TWAW on R4 In Touch - usual sob story

[1stWorldProblems]

Peter White is sounding quite sceptical by BBC standards and asked Natalie if he had ever had a negative experience in male spaces but didn't get an answer.

Otherwise same old same old - assigned at birth, can't use mens spaces as will be questioned as to why he's in there (as they'd be seen as a woman) and how rights have been taken from them by the Supreme Court 🥱

DH & I shouting at the radi. 2x DD shouting at us to keep it down as they can't hear the TV / know it all inside it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002grs9?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

Oh dearie me 🤦♀️

It was all rather ‘me, me, me’ wasn’t it?

Possibly cruel to voice this, and I know it’s not the point you’re making, OP…

But how, if Natalie is blind, does he have any real idea of how well he ‘passes?’

Having said which, I’m not aware of RMW having any heavy visual impairment and yet he seems to be able to block out what the mirror’s reflecting back.

Legally blind doesn't automatically mean she literally can't see anything. I'm sure there are lots of cues that affect how well she feels she passes.

I thought it was a good feature, Mumsnet could do with more different perspectives on this, it's a serious echo chamber.

@Lun82 - I think if Mumsnet is an echo chamber it's because we need somewhere to go to ensure we're not going mad - as programmes like this allow people like Natalie to spout utter nonsense with little (Peter didn't affirm his reality all the way through) or no push back.

Blind or not, very few trans (of either sex) pass. They often take people being polite as proof that they do. Most humans can correctly judge the sex, mental health & the degree of threat of any other human in seconds.

Natalie asserted that he would be unsafe in men's loos without any examples (despite a direct question on this) and came up with the old tropes that they had been "assigned male" at birth (rather that created male by his father's Y sperm merging with his mother's egg) and that the Supreme Court was removing rights from him, when it merely clarified the existing body of UK Law.

I can let off steam on here or bore my family some more with my rantings about a world where the Emperor's lack of clothing continues to be ignored.

Wouldn't be surprised if he's pretending to be blind just like he's pretending to be a woman.

How dare Natalie say that transwomen are at greater risk of harm than women. That really boiled my piss 😡

Love Peter. I didn’t hear this but can imagine him having a pretty common sense attitude. He’s very sweet and gentle but homes in on logical loopholes and suspicious claims.

They are, that's a statistical reality. That doesn't mean women aren't at risk.

Mumsnet could do with more different perspectives on this, it's a serious echo chamber.

It’s a forum for women, most of whom have female relatives and/or female friends. Huge diversity of opinions on most subjects. But as you might expect, not a lot of opposition to defending women’s rights and safeguarding children.

Passing just means lying. Does the man called Natalie lie convincingly?
Probably not. Every part of a man is male, that's because biologically they are male.

Given no one can deicide how many trans identifying men exist, i doubt those statistics are reliable.

Please could you link to the evidence/data for this assertion of 'statistical reality'? In the UK. Also, the definition of 'harm' that you are using in this context. Thank you.

This is a good study https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26895269.2024.2440856#d1e520 the CPS also have a watching brief as well: https://www.cps.gov.uk/crime-info/hate-crime/context-and-characteristics-hostility-towards-sexual-orientation-and-transgender-identity that's not directly comparing with other demographics though, so less relevant to the question.

In this country (and almost all others in the Western hemisphere), how many trans identifying men are deliberately killed, on average, per annum?

Now compare that to the number of women per day.

If you remove hurty wordz and the “literal violence” of “misgendering” from the crime statistics then you quickly get a truer perspective on which demographics are at most risk. And it’s not men - however they choose to identify.

It makes me laugh when posters claim mumsnet is an echo chamber when it was the ONLY forum for years that actually allowed the gender critical perspective to be aired. Reddit, Twitter etc alll heavily censored us. Did you complain about that @Lun82?

I haven't listened to this yet but I do find some of the personal stories quite compelling. It doesn't change my mind but I do feel sympathy. I think it is easy to say "be kind" in the face of personal stories if you haven't considered the flip side of the issue.

I was driving last night when this came on the radio and did quite a lot of cathartic shouting at the radio in the car.

He equated trans with being gay a lot and talked his unsupportive family and I wondered more than once if he was actually suppressing homosexuality with his transition which made me sad in addition to being cross.

I noticed that a lot of his answers to questions were about stories he'd heard rather than anything he'd actually experienced. And the poor butch lesbians being questioned in the ladies trope came out.

The final straw for me at the end was when he was asked how could the law be changed to protect people like him. The answer: amend 'sex' in the EA to include the gender trans people had transitioned into. I felt like crying with the insanity of it all really.

a couple of years ago I attended a work talk hosted by a blind transwoman (I don’t know if it was Nathalie). He knew he passed because his wife dressed and groomed him, and said he passed : his wife was , for all intents and purposes, his full time carer. The story of how he became blind was also extremely unfortunate. He lost one eye in a freak accident when he fell over onto something sharp, and the eye had to be surgically removed. He then lost the other functional eye a couple of years later by having the same accident. His wife then started looking after him , and that was when he realised he had been trans all along.

Thats not a very strong argument - you can't use absolute numbers, as clearly there are 4.5 billion women and a few million trans identified men - you would need to go on statistical likelihood of assault. However - you would also have to control for things like - are trans identified people more likely to be sex workers, and therefore be at a higher risk.

I don't actually know the answer but I suspect if you control for sex work, females are more likely to be attacked. Anyone got better stats?

Both things can be true at the same time :)

However - unlike Reddit, an actual echo chamber, dissenting voices are commonly heard here and not down voted to invisibility / deleted by mods. Though There is a very clear popular position with regard to trans people here.

@weebisom different guy. He said he'd been blind since childhood and had first realised he felt like a woman when he was around 10. I did feel sorry for him until all the soundbites got trotted out.

Peter White is no pushover. I was crossing the road at the same time as him once when a driver roared past and nearly knocked him over. His inventive swearing at the driver was very satisfying to hear 😂

One would expect relevant evidence to compare the experience of trans identifying men with cis women.

The first study aims were to compare the experience of transgender PEOPLE (not just trans women) with cis LGB people (so a mix of women and men, not just women).

Transwomen are at a higher risk of harm (from other men) than women are because they are men.

Men as a group are are higher risk from violence from other men than women are. The majority of people murdered are male. The majority of assaults that occur outside the home and between strangers are male on male. ONS has all the data on this.