some parallels

[Manfreglory]

I've been teasing out this idea, that transphobia and xenophobia have much in common.

• both rest on 'you're not from here; your culture is different; you can't know what it is to have grown up 'over here'/had period pains/gone through labour.

• both reject difference or change in favour of sameness or stasis. 'You look and talk and think differently/you underwent a journey to get here/I can't fully relate to you'.

• both rest not just on culture but on biology: 'Your genes are different than mine/your genotype for phenotype A, B or C aren't identical to mine'.

• both are territorial: 'i sweated blood as a member of this sex/to make it in this society - who are you to come here and demand a seat at the table'?

• both are suspicious of the reasons for transformation. 'You just want the perks of being female; you just want to look up our skirts in the toilet; you just migrated here from Guatemala for financial stability.'

• both demonize, aggressively overstating the chance that the person has or will commit a crime. (Migrants: no need to give examples, just read the news. Trans people: 'you just want access to 'our spaces'' (i.e. the spaces where women/cis women enjoy their privacy from all men, cis or trans) so you can assault us'.

• both minimize or even deny, the need for the transition: 'No child is born trans/those parents were homophobic as the kid was just gay/trans women are men with their dicks lopped off/people should stay in their home country and migration is too dangerous'.

• both hysterically fear that the trans person/migrant will corrupt innocents: 'they will indoctrinate children in school/they will spread religious fundamentalism'.

Gender critical women: ask yourself if you've been radicalized into the new right.

For the third time, have you read what the Supreme Court judgment has to say about this very point?

of course i have.

i am asking about how that is applied in real life.

To clarify @Manfreglory is your view that only post op transwomen on hormones who "pass" should be allowed into women's changing rooms?

In real life, trans men who live "stealth" are seeking out unisex facilities wherever possible, accessible ones if not, and trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, which generally does not involve using communal changing rooms or showers ever.

I know right !!!

I have underarm hair too! Eek!! I also come from a family where mum used to have to shave her chin stubble. I used to have to have my moustache waxed regularly when I was younger.

The lengths these people go to in order to leverage male people into female single sex spaces is incredible!

They seriously have no fucking clue about the real lives of female people, do they?

That's your comparator, otherwise I don't see how the supposed transman who look male applies to this argument.

How on earth could I make guarantees for "all" women? This is teenaged rhetoric. You keep setting up windmill after windmill to tilt at (AKA rows of strawmen) to avoid the nuance with which you're unable to engage. It's genuinely disappointing after your opening post.

Myself and others have addressed this nuance in other posts, including:

The risk profiile of transwomen v. transmen
The typical build and gait of a transman
The physiology of transition
The SC judgement

The element I've not seen at time of posting, which is, I think, key, is: campaigners like yourself have undermined the social contract that previously meant that it was commonly understood that single sex toilets were single sex. This has forced women into the uncomfortable position of being acutely aware of who's in their loos. If this social contract held strong, then I could perhaps imagine probable transmen being accepted by most, as the common understanding would be that they were almost certainly female. I can't see this ever being the case, though, since our spaces have long been treated as tools for male validation.

“likely interested in women sexually, is welcomed with open arms to said single sex spaces?”

What the fuck did I just read?

This is straight up homophobia.

I'm not sure. I find that a different conversation than the one we're having here about genes winning the day. You believe that xy or xx (or xxx or some variant) should be the only factor in deciding this. I think there are complicating factors - call it culture, call it gender dysphoria, css as al transitioning - that make your simple directive really hard to follow, in a fair society. I suppose ultimately, since you asked, genderless or "sexless" spaces since "gender does not exist", might be the future. But since you and I both agree that gendered (in your case sexed) spaces ought to be provided, then I'd say the individual would need to have done more than just mentally committed to their new gender. They should be bona fide trans which to my mind does mean they'd generally have taken hormones or had surgery or be dressed accordingly or done combo of these. To be accepted for surgery people need to have done this anyway.

I mortify myself sometimes - I've been a feminist for nearly fifty years, but I still tweeze. Admittedly I'm a bit extreme in the facial hair department (one of my school nicknames was "Brezhnev.."), so I kind of have to, if only not to frighten small children in the street. Still not a bloke though, @Manfreglory.

I mortify myself sometimes - I've been a feminist for nearly fifty years, but I still tweeze. Admittedly I'm a bit extreme in the facial hair department (one of my school nicknames was "Brezhnev.."), so I kind of have to, if only not to frighten small children in the street. Still not a bloke though, @Manfreglory.

If the person in question identifies as a trans male, not a woman, how is this "straight up homophobia". Have you ever tried asking a trans man if he's a trans man or a lesbian? Might want to, before getting it so, so wrong.

That last post is welcome - considered, detailed, precise. Thank you.

Have you considered that the group you describe here includes self-declared autogynophiles (eg. Debbie Hayton)? Can you see why women may feel uncomfortable with their single-sex spaces and their persons being used to validate such men?

The ECtHR has already ruled that sterilisation cannot be a condition of securing rights.

I think you haven't really thought any of this through, and you are confused about reproduction and the impact of sex.

Because you think that whether women want certain people in their single sex spaces is about whether the person is sexually attracted to them or not.

It's not, it's about what SEX they are.

How am I supposed to know whether the man who just walked into the women's changing rooms has had his penis removed or not?

(Sorry, have no idea why that posted twice..)

Yes.

Any woman, no matter how she presents herself to the world, is welcome in female single sex services. There are similar services available to any man, no matter how he presents himself to the world.

I don't exclude women, I do exclude men.

Personally I've yet to meet a woman who is completely convincing as a man so there's that, but if a woman who does convincingly pass as a man should enter a woman only space then I, and her, would not be too surprised if other women using the space questioned the woman as to whether she were in the right place.

What part of the fact that a woman is a woman from conception to death and a man is a man from conception to death are you not understanding?

That's the obvious question, of course. Manfreglory's argument favours the transwoman's experience of their body over the woman's experience of it.

To me, both are equally valid, which leads me to weigh up other factors to come to my conclusion, particularly statistics regarding sexual offending and the physical risk presented to women in spaces open to males, versus the safer alternative of third spaces for these males and any females who may choose to join them.

It seems self-evident to me that physical safety trumps emotional validation.

You seem to think you speak for all transgender people. Surely you don’t think they are a homogenous group all thinking the way you think?

Either way, it is you who is making homophobic posts here. You cannot try to argue your way out of this.

It is you who just mentioned sexual attraction to female people as a reason to exclude a female person from female single sex spaces.

It is right there on the post! You don’t even see what you did and you are now trying to distract from
the fact that you said

“likely interested in women sexually, is welcomed with open arms to said single sex spaces?”

Indeed!

But apparently attack and deflect is the tactic to deal with that little error in judgement.

A trans man is a woman.

A woman who is sexually attracted to women is a lesbian.

These are statements of fact.

You seem to be suggesting that a trans women or a lesbian is as likely to commit a crime against a woman as a man, but that is demonstrably not the case. Hence the suggestion that you are homophobic.

Your problem is your assumption that trans men are 'taken as men'.

You don't believe a trans man is a trans man, you believe he is a woman. I wouldn't not assume to speak for all trans people but I also don't wish to negate them out of existence as you are doing.

(perhaps they are a father)

Not a father. Do you know how sex works?