Talking to non GC people

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I've been chatting to a few people recently about gender issues, and their opinion runs roughly like this ' we should all listen to each other, and not be so unpleasant. But of course, men shouldn't be in women's sports'
Which begs the question that, if GC people hadn't been 'unpleasant' men would have been firmly in women's sports.
So, should I be pleased that public opinion has shifted slightly, or should I be banging my head against the wall?

RedToothBrush mentioned it, but it bears repeating: making a right dependent on invasive medical procedures is illegal because it infriges on the individual's human rights. Even the obtention of a GRC cannot be dependent on hormones or surgeries.

So either it's ALL transwomen (since all can obtain a GRC), or it's NO transwomen at all. Any in-between solution is outright illegal.

So make it legal. Trans folk need to compromise, too. They're not the only ones with rights. Imo, if they want to use women's spaces, they have to have undergone a genuine medical and social transition, supervised and certified by a doctor, to include a full course of hormone treatment, and the GRC should be dependent on that.

Nobody would be forcing anyone to undergo treatment. Trans women would be perfectly welcome to not transition physically and continue using the men's.

Josh transitioned at primary school. He now goes by the name Sophie. No one at high school knows the past. Sophie is stealth.

On what planet should Sophie be allowed to share changing facilities with his peers?

Scenario 1
Sophie turns 14 and he starts getting facial hair and his voice drops and he shoots up at height. All the girls are unhappy about the arrangements and make a complaint. I can't tell them anything but just get on with it, because they are being transphobic to complain.

Scenario 2
Sophie turns 14 and detransitions. The girls now dealing with Josh become upset because Josh saw them naked in year 7.

Scenario 3 is just Josh transitioning at high school when everyone knows.

Just what the fuck does this teach kids? How does any of this respect the privacy and dignity of the girls?

I started watching a TV movie the other day. We get introduced to a woman as she's driving her car. Pretty woman, nothing out of the ordinary.

As soon as she left the car and started walking, I went, "Eh? That's a transwoman." Checked the actress, and yup, sure enough.

I have more anecdotes like this one, including real life ones.

Transwomen don't pass anywhere as well as TRAs like to believe. I'd say it's the very lucky transwoman who passes at all some of the time, let alone always.

Why? Why should a democratic society have laws that impose falsehoods over material reality?

Why should it be legislated that some people’s philosophical belief about themselves that doesn’t reflect material reality is to be observed as if it is everyone’s material reality?

That's good in theory but even with hormones they are still demonstrably male.

And they've never had the lived experience of growing from a girl and getting periods and being sexually objectified while walking in public. They have male lived experience. And were born with and will always have, Male Privilege. Taking hormones won't change their 6'2 height or their strength, or their lack of any lived experience as a girl or woman.

How do you propose I do that? I can't. GC women can't. It's also not in their interests to. Maybe someone could get off their arse and campaign for it.

How do you propose the government do that anyway? It's not something they can legally do. Oh wait, you mean you have got the faintest foggiest idea what the fuck you are talking about when you come on here woke scolding?!

Perhaps go away and do your research about why this isn't possible as an option and get back to us all in your superior wisdom.

Your arrogance really stinks. You assume you have this magic solution that no one else here might have considered. You assume we are all ignorant. You prejudge us as bigots and motivated by bigotry.

You don't get to lecture us like this. Go and educate yourself.

Just no. The answer is always no.

You can't make it legal. It's literally against trans people's human rights to make anything, any right, dependent on medicalisation. The State itself would be breaching human rights conventions if it introduced any text subjecting any right to medical procedures. It literally isn't allowed to do it.

It's not about what anyone wants. It's about what the State itself is allowed to do or not do.

And, @SoftBalletShoes , hormones also don't change the male voice (if you google you will see male vocal cords are formed differently from females, so they need operations on their vocal cords, and even that doesn't give them a truly female voice), so how do you propose to balance the right of a rape survivor who would literally drop to the floor in fear when they hear a male voice in the ladies vs that male voiced but on hormones male? Whose rights matter more? Have you forgotten that bit about voice?

You want a 'middle ground' but you are not understanding that it is simply....not....possible.

The only middle ground is third spaces. That, is the only middle ground. Your fantasy of a 'middle ground' is an unworkable pipe dream. If you had paid any attention to the feminists in this section you would have worked that out long ago. Your fantasy is an unworkable pipe dream. You can't change male height. Male strength. Male lived experience. Or male voice.

I agree. I don’t believe there is one male person who will ‘pass’ 100% of the time to 100% of people.

It is a myth, in my opinion. Yet we are constantly derided that the ‘we can always tell’ is false when it comes to male body cues. I don’t believe it is false. The ‘we’ is, of course, referring to the world’s population, not to a few people on the internet with no contact with someone.

It might be recognising the proportion of a person’s hands, their gait, their posture, noticing where their elbow is, seeing their knees, seeing their ears and their ear placement, the space between their eyes, the position of their eyes. There are so many different cues.

genuine medical and social transition

Meaningless.

You want a 'middle ground' but you are not understanding that it is simply....not....possible.

The only middle ground is third spaces. That, is the only middle ground. Your fantasy of a 'middle ground' is an unworkable pipe dream. If you had paid any attention to the feminists in this section you would have worked that out long ago.

The crux of the problem that the Be Kinders and Politicians are still trying to figure out.

It's just like the NI and Brexit issue. You can't just do what you want.

It's not about GC women being mean. The whole framing GC as mean is misogyny in its own right.

Men can't become women. This matters. You can 'socially transition' but you can't erase history, change biology or ignore legal frameworks because they don't suit your agenda. This isn't GC women's fault or bigotry for pointing this out.

You can't middle ground this. It's impossible.

'No bad actor would take all the hormones and make himself look so feminine and have a mastectomy and grow his hair and look SO much like a biological woman simply for the purposes of using the women's loos and changing rooms!'

Reader’s note:

Of course he would. Throughout history there are examples of male people doing many things people would believe improbable to achieve their end goal of being accepted as what they are materially are not, or getting access to the resources that achieve their sexual goals.

This argument has always been fallacious for so many reasons. Yet it is still used.

It is also manipulative in that it presents this action as both an act that deserves the reward of access to the label ‘woman’ and what that gives the person and it asks the listener to put aside very well learned lessons about how abusive male people behave. This is about declaring something that is well known, some people will do extraordinary things to achieve their goals even such degrees of self harm is not to be believed about a specific group of male people. The aim is to lower people’s boundaries.

Expecting people with transgender identities to undergo extreme body modifications that are likely to be life limiting and potentially life shortening to be considered transgender or to achieve legal certification that they can access opposite sex single sex provisions or to change material reality, fits the definition of ‘extremist’.

“because post-transition trans women look just like women (like the ones I posted upthread here too), are no danger to anyone, and no one bats an eyelid.”

Reader’s note:

There is absolutely no evidence that this is true. None.

There is no evidence that says that a male person at any stage of transition will not commit sexual offences against a female person. There is also evidence that male people even with breast enhancement, surgical castration and taking exogenous estrogen can be violent towards women. And because they have a physical advantage, will cause greater injury than a female on female violent attack.

However, physical safety is not the only consideration for safeguarding
principles to remain strong and exclude all male people from female single sex provisions.

I will copy and paste from up thread.

There are numerous harms.
Harms include:

-Rape and sexual assault.

-Violence.

-Sexual abuse that is not rape or sexual assault.

-Sexual abuse that also includes solo sexual acts or using the experience in future sexual acts.

-Any other abuse that may include verbal abuse, intimidation in any way etc, this includes inappropriate questions and comments.

-A male person's presence where female people need privacy and dignity.

-A male person's presence where female people need to feel safe from any male person's presence (over the age of about 8 years old).

-Female people self-excluding knowing that there may be a male person accessing that provision.

-Female people not having the freedom to discuss the issues that cause them distress, concern, or that they need to talk about because a male person is present.

-Female children (and female adults) learning to have no or too low personal boundaries because they have been taught that male people are female people and that they should ignore and overcome feelings of discomfort.

Narrowing the discussion to sex and violence offences does not remove these other harms from consideration for female single sex provisions and many of the above are directly applicable to toilet provision as well as, of course, other single sex provision.

Reader’s Note:

This is illogical.

Creating a law that says to be recognised as being ‘genuine’ transgender status someone has to undergo brutal body medications and will likely be a medical patient on various drugs for life is indeed coercing people to undergo those medical procedures.

Because to have their belief recognised as being valid, people will most definitely undergo these procedures. We know from detransitioners that they will do this.

This legal enforcement is absolutely cruel.

What is ironic is that what some people regard as ‘extremist’ feminists actually agree here (very broadly) that these extreme body modifications should not enforced for a GRC.

From the feminist side, this is because it makes no difference. A male person is a male person and no amount of body modification will change that.

Having a law that requires this modification is forcing people to undergo it to feel valid. As another issue it can also mean achieving certification that allows a predator to access the resources that predator wants access to. And no, this is not arguing that all male people with transgender identities are predators. It is pointing out that it still allows a safeguarding loophole that can be utilised by predators.

I’m that person who can’t hear a male voice when I’m on the other side of a locked door. I’ve posted about it before and I would really rather not have to do so again. But. Sigh. I had a full on panic attack that lasted hours where I hyperventilated, clawed at my skin til it bled, was totally overwhelmed - because there was a man outside the disabled bathrooms waiting his turn. And I didn’t know that I would react like that, and I hadn’t got Mr Taz to stand by the door like I do now.

if men are allowed into women’s single sex spaces then I can’t go out unless I know I won’t need the loo.

again, I’ve posted about this before, but I used to post on a rape and SA (which means sexual assault) survivors board based in the states. A transwoman joined and they began to solicit and encourage women to share their stories. And it felt odd. Off. It made my skin crawl. So I don’t post there anymore. The last time I shared this, another poster had had the same experience.

finally, I am good at spotting trans identifying men. It’s because of my trauma I think - I don’t know, but I can always tell. Within a very few seconds. It’s hand size. Which they can’t change. It’s the way they walk. Their voice.

So they are never ever women for all practical purposes to me.

and just on the point of making trans individuals have surgery before they can be considered trans - that is illegal. And rightly so.

Per the European Court of Human Rights and UK courts, you can't make rights dependent on treatment that is effectively sterilisation.

I wonder how many people vaguely think this could be a possibility, (or is the situation now) but have neither thought through the implications or are aware of the legal background?

I would really like someone to explain to me why my consent or lack thereof to have men in women’s single sex spaces doesn’t matter.

That’s a real sticking point for me. I - and lots of other women - say no. My firm position is that it is a consent violation. And that taking that consent away weakens the protection given by consent in other areas of law that depend on the same protection. And that is dangerous for women.

it’s the same with the “stealth” argument. That fails not just because they are never in my experience truly stealth, but also because stealthing in intimate relationships is illegal and starting to allow it for access to women’s single sex spaces weakens the protection given by requiring people to be honest about their sex in intimate relationships. Furthermore, the position in the law is that it is still rape even if you didn’t know about it. And a change to any law in this area weakens that protection.

edited for clarity because I am struggling today with trauma due to yesterdays thread and I haven’t had much sleep. Before anyone starts to do laughing emojis at me and telling me to go to specsavers. It actually requires a great deal of mental effort to push through and post (which is why I didn’t participate last night after only a couple of posts). And that’s another thing. Continually fighting to protect women’s rights to single sex spaces is so re-traumatising and tiring.

"However, I do not perceive any threat from the transitioned women whose photos I'm posting below as examples."

Do they still do the thing in schools where they explain that people on the internet might not be who they say they are?

Or that filters are a thing?

I mean I'm embarrassed that anyone would post a post a heavily filtered photo of one single TW as some kind of gotcha! But then slippers does have a very familiar posting style

Also. Surely saying what makes a woman and woman is how they look is pure sexist and racist?

because it’s based on cultural norms of femininity?

And women like me who wear no make up, flat shoes, jeans and a jumper aren’t women by that argument. And the other thing is. It’s not objective. So it depends on the observer. How would that ever work?

That is because you have been hoodwinked into the idea that some men are closer to being women than other men because of how they think, or look, or feel.

I am asking you to think about what that means, what you are really agreeing to, not for the men you are worrying about, but for women.

Do you really believe the thing that makes us women is how we think, or how we look, or how we feel? That there are ways of thinking, or looking, or feeling, that are right for women and therefore other ways of thinking, or looking, or feeling that are not right for women?

Can you not see how sexist and reductive that is? Can you not see how that is exactly the sort of sexist beliefs about the differences between women and men that have been used to restrict and marginalise women, and that Feminism is the fight to get away from?

Trans women in reality are not any more like real, actual women than any other man. They may be closer to some sexist stereotypes, but is that really how you want to define a woman?

The middle ground is not always the reasnable compromise. The middle ground between a lie and the trurh is just a smaller lie.

If I say humans can fly and it's safe to jump off a skyscraper and you say we can't and it isn't, would it be sensible to compromise by saying humans can fly a little bit and it's safe to jump off a building as long as it's only a few stories high, or would you be an "extremist" and stick to your guns because you know humans can"t fly, not even if they have surgery to make their arms look like wings, not even if they have always felt they are a bird inside, not even if they are convinced they think like a bird and that other birds can't tell they are a human, so telling people they can fly is going to end up with someone getting hurt?

The position that women are defined by how they look, or feel, or think is extreme.

Sorry, but you have been mislead by some very sexist men.

Filters on the internet aren’t real Life.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj6xlwn570lo.amp

(The article is about a trans identifying man convicted of deception sexual assault who two pics included - one off the internet and one in RL)