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?

FFS MN! Are we allowed US Government sites?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3769077/

or the American Psychiatric Association?

https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/Psychiatrists/Practice/DSM/APA_DSM-5-Paraphilic-Disorders.pdf

Or the Psychiatric Times?

https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/paraphilias-diagnosis-treatment

Will I get deleted and banned for posting this which relates to the Diagnostic Standards Manual 5; which is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States:

A woman complained she was raped in a single sex nhs ward. She was told she was lying as there were no men on the ward. Cctv proved she was raped by the 'woman' in the bed opposite however this individual had been recorded as female and therefore allowed onto the ward. This is the issue- rape is no longer a male crime. Violent men are being recorded as women and therefore allowed access to vulnerable women unchecked.

I suppose to me it means people who aren’t interested in a balanced and open debate, cannot countenance that their world view might not be the single “truth”, and who are quick to vilify or denounce others whose views don’t accord with their own. Can tend to be rather pious and “shouty” rather than open to two way conversation.

I think people can disagree and have healthy debate.

As for Jen/Jenny asking or expecting to be invited to a hypothetical 'Women in' whatever group then it would matter what the group is about.

My point is not about the purpose of the group. Just suppose it is a group that you want to exclude Jenny from, as well as anyone else who is - well just how are you going to express that, when you aren't allowed to say that Jenny is male, or a man, or use the word "he"? And when using any of those words means you are (seen as) transphobic and requires you to be re-educated?

A balanced debate in this case though is how many rights and how much equality should be removed from women to enable men to have more freedoms and choices and let's face it, dominance and control over women.

Come on girls! Be reasonable. Talk NICELY and with an open minded as to how much of your equality you're willing to give these men who are shouting death and rape threats, throwing liquids (tomato juice today, acid tomorrow) and thumping pensioners. And waving placards saying 'protect trans prisoners' (from being deprived of more victims.

As to toilets, we make laws despite knowing they may be broken. The logic of "well, bad men will do bad things anyway so why not just let in any many who wants to," is the same logic that says, "bad people will kill/break into your house so why bother locking your door?"

Some women may be okay with sharing toilets with men but most women aren't. And most parents are absolutely opposed to their 11 year old daughter using a bathroom with a male stranger regardless how he's dressed.

This is about consent. You can't give away other women's consent just because you gave yours.

Also, any man who breaks social norms in a way that could make a woman uncomfortable does not respect women and girls. My elderly father is the kindest man in the world and would never hurt a fly. He would be safer in a women's space primarily because he is now weaker and unable to defend himself against a male attacker. But he would NEVER request that because he wouldn't dream of making women uncomfortable. Elderly, disabled and weak men are not asking to join women's spaces, are they?

You need to ask yourself, what kind of male is okay breaking social norms knowing he may scare and agitate women and girls? Regardless if a man is a predator or not, if he wants to use a woman's toilet, he's engaging in anti-social behavior and he lacks empathy for women and girls.

I read an article today, yes it was in the Daily Fail, about a trans woman who was complaining about others talking about her penis and testicles which apparently had been detected while going through the scanner at an airport, and the subsequent trauma experienced. It's the sheer ridiculous nonsense that says a person with a penis etc is a woman. Not a grey area for me, but clearly we are expected to believe it.

Ooh, don't forget 'watch your tone'. Because heaven forfend we raise our voices to object that our services and spaces are being colonised and women are self excluding.

Women tried to be nice and compromise. They were told to 'die in a grease fire' and inundated with an image of an anime girl pointing a gun with the caption 'shut the fuck up TERF'.

👊💯
Yup.

@Lydiahateswashing Thing is what you've described - an open debate, by all means one had in good faith, bears no resemblance to the meaning of woke. I think language is very important; it's quite clear that blurring the meaning of the words 'sex' and 'gender' is intentional and serves no other purpose but to disorientate, delegitimise and distract. If 'sex' means everything and nothing then it quite conveniently means we can't define what a woman is and therefore cannot defend 'sex-based' rights because it becomes a nebulous ideology. < This is exactly what has happened to the word woke. It's no accident that woke is now used just about everywhere to denounce or ridicule.

Maybe you're right, but unfortunately in the meantime there is untold damage being done.
Laws are being changed to accommodate this, which may take years to reverse. Single sex spaces will no longer be legally tenable. Women's sporting achievements will be drowned out by men winning everything.
Children and teenagers are being taught that if they are uncomfortable in their bodies the solution is surgery and lifelong hormones.

The repercussions of this will go on for years, long after it ceases being trendy.

"Trans/gender bending people have always been around. "
Yes. Gender bending geniuses like Dietrich, Bolan, Bowie, Lennox have indeed always been around and rightly worshipped. Don't recall any of them colonising women's safe spaces or demanding we neutralise important sex specific language about women.

trans? Well, yes, transvestites and transsexuals have been around and treated badly by men. That is not women's problem to fix.

As for women who dressed as men to access professions such as doctors, soldiers. That was because those professions were closed to women.

"Trans/gender bending people have always been around. "

And we've havent always given that gender bending man a female passport and birth certificate, and taught children its wrong to say that they are a man.

I can't be arsed getting het up about it. Trans people want legal and social reforms, these need to happen in a way that vulnerable groups. Over time, the right path will emerge.

Words fail.

That right path will be littered with raped, assaulted, battered and excluded women, homosexuals and sterilised, chronically ill children, and laws that subordinate females to males and will be decades to roll back. But what's that to get het up about, eh? No biggie.

@Farmageddon
Thank you

@Farmageddon i have come back and read through every page (it took a while 😂)

Had a lovely day out with the kids at a farm, saw some piglets being fed and had a conversation on breastfeeding.

Thank you so much for all the useful information.

On a note to the toilet debate I had a few questions why i wanted to give up this space for women. I don’t think that’s what I said or meant. I said im not bothered if a man was present and minding his own business but asked why some women are uncomfortable. To which I did got some good answers, I can see if you’re Muslim and wanting to adjust any clothing it wouldn’t work. Again if you have been sexually assaulted being alone in toilets with a man would be scary.

I'm neither Muslim nor worried about assualt. I just want some privacy and dignity op.
That should be a good enough reason for anyone.

The fact that women have to cite such extremes to be listened to shows how little our needs are valued.

It is easy to spot "that you are not arsed" because you seem wholly unaware that this has been a grassroots movement - not a top down one. That the media and the political class are now picking up on it is testament to a lot of hard work, dedication, and refusal to back down going back six or seven years.

Nothing "emerges"; what happens is that those who can be arsed make sure that their voices are heard at the table and they push for representation.

@Spyrothedragon23 I'm glad you read it all. I hope you keep coming back here. Some responses can feel very strong and intense so I'm glad you weren't put off. I am from the US and when I first came on to MN I was a little overwhelmed by the style and directness of some of the posters. You need a strong spine to ask questions and be open to answers.

It's a lot to process and if you stay long enough you'll also find a lot of us have trans or nonbinary or some other version of gender woo family members. We love them but many of us have seen up close what the ideology can do to vulnerable young people. I stick it out here despite my arguments with other women in this site. I'm here because I'm a feminist. I'm also an anti-racism activist and on the left. For example,I cringe when "woke" is flung around because the word originated with American Blacks who wanted to show they were awake to injustices. The trans movement is sneaky because it takes a lot of the language and emotion from other social justice movements but it's proven to be anything but just.

We're a diverse group here on FWR.

I am a woman

I don't want a man using my toilets

I don't need to defend or justify this

That is all

I have not read the whole thread and know I will be repeating a lot that has already been said, but:

I do not believe that gender is a real 'thing'. Gender was a grammatical term first used in the late 1960s to describe socially restrictive sex roles and the ways those restrictions are transmitted. It has now become a term used by people eager to embrace those restrictive sex roles, either to enforce them so that people behave and appear in a way 'appropriate' for their sex (think of all those blonde heavily made up Trump supporting women) or behave and appear in a way 'appropriate' for the opposite sex to their own.

Having spent my life believing anyone can dress how they like, wear their hair however they want, do any job they qualify for, shag and marry any consenting adult they fancy (I seem to be channeling JKR) I find this reinvention of restrictive sex based conventions really horrible.

The fact that genderism is used by many deeply misogynist men to lampoon women via womanface performance, and used by a variety of sexually transgressive men (exhibitionists, voyeurs, AGPs) who believe that women have no right to refuse consent to their desires is disturbing. The fact that genderism is being used by men to access vulnerable women in prisons, medical facilities, and refuges is a disgrace.

That is without going near the physical damage to naive teenagers with incomplete brain maturity entering into a lifetime of medical dependency.

I see nothing positive that has emerged from the invention of the concept of gender - it is misogynist and homophobic, and the only people benefitting from it are the academics pushing it and the medical and pharmaceutical businesses making a profit from it.

For example,I cringe when "woke" is flung around because the word originated with American Blacks who wanted to show they were awake to injustices.

Whereas I cringe when I see an adjective used as a noun (‘Blacks’ seems utterly offensive to my British sensibilities but I realise it’s common usage in American English!)

FWIW when Brits use ‘woke’ as an insulting description or pejorative we are usually referring to the middle class student types who have appropriated it from it’s Civil Justice Movement origins. The types of politically sheltered, financially privileged elites who would probably be derided as ‘White Saviours’ by those who follow CRT.

It’s good that here on MN we can vehemently disagree and still carry on talking here - it’s getting to be a lost art elsewhere online!

Glad you had a good day enjoying the natural world and time with your family OP!
I found this gave me a different/interesting perspective on the toilet issue too. Seeing how we got to even have women's toilets in the first place and how short a period of time that's been- also (although only briefly mentioned in this piece), access to toilets for women now in other cultures. Sometimes good to have a bigger picture perspective for context. It's an interesting read even outside of the current debate I think:

https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/History-of-Womens-Public-Toilets-in-Britain/

I find it interesting to that the campaign in India for women was called 'the right to pee'.
Perhaps a bit if co-opting going on in the current toilet debate?

FWIW when Brits use ‘woke’ as an insulting description or pejorative we are usually referring to the middle class student types who have appropriated it from it’s Civil Justice Movement origins. The types of politically sheltered, financially privileged elites who would probably be derided as ‘White Saviours’ by those who follow CRT.

I see the same usage across the pond. I think I cringe because causes I see as important (like outrageous maternal mortality rates for Black American women) are ignored while scolds police language. Boots on the ground activists would rather get accessible health care than share in a pronoun circle. I hate the performative bs as much as conservatives do!!

I wish the TRAs would take their toys and go home so we can get back to awakening people to REAL social issues that are ignored while we fight off this gender insanity. Men in women's spaces should never have become an issue and I resent the time it takes fighting back against it.