I'm not a thread starter the thought brings me out in a cold sweat. I tried once, I didn't like it.

But I have been known to hijack a few!

I shall have a look at trans Britain.

I got invisible women for Christmas and I've started It (not good for the blood pressure) and would read the rest it if i could drag myself off here.

I don't think the men who have helped all this grow to where we are now even have one single brain cell that cares about the consequences of this on women. Which is why i class this as a mens rights movement. The actual transpeople, those with the inability to survive their lives in the body they've got, are also bring thrown under the bus. It's wrong. It's cruel. And not surprisingly it's also Fucking misogynistic.

Women have been overlooked and put upon throughout history and i am so Fucking sick off it.

Men, You can't have womanhood. It's ours

It's lunch time some music, and lyrics with your food (sorry I've had the chorus on loop in my head today for some reason)

m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccs6D1npv3I

Oh, darling why d'you talk so fast?
Another evening just flew past tonight
And now the daybreak's coming in
And I can't win and it ain't right
You tell me all you've done and seen
And all the places you have been without me
Well, I don't really want to know
But I'll stay quiet and then I'll go
And you won't have no cause to think about me
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
Just like you swore to me that you'd be true
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
But he's a liar and I'm not sure about you
Oh, darling you're so popular
You were the best thing new in Hicksville
With your mohair suits and foreign shoes
Lou says you changed your pickup for a Seville
And now I'm lying here alone
'Cause you're out there on the phone to some star in New York
I can hear you laughing now
And I can't help feeling that somehow
You don't mean anything you say at all
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
Just like you swore to me that you'd be true
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
But he's a liar and I'm not sure about you, ow!
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
Just like you swore to me that you'd be true
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
But he's a liar and I'm not sure about you
I said he's a liar and I'm not sure about you
I said he's a liar and I'm not sure about you
I said he's a liar and I'm not sure about you

Mumsnet causes me masses of frustration at present - sometimes I’m partway through a post and go off to find a link and the Mumsnet page reloads losing everything.

I’m trying to make a habit of writing anything with a link in the notes app and copying over but sometimes replies get bigger than I intended.

We NEED a ‘save draft’ function, goddamnit!

I’m fairly new to this debate. I’ve commented a couple of times on other threads but as my new name suggests, I don’t get a lot of it.

I’ve just watched both tv interviews. I saw a person who to me looks like a man choosing to wear clothes more typically worn by women. They sound like a man, they look like a man but apparently they are a woman. I’m going right back to basics here, is there a thread explaining what it is about how this person, and other trans women, live that makes them a woman? All I can see is that they wear more typically female clothes and insist on using womens facilities rather than mens (assuming this person does that). What else? Was Robin called Robin before deciding they were female? It’s a male name to me.

I wish the interviews had been longer. Sarah had straight forward facts, clearly stated. Robin waffled about irrelevant things. The only point about prisons being the sad story of a trans woman who committed suicide in Armley. How many males have committed suicide in Armley? All equally as sad as Vicky’s death but not fitting Robins agenda.

Why, if they feel they are a woman, are they so completely lacking in understanding of womens need for safety from predatory men? Surely a woman can see that a man, even a man in a dress, in a woman’s changing room, bathroom, anywhere a woman feels vulnerable, is at best uncomfortable and at worst dangerous? FGS how can a teenage girl having to share a tent with a boy at guide camp be ok? How can teenage girls having to strip to practice spray tans in front of a 30yr old man be ok? How can women who have been raped having to relive their trauma in counselling with a man present be ok? AND HOW CAN A FEMALE PRISONER HAVING TO SHARE A CELL WITH ANY MAN, RAPIST OR SHOPLIFTER, BE OK? ( blaming beetle for the capitals)

So if Robin is a woman, how can they be fighting for these things to be ok? How can they be forcing IamSarah to go through a court case because she was discriminated against for refusing to talk about her rape in front of a man saying they were a woman? No woman would think these are ok surely?

I’m using Robin as an example, I mean all trans women who feel like Robin does. I do not mean all trans women, although my confusion about what makes someone a trans woman applies to all. I guess questioning this probably makes me a transphobia and a bigot, but it’s actually a lack of understanding hence my questions.

I shall have a look at trans Britain.

Let me know if you need a handhold. It gives me the feeling of watching a Martin Scorsese film like Goodfellas or The Wolf of Wall Street, where these evil people are blithely doing awful things, yet are being presented in a sympathetic way (except, unlike the films, it is dull too). It’s hard going.

They are banding around "risk assessment" and it's not actually clear who's risk is being assessed.

It has become apparent that the phrase 'risk assessment' is being politically spun as meaning 'deciding whether or not this male can be safely accommodated in the women's estate'. However the Bryson and Scott cases demonstrate that 'no' is never an answer.

The 'risk assessment' is not a 'can we/should we' question that may result in a no.

It is merely to work out the practicalities of the male's care in the women's estate, heavily focused on the nurturing of the male's special needs. With perhaps a brief glance towards minimising the wreckage to female inmates and staff as the main goal is achieved. Perhaps.

It's abhorrent.

The risk assessment seems to be all about the men & how they feel about it, with no genuine consideration for the actual women involved (including prison staff & the unfair strain, along with the extra work they are putting on those people).

I’ve just watched both tv interviews. I saw a person who to me looks like a man choosing to wear clothes more typically worn by women. They sound like a man, they look like a man but apparently they are a woman. I’m going right back to basics here, is there a thread explaining what it is about how this person, and other trans women, live that makes them a woman? All I can see is that they wear more typically female clothes and insist on using womens facilities rather than mens (assuming this person does that). What else? Was Robin called Robin before deciding they were female? It’s a male name to me.

The bold bit. People, women, have been asking for an answer for many many years. No one as far as I'm aware has been able to post a thread telling us we've got an explanation/answer to it yet.

Men must not be in female prisons. It needs to be made very clear that all spaces where women sleep, undress or play sports will be governed by sex and sex alone. Trans identifying men ought to be given a choice between a male prison or a separate unit for such men.

Absolutely that ^^

Apartheid?

Don't be so damn silly.

Men are men. They do not stop being men. Men have no place in women's spaces regardless of how they identify. Women's needs are not predicated on what is going on in the head of a man.

If there are issues for male prisoners and males in general, then address those issues. But whenever these issues are raised it is never about improving the lot of those males, it is an attempt to lever the predetermined desired goal of males in female spaces and females not able to protest.

Like the poor women Bryson made strip off in front of him in a beauty class, with the defense of 'transphobia' against those women having the right to boundaries.

Very, very, very over this now.

nilsmousehammer · Today 12:10

It has become apparent that the phrase 'risk assessment' is being politically spun as meaning 'deciding whether or not this male can be safely accommodated in the women's estate'.

Well, as we may surmise, the man is ALWAYS going to be safe in a womens' prison, unless the other prisoners decide to arm themselves and attack him, en masse.

I haven’t read it (but I have read some of Tish’s reviews on her gender critical woman blog - couple of links on the IPSO thread I started yesterday).
I could try and order a secondhand copy today and we could attempt a chapter by chapter book club type thread?

None of this is OK.

You don't understand the rules because firstly you are not supposed to, and secondly they change with the wind.

The other women in here have been asking and asking for answers to the questions in your post. tumbleweed usually or why won't you think of the poor oppressed men.

Better posters than me will hopefully be better at answering.

I'm just the shouty sweaty one!

I'm scared now. Will i need a cat close by to stroke?

Is this the point where we also discover they are being assessed with the female risk assessment form as they are 'female' and the risk assessment is different than the male version, or is that somewhere else? (Like England)

Ooh i like that women only (cunty kind) GC book club. MEN allowed if they are the author of the book and only on odd years ending in a 7. T

The genital ID posts will be interesting, I can't even mange to post Darren mews from mermaids cock and tits montage. Mnhq are going to be having conniptions

Maybe you’ll need to surround yourself with soft objects in case you throw something in annoyance.

Although you get to see from the horses mouth things like, how Sarah Brown and Roz Kaveney almost founded cancel culture together by means of intimidating picketing - first targeting Queer Up North because they had the temerity to host ‘Bitch’ an artist associated with Michigan Womyn’s Festival (which had a no male policy), you discover that there are an awful lot of women, traitors to our sex, high on testosterone, merrily driving a truck through women’s rights, starting with the most vulnerable and marginalised first.

Even thinking about it is driving up my blood pressure.

I would really love this.

Went for the cheapest version I could find which was kindle which is a bonus i don't have to put out in the bookcase!

Oh bollocks.

Archive link auto-rejected (it’s a 2011 article, so I didn’t think about the paywall aspect).

Trying again without the offending link.

@Somanyquestionstoaskaboutthiswelcome!

Helpfully, Robin’s backstory is well documented online.

Times article from 2011 (hopefully a kindly Times subscriber can supply us with a share token):

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/i-tried-very-hard-to-be-male-but-it-just-didnt-work-out-nt8lk5cbxrf

Robin’s personal transition blog (posts listed in reverse chronological order, ends rather abruptly in 2013):

becomingmoira.blogspot.com/

Sadly, I don’t think Robin has a dedicated chapter in ‘Trans Britain’ by Christine Burns? Perhaps Robin’s transition is just too recent to be an established member of the trans power-activist set?

Yes! This fucking book has has its spine winking at me from the book shelf for five years now.

It was printed in 2018 and I imagine it was written in 2017 - the time when transactivists were very confident that the law would ‘catch up’ with them, when they had the local police on speed dial as their own hit squad, Bercow was inviting them to hang out in Speaker’s House, they had unscrupulous allies everywhere - Twitter, etc. They are unabashed, showing off about everything. Indiscreet.

I kept the copy in case they started memory-holing everything.

About RMW:
I felt very uneasy about the comparison between social workers assessing whether or not to remove children from their possibly dangerous but loved families,
and prisons assessing whether or not a male prisoner who identifies as a woman should be put with the women prisoners he identifies with.

In the case of children there is likely to be an already crucial bond with their family which may be a necessary part of the child’s well being and worth an element of risk. But there is no such bond to protect in the prison context meaning the that the women prisoners ( the child as it were) need that man.

In any case, maybe social workers are more careful than prisoner assessors.
Social workers are thinking of the child ( the women as it were). Prisoner assessors may well, according to some information ( but nothing is transparent so we can’t be sure), be thinking more of the needs of the male prisoner ( the possibly harmful family as it were) than the women ( the child).

Though I can see RMW was trying to make clear that a likelihood, or not, of harm is weighed in the balance all the time in order to assess various outcomes, I think using children in this context was not truly comparable. And, because it was emotive, and related to children, it was a psychological way to close down any argument.

Similarly the apartheid argument is troubling.

Logic and philosophy elude me and I realise there are very clever people here who may see the argument better, but I cannot understand the ‘racist’ or ‘apartheid’ argument.

Firstly the balance of power in apartheid was black people powerless/white people ruling. So here it would be women prisoners are powerless and are being told by a more powerful and stronger class to move over and let one of the powerful relatively oppressive class into their midst.

To make out a transwoman would be a powerless equivalent, RMW gave the hypothetical instance of a transwoman who has had surgery, and hormones for years. But in real life there is no law to say such a woman must have had surgery, or even that they can be checked to see probably. I am also pretty sure the ECHR advised that requiring surgery would be against a person’s human rights. (This came up originally at the time GRCs were introduced, I think.)

Another related point is that the Swedish study carried over 30 yrs of males, which was of males who had had transgender surgery, found they still had the same offending rates for violent crime as ordinary men, (though there was no survey specifically about rape). So even RMW’s hypothetical example would not necessarily translate, in real life, as a gentle, unthreatening person.

Secondly, just to be literal about segregated spaces involving the idea of race, in African countries where the majority of people are black, they do not, I feel sure, think it is apartheid or racist to separate men from women in certain contexts. They must have lavatories and schools for example where only girls and women are allowed regardless of whether they are black or white girls.

RMW tried to make out that an additional prison space for the safety and dignity of transgender males would be separating them off from society and ‘we know where that leads’. That ominous short sentence seemed to suggest a ghetto with possible death to follow, even though he did not actually say that. I personally cannot see that a third space would be anything so dire but, rather, much nicer and safer than men’s prisons while at the same time not interfering with women’s dignity and safety.

I’m fairly new to this debate. I’ve commented a couple of times on other threads but as my new name suggests, I don’t get a lot of it.

If you haven't seen it, try the evergreen Break it down for me thread.

Let’s hope someone provides the share token.

I don’t think Robin has a dedicated chapter in ‘Trans Britain’ by Christine Burns

Yes, there seems to be a few omissions. Including Stephen Whittle - I wonder if there was some bad blood.

I also notice that the endorsements are pretty low key - alongside Michael Cashman, there is only Paris Lees, Juno Dawson and performance artist CN Lester. Either CB didn’t have much in the way of connections and clout or was deliberately trying to appeal to young people.