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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions
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9
PollyNomial · 16/01/2026 12:22

Shedmistress · 16/01/2026 09:32

Women can get raped no matter what they wear or how drunk.

I know that. It was deliberately reframing the victim blaming of shedmistress' post immediately before.

Shedmistress · 16/01/2026 12:29

PollyNomial · 16/01/2026 12:22

I know that. It was deliberately reframing the victim blaming of shedmistress' post immediately before.

I am Shedmistress.

Shedmistress · 16/01/2026 12:34

When the pic comes through you are welcome to add 'Don't dress in lingerie, behave weirdly when out and about' to the left hand side.

Well this was totally predictable
RedToothBrush · 16/01/2026 13:43

deadpan · 16/01/2026 11:48

And @TransParentlyAnnoyed I agree there needs to be a better functioning justice system and better mental health care.
There also needs to be a much better move to educate males not to rape or attack.
You talk of "dehumanisation of minorities", which happens yes, but lying to vulnerable (or not as the case may be) people and telling them that wearing different clothes and calling themselves a different name literally changes them to the extent that society as a whole will see them as their new self is just as bad as dehumanisation. It's down right cruelty.

Mental health crisis? It's not the ambulance that comes. It's the police.

Who know fuck all about mental health.

Hoardasurass · 16/01/2026 13:44

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

MeltedSunshine · 16/01/2026 13:49

RedToothBrush · 16/01/2026 13:43

Mental health crisis? It's not the ambulance that comes. It's the police.

Who know fuck all about mental health.

Ambulances definitely do attend mental health call outs.

Hoardasurass · 16/01/2026 13:57

Oh dear it seems that I hurt the feelings of a TRA
So i just say this
Women are not responsible for mens behaviour

ProfessorBinturong · 16/01/2026 14:17

nothingcomestonothing · 16/01/2026 11:22

I did whistleblow, 4 times, the first time pre Forstater (which was terrifying). The result each time was that the policy had been discussed and agreed with relevant stakeholders (i.e. Stonewall and the staff LGBTQI+ group) and that I needed to go on the trans training to better understand the needs of transpeople.

The last time when I asked why they'd put a trans IDing teenage girl in an adult male ward but not a non trans IDing teenage girl, the Head of Safeguarding ( yes really ) said it would be up to 'him' to choose. Management are utterly captured, and so are a lot of doctors and senior nurses, blinded to the reality of their 'kindness' and far removed from the nitty gritty of how this plays out at ward level, or of having to look the patients who are affected in the eye. Front line staff are not listened to.

Thank you for your courage in challenging this.

ArabellaScott · 16/01/2026 16:39

nothingcomestonothing · 16/01/2026 11:22

I did whistleblow, 4 times, the first time pre Forstater (which was terrifying). The result each time was that the policy had been discussed and agreed with relevant stakeholders (i.e. Stonewall and the staff LGBTQI+ group) and that I needed to go on the trans training to better understand the needs of transpeople.

The last time when I asked why they'd put a trans IDing teenage girl in an adult male ward but not a non trans IDing teenage girl, the Head of Safeguarding ( yes really ) said it would be up to 'him' to choose. Management are utterly captured, and so are a lot of doctors and senior nurses, blinded to the reality of their 'kindness' and far removed from the nitty gritty of how this plays out at ward level, or of having to look the patients who are affected in the eye. Front line staff are not listened to.

Thank you for standing up for the safety and wellbeing of patients. What an utterly insane situation.

MartySupremeisascream · 16/01/2026 17:11

KnottyAuty · 16/01/2026 01:02

From my very limited observations i noticed that the trans men I’d seen were all well below average height. As though being a small woman was something to escape

Predators go after the easiest prey.
That's why disabled children and women are the demographic most likely to be sexually assaulted and that is why (imho) so many trans "men" are tiny women.
I'm not referring to the dedicated followers of fashion for whom it is just a fad that will pass without any ill effect, I'm referring to the most vulnerable children and women in society who are targetted by predatory men.

I think many of them believe that if they just get rid of their breasts and grow facial hair, they will no longer be targetted by the sick bastards.
Unfortunately, that is not the case.

Instead they are walking around as if with a sign telling everyone who sees them that they are vulnerable.

MartySupremeisascream · 16/01/2026 17:35

MeltedSunshine · 16/01/2026 10:22

You can't change mental health wards in the sense that you are going to have a bunch of people in them who are immediately going to identify your sex.

Even is you have sufficient staff to prevent rape or sexual assault, or if the patients are not physically capable of it, you still have a bunch of vulnerable mentally ill men who have identified your sex. What happens then? Do you gaslight them and tell these mentally ill men that what they see with their own eyes is not true? Tell them they must lie about your sex, and remember to do so despite possible memory issues? And what if they refuse? Do you punish them? Discharge them? What if they are incapable of remembering or lying like that? Discharge them too? Remove them to a less optimum ward? Do you ignore the protected characteristics of their belief? And what of their privacy and dignity? Should that be ignored? It certainly sounds like a very dangerous situation for mentally ill men.

I don't have any sympathy or empathy for any rapists whether mentally ill or not.
These two men knew what they were doing and did it for the same reason most rapists do, because they thought they could get away with it.

CarefullyCuratedFurniture · 16/01/2026 17:45

MartySupremeisascream · 16/01/2026 17:11

Predators go after the easiest prey.
That's why disabled children and women are the demographic most likely to be sexually assaulted and that is why (imho) so many trans "men" are tiny women.
I'm not referring to the dedicated followers of fashion for whom it is just a fad that will pass without any ill effect, I'm referring to the most vulnerable children and women in society who are targetted by predatory men.

I think many of them believe that if they just get rid of their breasts and grow facial hair, they will no longer be targetted by the sick bastards.
Unfortunately, that is not the case.

Instead they are walking around as if with a sign telling everyone who sees them that they are vulnerable.

The early Tavistock records suggested that a substantial proportion of the children they saw had a parent who was a sex offender. Its fairly obvious why those poor children thought the way out of their horrific situation was to change sex to the one that was not preferred by the SO parent.

AzureStaffy · 16/01/2026 19:49

CarefullyCuratedFurniture · 16/01/2026 17:45

The early Tavistock records suggested that a substantial proportion of the children they saw had a parent who was a sex offender. Its fairly obvious why those poor children thought the way out of their horrific situation was to change sex to the one that was not preferred by the SO parent.

Just awful.

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 17/01/2026 03:39

TransParentlyAnnoyed · 16/01/2026 07:14

Calling women "females" is a bit of a giveaway there mate.

If you cared about this poor guy, you'd respect his identity. Full stop.

No one chooses to be trans, and every supportive parent of a trans person wishes they weren't trans - not because they don't respect & love them, but because they don't want them to be harassed, raped or killed.

Trans men know how vulnerable coming out makes them. It paints an immediate target. Yet they do it - because living openly as themselves is more important than that.

Trans people live with a degree of risk even I - a c!s woman of near 50, with a lifetime of coping with sexual harassment - can fathom. It certainly can't be understood by c!s men.

Trans people also live with a constant, exhausting hypervigilance. It makes trans kids collapse from sheer physical stress. No one chooses that. They are normal human beings who deserve understanding and respect. Misgendering is lame as hell, and says far more about the person doing it

We need safer MH spaces, a functioning justice system - and a far greater understanding of the impact dehumanisation of minorities has on society.

It's because we care about this woman that we acknowledge and state her sex. We state clearly that she was raped because of her sex. To use male pronouns is to obfuscate that reality and perpetuate the myth that she had "male privilege" because of her identity.

Trans people live with a degree of risk even I - a c!s woman of near 50, with a lifetime of coping with sexual harassment - can fathom.

I'm an autistic woman. We have a 90% probability of sexual assault. I was one of those 90% aged eight and that wasn't the last incident, so please don't presume to lecture me about living with a high degree of risk. This trans-identifying woman had a 25% chance of being autistic, based on stats from the Tavi. She needed protection from men, not being locked in a men's ward with them.

Trans people also live with a constant, exhausting hypervigilance. It makes trans kids collapse from sheer physical stress.

Autistic masking is constant, exhausting hypervigilance. Unlike crossdressing and demanding wrong-sexed pronouns, autism isn't a choice. Yet autistic people don't demand that the rest of the population give up their rights to accommodate us.

No one chooses that.

Yes, they do. They choose to change names, clothes, and haircuts. They choose hormones and surgery.

Misgendering is lame as hell

Correctly sexing people is infinitely more appropriate than your ableist language ever will be.

We need safer MH spaces

That's literally the point of single-sex psych wards.

far greater understanding of the impact dehumanisation of minorities has on society.

The only person dehumanising this woman is you. You dehumanise her by denying the embodied reality of her sex and the misogyny she faces because she is female.

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 17/01/2026 03:53

RedToothBrush · 16/01/2026 09:07

"We need to take the mentally ill patients out of mental health care because they are too dangerous..."

This shows just how much bollocks you spout and how little understanding of the world you have.

I'm sure transmen don't want to acknowledge they are female. The trouble is they are female and it's integral to their mental health, partly because hormone imbalances can send you crackers (Been there, done that, got the t-shirt), because being in a state of constantly pretending to be something you are not is straining on your mental health and because a constant desire to be something you are not or achieve something impossible will send you mental. In terms of pathological avoidant type behaviour - which this is - a form of extreme anxiety you can't get better without dealing with it head on. That means exposure to being told you are female and coming to peace with it. This is the treatment for other types of extreme phobia which have become so problematic they effect everyday functioning. Yet this is the one thing that isn't 'allowed' if trans. This attitude basically keeps deeply unwell women in a permanent state of mental illness.

It's akin to wanting to have treatment for cancer but not wishing to have invasive surgery because it upsets you to admit you have a tumour. Saying you don't want surgery doesn't help. No one wants surgery, but they just have to suck it up.

This is the same. They may not want to be referred to as female and treated as female, but unfortunately this isn't optional and I want shouldn't be getting.

Not only does it place the women in question at risk, but you have a myriad of other people directly and indirectly affected by her saying I'm a man and those who have responsibility nodding along like Muppets going 'yes of course'.

We have staff who no doubt saw this coming and felt unable to challenge who are deeply upset and traumatised. You have other patients who may have witnessed this who are deeply affected - you know mentally ill vulnerable patients. You have the men themselves who are responsible - who were mentally ill at the time but still had some capacity who really should have been put somewhere else because they were dangerous. They have the paradox of being vulnerable at the same time to acting on their unacceptable behaviours because they were enabled by fuckwits. You have all the patients affected by this court case and how it impacts on costs and staff out of the ward. You have everyone here deeply affected and numerous women who will avoid mental health care because they don't trust it and are concerned they may come across men - it means their mental health is more likely to hit crisis before getting help against their will when early intervention would have been better. The trust in HCP generally is a huge harm.

There are times when 'i want' shouldn't get. When there is no way to avoid the reality of a situation and it has to be confronted head on.

If you have bowel cancer, you almost certainly will face the indignity of having something shoved up your arse at some point. There are some issues which can not protect your dignity at all times.

You can't change mental health wards in the sense that you are going to have a bunch of people in them who are immediately going to identify your sex. Yes they should be more staffed. But ultimately you still have to identify the female patient. You can't protect them unless you do. You have to treat them differently.

How viable is it to protect a female patient in a male mental health ward with the best will in the world? These are men who don't have inhibitions and often display sexualised behaviour due to their condition. Is it reasonable to expect one to one protection for all transpatients? Is that equality of care for all patients? Maybe many of the other patients would benefit from one to one. We don't put mental health patients in isolation unless there's very good reason as there's an inherent danger to isolation for their own well being. Given that staffing ratios are appalling as it is, where are you going to take a member of staff from in order to enable one to one protection for a transperson? And how does this stop the comments of other patients or inappropriate flashing behaviour of other patients which still presents a risk to the patient b

So we have to put patients somewhere. We should be putting them in sexed wards because this is reflective of the levels of risks to and presented by males and females.

It's tough shit if you don't like it.

Women in Intensive care can't get single sex provision for good reason - they by nature need high staffing ratios. Why should women who want to be men get inappropriate care and be put at risk (and put others in positions where harm is likely) because they don't like it. It's not a good enough reason to allow it.

There are times where not only is it appropriate to say no we can't accommodate that, but actually we have good reason why it's harmful to you to say no because you need to deal with it or it will cause even more harm.

This is one.

The fact staff aren't doing this is awful. They are failing transpatients. It is one thing to want to be called male at certain times but at others you HAVE to acknowledge reality when it's appropriate. This isn't kind to fail to do. It's actively cruel and harmful.

The clearest thing here is you have zero experience of the mental health system nor had serious mental health issues yourself. It's totally speaking out of arse.

It's like saying we should stop murderers being in nasty because it makes prison dangerous.

Honestly all you do is show the unbelievable level of privilege and entitlement trans ideology is built upon.

numerous women who will avoid mental health care because they don't trust it and are concerned they may come across men - it means their mental health is more likely to hit crisis before getting help against their will when early intervention would have been better. The trust in HCP generally is a huge harm.

Yup. I tend to depression because a lifetime of being told off for social missteps that I didn't even know I'd made, being manipulated, multiple playground beatings, two rapes, and a childhood sexual assault really does a number on your sense of self-worth. The risk of encountering a TIM, with accompanying risk of a third rape, in a psych ward means that I will commit suicide sooner than become an in-patient. This would be exactly the opposite outcome of that intended, were I to be offered, or even mandated, in-patient treatment. The presence of male staff is scary enough without adding male patients.

The clearest thing here is you have zero experience of the mental health system nor had serious mental health issues yourself.

Yup. Yet more evidence that genderism is a luxury belief.

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 17/01/2026 04:06

Instructions · 16/01/2026 09:41

Very late to this so inevitably repeating something already said, but... I work in mental health. Eden ward is a male PICU. A PICU. You are only admitted to a PICU when your risks to self/others are really high and cannot be managed in another setting. To put a female patient on a male PICU is organisational abuse. What a fucking heinous decision. This really shames our sector.

Holy fuck. Psychiatric intensive care unit.

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 17/01/2026 04:10

MeltedSunshine · 16/01/2026 10:22

You can't change mental health wards in the sense that you are going to have a bunch of people in them who are immediately going to identify your sex.

Even is you have sufficient staff to prevent rape or sexual assault, or if the patients are not physically capable of it, you still have a bunch of vulnerable mentally ill men who have identified your sex. What happens then? Do you gaslight them and tell these mentally ill men that what they see with their own eyes is not true? Tell them they must lie about your sex, and remember to do so despite possible memory issues? And what if they refuse? Do you punish them? Discharge them? What if they are incapable of remembering or lying like that? Discharge them too? Remove them to a less optimum ward? Do you ignore the protected characteristics of their belief? And what of their privacy and dignity? Should that be ignored? It certainly sounds like a very dangerous situation for mentally ill men.

It's what they do to women on women's psych wards after the TIM has raped one of the women, so why wouldn't they gaslight the men?

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 17/01/2026 04:36

TransParentlyAnnoyed · 16/01/2026 11:03

I have a lot of frustration at mumsnetters for dehumanising and disrespecting trans kids, because it has very real effects.

Another trans boy has died by suicide because of bullying - and the misogynistic effects of rape culture.

When minorities are dehumanised, there is never any shortage of violent boys and men who will consider them fair game for all kinds of violence. They're usually sexualised as well - even children.

This is what's currently happening in schools. Trans children are targeted for sexual and physical violence, and told they deserve it. That it doesn't count. Their transitions framed as sexually-motivated, even though about half of trans kids are same-gender attracted.

My family endured this for years. Entire classes who would shout abuse at my kid, who hasn't had any hormones or surgery, just lives as himself. He was threatened on an almost daily basis with sexual.assault, forcibly touched and abused. Thank God for the gay teachers in particular who looked out for him. I still don't know how he survived.

I do know what it did to his exam chances. And his mental health.

Yet he's still trans. Even after all that, having walked through fire every day, he survived and is living as himself.

Terf propaganda enabled that abuse. It provided a justification for the violence - he was told so.

Fighting rape culture involves fighting for trans people too. They are on the front line of misogynistic violence. Especially school children.

With another trans child having died, I fully expect any terf sympathy to be accompanied by misgendering, horrible remarks about his parents, point-scoring and victim-blaming. Every. Single. Time.

First Rule of Misogyny: Women are responsible for what men do.

It is misogyny to blame women for what kids, probably mostly if not all boys, have done to your child. Kids don't sit reading Germaine Greer and Sheila Jeffries and the Sex Matters website before deciding to bully the socially-awkward child who crossdresses, they do it because the child is socially-awkward and crossdresses. The bullies have probably never heard of Greer, Jeffries, Sex Matters, or For Women Scotland.

You describe your child as your "son", which probably means that your child is female and so has a 25% chance of being autistic, based on the Tavi's patients. Autistic children are socially-awkward and get bullied a lot.

I am frightened for your child. I am frightened that your child is heading on a path that, after a certain point, cannot be reversed. I am frightened that your child may be getting the wrong support. Autistic girls need different mental health support from their neurotypical counterparts. I am frightened that your child is being sold snake oil, told that transition will solve everything when it can't and won't.

The Lambeth case should tell you that the most dangerous place a trans-identifying woman or girl can be in is a male space. That should inform how you safeguard your child. In your position, I'd be checking that your child's school is not sending your child into the opposite sex's loos and changing rooms. I speak from bitter personal experience when I say that changing rooms to which the opposite sex are admitted are extremely dangerous for girls, as such a changing room was the venue for my first sexual assault at the age of eight.

RedToothBrush · 17/01/2026 09:17

This thread has not aged well.

We now have a court saying that Rose should have been excluded from the changing facilities at Darlington on the grounds of sex not gender reassignment and this in no way interfered with article 8 rights. Rose's presence in the changing rooms was completely the fault of the trust (this Rose was cleared of harassment), was unlawful on the part of the trust to allow and that the women involved were completely reasonable and fair in their call to have single sex facilities - they were not irrational nor phobic. They were treated unfairly and with hostility by the complaints process which tried to vilify them and gaslight them with 'retraining'.

Further to this it looks like it's potentially indirect religious discrimination to force the oppose sex into these facilities and that it affected women who didn't even come across Rose because once the policy was set that anyone could self identify by the trust, women could no longer trust that the facilities were single sex so may have altered their behaviour.

So posters ranting at us for saying the same things are very much the wrong side of the law.

In terms of this case the Darlington case verdict now raises a whole PILE of liability issues for the NHS trust concerned which I'd seriously be looking at if I was one of the rapists lawyers...

MeltedSunshine · 17/01/2026 09:19

MartySupremeisascream · 16/01/2026 17:35

I don't have any sympathy or empathy for any rapists whether mentally ill or not.
These two men knew what they were doing and did it for the same reason most rapists do, because they thought they could get away with it.

Edited

We don’t know if the men in this case were acting with capacity or ‘knew what they were doing’ (they were in a secure psychiatric facility to protect themselves and others from the consequences of the behaviour) and I was referencing those without capacity. They were certainly lacking in critical thinking skills if they thought it was simple to get away with it when both they and the victim were locked in together and there were witnesses. But regardless of whether they had full capacity or not, the state still has a duty to protect them from harm when under its care.

KnottyAuty · 17/01/2026 09:21

AnSolas · 16/01/2026 11:28

In one of the worst policies I saw (I want to say it was Doncaster but I may be wrong) the policy said that if a patient or their family member refused care from a trans HCP they should be made to apologise and comply; if they still refused they could be discharged and refused further care.

That ^ is a criminal act of assault and each and every HCP who engaged in that act could (should along with the board who signed it off) end up with a criminal record and loss of professional registration.

I will bet it breached the Trusts own :
• policy on informed consent and
• policy on managaging threatening behavior and violence.

That’s what you might think but the Dr’s registration body the GMC don’t see it like that. They wouldn’t act on Dr Upton’s testimony that he’d treat a woman who had asked for single sex care and ignore her wishes. It’s so shocking how all these people who are supposed to protect us have gone completely LaLa

RedToothBrush · 17/01/2026 09:28

MeltedSunshine · 17/01/2026 09:19

We don’t know if the men in this case were acting with capacity or ‘knew what they were doing’ (they were in a secure psychiatric facility to protect themselves and others from the consequences of the behaviour) and I was referencing those without capacity. They were certainly lacking in critical thinking skills if they thought it was simple to get away with it when both they and the victim were locked in together and there were witnesses. But regardless of whether they had full capacity or not, the state still has a duty to protect them from harm when under its care.

The Darlington case raises liability issues. There a section in the ruling about whether Rose harassed the nurses....

The paragraph below is a big deal.

It says that the Trust not Rose were ultimately reasonable for his conduct in the changing because their unlawful policy meant they had liability for his presence there.

If you turn this on it's head for this situation. The woman in question should not have been in a male only unit - it was unlawful - therefore they take on liability and this may have the effect of removing responsibility from men who were already deemed to have diminished ability to function within society due to their mental health.

It strikes me as if this ruling gives good grounds for the rapists to get off but liability to be found to that of the Trusts.

It's an interesting prospect...

Well this was totally predictable
KnottyAuty · 17/01/2026 09:36

RedToothBrush · 17/01/2026 09:28

The Darlington case raises liability issues. There a section in the ruling about whether Rose harassed the nurses....

The paragraph below is a big deal.

It says that the Trust not Rose were ultimately reasonable for his conduct in the changing because their unlawful policy meant they had liability for his presence there.

If you turn this on it's head for this situation. The woman in question should not have been in a male only unit - it was unlawful - therefore they take on liability and this may have the effect of removing responsibility from men who were already deemed to have diminished ability to function within society due to their mental health.

It strikes me as if this ruling gives good grounds for the rapists to get off but liability to be found to that of the Trusts.

It's an interesting prospect...

I was thinking the exact same thing. If the men/accused have good lawyers they’ll get off - they e been detained under the MHA so the State has taken over responsibility because they can’t keep themselves safe…. Including safe from causing themselves harm or others…. As the state put them into a situation where they did harm others then it’s the NHS Policy which is responsible. This could potentially be a horrible process for the victim - it’s going to be a very long road. Whats the mechanism for criminal corporate charges against the NHS Trust?

AnSolas · 17/01/2026 09:56

KnottyAuty · 17/01/2026 09:21

That’s what you might think but the Dr’s registration body the GMC don’t see it like that. They wouldn’t act on Dr Upton’s testimony that he’d treat a woman who had asked for single sex care and ignore her wishes. It’s so shocking how all these people who are supposed to protect us have gone completely LaLa

Did they make a public statement on that?

I know they were forced to relink any historic rulings to the new name and number which was a basic obvious safeguarding fail and likely a failure of their legal obligations on record keeping.

Problem is that removing someones livelyhood is a high bar.

So bringing the profession into disrepute is a lesser concern to an actual assault.

But his statements under oath raise concerns about his fitness be allowed pratice medicine on the general public on ethical grounds.

However the test would be if a woman (or man) in Fife was forced to accept that male doctor when she asked for a female doctor had made a complaint.

But I agree that activism has won when their legal duties are ignored.

ArabellaScott · 17/01/2026 09:57

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 17/01/2026 04:06

Holy fuck. Psychiatric intensive care unit.

Yes. Its a secure unit, although described as low security. The rooms.are a bit like cells, albeit with some care taken to try to make them calming and soothing. I posted links upthread to the redesigned unit, which shojld be informative. This isnt like a standard hospital ward, at all. That poor, poor woman.

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