Feeling really low after being honest

[Notfeelingitwasworthit]

Training today. Gender identity. I was dreading it. Just keep your head down, I thought, don't say anything.
Then the subject of safe spaces came up and the presenter (they/them) said well it's actually not a problem at all, there are no statistics which show that sexual offences occur on hospital wards or in domestic abuse shelters and the other women are also really cool with it so it's not a problem at all!
I just said that this wasn't really accurate, we know women don't report sexual assaults or inappropriate behaviour, especially not if they think they're going to be labelled as transphobic, and women are constantly told to put up and shut up, so that labelled with the fear of being labelled a bigot OF COURSE won't mean they answer truthfully.
Obviously I was set upon. I tried to stand my ground but people kept going. Not just to my face but with snide comments throughout the rest of the day. I would join a room, everyone would stop talking. Even my closest contacts said 'well maybe you just shouldn't say it' and 'they do have a point'.

It just feels so lonely. It feels like you have a choice between being true to what you believe and having friends. Two of my closet friends would disown me if they knew.
Do I have to lie forever?

Thanks

Fuck off with your 'both sides' condescending bullshit. Transwomen are not 'other women ', they're men. The word woman is taken.

If you're not angry, you haven't been paying attention.

I’m not sure where you see anger in my post at least. Passion, yes, but underpinned by reasoned argument.

I really would be interested to hear a response to those arguments, which I’d hoped would show that I believe this goes far beyond “the wrong use of language”. (Equally, language is a personal interest of mine, & don’t want to de-rail.) 🙂

“..contrasting trans women with other women”: what other women? There are only women - no “other” women. Trans women are men. If they were women, they’d be…women.

Also yes, anger’s obviously totally legit - vital, & desperately needed, even. I read that statement by whichever police force it is earlier today, saying their policy was to describe a male sex offender as “female” (not even just “woman”, but “female”) on his say-so, in the context of appealing for witnesses & felt sick with anger, & fear. I think that’s an entirely rational response too! Sorry for bold, which now makes me look angry 😁 but want to highlight these points.

Letting a criminal choose how to be described in a way that makes apprehending him less likely, potentially puts the public at greater risk, & corrupts the data we use to permit women to play a full & active role in society (men’s relative capacity for committing violent offences) is utterly Orwellian.

Wow.

We have a live one who thinks we are all stupid and never have thought about any of this before and is here to lecture us in the guise of saying they just happened to stray here and have some comments to tell us. Yawn.

Trying to start a fight about how the word cis is fine, isn't a good start.

I think we possibly need to have the bucket of hake at the ready for the performance.

Just because something is new doesn’t make it wrong. A lot of terrible things happened in the past that need changing.

What makes this particular thing right?

A reminder.
Be wildernesses Rule of Misogyny:

1. Women are responsible for what men do.
2. Women saying no to men is a hate crime.
3. Women speaking for themselves are exclusionary and selfish.
4. Women’s opinions are violence against men, thus male violence against women is justified.
5. Women and Feminism must be useful to men or they are worthless.
6. Women who go around being female AT men by menstruating and breastfeeding babies deserve punishment.
7. Women should always be grateful to men for everything.
8. Men are whatever men say they are and women are whatever men say they are.
9. Men always know the “real reasons” for everything women do and say.
10. The worst thing about male violence is that it makes men look bad.

I refer to point 8. Women are women. Men do not get to call themselves women.

There's no such thing as cis women. Just sexism and biological women who have to be told by men they must include males because men decided they were woman.

Nope.

Men are never women. By definition all transwomen are men else what are they trans from? And no woman can be a transwoman.

Because biology.

I refer to points 2 and 3...

@Minglingpringle. Like Eresh’s question about the “particular”, above… You’re generalising a lot: upset, vulnerability, respect, kindness. These are all true, to a greater or lesser degree, of both sides. As such, lots of people have offered more specifics than this to justify why they favour the GC perspective. I tried to weigh up both in my post - why we need our def of “women” more than they do. Can you counter with specifics that do the same?

"Cis" is an interesting one. A question that never gets answered: what is one behaviour/trait a woman would have that would meet the criterion of her being "cis" - i.e., what does it look like if a female person has a gender that "aligns with" being female? Is there anything?

I don’t know if their fear is reasonable or not. But I like to take everyone’s fears seriously.

I’ve already said I don’t think it’s reasonable for them to attack people.

I am trying to respect everybody.

Your comments on coming into this thread were definitely not respectful. We don't just exist on Mumsnet, you realise, we are out there in the world. OP is a real person. If you think that our views about males in female spaces aren't representative, it's you in the echo chamber, your filter bubble must be very pro trans.

Im in my 50’s and I can honestly say I’d never seen the word used until I read these boards. And it’s still the only place other than Twitter I’ve ever seen it used.

It’s really not a common word amongst the GBP

I agree.

I’ve been cis-sed a fair few times, one way or another. I do find it quite upsetting, because the implications of it, to me, are so very stark.

I don’t know why you perceive it as condescending. But you seem to be telling me that you don’t are about the people on the other side of the debate at all and you would prefer for everybody to stay angry. So I guess it probably is best if I fuck off.

Just a reminder of what OP said in her training course, that this poster was so "fascinated" by our support for, when she was abused for it:

"Then the subject of safe spaces came up and the presenter (they/them) said well it's actually not a problem at all, there are no statistics which show that sexual offences occur on hospital wards or in domestic abuse shelters and the other women are also really cool with it so it's not a problem at all!
I just said that this wasn't really accurate, we know women don't report sexual assaults or inappropriate behaviour, especially not if they think they're going to be labelled as transphobic, and women are constantly told to put up and shut up, so that labelled with the fear of being labelled a bigot OF COURSE won't mean they answer truthfully."

I don’t know why you perceive it as condescending.

I'm not sure if you could be any more disingenuous.

I'll also note that the poster avoided answering any questions about why they hold the belief that a group of males should be considered as female to all intents and purposes.

Engaging with emotion, tone & generalities, not arguments & details, is easier - perception of moral high ground, scope for platitudes etc. I think a lot of people do it, from well-meaning but unthinking “be-kinders” to visitors unable to counter the concerns expressed here.

I don’t entirely disagree with you. I generally use the word women. Women are a category.

I just used cis in this specific context to differentiate between women and trans women. I don’t think that’s the end of the world. I nearly wrote “biological”
women. I don’t know if that’s the same level of red flag or not.

I don’t personally object to trans women calling themselves women, although I wouldn’t allow that to prevent me highlighting that they were a subset in situations where it would be useful to do so.

If we are to allow trans women to call themselves women (which I don’t mind but obviously everybody else on here does), then it is useful to have a word to differentiate the two.

I would object to them calling themselves women if I thought they were doing it with malicious intent. For me, it doesn’t seem obvious that this is the case, although I can see that a lot of people on here are convinced that it is.

Did you look at https://terfisaslur.com/ ? Do you actually think I should care about the wants or feelings of the men documented there, threatening to rape and murder women for not going along with their fetish?

You think you are the middle ground, you're not. GC feminism is the middle ground, you're a collaborator in the oppression of women.

I don't mind someone using "woman" to mean "person of either sex who...." as long as they can complete that sentence.

If they can't, they are using "woman" as indistinguishable from "man" or "person", and no-one actually knows what each other means.

I was literally asking if they were representative, not telling you they weren’t. This thread came up in the list of trending discussions. That was why it struck me.

I didn’t tell you you were an echo chamber but if you’re telling me an opposing view is considered disrespectful I will begin to think you are.

Thanks for the response. You’ll be pleased to hear I don’t think it’s the end of the world either, & my concern is less “malicious intent” than implications for women’s rights & safety. In this context, I do actually think the similarly emotive use of “red flag” is actually quite apt, though: to really drill down into the detail, what are your thoughts on the increasing regularity with which male sex offenders are categorised as women or female in the police service, the prison estate & the media, & of the implications of this? I think that, for whatever reason these men are identifying as women, our institutions’ response to this is disguising a fundamental truth about male/female patterns of violence. It’s engineering, if not a new world, then a new reality. Besides the implications for how our society is organised, I worry about the Orwellian precedent this sets: history shows where the mentality of “This group is what those in power say they are, by law & social contract [& contrary to all available evidence]“ can lead….

I didn’t tell you you were an echo chamber but if you’re telling me an opposing view is considered disrespectful I will begin to think you are.

I'm not, but if you can't see how breezing into a thread where a woman has been attacked for standing up for the rights of vulnerable women, and ignoring the post itself, and calling the fact that other women support her "fascinating", is disrespectful, I can't help you.