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.

I appreciate there’s a lot to catch up on as you had to leave the thread quite early but it’s been covered (several times) in the thread since then.

They affect women because if any male person can now self ID as a woman and use women's single sex spaces, there are no longer any women's single sex spaces. This means women who need single sex spaces no longer have access to them.

Come on, this isn't hard to understand.

The risk to children is a more complicated issue. Broadly, the main concern is the lack of safeguarding for children identifying as transgender.

I mean ordinary trans men and women who are not criminals or violent and are just living their lives- how do they affect women and children?

3 ways mainly:

Safeguarding
Safeguarding
Safeguarding

@Messyhair321 · Today 09:37

I just don't get why it does & actually I don't buy it either. I mean fucks sake, I have far more to worry about in my life. Seems absolutely ridiculous. So much paranoia & lack of trust in humanity. I'm sorry if you're someone who feels this way, or has a reason to but the majority of people are ok & just trying to live their lives without interference. And who uses a public toilet isn't really something that invades my thoughts.
I'm an older lady & believe me I've lived through stuff. I don't get it & to me all this focus on Trans people feels neurotic.

You want to be believed as old and wise and emotionaly blackmail women into accepting men (with girlie feelings or a sheet of paper) be a priority in female single sex space.
And that legal classes be abolished or ignored when they protect women.

Your sexist hysteria is amusing twisting, languge to hide the word man and male.

PS Gay men were never classed by women as high risk males when it came to VAWAG. They also never demanded to enter female single sex spaces.

No debate era is over and the Let them speak

https://twitter.com/CoachCaroline/status/1700601789093982596

Well, it speaks ....

As others have said, it's the fact that with self ID anyone can call themselves a transwoman. My DH, 6'2" with a beard wearing a pair of jeans and a rugby shirt, can call himself a transwoman and get access to women's changing area. If challenged he just has to say he identifies as female. Who's going to challenge him? If I challenge him can I challenge someone with a penis who came into my changing area wearing a dress? What about someone who came in wearing a bikini top and jeans with a penis? All of them self ID as a woman. So who's the transwoman? The one in the dress? I don't wear dresses or skirts and I prefer flat shoes. I'm a woman though, not a transman. So the dress isn't a clue. What about the bikini top? Does the fact that it looks like a bra give me a clue? Does my DH being 6'2" tall with a beard mean (s)he's not a transwoman? Because if he says he is then he is - right?

So how do I tell that the person with a penis in my women's changing room is a transwoman and not some pervert? In the past if I'd have been undressing and someone was in the room who showed a penis I'd have been out to the front desk and they'd be chucked out for flashing. All they need to do now is say they self ID and I'm transphobic.

And @Messyhair321 it's not my job to keep myself safe in changing rooms. I keep myself safe by choosing the appropriate changing room. That's as much safety as I need to provide for myself. Society has to provide the rest by ensuring men or people with penises, whatever they want to call themselves, do not get access to that changing room. If transwomen want to be women why the heck would they want to keep a penis?

In a way, but not in the way Pink News thinks.

I think the daft Ipso guidelines plus the widening of the trans umbrella have led to a growing number of juxtapositions that the general public just won't accept.

Cross dressing criminal men being described as women.

Isla Bryson was an absolute watershed in this.

And then the 'success' of biological males in women's elite sport and the remedying of sports bodies back to single sex.

This is just playing out how it was always destined to in practice.

I believe you can educate yourself on this by answering some these questions for yourself.

Do you believe that male bodied people - people with a penis and testicles - have the right to undress and shower in a communication changing room with teenage girls like my 15 year old autistic daughter?

Do you believe that children can be born in the wrong body?

Do you think that breastbinding devices should be given to girls in secret?

Do you believe that male rapists should be held in women's prisons?

Do you believe that a woman whose violent husband cross dresses, should be vilified and removed from the group for telling her support group about his fetish?

Do you think that medical language matters when it comes to treating men and women's different medical conditions and that it's important that there is no confusion?

It's not my job to be your teacher. Please think for yourself.

Give it a few years and I think mens biggest fear of dating a woman wont be "i hope she doesnt laugh at me" but "i hope she doesnt have a penis"

What a time to be alive....

Trans people aren't the problem here. The damaging bit is as the initial post suggests, wrongful reporting & the echo chamber that follows.

Depends on your pov; there is a great deal of news that simply does not get into the mainstream press and some that doesn't even hit locally.

I'd be quite glad of the balance you currently have to be honest

*typo - communal changing room not communication

Also @Anniessong TW are being given spaces on programmes set up to improve the representation of women in eg STEM or politics or being given places in women’s sports teams

every TW given a space or place is taking one from a woman. Why on earth should women celebrate their spaces & places being given over to men who have not had to deal with eg periods or the motherhood penalty in the workplace or menopause? Why should we clap along with that?

I'm a 2nd wave feminist. Anyone can call me terf if they like - I literally don't care 😁

Ok, I was following a good debate with quiet interest til the above stopped me in my tracks & made me exclaim in sheer frustration.

@Messyhair321, this is a thread that is literally discussing exactly what defines support, or lack of support, for trans people. Your argument is that you see the very worst manifestations of a lack of support right here on it - transphobia & hatred. Others disagree. Tell us why! Your contribution above is akin to a debater simply saying, “If you don’t see it my way, you’re wrong!” It doesn’t help to explain, or justify, or highlight, or educate.

If you really think that the hatred is that obvious, that unambiguous, & you really want to change it, then why not give a convincing condemnation of it, in a detailed response?

Why not shame the haters by highlighting their phobia in such a way that they’ll struggle to defend this? By doing this, you may also convert any fence-sitters by explaining what you feel they should be seeing but are missing here. You’d certainly help people like me (GC, but desperate to read quality counter-arguments) to understand you better.

But saying the above really does come across as either, “I’m loving having the moral high ground & am just here to enjoy that as opposed to changing people’s minds!” or “I can’t defend my claims, so will avoid trying to do so.” It just doesn’t help your cause!

I can see some comments above that could be misinterpreted as hate, some that I find a bit distastefully phrased, some that perhaps are badly worded. But hatred, phobia etc. are such strong words, I want to know what YOU mean, not have to guess! I actually want to be reassured that you’re not just driven by prejudice yourself, in a meaningful analysis from you.

Honestly, quite a bit of what’s led to my concerns about the current situation and GC perspective has been posts like yours above. It’s somehow quite upsettingly ironic.

(NB. Maybe you’ve answered by now, ofc. Reading on…)

That makes two of us @Brefugee - 'no debate, no concessions' my eye. Like I'm going to be told what I can think? If no debate means 'woman, know your place' you can keep that too @WhiteFire

@LoobiJee ok will trawl through the posts when the children are in bed as there’s quite a lot now

But what does the battle against transphobia involve and how will you know when it's won? Will that be when transwomen are in women's jails? When transwomen are in women's shelters? When transwomen are in women's showers and changing rooms? When all people believe you can change from one sex to another? When all people agree that transwomen fully understand periods and menopause because they are women?

What does 'winning' entail exactly?

Make sure you’re sitting comfortably! It took me two hours to catch up.and that that was this morning….

This is just sexism. Plenty of women are not particularly feminine and some quite masculine. Plenty of men are not particularly masculine.

"Fair enough - educate me. How do transgender people affect women and children in their day to day life?"

It is not transgender people who affect women and girls in our day to day life.

It is changing rules, regulations, and laws so that any man can self-ID as a woman.

That affects us all because it means that:

• Teenage girls have to sleep in the same room with male classmates on school trips or undress next to them in changing rooms.
• We have no female-only spaces at all such as female toilets, changing rooms, prisons, hospital wards or shelters. This is at times dangerous, undignified, and unnecessarily stressful.
• Traumatized rape survivors or minorities such as Muslim women are just not able to use changing rooms which are now effectively mixed. This is happening in many places. It takes just one make to wave their penis around in a changing room.
• Girls and women are not able to demand that intimate gynecological examinations be done by a female medical professional.
• Many arms of women's sport are now dominated by males, even if they are relatively few in number. In time, female records will be annihilated by transwomen. You might not care but you would if your daughter lived and breathed a sport for which she trained much of every day, only to be shadowed by a male who decided to identify as a girl last year.
• Some girls' scholarships go to males who "identify" as girls, possibly even just for as long as it takes to then switch to non-binary where they might identify as a girl once a week. This is devastating for underprivileged girls.
• Women's quotas in leadership positions are no longer necessarily filled by actual females.
• Women are no longer able to meet and organize among themselves.
• We can no longer talk about women's issues around the world such as FGM, access to pregnancy and birth care, and period poverty. It is considered "transphobia" to call them problems faced by women. When we can't even define "woman" as an adult with a female body, we can't fight those problems.

Was that enough to educate you, as you asked us to do? If not, I'm sure I can come up with some more.

Cote D'Azur I will add you if I may to my increasingly long list of women champions to whom I owe a very large drink.

I remember being so impressed with several posters when I joined nearly a decade ago, one was @CoteDAzur

You want to be believed as old and wise and emotionaly blackmail women into accepting men (with girlie feelings or a sheet of paper) be a priority in female single sex space.
And that legal classes be abolished or ignored when they protect women.

Your sexist hysteria is amusing twisting, languge to hide the word man and male.

PS Gay men were never classed by women as high risk males when it came to VAWAG. They also never demanded to enter female single sex spaces.

No debate era is over and the Let them speak

https://twitter.com/CoachCaroline/status/1700601789093982596

Well, it speaks ....

Great post. Well done for cutting through the emotional blackmail.

Here you go

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3348290-It-will-never-happen-resource-thread?latest=0

And check out

https://reduxx.info/

There will be cross over because the MN thread isn’t always updated.

You have not come back with the number of women and girls you consider acceptable collateral. I suspect that you cannot commit to a number. I can. It was 1. One woman or girl being harmed, raped, assaulted, abused or excluded was enough for me.

We can all see with these examples that you are a classic n+1 denier. You will deny that you are part of the issue while scolding and shaming women who are working actively to protect all female people.

If someone is legally female or male that's what they are as far as I'm concerned. You can't then start arguing that they are still a man or woman. Thats my take on it.

Most of the male people we're talking about aren't actually "legally female", so leaving aside that many here don't agree that you can change sex, and that they aren't "legally female" in the same way as women as there are exemptions to both the GRA and EA on the basis of single sex, do you accept that the male trans people without a GRC are men, both legally and in every other sense?

As someone else said its about the changing rules. Not individual nice transpeople.
Jobs that involve working with children normally involve a DBS/CRB check. (Or whatever its called these days) The majority of people applying for these jobs and getting a DBS check are nice non violent people with no bad intentions. But we still DBS check everyone.
If the law was changed that places no longer needed a DBS check and anyone could work with children, and some people started saying that wasn't a good idea, you wouldn't say well my children have had plenty of men/people around them without DBS checks and they've always been fine. What about all those nice non violent men/people who just want to work with children? They don't affect anyones lives. They just want to live their lives and have a nice job etc. So because of those nice people we shouldn't have DBS checks for anyone.
Life doesn't work like that. There are plenty of people who would never hurt anyone. Men. Women. Transpeople. But because SOME do, we need to be careful of everyone. Its sad that a few ruin it for everyone. But that's just life. I don't complain that I need a DBS check to do my job because I'm nice. I just get one and accept it and understand why it's needed.