Is it too early for a post mortem?

[Appalonia]

So, now that America has categorically rejected transgender ideology, which I do think will affect the rest of the world, is now the time to ascertain HOW did so many institutions, including the Democratic and Labour Parties get so completely bamboozled by this ideology? Which is crazy, not based in material reality, disadvantages half of the population, has physically damaged thousands of young people, and that they didn't think that people would see through it?

I know a lot of people dislike Matt Walsh, but his documentary, What is a Woman, was jaw dropping! We must NEVER let this dangerous idiocy happen again ( and yes I know it's not over...)

@ButterflyHatched The needs that "trans women" claim to have are in direct conflict with our needs.

One single "trans woman" in our female only spaces means our needs are not being met.

How do you propose to square that circle?

Can you think of a solution which is acceptable to trans people (from your point of view) which does not involve people like you calling yourselves women or using women's single sex spaces?

If not, then your wants are in direct conflict with our rights and needs, and our rights and needs should take priority.

Campaign for third spaces.
It’s perfectly simple, really.

Some men really want to use women's spaces.
Most women really want women's spaces without men in them.

What's the 'solution' here?

Butterfly suggests 'exceptions to the rule.' - that women should be forced to allow some men to use their spaces.

Quite honestly, we'd be better off with entirely mixed sex spaces than we would be with this fudge.

What a bizarre post.

But it follows from other bizarre posts. Where you make bizarre personal statements about things you have assumed about others or that you have personalised targeting one person when you are actually speaking 'at' a group of people.

So, factual statements are sledgehammers in your view. Well, I guess if you want to use that metaphor it is right. Facts remain and abide despite attempts of philosophising them into 'constellations' or 'fuzzy borders' so I guess they are like sledgehammers. Resilient and good at squashing bullshit.

denying the womanhood of groups of strange women

What's your definition of a transwoman, Butterfly?

I mean, it's absolute nonsense, isn't it?

Access to women's single sex spaces is not governed on a case by case basis.

Either we are allowed to keep all males out or we have to let all males in (and they become de facto mixed sex spaces).

"Case by case basis" in this context is just code for "we don't give a shit about your boundaries but make it sound vulnerable and marginalised".

I will deny the womanhood of male people every day of the week and 67 times on Sundays.

Well, we all know who would be the arbiters of who gets to use women's spaces, and we all know it wouldn't be up to women.

Of course males would be chosen as the ones who get to define womanhood. Of course. Women are terra nulla, empty vessels, service humans, decorative uterus bearers, pregnant people, etc, ad nauseum.

Here in reality, a young woman who has been in a terrible accident that means that they are in hospital (unable to get up from their hospital bed) requiring intimate care including during menstruation. For safety, privacy and dignity, the young woman requests single sex care.

I think about how a transwoman can never need single-sex intimate care for menstruation.
I think how a transwoman nurse could not give single-sex care to that female patient requiring care during menstruation.
I think about how people just lie when they insist that TWAW.

Of course they're lying. Everyone who says TWAW is lying. Nobody believes it.

I will deny the womanhood of male people every day of the week and 67 times on Sundays.

Me too. And it ain't never going to change.

There are too many things in that post to address.
Overall I get facts don't matter, my feelings do, yours don't.
No one is denying your lived whatever, some women just don't want to share bathrooms, changing rooms, or sport with males however they identify internally. It's that simple. Words like metaphysical don't change that.
No one wants to hurt you, but where there's a conflict of rights some women are sticking up for themselves. Your issues stems from internal conflicts, and while I think most people including me are sympathic to that, your internal conflicts don't automagically trump women's rights to feel safe in vulnerable places.
Who wants to be in a space with other people who are only sharing that space under duress and against their will anyway?

Who indeed.

@ButterflyHatched

Are these fundamental problems exclusive to trans people and the concept of transness in general, or do they extend beyond this to other groups as well?

I had a colleague who was a young earth creationist. I did not have a problem with this, because:

He did not campaign for his beliefs to be taught to schoolchildren,

Or to be enshrined in law,

Or for the ONS to base its statistics on it,

Or for palæontologists and cosmologists to be banned,

Or for me to be hounded out of my job and branded as hateful for mentioning the Great Rift Valley or the origins of the heavier elements (fun fact: he had a chemistry degree),

Or (most importantly) for laws to be made that would contravene all sorts of basic safeguarding and medical ethics.

We got on just fine.

nuance-free axiom = facts that you don't like to hear
nuance-free axiom = proven and established science about human sex categories written without disguising language

"They do not solve the problem. They allow you to ignore your problem."

So third spaces don't solve your problem? Why not?

"They also allow you to cynically weaponise the suffering of marginalised people against themselves while giving you a satisfying rush of power."

Blimey. You wrote this with a straight face? You provided your list of the 'rights' you consider you were being lost to you on the other thread. It was about you losing access to single sex spaces that were never yours to begin with, you wanting children to receive treatments that you cannot provide evidence for that shows it improves enough children's lives long term, and you wanting to non-consensual sex to be legal for some people.

And you talk about a satisfying rush of power... mate.... yeah... I think we understand.

Much of your post is an outstanding effort though. You really have surpassed yourself in the use of drama, cognitive distortions and just amazing self-centring limelight. And I feel quite happy that you put so much effort in just for a reply to me.

"Accepting that a single trans woman has needs or experiences similar to yours brings the entire house of cards crashing down. Much like your endless dismissals of evidence that human minds and experiences are far more complicated than the reductionist metaphysical categories you have backed yourself into a corner over, you now cannot allow for exceptions to the rule."

What evidence have we dismissed? The discredited evidence? Or the evidence you post that never quite or even gets close to supporting what you want it to? Or just the anecdotal evidence provided by you about yourself?

Have you got new studies and evidence? Because, I mean, I have asked on this thread and I think others have too. So, far you have linked no studies or evidence.

"It is pure, callous, cruel rigid thinking serving as the load-bearing pin for your worldview. You have forced yourself to deny the lived reality of certain types of woman over it despite their cases clearly requiring flexibility and compassion to any reasonable person."

No. I don't deny the 'lived reality of certain types of women' nor 'strange women'. I deny the false claim by male people that they are any type of 'woman.' That their philosophical belief makes them any type of woman.

I don't quite know how you function in a world where the majority of people don't believe that male people are any type of woman. Even if they say it superficially, when they are ask about the specifics, they really don't. So your census of reasonable people must be miniscule.

Most reasonable people don't agree that male people should have access to female single sex spaces once they are asked and they have been informed that even male people with their penises removed commit sexual abuses and acts of sexual harassment towards female people and children.

That is the lived reality.

Nothing to do with purity. It has everything to do with safety and care for female people and children.

'It is completely unreasonable and inappropriate to ban people who transition from facilities they are legally entitled to use and have been using for decades.'

It is completely reasonable and it is actually legal according to the EA2010. Just because a male person might have been wrongly using the single sex spaces for decades, or one day or all their life, never made it 'their' space. And it never made it their right just because they assumed it.

'We are a compassionate and humane forward-thinking society who has long ago decided that people who transition are who they say they are.'

People's philosophical beliefs have always had limits when they impact others. You have a philosophical belief. Your philosophical belief does not change the proven facts that you desperately want to be 'nuanced' and 'fuzzy bordered'. And again, when asked directly with facts presented, the vast majority of society don't agree with you that you should have access into female single sex spaces.

By the way, which is it?

'We are a compassionate and humane forward-thinking society who has long ago decided that people who transition are who they say they are.'

or

We have regressed so horrifyingly as a society under the influence of evangelist wedge issue attacks on all human rights that we are are in all seriousness back to beating trans women over the head with their own pain.

I mean, you have lost coherency there. Or... don't tell me ... both can be true! Yet you have made such absolute statements. I guess that is just the drama part, isn't it.

"Your ideology does not render irrelevant other people's real lived experiences. Your need for purity does not trump other people's need for humanity. Weaponising trans people's pain to effectively ban them from basic human services and facilities is inhumane and while technically a solution to your problem with them, is not a solution to the problem."

yeah? nah. I think I have addressed this already.

No one is banning trans people from basic human services and facilities. Those services and facilities have already been provided in the plethora of gender neutral provisions or male single sex provisions for male people. Female trans people can also use the gender neutral provisions (along with anyone else) and can use female single sex provisions where appropriate.

See... again... you forgot the female trans people. But hey... you usually do.

It's interesting that a female FtM trans person has never turned up to argue their points on this board. It's always males.
I would love to get the FtM perspective on these issues.

Just had a bliding thought. Do FtM transexuals use the men's toilets/changing rooms, and do they feel safe using them?

We have had a few. Including at least one who had detransitioned.

If I remember correctly, none of them used the male toilets if they had taken testosterone. Maybe someone will have a different recollection.

They used third spaces. They communicated with each other when travelling to areas they didn't know to plan for their toilet needs. A couple did state that they understood that male people needed privacy too so that they should not be going in there.

No female person with a transgender identity I know in real life uses male toilets.

Thanks @Helleofabore
I'm a bit gutted I missed those. I'd like to get the perspective.
Your middle bit about third spaces, communicating over resources, and being considerate about privacy sounds so different to the way males approach the same issues. It's almost like you can tell the difference between males and females by the way they behave.

That has always struck me too.

And of course, it has been commented on. The way most of those posters approached threads though, even when they disagreed, was very different to the male people.

On the other thread, you mentioned NHS proposed changes. I assume that means the nurses situation where a group of female nurses are making recommendations for single sex provisions to be sex based. ie. to ensure that the NHS uses the available exceptions under the EA.

If a mixed sex provision was provided and consenting women (to use your definition not the majority accepted definition) were there getting changed, going to the toilet and you were welcome too. Would you not be happy there? Why do you have to have access to non-consenting female people?

Your ideology does not render irrelevant other people's real lived experiences

Oh my goodness.

Well, if it's Stephen Bloody Whittle, honestly I wouldn't hold your breath for compassion or common sense. But we have definitely chatted to other transmen (Hobbit-something comes to mind) who have been clear that they know themselves to be female but present as male because it very much helps ths dysphoria.

And (I've been on MN too long) PigeonPodge (?), MtF, who was entirely pleasant and not in a wheedling 'I'm on your side, keep all the nasty ones out but not me' style, as patented by one DebbieH.

And at least one other MtF who said he'd been to the Women's Pool, accompanied by female friends, and it had been fine. He was surprised to learn that for many of the women there it probably hadn't been fine, but thought about it and decided to use the mixed pool in future.

Not everyone is unreasonable.

Your ideology does not render irrelevant other people's real lived experiences.

Oh my goodness indeed. I am going to answer this and use the case of Karen White which you brought into this thread @ButterflyHatched

You stated KW was a woman by the terms of the ideology you believe in and promote, you are quite right and I was surprised you admitted it bearing in mind that practically everybody else who also believes in it and promotes it couldn't distance themselves fast enough from KW and the crimes committed by KW. To them KW was not true trans and seemed to occupy that strange space of rapist gender or at it gender.

By doing so the harms this ideology you believe in are wreaking on women are:

Absolving the facility which locked a vulnerable woman in a room alone with KW, where KW so severely raped that vulnerable woman that she will never be able to have children, of any responsibility for the ordeal suffered by KW's victim.

Telling the woman subject to that horrendous ordeal that the person who subjected her to that is a woman just like her and therefore that's just part and parcel of what women do.

You yourself have used the pronoun 'she' for KW, presumably you would expect her to call her rapist 'she' in Court. By doing so you are completely re-writing and denigrating the victim's lived experience, you are denying her lived reality of this horrific crime. The victim must re-frame her trauma and experience to suit the ideology you believe.

Further women were sexually assaulted (surprise, surprise) when KW was placed in the female prison estate, again the ideology you believe says this is fair enough and to be expected because KW is a woman and should therefore be in that facility.

None of this should have happened and it wouldn't have happened if not for the ideology that a man is a woman if he says he is and once he does he must be treated as if he is one in all circumstances.

Where is the consideration of the human rights for those women who suffered at the hands of KW not to be placed in a position where they would suffer that harm?

This is the price women are paying, this is women as collateral damage, this is the decimation of women's human rights.

@ButterflyHatched

You believe "women" are not exclusively adult human females and girls are not exclusively juvenile human females.

I don't believe that, but that isn't the point of this post.

My question is, why do you even care whether human females have female specific needs, rights, opportunities, support and language, given the thing these female people have in common isn't anything to do with you or your womanhood?

It's like me who lives in Berwick getting all grumpy about what the people in Dudley are getting up to.

Given that all the "women-only" resources were set up using a definition of woman you don't even believe, why do you feel they have any relevance to "women" as you believe women to be? Why can't you just let the human females carry on with whatever they already had, and define something new for "women" that is open to everyone who feels they meet your definition?

Sall Grover discussing this issue (and others raised on this thread) with Jack Jewell is worth a watch because they have a very honest discussion: