Reply To: What is a woman?

[Siderite]

What makes them a woman? Because they say they are? Ludicrous. The law says transgender people have a right to be treated fairly and can access some female spaces post-GRA. Transactivists claim trans women are women based on what they say, hence anyone saying they are a gender are that gender. This creates obvious issues, because sex is reality, and anyone arguing otherwise is bonkers. It affects women, who have been historically oppressed by men, but we have to pretend they’re more privileged than some men to avoid hurt feelings. It’s ridiculous.

Women have a right to single sexed spaces Why is it bigoted because some men have hurt feelings? Why isn’t it bigoted of you to not care about women being placed at greater risk? You have shown no care about that. The only risk of single sex spaces remaining are hurt feelings from trans identified men. The risk for women is an increase in sexual harassment and assault*, as figures show in gender neutral spaces (which allowing men in effectively does) and girls skipping toilets in school.

*None of this means I think every or the majority are sexual predators.

MRA = men’s rights activist/activism. Your arguments, as most transactivist arguments, sound exactly like theirs. Everything is about the ‘rights’ of males and women’s concerns are ‘dogwhistles’ and how it’s ‘demonising’ to acknowledge that men pose a risk to women. There’s no care or thought as to women, everything is ‘bigoted’ because men might have hurt feelings or be critiqued.

There’s a reason why suffragists saw single spaced toilets as a secondary goal of theirs. There’s a reason why Oxfam and Amnesty International campaign for women’s toilets in other countries (e.g. India). It’s because this makes women safer and reduces sexual crimes against them. It’s because men pose a risk to women, and the idea the risk dissipates the moment a man says they identify as a woman is laughable. No-one can seriously think that the risk to women can only come from men who identify as men, and that something as spurious as claimed identity changes this risk.

I am losing no sleep over being called a bigot for not caring about a lesser worry in an obvious conflict in rights claims. One of which is very spurious indeed.