woman as the emotional support human, including for transwomen

I've noticed that some younger and older women seem to spend a considerable amount of their emotional resources, particularly online, encouraging and validating transwomen's sense being a "a pretty, attractive woman" as they might a female friend if that friend wanted or needed such validation or assurance.

Yet, it's much more than basic encouragement. It's almost as if these women have fallen into a default supportive role of supporting transwomen being 'real women' via a focus on fashion, beauty tips and continual feedback and reassurance.

This worries me because it feels like transwomen's need for constant reasurrance about being 'real women' is being met somehow by some biologically born females taking it on themselves, or believing that they have to be such reassurers and advocates for transwomen. Perhaps even instead of championing themselves and their female friends and their needs and pursuits in life.

Once again it's not unlike like a woman having to buck up and support a man all the time (albeit a man who believes he's a woman or wants to be one).

#australia #emotionalsupporthuman #femalesocialization #support #reassurance #validation

solidarity & shared experience in the female bathrooms

Here is a story that vividly illustrates why women and girls do not want men and boys in the bathrooms/toilets. I promise this story is 100% true.

I was 13-years-old and visiting an amusement park with my friend and both of our mothers. It was a hot summer day, and the park was very crowded. My friend was wearing white shorts.

My mom and I were walking behind my friend and her mom, and I suddenly saw blood on the back of my friend's shorts. I ran up to her to tell her. She was mortified.

We all scurried to the women's room, protecting her from view. When we got inside the women's room, my friend's mom told her to take off her shorts, which she did. Her mom scrubbed the shorts in the sink, while my friend stood there, sobbing.

While scrubbing out the shorts in the sink and listening to her daughter sob, my friend's mom tried to comfort her with these words: "Don't worry, honey, we're all women in here. We all know what you are going through."

Here's the thing. Even if you believe that a male person can be a woman (which I don't), even if you think TWAW (and I don't), that last sentence of my friend's mom's words make it obvious why we don't want males in our bathrooms.

No one born male can ever possibly have the slightest clue what it feels like to be a 13-year-old girl and starting a period in the middle of an amusement park while wearing white shorts. No one born male can ever know what my friend was going through.

If we compromise, even a little bit, no mother will ever be able to comfort her daughter in the way that the mom in this story comforted her daughter.

No mom will ever be able to say to her mortified, sobbing daughter, "Don't worry, honey. All of us in here know what you're going through."

No compromises.

[*Moderator's note: this is from a tweet thread by Kara Dansky @KDansky, 7th May 9.49am, which another Twitter user asked her to submit here, and I have reproduced with her permission].

united states correctional facility

Washington State has recently begun transferring violent men - men convicted of rape, sexual depravity, and femicide - who “self-identify” as women to the state’s only female correctional facility in Pierce County. One of these men has already violently raped a vulnerable female inmate in the mental health ward. Another man was suspected of undergoing gender reassignment in order to avoid prosecution for his crimes (he was ultimately convicted of murdering three female sex workers); his “identification” as a woman and transfer to a female correctional facility is now giving him unprecedented access to vulnerable inmates and female guards where he has already engaged in sexual misconduct and attempted rape. Yet another transferred man was convicted of the rape of a 12 year old girl.

According to guards, 150+ men are in line to be transferred to the female correctional facility by the state, simply because they proclaim to be women. Concerned citizens who have filed Public Records Requests to try to get information from the state Department of Corrections are now being sued by the Washington ACLU to block their access to any information about the presence of men being housed with vulnerable women who literally cannot escape them.

Washington State and Jay Inslee (the governor) apparently believe the interests of men, even men who are convicted sexual predators, outweigh the rights of women to be safe and unviolated in their persons.

[*Moderator's note: here is an article about the prison rape, and here is an article about the ACLU's suppression of the information request].

#unitedstates #piercecounty #prisons #correctionalfacility #rape #sexualviolence #maleviolence #safeguarding #safety #womensrights