Trans Women are Real Women and Should Have Access to Women's Spaces

[user08101988]

Started because a thread on Girlguiding was getting too off topic.

Ah, the old "both sides" argument. Because women only deserve safety, respect and single sex spaces if they've been nice

As for how many trans women are frequenting women's loos, it doesn't really matter. One is too many - I've found myself in the ladies with a hulking great big trans-identifying bloke in there and it was not a pleasant experience, not least because he was between me and the door - but even the fear that one might be there. Men, however they present, retain the advantages of puberty and the vast majority of transwomen have not had hormones, let alone surgery. They still retain the ability to assault, over-power and sexually abuse us.

There's always the "my friend is a transwoman, she's lovely and would never hurt a fly" argument which doesn't work because other women don't know your friend is not a risk. Good men stay out so bad men stand out.

In the conflict between transwomen's desire to use facilities that validate them and women's need to have safe spaces away from men of all types/identities, the latter is always the path of least harm.

I’m not suggesting dismantling single‑sex spaces at all, quite the opposite. I think single‑sex spaces are essential for safeguarding, dignity and privacy, and they should remain exactly as they are.

My point is that the conversation gets stuck when it’s framed as “either trans women are women and get full access” or “single‑sex spaces must disappear”. That’s a false choice there are other options.

We can keep women‑only spaces and create additional options that include trans people without compromising anyone’s safety. Things like:

• single‑occupancy unisex toilets
• individual changing cubicles
• mixed‑gender facilities alongside women‑only ones

These don’t replace single‑sex spaces, they sit alongside them.

That’s why I keep saying the useful question is about design and policy, not ideology. We don’t need to redefine womanhood or remove boundaries to make sure everyone has somewhere appropriate to go.

Well it absolutely does when considering single sex places where women are partially undressed.

Your behaviour towards Taztoy was awful and clearly I'm not the only one to think so.

I cannot have a man in a single sex space with me. I can tell from so many small tells. Hand size. Foot size. Gait.

I am legally entitled to single sex spaces.

why are my rights less important?

It's sad that your bar for evidence is so low. I would like to see more research in this area and am in no way trying to argue against it. More research would in my opinion be useful but it's not this.

In medical reseach there are several red flags for poor research and this one has too many for me to be comfortable with it being considered as evidence.

There were only 24 brain scans. That's not enough for the normal analysis needed

It mentions other studies where the same effect wasn't found. Then tries to explain these away with no evidence that this is the case

They used a "recently developed multivarient classifier" so their methods are new and novel and untested. They are not standard methods with a long track record in a larger body of research

It's not a replicated study. It's a small study, using novel methods and not been tested at other clinics on a larger population

There is a lot of loaded language thoughout i.e biological sex, perceived gender. Perceived? Very few biological men look like biological women even after drugs, surgery etc.

I think trans people deserve better. Research like this doesn't help.

They were not adjudicating on the meaning of sex or gender or the definition of "women" other than how that word is used in a specific piece of legislation enacted by parliament - the EA 2010. It's really important people understand that and stop saying things like "the Supreme Court has confirmed trans women aren't women."

Nope. A man with a fetish wandering around in a dress and performing womanface does not mean he is a female. Woman = Adult human female. Man = Adult human male.

Womanface is an offensive grotesque parody of femininity.

Its grossly offensive in the same way that TRA groups try to hijack female pronouns and language and try to apply revolting labels to women like "cis".

I and other women are not obliged to pander to men who try to force themselves into womens spaces or who try to hijack and pervert our language and pronouns. We will not pander or pretend or indulge a delusion. Women have the right to defend our spaces against predators.

I have 2 transwomen friends, and know others more superficially. One has had top and bottom surgery, a surgically created vagina for penetrative sex, breasts, she is on life long hormone treatment, changed her name, and has been living as a woman since her late teens.

Friend number two, who is in her 60s, has been living as a woman since her 40s and has changed her name. She's kept her penis, and has not undergone hormone treatment. She's bisexual and has penetrative sex with her female partner.
I am comfortable with friend 1 to be in female only spaces because although she was borne male her body is no longer such. Friend number 2 however is still very much a man, even though she lives as a woman as that's how she feels comfortable with.

Yes. I have to go and do something right now but I will be back tonight or tomorrow afternoon to discuss :)

Just because something is stated as true doesn’t make it true.

Germaine Greer’s view was that defective men are not and can never be ‘women’.

It was a while ago, when gender critical posters were being pretty heavily monitored - MN was pretty much the only place we were able to talk at all though. Before the Forstater judgment and Supreme Court etc.

It wouldn't make any difference if no trans women were using women's toilets.

You either have a law that allows services to be segregated by sex or you don't.

Gender can't be objectively defined, so if the law refers to gender and not sex, then anyone can use any service.

Should any of the women who were female at birth decide that they wanted to become one of the "special" kind of women that transwomen are, we couldn't. It would be physically impossible. As the prerequisite for being a transwomen is that said person has had to start out life as a male.

And so, it is equally physically impossible for a transwomen to be anything other than a male who feels like they should be female and who may (or may not) have made cosmetic or surgical alterations to their body to more closely have a physical appearance that resembles a woman. And no matter what kind of "lady-brain" they think they possess, they will still, despite such cosmetic and/or surgical interventions, always be a man. And when archeologists unearth their remains hundreds of years from now, they will be catalogued as male.

it might have been subbing for a grey rock.

https://supremecourt.uk/cases/judgments/uksc-2024-0042

'(21) Summary on the EA 2010

264. For all these reasons, this examination of the language of the EA 2010, its context and purpose, demonstrate that the words “sex”, “woman” and “man” in sections 11 and 212(1) mean (and were always intended to mean) biological sex, biological woman and biological man. These and the other provisions to which we have referred cannot properly be interpreted as also extending to include certificated sex without rendering them incoherent and unworkable. In other words, in relation to sex discrimination (for the purposes of sections 11 and 212(1)), a person with the protected characteristic of sex has the characteristic of their biological sex only: a trans man with a GRC (a biological female but legally male for those purposes to which section 9(1) of the GRA 2004 applies) is a woman for the purposes of section 11 and a trans woman with a GRC (biologically male but legally female for those purposes to which section 9(1) applies), is a man and not entitled to be treated as a woman under the EA 2010.'

Trans women are not women. I have a daughter who is into sports and does a number and I would not be happy if she was made to compete against a trans woman. I would not be happy if she was in a changing room with a trans woman. Trans women have a right to exist but in a third space when it comes to things like competing in sports and changing rooms/loos.

There is no legal way to distinguish between the two.

Any chance that people could stop responding to the person who thinks it's appropriate to post an eyeroll emoji to someone stating that they've been raped??

I mean ffs. 😡

I mean we don't need a Supreme Court judgement to understand that a man is always a man, it's not possible to change sex, and a 'transwoman' is by definition, a man.

I guess it's gone the other way now. Presumably if I posted a potato in response to a gender critical post I disagreed with, that would be reported by a mob of users as well.

What is a 'transwoman'? A man pretending to be a woman, a man who thinks he is a woman, a man who claims to be a woman, a man who calls himself a woman, a man who feels that he is a woman.

In every instance, he is a man.

Okay great, we agree.

Word to the wise though, women on these boards have been suggesting third spaces as the answer for eons. It's not some kind of immense breakthrough.

And fundamentally it IS about basic understanding of what being a woman means. You can't maintain single sex spaces without defining womanhood.

Can ‘trans women’ menstruate, birth children, suffer through the menopause? Many deem until they can, notwithstanding the other differences, ‘sex’ refers to biological sex.

I mean we went to the fucking supreme court to get 'third spaces'.