Could we ban "transvestigating" threads on here?

[Christinapple]

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5225715-ilona-maher

This one for example. Transvestigating is an informal term given to when people play detective and try to determine if a given person (usually a woman) is transgender or not from how they look e.g. photos.

I've seen it more than a few times on Twitter anytime a woman who is tall or muscular or "masculine looking" appears. Quite often, women are wrongly mistaken for being trans.

As well as being transphobic, IMO this harms all women and reinforces stereotypes of what men/women should look like. And the idea of obsessing over people's appearances like this just doesn't sit well with me.

Makes sense to me.

🙈 - I agree. Really I’m still a bit taken aback about what I see around on the internet.

So basically you want people to state their sex rather than their gender? I’m all for that

That would be good. No need.

I don't like such threads, but sadly as long as we have the ridiculous concept that womanhood is a mental state found in male bodies, women will be second guessing each other because we know too bloody well that whatever gender a man feels he has, his male body confers physical and social advantages women don't get.

It's fucking tragic, just the latest one more of the myriad ways surviving patriarchy forces women to distrust each other.

It's also fucking tragic that Apple's concern for the distress of women of the female type begins and ends with what Apple can leverage to benefit women of the male type. While having your physical appearance dissected is undoubtably nasty, it's no more distressing than the injustices and indignities trans ideology forces onto women individually and as a social group, a distress about which Apple Pie has unfathomably not just remained silent about but actively promotes.

I really resent genderism for making me question the sex of people I see in the media. Before we were all instructed to believe that men are women if they say so, I may have idly wondered now and again but thought it not worth the mental effort.

Now it matters so much more to all (female) women, I feel it's reasonable and even sensible to wonder. I have occasionally done a bit of digging. The first thing I look for is a TV interview with them, as the voice and mannerisms when speaking are usually determinative (I checked the linked video of Ilona Maher for about 5 seconds).

I resent the hell out of it. I resent that it tries to tell me my sex isn't real, I resent the opportunities stolen from women & girls, I resent the safety implications and, among other things, I resent the way this development has forced me to query women who may not seem conventionally 'feminine' in some way.

I make no apologies for wondering, I just mind very much that it's now relevant. And, no, Chris, this doesn't mean we should nonchalantly accept that everyone is the sex they say they are. It's genderism's fault that it's even a question; I won't be gaslighted further.

No one on that thread - including the OP is "transvestigating" anyone.
Did you actually read it?

So for example if we see an article about a woman on trial for rape, we can't ask on a thread - hey, does anyone know if this person is actually a man?

That would be so very transphobic. I made these slides of criminal 'women' in 2017. Couldn't keep up with the numbers after that! Fortunately, there is Trans Crime UK. God forbid you should transvestigate these people, the police clearly don't.

Yeah, no, we shouldn't be banning this.

It is really important for women’s sport that ‘competitors’ who were born male - and especially those who have been though male puberty - are identified and their legitimacy in the female sporting arena considered

The simple solution is to stop make sure authorities have rules or policies in place that stop them calling men women.

Then there would be no need for public speculation - everyone could trust that anyone said to be a woman - by the police, sports bodies, the press, etc - was a woman.

But the current state of affairs is that all those bodies lie routinely. Therefore we have to question. And most of the time, we're right - they're lying again.

Not nice, but better than the alternative of not questioning. And you'll have to live with it, OP, until the rules are sorted. Or rather, women will.

If you want the authorities to call men women, this is yet another of the bad consequences that follow - people questioning the authorities becomes mainstream, and public trust plummets. Feel free to join our campaign to fix the policies and this bad consequence along with all the others, any time.

(If you actually care about the issue at all, rather than using it as yet another rhetorical stick for scolding women for having their own minds).

I think it’s quite important actually.

The thin end of the wedge is quite obvious men being called women whilst they are on trial for rape. The thick end is men stealing women’s awards in sport - these men rob and steal a lifetime’s work of hours of dedication, money invested and change the sport in to another male category.

It’s really shit that we have to do it all.

Me too.
Enough of all this Bollocks 🤨

So, men can demand that they are women, institutions - like the justice system and the healthcare system - have decided that men can become women through policies that extends well beyond the remit of the law making it riskier for women and whisking away rights around dignity without oversight, and now you'd like it to become a crime to wonder aloud if masculine looking women are actually men and placing the burden and the crime on the shoulders of those at risk and not those people who have subverted the notion of sex to anything the hell they want it to mean?

No thanks.

I’ve never known a group of people so obsessed with another group as mumsnetters are with transgender people.

A feminist board who's discussing male incursion into women's spaces! What next? Discussing why women might want to pretend to be male in an attempt to escape patriarchal standards? Trying to stop children and young people being mutilated? When will these women stop interfering!

^I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of you have never met a trans person in your life and the actually have on impact at all on your day to day life.
It’s very keyboard warrior.^

Plenty of us have. (although I thought the line was that we would never know as so many flawlessly pass?). And, (and I'm sure this will boggle your mind), we're able to plan and think ahead/outside our own direct experiences. We know that other people exist, and that we are not the centre of the universe.

And I know you are going to say but toilets but sport etc. But honestly other than boxing or rugby where people could get hurt (and my worry is both for women competing with trans women and transmen competing with men) I don’t think it’s the day to day issue you think it is.

Tell that to the women in prison with men, to the little girl who was abused in the toilet in Scotland, to the girls forced to share changing rooms and swimming competitions with Lia Thomas.

How much impact does it need to be before women are allowed to object?

I am another who will be extremely happy when we can again trust what we read because when someone is a male person, they are only ever reported as being a male person. Yay! Great solution Chris!

But that would make some people very sad because they then would have less opportunities to make women feel shamed for doubting what should be accurate and clear reporting and for rejecting attempts at gaslighting.

But hey… doubting women deserve cream pies in the face too don’t they? Just like a comedy routine, nothing to worry about … isn’t that right? How surprising to know that a poster can profess to care so much about female people, yet support violence and intimidation of female people when it suits the poster’s politics!

Well you'd be wrong. It was someone close to me transitioning that laid bare the misogyny and toxicity of trans ideology.

What we are keen on is women’s rights not being swept aside, overlooked or disregarded in favour men who claim to have women feelings (whatever it is that all women apparently feel)

And if you think redefining women do it means “adult human female oh and some men with special feelings” doesn’t affect absolutely everything to do with women I can’t help you

want to set up a rape support service for women? Sorry it needs to be open to men

want to set up a group for lesbians? Sorry needs to be open to men

want to know how a new policy to promote women in STEM is being effective? Sorry can’t tell you as we now need to count men with lady feelings in with women

want to project how many women might need breast cancer surgery over the next 3 years? Sorry stats are based on gender not sex so we can’t make accurate predictions

it affects absolutely everything! if there is no definition of women that doesn’t include men then there is no way to define women as a separate sex with needs that are at times separate to men

still you don’t seem to mind that erasure so you do you

@GargoylesofBeelzebub same for me, my brother is transitioning and there's something really creepy about it. His sexist 'banter' was unpleasant but combining it with outdated clothing cliches is a different level.
I was more neutral originally about a work colleague then under stress we saw a different side to them.

I feel sad that I too sought out a tv interview for the rugby player but I'm now really excited for her. It's made me warm towards her.

And yet you say this on a board specifically set up for this very purpose. All because some people had no impulse control as the adult people they profess to be and couldn’t scroll past threads that didn’t interest them, and they wanted a special curated space just for them. Hence all these threads have to be on a board just for the topic.

But hey, don’t let the small number of threads on a massive public forum point out your most stunning attempt to shame posters on a thread designed just for that purpose!

And despite what you ignorantly state, many of us have people worth transgender identities in our daily lives. Guess what? people with transgender identities are also not a homogenous group and many also agree that male people should not have access to provisions set aside for female people. Maybe you would know that if you talked to them.

Of course we've met trans people in real life. Sadly that's increasingly in the context of men in a women's changing room rather than someone minding their own business down the pub.

Nah.

Women don't owe anyone nice. Women don't have to perform their stereotype for anyone.

Some people wish women would relax about knowing what sex people are. They wish we could all say it didn't matter. I say "men first".

Get men (special identity or not) to stop abusing the physical and structural power they have over women. Get men to stop trampling women's boundaries. In short, get men to behave less like the very worst example of their stereotype and then we'll see.

How odd. You’ve never known anyone group concerned about any other groups impact on them? What about the Palestinians feelings about the settlers or the indigenous people of North America, Australia, or Canada’s feelings about the influx of people from other parts of the world? You must surely have heard some thoughts on these situations? I’m flabbergasted you could have missed the fact that many groups do not actually welcome being forcibly “joined”.