Is this a safe place to ask a question without being flamed?

[StrumpersPlunkett]

I have a question relating to transgender issues and working through my thoughts on things but it feels like a conversation I am only allowed to have in my head.
Is this a safe place to talk it through?

As a trans man, I think it's so complicated and whatever you say or do, you sadly can't win. It would be so lovely if we could all sit down and just talk about it.

When I came out as trans, it felt weird. I expected to feel free, but the groups I joined and other trans people I spoke to, they weren't like me. There were so many things I didn't agree with. I started to think I was wrong, because I wasn't screaming about trans rights or demanding someone use he/him pronouns loudly in a public place.

But I came across MN one day and after reading tons of trans related posts, I realised that there is a huge difference between transphobic and GC. And I bloody love the GC side of mumsnet. There's absolutely nothing wrong with supporting trans people and having limits. You don't have to be pro or anti trans and agree to everything people tell you. You can be in the middle. Sit on the bench. We probably have cookies somewhere 😁

But in seriousness, I don't think this is a fight that either side can win, and unfortunately a lot of trans people are the reason for that.
You can't break into someone's house, change their wallpaper and then be upset when they tell you that they don't like it.

I wish it didn't have to be framed as 'winning'.

All that is needed is solutions that work for everybody. Most are absolutely fine with everyone identifying and presenting and naming themselves any way they choose, the limits to that freedom is impacting upon other people's access, equality and freedoms.

Everyone's entitled to pick and share their own pronouns: just not to require others to use them. It's a choice, it's about mutual respect.

And women should not be excluded by men from a women's space because men feel that their right to express their gender is more important than women's dignity, privacy, access and inclusion, and safety. Nor it is right that women should be required to provide themselves to be used by a man, including for sexual agendas, to be able to use women's services and resources. Of course it's not right, it's ethically absolutely awful.

All it will take is mutual and reciprocal respect and tolerance, and kindness and willingness to care on both sides. And sadly the lack of reciprocation isn't a trans issue, it's a men's issue.

I’m guessing you teach senior school? Although I’m surprised that there are no trans students in your school. There are clearly trans masc / trans femme students in our local senior schools and sixth forms.

This issue is definitely present at my uni. Very much so. There’s even a "queering the agenda" programme run centrally and all our diversity training focuses on the T and not the LGB. Depends on the department, but there are many many uni students who identify as trans. I couldn’t see anyone GC such as Doc Stock or Maya being invited to speak.

As such, no one needs to be ‘pushing’ the OP to take a stance. I would suggest that even if you haven’t experienced this issue, that doesn’t mean that there are not others who have and continue to manage these situations quite frequently.

Edited to agree it’s not about winning or losing. Seems to be the TRAs that characterise this as a war (on their ‘rights’ including to be in the spaces they demand access to) and hence invoking the language of winning or losing. The vast majority of FWR GC posters always advocate live how you want and third spaces to keep single sex spaces for women’s privacy, dignity and safety ie accommodating different needs.

@DrBlackbird we do have a handful of trans students but I've never happened to teach them. I'm not saying it's a non issue! Just that I've never in real life felt pressured to take a stance professionally or socially and I wondered what kind of environment would pressure someone in that way. It rarely even gets discussed in my school.

And funnily enough one of the things that hasn't come up is toilets even though we are a school with a known toilet shortage!! Takes bloody ages to find one that's free, however all staff toilets are single room non gender/ sec specific with washbasin so the trans kids use those, as do random other kids who want to vape etc

we are a school with a known toilet shortage!!

Effect.

all staff toilets are single room non gender/ sec specific with washbasin

Cause.

Single, fully enclosed with washbasin toilets take up more space (so fewer are built) and are slower to use.

Here's a scenario I was in recently. Went for a day out to a Watersports centre, I'd never been there before, they do kayaking and boating and paddle boarding.
We went into the main building to pay, one member of staff on duty behind a desk, she informed us that there were several coach parties of school children expected that day so the lake might be busy.

Off to the side of the reception desk was two doors leading to the female and male changing rooms.
I went in to the female changing room which was literally one large open room with wooden benches and lockers, two showers. No separate cubicles at all, the showers didn't have doors or curtains.
At the time I got changed into my swimming costume and then wetsuit I was the only person in there.

When I returned a few hours later to have a shower and get dressed- which would obviously require completely stripping off- there was 25-30 teenage girls in there getting changed. No other adults were present in the room.
One girl just along from me was clearly upset and didn't want to get changed, her friends promised to hold their towels round her so she could get undressed without anyone seeing anything.

Can you now picture that same situation with a trans woman present, be that a person known to them ie a classmate or an unknown.
Teenage girls getting completely undressed, no adult supervision.
What do you think should happen? do the girls carry on or do they ask the person to leave?

Ah okay. I think perhaps count yourself lucky that SMT are not driving an agenda. I’m currently doing my best to remain neutral but the endless drive for declaring pronouns (we have to start every committee meeting stating them, requests for adding them to email signatures, badges distributed, asking students to declare them etc) along with EDI training misrepresenting the EA, my captured union, etc etc makes it challenging. I’m not sure our central SMT are driving this but definitely happy to outsource to a committee that is driving the queering the university agenda.

Shame the OP @StrumpersPlunkett bailed out of the thread after the first day I was interested to know her thoughts on some of the issues raised.

I didn't bail, have been interested reading, but had nothing to add.
It was clear from first couple of days that I had a lot of back ground reading to do and so I thought it best to do that before commenting further.

Well you won't get far on MN if you actually want to absorb information and think your thoughts through before posting!
(Kidding, obviously (I hope) - you'd be welcome in this section)

Dunno if you’d find this useful or not but it’s a book I used when I was studying feminist political theory at Uni in the 90s. We read the first edition of the book but this third edition came out a few years later and seems quite similar but with a few updates:

Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction

It summarises all the major schools of feminist thought and analyses their strengths/weaknesses.

Glad you stuck around