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.

if anything many were noticed much more before, because things like hair removal/regrowth was hideously expensive. I still see one or two, but nowhere as near as many trans women with stubble poking through their foundation.

And previously i have been as reluctant to confront a big unit in a dress (with or without stubble) in the ladies as i am now: i have been on the receiving end of MVAWG enough already, thansk.

Of course. Your body, your choice.

Bodies are indeed not sacred things, so a man who modifies his body into a facsimile of some external elements of the female body is not performing a sacred right that transubstantiates him into actual womanhood.

The choices you (generic you) may make for your body do not give you the right to redefine yourself as a woman when you are a man or vice versa (original sex based meanings) and they do not give a modified man any right to appropriate women's language for yourself, women's spaces for yourself, women's lives for yourself or women's history for yourself.

I walked into some loos the other day, saw the mixed up symbol and thought great I bet the men still have theirs, they did, but so did I as a woman!
It felt amazing to have my right as a women and not to see sexism taking place.

After having to accept mixed sex in other areas (but men having their own) and seeing women discounted in sports, hospitals and prisons it was good to see the other option. A separate facility for anyone following the T+ that doesn't like biology.

It is likely to serve little purpose other than to cause distress in a population who is already dealing with a lot of appearance-related distress to begin with.

It is likely to serve the very useful purpose of a woman not getting trapped in a space with a male, who could be a predator. That vastly outweighs the minor inconvenience of a transw realising that they have been sussed.

The facilities can be provided, but it all falls down at the point an individual decides which one to use based on their own internal justification.

Bit muddled there, Butters!

If you really supported people living without shame in their existing bodies surely you’d oppose cosmetic surgeries and not support capitalist doctors preying on the insecurities of the vulnerable?

It’s 2024 - Men can have tits, y’know!

I think that the past 5 years of public discussion has most definitely improved many people's understanding of consent thoughout the UK. I find comments such as "transwomen have been passing amongst you all unnoticed for decades" to be a public rejection of consent. Not only that, it is a public display of coercion because it comes with the intimidation elements of 'see how powerless you all are to stop this behaviour that you have valid concerns about' as well as 'I really couldn't give a fuck that any female people were harmed, this is going to continue regardless.'

It is akin to Chappell's 'it wouldn't matter if there was a slight spike in those statistics, because this isn’t about that kind of issue" while actively dismissing a any increase in violence against female people because Chappell considers male access in female spaces as a 'human rights' issue. Which also then positions violence against female people as being subordinate in the hierarchy.

The Victorian government's ad where the woman leaves the lift and the government's desired response to a male person entering a lift with a solitary female occupant also shows just how a group of people utilise that same intimidation. The Vic Gov's ad is attempting to educate a population to ignore their distress and discomfort when a female person does correctly identify a person's sex. I consider this part of the issue. That government sponsored ad basically was intimidating female people to fight their reaction to leave a space they found to be concerning through educating them that 'respectful' people don't do this - while ignoring the needs of female people.

www.vic.gov.au/media/977575

And I've never known a group of people so obsessed with getting into women and girls spaces.
What are they looking for?

I saw a bloke the other day, bearded, male haircut, wearing some sort of wrap-around skirt with leggings, a semi-formal jacket and boots. He was striding along in a very blokey way. And I thought he looked epic - it was a really fantastic look.

So long, that it is, as he knew he was a man.* I wouldn't have thought he looked good if he'd appeared in the ladies' loos.

As an aside, the loos were unisex, full cubicles. The friend I was with made the comment that only possible plus point of these was that the menz were discovering the delights of having to queue to relieve themselves.

*He 100% gave the impression that he knew he was a man. The jacket, the haircut, the walk, the overall lack of sexualisation of his clothing.

Edited for typo.

I've never known such a profound lack of awareness around an important issue that affects so many areas of safeguarding being disguised as "shut up you meanies" as we see in modern day transactivists as they wave their infantile flags and their plushie shark toys and their creepy sloths and their little badges. "Nothing to see here! Unicorn joy!!!!"

Thank goodness the grown ups are talking here.

Hi I think this must be directed at me in error ? I understand 'trans' totally and at no point have I commented on this subject. Maybe re check your target before posting. Hugs and Merry Christmas !

It is likely to serve little purpose other than to cause distress in a population who is already dealing with a lot of appearance-related distress to begin with.

We're told that viewing trans people as hating their bodies is transphobic. The large number of transwomen who get turned on by dressing in women's clothes would not be happy with you suggesting they have distress. How could they film themselves wanking in women's toilets if they weren't very pleased with their bodies? The ones who root through sani bins to find used tampons to stick up their arses or used towels to piss in aren't showing distress.

Groups pushing for trans rights are saying that being trans is not a medical issue, it's not a mental health issue. If it's not a mental health issue then they clearly don't have distress about their appearance and if it's not a medical issue then they don't need drugs and surgeries.

Edited for Samsung's incredibly overzealous autocarrot

Looks like you were tagged in error due to a very similar user name (unless this post was made by someone identifying AS you! 😆)

Aye, male ego matters more to some people than women's safety.

Hard disagree. If someone with body integrity identity disorder wants their leg amputated, we recognise and treat this as a mental illness and we most certainly do not do as they ask.

First, do no harm.

It took me several years to realise nobody could tell. I was always waiting for it; fearing the moment when it would turn out I'd just been being humoured; that secretly people were just being polite.

Once you realise clinicians are assuming you are here to attend maternity departments and people are behaving in ways that demonstrate they have psychologically categorised you as 'cis female' even in the presence of trans women they are subconsciously behaving differently around, you realise that it's actually kind of ridiculous to keep your walls up.

When I saw that one of my older cis female friends was occasionally getting accidentally misgendered even when I was literally stood there right next to her, and saw other trans women being regularly misgendered even while once again standing right next to me, I realised that people really can't always tell and as long as I was careful about what I said, I'd be safe.

The first time I disclosed after nearly a decade of complete and repeatedly demonstrable invisibility, I did so exclusively to a group of other (misogyny-subject) feminists I had spent years carefully scrutinising and slowly learning to trust. They had no idea and some initially thought I was joking because it was so out of nowhere. There was a lot of 'You didn't need to tell me and I'm kind of sad that you were scared, but thankyou for sharing. Also...I know trans people and had absolutely no idea that was even possible, what the hell?'. I did ask if there was any advice and offered to remove myself if it was a problem for anyone and got a unanimous 'don't you fucking dare imply you have any less right to be here than any of us' scolding which rather set the tone for the future.

It could have just been a fluke that time, but the same has happened again and again for years and years and the general baseline of society has moved in a positive direction.

Around 2017 the evangelical right's pivot toward using trans people as a wedge issue caused it to start becoming more dangerous to be visibly trans again. Trumpism manifested as a neoreactionary extinction burst, the papers went full mask-off over here and it wasn't long before suddenly the transphobic FPFW flyers started mysteriously appearing all over publicly accessible safe spaces, even in academic institutions with positive cultures of tolerance.

Trans people were being more generally accepted as a baseline, but were also seeing more active abuse from highly radicalised anti-trans activists. Some of my friends - sometimes even cis women - would get challenged. It was terrifying.

Weirdly, though, they never once targeted me. I've walked right through groups of anti-trans activists hurling abuse at any visible trans people they see over the last few years; I even had to stop and ask them to please get out of the way so I could get to my train once. Nothing.

When I heard a cis woman being hasseled by the same group later in the day for being tall and having short hair I began to realise what was actually going on and where things were going - the pretence is slowly falling away as the overton window shifts and the quiet part starts becoming audible.

The phenomenon of Transvestigation and the bizarre conspiracy lore it has become embedded in is one of the many outcomes of a decade of stochastic terrorism.

No. This is a feminism discussion board. We are currently seeing a mass attack on women's rights, sports, refuges, rape crisis centres and other safe places, all by men claiming to be women. Its a relevant topic.
And for the rare masculine woman who may be mistaken for a man, then that's also a topic for feminist boards as it involves gender stereotyping as well as the issue that is causing this in the first place -- men trying to force their way into womens spaces so that women need to be hypervigilant.
Banning us from discussing this isn't very feminist.

OP, plenty of people have responded to your post - if you're interested in defending your position, maybe it'd be helpful if you replied to them?

@ButterflyHatched What does "visibly trans" mean? You use it a lot. Can you clarify?

I don't believe a word of this. I'll probably get a strike for it, but it rings completely untrue to every single one of us who has actually been involved in feminist spaces, marches and protests.
You forget that we are the people who are at these things. If this was in anyway true, we'd see videos trending on YouTube and twitter of this kind of thing happening, the same way we see women constantly abused by trans activists.

Another MRA trying to shut down an avenue of women's discussion…
To answer the question posed in the title: absolutely not.

Women are entitled to research and question the background of people who pretend to be them and muscle in on their rights and spaces, not to mention the ones who disrupt legal gatherings, scream and spit in their faces, threaten them with violence, or who commit violence.

Sigh. How many more times..

@ButterflyHatched
I will happily use my own significant privilege when it comes to appearance to highlight and challenge negative attitudes in others, however

It was at this point that I realised you are a biological male because women don't talk about themselves like that.

Ah the confidence that comes from male socialisation and privilege...

You can believe what you want and are welcome to play pretend if it affirms your beliefs.

I would advise reflection on how hard you find it to believe that someone who has only been briefly exposed to low and late levels of endogenous testosterone she is partially resistant to and has spent the rest of her life on exogenous oestrogen might have physically developed and become socialised in a particular way.

The phenomenon of Transvestigation and the bizarre conspiracy lore it has become embedded in is one of the many outcomes of a decade of stochastic terrorism.

"stochastic terrorism" 😂😂😂

You mean that women are increasingly saying clearly to men who claim to be women that the thing they experience is not in fact womanhood and therefore does not support any of the claims they are making, boundaries they are ignoring and landgrabs they are enacting on top of it.

Your need to obfuscate this simple fact by enacting ever higher peaks of word salad is a clear indication you know your position does not stand up to clear eyed inspection.

Indeed. There are so many markers in the previous post alone. But apparently nobody can tell.