Cont: Trans Women are not Women II: The Bath Of Khan

[Meadmaker]

Which is a good reason for not designating ladies' rooms constructed in that way as mixed-sex, no?

Absolutely. It's bizarre to me that someone might be surprised at the result.

 

[Meadmaker]

I see your point, but wanting to watch women who are complete strangers undress to use the toilet? Really? There's also the point about menstrual fetishism, which I think may be a significant part of this.

Those are fetishistic.

 

[Rolfe]

That was what we were talking about.

 

[Porpoise of Life]

I would like to see a proponent of trans access to cis-gendfered spaces address this conundrum head-on. No quibbling about definitions. No repetition of the legal and social barriers in place today. No whining about transphobia. No dismissing the questioner as paranoid. Just answer the questions: Should we remove the legal and social barriers against men in women's spaces, in order to better welcome transwomen into ciswomen's spaces? Are you prepared to address the concerns and the trade-offs that would arise from such a policy?

I don't know. I don't really have an ideological dog in this fight. I don't care about the definition of who gets to be a 'real' man or woman. It'd be nice if we, as a society, could accommodate trans folks by letting them use the bathroom of their choice.
But if this really does lead to an increase of attacks on women, it sounds like a bad idea.
We'd need data from places where trans people are already free to choose their own bathroom in order to draw a conclusion.
My intuition is that there's a lot of scaremongering in this thread and that there won't be a real increase in risk of assault. Other posters believe otherwise.

 

[theprestige]

Why not?

Because it sucks. People have enough to deal with in life, without having to be challenged for identity papers just to use a public restroom. If we can figure out a way to ease that for people, we should.

First of all, women don't declare anything in order to go. They just do.

Already addressed.

Second, and this is important, trans women are not women. They are trans women; hence the different name. The whole question should be how to give access to trans women and trans men to this or that. Whether they're actually women or men is already answered, unless you change the definitions involved.

Already addressed, at length, repeatedly in this thread.

Do you want to take a shot at answering my questions?

 

[theprestige]

Neither surgery nor hormone treatment are requirements, there are no medical requirements other than a doctor's note confirming that you have gender dysphoria, you don't have to change anything about your body to get a GRC under current law.

And even that doctor's note is a burden we should ease if we can.*

---
*Which is to say, if we can find a solution that does better at welcoming transgendered people to cis-gendered spaces, and has a more beneficial set of trade-offs for society overall.

 

[kellyb]

Not necessarily. A significant part of the complaints in the UK (from the data posted upthread) are about harassment outside of the stalls themselves.

I suspect the stalls are the things which lure the creeps to the area.

 

[kellyb]

There's also the concern that a male may (legitimately) hang around in the common area outside the stalls until a woman or girl goes into a stall, and there's nobody else around. The woman or girl may then, when she opens the door, be forced back inside and the door shut while an assault takes place in this nice private space with floor-to-ceiling partitions and door. It has happened.

If it's illegitimate for a male to be hanging around in there, this danger is significantly lessened.

Are you 100% sure the stalls were floor to ceiling partitioned? That doesn't really sound right. It sound like the stalls that are not floor to ceiling partitioned have assaults in the common area.

I just can't imagine the creeps finding the floor to ceiling partitioned showers very interesting to even scope out for long.

 

[theprestige]

I don't know. I don't really have an ideological dog in this fight. I don't care about the definition of who gets to be a 'real' man or woman. It'd be nice if we, as a society, could accommodate trans folks by letting them use the bathroom of their choice.
But if this really does lead to an increase of attacks on women, it sounds like a bad idea.
We'd need data from places where trans people are already free to choose their own bathroom in order to draw a conclusion.
My intuition is that there's a lot of scaremongering in this thread and that there won't be a real increase in risk of assault. Other posters believe otherwise.

Again, it's not just a question of real rise in attacks. It's also a question of perception of safety in spaces that are supposed to be perceived as safe. Even a tiny rise in incidents could end up making a lot of people feel unsafe, which defeats the purpose of setting aside the space to begin with.

It's also not just attacks. It's also harassment, and ogling, and other borderline behaviors, that are currently kept at bay by legal and social barriers to entry.

 

[Rolfe]

I came across a link on twitter to a video on a US newspaper web site. I couldn't watch the video as I was on my phone in a public place at the time, but I read the article. It concerned swimming-pool changing facilities at a school. There was a boy who identified as trans, although he had not taken any hormones (and of course had not had surgery). There had been a rather protracted dispute with him refusing private facilities and insisting on getting changed with the girls. There were some private changing stalls in the changing area, although not enough for everyone, and the girls mostly just changed in the open area with the benches.

The previous ruling had been that the male student could use the girls' changing room, but he had to get changed inside one of the private stalls. However he had protested about this, and said it was demeaning to him to be required to use the privacy stalls when nobody else was required to use them. This protest was successful and he had been given the green light to get changed in the open area with the girls.

From the comments the video showed the boy jubilant and high-fiving with supporters over this great victory. At the end there was an interview with one or more girls who were in tears or fighting back tears, saying how uncomfortable they were changing beside a naked boy, and that there weren't nearly enough privacy stalls for all the girls to use.

This seems emblematic of the whole situation. Women and girls are constantly being told to suck it up and castigated for bigotry when they try to articulate their desire for privacy and modesty, while the males are given everything they want. Nobody ever tells the boy who has decided that he's trans to suck it up, or ask him what his problem is changing beside other people with the same genitalia as he has, or calls him bigoted for not wanting to do that.

 

[Rolfe]

I don't know. I don't really have an ideological dog in this fight. I don't care about the definition of who gets to be a 'real' man or woman. It'd be nice if we, as a society, could accommodate trans folks by letting them use the bathroom of their choice.

Why? What about "it would be nice if we could accommodate women and girls by letting them continue to have sex-segregated sanitary, changing and sleeping accommodation where they can choose to do these things without the presence of male-bodied people"? Why would that not be nice?

 

[Rolfe]

Are you 100% sure the stalls were floor to ceiling partitioned? That doesn't really sound right. It sound like the stalls that are not floor to ceiling partitioned have assaults in the common area.

I just can't imagine the creeps finding the floor to ceiling partitioned showers very interesting to even scope out for long.

There have been a number of incidents. I couldn't swear to the exact configuration of any given facility.

If someone is hanging around just in the hope of getting a voyeuristic fix in somewhere with floor-to-ceiling partitions then he may be out of luck. However if his intentions are much more sinister than that and he's actually looking for somewhere to commit an actual sexual assault, such a configuration may actually make it easier.

I read somewhere of an incident where a woman opening the door of a stall to exit into the common grooming area found a man standing right outside the stall, "in her face" as it were. She shut the door, waited a few moments, then tried again. Still there. There was nobody else around.

I don't remember the details. I don't remember if he was actually exposing himself or not. I don't think she was actually assaulted. I don't remember how she got out of it.

This is not something that happened before this craze for "gender neutral" everything. But it's happening now. Women are telling each other about things that have happened, and awareness and alarm are heightening. Women are getting scared, and starting to avoid public toilets.

All this because a tiny number of males are whining about hurt feelings so we have to change everything to accommodate them, and to hell with women's comfort or safety.

 

[kellyb]

There have been a number of incidents. I couldn't swear to the exact configuration of any given facility.

If someone is hanging around just in the hope of getting a voyeuristic fix in somewhere with floor-to-ceiling partitions then he may be out of luck. However if his intentions are much more sinister than that and he's actually looking for somewhere to commit an actual sexual assault, such a configuration may actually make it easier.

Having used one of these showers and going into the facility expecting it to be sketchy-feeling, it was really just like a hotel hall. The sinks were around a corner. It just isn't the sort of place that the bathroom pervs would find appealing in any way, I really, honestly don't think.

 

[Rolfe]

I somehow doubt such admirable standards will be universal in such facilities. And indeed, you seem unusually relaxed about sharing intimate spaces with males. Do you think that women and girls who aren't so relaxed don't deserve any consideration? Why does everything have to be re-built/repurposed/rearranged to suit the comfort of the tiny number of transwomen, but the comfort of 50% of the population doesn't merit any consideration?

 

[kellyb]

There have been a number of incidents. I couldn't swear to the exact configuration of any given facility.

If someone is hanging around just in the hope of getting a voyeuristic fix in somewhere with floor-to-ceiling partitions then he may be out of luck. However if his intentions are much more sinister than that and he's actually looking for somewhere to commit an actual sexual assault, such a configuration may actually make it easier.

I read somewhere of an incident where a woman opening the door of a stall to exit into the common grooming area found a man standing right outside the stall, "in her face" as it were. She shut the door, waited a few moments, then tried again. Still there. There was nobody else around.

I don't remember the details. I don't remember if he was actually exposing himself or not. I don't think she was actually assaulted. I don't remember how she got out of it.

This is not something that happened before this craze for "gender neutral" everything. But it's happening now. Women are telling each other about things that have happened, and awareness and alarm are heightening. Women are getting scared, and starting to avoid public toilets.

All this because a tiny number of males are whining about hurt feelings so we have to change everything to accommodate them, and to hell with women's comfort or safety.

You really have to be careful about anecdotes with this stuff, because social hysteria is very real and results in exaggerated rumors and false reports galore.

Arounfd Halloween in my city there are rumors of shootings in the rich neighborhoods, where the poor bring their kids to trick or treat. The reports come from places like the social media network "nextdoor" and facebook. Unless the local media is covering up the shootings, it's just whisper networks gone bonkers and resulting in some sort of yearly urban legend that re-emerges.

I'm not saying there's been no increase, by the way. But be aware that the anecdotes in the cases where people are getting alarmed in groups are very prone to be false.

 

[kellyb]

I somehow doubt such admirable standards will be universal in such facilities. And indeed, you seem unusually relaxed about sharing intimate spaces with males. Do you think that women and girls who aren't so relaxed don't deserve any consideration? Why does everything have to be re-built/repurposed/rearranged to suit the comfort of the tiny number of transwomen, but the comfort of 50% of the population doesn't merit any consideration?

Well, the aquatics facility I'm talking about is technically down south about 45 minutes into Mississippi, where people are more like you. "The locals" who are unaccustomed to people I'm accustomed to seem to be fine with it.

I wasn't trying to tell you how thing should be in Scotland. I was just reporting my experience, for whatever it was worth.

 

[Rolfe]

Well, you know, when someone relates an incident which is all too believable and which absolutely could occur, should we say, well I can't prove that happened, it's just an anecdote, so it's not something I should ever worry about happening?

The comfort, modesty and safety of women and girls isn't even a consideration in this mad stampede to "gender neutral" everything. It's being done entirely at the behest of the trans lobby, who seem to have a monopoly on any expectation of comfort or convenience. We've gone beyond demands that trans-identifying men should be able to go where they want and do whatever they want without challenge, to the point where all sex segregation is being reflexively abandoned as apparently being the simplest way to achieve this.

Every protest about a negative consequence that has befallen or may befall women or girls as a result of this is brushed aside either as scaremonngering, or an "isolated incident" (how many do you need before it isn't isolated any more? oh that's right, twitter will ban you if you collect them together because this is apparently hate speech), or hypothetical, it probably didn't happen, or shouted down as bigotry.

Meanwhile every demand by the trans lobby is catered for. Nothing is too much trouble to soothe their wounded feelings. Don't want to get changed or pee next to people with your own genitalia? Oh, of course not, how could you possibly be expected to do that? In you go with the women and girls, and if they don't like getting changed or peeing next to you they're transphobic bigots who shouldn't be thinking about your genitalia.

And so on.

 

[kellyb]

Well, you know, when someone relates an incident which is all too believable and which absolutely could occur, should we say, well I can't prove that happened, it's just an anecdote, so it's not something I should ever worry about happening?.

I'll repeat what I said before.

I'm not saying there's been no increase, by the way. But be aware that the anecdotes in the cases where people are getting alarmed in groups are very prone to be false.

Feel free to disregard the issue of if the anecdotes are actually true, if you wish.

 

[Rolfe]

Because it sucks. People have enough to deal with in life, without having to be challenged for identity papers just to use a public restroom. If we can figure out a way to ease that for people, we should.

What about, women have enough to deal with in life without summarily abolishng all the spaces which have, for about a century, allowed them somewhere to go to get away from males. Don't you think that sucks?

 

[Rolfe]

I'll repeat what I said before.

Feel free to disregard the issue of if the anecdotes are actually true, if you wish.

You mean if someone points out a clearly real potential problem (you know, like risk assessments are supposed to do), this should be disregarded if you're not absolutely certain that it has actually happened yet?