It’s about trauma and whose rights matter
I’m reading some of the comments on Sophie Grace Chappell’s letter to Rowling, and # 7 by Jean (comments don’t have separate links there) is…informative.
I am so exhausted by all this. I’m disappointed that you only engaged with one point of the 5 Rowling made, but OK, I’ll meet you on the ‘bathroom’ issue. It’s extraordinarily disingenuous for you and others to assume that the ‘bathroom’ issue is about ordinary women going about their days. It is not. It’s about trauma and whose rights matter more.
I live on the west coast of Canada, where Trans dreams have largely all come true. And here is what I know:
I used to volunteer extensively at a charity for vulnerable women – indigenous women, sex workers attempting to escape, domestic violence victims, rape victims. Women who are struggling to get survive. Two years ago our main funding body (initials UW) gained a new transwoman board member, and sweeping funding changes were implemented. We were told that unless we offered all our services to natal and transwomen equally, we would be immediately and irrevocably defunded. We pointed out that many of these women were terrified of male-bodied people, and had repeatedly been traumatized by male-bodied people, but there was no sympathy for such an argument. Apparently women who refuse to take part in therapy or other programs with transwomen were ‘transphobic’, and therefore undeserving of any charity or help. We suggested offering similar, parallel services, and were denied. So we acquiesced, and opened our programs to all who wanted them, even transwomen who made no attempt to pass. Our clients dropped out in droves, but not before one was assaulted by one of the new transwomen clients. The organization is now being sued, but I and others have since dropped away. The charity is now a shell of what it once was.
That takes my breath away. We’ve read about it before, but still…I suppose because it comes from a participant (if she’s telling the truth), it horrifies anew.
I have not doubt that you’ll call me a TERF, declare me transphobic if you respond at all. But I am still a woman, not a menstruator or whatever you want to call me. I am not going to go away or be silenced by anyone. Most women I know all believe the same, even if they are too scared to speak out publicly.
Definitely a sign of a progressive movement: people are too scared to tell the truth about it.
A very compelling story: both as a reality in and of itself, and as a reality behind all the bullshit.
If you are born male (anatomical criteria supplied on request) and you don’t want to use male facilities, washrooms and whatever, then best carry a tent or tarpaulin and a bucket with you wherever you go. If you have a car, get it fitted with a towbar for a trailer complete with portaloo or one of those mobile dunnies used in the construction industry. Or buy yourself one of those campervans with washroom built in. Could hardly be simpler.
Exactly Omar, the conversation should be about third spaces or individual spaces, but there’s woefully too little common sense among the wokesters.
Omar — all the well-traveled transwoman needs is one of these. Voilà — problem solved!
twiliter, the problem is, third spaces aren’t acceptable. Third spaces suggest trans women are something other than women.They suggest trans women are different. And they don’t let them ogle women.
One would have thought that transwomen, if they are actual honest-to-goodness women as claimed, would at least understand the concerns of women, and yet in reality they act as though they were merely men whose personal needs and desires are all that matter. It’s almost as though their male entitlement is one thing they refuse to leave behind with their male names, preferring to preserve that part of their past along with their meat and two veg.
Actually, is it just my imagination or have a lot more men jumped onto the trans express now that they know they don’t need to transition surgically in order to
cosplaylive as theirfantasyauthentic selves?Ikn, right you are, and the bizarre thing is that it’s them who are so insistently making the distinction. If they actually were women, or truly believed that they were, most of this nonsense would go away, but they don’t believe it either.
Peter N @#3:
Must get one in my size. But I’m not sure about the lid that glows in the dark. It could be radioactive.
;-)
@1 Or, as subsequent comments say, just use the accessible unisex toilet. Such a simple solution, if you take the life- and identity-threatening peril of using a male toilet at face value. And @5 to me that completely gives the game away, for two reasons. Those of us socialised as women always put others’ feelings first; the fact that they don’t shows more clearly than anything else that they don’t actually ‘feel like women’, and moreover have no idea what ‘feeling like a woman’ could possibly be. And just from a movement point of view, women support all kinds of things that don’t apply to them–childless women support maternal leave, menopausal women support abortion rights, women who will never face these threats themselves support rights for immigrant women and women in prison. But it’s clearly far too much to ask for these genuine 100% real male women to support anything that won’t directly benefit them, another obvious flashing red light of male entitlement (not to say that you lovely men out there aren’t willing to support things that won’t affect you, but you know what I mean).
#1 Omar
Waitaminnit! Dunnies. Australian slang. Are you… are you kidding me? Another one of us?? How many of us are here?!
You didn’t know Omar is Strayan?! Omar is the Ur-strayan in these parts.
Holms,
How many of us are here? A few. No make that a good few. Could even be a fair few. That many!
Ah yairs, I won’t bullshit yez. I hail from down the Castlereagh, by Warrumbungles’ side, / Where Siding Spring stargazes far and neear. / If you’re passing through Gilgandra, Coonamble or Coonabloodybarabran; / Drop by, and I’ll shout yez all a beear.
And I’ll chuck yer bloody dawg a bone as well. A good’un for a bluey.
Crazy. I’m sure there is some degree of confirmation bias going on, but sometimes it seems about 40% of the frequent commenters here are strine.
I’ll be roun dreckly fuh the beer, but that there dog o mine’s as good as any bluey any day o the week, but lazier. She gets the good un or swelp me gourd you’ll cop it.
Reminds me to donate to Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter…
https://www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/
https://www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/learn/resources/women-only-space