the law as it stands on sex

Also safe spaces still exist and you can still request who you want for examination... No one has taken that from you

Mollygo you really should stop accusing trans allies of sheltering abusive people....

That's not happening

No one acknowledges me when I say butch lesbians and masculine appearing women are being abused by those who don't want trans people in toilets etc... Imagine if I assigned fault for that to anyone here...

It would rightfully be shouted down

Why can't you stop?

There are no winners in discussion

Dysphoria not dysphasia * autocorrect!

For some of us 'woman' is still a biological category, for others it's an amorphous 'anything goes' category. I think this is a shame. I liked that woman had a definite definition, and according to dictionaries still has.... adult human female

For most people that is still true and so it should be.
It was a man who started the business of woman being legally applied to those who are not AHF.
Prior to that, as I’m sure I’ve been told, men may well have suffered gender dysphasia and have been living as women but without seeing it as an opportunity to do wrong and harm females.
Then some men began to see an advantage of calling themselves women, and gradually for some, this claim has become a way of perpetuating harm on females under the sheltering wing of TRA.

Whether or not the men who do that would have done it anyway, at least they would have done it openly without the pretence of gender dysphoria to excuse their actions.

Then some TW began claiming they did their wrongdoings as women, and were supported in their claims,

not only by those with a desperate need to champion any minority group, who shriek transphobia and discrimination, even when faced with the evil done by some transwomen

but also by authorities and politicians, afraid of the accusation of transphobia if they say a person with a penis committed this crime, therefore they will be treated as a male.

You would think everyone would come forward and acknowledge that a proportion of TW are tarnishing the image of the whole TW group,

or acknowledge that they are causing untold harm to the very group they say they aspire to belong to

Or acknowledge that there needs to be places and occasions where women should be protected from males, however they present.

But no.

We have those who say it’s ‘discriminatory for females to demand a female medical person for medical examinations’.

We have those who say TW -even those obviously male, should have access to female safe spaces because the traumatised women in those spaces can complain if they are not happy about it’

We have those who, by refusing to condemn it, support and excuse the blatant cheating by TW entering female competitions knowing their male bodies give them an unfair advantage

And worst of all, it’s not other uninvolved TW who are giving their support to those actions and excusing them on the grounds that worse things are happening,

It’s some females.

Females who defend males trying to usurp female rights for themselves

Females who refuse to see that AHF are being discriminated against by allowing predatory males into their safe spaces.

Females who have shouted down, abused, or cancelled AHF like Maya Forstater and JKR and Kathleen Stock who dare to say that what is going on is wrong.

Not really no

For some of us 'woman' is still a biological category, for others it's an amorphous 'anything goes' category. I think this is a shame. I liked that woman had a definite definition, and according to dictionaries still has.... adult human female. If we start messing with definitions we won't know what anything means. Going to get a puppy? Goodness to me that looks like a kitten, but the new definition is young fluffy animal so it fits!

Soon language will be truly Humpty Dumpty and will mean just what each individual decides it means. We'll have reverted to prehistory levels of communication.

Elegran

Violetsky Yes, you did answer, on another thread, what you think a woman is, but that answer was what you see in yourself. It was a good description, and you sound a nice person, but there are many women (I am using that for what now often get called "cis women" - a term I don't like but I use it to be quite clear) who are different from you in one or other or more of the traits you see in yourself.

Women who have always been female and have gone through all the stages of womanhood can have all kinds of personalities. The only constant in all of them is their biological sex, their DNA and the contribution they give if they create new people. Females provide an egg, they carry the child until it can live independently and they give birth to it and feed it. Medical science helps some of the many women who have problems with some of the process, but it can't make a male do these things - males produce the other half of a child's DNA, the sperm. Men are males, women are females. Transmen present as men, transwomen present as females, but transmen are still female women and transwomen are still male men.

Transition cannot change this biological sex from male to female, or female to male. Someone can live as whichever they wish, and should be able to do so without abuse, ^but they have not changed sex^

Elegran thank you for saying that

I don't think you have to be biologically anything to be a woman... Others had the opportunity to answer the question in that thread and chose.... Something else instead

But if someone has a good value system and is kind and accepting and tells me they are a woman, I believe them... I can't do otherwise.

If someone walks past me in the street or uses the bathroom I'm not looking for any telltale signs that might mean they shouldn't be there...

I'm getting caught up trying to explain again but hopefully you get my drift

It's weird because your beliefs don't invalidate mine...

Right back at you with that one!

It is difficult to understand why someone who believes they are a woman would want to retain a penis and testicles. exactly. And equally confounding is a transman, so alienated to their female body that they stop the testosterone to do that uniquely female thing....... become pregnant and gestate and deliver a child.
Of course not everyone with body dysmorphia wants to live as the other sex. Lauren Black is a butch lesbian with chronic body dysmorphia but has no sense of being, or desire to be, a man. She has a beautiful wife Ceri and two sons. She struggles every month with her periods especially. Some TRAs have been vile to this couple, saying Lauren should trans and that would solve her dysphoria. I think Lauren knows Lauren best.

It's weird because your beliefs don't invalidate mine...

That's what I take issue too...

I try very hard to be respectful of others beliefs while maintaining.... We just dint k ow everything yet.

When someone can say why this is happening and prove their research ill believe it

Gender dysphoria is the answer. Real, genuine gender dysphoria.

And someone suffering from that should b supported, and AFAIK nobody on this thread has said otherwise.

What we are concerned about is people claiming to be dysphoric (men in dresses) and pretending to be transwomen, thus getting access to vulnerable women for nefarious purposes. That, fairly obviously, I would have thought, is why I asked about the difference.

Someone with dysphoria should have access to psychological help and, if necessary, to surgery. If they wish to more closely align their sexual appearance to their preferred ‘gender’ norms they should be assisted in doing so. They can’t change sex, but they can look like and follow the cultural and behavioural norms for their preferred sex. They would be transwomen.

If, however, they choose to remain intact males, they are not ‘as women’ and whereas they can please themselves what they wear and how they live, they should not enter women’s safe spaces, compete in sport against women or touch women intimately without declaring their maleness in advance, so that women have the option to refuse. They are men in dresses.

If someone has ‘real, genuine dysphoria’ surely they would want to transition? It is difficult to understand why someone who believes they are a woman would want to retain a penis and testicles.

I understand that operations are difficult to come by, but rather than women having to live with men in their spaces when we don’t feel safe, why don’t men organise and demand more operations?

Transition cannot change this biological sex from male to female, or female to male. Someone can live as whichever they wish, and should be able to do so without abuse, but they have not changed sex.
Perfectly, succinctly and clearly put. Thank you Elegran.

Transition cannot change this biological sex from male to female, or female to male. Someone can live as whichever they wish, and should be able to do so without abuse, but they have not changed sex

Succinct, perfectly expressed and without the unnecessarily rude and confrontational waffle, thank you Elegran.

Thank you Elegran - clear and concise.

Well said Elegran ? A clear explanation IMO.

Violetsky Yes, you did answer, on another thread, what you think a woman is, but that answer was what you see in yourself. It was a good description, and you sound a nice person, but there are many women (I am using that for what now often get called "cis women" - a term I don't like but I use it to be quite clear) who are different from you in one or other or more of the traits you see in yourself.

Women who have always been female and have gone through all the stages of womanhood can have all kinds of personalities. The only constant in all of them is their biological sex, their DNA and the contribution they give if they create new people. Females provide an egg, they carry the child until it can live independently and they give birth to it and feed it. Medical science helps some of the many women who have problems with some of the process, but it can't make a male do these things - males produce the other half of a child's DNA, the sperm. Men are males, women are females. Transmen present as men, transwomen present as females, but transmen are still female women and transwomen are still male men.

Transition cannot change this biological sex from male to female, or female to male. Someone can live as whichever they wish, and should be able to do so without abuse, but they have not changed sex

Violetsky "But what you do know is that I believe men may impersonate women or trans women to gain access to women... Without trand women they would still be able to achieve that."

And AS trans women they are still able to achieve that.

The ill-intentioned ones don't magically lose their ill-intentions by IDing as women. I haven't seen anyone on here saying that ALL trans women do it purely to access vulnerable women. What I do see is many people saying that among the transwomen there are some who could pose a danger, just as among men who have not transitioned to women there are some who pose a threat.

Then I see answers by you and others saying that we are blaming ALL trans people unfairly. This is not so. No-one thinks that ALL men are rapists and abusers because some of them are are, and no-one thinks ALL trans women are rapists and abusers because some of them are.

However, among other things, women's refuges don't allow ANY men in because you can't identify in advance who will abuse and who will not, and those women who have been abused once by people they trusted should be free of fear of it happening again. Why should that ban apply ONLY to those men who have now decided to self-identify as women but keep their male genitalia and/or hormones? What magic do they have?

Gender dysphoria is the answer. Real, genuine gender dysphoria.

Now I am not saying someone can't be trans and do harm.

But is an abusive mother a real mother? No, they are everything a good mother stands against. They have no right to be called mother.

So I can't look at someone who claims to be trans and see a real woman if they would violate another woman.

That does not take anything away from all the ways I can and do see trans women as women.

I don't know if that's right or wrong, I don't know if the mass of trans allies I am apparently floating about in would agree or disagree, it's just how I feel.

Women who deliberately abuse women aren't feminists.

Is that a good enough answer?

Before you go, can you please help me out with your explanation of what the difference is between a man in a dress and a transwoman?

I'm not going 'la la la', so there is no need to be rude - I am just unfamiliar with your definition of a woman - but if you are seriously suggesting that there is anything to separate a man in a dress and a transwoman then surely you must agree that it is wise to have reservations about a political party that doesn't know the difference?

If memory serves, it is only trisher who has grasped this particular nettle, and her definition was that a woman is anyone who 'presents as' such, and who agrees with her politics, which wasn't particularly helpful, although at least she bothered to respond. If I've forgotten any other definitions, please feel free to remind me.

Doodledog

I don't 'need' to ask anything, but as this is a discussion board, I am joining in the discussion.

I am not 'obliging' anyone to do anything. I am simply interested to know how people can believe TWAW when (a) they don't know what a woman is, and (b) don't know the difference between a man in a dress and a transwoman. If they do know the answers to those things and would be willing to share them, there might be more chance of a meeting of minds.

As it is, it feels as though we are being told that we are 'phobic' for not knowing something that they don't know either.

But I do know what a woman is and have answered, you are just sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "lalala" which doesn't help anything...

I'm off to have a proper discussion elsewhere for a bit again, it's very soothing after these threads

Mollygo

VS
But what you do know is that I believe men may impersonate women or trans women to gain access to women... Without trand women they would still be able to achieve that.
Now just look what you did. I thought it was going so well and then you dragged in the tired old rhetoric that men would still be able to do that. And that’s an excuse for you?
The point is, men would be doing it as males, not pretending to be something they aren’t in order to achieve it.
Hey ho, if you can’t see the difference, you can’t.

It's like you and I are both having different conversations and I'm not interested in having that sort of discussion, either meet me at what I actually mean and engage politely or don't waste both our time

Because people dont make decisions in the way you want them to.

Why would any voter chose a corrupt incompetent party? Because currently that’s all we’re being offered. Some parties are just more corrupt than others.

VS
But what you do know is that I believe men may impersonate women or trans women to gain access to women... Without trand women they would still be able to achieve that.
Now just look what you did. I thought it was going so well and then you dragged in the tired old rhetoric that men would still be able to do that. And that’s an excuse for you?
The point is, men would be doing it as males, not pretending to be something they aren’t in order to achieve it.
Hey ho, if you can’t see the difference, you can’t.

I don't 'need' to ask anything, but as this is a discussion board, I am joining in the discussion.

I am not 'obliging' anyone to do anything. I am simply interested to know how people can believe TWAW when (a) they don't know what a woman is, and (b) don't know the difference between a man in a dress and a transwoman. If they do know the answers to those things and would be willing to share them, there might be more chance of a meeting of minds.

As it is, it feels as though we are being told that we are 'phobic' for not knowing something that they don't know either.