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Apr 8, 2022·edited Apr 8, 2022Liked by Gabrielle Blair

Thank you so much for this. As always you have these mind blowing, creative answers and thoughts, while I am just baffled by how narrow minded a lot of people are. I have a hard time finding the right words in an argument and you do it so well.

My kid is trans and it hurts me how specially progressive people are weirded out by the transgender topic. See, I come frome an atheist family and God and religion has always been a foreign concept to me that I learned to respect, but don't understand. And I find it crazy how much we let churches invade safe spaces, abuse and exploit women and kids and noone is talking about shutting down religion or never letting priests work with kids again. If we are lucky, the church is dealing with the abusers, but not questioning the whole concept. So I always wondered why is it so hard to deal with the very few men who pretend to be transwomen in order to attack women, and not go after every transwomen, who wants to use the women's bathroom?

As to the topic of sports: I always sucked at sport but loved to move my body and I would have benefitted so much from a more creative and less competitive approach. I understand that competition is important for ambitious athlets but when I look at the fact that most professional athlets have a completely wrecked and worn out body by the time they are forty, I wonder if we might carried it a bit too far there, too.

So again: Thank you. This was an especially good read.

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Apr 8, 2022Liked by Gabrielle Blair

I wish your newsletters on Trans harassment were seen by many…many more than will see it. Unfortunately, those who hold views opposing yours wouldn’t be moved to change their minds because their views are based on beliefs that are deeply engrained in their brains. Perhaps some may be moved to think about these issues based on your extremely well expressed explanations, but not many.

Thank you once again…I am constantly reminded of the reasons why I support your newsletter by subscribing.

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Apr 8, 2022Liked by Gabrielle Blair

Gabrielle, this is my first comment to you, but I have read you for years. Saw your House Hunters and have your book. So it's no surprise I agree with these two emails. I have always thought that the bathroom issue was nuts. If all bathrooms had stalls this would not be an issue! Simple privacy manners and common sense could rule.

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Apr 8, 2022·edited Apr 8, 2022Liked by Gabrielle Blair

Your timing is impeccable! I just had a conversation about trans women in sports (as you said, it seems no one cares about trans men in sport) and I brought up the same idea of sport being developed inclusive of all genders. My example was gymnastics- how different would the sport be, and how would the physicality of top athletes change if flexibility and balance events (like the beam) were required for all?

I think the presence of trans and non-binary individuals are such a gift to us all, because their presence helps us all to question and dismantle the rigid stories we have been sold about gender.

Thank you for your usual clarity and wonderful links. I truly appreciate your commentary and writing.

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Apr 9, 2022Liked by Gabrielle Blair

I live in Melbourne, Australia, and I have noticed many parks and recreation areas now have genderless toilets - there is a row of toilet cubicles (all with doors, obviously) and then the taps for hand washing are outside the toilet cubicles, to be used by everyone. It is safe because every toilet cubicle opens not into a huge bathroom, but into the open. Anyone can use any toilet. This setup removes the worry of men attacking women in toilets because the only part of the facilities not visible is inside each individual toilet cubicle.

Another point about gender toilets - I have a severely disabled daughter and when I take her to a public toilet, I need to use a disability-friendly toilet so there is plenty of room in the cubicle for both my daughter and myself. In most places - parks, restaurants, shopping centres - the disabled toilet is separate to the male and female toilets, so is to be used by any disabled person. I feel lucky that we can access a disabled toilet when we are out, nevermind worrying about whether the last person to use it was a male. Perhaps toilets and bathrooms just need to be redesigned as so many have been in public areas where I live. It would certainly make life easier for people who need to toilet a child/disabled person or elderly relative of a different gender.

Side note : one of my brother-in-laws was verbally abused by a woman when he took one of his young children into a parent's room to change the child's nappy. HIS child into a PARENTS room. It upset him greatly and he was thereafter reluctant to use family change rooms with his children unless his wife was present. Some people are just horrid.

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I am a boyish female (often mistaken for male) with 5 children and a disability. This disability affects women and men very differently. A lot of women have received bad treatment or the wrong treatment based on the fact that the medical community persists in thinking that women are just small men. There is current studies that are finally discovering that the reason women suffer so many more side effects to medication than men is because they are medicated as small men rather than as someone with a completely different system than the male. This is a problem which persists across a number of work situations also - such as the construction industry or even the army where defence clothing or safety wear is designed for men or small men (women) and therefore doesn’t give them adequate protection. This goes so far as safety for women in cars where crash test dummies are men or smaller men - female bodies (which respond differently in a crash) have not been used in crash tests, or at the very least are not used in the driving seat.

There is a huge missing gap when it comes to serving a large section of society’s needs.

So I was very disappointed when I was told that they were removing the mention of ‘women’ in the important department of ‘women’s health’ in hospitals. Many many more women than men suffer inadequate treatment and if the mention of this is statistically removed I worry. I was also told that I should not describe myself as a mother in case it caused offence - mention of the fact that I was a mother was removed from my medical file - this had major implications on subsequent treatment because it is a big deal to my body that I have given birth to 5 children.

My daughter is struggling with heavy periods and as a 15 year old is struggling with frustration as she is watching her male counterparts and brothers simply grow muscles and get taller and stronger with no real effort while she pushes herself in the gym and struggles to hide her daily pain as her body softens into womanhood. It is important to me that I am able to discuss her differences and accept with her that there are some aspects of her body that feels unfair. Not to just say she is essentially a small man. She is important and her body can do incredible, but very different things from the male body. It is important that I help her to praise the positives to help her to accept the downsides. This is not to reject the sad and difficult situation of someone who feels they were born in the wrong body, but just because I am already fighting to get the needs met of my children and myself. I understand that this shouldn’t mean that trans people should not be treated with kindness and dignity, but that we still have a long way to go in our (society’s) treatment (literally) of women particularly and I don’t want to see this important work abandoned - but I am seeing that this is what is happening for the mistaken belief that it will create a fairer society.

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Apr 10, 2022Liked by Gabrielle Blair

I am always in awe and filled with gratitude when I witness how your brain works and then puts words together in the very best order. It's a beautiful thing and inspires me to read more and think more creatively. To add to your discussion about designing competitive sports differently, I played on Intramural, co-ed, highly competitive sports teams during my university years. All teams were required to have an equal mix on the field. The men on my teams admitted to thinking more strategically about positions and the mechanics of the game on co-ed teams vs. their all men teams. It made them better and smarter players on both kinds of teams.

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Apr 11, 2022·edited Apr 11, 2022Liked by Gabrielle Blair

I know you wrote this from a trans athlete point of view (and I 1000% agree with you on that subject so just hear my "YES!" from over here), but your examination of sports made me think of a book I read called The Sports Gene. Not all men are equal, not all women are equal, and in some cases, women will beat men and in others men will beat women. Your family ancestry is probably a better predictor of what sport you'll be good at than what sport your heart loves. This is why I'm good at hockey and a horrible runner even though I had to quit hockey due to logistics (live an hour from a rink/league) and have been running (or at least trying to) for almost 20 years.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16171221-the-sports-gene

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Incredible work as always, Gabrielle. Thoughtful, thought provoking, unthreatening - I wish more people out there were putting this kind of thing out into the world, and were the loudest voices around. I try to share your work when I can, and yet I often wonder, are the only people reading this those that already agree with me anyway? This is the kind of thing that should be blasted from the rooftops.

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I feel so ambivalent about the sea change on this issue over the last few years. I feel like on the left end, people are quick to condemn anyone who can't get in line with the new terminology and proper new opinions fast enough (like JK Rolling and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie). The vocabulary changes so quickly that I get confused and feel like a dinosaur when I see new terms like cishet or AMAB, and I'm actually trying to keep up and I'm still in my 30s. Meanwhile another huge portion of society is having Gender Reveal parties or otherwise sticking with long-standing norms about appropriate societal roles of men and women (including - prominently- gender-restricted roles in many religious organizations). I feel like the people coming to the table to discuss, trying to understand and grow, are getting shot down as insufficiently progressive or open-minded, while half of society is not even acknowledging that anything worth noticing is going on with our understanding of sex and gender.

Am I the only one who feels like women are being erased when we use terms like "pregnant person" or "menstruating person"? Is there still room in society for female-only spaces, like women's colleges? The new orthodoxy reminds me of the "I don't see color, so I can't be racist."

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