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.

Again, just because you are unable to correctly identify the sex of male people, please don't think that this is the norm.

Most female people will reliably be able to identify the sex of a male person by looking at the male body cues. This includes skeletal proportions, hip / knee alignment and gait.

You may not feel confident about correctly identifying the correct sex of male people. But that is you.

Yes, that's one word from my post, and you've stuck two question marks after it. I'm unsure why.

Can you address the other several hundred words now in words of your own?

Honestly, I try not to be acerbic or rude, but this is very trying.

Debate, Manfreglory! Engage! Be brave - and more meaningfully true to your cause in so doing.

"essentially it's you telling them where they can go and what they can do"

Yes. Safeguarding principles using risk analysis available from crime statistics do indeed shape policies as to where people can go and what they can do.

Do you understand this?

Safeguarding principles are very commonly applied in a wide range of situations. And when it comes to situations where sex does indeed matter, people in one sex class are treated differently to the group of people in the other sex class. This is basic safeguarding.

It is a common error to ignore these safeguarding principles.

We are perhaps talking at cross purposes. No I don't know how many people "pass"; not do you.

But that some transmen may pass isn't an argument for allowing all transwomen into women's spaces. In that sense it's the extreme.

I find "passing" a bit of a problematic concept as how someone is perceived varies massively by the perceptor, the perceiver and the situation.

Regardless, by your account that's as simple as dressing stereotypically female. They would still be identifiably and physically biologically male.

Here is a question for you @Manfreglory .

What exactly changes in a male person that you believe removes them from being at the very same risk as all other male people from committing a sex or violent crime against a female person?

To be clear. What process do they go through and what are the specific changes, in your opinion, where a group of male people with transgender identities have the same level of committing sex or violent crimes against a female person as another female person?

Please be very specific here.

If possible, please provide evidence that this process works.

And by the way, this is only addressing the safety element that is a significant issue that male people present in female single sex spaces. It doesn't address any other issue that their presence creates.

Here is another question for you @Manfreglory

What other group with a philosophical belief that is not based in material reality has society been emotionally manipulated into acting as if they comply with?

And by this, I don't mean support those people to have that belief. I mean that society is actively being pressured through activism to act as if that group's belief is materially real.

And again, those people will be materially real, they do exist as people. I am very specifically talking about their belief about their own identity.

Please list other groups who have convinced society that their belief is based in material reality and people should therefore act as if that belief is indeed a scientific and well proven fact.

Essentially it's you telling them where they can go and what they can do

To the extent that they shouldn't be entering women's only spaces such as changing rooms, rape crisis centres, competing in sports and so on yes that's true.

It's because doing so interferes with the rights and interests of biological women in these spaces. We have rights too.

I mean, obviously, none of the ones in the news ever do- the judge who’s challenging the Supreme Court, RMW, Beth Upton. None of them do.

Why would I suppose that they are passing me unnoticed in the streets when every single one I know about is evidently not passing? That includes friends’ children as well as those in
the media and news. The ones who pass me in the streets certainly don’t pass. Though one would have made a credible punk, so maybe he wasn’t trans. I couldn’t look too closely as I was driving.

They won’t have male sex organs, as they are women. They may have had cosmetic surgery, but that won’t make them men.

To say nothing of the people who don't even try to pass because they identify as non-binary.

Regardless of the OP's POV, non-binary people represent a significant proportion of people who identify as trans (from the last census, a third), and it's not up to gender critical women to decide who is and isn't covered by the trans umbrella. The relevant question is whether they are men.

Personally if transmen were entering women's facilities and frightening women by how manly they are and sound I would prefer that they avoided doing so.

But it's irrelevant to biological males entering women's spaces. Sexual risks aren't symmetric.

"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."

It has been pointed out to you numerous times now, but do you understand how this statement means that you are arbitrating who is and who is not transgender in your own mind.

You have said quite a few things on this thread that really show that you are actually not here for a discussion. I think that you have not truly thought through the issues that you wish to denigrate others for their positions about.

Because your posts show some remarkable inconsistencies. Such as your use of stereotypes to categorise human bodies. Such as this post and this inconsistency here where you arbitrate who is and isn't transgender, yet you also use wildly differing criteria - surgery, vs hormones vs clothing.

In saying that, you show that you have superficial knowledge and you probably have been convinced by the same emotionally laden and manipulative reasoning that you are repeating.

If transgender people were all to be accepted as you have told us, why are you applying any criteria at all to arbitrate who is and isn't transgender?

so for you, it's not sex but how frightening the person is?

Women tend to 'pass'' more easily as men than men do as women, in our experience. We don't expect you to understand the problem, you don't experience the same fear reaction when you suddenly find yourself in a female only space with an unknown male.

Nooooo females are invited to use female spaces. Or are you not including transwomen in your er… question? I’m assuming you’re meaning transwomen as no female can have male organs. Humans can’t change sex you silly billy.

Again it is worth pointing out, we wouldn't be in this situation if female people were 100% confident that no male people would be accessing their single sex provisions.

Imagine a world where male people fully respected the need where female people had spaces for only female people and they stayed out. And if they rejected the single sex provision that has been provided for them, they had found an alternative solution and not ignored the consent of female people and just accessed female single sex provisions.

I’ve seen lots of photos of men who claim they “mostly pass” as “cis”. “Cis men” maybe, yes. They don’t pass as female though. And they are even less likely to IRL.

Still not getting it.

In the Sandie Peggie tribunal we had the whole performance of not being able to say that Upton doesn’t pass. Upton doesn’t pass.

It's like there's a whole section of society that's deliberately putting its fingers in its ears and screaming "la la la , not listening", then getting furious with the rest of the population who refuse to deafen themselves.

I'm afraid the idea that most trans people pass so well that nobody can tell is a bit of an urban myth in the trans community. You often see on trans subreddits posters claiming that cis people are so dumb they're incapable of telling that someone is trans.

But it's not true. In my whole life, I have known one transwoman who passed well - not perfectly, not if you looked closely, but well enough that on a brief acquaintance you'd probably take them for a tallish woman with a husky voice. Not necessarily though, because some people are more alert to subtle sex differences.

With all the others I've known, I'm afraid their trans status stood out a mile. I take no pleasure in saying that, because it feels a bit like saying your friends are ugly, but they didn't remotely pass, they knew they didn't pass, and everyone was just being polite.

It's the same with the mythical 6-foot burly transman we keep hearing about. She's a statistical possibility because tall and burly women exist, but every transman I've met has been on the short side even for a woman, and the facial hair does all the heavy lifting. You can tell by the voice, the gait, the narrow shoulders and wide hips, the mannerisms.

So it's not just that someone's philosophical belief about their identity doesn't match the material reality of their sexed body, it's that the incongruence between their philosophical belief and their sexed body is readily visible to almost everyone they meet.

This is relevant to safeguarding because of the wildly different offending patterns between the sexes, and because a biologically male person deciding to identify as female does not thereby acquire the risk profile of a biological female.

Agree. It's like trying to reason with a child.

The truth is, I don't yet know. I've been thinking about this for a long time and still haven't made up my mind about a few aspects of this complicated situation. Everybody on this forum is certain. Dead certain. Xx Is female and Xy Is male. There is only this. There is no gender. Usage of a sexed space must rest entirely on the makeup of your blood: your chromosomes.

I find this reductive, naive and discriminatory. It forces people to use spaces designed for their sex at birth when they might have been identifying otherwise for decades. It might terribly humiliating not to mention risky, to walk into that space and be a target for bigots or macho drunk guys. But this, you say, is the price of your kind of absolutism. (The fact that it is someone else's price to pay, and not yours, is just by the by).

While I'm sure of all this, I'm not sure how it should work if somebody identifies as trans and feels trans but hadn't made any changes to their outward appearance or biology. Can it pave the way for a mass invasion of women's spaces? I doubt it but I am not as sure as you all seem to be about your position. You put all trans people together; I suspect there might be different rights of access and usage but I know I'm setting myself up for a virtual bloodbath here.

Trans women competing with born-women in sport? Another thing I'm still trying to learn about so I can form a meaningful opinion. Not there yet. My daughter was regularly beaten by a trans girl when they were little: I didn't love it and interestingly, nor did the mother particularly. There's that. Unlike most on here, I am not an absolutist and I don't think this is simple.

I think at this stage we can all see that this poster is only here to provoke.

There is little of substance in their posts. It is a constant stream of half arsed attempts at provoking a response with very little engagement. Probably because the engagement they have undertaken has been shown to be transphobic, misogynistic and homophobic in nature and not carefully thought through at all.

That post was just like a teenager making a poorly judged off hand attempt at deflecting and distracting.

Most of us are not confused about our sex, so just make a third option for those who don't feel they fit the traditional sex binary. We could all support that.

The only reason not to is if you want to use those facilities and the people in them to validate your own identity.