no-one has ever had before, why don't we all get along by women compromising!' posters expect to achieve

but I guess they haven't hung around long enough to get it. then they either flounce or stick around until the magic eye picture resolves and they become evil old black and white meanies like the rest of us

OP - not read the whole thread.

But can I ask, as a woman I do not want to share toilets with biological men. I do not want my daughter to have to. I do not want my Muslim best friends to be forced to share toilets with men. I do not want my best friend who was raped to have to share a toilet with men.

Im pleased for you that you’re happy to share toilets with men but can I ask do the voices of other women not matter?

The issue is that people have been giving so many inches that we've now reached the point they've taken not just a mile, but, well, everything.

Exactly. This isn't about acceptance for many, it's about control. A massive power trip. They don't see any grey areas. If you stand in the way of them getting everything they want, you will be smeared as a transphobe. And if you are a woman, they have a special term for you, whether or not you are in any way a radical feminist. They don't care.

I think we all start from a grey area and hope to have some nuance, but like everyone says it really does just become more black and white the more you look into it. If stonewall had campaigned for third spaces a lot of this unpleasantness wouldn't have got so far... but like everyone has said, it's never good enough.

Pronouns, I wouldn't hurt anyone but I won't use them, I use their name. I think that using them, adding them to sign offs perpetuates this whole movements and I've got to the point where I think less of people that do use them.

Non binary is a nonsense, it just called a personality.

The fact that our young people are constantly wondering who they are, I mean I guess we did when we were teenagers, wearing different clothes, acting out, but non of it caused irreversibly harm like it can do now.

The aggression from the TRAs what happened at SFW event the other day worries me greatly, we really are in a difficult place as a society.

I think for most of us, we start from a place of grey and then realise the full implications, sport, prisons, religious women, safety, the larping side of it, is that another word we is for the 3 letter one? The danger to children...

As an aside, thanks to all the people on here, I seldom post but am here every day.

Also OP and I promise this is not name calling or being rude. But I really doubt you’ve read much on this bored. I’ve been about for a number of years, don’t post much, but there have been SO MANY posts on toilets, if you’re sincere about understanding the situation spend time reading. Please also understand that the women on this bored are often having to defend their position to people who are not well meaning but disguise their position with ‘I just want to learn….but while I’m here why are you’re views so bad?’