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.

@ButterflyHatched

Im new to this stuff so bear with me - why can’t transwomen (natally assigned male) just stay out of women-only spaces and use a third space?

Same for Furries - why not just use a third space? That way everyone is happy.

@ButterflyHatched

"It's a strong argument, however we're on a thread asking people not to 'transvestigate' people due to the climate of fear it generates"

You... you do realise the thread was started by one of our regular TRAs trying to shame women don't you? This is someone who literally only cares about women's feelings to the degree that they can be leveraged in support of trans identifying men. It is not a good faith thread at all.

(Sorry, reply to question about third spaces above)

Oh no, that's 'othering', apparently. It's not the space being looked for, there has to be women present (even if its against their will) in order for it to be 'affirming'.

See the Darlington nurses -
https://news.sky.com/story/nurses-suing-their-employer-for-allowing-trans-women-to-use-their-changing-rooms-13160104

The open category in a swimming competition had no entrants -

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/oct/03/swimming-world-cup-category-for-transgender-athletes-cancelled-after-no-entries-received#:~:text=No%20entrants%20were%20received%20for,more%20than%201%20year%20old

Well surely Furries are “other”?

So, if I declared myself to be a Furry, say a tiger or similar, and wanted therefore to run around the segregated tiger spaces at the zoo, wouldn’t it be transphobic to stop me? Or would it be ok to say “well alright but you might get eaten.”

And further extrapolation…

So I’m a trans tiger and using tiger spaces is dangerous so really I should be allowed into the chinchilla enclosure?

Have I got this right? I promise I won’t eat a chinchilla. Honest.

Err - they'll send you to Radiology....

I'm sure I'm repeating something thats already been said, you are calling an instintive and necessary behaviour 'transvestigating' and demanding women stop doing it.

We have to be wary of men for obvious reasons and to twist that need into the idea that its women with hate in their eyes and its men who are the victims is madness.

Especially as its male violence thats often used as the reason male spaces arent safe for non conforming men.

So is male violence a thing or not?

Not if you are a man in a 1980s laura Ashley maternity dress knitting bootees.

No idea about Furries, sorry. I don't think they have anything to do with gender incongruence unless I'm missing something that means this isn't a thinly veiled attempt to associate the two?

Which is certainly where I would have wanted to be sent rather than spending 15 minutes tracking back and forth across a hospital! Yet it happened. Because you cannot, in fact, always tell - even if you are a clinician who works with women all day long.

Well, even then they will - all my maternity scans were done in Radiology - because that's where the radiologists are who perform them.

I went into the EPU once, they just used a heart rate monitor, what with them being midwives rather than radiologists.

Right, but, that's also where pregnant women are sent - so......

Know your audience, butterfly. That tale would go down a treat on a trans forum, together with the nurse asking a man when he last had a smear.

But it really makes no sense on a forum full of women.

transpohic! Furries come under the trans umbrella too

Why do you feel the need to call yourself ' a woman' when you know that this is, not only, a radically ideological position; one that is highly contested, but also highly offensive to women.

Why can't you just be who and what you are ( which is a biologically male person not at home in the associated gender role/expression/presentation for that sex?)? If there was no desperate push to encroach and colonise a space that doesn't belong to you - then the majority of the issues would disappear.......and you could simply campaign for your own discrete provisions.

It is the trans lobby that is the aggressor here - not the women defending their integrity.

😁

Coming quickly back to this before reading on - it's such an important point.

I was one of taxi driver John Worboys's victims. I found out after seeing a documentary about him and phoning the helpline; I only have fragmentary memories. The officer filled me in on how Worboys worked, though I chose not to know the gritty details.

Worboys drugged and 'assaulted by penetration' over a hundred women. Carrie Symonds was another. Does our impaired awareness of the assaults mean they don't matter? Do you believe that what you don't know doesn't hurt you, and would you therefore say the serial rapist committed no crimes?

Worboys 'adopted a deceptive persona', having gradually developed a plan to offend. Worboys enabled himself to 'create a fantasy which made him feel powerful'.

Interesting parallel.

Garlic, I'm so very sorry.

Woman still exists as a category. We have terms to qualify specifics about the individual person because women do not all possess a singular homogenous set of qualities. Some women have a history involving transition. Most do not.

You have lost nothing. It's such a strange argument to make that trans women are somehow stealing womanhood or banning anyone from existing.

The only women who have a history involving transition are trans men and detransitioned women.

If we don't have a term to describe ourselves which includes them but specifically excludes you then we cannot accurately describe ourselves.

Denying that we all possess a singular set of shared qualities is denying our shared existence and our femaleness. This is how you are attempting to erase us. We do all have something that unites us. But it happens to be the very thing that differentiates us from you, which is why you're so determined to deny it. Well, guess what? That characteristic is important to us and you don't get to deny it. Not everything is about you. Most things, in fact, are not about you.

women do not all possess a singular homogenous set of qualities

We Absolutely do! We are adult human females. Females being the sex that produces large gametes and have their body structured around the production of large gametes.

Big hug from me, Garlic.

This

💐 @Garlicwest

Or, perhaps, tail, not tale.