Just to clear up the sport issue, here is a very short-lived thread from a few weeks back where I gave some of my views. I'm basically in favour of trans leagues/divisions in sports where that makes sense.
https://www.uptheclarets.com/messageboa ... &p=1981409
I'll answer some of the points that have been made to me, and in the interest of cohesion, without quoting them directly I'll express the points made as I understand them, reduced or condensed to the main arguments which I'll answer in a sort of catechistic form. I think this will be better than posting a huge messy and unwieldly wall of quote-posts, and I also don't know when I'll be able to respond again, so I'll make my point as thoroughly as possible in the hope that a back-and-forth is not needed. I apologise and stand to be corrected if in summary I have misrepresented anyone's points. I also apologise for the wall of text, but if you're sincere in any of this, you'll read it all.
First:
From a position of male privilege, I'm infantilising and condescending cisgender women by telling them their fears are misplaced.
Second:
The "system" might be abused by cis-male predators playing dress-up.
Answer: As I said above those fears are understandable, but only from a position of misunderstanding the reforms and their implications. And again, yes, cis bloke talking at women about how they feel, etc etc etc. Acknowledged. Point of pedantry: that doesn't mean I'm wrong though, because the accuracy of a preposition is not determined by the particulars of the person who utters the preposition, the truth or falseness of a preposition is bound by a logic that exists in spite of a human's individual person, prejudice and subjectivity. My argument to that point would be this: reform to gender recognition practices does not enable predators any more than the current status quo already does. This argument is true whether I'm a man or woman, cis or trans. The most charitable interpretation I could afford anyone making that point would be that reforms might been seen by them to potentially escalate the potential for predatory behaviour, but to this I would ask, precisely how? Please explain exactly how this would work. This is based on a misplaced notion of how predators behave, and again, this argument contains hidden assumptions about trans people that I've already talked about. You're focussed on a scenario where a predator walks into a changing room brandishing a certificate which states they are a woman in order to intimidate with impunity. The overwhelming majority of trans women would just want to get in and out as quick as possible. Believe me, for the most part they are more anxious over dressing room dilemmas than cis people, as are trans men. So do you legislate
for the majority of a particular minority group, or
against the potentiality of a small abusive minority falsely assuming a position within a minority group?
Okay, so what if we just focus on the "bad" ones? This leaves just those trans women who would intimidate or even commit a crime, and those cis men who abuse the system in order to gain some form of bull$hit alibi. But again I ask, how exactly does liberation of gender recognition laws cause this to happen any more than it currently does? We have already established that there is literally nothing stopping a man from walking into a women's dressing room or toilet, certainly not any relevant paperwork. The notion that a liberalisation of GR laws would notably increase the number of people doing this is pure fantasy because it assumes predators are somehow deterred by current gender recognition laws, which they most certainly are not. To state it would somehow open the door to predators is to misunderstand the bill and the existing self-ID policies used in public spaces. I'd again bring people's attention to the fact that a certificate is not needed to access certain women's spaces. GRR reduces waiting periods and removes certain indignities for trans people gaining legal recognition of their gender — foremost among them, from my vantage point at least, reforming the existing practice whereby a change of gender requires a medical diagnosis, which implies transgenderism (for lack of a better term) as being an illness or disorder, which it categorically is not. The bill has no bearing on self-ID practices already in use in public spaces. The only thing that stops a cis-male predator from entering a women's changing room or toilet and committing a crime is the laws that already prohibit people from doing exactly that. We do not have genital inspectors. Reforming gender recognition laws does not provide greater protection for trans people under equality law than that which already exists, and certainly not at the expense of the rights cis women have. This is being framed as an encroachment on women's rights (via an intrusion on women's spaces), but these reforms provide for no such thing: they address bureaucratic technicalities in the hope of lessening indignities trans people face; they do not strip women of a single solitary right. I can understand how blocking gender recognition reforms might give a superficial sense of security to cis women, but I'll say it again, this sense of security, this idea that stopping the liberalisation of gender recognition laws acts as a bulwark against an escalating encroachment on women's spaces by people with a penis — while I can understand how people get to that point of view on an empathetic level, it is not well founded precisely because the reforms to the law do not expose women to any greater threat than that which already exists, and thus, in blocking the reforms, trans people are hurt while women are made no safer, nor is any potential for escalating danger toward cis women avoided, because that potential for escalation was not carried by the reforms in the first place. The entire argument rests on the notion that a predator is enabled by existing gender recognition laws, and to liberate those laws would be to further expose women, and I suppose the only way I can respond to that is by asking this question: what stops a predator from entering a women's space and committing a crime? Try to answer that. The answer is certainly not a gender recognition certificate. And from this position, please explain to me how liberating gender recognition laws would further imperil women. Predators by their very actions cannot be said to be deterred by laws which exist to bind people to moral and acceptable behaviour.
The only thing left to say is that a cis woman opposed to GRR is intimidated by the possibility of a penis being in their proximity in an intimate space, and while this is completely understandable, it again carries the implication that with trans women it will be used as a weapon. You could propose a "solution" to this along the lines of redefining men's and women's spaces to spaces for those with a penis, and those without, but this would introduce more problems: it would force a masculine presenting trans man to enter a without-penis toilet, and a feminine presenting trans woman to enter a with-penis toilet. This brings practical harm, not imagined harm, to lots of people; to the trans woman who has to effectively 'out' herself as transgender by using a with-penis space, visibly and declaratively exposing her to male predators who either discriminate against or fetishize her, to cis women in the presence of a FtM trans man who might be made to feel uncomfortable in the presence of a masculine presenting trans man, and to the trans man himself who similarly is effectively forced to out himself as trans by using the without-penis space.
Why is legal gender recognition important to trans people? The same reason why anyone who is reading this post wouldn't want an incorrect gender to be etched into your own tombstone.