Why is anti-trans so important?

[Elizabethbd]

So, I will preface this with saying that I’m not in the UK, and my country does not yet have the kind of anti-trans debate as there is in the English speaking world.

So, I have a hard time understanding why this is such an important question to many women.

Surely there are women’s issues that affect a larger part of society.

I’m thinking rape and violence towards women, homelesness, sex trafficking and honour killings. Why are these issues not more important and worthy of attention, as they affect so many more women than those who come into contact with trans women (or men)?

It doesn't matter what men identify as.

They still stay men.

Men who think they can magically turn into women by changing what they wear or putting on make up are just men following sexist gender stereotypes.

This is a material reality. It is not pro or anti trans.

It is a neutral observation.

It's also worth making the point that even if a particular group of male people were statistically unlikely to harm women (it is possible that this is true of gay men, for example, or men who play badminton), it still wouldn't matter. Because when women see a male stranger, all we can see is that he is male. We can't see his sexual orientation or his gender identity. We can't see what hobbies he has or how he votes or whether he is a cat person or a dog person. We can see that he is male. And we can see other visible things such as his ethnicity.

So even if we could be 100% sure that men who like knitting hats for premature babies are completely 100% safe, we still have to ban men who like knitting hats for premature babies from women's spaces because we can't tell the difference between them and gay men, trans women, regular men, sex offenders, Tory voters or what have you.

We can only assess risk on the basis of the information available to us. In the case of a stranger in a toilet, that's what we can see. We can see that he is male and we know that makes him a potential threat. We can see that he is wearing a skirt, but we know that doesn't make him safe.

Do you understand that to some male people the act of knowingly transgressing boundaries and being in a space for female people where female people might be distressed because they see a male there is part of the appeal of being there? How many female people post videos showing them being in female single sex spaces? Male people do it because it is them intimidating female people by showing them who has the power to ignore the needs of female people.

There is a growing porn category of male people with transgender identities masturbating in female toilets. They used to post snippets of their videos on twitter when it allowed porn. They made a feature of the fact that female people could be heard urinating in the next cubicle or that a mother had children in the cubicle next door.

There were two male people with transgender identities famously mocking female toilet sounds on twitter not that long ago. Mocking female people for making toilet sounds.

There are many ways to cause harm to female people without attacking them directly. And there is a group of male people posting this content directly to women so we know that they are doing this and that we know why they are posting this content. To intimidate and distress. It is all there in the public domain and not hard to find.

it is more than being attacked.

I honestly think we should pin this and the 'Break It Down for Me' thread at the top of this board. It would be so helpful -

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3348290-It-will-never-happen-resource-thread

Ok I'm I'm over my head here, you make very good points. I suppose I just worried about genuine trans women just trying to live their lifes and about how this will affect them. But I can accept that there is more of a risk to women and girls than I realised by not having female only spaces.

Stick around - please.

This is a place where a real debate can be had. And many of the regular posters on this board are very knowledgeable and have thought about the issues deeply. You can learn a lot by reading and thinking about what people are saying, It may or may not change your mind (Katie Dolatowski is not an isolated case), but it will definitely help you hone your arguments, and be better informed,

Female people with PCOS don’t look like male people. The way many people correctly sex a male or female person is not what they present like. It is so much more than that.

It is the very many differences that are derived from MALE levels of testosterone which is far higher than female levels of testosterone. I am happy to find the nmol amounts but iirc female people don’t overlap with masculinised male people. There seems to be a great deal of misinformation on this thread already. Wrongly dismissed prison statistics, PCOS, sexual orientation assumptions.

No. Male people have sketal differences that are markedly different to female people. These cannot be changed with any hormones or surgery. Male people move and walk very differently to female people. Even arm proportions and leverage points are different. And skull structural differences that are easily picked. No woman with PCOS takes on a male skull structure or skeleton.

Male power advantages do not diminish with suppression of testosterone either. So any male in a female space will have power advantage over those female people.

It doesn’t matter at all what a male person ‘presents’ like. It truly doesn’t. No male people in female single sex spaces.

How many men does that 16% actually amount to and how many trans women overall? And how many of the trans women just decided to become trans after being caught because they are definitely a fair few so that gives a false reading of the amount of 'genuune' trans women

I don’t think there is anyone here who wishes harm to transpeople - we just see equality as being about more than trans issues and, this being a feminism forum, we’re primarily focused on ensuring fair treatment for women. Please stay and join the discussion, just don’t assume posters are coming from an anti-trans perspective if they are centring women rather than transpeople.

I think that this is a good moment to share this thread.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1816266309555884491.html

Here. (Wait for image to upload.)

This is a few years old but I am not aware of anyone having put more recent data online and I haven't done my own FOI request.

So obviously a lot more men, but that makes sense because there are more of them. On a per capita basis though, it would appear that trans women are more dangerous.

There are only two explanations for this.

Either men who identify as trans women are more likely to be sex offenders, or sex offenders are likely to pretend to be trans.

Both of those explanations are very good reasons for keeping all male people out of women's spaces.

People have to ask questions in order to learn. OP hasn’t been rude or anything, I agree he/she is thinking, learning, and probably mulling it over.

Plus, not in the UK might mean ‘not read anything or seen anything other than inflammatory headlines’.

@Eolhc1990 we truly, and I know I don't speak for every poster, in the main aren't anti trans on here. We are pro woman though.

We don't wish to eradicate trans people. A lot of posters have trans family members: children siblings partners etc.

Transwomen and transmen can live their lives however they want, wear whatever they want, call themselves whatever they want, and I personally hope they find their lives more happy and fulfilling.

There is nothing wrong with a man who claims to be a transwoman using the gents. Despite the TRAs protesting profusely about how unsafe those transwomen would be in the gents there is very little proof of this being true. And even if it were true that isn't a problem for woman to solve. That's a mens problem to solve.

But women are not something that men can actually be, no matter how much they wish they could.

Sure. Male people may be vulnerable if they have a transgender identity. But so are many many other groups of male people.

Not one group of male people other than children have been given access to female single sex spaces to keep them safe. Not one.

Why? Because human rights only cover segregation of sexes for safety and privacy. No male person should expect to use a freely available public male single sex space separated from other male people. Just like we don’t segregate groups of female people. Because female people are kept safe from male people’s attacks (sexual, physical and intimidation) and given privacy. But there is not expectation that a female person should have privacy and safety from other female people even with some
rare female people being violent and sex attackers. That would be unworkable.

And the statistics show that there is no reduction in the pattern of criminality with any stage of transition in the UK. So it is a very clear safeguarding risk.

So, no. No male people get to use female single sex spaces because they are ‘vulnerable.’ And no, they don’t get to use the space because they have a particular philosophical belief about themselves that doesn’t reflect material reality. It doesn’t matter what they identify as, they are male. That is their body formation.

All the talk about vulnerability is emotional manipulation to distract from the truth.

Eolhc1990

do stick around 😀

It doesn’t matter for several reasons.

Ultimately, they are still male people.

But all people who say they are transgender are who they say they are. Whenever they say they are. To gatekeep being transgender is transphobic.

Are you seriously calling me a bigot? Read my posts.

Female people also use public toilets differently to any male person. Often it requires using the public space (washbasins) to clean blood, breastmilk, children’s
vomit or drinks or food off clothing.

We should be able to do this without any male person walking in. Regardless of how that male
presents or identifies. That is a major privacy issue for many female people that is all too often dismissed by those who have not had to do this or are very quick to declare they wouldn’t care. But female people deserve privacy as well as safety. And it is never up to another female person to consent on behalf of others.

You value how others judge you and being perceived as supportive of men's rights to women and their spaces rather than the risks to women, the mental wellbeing of women and the privacy and dignity of women.

I'd say that was pretty bigoted and disrespectful to women.

Do crack on.

To be fair you were the one throwing around insults first, you told me I was ignorant and stupid and bizarrely you then decided to trying to gatekeep who could be trans just because John had only just come out as trans, and you assumed things about what I thought that were wrong.

So why would you be surprised when someone then asked you if you might be a bigot because you were deciding a trans woman was not genuine?

You claimed John was pretending to be trans. No one else did, we accepted his claim of being a transwoman.

Thanks. I do think more and more men are claiming to be trans when caught when theyre really not so that for me reduces the amount of actual trans women offences.

Haha, well I don't think most people actually think that and I think activists are moving away from that line of thinking

@Eolhc1990 i'm interested to know why you had those worries about trans women initially.

I think it's really great to learn from these threads. You seem to have started out from a perspective of being worried about a group without really having much understanding. Of the issues at play. I think it's great that you've admitted that, but I'm curious to know why you thought there was a problem.

The reason I asked the question is that I think a lot of people engage without knowing the fact and maybe have read some emotive headlines?

I can't keep up with the thread, but I don't think @deadpantrashcan has come back on my query about out of date definitions.

In general, this makes me wonder how much misunderstanding goes on.

I think it's really good that we can talk more freely on these threads. I don't know what would've happened if someone tried to have this conversation in real life.

All male people are male people. It doesn’t matter how long they have had a transgender identity. Still male. And still have male risk of committing sex offences and still have male physical advantage that can mean increased harm - and they should be treated like all other male people because of this. And they still have male body cues which mean female people are highly likely to correctly identify their sex which may cause distress.

it doesn’t matter how much effort they have made. The reasons are the same regardless of effort level.

Access to female spaces is not to be rewarded depending on effort level.

Then they need to update all the mantras and policies that they have influenced and all the guidelines.

And to re-educate everyone.

and to exclude groups of people from the Trans umbrella it seems. Do you think that people cannot be genderfluid ?