pelch

Most people are fine with tolerating the 'gender identity' beliefs of others, up to a point. It's like that for other beliefs too. For example, if you're an atheist then you should not have any issue with your neighbor attending church each week and praying with other like-minded people.

However if you were having a religious belief imposed on you - like, being compelled to pray under threat of being fired, having every previously secular space converted into a place of worship, children in school getting taught it as if it's fact - then that would be a problem.

Same for 'gender identity' beliefs. The ideology is that any claims of 'gender identity' must be believed and that this should override sex, so for instance a man who says he has a 'female gender identity' is a woman and should be treated as such in every regard, according to this point of view. Children in school are being taught this as if it's truth rather than a belief.

This has real-world implications. If a man wants to cross-dress and pretend he's a woman in the company of other like-minded people, that's not really anybody else's business. This can be tolerated like any other private belief and practise of it. But if he starts using his claims of 'gender identity' to impose himself in female-only spaces, disregarding women's boundaries and consent, then that becomes a problem for very many women. And a lot of men find this problematic too.

It's even worse in places where law and policy have been altered to further impose this ideology. Women in prison have been raped by male inmates who were incarcerated there as a result of claiming to have a 'female gender identity'. Female athletes are being pushed out of their own competitions by men who pretend to be women. Dating spaces for lesbian women are increasingly being invaded by men who call themselves lesbians and cry 'transphobia' when they are asked to leave.

In effect, this ideology of 'gender identity' enables a form of male dominance over women, and is having a profoundly negative effect on women's rights in places where it has been enforced. I think that in itself is good enough reason to oppose it.

At least in the UK, data from the Ministry of Justice shows that trans-identifying male prisoners are significantly more likely than other men to be incarcerated for sex offences.

There is also no data whatsoever indicating that if a man calls himself a woman, then he poses any less risk to women than other men.

I agree that prisons need to stay sex-segregated, or revert back to being so where authorities have made this abominable ideological error of incarcerating men in the women's prisons.

> this whole conversation is based upon the idea that trans women aren't valid

Exactly. They aren't. A 'trans woman' is a type of man and needs to be treated as such when his demands and desires come into conflict with women's needs.

No-one is okay with any of this but it makes no sense whatsoever to try to solve a problem within men's prisons, i.e. men raping men, by moving some of these men to women's prisons.

Women's prisons do not exist for the purpose of forcing women to be human shields against male-on-male sexual violence.

Not just women's sports but many other women-only spaces too. The key question is, should men be permitted to ignore women's boundaries and consent if they say they are women? If your answer is yes, then you're likely a misogynist who sees men's desires as more important than the dignity and safety of women and girls.

More specifically it is development of testes or ovaries that makes an individual male or female. This concept applies across all gonochoric species, not just humans.

Female prisoners have been raped, sexually assaulted and even impregnated by these male prisoners who they're forced to cohabit with. There's no excuse whatsoever for prison authorities using women as human shields for male-on-male violence.

Women's prisons absolutely need to be female-only, for the safety and dignity of women. If male prisoners are in danger from other men, for whatever reason (ex-police, pedophile, trans-identifying, etc.), then that is solely an issue to be dealt with within the male prison estate. Not for vulnerable women to be punished with.

This is the problem with the so-called "trans rights" movement more broadly. Their activists will bend over backwards to cater to whatever demands these trans-identifying males have, while completely disregarding all the harmful negative impacts upon women. It's a deeply misogynistic type of activism that is centered almost entirely around male desires.

> transgender men and nonbinary people also get pregnant

The former are women pretending to be men. The latter are women if female.

Let's avoid language that perpetuates these identity delusions.