Worrying Increase in Transphobia

[PorcelinaV]

https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/09/09/transphobia-uk-press-media-negative-coverage/

An increase in transphobic sentiment among the British public has been fuelled by hostile coverage of trans people from the right-wing press, argues data journalist Ell Folan....

Unfortunately, newspapers still have a great deal of influence on the public and political agenda in Britain, and nowhere is this more obvious than in how perceptions of trans rights have changed.

As recently as Feburary 2021, an absolute majority of British voters (51 per cent) agreed with the statement “a transgender woman is a woman”, including 6 in 10 women. Just 34 per cent disagreed. But after years of negative coverage from the press, those numbers have changed.

In April this year, only 33 per cent of voters agreed that trans women are women, with 47 per cent disagreeing....

It is clear that the media plays an important role in shaping public perceptions, and unless their negative coverage is corrected and refuted, public opinion will continue to worsen.

Yes, @Katiemag, are you aware of Sarah Summers' legal action against The Survivors' Network?

Sarah was attending a women only group therapy session to help her come to terms with having been raped. One day an obviously male person joined the group, didn't contribute, just sat there and listened as women described their experiences of being raped. Sarah felt deeply uncomfortable and privately asked Survivors' Network if there was another group she could attend which was guaranteed to be for female women only. She was told no, and to use another service. She found there were no female only services in her area because all are explicitly and proudly inclusive of trans women.

Many trans activists told her to set up her own group.

She's now trying to set up her own group - this is not a toilet, a changing room, a sporting competition or a service which receives taxpayers' money, but a privately organised group of women who just want to find a safe space where they can meet and talk. But a group of trans activists have been contacting venues across her local area and convincing them not to let these women use them because they are trans exclusionary.

Is that the behaviour of a powerless, marginalised group?

Maybe you should check your privilege. And if you genuinely believe that 'the majority of people are ok & just trying to live their lives without interference' then that would include all the men in the men's toilets, hospital wards, whatever yes? So transwomen have nothing to fear from them, and can use those spaces and stay out of women's spaces, yes? Great.

I think framing wanting to protect women's single sex spaces and sports as "discriminating against trans people" is the crux of the issue though.

Exactly. THIS is the actual transphobia because it frames trans people as necessarily abusive and is the stance that has attracted the "prison onset gender dysphorics" to the yard.

I'm not saying old school transsexualism was problem free for women - far from it - but it also never set it self up as the rights movement to end all rights movements, appropriating everything in its path.

I wish trans activists, especially those who fancy themselves left wing or shout stuff like "acab", would stop and ponder on why it is this particular rights movement which has been so quickly and uncritically adopted by our police, government, press, tech, financial institutions and other major companies. What do all those organisations have in common 🤔

“I agree that women’s safe spaces should be protected”

Hi @Anniessong first of all, once again apologies for replying when you are away from the thread getting on with childcare etc, but this phrase “safe spaces” is not a trivial point of terminology. There is a substantive point here.

What women are asking for is to retain their right to privacy and dignity when in a state of undress. Note, they are not asking for something new and additional, they are asking for their pre-existing rights to be retained. In contrast the campaigners, on whose behalf Pink News is writing, are lobbying for women’s right to privacy and dignity when in a state of undress to be removed from them.

A tactic routinely used by those lobbying for the removal of women’s rights is to ignore any points made about women’s right to “privacy and dignity” (which must be an absolute right or is meaningless/doesn’t exist at all) and to change the discussion to one about “safety” and “safe spaces” (which moves it into the subjective realm of perceptions, degrees of risk/harm, balancing of interests, and - importantly- enables all sorts of whataboutery, distraction and in bad faith arguments).

The key thing it does is to allow the removal of women’s rights lobbyists to throw all sorts of false, emotive, hyperbolic, mudslinging claims at women who want to retain their right to privacy and dignity when in a state of undress. Those false claims are made in order to make it easier to accuse women who want to retain the right to privacy and dignity when in a state of undress of transphobia, and to ensure they are not listened to. A favoured false claim is the claim that women who want to retain the right to privacy and dignity when in a state of undress are saying that all males who assert a feminine gender identity are a sexual threat to women. That’s a false claim: no one has said nor is saying that all males who assert a feminine gender identity are sexual predators - in the prison population it’s about half of the male inmates who assert a feminine gender identity who are convicted sex offenders, which is a much higher proportion than for other prisoners; outside the prison population we don’t know what percentage of males who assert a feminine gender identity have committed a sexual offence but not been convicted of it, nor whether it’s lower, higher or the same proportion as for other males in the general population.

What’s interesting is that the Labour Party in England in its recent change of messaging is using “safe spaces” and is not using “single sex spaces”. This seems to indicate that women seeking to retain their right to privacy and dignity when in a state of undress have not yet persuaded the Labour Party in England to support the retention of that right to privacy and dignity.

If the statement people are disagreeing with was “a transgender woman is transgender” rather than “a transgender woman is a woman” you might have a point.

Just this

I couldn't agree with you more ❤

Perhaps you should chat to the ten year old girl who was sexually assaulted by Katie Dolatowski in a women's toilet, or the women who were sexually assaulted by Karen White in prison, and check your privilege.

These things haven't happened to me either but I can at least empathise with the girls and women they have happened to.

The need to deny that they are transwomen – with characteristics and needs different from dictionary-definition women – always strokes me as a sign that doesn’t have dysphoria, but rather that they have that acronym that we aren’t allowed to mention here.

I think @PorcelinaV is being tongue in cheek. Her OP was quoting the deranged Pink News piece.

As pp pointed out, the spin in the PN article is spectacularly dishonest. The aim of the research being quoted in April was to find out whether people knew the definition of a "trans woman" as a male.

Now we have a majority of people denying the existence of trans people.

Nobody is denying the existence of trans people. Many of us just don't believe in transubstantiation.

Why are you insisting that people can only believe your version of life?

As long as trans people are not materially discriminated against for work/education/housing etc and are not targeted with violence or aggression for being trans, you cannot force people to believe that men and women can become the other sex.

It’s not about transwomen. It’s about keeping male people - all of them - out of women’s spaces.

Do you not understand that some - many, even - need to have sex-segregated changing facilities and same-sex providers of intimate care?

but how do you tell isn't a reason to discriminate against all. Is it?

@Talltall , yes, that is exactly how it works.

Males are a threat to females. Not all males, but there's no way to tell which ones so ALL men are banned from women's spaces.

Transwomen are male, so this applies to them too.

Transwomen are vastly overrepresented in prisons as sex offenders (see graphic helpfully posted earlier in the thread).

Whether transwomen are more likely to be sex offenders or sex offenders are more likely to claim to be transwomen is moot - the danger to women is clear and women deserve safety.

@Messyhair321, how very privileged of you. My young relative was sexually assaulted in her sleep by a transwoman because her school believed TWAW. No one on FWR board gives a shit how feminine or masculine anyone wants to present, but sex is still an important distinction.

As usual Pink News ignores transmen.

I see those busy scolding have really two lines of thought:

1. I'm fine and have no barriers to getting undressed with random male people - in essence ignorance of the reality of other women and being fine with their exclusion

and

2. you only have a problem cos you're mean.

I'd explain it all, (again), but it's been explained multiple times on the thread already.

Get your kit off in front of whoever you want. Validate men with your body if that's your thing. No one wants to stop you.

But I'll ask the question I keep asking and no one ever answers: what are you going to do with all the women you just excluded, who have disabilities, traumas, cultures, faiths, beliefs and needs just as protected as transgenderism, and WHO CANNOT USE A SPACE WITH A MALE PERSON IN IT REGARDLESS OF HOW THE MALE PERSON IDENTIFIES OR HOW LOVELY THE MALE PERSON IS

Come on, answer.

Are you pro excluding women from anything so the male people you feel protective of can have control and choice from everything?

Are you ok with excluding women to make men happier? You do realise those women are tax payers and have rights too? And that if you're into inclusion and kindness, it's not just a male only thing?

I believe Porcelina is very much being tongue in cheek.

This. The reason fewer people are supporting gender ideology now is because it's absolutely, glaringly obvious that it is detrimental to women, children and gay people.

Indeed. It always makes me suspicious when I see the phrase 'safe spaces' being used as it seems like a deliberate dilution of the specific single sex allowances stated in the Equality Act 2010 -

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/notes/division/3/16/20/7

And which certain organisations have campaigned to be removed -

womansplaceuk.org/2018/06/25/references-to-removal-of-single-sex-exemptions/

The population generally is getting fed up of being told they must deny reality. They have realised that "being kind" is deeply unfair to female sportwomen. They are beginning to realise that it's unfair to modest women including but not only those who for cultural reasons are not ok with undressing in front of men.

"no debate" is bigotry and is rebounding on the bigots.

It's also becoming increasingly obvious that there is absolutely no reciprocal kindness, tolerance, education, or even basic ability to listen from male people with TQ identities towards women.

We know about this kind of relationship on MN. It's the kind of relationship the Freedom Programme was written for.

If you read the thread, you can feel the intense hatred.

I think you have misread anger as hatred, @Messyhair321 Many people, especially women and gay people, are very angry about what is happening. As well they should be.

This.

I’m not transphobic and I think people can do what they want as long as it doesn’t impact other people.

I do not agree however that a trans woman is a woman or trans man is a man.
That is why the ‘trans’ part is in front of it.

I would not go around saying I’m a trans woman because I’m not. I am a woman.

I actually feel sorry for true trans people as they get grouped with these pretend trans people who are doing it for attention/power/wokeness etc.

The main issue I have with the trans ideology is that it reinforces stereotypes.
Why does wearing a dress and having long hair make you feel like a woman when lots of women don’t wear dresses and have long hair.

How does someone changing their gender identity to suit their feelings about themselves better affect anyone? Or harm anyone?

Don’t you see how you’re answering your own question?

My life has never been affected by a transgender person yet everyday it has been by violent men, sexual predators,

The fact is that what the TRA are trying to achieve means that violent men and sexual predators would be able to self-identify as women and thus access the safe spaces women have to protect themselves from such people.

women are being taught to fear transgender women, to believe they are some sort of threat to their own female identity and rights, and to their safety (uproar about bathrooms etc)

Violent men and sexual predators who identify as women ARE a threat to female rights and safety. You’d have to be spectacularly unaware not to see that.