Am I alone in NOT wanting a great flourishing of third spaces but to prefer that the definition of what being a man is widens...

[loveyouradvice]

Just that really

I remember when this whole madness started and various bearded men in skirts in women's refuges were so clear that women needed to expand their definition of women to include them....

I've always thought men need to become more involved, even just thinking about it and that the solution is for men to expand their concept of what being a man is....

But then I'm an old-fashioned feminist who has always seen performing gender-roles as an issue!!

New builds? yes you're right, a gender neutral toilet is an optional extra forth space under building regs, and may be incorporated into future constructions.

But 'OK, then, most if not all future buildings will have a gender neutral toilet you can use' or 'You could campaign to have a fourth GN space written into the building regs' is highly unlikely to satisfy the TRA demands for everything they want, now.

Tough!

I guess they will have to use an accessible toilet in the meantime, or a single cubicle in the coffee shop/cafe, just like everyone else.

For rape crisis and support services, I think that there should/could be LGBTQ+ services. The needs and experiences align more closely than with those of women.
I don't know. I don't think LBG should be lumped in with trans people. Their needs and experiences are different. I don't see why a lesbian woman should speak to a male counsellor presenting as a woman if they don't want to, or a gay man raped by a man speaking to a woman. This is one service where I think the priority should be separate services and provision. Options of open services but also guaranteed specific sex based services.

I’m wary of pushing the problem onto another group as has been done to women. But I do think if it hadn’t been decided that trans didn’t require gender disphoria then the solution would have been trans individuals who feel unable to use the toilet/change if room appropriate to their sex would have had the right to use the disability facilities as they were disabled. However it’s been made very clear that many trans individuals do not consider themselves disabled which has been accepted by the general public so this solution isn’t a solution it’s passing the problem of having your space co-opted onto another group.

my opinion is that a trans identity IS a mental disability and we should support and treat individuals who suffer with it as we did 20 years ago. Without hate or prejudice and with the utmost kindness. I am however not going to publicly argue this or push for this as it reminds me that being homosexual used to be in the DSM classes as a mental illness and that parallel makes me uncomfortable.

ultimately I agree with most posters here. This isn’t woman’s problem to solve. I might sign petitions and send emails for a cause I believe in and maybe trans individuals will start campaigning for a workable solution and I will happily get behind that. But it’s not for me as a woman to brainstorm or initiate

This ruling will also be beneficial to TW who just want to get on with their lives and not go into womens spaces performatively. They will probably still use the Ladies but walk in, pee in a cubicle, wash hands and out. They were never the ones who hung around by the mirrors waiting to discuss tampons with teenage girls and while they DON'T really pass and shouldn't be there I would probably not make a huge deal of it if I saw one.

For rape crisis and support services, I think that there should/could be LGBTQ+ services. The needs and experiences align more closely than with those of women

No, they don't.

This is one of the key issues, actually.

Women's experiences do not align with mens/transwomen's experiences at all. That's the whole point.

Lesbians and Bisexual women don't have the same needs as men/transwomen. They're the opposite sex.

It's men who are doing the raping in the first place. Rape crisis support shouldn't be extended to the rapists.

We must carry on demanding LGB without the T.

Why not both? Realistically there is a need for third spaces. Particularly for trans-identified females who can be legally excluded from female single sex space if they 'pass' as men. I think making a small accommodation for such people is reasonable, and doesn't mean we can't also keep working away at removing gender stereotypes.

When the whole country has sufficient numbers of clean accessible loos for disabled people I might give some thought to this.

But probably not tbh.

Males regardless of how they dress or what surgeries or medication they use need to use the men's facilities. If their has to be a gender neutral space then make that the men's toilets, changing rooms and so on and leave the women's spaces for real women only.

Again, why not both? We need better provisions for anyone not adequately served by standard toilets.

Transmen are welcome in women's loos. Transwomen are welcome in men's loos.

Life-changing decisions come with life-changing consequences. Think of all the women who've had to give up visiting their local leisure centre or cinema because the loos are unisex and they don't want to have to deal with a man in the basin area. Don't you care about them?

For rape crisis and support services, I think that there should/could be LGBTQ+ services. The needs and experiences align more closely than with those of women.

Oh, FFS! Have we not had several years to work this through? TQ+ was forcibly added to the LGB to exploit the success of gaining LGB rights. TQ+ is at war with the LGB. TQ+ is homophobic. It says LGB people shouldn't be same-sex attracted, they should be same gender attracted, so that straight men who self-ID as lesbians can get to have sex with lesbians. Lesbians have said no and been told by Nancy Kelley of Stonewall that they're like racists for not being willing to have sexual relationships with men. Lesbians are not attracted to people with penises, even if that penis comes with a £50 gender recognition certificate.

So leave the LGB out of it. We're same-sex attracted. End of, and we have nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with TQNB+ people with gender dysphoria or autogynephilia or fetishes.

It isn't that simply when it comes to trans-identified females. They can be lawfully excluded from female only space on the basis of their masculinised appearance. Clearly there needs to be third spaces for such women.

The example given by the Supreme Court was a very masculine-looking trans-identified woman in a rape crisis centre. She might be offered individual support, rather than being supported in a group and possibly triggering raped and abused women who read her as a man.

On loos it was very clear. Female people in the Ladies, male people in the Gents. If you don't want to go in either, sort out some kind of provision for yourself. Just like the women who won't use the mixed-sex loos at various London theatres and locate suitable premises to have a wee before and after the performance.

Absolutely yes to being welcoming.

I would love there to be as few private cubicles as possible. This means if we had ‘third spaces’ that they should not be completely private too. It would afford the occupants the same safety protections as single sex toilets.

I have been studying this for ages. When you get mixed sex spaces they are private. You have a private space in a public area open to both sexes. What you think might happen, happens.

It seems counterintuitive that privacy is bad but when you have collated a lot of individual cases you see a pattern. For instance a 6 year old being led into a toilet by a man on a train. A 12 year old girl at a station. A boy in shopping centre. A girl in a nightclub being followed into the toilets by a man who spiked her. All mixed sex private toilets in very public places and no one stopped it because they didn’t know. I believe it would stop a lot of VAWG if there were less opportunities.

I bloody hate detailing these incidents because I care about not identifying people but these are all newspaper stories and so the tip of the iceberg.

Ok so we have had a week flying our broomsticks around the Salem fire and dancing with our pitchforks. What is next for us old skool feminist hags?

As I suspect, this is going to grumble on as all the messages of support to the transcommunity continue (deafening crickets about women getting their spaces back but ho hum)

As much as I love a good roll in the mama bearpit as MN forums have been a blast, I am aware that the more delicately souled and the fence-sitters will still worry that be kind has not worked. Our forthrightness may be off-putting and I wouldn’t mind winning a few over.

I recall my peaking being a slow drip drip drip. I think many allies of the transcommunity may have had their loyal adherence to the cause eroded. There is something to be said about tempering our public interactions with the fence sitters and former stalwart allies to get them to consider the unthinkable heretical thoughts about the validity of sex classes.

Since I move in relatively woke circles. I have been told that most lesbians do support their trans sisters (news to me) but they do know my views. Nevertheless, I think there is mileage in trying to find some common ground.

I am thinking of framing my discussions on these contentions around the difference of liberal feminism compared to old school second wave feminism and gently drawing them into the world of material reality.

I would want to broaden out the discussion into one of life experience. As middle-aged women, we are ignored our opinions are dismissed and yet like canaries in the coal mine we have still spoken out. Some of us in light of the ruling are glad a proper debate can be had. The win is for transparency, light debate and proper honest conversation not making questioning someone’s position or belief a taboo. It is a starting point.

A lot of the younger generation know their fellow trans friends as the waif like non masc guys and the girls whose self-image and loathing is so fragile that they would self combust on the tiny mistake of a mixed pronoun. Of course, it is easier to endorse them and chime along with the outrage. To step outside the group-think is social death.

I can even understand that within a university setting these young ones have decided their world will be a true utopian ideal and that if the legislation had allowed for transpeople in all spaces we would all be in the sunny uplands of rainbowville. In their fervour they assumed once we met lots of trans peeps we would all join hands (never considering that actually us boring olds have plenty of experience of transfolk).

Sadly, they have been misled. Not everyone is as optimistic as them of their new progressive utopia. Much of another person’s outlook on life has been affected by life experience. Outwith of wealthy media land, luvvy think and the ivory towers, women and men have had to contend with the grubby the truly ugly and meaness of an ordinary life.

An ordinary life that allows with their naive outlook in utopia land for a rape victim to be forced to call say “her penis” in court. An ordinary life where women who really are the most deprived and vulnerable have to share a cell with Isla Bryson.

An ordinary life where a victim of domestic abuse has a panic attack in a shelter because a man walks into it. That ordinary woman cannot stop her body shaking, her mind tripping from fight or flight, and does not need to be further re traumatised by telling her to “reframe her trauma”.

An ordinary teenage girl who in the changing rooms of a local swimming pool has an older person in a wig leering and showing his “euphoria” while she tries to tell herself not to run out, even though it is her strongest instinct, because she doesn’t want to be seen as phobic.

But I think I would start with misogyny, How has their approach solved the intractable issues of men subjecting women to physical and sexual abuse since the new utopia? How is calling men women and women men helping on that? All I can see with my eyes is a blurring that has allowed boundaries to be crossed and it is for ordinary women that I am old school.

Fix misogyny first, stop assuming you have already done so, then we can discuss your progressive values seriously. I am more than willing to help with that mission.

It's a corollary of Rules 1, 2, 3, and 11 that probably could be a Rule 18 of its own: "women are responsible for fixing men's problems even though men caused those problems in the first place".

It's not quite Rule 1: men's proclivity to beat up other men isn't being blamed on women per se but we are being made responsible for preventing it.

Our refusal to go along with this is unacceptable and punishable under Rules 2 and 3, and the harm done to us in letting men into women's spaces is minimised under Rule 11.

it reminds me that being homosexual used to be in the DSM classes as a mental illness and that parallel makes me uncomfortable.

The TRAs are still inside your head, force-teaming the LGB with the T. They've told us all about that parallel to stop us from thinking too hard, it's called a "thought-terminating cliche".

The huge critical difference between being gay and being trans is that no one's rights are infringed upon by the gay person's demands for more rights. Legalising same-sex marriage didn't stop opposite-sex marriages, nor did it force ministers of religion to conduct same-sex weddings because any same-sex couple can marry at the Register Office. As the Supreme Court has recently confirmed, there is a conflict between the trans demand to use opposite-sex single-sex spaces and women's rights to single-sex spaces.

It makes no sense to pathologise harmless behaviours, such as being gay, because there's no need to treat the those behaviours to protect the person displaying the behaviour and others around them. By contrast, taking cross-sex hormones and demanding entry into spaces that are for the opposite sex only is something that the person and others absolutely need protecting from.

I don't see how you can exclude transmen from female loos on the basis of their appearance. If that was the case you could exclude women identifying as female just because they looked masculine, as well. That can't be right.

I get the rape crisis centre example but that is very specific and probably very rare.

I am hoping things go back to how things were before gender ideology took hold and things were sane and workable.

Men who really do have severe gender dysphoria (and they do exist) transition well enough to pass as female will still use the women's loos - nearly everyone was fine with this. And the piss taking men, whatever their identity or none, go back to using the men's.

This worked well and so all the doom and gloom and catastrophising from TRA is just nonsense.

My feminism lets me think that it is fine to be a masculine female or or one who presents as a man. 'Woman' really is a broad band. It just doesn't include males.

Females changing in a women's space wearing manly clothing /a beard etc. do not present the sort of problems that would trouble many. Appearances differ.

That probably isn't the difficulty we are being faced with though. :)

On the other side of things, I don't have the experience to be sure.

I feel that men should be flexible about manliness but this is not my challenge. How trans-women should be welcomed amongst other males is really something for all males to decide. Perhaps a third space is required. Perhaps it is not.

And, crucially, in that example they would be offered a service that still meets their needs but doesn’t exclude others.

Everyone’s needs are being met.

That was an example, but it still yet to be seen how far it will be taken. Recent guidance put out by the EHRC refers to men's and women's facilities generally, not specifically rape crisis centres.
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/media-centre/interim-update-practical-implications-uk-supreme-court-judgment

Maya Forstater has been pretty clear that it applies to far more than rape crisis centres.

https://x.com/MForstater/status/1913185941977510055

They would be breaking the law though so perhaps they are decent enough men not to do so.