Transwomen v. deceptive men are a threat

[pantsforteaagain]

I am just reading about Keir Starmer on Radio 5 live about the new stance by Labour on transwomen. The interviewer was talking about how women need safe spaces in case transwomen are a threat, e.g. Isla Bryson. But surely most people are worried about men being deceptive and pretending to be trans in order to access single-sex spaces. That seems much more likely to happen, and that is relevant because the response is always "but that, i.e. transwomen being a threat, hardly ever happens". Do people not say it because they are are scared to say out loud that some transwomen are a fraud? It seems such an obvious and important distinction to me.

It's the thing we're not allowed to say out loud, ignoring decades of evidence, safeguarding training and serious case reviews showing abusive men will exploit any loophole.

This whole "deceptive men" argument is a red herring. It isn't my issue.

The "men" issue is my issue.

I think this argument gathered pace because people could say it's not about you (the TW they are talking to), it's about them over there.

For me it was always about all men.

I think if they were genuinely trans I would mind them in the female toilet but I'm not ok with AGP or preditory men who pretend and as there is no way to tell I think it should be a blanket "no". I'm also aware even if I'm not that bothered others are and I absolutely do not have the right to give away that safe space.

But when you add prison where you need to sleep and shower with male people if they say they are women? I'm not ok with that. Same for female hospital wards.

Add sport? Grants etc for women in all areas?

Men saying they are women and swaying the stats on equality at work? Crime statistics?

Then when you consider normalising this for adults leads/has lead to what is happening on our children?

It's not really about wether some men are safe or who is genuine or not. It's about the societal attitudes to women, our rights our protections and opportunities. Our safety from the pretenders really is just the most obvious part

I don't trust anyone with XY chromosomes. Never have. Never will.

I don't like this argument about deceptive men because it is based on the idea that there are genuine transwomen (the ones who 'only want to pee') and then there are the predatory men who are pretending, and that these are two distinct groups. I think the reality is much messier and blurrier than that.

Most transwomen are not a threat.
Most men are not a threat.
Most women are not a threat.

Some people are dangerous, abusive and predatory. Statistically the vast majority of dangerous, abusive and predatory people are male. Historically, dangerous, abusive and predatory people have gone to enormous lengths to get themselves into a position of trust in order to exploit the vulnerable.

When rules are made to keep people safe, it is always the case that the vast majority of people who are prevented from doing something they would otherwise have done, had no malicious intent and would not have done anything wrong. This is normal and expected.

Because there is no way to independently verify the emotions, thoughts or soul of a clearly male person who says they are a woman, there is no way to tell the difference between a harmless transwoman and a predator who is trying to bypass a restriction in order to further their predatory behaviour. The fact that harmless people vastly outnumber predators is irrelevant. There is no acceptable number of predators who should be allowed to operate unchallenged in order to not hurt a transwoman's feelings. If there is any situation where men are barred, then all transwomen need to be barred too.

It is quite right and proper that thought should go into deciding whether a bar for all males is appropriate, but if it is then there shouldn't be exceptions for men who are presenting according to feminine-coded ideas.

Yes the issue is that some men will go to extraordinary levels to abuse people. We only need to look at men who have gone through years of training and building entirely fake personas and interests in order to get into religious communities, schools, medical institutions....... to know this.

It is not even hard work to utter the words 'I identify as a woman' while looking and dressing in typically male presenting ways so of course it is a loophole that abusive men will exploit.

The problem is that we have no way of knowing if the male in a dress or just saying the words really is gender dysphoric or if they just want to be close to women and children in a vulnerable state.

So we put in place safeguarding measures, we run CRB checks for employment in schools etc, we segregate some services and facilities for females only.

It's a simple concept and over ruling or twisting it does negate safeguarding measures and does mean that the people those measures were put in place for are less safe.

How can anyone possibly make the distinction? How do we know that Isla Bryson is pretending ("at it" to use the Scottish first minister's phrase) rather than genuinely trans?

It doesn't matter anyway. I'm no more inclined to allow Paris Lees into a women's changing room/prison/domestic refuge than I am Bryson or Karen White.

This. It has to be a blanket no. Single-sex spaces, your sex determined by your chromosomes.

I get what you mean OP but my hard line after years of following this issue is no man, regardless of appearance or intent, in women-only spaces. (I think that's a Sall Grover line originally).

By that mad bit of logic, Karen White and Isla Bryson and Katie Dolotowski and many, many others, are not 'real' transwomen.

Are they going to be stopped from 'doing it' then?

Are you going to not be allowed a GRC or to self ID if you have a record of sexual assault on women? Stripped of your GRC post offence? Stripped of the right to use women's spaces?

When Karen's out on parole (I think Katie is now) who is following them around to make sure they don't go into to a women's space? And who makes them stop, with what consequences?

And the ones who wank in the toilet cubicles and take videos to put on social media because being in a room with women with their knickers down peeing is such a thrill, or the ones who stuff your just used tampon up their bum, or wave swords around in toilets, or take selfies of self in toilet WITH WOMEN.... you know, the ones using women as props, often in sexual experiences? Is that ok? Do they have to have a full conviction before we say they're not TW or do we worry about the fact that this a bloody awful way to encourage men to treat women at any earlier point? Basically what's the body count/degree of injury and harm needed before it's no longer ok for a man to use a non consenting woman?

It's batshit. It cannot be done. And the phrase deceptive men is a very unfortunate choice of words for his argument there.

What @Sh4rkAttack said.

It’s unhelpful to talk about “genuine transwomen” as if some people are born with an innate desire to wear skirts and make up, and others are born with a desire for trousers and no make up 🤔 and it’s insulting to all that women go through, to define us by how we dress.

Also, if I find myself in a small enclosed space without witnesses, and a woman is there, I do not feel unsafe. I know that if she attacked me, we are physically equal enough that I’d have a good chance at getting away.

If however I’m in that situation with a transwoman, I do feel unsafe. If we had a physical fight, I’d have zero chance at defending myself enough to escape. A transwoman can easily physically overpower me or impregnate me; a biological woman cannot. And the only thing I know about a transwoman other than their superior strength is that they have body dysphoria, which is a mental health issue. Do I feel safe being confined alone with someone when the only two things I know about them are that they are much stronger than me and have mental health issues? No, I do not.

Thanks for all these points, which are very convincing. Once you look at the issue from the point of view of women, then it is clear that males - whether transwomen or not - should not be in women spaces.
But I am frustrated because there are few opportunities for women (or men, but it is mostly women) to put forward the women point of view and the main argument getting airtime is the one about transwomen being seen as a threat, which is presented as so mean and so rare.
(BTW, I do know how to use an apostrophe, but my keyboard does not let me.)

Even with the so-called "genuine transwomen", the fact that most of them insist on access to spaces they know are intended to be female-only, despite being well aware that many women are uncomfortable with this to say the least, is already an indicator of dubious intention. It's a violation of boundaries if nothing else.

Becoming a modern type of eunuch isn't the same as actually being a woman. It's very unreasonable to expect all women to accept this as somehow being equivalent.

It's not just about safety. It's about privacy and dignity too.

Whilst I would feel 'safe' sharing a changing room with, for example, my friend's husband or my father in law, I still wouldn't want to share that space for reasons of privacy and dignity.

That's why Starmer's promise of 'safe spaces' is not good enough. It has to be single sex spaces.

The concept of "fraudulence"/"deceptiveness" is a red herring.

There's no externally verifiable way to define what it "feels like" to be a woman and no way to verify whether what any particular person feels about themselves is "correct" even if such a definition could exist.

Whether or not a specific individual meets such a definition, if it could exist, could only be based on what they say and do, and that may or may not be honest but whether or not it is is irrelevant.

When men are excluded from something it is not because all men are dangerous or predatory or whatever. The vast majority of men excluded are honourable and lovely people. The vast majority of transwomen excluded are honourable and lovely people. The exclusion isn't a judgement of whether they are honourable and lovely, or whether they have lied about their feelings, or whether those feelings are correctly "feminine" whatever that means. The only externally verifiable fact is whether or not they are male (and that is not affected by dress, or hormone treatments, or surgery)

If there's a legitimate reason for something to be single-sex then whatever that reason is applies to all males regardless of gender identity and regardless of whether their professed belief in themselves as feminine is honest. But the point is that those transwomen excluded are no more being insulted/demeaned or under-suspicion than any of the perfectly lovely male-identifying men who are also excluded.

Theoretically a predator might have just as "honest"/"genuine" feelings about their gender as a perfectly lovely non-predatory transwoman. Their honesty/genuineness is not a useful measure of whether they are a threat even if it could be measured. Their exclusion is not therefore a judgement on their honesty/genuineness.

Men pose the threat. To the safety, privacy and dignity of women in changing rooms, public toilets, hospital wards, prisons, etc. And to fairness in women's sport.

It's men that pose the threat.

The whole 'but surely those lovely TW are very rarely a threat' argument is for the hard-of-thinking. It's about men, however they are dressed, however they identify... because no one can tell a predator in a dress from a 'genuine' TW. It's pretty damn obvious.

@PurpleBugz as a middle-aged Lesbian I've met quite a few transwomen (men).
I can tell you whether they were straight (m-f) or gay (m-m) they all acted like entitled men.

I can tell you the true trans I met, who loudly announced to my Lesbian social group "I got my penis cut off, yay!" Was a horrible male sexist creep.

Cutting your penis off changes nothing.
Do you think Alan, Sarah-Jane Barker is
lovely and kind?

All trans, whether ‘men’ or ‘women’ are frauds. If by dress or behaviour they attempt to deceive and/or gain an advantage.
Which they do.

Women's rights can't exist without the right to enforce our boundaries.

The problem with TW/TM etc is that they are obsessed with gender, sex and themselves. To them it is inconceivable that people are just not interested and can really do with a break at getting this ideology & pronoun rules shoved in their faces.

But at the end of the day they are pretending to be someone they are not &, like the tale of the scorpion & the frog, men will be men, it is in their nature. No matter how good the wig, thick the makeup and frilly the dress.

IMO the entire threat/security discussion is a convenient red herring brought up by TRAs. Reduce the problem down to merely being about security, then argue it's not fair to make general rules based on a few bad apples. When in fact problems are of a much more general nature and women have the right to basic privacy in certain types of spaces, in particular where communal nudity is involved (changing rooms/showers/saunas.)

You do have to wonder how they expect GC people to make any sense of this distinction.

Perhaps it's: "Men really pretending to be women, vs. Men pretending to be men pretending to be women."

Either way, all these nonsensical problems can be avoided by identifying people by their sex, and ensuring that women can retain safe single-sex spaces.

Males can be gender dysphoric. Males can be sexually abusive.
Males can be gender dysphoric and sexually abusive.

Being “genuine trans” does not lessen the likelihood of being sexually abusive. I’ll be generous and leave it there.