Women's rights under attack

So you're fine with rape victims being expected to "reframe their trauma" by having male rape counsellors when they are unable to be alone in a room with a man?

Could you explain why it's "obsessive" to say this is a problem and that people need to speak up and not just leave these women to deal with it themselves?

(Surely you meant to write "its" to complete the set in that last sentence? 😁)

Then …. don't??

Seems more than a tad performative to make multiple posts to say you're not going to discuss the substantive issues because I've failed some sort of purity test in your mind.

But ok. I will kindly authorise you to keep on scrolling by and not post in here ever again.

I mean - you seem to want my blessing to do that, so… 🤔

Well yes of course, since the way he came into the discussion, in the post you quoted when you said he wasn't deputy head of the Greens was this:

Or how come this man, Mothin Ali, deputy leader of the Greens, the ones who won the Gorton and Denton by-election the other day,

So unless there's also a Gorton and Denton constituency somewhere in Ireland, and which also held a by-election last week, it was obvious that I was referring to the UK Greens.

If I were posting on the politics forum, I MIGHT feel the need to specify - but TBH if I'd gone to the bother of explaining that I was talking about the party that had just won a named by-election in England, I'd probably assume that most people's reading level was up to the challenge.

It's amusing how on a thread about women's rights, generally, in a forum about women's issues, generally, a man who misreads a post which is clearly about the English Greens because it explicitly mentions an English constituency, but being a man he can't just say he made a mistake and instead he makes up new rules about what we're allowed to talk about on this forum.

Or maybe, mysteriously, all those other posts and discussions just pass you by.

Hilarious.

A good rule of thumb IME is never to put too much faith in someone's description of someone else's opinion. And that's what you're doing there.

IME most women who don't believe that one can change sex generally feel that a transgender person who genuinely passes as the other sex, both in looks and behaviour, can use whatever toilet they want.

What women want is not to find themselves berated for being bigots when someone's behaviour is NOT appropriate and they complain to the people in charge - as happened, for example, to the woman who complained that Darren Merager had his penis out in full view of little girls in the women's spa in the Wi Spa incident in Los Angeles. Darren Merager turned out to have a history of exhibitionism, including masturbating outside an elderly lady's window - and yet the moment he played the trump card of "I'm trans", the woman who complained was told that she was in the wrong.

There are a very few women who have been so traumatised by men's abuse in the past that they are not so relaxed about even transidentifying men who pretty much pass as women, but even they don't actually care whether a transidentifying woman with a beard uses male facilities or not.

Where such a person should go might still be an issue, I agree, but it's a men's rights issue, not women's rights, and as such is one for the Gentlemen's Club and not this thread. Maybe start a thread over there?

as far as I can make out anyway

That's your problem right there. Your own blindness.

For instance guess what country carries out the highest rate of trans surgeries?

The Guardian wrote “Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran occupies the unlikely role of global leader for sex change”

Or here: from the NYT:

Iran Lures transgender foreigners for surgery - but forces Operations on Locals

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/world/middleeast/iran-transgender-surgery.html

Now think about why a right wing, deeply conservative country prefers to carry out conversion surgery on gay men than tolerate homosexuality?

And your nonsense about "returning" to a horrific status for women sits rather badly with that too doesn't it? I mean, considering the position of women in Iran.

And now, compare that to gay counsellors at the GIDS/Tavistock clinic in London being accused of transphobia when they suggested that some of their young patients might be motivated by familial or even internal homophobia when they came looking for a sex change to cure their body dysphoria?

Just as the co founder of Mermaids, Susie Green said about her own son, whose father couldn't accept that he might have a gay son, but was actually ok with having a trans daughter.

You did say it. I was quoting your actual words: here's the post:

"Trans-men are women, unless they look like men"

Nobody said that. You are misrepresenting an argument that you disagree with. That's dishonest.

And I say dishonest because I know it was a deliberate misrepresentation of what was actually said. However if you've now abandoned the ptretence that anyone said that and now want to discount that lie and reframe to a more reasonable attempt at describing other people's opinions, I suppose this post below is closer to what you feel you can actually stand behind:

@Mother Shaboobu has replied so I won't respond to all of that post, but there are a few points that are important.

Focusing on the at risk party makes sense. I didn't say that focus was strange. The strange part is hyper-fixation on only half of trans people to be point of contradiction is strange. Especially when its framed as a safety issue - reason why should be obvious.

You realise that the term "transgender people" is an almost meaningless category. There are in fact two main profiles of "transgender people": older almost exclusively male, often already parents from a longstanding heterosexual relationship, and with no other significant mental health issues. People like Jan Morrison, Lydia Foy, Rachel Levine etc.

Then there's a much younger, majority female cohort, where other issues such as depression, autism and trauma, and even suspicion of parental child abuse (10% of the children attending GIDS had a parent with a conviction for child sexual abuse and many had spent time in care). This younger cohort used to be much smaller and mainly male, but with the same psychological issues that the older cohort didn't show. The massive increase seen in the last decade however is almost entirely due to an entirely new group, young females. The number of boys has not grown similarly.

The treatment designed for a previous cohort of predominantly younger boys who had exhibited gender dysphoria since early childhood was simply transferred to a completely new population of majority teenage girls with no history of gender dysphoria in childhood, with no data or evidence to support it. Worse, this new population has an even greater incidence of pre-existing mental health issues, neurodevelopmental differences and troubled backgrounds, including an over-representation of children in care, and adolescents who are same-sex attracted (one of the most disturbing aspects of this book is the number of times homophobia is cited by clinicians as an area of concern.)

So yes, there absolutely is a problem with girls who wish to be boys, and if you read my posts I've talked more about those girls than I have about adult males. However the problem is an entirely different one. These children are being pushed into a pathway of medication and surgery instead of getting the mental health care they need.

And then there's this:

Eddie Izzard, good example. There's a bit of a difference between Eddie, and someone who has done "all the work", as you put it. And I agree with you. That's the point/

As I said in a previous post, I don't mind if transwomen use female spaces - and often you'd be none the wiser, because I don't agree you can always tell. But anyone who is gender non conforming is now deemed trans, and this does a disservice to trans people because it minimises what trans means - which is not simply cross-dressing. Someone who is simply cross-dressing, or who just *says* they identify as the opposite sex, is not trans, and shouldn't use the spaces of the opposite sex.

I agree with your first statement in bold. That's the point. Some do successfully present as the transgender. Like I said, it falls apart when you consider all the scenarios.

Cross dressing is not trans. Confusing the two is unfair to all involved.

Two things here: Eddie Izzard used to say he was a cross dresser. He now says he is a woman whenever that suits, but is still a man when that's better for work purposes. He uses women's toilets. He claims to have "girl phase" and "boy phase", which for someone in their 60s is in itself a bit odd, but, whatever.

By your thinking, though, is Eddie Izzard a man, a woman, someone who genuinely flips from one to the other, or just a fake?

Concerning cross dressers more generally, how is anyone to tell the difference? Are we to assume that no man would ever lie about being a woman in order to, for instance, spend a prison term in a women's jail which are lower security than men's prisons, and less dangerous for a man, obviously? Or maybe just for the fun of taking a shower in the female changing section of the local swimming pool?

Neither of those issues are relevant for FTM transidentifying women. Hence why women don't care if biological women whose drug use has led to them growing a beard wish to use the men's changing rooms. I'm sure you can see that really.