Eddie Izzard

Eddie-bless him. He's the gift that keeps on giving. Such entertainment value!

But off at a slight tangent-what actually is a transwoman? If we cant define exactly what a transwoman is, we surely cant agree to any inclusion into women's spaces and activities.

On the one hand I have full sympathy with someone who has struggled with their sexuality and I feel that they need understanding and consideration. Then I will see yet another abhorrent article about a violent, abusive middle aged/older man who when caught for some hideous sexual assault has a eureka moment and realises, as he's about to be sent down, that he's been a woman all along and can he please go to a woman's prison. And once there, goes on to initiate a sexual relationship with a vulnerable woman. Is that man a transwoman? Is it someone who used to be regarded as a transexual, someone who had all the drugs and all the surgeries and tried to fit in. Maybe its someone who outwardly looks a bit like a woman, has had all the drugs, dresses as a woman but retains his penis. Or is it an Eddie type character, who used to be known as a cross dresser, who now gains publicity when he claims to be in girl mode. The autogynephile perhaps, who exhibits his particular fetish, is he a transwoman.

Even harder, what about the part time transwomen? The Pippa Bunces of the world or the Alex Drummond types showing women how to expand the bandwidth of being a woman. Could it be a drag queen offering a hyper sexualised parody of being a woman. Or a Kayla Lemieux, threatening to take a students eye out with the hugely prominent nipples on his gigantic fake breasts. Are they all transwomen? And if all the above are transwomen, and transwomen are real women, these individuals are actually women. What a chilling thought.

So is there a “right “ sort of transwoman that we should welcome into women's spaces. Or do we have to welcome all of the above or just some of them. If women only areas are opened up to all transwomen, how do women know which sort of transwoman is standing by the mirror applying lipstick.

Excellent article MargotLedbetter

No punches pulled, eh? As Brendan O'Neil says, no decent man goes into a women's loo or changing room. The men who do are the men who absolutely need to be kept out.

Lots of transgender people — Debbie Hayton, Miranda Yardley, others whose names escape me at the moment — don't use women's loos out of respect for women. The men we encounter in women's loos are the ones who have no respect for us.

Petunia, when you write this:

On the one hand I have full sympathy with someone who has struggled with their sexuality and I feel that they need understanding and consideration.

you create confusion. Sexuality is about sexual attraction, not about gender or identity issues. People struggling with their sexuality are lesbian, gay and bisexual people. It has nothing to do with the vast majority of cross-dressing or transgender people, who either suffer from dysphoria or autogynephilia.

Has anyone here read Trans by Helen Joyce? If not, it's the best book on the subject and covers a lot of ground. Helen Joyce is/ was a senior journalist on The Economist: she's a serious, meticulous investigator. It's sometimes available for 99p on Kindle.

MargoLedbetter Thank you for that link ✊?

MargotLedbetter

Mollygo

Perhaps admitting that by using the women's toilet openly and carefully Eddie did no one any harm at all is too much of a step.
You only think that, because you deliberately ignore the very valid reasons why it is not true-but that’s your problem, not mine.

If it was done for publicity it has certainly worked. That says it all.
I’m going to do this to prove I can and I neither know nor care whether it upsets anyone else Great attitude for a would be politician.

But try to do it without being personal, misconstruing, misrepresenting or otherwise attacking me.
These attacks? What attacks? Do you mean disagreeing with you on the matter of female rights and male wrongdoing?

I'll have so much more respect for you if you do. ???
Since your posts indicate you do respect men like EI and those TIM who consider their rights override those of females, you might understand why your possible lack of respect for me is unimportant.

Google the word autogynephilia and then spend half an hour reading about it. Read about paraphilias/ fetishes. Read about men who take used sanitary pads from bins to wear themselves in the pretence that they are women. Read about cross-dressing men who fantasise about assisting schoolgirls to insert tampons. Read about the men who get a sexual thrill from just hearing a woman peeing in the cubicle next door.

When an older man with a wife and children suddenly decides he's a woman in a man's body and starts cross-dressing, it's rarely some deep-seated dysphoric issue, it's usually because he's been watching sissy-porn (google at your own peril) on the internet. This is about sexual thrills and fantasy — and the fantasies are all demeaning to women. When a cross-dressing man enters a women's loo or changing room, the women in there aren't real people to him, they're just props in his fantasy.

Well I've read enough to know that autogynephilia is a concept formed in the '80s. which had no research behind it, and which subsequent research and studies have proved to be erroneous and which is now firmly rejected by most experts.
As for the sexual fantasies of other people it is widely known that people's fantasies are rarely enacted and seldom bear any relationship to reality. There are quite a few women whose
fantasy is rape. No one (I hope) thinks they really want to be raped. Still if those things entertain you...
As for the middle aged man with children. One of the first people to openly discuss their trans status was Jan Morris, writer and broadcaster, she had children and was married. I doubt if porn was the reason she transitioned it was hard to get hold of then. (1970s)

You're welcome. I started out a few years ago trying to be kind to transwomen and then the penny began to drop that many of them say they want to be women but have zero respect for real women and our rights — in fact some (the autogynephiles) seem to hate us because our existence reminds them they're not the genuine article. Then I read Helen Joyce's book and others about all the damage being done to young lesbians and autistic women who are having their breasts cut off and other barbaric surgeries and now I don't give a damn.

There are two sexes, male and female, and you can't change sex. I'm fine with Eddie Izzard wearing a frock and lipstick and being gender-nonconforming. Gender non-conforming is great, we're too trapped in gender stereotypes. But he's not a woman and he needs to respect women's boundaries.

If men create problems for themselves they need to solve them themselves. It's not up to women to make space for them.

Rosie51

icanhandthemback However, I do think the facilities should be completely contained so that there can be no means of any funny business and that women (of either sex) are safe. women of either sex? You don't consider women to be an exclusive sex class? Should we use female at all times to denote we are talking about 'women' with female biology? Ladies toilets were created to allow women to have single sex provision and free them from the 'urinary leash', allowing them to become mixed sex will put the leash back on women from some faiths and cultures.

What I want and what I am likely to get are two very different things. I think I probably used the wrong terminology (I am so new to this) and when I wrote either sex I meant women at birth and trans women, the latter also need to be safe and possibly face the same violence that birth women face from men.
As I have consistently said, my worries are more about the safety aspect which IMO can be handled by making all cubicles safer. I realise other people will see this differently and I respect their views. I am certainly not against single sex facilities but I really don't see the right designs of mixed sex use as putting us back on a urinary leash.

^Well I've read enough to know that autogynephilia is a concept formed in the '80s. which had no research behind it, and which subsequent research and studies have proved to be erroneous and which is now firmly rejected by most experts.
As for the sexual fantasies of other people it is widely known that people's fantasies are rarely enacted and seldom bear any relationship to reality. There are quite a few women whose^

You're talking dangerous nonsense Glorianny, and one has to wonder why you'd do so. The concept of autogynephilia has been under attack by the trans lobby, particularly by trans researcher Julia Serano, but is more widely accepted now than ever before — partly because what we've started seeing so much of it in the last few years.

For anyone who wants to understand about it, there are innumerable places to start. I've randomly googled a few:

www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/328921. This provides a basic definition of what it is.

Here's an article by trans woman Debbie Hayton talking about his own autogynephilia. Debbie knows he's male and doesn't object to male pronouns:
unherd.com/2022/05/the-truth-about-autogynephilia/

Ray Blanchard first came up with the classification 'autogynephilia' to describe the behaviours and thoughts of some of his patients. Here's a podcast about his theories:
gender-a-wider-lens.captivate.fm/episode/61-pioneers-series-autogynephilia-myth-and-meaning-with-ray-blanchard

Excellent article, Margot, and great post petunia.

Nothing to say about how your thread about Truss doesn't contravene your 'feminists shouldn't 'dis' other women' philosophy, Glorianny?

ICHTB your posts are always considered, and I understand that you are looking out for a loved one, which is bound to mean that you have a different perspective. I still believe, however, that the best solution is to work towards accepting transpeople for what they are, so there is nothing unusual about a man in a dress using a male lavatory (and the same for women in 'male dress', whatever that is). Pretending that men are women and women are men is what causes the problems - far more than the fact that some people want to be the opposite sex.

If we had men and women and transmen and transwomen, with equal treatment for all, would that be so bad? It might disrupt the autogynephiles' fantasies that they 'are' women, but if you can't please all of the people all of the time, you might as well please some of the people some of the time, etc.

If we had men and women and transmen and transwomen, with equal treatment for all, would that be so bad?

Doodledog, I wholeheartedly agree. I have never accepted you can change biological sex no matter how much you want to but I know I would want to be sympathetically treated no matter what I "identified" as. It horrifies me that people are abused for the way they choose to dress and they lifestyle they want to lead where it doesn't hurt anyone else. I certainly want to stick up for my rights as a woman but it doesn't mean I can't see modifications that could be made to protect us all as far as that can be achieved. .

One of the first people to openly discuss their trans status was Jan Morris, writer and broadcaster, she had children and was married.

It doesn't have to be porn, but porn explains the explosion in autogynephilia we're seeing now. I know several people who live in Wales and knew Jan Morris and his wife and family well. My family is Welsh and from that area. Jan managed to somehow create an idyllic picture of his life that people willingly swallowed. The reality was far more troubling and sordid and I have no doubt will come out at some point.

For those interested in the trans-widow experience I recommend this site:
www.transwidowsvoices.org

There is a long running support thread/s for trans widows on MN

Margot-sorry for the confusion. I was trying to keep my post shorter so I could have expressed that bit better. Of course no one can change sex.

Glorianny said Perhaps admitting that by using the women's toilet openly and carefully Eddie did no one any harm at all is too much of a step.

Admitting that EI using the women’s toilets did no harm would be admitting a lie. It did do harm. It harmed women by making those facilities unavailable to any women who cared to not share them with a man, even if it was just for a shirt amount of time.

His action signals that women are inferior and can be put in second place and it signals that he thinks of himself far more than he thinks of anyone else.

As for Jan Morris, in ‘her’ memoir, she said openly and plainly that she knew she was not a woman, despite surgery.

icanhandthemback

^If we had men and women and transmen and transwomen, with equal treatment for all, would that be so bad?^

Doodledog, I wholeheartedly agree. I have never accepted you can change biological sex no matter how much you want to but I know I would want to be sympathetically treated no matter what I "identified" as. It horrifies me that people are abused for the way they choose to dress and they lifestyle they want to lead where it doesn't hurt anyone else. I certainly want to stick up for my rights as a woman but it doesn't mean I can't see modifications that could be made to protect us all as far as that can be achieved. .

I think it is the over-reachers who have got us where we are. If, instead of insisting that TWAW they had accepted that no, they are transwomen (and the same for transmen), we could be a lot further along the road to full acceptance. As it is, expecting people to agree to believe the impossible, and expecting women to move over so that men can beat us at sport and take our places in hard-won spaces isn't going to work, but Stonewall and its followers get ever more entrenched, and make getting there more difficult.

SueDonim

Glorianny said Perhaps admitting that by using the women's toilet openly and carefully Eddie did no one any harm at all is too much of a step.

Admitting that EI using the women’s toilets did no harm would be admitting a lie. It did do harm. It harmed women by making those facilities unavailable to any women who cared to not share them with a man, even if it was just for a shirt amount of time.

His action signals that women are inferior and can be put in second place and it signals that he thinks of himself far more than he thinks of anyone else.

As for Jan Morris, in ‘her’ memoir, she said openly and plainly that she knew she was not a woman, despite surgery.

Agreed, SD. That is the attitude that underpins so much of this situation.

Women need to know our place, which is to stand back and let the men in - whether it is toilets, changing rooms, prisons, sports teams, hospitals or whatever - and if we speak up we are laughed at, dismissed with childish jokes, heckled or worse.

Yes. The reasonable transpeople are having their lives ruined by the extreme trans activists who will settle for nothing short of total capitulation from all women. They want us to lie about reality and bow to our erasure — because if anyone can be a woman, then what is a woman?

I feel sad for the 'old-fashioned' transpeople who were leading quiet lives before this blew up. People like Miranda Yardley are called 'scum' by other trans people because they do not pretend to have changed sex. It's tragic.

MargotLedbetter
I have been saying that about the trans who were leading a quiet life for a long time. Their anonymity -apart from probably family and close friends allowed them to be the way they felt, without being coerced into chemical or physical surgery.
The TIM and their supporters who have caused such an upheaval by claiming entitlement to the hard-won rights of females damage not only females but those who are the same sex as TIM remain.
The antics of men like IE, who think that the right to dress as they please gives them the right to invade female spaces compound the problems.

MargotLedbetter and Mollygo good and sensible posts which I totally agree with ???

Transwomen are women, the clue is in the name

VioletSky

Transwomen are women, the clue is in the name

Until such time that science and medicine can alter a persons chromosomes a trans woman can never be a woman they remain a trans woman and have all the medical problems associated with being male not female.

Unless you know better than the medical profession of course VioletSky ?

Transwomen is a different noun to women with a totally different meaning. Transwomen are male, women are female.

VS if you are if the TWAW persuasion, which I understand that you are; the correct terminology is trans women, and not transwomen

Now I prefer transwomen because that's a noun, if you use trans women (which is what TRAs prefer) then trans becomes an adjective to describe the women. I totally reject the concept that transwomen are just another kind of woman.