Eddie Izzard

I am not and never have suggested that anyone be forced to do anything they don't want to do. Please show me where I have done this.

If a transwoman prefers not to transition, that is her choice, and nothing to do with me. I am perfectly happy for her to go about her life as she wishes, and be accepted as a woman, unless doing so is going to distress a biological woman who feels vulnerable at the idea of being intimately examined by a person with a penis. I see no reason why this should be a big deal, as these situations are niche, rare, and very easily avoided if a transwoman does not want to cause such distress.

I have said this over and over. I don't know how else I can phrase it so that you understand or accept that this is all I am saying.

I can only assume that you are wilfully misunderstanding what I am saying in order to deflect the conversation away from the ethical issues that you still have not addressed.

If you don't understand that forcing someone to have medical treatment they do not wish to have, that assessing them as psychologically ill because they are different is an abuse of human rights then you probably don't understand why transpeople are not happy with the present system for changing gender.
This is why
it’s secretive, discriminatory, and it's medicalised. It can also take several years to go through, costs a lot of money and is a bureaucratic mess full of red tape and intrusive medical assessments. It also only allows for people to switch from one binary gender to the other – male to female or vice versa – which means it doesn’t work at all for non-binary people who don’t identify as either.
What they want NiceasMice is to be regarded as perfectly capable of deciding they want to change gender, to access medical treatment if they wish, but not to be forced to do anything. They would like a process which is legal but not complicated (most would like to sign something in front of a solicitor). Self id
Many countries including Ireland have already introduced self id
Since Ireland changed in 2015 just over 200 people have changed gender under this system. The details of how it works are here.
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/birth_family_relationships/changing_to_your_preferred_gender.html

I am not at all saying that transpeople should not have human rights. I am simply saying, to the point of tedium, that those rights should not trample on the rights of women who would prefer not to be intimately touched by a man (as defined as 'someone with a penis') for whatever reason she chooses.

You responded to this by saying that anyone has a right to refuse to be examined, which is disingenuous to say the least, as (leaving aside considerations of language barriers, lack of confidence, fear and/or PTSD and other things), one can only object if one is aware that the person doing the examining has a penis, and it is unlikely that this will be made obvious.

You then said that if the woman could not tell that the examiner had a penis then it wouldn't matter, which I found shockingly insensitive and abusive.

I used the burger analogy not because of any obsession, but to highlight the ethical problems inherent in this lack of respect for the right of women with views, religious observations or circumstances that differ from yours - 'it doesn't matter if they can't tell the difference'. It really does, in the same way that it really mattered to me that my children did not eat meat, as they were raised during the BSE years and I wanted to protect them from that risk.

Regardless of whether you consider my attitude to be reasonable, it is not for you to make that call based on your own views and simply ride roughshod over mine, in the same way as it is not for you or anyone else to decide that 'it doesn't matter' if a woman with religious or other objections is intimately examined by someone she erroneously believes to be female but is, in fact, biologically male.

I think that this is a fairly simple analogy, and that it is clear that it is not about a 'food element', but a metaphor for imposing one set of values on another by deceit.

Sorry, but I can't follow your argument about picking out the vegetables, but I suspect that it is not relevant to the point I was making.

trisher
Nobody here has suggested that trans rights are not human rights.
Trans people have all the rights they need, enshrined in law as gender reassignment, for which they can have a new birth certificate, passport, driving licence in their newly defined sex. It is called a legal fiction, rather like adoptive parents have the full parental rights of biological parents.

Tell me trisher, what are the rights that trans people don't have?
What is it they want?

Women have been excluded from men's spaces entirely for social reasons
Really! I think they are few and far between since women's lib- one of the things we fought for was access to those spaces. Women used to be banned from bars, clubs and all sorts of things. No more!
The food element which seems to obsess you Doodledog is ridiculous because we are talking about human rights. If your children were being persecuted, forced to eat meat or otherwise suffering abuse you might have a point. They aren't Perhaps you should answer this question if your children had to eat in a place which only served meat, and I simply said it's OK they can pick out the vegetables. If their vegetarianism meant they were liable to be attacked and beaten up and I said nothing, actually denying them a safe space would that be OK?
The only thing discriminating against transpeople resembles is apartheid- the idea that actually they can have human rights just not the same as the rest of us, because they are different and must be kept seperate. It never works because human rights are universal.

The burger question is not 'ridiculous'. You say that if someone doesn't notice that a transman is passing as a woman then it doesn't matter. Clearly, to someone with religious objections to being intimately touched by a man outside of her family it matters very much, and the fact that you have no issue with it does not override her rights.

The notion that if a vegetarian doesn't notice that they are eating meat then it doesn't matter is very similar. My children were brought up vegetarian, and a number of busybody types who thought that they knew better than me would try to 'sneak' them meat. As it was, there were no religious concerns in the case of my children, but even so, it is very unethical to impose your world view on others, on the assumption that their beliefs matter less than yours.

Can't you see the arrogance implicit in saying that this is 'ridiculous'? How you can talk about offsetting one set of human rights against another when you can't see the gaping moral holes in your answer is beyond me.

And yes, of course we know that there are transwomen. If we were all rampant transphobes we would be as concerned about them as we are about self-identifying transwomen. But we are not, as a transman is far less of a threat to a biological man than a transwoman is to a biological woman. This is why there are virtually no single sex spaces for men that are there for reasons of safety. Women have been excluded from men's spaces entirely for social reasons, and now men are imposing themselves on the few safe spaces that we have fought for, simply by saying that they are female.

The concept that women should be defined by appearance

trisher you have said in your posts that If you look like a woman, say you are a woman so you do think appearance counts?

With regards to transmen, if men object to them being in their single sex places then they must make that known themselves. How many transmen are housed in the male prison estate for example, something we don't read about. Being for women's legal rights to single sex spaces does not mean you are anti trans any more than having those hard fought for protections was anti men.

Safe spaces are defined by thorough and properly used assessments. They are not defined by birth gender. One of the things women's refuges had to learn, because it wasn't appreciated in the first instance, was that some women would access those spaces to find other women they could dominate. It took proper risk assessment to do that.
The concept that women should be defined by appearance possibly means you would deny access to this woman www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJSAuFWR6jQ
The idea that women should not have facial hair is of course a social construct.
The burger question by the way is ridiculous I'm not asking you to consume anything simply to allow people to exist. Both burgers maybe presented. Most vegetarians could tell the meat burger by looking some couldn't. But comparing food consumption with human rights just shows how low some people have to go to prove something that is so evidently wrong. That one set of people must be demonised to protect another's rights. It doesn't work that way. Those who really believe in the rights of the individual will stand up for minorities and not further oppress them.
Incidently there are transmen. The anti-trans movement of course ignores them. They are often described as "just tomboys" or denigrated as "it's just a stage I went through it". Possibly because they have decided they don't want to be women.

Good Morning - I've just read through this thread and want to thanks all the posters who support women's rights to safe spaces. I don't suppose we should be surprised that the trans / self ID issue is being dominated by men. It's the story of our lives isn't it. One step forward, several back in terms of equality. I find the suggestion that those of us raising concerns about self ID are somehow under the influence of right wing US Christian groups laughable or offensive.

Hullo Rosie51.
Alex Drummond demonstrates exactly what's wrong with the claim that 'transwomen are women'.
Alex is not some wacky outlying individual - he's an advisor to Stonewall on 'trans issues'.
So it's A-okay with Stonewall for a 'woman' to look as Alex does.

Long time lurker here who has just registered. I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for trisher to answer any direct questions. My anomaly is how women's refuges can ban a woman taking her teenage male child in with her because of the possible "triggering" of other women, but permit any male who identifies as a women even if their physical appearance would belie that. Same as some swimming pools....boys over the age of 8, 9, 10 banned from the communal womens' changing areas but a male bodied (penis intact) transwoman fully admissible??? Why are my lovely husband and son who'd never harm a woman banned from women's changing areas, toilets, female hospital wards etc
We're constantly told transwomen have been amongst us for decades and we've never noticed, I'm pretty sure most of us would notice this lesbian transwoman who wants to "widen the bandwidth of being a woman".... I suppose widening the bandwidth of being a man was too difficult?

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/there-no-legal-bars-woman-10297113

For clarity - my burger question should read 'do you think it would be ethical to give a beef burger to a vegetarian knowing that they think it is soya?'

I do wish we could edit our posts on here!

trisher did you read any of the links in the post from hugshelp at 16.49 today?

They show where being 'polite' can lead.

I'm interested in your answer to the question about the beefburger, too.

trisher did you miss that RD introduced Izzard with male pronouns?
Presumably he was okay with that.

Izzard corrected RD who called him an 'action lesbian', saying that his term was 'action transvestite'.

'Lesbian' means a woman who is sexually attracted to other women - so Izzard is not a lesbian.

I don't care about Izzard's sexuality - but do care about claims that he is a woman, in girl-mode', a she, when none of that is true.

The rest of the interview was interesting, yes, but the subject of this thread is that of calling a man 'she'.

trisher

I am very familiar with the request to change someone's pronoun (IME it is usually because people are saying that they are gender neutral), and will happily do so, although I don't really understand why they care about what people call them in their absence. When they are there, people call them by their name, or address them as 'you'. However, I respect their wishes and use 'they', or whatever they want.

Anyway, back to the unanswered questions - for starters, do you think it would be ethical to give a beef burger to a vegetarian knowing that it was soya? If not, why not?

In an hour interview there are I think two references to Izzard's, sexual preferences and her transvestite history. Some people need to get over their obsessions. She has asked to be referred to as"she". I know people who choose "they". I use the pronoun someone prefers. I was brought up to be polite, understanding and non judgemental. It's a question a lot of people are asking now- "which pronoun do you prefer?" perhaps you haven't encountered it, but it is becoming more common.
It's an interesting interview thanks for posting it. A pity some can only focus on one aspect of a talented individual.

Going by that interview, I actually think that Izzard has given no thought to any effects on women and girls, and is just doing whatever suits himself.

Yet people like trisher have immediately started saying he is a woman and calling him 'she' .

It's the frisson.
They note the frisson on the faces of the women this makes them feel clever, superior.

In reality, women note a disconnect, mixed messages that momentarily confuses. A similar confused reaction is seen with the Stroop test.
At the very least it isn't funny.
At worst it constitutes an abuse of power.
If they display that behaviour to a man, they'd be punched.

Yes Doodledog misogyny through to the core.

So it sounds to me like this is just a man doing exactly what he wants

Yes, and it's women who will give up their safety, security, privacy and freedom to ensure he gets it. As you say FarNorth.... No news there.

Here's a very recent interview of Eddie Izzard talking with Ruth Davidson (28 Dec).

www.globalplayer.com/catchup/lbc/london/episodes/BUrsAL7PSF926CXchsza49yPz/

RD uses several male pronouns to introduce Izzard.
Later, she says he is an "action lesbian" but he corrects her and says he used the terms "action transvestite" & "executive transvestite", and that he is a "wannabe lesbian" & "straight transvestite".
He also claims that transvestite / transgender is all the same thing, it's all trans.

So it sounds to me like this is just a man doing exactly what he wants.
No news.

I agree, you would think that a transwoman would have some empathy with other women.
Yet some still press for the right to shower with women, in a women's refuge, even after women are harrassed in this way.
abc30.com/amp/homeless-women-harassed-in-shower-lawsuit-says/3514544/
Yes some would still sue women for refusing to wax their genitalia - windsorstar.com/news/local-news/transgender-woman-files-human-rights-complaint-against-windsor-spa/amp
Women forced to share rooms with transwomen who have male genitalia or be evicted - globalnews.ca/news/3300518/concerns-over-transgender-client-at-okanagan-shelter/
The transwomen head nurse of a female psychiatric ward, that deals with sexual trauma
www.facebook.com/2239530066266838/posts/rachel-is-head-of-a-womens-mental-health-trauma-unit-the-nhs-dont-even-bother-to/2844248849128287/

So much empathy...

Women and children in a DV refuge need a space protected from all males, however harmless they may be, as a breathing space.

Why is that so difficult for some to understand?

From an article about the incident SueDonim described :

"James Caspian, a psychotherapist who specialises in working with transgender people, said self-certification would create many similar situations arising in the future.
“Politicians have not thought through all the implications of allowing self-certification,” he said."

inews.co.uk/news/health/nhs-woman-transgender-nurse-smear-test-114009

How would it work in a domestic violence refuge would a man identifying as a woman be entitled to stay

The answer to this is an unequivocal yes, he would. On a previous thread about this subject, I posted a letter that was written from a woman's refuge in which they were begging for men; however they dressed/presented themselves, to be kept away from their safe place. These women, and their children, have suffered physical, mental and emotional abuse by men, and yet are being told that any man who declares himself to be a woman can, and will, be admitted to their refuge, irrespective of the harm that will do. And the reason for this is because a man's needs/wants/demands will always supersede those of a woman. It was ever thus.