Trans Women are not Women

[ponderingturtle]

If, then, a group of biological males aggressively campaign for access to such enclosures, and some of them have been shown to be predatory, even if many or most of them are not, there will be--to say the least--pushback.

Exactly why gay men need to be put back out of locker rooms and the like. Sure most of them are OK but if one is bad it will hurt them all and better be safe than sorry.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Yes; this exactly. It's a tiny minority wanting to break a system that works pretty well for almost everyone else just because they don't like the way it works for them.

Just like traditional straight marriage.

What percentage does the minority need to hit to get rights?

 

[Meadmaker]

They seem to trust the members to act responsibly.

Seems naive.

But, until problems appear, it seems like they've gone out of their way to accommodate. Personally, I thought the y was kind of expensive. I started using planet fitness after my kid stopped swimming.

 

[Steve]

Seems naive.

But, until problems appear, it seems like they've gone out of their way to accommodate. Personally, I thought the y was kind of expensive. I started using planet fitness after my kid stopped swimming.

They have been operating like this for 20 years. I guess a paying membership is a tad more responsible than the public at large. and they can ban anyone who is a problem.

I agree that they are expensive. They do offer more than a fitness facility for kids though - summer camps, school break camps, arts and activities clubs. Plus it is local to us, walking distance if we are not in a hurry.

 

[d4m10n]

Just like traditional straight marriage.

This is a far from useful analogy, IMO.

I didn't have to change anything about my straight marriage when my sister-in-law got gay married, unless you count attending the ceremony.

 

[d4m10n]

It would be ironic if the battle between two groups who want the use of female-only spaces were ended by the complete removal of female-only spaces.

I have no problem with voluntary private associations setting whatever arbitrary inclusion criteria they please. If some lesbian music festival wants to limit their attendance to "women born women," so be it. If the Klan decides they will happily include white people baptized Catholic (like myself) but exclude people of Ashkenazi ancestry (like myself) then so be it. If the League of White Women Married to Hispanic Men chooses to exclude my wife because of her well-documented Native American ancestry, so be it. (Admittedly, I made one of these examples up.)

The question (IMO) we're focusing on here is what places of public accommodation (e.g. restaurants, shops, gymnasia) should do if they choose to provide sex- or gender-segregated facilities to the public. In my opinion, they should minimize segregation as quickly and efficiently as economically feasible, because it perpetuates the impression that women are "the weaker sex" and thus require extra protection not afforded to everyone else. Men and women alike should be able to access safe, private, lockable stalls for toilets and a common room for washing up thereafter. This solution has already been implemented in a few places, and there is no evidence indicating that such a solution would be any less safe than the current arrangements which rely on social taboos to keep anti-social predators in check.

 

[The Atheist]

Bible stories didn't *teach* us right from wrong, we already knew it, they just illustrate it in easy to remember ways.

Utter nonsense. What is right and wrong about hiding genitalia? That is straight out of the religion playbook and occurs nowhere else in nature.

Christ, Jonathan Swift was writing about this 300 years ago - if we all went around naked, nobody would notice any of the baloney we've been seeing about women's spaces & bathrooms.

 

[Rolfe]

Now this is weird. I accidentally found myself in a twitter thread where someone had tagged in Buck Angel. I thought, oh dear I'm blocking that pronto. But I had to go to his profile to do that and I read his timeline and, er...

He's just found out about James Caspian's detransitioning study being blocked and that girls of 13 are having mastectomies and he's appalled about both developments. He's shouting down someone who doesn't want research done into transgender issues. Someone just told him about the incidence of autism in ROGD girls and he's appalled about that too. They're calling him a transphobe, because Graham Linehan is applauding what he's saying. He just called the weird gender IDs a mental illness (twitter bans people for that). He's now referring to the "trans bullies" and rather angrily saying that of course he's biologically female.

This looks very much like watching somebody peak-trans. We're right through the looking-glass here.

ETA. Good Lord, somebody just called him a terf. And he just asked what self-ID is and somebody just told him and it's like waiting for the second shoe to drop.

 

[Roboramma]

Our local YMCA has open change areas in the locker rooms along with some private cubicles. Also open gang showers along with some private showers. Those who do not wish to expose their bodies to others are easily and properly accommodated.

That’s great. On the other hand my yoga studio has two women’s and one men’s changing room with attached showers. They are too small (and busy) to even think about having private changing areas inside. I’ve also got one unisex toilet/shower that is used one person at a time with the door locked, but if many people wanted to use it the lines would get unfeasibly long.

 

[Cheetah]

Nonsense - evolution provides no basis for morality, otherwise things like rape, murder & theft would not be against human laws. Evolution says the fittest survive and the strongest mate with the most females, so as to replicate their genes.

Utter nonsense. What is right and wrong about hiding genitalia? That is straight out of the religion playbook and occurs nowhere else in nature.

No.

It is well known in evolutionary psychology.
Modesty, as in behaviors to avoid the encouragement of sexual attraction in others is common amongst females across the animal kingdom, from bugs to humans.
Unfortunately nature has demonized males.
The well known: Males and females usually differ in reproductive fitness optima. Males generally prefer to maximize their number of offspring, and therefore their number of mates; females, on the other hand, tend to care more for their offspring and have fewer mates. Because of this, there are generally more males available to mate at a given time, making females a limited resource. This leads males to evolve aggressive mating behaviors which can help them produce offspring.
Sexual coercion is a widespread strategy and it's no wonder females evolved behaviors to avoid rape.


Because of evolution men and woman have different adaptive biases when it comes to sex. Men overestimate sexual interest from woman, woman underestimate commitment.
GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PERCEPTIONS OF SEXUAL INTENT: A QUALITATIVE REVIEW AND INTEGRATION
It appears that rape might result in a higher incidence of pregnancy (7.98% vs 2-4%) per incident than consensual sex.
Are per-incident rape-pregnancy rates higher than per-incident consensual pregnancy rates?
Rapists might be unconsciously targeting woman in the fertile phase of their menstrual cycle and woman during the same phase display behavior to decrease the risk of sexual assault.
Risk taking and Women’s Menstrual Cycle: Near Ovulation, Women Avoid a Doubtful Man
All this means is that female animals have been at risk from males for a long time, even in evolutionary terms. For a woman to be alone with an unknown man in a 'private space' would have been a considerable risk since before we were human.

I totally understand why woman would want separate bathrooms with no men in them.


If you feel demonized because of this just blame evolution.

 

[Francesca R]

In my opinion, they should minimize segregation as quickly and efficiently as economically feasible, because it perpetuates the impression that women are "the weaker sex"

Just do away with protection and then women magically won't be.

Yeah right. I'm sure women are jumping up and down in favour of that one.

 

[Ziggurat]

In my opinion, they should minimize segregation as quickly and efficiently as economically feasible, because it perpetuates the impression that women are "the weaker sex" and thus require extra protection not afforded to everyone else.

But women are the weaker sex. That’s pretty clear. They have considerably less physical strength. That isn’t socially conditioned, it isn’t a social construct, it’s not a patriarchal conspiracy. It’s a biological fact. Given that fact, is it really wrong to provide them the protection of segregated private spaces for intimate functions? Why?

 

[d4m10n]

Just do away with protection and then women magically won't be.

Do away with protection?

Did you actually read my post?

Men and women alike should be able to access safe, private, lockable stalls for toilets and a common room for washing up thereafter.

If you continue to insist that sex-segregated spaces somehow provide physical safety, you're going to have to take up at least some burden of proof. You cannot expect us to simply assume a sign on the door is going to prove effective against someone bent upon violence.

 

[d4m10n]

But women are the weaker sex. That’s pretty clear. They have considerably less physical strength. That isn’t socially conditioned, it isn’t a social construct, it’s not a patriarchal conspiracy. It’s a biological fact.

A good argument for having separate sports leagues, where physical strength matters. Not a good argument for sex-segregation of public spaces more generally.

 

[GlennB]

Do away with protection?

Did you actually read my post?

If you continue to insist that sex-segregated spaces somehow provide physical safety, you're going to have to take up at least some burden of proof. You cannot expect us to simply assume a sign on the door is going to prove effective against someone bent upon violence.

I'd have thought it was a useful deterrent, rather as traffic lights are. But, as has been mentioned many times here, straight physical violence is not the only hazard women face. In an ideal world this wouldn't be the case, but it's a long way from ideal.

 

[d4m10n]

I'd have thought it was a useful deterrent, rather as traffic lights are.

I'd've thought that male predators would rather like the idea of a room where they can rest assured that rule-following, law-abiding males won't happen upon them while they are predating upon women.

 

[DragonLady]

I'd've thought that male predators would rather like the idea of a room where they can rest assured that rule-following, law-abiding males won't happen upon them while they are predating upon women.

They do. But they have to enter and exit that room, and have no idea who is standing outside when they do. If they stay too long, another person will enter, and that's risky, too.

To my thinking, that ability to walk in and out unquestioned takes a huge amount of the risk out of the equation, thus making it more likely those who would do harm will simply walk in like they own the place, and the occupants need to be a bit concerned every time the door opens, regardless where they are or what they're doing.

 

[Ziggurat]

A good argument for having separate sports leagues, where physical strength matters. Not a good argument for sex-segregation of public spaces more generally.

Are bathrooms and changing rooms really public spaces? They certainly aren't general, it's a fairly specific use case.

 

[d4m10n]

Are bathrooms and changing rooms really public spaces? They certainly aren't general, it's a fairly specific use case.

How do sex differences in physical strength apply to this specific use case?

 

[DragonLady]

How do sex differences in physical strength apply to this specific use case?

I know you're not talking to me, but I think the answer should be pretty obvious.

A bathroom is an enclosed room, with only one exit. It has running water that can be turned on to mask sounds, those using for it's intended purpose are likely to already in a more vulnerable position -partly undressed, purse with phone, deterrents like pepper spray or even weapons is on the floor or entirely out of reach. So it's just down to one-on-one physical strength, and that's where females always lose (no matter how much Hollywood likes to pretend otherwise).


Not that phone, pepper spray or even a weapon ever really evens out the odds, but females need all the help they can get when a male decides to try to harm them.