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.

A. Insinuations that trans women who spend years pursuing treatment in order to address lifelong dysphoria, do not disclose their medical history and then 'go stealth' in order to escape a life of constant, direct transphobic abuse are actually secretly doing so in order to gain access to vulnerable women are incredibly offensive.

If these stealthers then try to seduce someone by lying about their sex, then that’s incredibly offensive.

If you think you can only have sex by lying to the other person, then don’t have sex.

Garlic, please look after yourself. The threads over the past months discussing Gisele Pelicot must have been excuriatingly hard for you and other survivors, I couldn’t even read those threads, then come these two threads. I hope you have good support and care.

Yes. I’m so sorry, @Garlicwest.

You should maybe finish reading the thread before commenting as no one has said all trans women are predators (and you also wouldn’t look so silly). Just a suggestion.

They do. What they share/all that they share is the nature of their biological sex. That's it.

You are not a woman, or a girl, if you do not have XY chromosomes and all that follows on from that fact.

Butterfly, the reasons why you transitioned aren't relevant.

It's not reasonable to say to women, "You're allowed to object to men in your single sex spaces, and to men who are just pretending to identify as trans women in your single sex spaces, but not to biological males who genuinely do suffer from gender dysphoria and really believe they identify as women. And actually, because you're not allowed to object to the latter, you have to accept the former as well."

Why should women's right to safety and dignity be conditional on not upsetting trans people?

The fact is that allowing trans people to use single sex spaces which they believe correspond to their gender identity and not their sex has been a safeguarding nightmare for women and children. Because we have no way of letting you in but keeping John Worboys out. If we have to let you in, we also have to let John Worboys in. Because there is no way to legislate for the difference between you and him, or to police it.

Why don't you get this?

It's not about you.

It's not relevant whether you had a sad childhood and were traumatised by toxic masculinity. Because it's not all about you.

Plenty of other men don't see themselves in those toxic stereotypes of masculinity and they manage to go about their lives without appropriating womanhood and making it all about them.

Nobody is claiming that trans people are immune from abuse or sexual assault. Literally nobody has said that. But you constantly overegg the pudding, claiming to be more vulnerable than women, when all the evidence we have shows otherwise, and using this as your justification for why we should not be allowed to exclude you from our spaces. Why our consent is not important.

Because that is what it comes down to at the end of the day.

We are saying that we do not see you as a woman and do not want you or people like you in our single sex spaces. Not because you are trans, but because you are male. And because if we let you in, many women such as rape survivors and women from religious minorities will no longer feel comfortable using that space and self exclude. And because if we let you in, we can't keep John Worboys out. We are saying we do not consent.

And you're telling us that our consent is not important, and that our boundaries are transphobic.

And then, just to troll us all further, you claim to be a feminist.

Is all of this trauma not just down to you to be pretending/imagining yourself to be something you know you are not. You must continually aware of whether you " pass" or not; continually focussed on your own reception, or rejection. When a whole life becomes about upholding a particular sense if identity it cannot be healthy.

We all have empathy for suffering, and everyone has suffered to greater or lesser degrees.....but your suffering does not admit you to 'womanhood'. Womanhood is not predicated on trauma and suffering - even if some men once mistook you for a woman and were abusive towards you when you were 19.

"The person who goes stealth, whatever their reasons, is the predator, not the unknowing or unconscious victim."

The quote is significant though and correct.

Do you understand that a person who does not declare the sex category of their body (and that might be a body with extreme body modifications) will be having non-consensual sex with people who would expect to have this information clarified before sex?

And in the last thread where this was discussed the poster talked of advising young people (who may never have even had a romantic relationship before).

“My standard advice to young trans people intending to go stealth is 'don't fuck bigots or those even faintly vulnerable to bigoted ideologies; they can and will send you to prison and there is legal precedent supporting them doing so' with a side order of 'you can't know if someone is a bigot until they show you. Make sure the first time they show you isn't in court'.”

There was at least one other iteration of this repeated when clarification was sought. Always about not fucking bigots or whatever the word was changed to.

When numerous posters pointed out just how exactly this advice worked and how it was not actually advising young people to be honest and have an honest conversation about sex, and sought more clarity, the poster doubled down.

In effect this statement could be interpreted with very poor outcomes for both the person being advised and the person about to have sex with the person taking that advice. It can be interpreted as targeting specifically people who are vulnerable at the time of having sex for the benefit of the person non-disclosing.

Do you think that it is unreasonable for anyone to expect honesty about the sex of their prospective partner before having sex? Or do you think vulnerable people who cannot tell the sex of their prospective partner should just accept the consequences of not specifically asking that question before engaging in sex?

We have had lesbians come to this board to disclose the exact situation where they found out after starting to have sex that the person was male. They were so scared of violent retribution AND of being ostracised from their social groups that they didn’t withdraw consent. Because they too would have been classed as ‘someone who was ‘not a bigot’ or a ‘cis transphobe’ which was who the poster told us they advised young people to avoid while ‘in stealth’. They ended up having sex that was effectively non-consensual and had to seek extensive support.

And we were told in the previous thread that if a partner discovered later that they had sex with a person of the sex category that they would never have consented to have sex with, then it was all fine because they just shouldn’t have sex with that person again.

There are of course, plenty of other different scenarios in how that advice given above causes significant harm to others.

Would you consider knowing the sex of a person you are having sex with important information? Can you explain how it is not predatory for a person to have sex without disclosing the sex they are to sex partners?

And I don’t believe any one has said ‘all transwomen are predators’. Please post where this has been said.

Great post, and despite all the excellent points made by Scarlett the fact that these male transitioners show no empathy for women who will be excluded, think only of themselves and still feel entitled to act without consent shows the most entitled typically male behaviour imaginable.

The opposite of typically female behaviour.

Why do men always think womanhood is about superficial appearance alone? Pretty stark also on the transwidows threads - rarely a rush over there of male transitioners rushing to pick up the childcare and mental load or putting child wellbeing ahead of their wants.

yep. We need to keep posting this or like this on every thread because for years no one has been able to cut through to ever receive this acknowledgment.

By the way, sex by deception should also cover any person who is directly asked what sex they are who gives their ‘legal’ sex as an answer before consent given, when this sex category is the opposite to the materially real sex category of their body.

With the growing number of people currently stating specifically that they are the opposite sex to what they are, this too needs to be said. To be clear, I refer to any person who declares they are ‘female’ when they are male. Therefore, they have a body formed around the production of small gametes, even if those gametes never were produced, and even if those body parts have been removed.

great post garlicwest 💐

Just about every woman I know is mortified if someone thinks they they are pregnant when they are not

they think it means they are fat…

I would also like to come back to this post.

I could not give a flying fuck if so called international "human rights" organisations and permanently online trans activists with blue ticks are deploring the levels of "transphobia" in the UK these days and referring to the UK as "Terf Island".

Frankly, those so called human rights organisations are no longer fit for purpose. Amnesty International? What a joke. They were supposed to be leading the way in the right to eradicate female genital mutilation and now they claim there is no such thing as female. That it is not necessary to even have a word to describe the biological sex class which is subjected to female genital mutilation, and if you disagree it's because you're an evil TERF. Meanwhile, the rights of female people are under threat in various countries across the world from the USA (where millions of women can no longer access safe and legal abortions) to Afghanistan (where women are no longer allowed to have an education, receive medical care or even speak outside their homes). What has Amnesty fucking International done to help? Fuck all. Because those things are difficult. Whereas wibbling on about transphobia in the UK on the basis of fuck all evidence other than reports commissioned by people like Stonewall and Mermaids and warning that trans people's human rights are under threat on TERF Island. The only way that could conceivably be true is if they think that having women pretend that you are the opposite sex to the one you actually are at the expense of their own rights and safety is a human right. Because women (and men) on TERF Island are starting to say, "Fuck that shit. Women's rights are also human rights."

@sadmillenial if you're new you've probably missed a lot of the background that has brought this particular thread to where it is now.
Another thread about a week ago contained some very disturbing assertions about stealth behaviour and having sex.
Many on here were triggered by much of what was suggested. The actions of Dominique Pelicot, and now John Warboys, were brought to mind.
A particular poster on here is simply not listening to women and their experiences.
There's a lot of backstory, and nobody has piled in to say all transpeople are predators.

For a long time, TRA tried to redefine the purpose of women only spaces away from saftey and dignity to one more aligned to a private members club, where if they pass they get to use the facilities- the spaces became a validation exercise.

Now they want them to be a test for society - if they cannot use them, then society doesn't see them as women. If governments issue them with female passports, society should respect that and see them as women.

It has never been about their saftey or dignity because they are doing nothing to keep the non trans identity men out. Its about challenging women - at first can we see through their use of femininity, then can we stand up to authority to question their female id. Its always been a power kick.

At the FiLiA conference in Portsmouth a couple of years ago, where TRA protesters were drowning out the voices of sexual abuse survivors with their misogynist chants outside the venue, and chalking pornographic & obscene graffiti in a busy public square, the protesters were also carrying Amnesty-branded placards reading I AM WHO I SAY I AM.

Just like Dominique Pelicot’s bunch of rapists are all upstanding gentlemen who thought Madame Pelicot had consented, and Wayne Couzens was simply a policeman doing his job.

I’m NOT saying that everyone who carried one of those placards was a predator. I’m saying that this is an incredibly dangerous message to put across - and it doesn’t matter who’s saying it or what their motives are.

Brilliant post @MissScarletInTheBallroom

Meanwhile, the rights of female people are under threat in various countries across the world from the USA (where millions of women can no longer access safe and legal abortions) to Afghanistan (where women are no longer allowed to have an education, receive medical care or even speak outside their homes). What has Amnesty fucking International done to help? Fuck all. Because those things are difficult. Whereas wibbling on about transphobia in the UK on the basis of fuck all evidence other than reports commissioned by people like Stonewall and Mermaids and warning that trans people's human rights are under threat on TERF Island.

This. I'm angry that I used to donate to them years ago.
I'm proud of the UK's so-called "derisive" nickname". Who coined that nickname anyway? TRAs? Why should we care what they think?

I'm not sure your first statement is true, there's precious little empathy for the many women who have to limit their lives due to lack of truly single sex spaces.

I'm talking generally...of course most of us posting here have empathy. Empathy is a normal human response. Though having empathy and agreeing to drop one's safeguards and personal boundaries is another matter.

Insinuations that trans women who spend years pursuing treatment in order to address lifelong dysphoria, do not disclose their medical history and then 'go stealth' in order to escape a life of constant, direct transphobic abuse are actually secretly doing so in order to gain access to vulnerable women are incredibly offensive.

What you mean here by ‘transphobic abuse’ is being identified and treated as your sex. And what you mean by ‘stealth’ is gaining access to women by hiding your sex. ‘Gaining access to women’ includes being in spaces where women undress or in conversations they may not have had with men (eg discussing sexual assaults). Going ‘stealth’ means you do not have those women’s consent and that is the only reason you ‘go stealth’. You know they might well object and tell you to use the men’s toilets/changing rooms/sports or change their conversations if they knew you are a man. That is not you being abused.

🎯👏

This ^^.

I think we should start calling the UK "Feminist Island". The T, E and R are entirely redundant. Feminism is supposed to exclude male people. Not trans people. Male people. There is nothing radical about the belief that feminism is about female people.