Help me to verbalise my feelings on the trans movement/new law

[miniegghead]

I am very liberal and usually maintain a live and let live attitude. I don’t care how people choose to identify or live their lives. Gay, straight, trans, race, whatever - as long as you’re a decent person crack on.

However the whole issue with the trans thing is how they have slowly tried to infiltrate women’s spaces and rights. Live how you want to live but don’t try to change society for the majority. It began to feel like the wants and feelings of one trans woman trumped the comfort and safety of a bunch of women and I didn’t like that. So for that reason I support the new laws.

What I don’t understand, and I admit I’m not clued up on the language or in depth debates surrounding this, is why other people are no against this? People I know and have agreed with before entirely on political issues and whatnot are up in arms. They loathe JK Rowling, they think it’s disgraceful. Why are people so angry about trying to maintain single sex spaces? I have one particular friend who is really wound up about it and I know it’s going to come up in conversation. I feel ill equipped to put my point across succinctly because I just can’t understand the outrage at declaring women deserve privacy and respect.

Can anyone explain a little about the opposing view?

What new law? No new law was made...

There is no new law, the law is the same as it ever was. Trans women are a subset of men.

I said I’m not clued up on it lol. But I think you know what I mean.

There is no new law.

No I really don't.

Up until about 10 years ago the law was very clear, then lobby groups lied to people about it.

Now it's been clarified.

The fact that someone (Stonewall the biggest in the UK) told a bunch of people to break the law should be worth highlighting.

It isn't a new law it Is a ruling on existing biological fact. Trans women are not biological women they can still go about their lives as transwomen and men but they can't erode their biology, is how I see it. Their status is still protected just not aligned with women.

Women have been conditioned to be support humans for men, even to their own detriment. It was ever thus.
How about just saying that safeguarding is important and women need to be able to challenge the presence of men in certain situations.

The "new law " mistake sums it up: stonewall law (not the law but wants of a charity that needed a new reason to exist and get funding) was beyond the law. Sex has ALWAYS mattered, but people gave been bullied and cowed into saying 2+2=5 ,because we all really know what a man is abd what a women is.

The existing law had been increasingly Misinterpreted over a number of years. the ruling yesterday made a Decision about its original intention in what was meant by the term sex. Really, It couldn't have gone any other way and still have made sense.Of course sex means ... sex, not gender identity.
The ruling will make life more difficult for some transpeople.That's for sure. There
Really is no easy way of managing the whole situation.

The opposing view is largely that if you don't believe that transwomen are women then you are a far right bigoted terf who deserves to die in a grease fire.

This is what cant get my head around. Why are views so extreme by trans allies and activists? Can they genuinely not grasp that some people need or deserve single sex spaces - certain faiths for example or victims of abuse.

It's all about control.

And when that controling"request" is not followed, be it language, behaviour or boundaries, the aggression starts.

I struggle with this myself. It just seems so unreasonable and I think I’m a naturally conciliatory sort of person.

i think a lot of people went with the TWAW , no debate. Then there were ridiculous contortions to accommodate difficult situations. Not wanting penises in female changing rooms, stop looking you pervs. Male rapists in female prisons maybe if women were nicer and more inclusive to the rapist he wouldn’t of been forced to rape now he’s a woman he can be his true authentic self. Rape survivors wanting a female space to recover should reframe their trauma. Lesbians need to stop focusing on genitals, wtf?

Maybe Germaine Greer is right and men just hate women. It’s presented with so much bias it takes a lot to cut through. Trans children denied gender affirming care = giving children drugs and chopping off healthy body parts isn’t in their best interest.

Argh wrong quote. Apologies frenchnoodle. That was for OP.

No. The patriarchy in action - the needs of a very few men are more important than the needs of women and girls. I resent the references to religion/abuse survivors, all women should have the right to say no to men.
The media reporting generally centres the feelings of men, women are conditioned to be kind, and here we are.

All women deserve single sex spaces. But obviously you are going to get some (the allies) who don’t seem at all perturbed by it and actually think trans women have the right to be in women’s toilets and changing rooms.

Ok, I’m going to assume you’re a good faith asker here, and will attempt to respond to the spirit of you question.

The law, as it was written, and as we now see from the SC judgement, made it clear that there were certain protected characteristics, upon which no one should be discriminated against.

So, under normal circumstances, you couldn’t advertise a job as being only for men, or pay a gay person less for a job, or turn a person who had undergone gender reassignment away from a hotel.

But it was also recognised that in some
circumstances, we, as a society, do have to discriminate — for the safety and privacy of women, the law therefore allows single sex exceptions. These tend to be toilets, changing rooms, rape crisis centres, etc.

I’m going to skip a lot of stuff in the middle about people’s interpretation of the GRA, because the main thing that trans people and their allies are upset about is the following:

Stonewall, who have been embedded in almost every workplace for many years, have pushed policies that say that all trans people must be allowed to use the spaces and services that align with how they feel. So if they are a natal man who feels like a woman they must be allowed to use single-sex women-only facilities. Stonewall (and other groups) sometimes (if they are explicit about it) call this “getting ahead of the law” — that is, they believed, or said they believed, that it would only be a matter of time before the law would catch up with them. They exhorted all their partners to follow this policy, and to punish anyone (employees, clients, the general public) who objected.

So for 10-15-ish years, trans people (and many others, frankly) have thought, due to Stonewall’s interventions, that they had a legal right to use facilities that aligned with their feelings not their sex, and to call people (women in particular) bigots if they objected because this by definition makes single-sex facilities mixed-sex facilities. But crucially, most of these people using or supporting the use of opposite-sex facilities thought they were in the right with regard to the law. Because Stonewall told them, and they are supposed to be the experts.

The SC judgement, which again did not make new law, only made clear what the law was, has specified that when the law says woman or man, the law means sex - biological sex only. This punches a great big hole in Stonewall’s “getting ahead of the law” policies. But it also means that all those people who thought they were obeying the law because Stonewall said they were, think that somehow something new has come in to “take away” their right to use or support the use of opposite sex facilities.

They think they are being deprived of something they thought they could do, by some new ruling. They don’t understand that they shouldn’t have been allowed to do it in the first place. The people who tried to get ahead of the law, in fact broke the law, and in doing so gave a whole load of now unhappy people the idea that they were in the right, when they were not.

Hi, thanks for being open to other views. That’s not something you see a lot on here. As a survivor of sexual assault, I find the celebration around the SC ruling to be a massive distraction from the real issues facing women. In the time spent arguing about whether trans women deserve dignity, we could have made real progress fighting male violence, funding women’s services, and strengthening rights.

There is no credible evidence that trans women make women’s spaces less safe. The real threat has always been violent men, and targeting trans women doesn’t make anyone safer, it just punishes an already vulnerable group who face staggering rates of violence and abuse themselves (cue GC people bringing up articles of trans women who have been predators, as if it’s ever not been bigoted to share examples from a small number of people who are predators and use it to paint a whole group as being inherently predatory. They’ll say that’s not what they’re doing but the comments on here focussing on autogynophelia, fetishes etc. say otherwise.)

Also, honestly, I’ve been mansplained to about my own body more by gender critical men (who we all know are raving misogynists really) in the last two days than in the last two years. It’s telling who’s really trying to control and silence women.

That’s why so many of us are angry. Not because we don’t care about women’s safety (we absolutely do), but because this manufactured panic is hurting real people, trans people, and it’s setting back the fight for all women’s rights. Even if I agreed with the premise (which I don’t), we will never be able to enforce it, so it’s just ridiculous.

Thats my take on this small issue which is part of the much wider web of what I believe to be transphobia. I hope that helps.

They claim it's dangerous for TW to use men's toilets and it's humiliating to use a third space.

Hey I think the majority take your very reasonable position to life - live and let live.

the reason for the outrage about the Supreme Court judgment is 3 fold -

1. social leeches looking for popularity points - don’t underestimate the amount of supporters of trans rights who are looking for an easy cause to get behind that scores them social points. The trans agenda purposefully designed their campaign to be easy to get behind by using simple slogans (trans women are women, trans men are men). Many people like a cause to get behind publicly - social pressure is huge at any age and TRAs have been very good at painting what is essentially a men’s rights movement (with a few women thrown in who want to be men) as a human rights issue. So reason no 1 is many supporters are there because they are concerned with image management and how they are perceived
2. TRAs have done an excellent job at omitting the devastating risks of allowing trans identified males (men who cross dress as women - also known as a ‘trans women’) into all female spaces (prisons, positions of trust and access to young girls formerly reserved for women) and highlighting the sympathetic side of being trans eg abuse from other men. (See the pattern here? It’s a male issue, which deserves a solution but their solution is to set fire to women’s rights)
3. selective outrage. If they were to pick an issue that affects trans people who should be the poor male prostitutes in South America being murdered who cross dress as women- this is where all the state come from when they talk about trans people being murdered. There are currently refugee children going missing from British hotels being picked up by gangs. They go missing and don’t come back. Where is the outrage about these children? Hundreds of them. Women are currently being trafficked across Europe by sex rings. We’re talking tens if not hundreds of thousands of women. All the chattering classes will chatter about is the diet they are force fed by the media who wants them to focus on certain things.
4. this next one is an extra point and affects many good decent people, friends of mine included. They are regularly lied to by media that has been considered historically trustworthy (bbc main culprit). You could google ‘bbc lies trans’ loads of literature will come up

your question is a good one. Another good one is - why is the concept of a ‘third space’ so offensive to trans people? They could have their own hostels, prison wings, toilets. But trans identified men don’t want this. Because beyond a small number of trans people with genuine dysphoria - the vast majority of this new trans army are men with fetishes who want to be in women’s spaces because of women. If you haven’t heard about autogynephillia have a Google. I try to slip this word in five times to every conversation I have because once you know about it there’s no going back.

you sound lovely and reasonable and we need more people like you expressing your point of view. I’m a lesbian and these men have bulldozed lesbian spaces. I had one of them follow me around a social event a few months ago. I couldn’t complain because he identities as trans it makes him untouchable. What you see in straight / heteronormative society is the tip of the iceberg. Some of these men are terrifying once they have a mandate

There is no credible evidence that trans women make women’s spaces less safe.

Apart from the female prisoners that were sexually assaulted by male prisoners in womens prison

Or the woman that was raped by a man on an NHS ward only for the hospital to lie to the police that the rape couldn't have happened because there was no man on the ward ( a lie they kept ip for a year until CCTV footage was discovered)

Or the rape survivors at ERCC who expected a female counsellor but instead got a man who questioned them about whether they orgasmed during their rape

Indeed. I think the reasons that the judgement was reached were explained well by the judge. They haven't been widely reported.

I have never understood the negativity and argument against creating (alongside single sex spaces) a unisex toilet/ changing room, and the upset around this. There are very few trans people in the country and this would solve that issue.

On a wider level, this is a good source for the background -

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me

On this specific judgement, which was brought to the Supreme Court by For Women Scotland, it was clarified what should have been happening around the single sex exemptions etc in the EQA 2010, despite what lobbying groups have been insisting. Woman = biological woman.

https://forwomen.scot/03/08/2021/the-status-of-women-in-scotland-gender-representation-on-public-boards-act/

Edited to add, I've included the FWS link for background about why the case was brought. Obviously, the judgement document from Wednesday goes into more detail.