Horrible news story

[MumblesParty]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-66107716

And I can't help wondering if the "women" assailants are actually women.
Poor kid.

Certain people want to dictate what pronouns are used about them. I'm dictating , in the same way, that I won't be called 'cis'.

If you're a true feminist though periods and childbirth are not what makes us women. In-fact modern feminism was built on the idea that what makes us a woman is determined by ourselves.

Says who? That strikes me as being totally arse-about-face. What women can do is determined by ourselves. What makes us a woman is simply the fact that we are one. In a biological sense, because there is no other sense. You seem to be confusing the concept that what women make of their lives shouldn't be determined by their sex with the idea that women's sex can't be determined by their biology. The latter is not feminism, it's just nonsense.

@lady69 thanks for calling it out!....if only they would ban that vile term (turfs) ... disgusting how women are insulted these days.

And tall. So very, very tall.

So either two men or a man and a woman are suspected of this crime. Think I'll hang fire on judgement for now

It upsets this group in particular, nobody else. Well unless you count Elon Musk.

By that do you mean this group on this thread? That 'nobody else' sounds pretty definitive, yet l do not know anyone who will accept that language. Visiting a friend last week, one very sympathetic to men who say they are women, and she turned red and nearly spit in anger at the suggestion that she could be called "cis".

The point is we should not be wondering what the actual sex is of people the police want help to identify and catch. Sex is a pretty obvious distinguishing characteristic. A 6 foot man with red hair is also very distinctive. So if that person was a man, all he has to do now is lose the dress to hide. Because the police have told people to look for a woman.

What matters most here. Catching a dangerous sex offender or risking ‘misgendering’.?

I’m so sick of this gaslighting bullshit, men having their ‘identities’ prioritised above everything, even a little boy. This shouldn’t be legal, it’s so grossly offensive to women and actively obstructs these pigs being found.

Obvious when you're standing next to each other. I can say my son is "a few inches taller than me" but I couldn't tell you his actual height at all. I mentioned above that a previous manager was a 6ft 3 female with bright red hair (and always wears DM's). My best friend is also somewhere around 6ft (but has marfans which explains that). I'm 5ft 1. I only know the actual height other than "a lot taller than me" because they've told me and I know them well enough to remember. In the case of a highly stressful situation, where someone is being pushed around, grabbed etc, I doubt may would be particular clear on height other than a lot / some / a little taller than them. There a lot of research and papers out there about how hard it is to give a witness description of someone.

I, and no one here, knows the true situation. What I'm objecting to is the whole "these must be men dressed as women and there is a massive cover up" with no actual evidence to back this up. If the 15 year old reported them as women, what do you expect the police force to do? To say "Well, he said they were women, but they're tall, so we'll ignore what the victim said"??

@justteanbiscuits , this is the Sussex police. They have form.

You know I meant "personal pronouns", yes, life would be tough without them. However badges with personal pronouns can all get recycled into something more useful, in my view.

Your friends are successful and chill. Good, so are mine. However my little coterie of pals doesn't give the thumbs up for cis, nether do my dozy male friends, once they've piped up after pizza and beer.

Your chilled friends are good w cis? Personal pronouns? And any number/all of trans demands for societal change? Men in women's sport and safe spaces, kids to have gender changes kept secret from parents by teachers, etc?

Some people need to stop and think when they're holding forth about how wrong others are. All those children have been abused - as a result of the demand for images of them from predominantly (but not solely) men.
It's unbelievable to see it written here and while I'm tempted to report any poster who minimises the sexual abuse of children, frankly letting it stand is more revealing about the lack of thinking and care for children.

Fuck! Did you read this before posting?

How do you know that no child was raped in producing that child sex abuse content that you just dismiss as ‘not like sexual offences or rape’? Not only that, but do you understand that every single time that content is viewed that any child sexually abused to produce that specific material is harmed again and again and again.

You seem rather dismissive about it all. Like ‘well, at least x wasn’t actually raping that child’ is any consolation for the victims. But maybe I am misunderstanding your post, in which case I apologise.

I would really like to hear which passage in Kathleen Stock's book says women have determined what makes a women and what does not.

I think you may have completely misunderstood the meaning of 'self-determination'.

There are some awful women out there who do commit sexual offences.

However, while 5ft 9 isn't unbelievably tall for a woman so one may have been female. Unlikely the 6ft 3 one is though.

I would really like to hear which passage in Kathleen Stock's book says women have determined what makes a women and what does not.

The poster was referring to some long-dead sculptor. Unfortunately not Kathleen Stock who can obviously be relied on to talk sense.

The truth is that nobody outside of queer circles uses it or relates to it; and for others it is a highly contested term.

Furthermore It adds no meaningful information. Woman does not require any qualifiers - it is has integrity on its own. If you want to describe a male who is identifying as a woman - you coould easily say 'trans identified male', or just 'transwoman'.

This is indeed truly horrifying. That poor boy. He will carry this trauma for the rest of his life. I hope that he can find a way forward.

At the risk of being overly blunt/crude, this attack is described by the police as a sexual assault. Sexual assaults usually involve a male person attacking a (usually, but certainly not always) female person. They usually involve the male attacker displaying or actively using their penis while committing the crime. I don't know if that's what happened here, or whether the boy even knows for sure if he was rendered unconscious during the attack. But I'm really struggling with the idea of a 'sexual assault' being committed by a female person on an unconscious male person. I genuinely don't know what that would involve in order to be labelled by the police as 'sexual assault'. And if either attacker had a penis (and assuming the boy saw evidence of that), surely even in the current self-id-is-everything climate he would not have described them to police as a woman?

I am happy to respect people's pronouns and identities, as long as the accommodation of their rights does not trample all over women's rights. I will 'they/them' all of the vulnerable teens and 20-somethings who feel they need these special pronouns and I will 'she/her' male people if it matters to them. EXCEPT when these male 'women' use their PENISES to commit violent and sexual crimes. You use your fully-functioning penis to sexually assault somebody? You are NOT a 'she'. You are NOT a woman. And it really, really boils my piss to see rapists described as f**king WOMEN and their victims being forced to address them as she/her. How this is happening in 21st century Britain is utterly beyond me.

Might be a good idea for @evieowlette and others to familiarise themselves with the MNHQ rules for posting on this board, e.g.
many feminists are affronted by the term ‘cis’ and ‘terf’, so using these terms will make civil debate less likely. As we’ve said, context is everything – but our moderation team will most likely delete these expressions if we feel they're being used in a deliberately inflammatory way.

https://www.mumsnet.com/i/trans-rights-moderation-policy

Sorry - no, I didn't think about the pronouns on badges. I don't wear a badge so, sorry, I didn't think about it. But my friends are OK with using a persons preferred pronouns, yes. They're fine with sharing spaces with trans women. There are no kids having gender changes without parents knowing. There are simply no kids under going gender reassignment surgery in the UK.

Sport is a very very different issue. I support there being male, female and open categories - but this is mainly as it would be impossible to, for example, test testosterone levels in grassroots sport.

A 6'2" man with orange/red dyed hair in a frock is certainly memorable.

In fact DH remembers spotting one a few weeks ago in a different Sussex town. No pink trainers though.

Offs, it's a man. I'm sick of playing the game. It's a man.

And again, the point is that no one should be wondering. ‘Are the police looking for a male or female?’ When they describe someone as a woman. This does not help victims, or police to catch criminals.

And yes, this is where preferred pronouns and fear of stating someone’s sex leads. It’s not harmless and it’s not ‘politeness’ to refuse to state someone’s sex.

If you truly believe all this, I think you should seriously consider whether your 6’ 3 former boss with bright red hair might be involved in this crime. Because statistically speaking it seems not unlikely.