The Democrats Need an Honest Conversation on Gender Identity

[Ingenieur]

An interesting article in The Atlantic today, and a sign the tide might be turning in the USA.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/democrats-dishonest-gender-conversation-2024-election/680604/

Most voters think that biological sex is real, and that it matters in law and policy. Instructing them to believe otherwise, and not to ask any questions, is a doomed strategy. By shedding their most extreme positions, the Democrats will be better placed to defend transgender Americans who want to live their lives in peace.

Baby steps

but to use a mens is unthinkable

No, it isn't. The female toilets are for female people.

yep. It is also why I continue to no use correct sex pronouns despite receiving some flack about it recently on other threads.

But as you say.... women are so fucking free to talk freely on MN... slow fucking hand clap!

No. Women are free to talk as long as they comply to other people's language demands that support that person's philosophical belief. Apparently, for some people arguing that they are more 'left wing' and thereby fucking righteous than the people who disagree with them, that totalitarianism has to be accepted because.... kindness, righteousness and progress! Like fuck.

Re-done mine as well, just in case.

She is not a predator to women she is facing the predators alongside us!

No.

it's important she can use women's spaces.

Selfishly so for your friend, completely dismissing the importance of those spaces being completely male free for women.

She also is very aware that women are fearful of her

But carries on using the spaces anyway completely disregarding the feelings of the women in there as long as your friend is all right, Jack. For women in there to be fearful it is clear that your friend is not female.

(as she is of them and has been the subject of awful comments) so will always choose a non binary option if available but to use a mens is unthinkable

Your friend needs to either use a unisex option or start thinking about and using the male option and not under any circumstances use the female option. Why should women have to exclude themselves from the very spaces that are there for their use because they are fearful, because their safety, privacy and dignity counts as nothing compared to those of your friend?

The email said there had been reports (plural) about my post, so whatever that means. Someone reading along and zapping as they go? My post was up for about a minute!

Wait what? Deletions because someone used 'he' to describe a biological male?! I thought that nonsense had finally stopped.

yes we are so free to have a debate about women's issues that MN will zap posts using correct sex pronouns. We are so free!

So. The statistics for transgender male people in the UK prisons exist. You can look them up for yourself however I am reasonably sure you have been on the threads where they have appeared.

Strange that you did not then even bother to attempt to answer the other question.

Here it is again:

"And if not, can you please explain what the process is that those male people go through that removes their risk of committing sex and violent crime."

Please be specific. What process has ANY male person gone through to lower the risk of them committing sex and violent crime to be THE SAME risk level or lower than FEMALE people?

You are here on this board regularly posting and you have just told us that you prioritise male people's demands above female people's needs. How about you tell us why you have made this decision outside of your mate?

Re-doing my post: Ok, @Maddy70 WHY can't they use the males, why is it 'unthinkable'? We know from transwomen themselves and gay men that transwomen are completely safe in the males, the worst they get is a smirk. One transwoman even filmed themself going into the urinals in the gents.
There is zero reason they cannot use the males. Absolutely no reason. They are a male. And we females are not Human Shields for a male with mental health issues. They have no business whatever the situation, no matter what, to ever be in a female space.
(FMD that really sounds like bad broken English)

Here is what I use the toilet for:

What do women do in toilets?

I spent many days, often 2-3 times a week, where I had a stroller or pram jammed in the door because I had no one but myself to do shopping. And I didn’t need the change table so didn’t use the accessible toilet if there was one. That included at period time with flooding periods and hormonal diarrhoea. Particulary after pregnancy. Often with a crying infant.

I have also had to take my wheelchair bound elderly mother to a normal cubicle when there was no accessible toilet available. Where I couldn’t leave her to sit without assistance to remove the wheelchair to lock the door .

I, too, have washed clothing out, and at times had to unbutton shirts to get them dry from baby vomit, or leaking breasts.

I have even had to do this at work when I was stuck in an event for hours and could not leave to express so ended up with significant leakage. More than once. Because breastfeeding women work too.

And got dressed in work toilets for various reasons.

And cried there and comforted others. And hid there from men who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

I know I am not the only one because several times this past year I have come across half stripped women in the toilets while out dealing with similar issues.
The solution is not demanding gender neutral toilets. It is not fully enclosed cubicles. A female taking up a cubicle to wash and dry clothes is putting an undue time demand on those waiting to use that cubicle.

So, who does 'fully enclosed cubicles' actually help? Only those male people who wish to use the female spaces ultimately. Because now the line up for the toilet is longer. And if those cubicles are 'unisex', the male people are now also lining up. What a great solution!

There are many reasons that women do not want males in the toilet.

I often think it must be nice to never have had to deal with just period flooding the number of times I have since being a teenager. But it seems that there are many female people who have never had to deal with this. What a wonderfully privileged position to have been in! Well done those who have had this privilege who lack the understanding of that privilege and are happy to dismiss other's needs to retain female spaces as single sex with no male people.

I realise that I have very heavy periods compared to some people, but it certainly made me very aware of the need for single sex spaces. In fact, now in peri, I am on a menstrual leash. I cannot leave the house some days due to the flooding incidents, which is fine as those days I can work from home.

However, the female toilets have never been used just to ‘pee’. And I don't want any male person in the female toilets, even the ones who are someone's lovely fucking friends.

I am always surprised when people either never realised this or never acknowledge it.

What was that about Bots upthread?

Who are they working for?

The fucking hypocrisy of the left, believing that they are the bastions of democracy.

THIS is why the Democrats need a conversation on gender identity.

Silencing women with concerns about our rights for using correct sex pronouns is not a good look.

I've just made a complaint about being deleted, so just as well pps have re-written their posts!

We keep being told that trans rights have absolutely no impact on women and women's rights yet here we have an admission by a poster that the use of women's facilities by their male friend who identifies as a women makes women users of that facility fearful.

And here we are being forced/coerced into mangling our language to avoid deletions when responding to/discussing the above.

Yeah, no impact at all.

What Mumsnet might be doing here is breaking the law. Legal precedent shows that it is perfectly legal to call a male 'he'. That's been established in UK law. So Mumsnet is breaching the law by deleting these posts. Further, rape victims and domestic violence victims on here should not be gaslit to missex a male. That is another breach of females human rights.

Why is it that you accept that it is "unthinkable" for your friend to use such spaces in the company of male people and so the solution is for your friend to use female only spaces, but if women believe it is unthinkable for them to use such spaces in the company of male people (such as your friend) the only solution is for them to self exclude from these spaces? (Unless the space in question happens to be a prison, in which case tough shit.)

How can your friend be a nice person, if they know full well that accessing women's toilets is making the women and girls in there uncomfortable?

They are already violating women's boundaries without a backwards glance.

Never mind not being able to face the world as a male, your friend is behaving like a stereotypical male! Assuming that women are just a resource to validate their internal self image.

There is absolutely zero evidence that cross dressing men face danger in the men's toilets.

It's only unthinkable in their head, presumably because they might suffer some internal discomfort!

And there you are cheering it on. For fuck sake, can you drag yourself off accommodating the male sex, for one tiny fucking second, and focus on the women whose boundaries they are tramping all over.

I think we should have clarification on this, I thought it was ok now to use correct sex pronouns

You may wish to point out that Maddy called the friend a boy in their post and used he pronouns:

"A very close friend of mine (boy!) (since primary school) was always super shy, facing the wall when he spoke, htper self conscious etc etc."

Presumably everyone is following Maddy's lead?

Women are entitled to privacy from the opposite sex - even the mentally vulnerable ones. It's fine for you to be a good friend and share showers, toilets and changing rooms with him if that's what your friendship requires. It's not the responsibility of other women to suppress their own feelings and rights because his requirements are considered to be more important.

This.

There appear to be so many women who quite genuinely think it's completely normal to prioritise men over women.

I've already sent the email. It did cross my mind to quote Maddy70 using correct sex pronouns, but I decided against it.
I'll see what MNHQ come back with.

And this is an example of many people being directly affected. The censorship has a direct effect and winds people up no end. It's happening on a huge scale on all English speaking social media. And it's from employees of social media largely in the US. Gatekeeping censorship is almost certainly one factor that's at play in this.

Also why is the mental health of males who think they are trans always more important than the mental health and dignity of females who perhaps are sexual abuse victims or are religiously compromised? Why is the mental health of women not valued?

I find it more 'unthinkable' that women are self excluding because of males.

The unthinkable part is that so many people aren't thinking of this self exclusion and are happy to drive women back into the private sphere and out of the public one because of their lack of thinking. In 2024. It's so regressive.

My brother is absolutely lovely and not a predator. Is it ok if he showers with you?

Why is it "important" that your friend is able to use female spaces?" Interesting choice of wording.

Is it

• Because being in a female only space with women validates your friend as female? It usually is the reason.

It's the number one reason why you'll find "trans women" choosing to colonise women-only groups that exist to help women with experiences that literally only happen to actual women. Like menopause and endometriosis, for instance.Even infertility groups. Many of these "trans women" (men) actively seek them out, despite not ever being physically able to suffer the condition. Sadly, there are always some women in these groups who are so utterly beholden to the idea that their job in life is to "be kind, caring, look after the males" that they pander, seemingly lacking logic and excluding any woman who won't do likewise, or has a logical brain in her head saying, "Um, he literally can't have a menopause, so what is he doing in this group exactly, and why is everything about OUR condition suddenly centred around HIM?"

So this is yet another "Not My Nigel" argument.

Other women aren't validation tools for your friend's inner identity. It is not our job to look after your friend and put our own needs and rights aside to do so. That's a patriarchal, misogynist idea of what womens' role in life is. Nor are we human shields. Our single sex spaces exist, for us, to protect us from males, for very good reason, to do with males, and you should note that there is ZERO evidence that "trans women" are ANY different from other men with regard to the reasons why women had to have single sex spaces (in fact, there's quite a bit of evidence showing the opposite). Do you understand what those reasons were and why it was such a fight to gain them in decades past?

Many males are lovely, but somehow manage not to demand entry into our spaces, generally situations when we are vulnerable or undressed. We don't make exceptions for "nice" males; that's safeguarding. And if your friend is insisting that "it is important he can use female spaces" then your friend isn't being all that nice at all, actually.

Tell you what, I will help out. I haven't looked to see if there is a more current one.

Here is an FOI request from 30 April 2024

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/population_of_transgender_offend/response/2641337/attach/html/7/FOI%20240322022%20Annex%20A.xlsx.html

Up to the 31st March 2023, the MoJ stated that of the 88 male transgender prisoners with one or more sexual offences.
The breakdown was
48 rapes,
0 attempted rapes,
10 Sexual assault or attempted sexual assault,
13 causing or inciting a child under 16 to engage in sexual activity,
0 indecent assault or gross indecency
6 sexual activity with a child under 16
0 other

77 listed here.... BUT there is a total of 88 in the total so there is 11 crimes not noted.

Possessing or making indecent photographs or pseudo photographs of child has not been recorded in this FOI.

However, there is are further discrepancies in the data of the following when you look at TOTAL NUMBER OF TRANSGENDER PRISONERS SENTENCED FOR A PRINCIPAL SEXUAL OFFENCE.

1 causing or inciting a child under 16 to engage in sexual activity
3 rapes
2 sexual activity with a child under 16
3 Sexual assault or attempted sexual assault,

This equals 9 additional... however the sum for TOTAL NUMBER OF TRANSGENDER PRISONERS SENTENCED FOR A PRINCIPAL SEXUAL OFFENCE is 99. Therefore 2 more sex crimes have been hidden from this data.

There were 203 males who were declared as transgender in the prison at the time. There were 24 NB who were not segregated into male and female. What is key here, is that THIS IS NON-GRC HOLDERS. And we all know that males holding GRCs have increased and they are excluded from this data. NO female people with transgender identities were sentenced to a principal sexual offence. There were 41 female people with transgender identities in UK prisons at that time.

As a comparison, I have stats that say as of April 2019 that the general male MoJ data for male sex offenders was just 16.8% of the male prison population. And there were 3.3% of female people in UK prisons were sex offenders.

I will leave you Maddy70 to do your own sums. But... even using the figure of 88/203 is 43.3%. (And that doesn't include making or possessing indecent photographs of a child remember.)

By the way this exercise was done in 2021. And I checked this data myself from the data source and it was correct at the time. So, it will give some back ground to the above.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/breakdown_of_offences_committed

The ones that say that in the March/April 2021 data collection period, the MoJ stated that of the 97 transgender prisoners with one or more sexual offences.
The breakdown was
40 rapes,
8 attempted rapes,
31 possessing or making indecent photographs or pseudo photographs of child,
32 Sexual assault or attempted sexual assault,
20 causing or inciting a child under 16 to engage in sexual activity,
10 indecent assault or gross indecency
9 sexual activity with a child under 16
27 other

The 97 sex offender transgender prisons collected 177 sentences between them.

And that according to that FOI 197 prisoners are transgender.

I can also provide you with 2019 figures that show pretty much the same kind of disproportion.

Would you please now tell us exactly how a male at any stage of transition lowers their propensity to commit sex crime at the same risk level of the rest of the UK male population?

And could you now please explain how these figures could ever show that males who have transgender identities have the same or lower risk of sex crime levels of any female person in the UK?

You've grown up with a brother and been actively taught from a certain age that showering with him is inappropriate and unacceptable.

You've grown up with a dad and been actively taught that from a certain age that showering with him is inappropriate and unacceptable.

You've grown up with a male friend and been actively taught that from a certain age that showering with him is inappropriate and unacceptable.

Then the next day he says he's Daisy and you are supposed to be just fine with taking a shower with him. From that moment. Because otherwise you are bigotted and transphobic.

Yeah thats healthy.

But Daisy is absolutely lovely and caring.

Except Daisy can't understand why any of the above scenarios is really not ok.

There are some comparisons I can make here about not understanding why this selfish behaviour which doesn't respect the fact that every female is someone's daughter, sister, wife etc and we would not tolerate this behaviour in other scenarios for fairly obvious reasons. But I won't. I think I've spelt out the problem here well enough.