Believing in Biological Sex - a Sacking Offence

But this case has absolutely nothing to do with violence in prisons or women's refuges. This was about a woman who refused to accept that there are any other issues , that everyone should fit in with her belief that there are only two sexes and refused to use the pronoun someone preferred and that's why her contract was not renewed. Because of intolerance and it is intolerance we encounter again and again in this matter. It isn't feminist to be intolerant it is a product of a patriachal society and yes trans-women can be intolerant as well.
Yes there need to be safeguards, but good women's refuges already have safeguards because strangely enough there are some violent women who are dangerous to other women and who don't get through a risk assessment, just as a dangerous trans-woman wouldn't. As for the prison records it might be best to ask for the rape records that have been kept, rape being a crime that can only be committed by someone with penis whatever gender they may be registered as. But choosing to demonise a whole secion of society because of a few individuals is not the way to go. It is what patriachies have done throughout time usually because they were afraid of losing power. Being inclusive doesn't prevent women being women it makes us better and stronger than men.

I don't know how this can be halted to allow us all to take stock. We are l giving away sex based rights, worse, we are insisting that others take away our sex based rights. And it is happening while women are being taken to court over what is a woman or someone has mis gendered another. How utterly crazy this has become.

Its not disrespecting people who are transgender to stand up for ourselves.Noone else will. Farnorth has demonstrated that the powers that be have no idea of the impact of men in women's prisons. I suspect that lack of accounting is widespread.

Institutions are rushing headlong into diversity and inclusivity without proper risk assessments. Yet no one is asking the 50% plus of the population how they feel about it.

Different generations will have different views maybe, but we cant know without asking. The GRA reform was kicked into the long grass in the last parliament as it was so busy arguing about Brexit, but I'm sure it will raise its head again. What are we prepared to do?

wow farnorth. that is so disturbing. without definitions or accurate counting, we will loose our way here

Excellent post ,petunia,
Common sense , common courtesy & tolerance covers most situations.

My MSP told me that there is no evidence of problems with the practice of placing transwomen in female prisons.
(These are men who self-identify as women. No diagnosis of dysphoria, or Gender Recognition Certificate needed).

At my request, he asked the Scottish Prison Service for statistics on incidents and assaults involving transwomen in female prisons.
The reply was that no separate records are kept of such things.

All incidents are recorded as involving females, meaning that there can never be any evidence of success or otherwise of including males in female prisons.

Far North wrote:

"Alexa but what if some of those "big breasted women becoming engineers or pilots" are actually males who now wish everyone to believe they are females?

I am happy for them to present themselves any way they like, but they are not female."

That is one of the two main problems about lack of gender stereotyping. As I see it the only solution is for the special gender stereotype which goes by several names, e.g. 'laddish', 'macho' , (please insert other similar epithets) must come to be popularly viewed as undesirable personality traits .

In any case it's very unlikely a would-be macho bully would appear as a female woman with big breasts. The individual may be a female bully but that is not the case in point. Bullying itself is what is bad, or to put it another way, regarding others as prey for one's arrogant superiority.

Words have such significance, as we see with the earlier responses concerning pronouns. If individuals can be so upset about being referred to as she or he rather than they, how much more upset should women be to be referred to as a non man or cis woman.

But as most of us are unaware of moves to rebrand womanhood, how can it be stopped?

I stumbled across the (really quite nasty and sometimes spiteful) political aspect of the transgender movement about three of years ago when I was witness to an incident of mis gendering in the workplace. The incident appeared genuinely an innocent mistake but the fall out was extremely unpleasant. Until then I had no idea how widespread and insidious the movement had become.

But its working. If we cant state that a woman is an adult human female without fear of criticism, if we cant stand up to the erosion of women's rights such as female only prisons, refuges, hostels and yes, changing rooms and toilets because we cant agree what a woman is, we are doomed to be an add on to the male sex.

No, I mentioned its use by the Green Party upthread in response to trasher's post about patriarchy, and have asked more than once for it to be commented on, but it has been ignored.

Maybe 'non-man' is being ignored because people are unaware of its existence.

Here is an example of its use :

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/feminists-mock-green-party-young-womens-invite-to-non-men-a6987061.html

Yes, SueDonim. I agree with your post absolutely.

It would be interesting to see how many men (as opposed to non-men) would choose it.

Unless or until 'they' becomes the norm, it will be a minority (obviously ), by which I suppose I mean that it will be chosen by people who are making a statement, and if it is recorded and needs to be looked up so that people remember which pronoun to use it will set them apart. Fair enough, if that is what they want; but not so great for people who just want to get on with doing their own thing.

Introduction games/activities are the sort of thing where people would have a perfect opportunity to say how they want to be addressed during that activity - there is therefore no need to ask everyone in a company to declare their preferred pronoun for HR records.

I do understand the need that some people have for choosing their name and pronoun, incidentally. I know someone well who has changed their name to a gender-neutral one by deed poll, and has had both her passport and degree certificate altered retrospectively to their new one. That is a personal choice (which I respect) however. My problem is not with that, but with everyone being asked to make a gender-based statement to accommodate a relatively small number of people. And, the whole 'non-male' thing, which has still not been picked up on this thread.

Caster Semenya has been mentioned earlier. It is understood that she in fact has a disorder of sexual development (DSD) which gives her XY chromosomes. Yet again, people are conflating intersex with trans.

The comparison of the fight for gay rights with that of the trans lobby does not stand up. Gay people didn’t want to take away anyone else’s rights, they simply wanted the same rights as everyone else. The trans-activists, however, want to move in on women’s rights. They want to erase the very idea of woman, with their insistence that trans-women are women, with the reduction of half the population to Non-men or cis-women.

How can sex-based rights or protections be guaranteed when no one can define what a woman is? We hear often about how women are treated unequally in the world of work, amongst other places. If a law were brought in whereby half of MP’s had to be women, would we consider that rule to be fulfilled if 50% were male, 25% female and 25% trans female?

This trans stuff is driven by misogyny, by people who want to remove rights from women because they feel threatened by the growing power of women in the modern world.

How can using 'they' only wipe out women? would no men choose that pronoun? What it effectively does is tell you that the person refuses to be classified by their gender. In a group the pronoun would be used if you were saying something about the person. i.e taking part in an introduction game or other activity.

What about the young person I met who looked like a girl but chose when asked to identify as "they" have 'they' no right to do that?

Yes, IMO anyone has a right to ask to be addressed as 'they', and I have no problem with addressing people as such* if that is what they prefer. Where I disagree is when everyone is asked to make a statement by choosing a pronoun, which has happened in requests from HR to at least two people (working in different companies) of my acquaintance.

As regards toilets, it is not so bad if there are cubicles with floor to ceiling doors, but they are rare in public loos for safety reasons. Cubicles with gaps at top and bottom afford little privacy when they are unisex - anyone can peer over or under the door, stick a phone under or over and take a photo.

Regardless of the style of the door, if cubicles are all in the same area, behind the same entrance door, there is no reason why a man lurking around would stand out, in the way that he would in a female-only block. I have known several women who have been assaulted by men following them to the loo in pubs and clubs over the years (one very seriously), and am not at all happy with the idea of unisex loos, particularly on licensed premises. It is not remotely the same as sharing bathrooms in the home.

*Except that people aren't addressed as 'they', are they? It would only be if someone were being discussed that a third person pronoun would be used, and then usually in their absence. Nine time out of ten, people are addressed as 'you', or by their name. When everyone in a large company is asked to choose a pronoun, the only way people will remember which one to use is to look it up each time, which will, if anything, draw attention to those who choose 'they', as they are likely to be in a minority unless it becomes politically undesirable to use gender-specific pronouns, and wipe women out altogether.

Gosh I think I need to do some studying, it all sounds so complicated now.
Growing up in a largish village , folks were accepted as they were , no labels , no questions asked, no declarations, no condemnations.

The prefix 'cis' is intended to mean someone who is not trans. So it also defines us only in relation to something else.

Yes, I know (in this usage, anyway). I added that caveat so that nobody would pick on the fact that trans people are defined as something they are not. Interestingly, nobody has picked up on the non-men/non-male assignation applied to all women. Does anyone feel that this is not a patriarchal term?

Behold the future. It is inevitable that we humans will affect many possibilities & changes over time. Always have always will.

Here's an interesting article about a dad who got pregnant using female sperm, and has now given birth.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/transgender-man-gives-birth-non-21177808?fbclid=IwAR24qw3y6LlQqRKC9_6in6j6Jk4Txxl2CAX933I2mqBQzF__sNj6v5aK0bQ

The term ‘They’ doesn’t sound grammatically correct or even respectful ,
It makes a person sound like a non person .

What about the young person I met who looked like a girl but chose when asked to identify as "they" have 'they' no right to do that? They have every right to reject the constraints gender has put upon them and if it includes unisex loos they should be entitled to them. It really is something the young are just adapting to and all the posts rejecting the change are useless. It's happening.

The sensible , but probably not economically viable solutions is to have
toilets & changing rooms for Female only , Male only & Mixed ( so that there is a choice.)
Some toilets in motorway services are intimidating enough as it is( especially at night & especially if travelling alone .

Here's a pic of Debbie in the controversial teeshirt.

>> Debbie Hayton, 51, a physics teacher in the Midlands, who transitioned from male to female in 2012, is facing expulsion from the LGBT committee of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) for the slogan: “Trans women are men. Get over it!” <<

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-woman-debbie-hayton-faces-ban-for-transphobia-96tfkl5gc?fbclid=IwAR3sD51lRFuErQCijTyx6p5eZG1SCAmCQVvKQwsngz2eO7AbM4yrcd64KPg

Debbie is not the only transwoman who maintains that transwomen are male.

a move towards separate secure toilets and changing areas as a solution

Great idea!
Where those separate, secure facilities are not provided there should be no unisex provision.

It's just irrelevant really, trans people are not, according to the articles I read, causing any issues. It is men causing the mojority of issues. Trans people are just being scapegoated for it and if someone makes you a scapegoat it is because they don't like you.