Darling sister and pronouns

[CheeseFromTheNorth]

I know this has cropped up many times, the sense of sadness when a close family member or friend seems to have joined the #bekind brigade.
Had a forwarded email from my sister who lives in another country, from her work address and she used pronouns in her email signature.
I don't understand it. She is all for social justice (Aboriginal rights) across the board and proclaims to be a feminist.
I won't have a conversation about this with her until I see her in person. But when I do my line will be something along the lines of "I used to respect pronouns, as I saw no harm in it. But as I read more and more about male rapists wanting to be referred to as she/her and all institutions complying with it, I realised that something is very wrong.
Who do I decide "deserves" those pronouns? The trans identifying male that's kind but doesn't pass? The male rapist because he speaks of gender dysphoria, but forces his victim to use language such as "her penis" when testifying in court?
So I've drawn and line and will refer to a man who identifies as a woman by their name".

That's all I would say, it does share my opinion and shows the time line of thinking over the years. I have been overweight for many years (not anymore) so I don't think that me raising the sports issue rings true as a reason for me to be of the anti-pronoun brigade (of course no man should be in women's sports but sports is never something I've been interested in, so it rings false for me to be passionate about it), but I HAVE been sexually assaulted many times, so this is my hill.

Keeping discussions like this light and giving food for thought is the way to go imho.

But what has been troubling me is the "why"? Why has she not looked in to this? She too is a SA survivor and it was a particularly horrendous event that has very badly scarred her.

Sorry for the long post.

Lots of trans activists coming out of their Mum's basements tonight I see

So now even the mildest of dissenters are either men or trans activists. They can't just be normal people who disagree with you.

As I said before. I'm GC and a woman. But I'm not a black and white thinker and I'm not à GC activist who wants to pull up everyone who puts pronouns in their signature.

But there's no point in engaging with you @CheeseFromTheNorth because you simply cannot discuss this without insulting anyone who questions your planned action.

Are you her? No. So in no position to accuse her of lying. Why would she? She has no reason to.

The point is that we don’t need “women’s spaces” at all. We simply need “safe spaces”. And the rhetoric being spouted, is removing that safety for many women. There are trans women that no one would question, if they appeared in a female toilet, on the basis that no one would be able to tell. And there are women that are scared to use public facilities, because they are confronted by these self important busy bodies, everytime they need to use these facilities, simply because they don’t “look” very “feminine”. They are being judged on how they LOOK, not on who they are.

You are seriously expect f me (and everyone else) to believe that you are regularly misgendered/ mistaken for a man in female conveniences, and these people simply apologise when you say “hey, I’m a woman”? With no further questions? Or are you saying that you have no problem “proving” that you are a woman, on “all” of these occasions? And how do you do that? A passport doesn’t prove it. Even showing your genitalia wouldn’t necessarily prove it. Or do you voluntarily submit to an on the spot DNA test, to prove it. Or are you simply talking nonsense? Because just asking someone if they are in the “right” space, is pointless, unless they can prove that they are.

Highlifhts the exact issue. This “feminist” needs women to stay in a very specific box.

If you are worried about men pretending to be women in order to attack women, you are not worried about trans individuals. You are worried about predatory men. Hope this helps x

You are in no position to tell other women what they need, you understand that, right?

Men commit more than 90% of violence and sexual violence. If women want space away from them in certain circumstances as they always have done, they are totally entitled to that.

Men broke the social contract by barging into women's spaces without their permission. Don't you dare blame women for the fallout of that.

Safe spaces for women have to be single sex. Any male people makes the space mixed sex and therefore unsafe. No males who claim to be women should be using them, whether they think they pass as women or not.

Single sex spaces also allow women and girls dignity and privacy, just as important as safety.

If you can't tell a male person from a woman, I'm sorry to hear it, but that's your problem.
I don't believe women are frightened of using women's facilities.

There will almost never be a need to 'prove' sex as it is almost always self evident. However, we need to outlaw the practice of being able to lie about sex markers on official documents and then that will be sorted also.

Also, note to men. Just don't lie about sex to women who don't want you in their spaces. Basic respect to others.

Yes, as soon as we open our mouths or they get a proper look, it becomes obvious.

Predatory men and trans individuals are overlapping circles in a Venn diagram of male people.
If facilities are mixed sex, any male person can use them without challenge. Including predators. No dressing up or body modifications required.

What kind of man would want access to women's spaces, where they are not wanted and women are vulnerable?

No decent man would want this, we all know that. So why shill for these men?

@Reallyneedsaholiday

The point is that you only THINK you know who is make or female, based on their appearance, which is discriminatory at best. Women are targeted by people like you, who think they have the right to judge what gender they are, based solely on how they look.

What does transgender mean if appearance is nothing?

The point is that we don’t need “women’s spaces” at all.

Don't think you can tell other women what they do and don't need. "We" don't agree.

If you are worried about men pretending to be women in order to attack women, you are not worried about trans individuals. You are worried about predatory men. Hope this helps x

I don't see "trans women" as anything different from other members of their sex. So they're all just men. And statistically pose a risk to women. Hope that helps.

Rare events make the news. If women are physically assaulting women who they've mistaken for men, show us the news articles.

We've seen the Atlanta case, and 1) no one was attacked and 2) it was a man who called the police.

“If you are worried about men pretending to be women in order to attack women, you are not worried about trans individuals. You are worried about predatory men. Hope this helps x”

If you are worried about men pretending to be women in order to attack women, you are not worried about trans individuals. You are worried about predatory [males] men.

Hope this helps x

Did we ever need to prove we were female before male people accessed single sex spaces?

Interactions, including voice, gait and observation, over a quick conversation generally will allow a female person to reliably correctly identify the sex of a person. Any discussion of showing identification to female people asking questions and as some suggest, genital inspections, are using hyperbole.

It's amazing how fast these tedious cliches get wheeled out.

I got sirred in Toolstation just before Christmas. I got sirred at the bar at a brass band contest last summer.

I'm tall and I'm quite square-jawed with low eyebrows, I'm autistic so I don't do female-coded body language, I have "resting bitch face" and I wear dark clothes that don't show my body shape. So yes, it's understandable that it happens to me because I don't tick all the boxes a neurotypical woman would tick. And no one female has ever attacked me because they mistook me for male.

You are not female. I can tell this by the following:

• Your absurd insistence that women cannot gauge sex reliably based on face shape, body shape, and voice. That a small number of women cannot gauge that reliably for me doesn't mean that they aren't doing it reliably for other women.
• Your insistence that a woman would attack someone she perceived to be a man, when men are stronger and could hospitalise her or worse in retaliation.
• Your absurd idea that women would sexually assault perceived men in the form of "genital inspections", when a) men are stronger and retaliation could look like murder, hospitalisation, and rape, and b) some men would interpret it as a sexual overture and women are trained from childhood not to make sexual overtures to men unless she is sure she wants sex with him because of the risk that he will rape her if she changes her mind.

Isn't it just?

Absolutely pathetic.

I get mistaken for a bloke perhaps once or twice a year and have been for the last 50 years. I've never been attacked or abused or even treated rudely, just something along the lines of 'excuse me, this is the ladies' or someone bumps into me in the supermarket and says 'sorry mate'. It's all cleared up in a split second when I speak or turn round or smile and say 'I know'. It's more embarrassing for them than me and I've never felt the slightest bit harassed over it. It's just one of them things, far bigger issues to be worried about. If it's happening more frequently in ladies loos, that's down to men in dresses making women feel more uncomfortable and needing to confront more often.

A reminder also for those in denial or fantasy-land. Accurate sex-recognition is one of the very earliest cognitive abilities we develop. Babies can do it. Animals can do it. It's not about hairstyles or clothes or likes or dislikes—a lot of it is facial recognition, but also, as has been mentioned, gait, build etc. Which has been backed up by numerous studies over the years, incidentally. It's laughable that anyone would still be trotting out the "nobody can tell" rubbish. The vast majority of human beings can tell. Easily. If you can't, you 'd be in a very small minority.

And no, being a woman has fuck-all to do with stereotypes. You just have to be female. This really isn't difficult, even though your average transactivist has clearly missed the last half century or more of feminism, mostly because it directly challenges their regressively sexist quasi religious framework which entirely relies on the backwards pink and blue stereotype boxes that most of us binned fucking decades ago.

Reality-denial is incredibly tiresome. And while I don't agree that everyone doing so on this thread is a man (plenty of women appear to be big fans of patriarchy, sadly - just look at those women who campaigned against the suffragettes), if you are feeding into the bullshit, you absolutely are a transactivist, and you are clueless about women's rights. You do not speak for the rest of us, you do not get to consent for the rest of us, especially to our rights being dismantled, even if you can't personally see it. And we can see your fact-free "arguments" for what they are. They're bullshit. Lies, smears, ad-hominems, projections, propaganda, mantras. The exact same cut n' paste bullshit that's trotted out by activists over and over again. Repeat them all you like, it still won't make them true. And look at you still desperately telling lies about the views and experiences of the women here.

Integrity would have served your movement much better, but unfortunately, as we see time and time again, it seems you just cannot help yourselves. Embarrassing to have this as your "activism", frankly.

"I think you are a man here to rape me so uncover your genitals the body part you would use to rape me if I'm correct on this so I can check" said literally no woman ever.

Reality-denial is incredibly tiresome. And while I don't agree that everyone doing so on this thread is a man (plenty of women appear to be big fans of patriarchy, sadly - just look at those women who campaigned against the suffragettes), if you are feeding into the bullshit, you absolutely are a transactivist, and you are clueless about women's rights. You do not speak for us, you do not consent for us. And we can see your fact-free "arguments" for what they are. They're bullshit. Lies, smears, ad-hominems, projections, propaganda, mantras. The exact same cut n' paste bullshit that's trotted out by activists over and over again. Repeat them all you like, it still won't make them true. And look at you still desperately telling lies about the views and experiences of the women here.

Integrity would have served your movement much better, but unfortunately, as we see time and time again, it seems you just cannot help yourselves. Embarrassing to have this as your "activism", frankly.

This 👏

The reality is if a female asks a person in the female toilet if they are in the correct toilet and hears a male voice, they will either leave and get security or police, or will tell anyone passing them coming in that that is a male in that toilet. No attacks by female people towards male people ever.

If they hear a female voice, and there is a difference, then they are likely to apologise or they may not because they are hugely embarrassed and don’t know what to do in that instance.

How fucked up is society though that female people have to do this because they understand that some male people will access what should be a safe space?

And how fucked up is it that the discomfort of those who get to the point that they have to ask, is then used against female people collectively to shame them about seeking to keep female single sex spaces free from male people? All this does is emotionally manipulate female people to simply accept some male people accessing those spaces. Whether it is intended to or not, this is the desired outcome.

This is the impact of focusing on the women asking and not putting the focus on the male people who have transgressed the boundaries that cause some female people, many I would say, distress. With some people, I would suggest they know this and it is deliberate.