Aren't transpeople still a tiny minority?

[Waheymum]

Over about fifteen years, I've noticed growing awareness and concern about transpeople. This may be my age and simply a case of when people I knew started to transition.
What I'm wondering is whether there are statistics further to the last census on how many people are transitioning or have transitioned. This is because I'm pretty sure that men are still a bigger threat to women's safety than transgender (m-f) women are. I'm not saying that no transwoman poses a risk to women, I'm querying whether, statistically, I'm better off crossing the road to avoid a cisgender man or a transgender woman (if, hypothetically, one were on each side of the road).

It is certainly not a minority of TRAs who are saying women’s boundaries should be ignored, that our language should be appropriated, our services destroyed…

"I want to get to a position of saying 'trans people are going to be mentally healthier if they aren't overly invested in "being perceived as" the other sex and "having the perceived privileges" of the other sex. In return, they deserve respect, dedicated spaces and dignity'.

I get that.

However, there is an inherent sexism about declaring that someone is not the sex they are. Just dismissing this with 'they know who they are' doesn't actually go to the very heart of the categorisation that they are rejecting and making.

And any person who requires any other person to use opposite sex language for them is heavily invested enough in being perceived as the other sex. I, and other women, do not consider it respectful at all that any male person uses female language to describe themselves. That is not respectful and it violates female dignity and causes harm in many ways collectively.

Diverze can post whatever they want.

You seem to be under the illusion that just because they have a child who identifies as the opposite sex they deserve some kind of bravery medal.

What is actually brave is standing up for women in a society that has collectively swallowed an ideology that is harmful to women and girls and benefits perverted men. Because it creates huge holes in safeguarding.

Reorganising society to make a small number of people feel better about believing a lie is harmful to everyone. It's not about 'lacking empathy'.

@MarieDeGournay

the concept of transgenderism is damaging to women in that it destroys the category 'women' by including in it members of the category 'men'.

But the only reason it has the power to do this is that it resolutely refuses to treat itself as a concept, which individuals can believe in or not as they choose, but insists on being a true description of material reality. And so far has got away with it, putting itself in the position of Mary I, able to declare Protestantism 'untrue' by punishing its adherents (also see Communism, 1984, etc, etc).

The only logical desirable endpoint is one in which transgenderism is treated as a belief system like any other, with believers and non-believers required to accommodate each other exactly as we do for other beliefs.

Ahh... the old there are so few fallacy.

"It is a minority issue as the chances of any one of us coming across this issue is unlikely."

I have trans people in my daily life. I am sure that many people have. You seem to be the one who is ill informed.

'Actually it is everyone else misunderstanding stats and not me."

you do seem to be the one misunderstanding stats and safeguarding.

Now we have the 'there are bigger issues' distraction tactic while not acknowledging that the inclusion of male people in female single sex provisions is a contributor to many of the bigger issues.

"We can talk about the question of toilets and changing rooms - but the reality is that there are barely any toilets or changing rooms left anywhere regardless of gender because there is no cash."

This is just hyperbolic now and using catastrophising to again distract the discussion. Yes, there are less government provided public toilets, that does not remove the significant issue of who is using those.

There’s a UN definition of the Global South if that helps you. ‘Parts of’ would probably be more accurate. The parts that the aforementioned UN campaign for single sex facilities in. Or the ‘not as civilised as us’ parts as you clearly feel they are.

(China’s position as part of the Global South is very much debated, although if you want to cite a country that employs mass detention and forced labour camps against its own people as an example of best practice you do you)

but because statistically you are unlikely to come across them

So many things we can stop worrying about or legislating for because as individuals we are unlikely to come across them….

Statistically I am unlikely to get pancreatic cancer so let’s stop funding treatment of it.
Statistically I am unlikely to be killed by a drugged driver so we should do away with drug driving laws.
Statistically my taxes are unlikely to make any difference to the funding of the health service so I should stop paying them.
Statistically I am unlikely to die in a house fire so forget smoke alarms…

And now we have the 'if a man is going to rape, a sign won't stop him' fallacy argument too. Let's just get rid of any safeguarding attempt.

They are really all coming out on this thread.

The UN's definition of the Global South is both well out of date and frankly racist. Guess how I know about it - I write about it.

The problems of inadequate staffing are not relieved by adding in ‘no guarantee of same-sex care’. The reverse.

So you’re fully aware of the UN’s position on single-sex toilets in some areas then. You were just being deliberately obtuse. Good to know.

(‘write about’ rather than do anything, I imagine).

The point of the question was whether or not it is a minority issue - not a rehashing of the trans v women debate.

And yes I think that we may need to reconsider how we think about risk and how best to allocate money towards that. For example, a lot of the issues raised to do with things like house burglaries etc - realistically by now the met does think it's a non issue a) because it's pretty rare; b) they dont investigate them. In practice, yes people shut their doors in London but actually you are very unlikely to get burgled in your own home ( it is much cheaper and more effective to nick your phone - the profession of house burglars has sort of died out - the most people do is nick your parcels from outside your house - and if you are nothing will happen to you, same with rape or even shop lifting. All those things are pretty much legal now and some of them has also kind of died out. We worry about them because of historical memory rather than reality.

We continue to perceive certain risks due to habit and also fund things as much out of habit as actual risk.

We also tend to worry about things in the news rather than actual risk. It's not scaremongering - it's a harsh look at risk, perceived risk and actual tackling/management of those risks.

I wasn’t trying to suggest anything apart from the potential possible misinterpretations of the data. For example the percentage of transwomen prisoners who are sex offenders is very high but we cannot infer that this means that transwomen are more likely to be sex offenders than men. It may well be true but it may be well not be. We cannot tell.

Ultimately though, the incidence of transwomen wanting to use women's spaces is not particularly relevant to two key aspects of the debate.

Firstly - Once spaces are opened to one group of men, we cannot police other men from using them.

Secondly - Single sex spaces are zero sum. Either they are upheld or they aren't. As soon as a man is allowed to enter, they cease to become single sex. It doesn't matter how few men are involved. It's like being nut free. Food either is nut free or it isn't. The number of nuts involved is immaterial,

I am fully familiar with those cases. And Maria McLaughlin vs Tara Wolff. And Keira Bell. Ritchie Herron. Glinner. Veronica Ivy. Laurel Hubbard. WORIADS. I know about all of it. I've been on FWR a decade.

I see many many people dismissing people like my trans daughter, calling her "he" and reminding me she is a man who is either a pervert, a fetishist or mentally ill, or a person who expects to be fawned over, I see "stunning and brave" used as hilarious shorthand at least once on every trans-related thread. I see people saying men should budge up in the gents which sounds logical except it doesn't enable privacy and dignity FOR ALL.

So whilst some on FWR may be arguing for 3rd spaces I don't see that much reflected. I see get out of women's spaces and stats on sexual deviance, and the same "terf is a slur" site with 10 -5 year old tweets on every thread.

Which is all fair enough but don't then pretend that FWR is championing 3rd spaces. It doesn't have to, but don't then pretend that is the main advocacy on here.

And the point made is that their patterns, for risk assessment, are not equal to or lower than female people.

I think that the statistics can be correctly interpreted to support that claim as per the post before the one you quoted which pointed out:

"In 2019, there were 3.3% of female people in UK prisons were sex offenders. I haven’t looked up the stats since. But I wouldn’t expect this will be different. Last time I looked at the raw stats for female sex offences, they had remained stable numbers for a decade or more despite population growth.

For male people with transgender identities to have the same rate of committing sex offences, there would be 8 (3.3% of 243) prisoners with trans identities in the UK prison population with sex offences.

8
Not 151."

If you don't understand that the majority of opinion on FWR is for third spaces, then you are not nearly as familiar with it as you think.

So whilst some on FWR may be arguing for 3rd spaces I don't see that much reflected.

You may not think there has been much arguing for 3rd spaces on FWR, but I haven't seen any arguing for 3rd spaces from trans advocacy organisations. Are you aware of any?

ETA: Although these boards sometimes seem to be shouting into the void, actual cases and a lot of fundraising have been started on these boards, so the rhetoric does get translated into action. However, I don't think it's the place of e.g. Sex Matters to campaign for third spaces. In practical terms, the campaign has to come from elsewhere.

I agree anbout that prison data and it annoys me when people use this data for this purpose - the high percentage of trans prisoners being sex offenders could reflect lower offending rates for other crimes.

However, the census data showed quite clearly that the proportion of men identifying as trans who were incarcerated for sex offences at the time of the census was several times higher than that for other men. We also see from court reports that trans sex offenders are often given more lenient sentences because of their trans status. And we know that the census question overestimated the number of trans people. So the proportion of men who identify as trans who are sex offenders is even higher than the census indicated.

So whilst some on FWR may be arguing for 3rd spaces I don't see that much reflected.

Why should women have to spend their time arguing for third spaces? If men who identify as women don’t want to pee alongside other men (who just want to pee) then it is up to them to argue for third spaces.

"Which is all fair enough but don't then pretend that FWR is championing 3rd spaces. It doesn't have to, but don't then pretend that is the main advocacy on here."

All the things that you have mentioned can still be consistent with the majority of FWR championing 3 rd spaces though.

We can point out all the issues with language usage, with male inclusion etc while still also being very clear that declaring that a male is in anyway female is very likely to have sexist foundations and that it doesn't change that person's sex all we want, and still support 3rd spaces.

Just because others don't agree that any male person can be female and may describe your child accurately as being male, doesn't mean that they are hateful. It also doesn't mean that they don't support 3rd spaces.

And pointing out that male people should be also working to make male spaces more safe and inclusive for all male people also doesn't mean that people don't also support 3rd spaces. Both can be true.

I've also been on here about a decade, and people have suggested 3rd spaces throughout that time.
I would say there were a couple of years where maybe it didn't get talked about as much, because we'd had years of hearing "that's never going to be acceptable, it's degrading, twaw" so you sort of assume it's pointless to keep mentioning it!

The issue is that there is no point in relying on the data from the census. We can use it, but it gets rejected so many of us have stopped presenting it.

I used to use a calculation from a male person with a transgender identity to present the %s. That was rejected too. Instead of discussing the solutions, I and other spent threads discussing the veracity of data.

Yes the main issue is keeping men out of women's spaces.

Who is actively pushing back against 3rd spaces as an option? Is it us? Or is it the TRAs?

Whose job do you think it is to champion 3rd spaces? If you want 3rd spaces campaign for that. I'd support you on it.

I'm not sure what it is that you want that is different to the vast majority of people here.