The EU Parliament has voted to recognise "trans women" as women for all purposes

[Columbidae]

With thanks to shyChic63 who posted this on Vexxed and to Róisín Michaux for the report below which she posted on X.

BREAKING: The EU Parliament has voted to recognise "trans women" as women for all purposes, explicitly calling for them to be granted access to women-only domestic violence shelters and refugees.

An EU delegation will present this radical recommendation at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York next month. It is not binding, but intended to be adopted/followed as an "international standard". It also demonstrates the ideological makeup of the European Parliament.

Few speakers mentioned the "trans women" part of the recommendation during the debate leading up to the vote. Parties could have asked for a vote on the individual paragraph, but having failed to do so, MEPs were left with a choice between rejecting the entire resolution, or adopting it with no possibility of removing the trans paragraph.

The chamber was almost empty for the debate. Left-wing parties and centre-right parties concentrated on the Epstein files, "gender" stereotypes, the "gender pay gap", and the "anti-gender movement" as well as ICE operations in the US. MEPs from both the Patriots party and the European Conservatives and Reformists, spoke up in favour of protecting the category of woman in international fora. They were defeated.

*Trans women are males who identify as women, a dissociative disorder linked to paraphilia/fetishism. This identity is mostly adopted by heterosexual men.

340 YES
141 NO
68 ABSTAIN

https://nitter.net/RoisinMichaux/status/2021925086643581063?s=20

For those who understand these things it would be interesting to hear what impact this might have.

I'm pretty clueless but I know it's an appalling betrayal of women.

I also notice that this framing requires my daughter to be categorised alongside male perpetrators of violence against women. She's a teenage girl who is afraid of the dark and cries at sad films. The categorical "all men" position requires you to see her as equivalent to the men that women are fleeing from. I can't accept that, not because I'm ignoring biology, but because I know her.

We exclude males in certain key situations for sound biological reasons, not reactions to film genres. All males, regardless of how lovely their mums say they are.

If your child is male (you know, penis and testicles) they are excluded from female spaces. It's not a personal slight against your child.

'afraid of the dark and cries at sad films'

Holy sexist sterotypes Batman!

Fuck that shit.

I notice we've reached the point in this conversation where we're using completely different frameworks, and I'm not sure either of us can bridge that gap.
You see my daughter as a man. I see her as my daughter. Those aren't positions we can split the difference on.
But I'll try to address the substantive point about safeguarding.
You're right that single-sex spaces exist because any male could pose a risk, and we can't always tell in advance which ones will. That's the logic. I understand it.
What I'd ask you to consider is whether that logic, applied absolutely, actually achieves what you want it to achieve. Trans men exist. Under a strict biological sex policy, you'd have people who look entirely male, who've lived as men for years, who have beards and deep voices, in women's refuges and toilets. Is that the outcome you're seeking? Does that make women safer?
The policy you're describing isn't really "keep all males out." It's "keep all trans women out while forcing trans men in." I struggle to see how that's a coherent safeguarding approach rather than a policy that specifically targets one group.
On your husband crying at Ratatouille, fair enough. Crying at films doesn't determine anything. But you're making a category claim, that all males are equivalent risks, while simultaneously knowing that's not actually true. Your husband isn't a risk to women in refuges. You know he isn't. The question is whether we make policy based on categorical rules or individual assessment.
I suspect we won't agree. But I did want to name what I see as an inconsistency in the position you're describing.

Transmen are women, yes they should use women's spaces. Why does everyone expect women to be afraid of beards? Beards aren't the problem. Some women who aren't on hormone treatment can grow beards also.

Your child is a man. There is no criteria that is scientific, objective, verifiable under which he is not a man. Any belief you or he has, is metaphysical, like a religious belief. You cannot force anyone else to share that metaphysical belief.

No, not all men are equally a danger, but why make an exception for one group of men (gender non conforming), but not others who could argue they are less of a threat. (elderly men, disabled men, gay men)?

Nothing changed the facts. Men do not belong in women's spaces. Not any of them.

With no disrespect intended towards individual posters’ husbands or sons, women can’t “know” whether their husbands or sons pose a threat to other women or not. Plenty of women have found out the hard way that their male loved ones have sexually assaulted or sexually exploited other women and girls.

What’s being described really is a policy of keeping all men out. “Trans women” are all men. “Trans men” are all women. You say you understand that people think this, but you seem not to grasp that it informs every single one of our views on sex and gender.

There are women out there who insist that their male relatives would never harm anyone.

I don’t know if they are seriously that naive or just privilege their family over public safety.

The question is whether we make policy based on categorical rules or individual assessment.

We make assessments based on category in some situations because we can’t make individual assessments.

This is why it is legal to ban under 21s from a nightclub.

Sarah is a perfect example of the Helen Joyce last Japanese soldier trans patent marauding across thread after thread demanding through the medium of emotional blackmail that we treat their son as women because he's nice/would be sad/definitely passes/why can't we just be kind and sacrifice our needs etc

on a forum we can be as blunt as we like saying no without any caveats but imagine in your work place or your sports club or your hobby group. It would be the chilling effect in action

The concern in refuges is safety from violence. So the relevant question becomes: do trans women as a group pose a risk to other women in these spaces?

There is no way to define trans women as a group, largely because of years of campaigning by groups like Stonewall. A trans woman is any man who claims to be a woman for any reason, regardless of any treatment and regardless of whether his identity changes from day to day.

@sarahd89 you are onto a loser in expecting the world to deny reality for your child. It’s not personal and it’s not about you. The number of people who are sympathetic to your ideology is going down, not up. The law has been clarified and will continue to be. The best thing you can do is to be realistic with him about it.

The concern in refuges is safety from violence.

No. Not at all. The point of a refuge is a safe place where a traumatised, abused woman can recover. The most brief read or engagement with how refuges work and the women who need them informs this. It does not matter how lovely a man is - I have many lovely men in my life who I think of as perfectly safe - when the sheer sound of a deep voice in the hallway outside may trigger a woman's trauma.

Women's refuges are not about men. They do not involve men. They are not there for men. Not everything is always about men.

So the relevant question becomes: do trans women as a group pose a risk to other women in these spaces?

No, the relevant question becomes 'why are activists trying to enforce men on these women for a political agenda? And why are they so very uniformed and uncaring about women in refuges? Why would they see the recovery of those women limited and harmed and women excluded as a fair price, if it makes a man feel happy he can be in a place with 'women' written on the door and women all around him as his backing set? '

'What is with that horrific misogyny?' is another question.

But what should be being focused on is: what facilities and refuges need to be created for men with gender identities?'

Obviously starting from a point of 'these plans cannot involve damaging, removing, talking over/minimising/dismissing and abandoning care and recovery for women in women's refuges. Because that's insane.

I refrained from commenting at the time, but yes.

Maybe if boys were allowed to cry and be afraid and not be ridiculed they wouldn't be going through the escape route from gender stereotypes which is largely what those who trans are doing.

Conforming to gender stereotypes.

Not all men.

How many women as wives, mothers, daughters have protested that the men they know are not like other men.

As though in the era when at least some of the information about Epstein is being made public, anyone could think this is a plausibe postion.

We know that from groups of rich men to groups of men working inunderpaid jobs will, if given the opportunity, exploit, discriminate and be violent towards women and girls.

The question is whether we make policy based on categorical rules or individual assessment.

As well as being completely impractical and putting an inordinate amount of pressure on people who may not have the skills or training to make those decisions, Trans Reddit is full of people declaring that they do not have to answer questions from service providers due to their "privacy". How can we make individual assessments if people are determined not to answer questions honestly?

Maybe someone should start a group (which 20-30 years ago would have been common) about how to challenge gender stereotypes.

That irrespective of the sex they are born, given the opportunity children should be able to grow up with a range of feelings, clothes preferences, etc. that would be just what they are. Their personal choices.

And society, or rather adults, are the problem.

Because they are not allowing children to make that free choice.

And not as in the Victorian era where families policed gender conforming, but in today's world not allow advertisers, etc., their relentless pigeon wholing the 2 sexes into rigid but different boxes.

Robust safeguarding requires that not one female person has to make an instant risk assessment about one male person to identify that male person’s risk potential to harm her.

It also requires no female person to have to accept any ‘nice’ male person who can cause her distress simply by being in that space.

No. No, no one’s ‘nice’, ‘kind’, ‘timid’, ‘cries at movies’ male loved one is exempt from the full category exclusion that is required under safeguarding principles. No female person should be wheedling to convince any other female person to lower their boundaries, and / or ignore their personal needs to include anyone’s male loved one in a space where they need and expect no male people.

There is a reason all male people are excluded. That reason is partly due to no female person being expected to make exceptions for someone else’s male loved one based on that person’s say so.

And there’s a reason female people should also stop weaponising other female people’s decisions to take testosterone to change their appearance. Many of those female people go out of their way not to access female single sex provisions knowing that their appearance may cause distress. They have even come onto this very board to tell us so and explain their solutions.

Their existence does not mean that some male people should be accessing female single sex provisions. It is not a symmetrical issue. It never was. And it is actually rather misogynistic to attempt to make it so in the attempt to leverage a male person into being exempt from male exclusion.

Would Poland and Hungary have voted for this?

This. ^^

No woman should have to take that risk as the price of her access to spaces, services and resources.

She should not have to subordinate herself to the so much more important interests of a man, with that subordination being entirely binary and sex based.

Well determined attempts to act with bad intent has to eventually end in much tighter rules and consequences. I suppose a small minority of men will push until they've achieved this.

The overarching theme in all this is a distorted belief of 'the world revolves around me and I'm the only important thing in it'. Sadly people acting on that are going to be continually running up against disappointment and boundaries.

Yes, why can't boys be sensitive?

A sensitive boy is still a boy.