public bathrooms

Was using a public women's bathroom after having a few drinks with a friend at night, came out to wash my hands and there was a man in there. I nearly jumped out of my skin. If someone is truly transgender and wishes to be a female I think it’s important they not dress and have facial hair like a man and truly make an effort to dress and look like a woman because for all I know this was just a pervy guy trying to take advantage of drunk women in a public bathroom. How would we know the difference otherwise? Thank you for caring enough to ask for a woman’s opinion instead of assuming the rights of a very very tiny minority of society are more important than those of 50% of the population. In the future will the winners of prime minister elections be those with the least amount of votes because they must be vulnerable? What happened to democracy where everyone gets a vote instead of just a loud few people. I agree with the concept of a third bathroom space that could be used by anyone as then I would use that as I would be mentally prepared to run into absolutely anyone in the bathroom but when it says ‘female bathroom’ I don’t expect to see a long haired bearded fellow in there with me.

#australia #sydney #publicbathrooms #toilets #beardedmen

changing the subject from feminism to gender identity

My experience was fleeting but made me wonder about the females who put up with this behaviour on a constant basis. I attended an open political gathering that was meant to be about the history of feminism and anarchism. The organisers jumped too quickly into question time and what followed wasn't questions as such but long-winded comments (not unusual for these kinds of events I know) from MTFs about the awfulness of feminism and TERFs. This dragged on for some time, but nobody told them to get to the point and ask a question. Growing restless, I put my hand up and caught the attention of the panel, and then, finally it was my turn. I made a point of acknowledging the trans activists and asked about the positive history of feminism and anarchism. After all, the event was supposed to be about feminism and anarchism and as a non-anarchist that is what I was hoping to learn about. I wonder how many political meetings in which feminism and women are supposed to be the topics at hand are now being dominated by endless hand-wringing about gender identity. I also wonder how easy it would've been for me to feel free to ask a question seeking favourable responses about feminism if I was a member of the group that organised the event.

#feminism #anarchism #changingthesubject #genderidentity

the meaning of "woman"

I find that one of the issues around transgenderism is a complete lack of understanding of what it means to be a biological female.

When I hear transgender women speak about their womaness it is always in the most stereotypical terms - the very terms women in the 70s fought to get away from. It’s always “I liked pretty clothes, I liked dolls, I liked makeup etc. that’s how I knew I was really a woman". These have nothing to do with being a woman.

Being a woman is from the minute you were born being told that you were a little bit less than men, it is being told ‘no' more often than ‘yes', it is knowing that your voice will be overpowered if men are around, it is learning very quickly to ‘be good’, it is having the trauma of periods or having the trauma of not having periods, it is trauma of giving birth or the trauma of not giving birth.

When I have been in spaces where transgender women have entered they don’t behave as women, they behave as men, they feel they are owed space, they assert their rights, they don't nurture others as women do, they don't leave space for others as women do.

When my gentle son was three years old he announced he was a girl and his name was Mandy. He refused to answer to his real name and would only wear frilly nighties. This continued for a good two to three years. My ex-husband took him off to a counsellor who blamed me for being a feminist. I didn’t fight my son's demand to be a girl but neither did I reinforce it. I might have gently reminded him he was a boy but he could be a boy who wore nighties if he wanted. My son gradually grew out of wanting to be Mandy but it worries me what would have happened to him had he been born three years ago rather than forty years ago. His experimenting as a three-year-old would today be ingrained in him, he would be labelled transgender and I would be powerless under new laws to question his demands in any way even though he was only three.

As someone who grew up in the seventies and eighties I know only too well what the women before me fought for. I was regularly patted on the bum at work by male colleagues, called ducky or similar, I was paid 1/3 less than males for exactly the same role, I wasn’t promoted because I’d soon leave to have babies anyway. I was expected to leave work and never return if I became pregnant. Men I dated expected sex in return for dinner. I was taught to play dumb so that I didn’t bruise men’s delicate egos.

I support transgender people as transgender people but that is something different from being a woman. It seems to me that those who identify as transgender women are getting their egos bruised and are responding to this in just the same way men before them responded to feminists in the seventies who were labelled as 'men-haters', 'hags who couldn’t get a bloke', or 'ugly bitches'.

Now women are 'TERFs' - it's still name-calling, it’s still silencing the voices of women.

I don't see any of these transgender women showing any respect towards the gender they want to become.

#australia #language #concepts #meaningofwomen #beingawoman