A space for respectful dialogue about sex, gender and diversity

[Tandora]

This is a thread for posters who want to talk and share a diverse range of opinions about sex, gender, being gender non-conforming and/or trans, and public policy. It is to learn from each other; to engage in a productive exchange, and to hear different sides of the story.

It is not a space for bullying and insults. Please do not join if your intention is to control the conversation and undermine those who disagree with you.

There is no point in a separate board because TRA’s are only relevant when they are arguing the toss with women. A TRA board would be nothing but tumbleweed.

Well yes, some absolutist thinking can lead to extremism, we can all recognise that, and know that that sort of ideology comes at us from many directions and we have to have arguments ready to counter dogmatism and intolerance.

But we need to also acknowledge that some truths are absolute. Humans need oxygen to breathe, gravity exists, diamonds are hard, mammals are binary, people can’t change sex. It is no good wasting time and energy fighting reality , so save critical thinking skills and debate for ideas and situations where curiosity and the dynamic nature of knowledge can be useful in moving humanity further forward, not bogging progress down by demonising people who don’t agree with you.

You are of course free to politely request anything you like.

If someone's identity is woman, then wearing a dress is an example of being gender-conforming.

The only way you would see a woman in a dress and think 'that person is gender non-conforming' would be if you believed that woman was a man.

Tandora has massively outed herself here.

The statement if I recall was "the only requirement to be a trans woman is to be a man".

This is a meaningless statement because

• it doesn't describe anything
• it obscures rather than clarifies what it is to be a trans woman.

To be a trans woman is to have been born with some physical characteristics that are observably male, but to recognise self as female.

I wholeheartedly agree - this another mirror-image quote (ref. my previous posts), in that it represents my own GC view just as much as it represents Tandora's view. I could have written it myself.

Respect the diversity of female people as distinct from trans women, and their corresponding dignity and rights. They're suffering. Taztoy's posts on previous threads, and distress at Tandora's lack of response to her, have exemplified that.

I'm stepping out of the hall of mirrors now.

Beautiful 🙂

@Tandora I would fully engage in meaningful discussion, but when you liken trans to autism - which you did on another thread - there can't be any level playing field to start from.
Trans isn't a neuro diversity, it's a psychological condition.

@Tandora In the five or six months since I arrived on MN FWR, I have seen at least three threads that were started precisely for the purpose of engaging with you in respectful debate. I have seen many other threads that morphed into a platform for your views. Yes, many responses have not been respectful, and I'm sorry about that. But there is a small core of posters who genuinely want to understand why you think as you do.

During those threads you have been asked repeatedly why you apparently think transness is an innate aspect of sex and must be treated as "real". Your response has been to post occasional links to papers on neurological development, which seem more relevant to sexual orientation or gender (non)conformity - two issues that don't raise any eyebrows here. So you haven't answered that question.

You have been asked how allowing transwomen into women's single-sex spaces would be workable in law. You have given no answer, and you do not seem up to date with UK equality law - a subject that many here understand very well.

You do not acknowledge that the cohort of transwomen now includes men previously categorised as cross-dressers, who exhibit behaviour traditionally seen within the criminal justice system as a red flag. You do not acknowledge the possible role played by social contagion in the remarkable rise in teenagers (especially girls) questioning their gender. When posters present you with statistics on these and similar issues, you dismiss them.

Finally, when posters have described their own experiences of sexual trauma as a desperate attempt to get you to understand that single-sex spaces are important, you ignore them.

In my view, your conduct has not been respectful.

OK will check back later. Hoping some of the posters who have more nuanced perspectives on this subject come back and that the thread doesn't just descend into a long stream of personal attacks

xx

Even when we reach a stage of society where all types of diversity will be accommodated we will still know and need to know a persons sex

in fact we can’t reach that state without acknowledging the differences between sexes and accommodate for that

if no woman ever suffered sexual abuse then single sex facilities wouldn’t be needed but sex segregated sport would still be needed

The rights of one group with protected characteristics (trans women) do not take precedent over another group with protected characteristics (women).

Society in the whole IS organised. Women have the right to safe spaces away from men and those with penises.

If you want rights... fair enough- but not at the expense of others.
Women have fought for centuries for their rights.
Maybe dont piggy back off that.

Yes, many responses have not been respectful, and I'm sorry about that. But there is a small core of posters who genuinely want to understand why you think as you do.

Thank you . I really do want to engage with those posters. It's hard to find them in all the noise.

It’s as productive as every other post on this thread.

Then don’t start by being rude and dismissive of others opinions

dont disrespect their lived experience of sex and how that affects - usually negatively - women’s lives

you can not ask for a respectful discussion if you can’t accept that male and female are biological definitions with simple and clear meanings

I'd say no, because at present, to get a GRC a trans person needs to live as the opposite gender for 2 years including using single sex places. Which they can't because sex is biological.

If you sort this out, how do you police it against people who are, shall we say bad faith actors. To my mind, anyone who seeks out a place where they know they are making other people uncomfortable and that those people have a legal right to is a bad faith actor.

Well, I think it's dumb, and it's definitely a mixed sex group.

I just think people should have the right to organise dumb combinations of people if they want, in their private lives, hobby groups, services they choose to provide etc.

To address your concerns:

You have been asked how allowing transwomen into women's single-sex spaces would be workable in law. You have given no answer, and you do not seem up to date with UK equality law - a subject that many here understand very well.

Actually, I've often discussed the law and policy. I don't agree with the majority interpretation of the SC judgement - I've discussed this - and why - on multiple threads. Maybe you haven't seen them?

You do not acknowledge that the cohort of transwomen now includes men previously categorised as cross-dressers, who exhibit behaviour traditionally seen within the criminal justice system as a red flag. You do not acknowledge the possible role played by social contagion in the remarkable rise in teenagers (especially girls) questioning their gender. When posters present you with statistics on these and similar issues, you dismiss them.

Because I don't accept/ agree with the veracity of these perspectives. I don't see any evidence for them. What I see is moral panic, because trans people have become more visible in society. This is a tale as old as time.

Finally, when posters have described their own experiences of sexual trauma as a desperate attempt to get you to understand that single-sex spaces are important, you ignore them.

This is something that I find extremely tricky to address, for a number of reasons.

you can not ask for a respectful discussion if you can’t accept that male and female are biological definitions with simple and clear meanings

This is not the thread for you if you believe that differences in opinion on this are definitionally disrespectful.

Right BBL x

This is something that I find extremely tricky to address, for a number of reasons.

Why?

100%

CAIS and Swyers? Happy to consider them as women. I think the fuss thrown up around DSDs is a Genderist bad faith argument. The idea that because a less than 1% number of people genuinely don't align with the usual biological structures of sex, sex identification can't be done perfectly easily for the +99% who do is patent nonsense, as millenia of everyone accepting everyone else's sex all the time and managing the odd exception case by case shows.

But then, I'm very pragmatic. My thinking is "sex specific rights and protections exist because of historic and current sexism, and since the sexism is applied to and experienced by people based on the crude old fashioned understanding of women, that's also the right definition for the people who get these mitigations".

I'm entirely comfortable that we do the best we can, get the best rules, protections and conventions in place, and deal with the odd question when necessary. That makes far more sense than saying "if you can't have a 100% rule there's no point in having 99%" - seems bloody unfair to the 99% to not support them even though you could!

On the EHRC guidance, again I'm pragmatic. If the purpose of a specific single sex provision is to avoid retraumatising women who cannot be with men in certain situations, and whose trauma is such that even knowing the person is female cannot undo the response, it is justifiable to also exclude women who the traumatised women are likely to read as male. I would hope in those cases provisions are made to support these women as well, perhaps alone or with men hapoy to support in a mixed sex way depending on her needs.

I do think suggesting that this scenario would ever apply to something like a ladies' toilet and claiming "trans men are banned from public toilets" is just bad faith hyperbole. In the very very unfortunate situation this hypothetical trans man did encounter the traumatised woman in that space I would hope they would like anyone else simply step outside and wait a little.

I said I'd leave, but it's really just too easy.

Absolutism, Tandora, is a repeated denial that there's any conflict of rights in a discussion spanning thousands of ages, the very existence of which exemplifies that conflict of rights.

It's Kafkaesque in its absurdity, and participating in it feels not dissimilar.

A genuine goodbye from Catiette K.

I think they should be forced to be completely clear that it is not a women only group in equality law terms. Regardless of their personal “gender” notions of what a woman is. So women who want a women only group can make an informed choice. I think it should be against the law to pretend a group that women are likely to want to be female only is a women only group when it isn’t.