tixialu

I admit I am quite sceptical that providing carte blanche access to women's spaces to males who identify as transgender will have a significant impact on reducing suicide rates amongst this population, such that it outweighs the negative impacts on women. I've not yet seen anything that convinces me this is an appropriate policy direction, but I appreciate the opportunity to consider arguments that may change my mind.

My view is that with something as complex and multifactorial as suicide, we have to be cautious in ascribing a particular cause or mitigation, and the available data must be examined with caution.

The first abstract you linked describes a 41% attempted suicide rate, but I'm not clear how this was determined or exactly which population it applies to. It seems to be for a poster at a psychiatry conference, the full copy of which isn't available online, as far as I can see. Do you know how this figure was arrived at? I would be interested to see the original source.

In the second paper you linked, which concerns transgender people in India, it sounds like there are many other correlative factors that involve poverty and lack of access to education and employment, with many living in slums, begging and working as prostitutes. Access to the bathroom of their choice or other opposite sex spaces seems to be the least of their issues, and it's not mentioned in this paper. The section discussing resiliency sounds promising though, with correlations to higher income, better support structures, and being employed in a mainstream job. Perhaps these are the factors best addressed by policy, in India at least?

Another alternative is for women to refuse to participate in such competitions en masse, or to threaten to. Basically taking strike action against unfair conditions.

It came close to this in a British cycling race back in March: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/mar/30/trans-cyclist-...

"The UCI's decision came amid a growing backlash from within the sport, with the Guardian understanding that a number of female riders were talking about boycotting the event in Derby because they felt that Bridges, who was on the Great Britain Academy programme as a male rider until being dropped in 2020, had an unfair advantage."

The problem is that being justifiably critical of laws and policies that eradicate female-only spaces is now being framed as a bigoted and intolerant anti-trans viewpoint, and this reframing is being used to suppress such critical speech.

Sadly, there are men who adopt trans identities as a mask for their sex deviance, enough that it is a real problem. These are the men that women definitely do not want in their spaces.

Some examples:

- Janiah Monroe, a man who murdered his male cell mate, was transferred to a women's prison, and raped a female inmate there [1]

- Ramel Blout, a man who was housed in a women's prison and raped a female inmate just after she'd finished showering [2]

- Karen White, a man jailed for rape, who sexually assaulted two female inmates while in a women's prison [3]

The problem isn't trans people in general, it's these new policies and laws that are obliterating female-only spaces, and thus allowing men who would never previously be permitted to be in proximity to commit abuses like the above.

[1] https://www.womenarehuman.com/transgender-felon-who-killed-m...

[2] https://reduxx.info/transgender-inmate-convicted-of-raping-f...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/11/transgender-...

Mostly because some places - prisons, for example - need to be segregated by sex, and the transactivists want to abolish that.

And because they're also pushing a large-scale redefinition of the terms "woman" and "man", and trying to make it law, which most people don't agree with.