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[ED] Discussion: Trans Women Are not Women (Part 6)

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There's absolutely zero lack of comprehension. We comprehend this very, very well. And that's the problem.

Read your own last bit there. You, who are male, who present as male, need only identify yourself as a woman... and by doing so you now would have the LEGAL RIGHT to go into any female-only space and look at naked females - WHETHER THEY WANT YOU TO OR NOT. There is nothing that females can do to prevent you from looking at them without their consent.

Give that a minute of thought, please.

This law creates a situations that literally removes the consent of females from whether or not males get to look at them naked. Males can now, legally, force females into a situation where they can be viewed by males even if they don't want to.

The only solution that females have in order to avoid being the unwilling object of voyeurs... is to NOT USE ANY OF THOSE SPACES.



I've given it plenty of thought (sorry: we've given it plenty of thought*...). And I've/we've also given thought to the fact that - to borrow your rhetoric:

You, who presents as female, need only identify yourself as a man... and by doing so you now would have the LEGAL RIGHT to go into any male-only space and look at naked males - WHETHER THEY WANT YOU TO OR NOT. There is nothing that males can do to prevent you from looking at them without their consent.



And I'll state once again: if there are situations where reasonable evidence indicates that females in women's changing rooms are being made uncomfortable owing to the presence of males who are identifying as women, then - clearly and obviously - measures will have to be taken in order to a) protect females in that situation, and b) sanction the offending transwomen appropriately.



* And the likes of the US Presidency and the US House of Representatives has also given it thought. Unless, that is, you believe that all of those many hundreds of experienced policy-makers and legislators - a large proportion of whom are females - haven't given it much (or any?) thought?
 
* And in that respect, the Home Office experiment actually served a very useful purpose: it showed just how antediluvial public attitudes currently are in this area.

Exactly; the floods arrived when they let the men in.:)
 
Recent news of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Trump making public trans-bashing statements has me wondering about the political future of anti-trans bigotry in the US.

It seems extremely likely that anti-trans animus is going to become a leading issue for the minority conservative political movement during the Biden years, with increasingly nasty and bigoted rhetoric becoming the norm as conservatives rely on culture war nonsense to gin up their fascistic base.

Seems like an ill omen for "reasonable" transphobes that might try to find a home among the Democrats or other liberal circles. The right wing leaning into trans-bashing as a political issue will make it difficult for TERFs, for example, to find a receptive audience among liberals, as they have in the UK. The alignment between transphobes and the fascistic right will become extremely clear in the US.
 
Elided in this conversation is the starting assumption that excluding trans women from women's facilities is the only way to achieve the goal of protecting the privacy in these places.

I find it strange that trampling all over the civil rights of trans people is a cost seen as perfectly acceptable, but doing anything else to modify these facilities to actually protect personal privacy is simply too onerous. If not rooted in outright animus towards trans people, it shows a clear bias towards protecting the status quo even as there have been several flaws exposed in the fundamental assumption that single-sex environments are inherently lust-free.

Humor me if you will and treat this like a puzzle. Assume that trans exclusion is no longer an option, which is a realistic condition in places where such discrimination is unlawful.

How do you deal with the very real concern that women (and men) want not to be seen by some (or any) people while in various stages of undress, showering, and so on. Again, assume trans exclusionary policies are not available.

Is there truly no other solution? Is it an intractable problem as Emily Cat suggests, where women will have no option but to weep in silence while being forced to undress in front of leering men?

It has been pointed over numerous times in this thread that the general trend over time, even outside the scope of discussing trans rights, is increasing personal privacy in these kinds of facilities. Personal shower stalls are increasingly replacing open communal showers, for example.
 
Oh I'm in little to no doubt about the reaction I would get*. But that's immaterial. The point is that cismen can currently walk straight into spaces where women are undressing or using the bathroom, if they so wish.

Maybe where you live. Try it around here and you will end up in a police car.

* And in that respect, the Home Office experiment actually served a very useful purpose: it showed just how antediluvial public attitudes currently are in this area. But things can - and will - change for the better.

And here is the essence of the debate.

Is modesty, especially female modesty, a natural feeling, or to use a different phrase, a valid lived experience? Or is it a societally imposed prejudice?


I think it's natural. I think attempts to legislate it out of existence or to violate it are misguided. I don't think things will change "for the better". I think efforts to impose those changes will be rejected. All my life, people have been talking about society forcing us to feel bad about our bodies and prudishness and that sort of thing. The kids at Woodstock got free and naked to a world that was variously outraged, amused, and titillated. Fifty years later, kids are still finding reasons to take off their clothes, and creepy old men are still encouraging them to do so. We are so much more open about sex and are completely awash in visual images of erotic and pornographic material, and the consequence has actually been to make people more aware, more self conscious, and more shy about being seen naked, especially by members or the opposite sex, but even now by people of the same sex.
 
Oh I'm in little to no doubt about the reaction I would get*.

...

* And in that respect, the Home Office experiment actually served a very useful purpose: it showed just how antediluvial public attitudes currently are in this area. But things can - and will - change for the better.

The feelings of women who don't want to have penis-bearers in spaces where they are vulnerable are "antediluvian".

How do you feel about women who object to peeping toms taking up-skirt panty shots and posting them on the internet? Or sneaking a peak through a window while they change? Are those women also "antediluvian"?

What about women how object to flashers coming up and exposing themselves to them in public? Are they also "antediluvian"?

Could you expand a bit on what you see as being "antediluvian" in this respect? What regressive, old-fashioned behavior is it that these women are exhibiting?
 
Where can this currently occur? Specifically where can a man walk into a woman’s shower without consequence while it is in use by women, strip, and start washing up?

In Washington... where the law sided with the be-penised transwoman's right to be nude in the women's locker room with the children's swim team that held their practices at that pool.

The majority of the girls opted to take turns changing in the admin locker room, taking turns, instead of being in the large locker room and showers with the male-bodied person.
 
Humor me if you will and treat this like a puzzle. Assume that trans exclusion is no longer an option, which is a realistic condition in places where such discrimination is unlawful.

How do you deal with the very real concern that women (and men) want not to be seen by some (or any) people while in various stages of undress, showering, and so on. Again, assume trans exclusionary policies are not available.

Is there truly no other solution? Is it an intractable problem as Emily Cat suggests, where women will have no option but to weep in silence while being forced to undress in front of leering men?

I rather expect that the result is going to be an under-the-rug reintroduction of the urinary leash. Females will simply not use those services, and will stay dirty/sweaty/covered in chlorine until they can get to the safety of their own home in order to bath and change. They'll hold their bladder until they get home, or until they are certain there's nobody else in the toilet. And they'll always go in groups, never being alone in those areas.

It will result in limitations on how much females can take part in society.
 
Elided in this conversation is the starting assumption that excluding trans women from women's facilities is the only way to achieve the goal of protecting the privacy in these places.

I find it strange that trampling all over the civil rights of trans people is a cost seen as perfectly acceptable, but doing anything else to modify these facilities to actually protect personal privacy is simply too onerous. If not rooted in outright animus towards trans people, it shows a clear bias towards protecting the status quo even as there have been several flaws exposed in the fundamental assumption that single-sex environments are inherently lust-free.

Humor me if you will and treat this like a puzzle. Assume that trans exclusion is no longer an option, which is a realistic condition in places where such discrimination is unlawful.

How do you deal with the very real concern that women (and men) want not to be seen by some (or any) people while in various stages of undress, showering, and so on. Again, assume trans exclusionary policies are not available.

Is there truly no other solution? Is it an intractable problem as Emily Cat suggests, where women will have no option but to weep in silence while being forced to undress in front of leering men?

It has been pointed over numerous times in this thread that the general trend over time, even outside the scope of discussing trans rights, is increasing personal privacy in these kinds of facilities. Personal shower stalls are increasingly replacing open communal showers, for example.

there is no push to eliminate trans-exclusion.
The debate is simply which set of sex-segregated private spaces they will be excluded from.
If Trans-women are legislated to belong in Women's' private spaces- they are then excluded from Men's.
Unless the law is set to claim that being Trans makes one immune from deferring to a segregated space at all. That does'nt seem like a civil right, more like a "special" right.
 
Maybe where you live. Try it around here and you will end up in a police car.



I think you've missed my point here. My point is that there is no barrier to entry for males to walk into women's changing facilities. A male could do it in the UK; a male could do it in any state of the USA.

I suspect the repurcussions would be broadly similar on both sides of the Atlantic. But I wasn't talking about the repurcussions.




And here is the essence of the debate.

Is modesty, especially female modesty, a natural feeling, or to use a different phrase, a valid lived experience? Or is it a societally imposed prejudice?


I think it's natural. I think attempts to legislate it out of existence or to violate it are misguided. I don't think things will change "for the better". I think efforts to impose those changes will be rejected. All my life, people have been talking about society forcing us to feel bad about our bodies and prudishness and that sort of thing. The kids at Woodstock got free and naked to a world that was variously outraged, amused, and titillated. Fifty years later, kids are still finding reasons to take off their clothes, and creepy old men are still encouraging them to do so. We are so much more open about sex and are completely awash in visual images of erotic and pornographic material, and the consequence has actually been to make people more aware, more self conscious, and more shy about being seen naked, especially by members or the opposite sex, but even now by people of the same sex.



Well yes, that may very well be the case. I myself shudder when I remember that at school (I went to a private boarding school at age 10-18), between the ages of 10-12 we used to have to have swimming lessons in the nude.

Times and morals most certainly do change over time. But I'd say again that the issues around transgender people using the changing rooms which correspond to their gender... stand apart from general matters related to personal privacy and the increasing desire for individual changing stalls, shower stalls, etc.
 
I rather expect that the result is going to be an under-the-rug reintroduction of the urinary leash. Females will simply not use those services, and will stay dirty/sweaty/covered in chlorine until they can get to the safety of their own home in order to bath and change. They'll hold their bladder until they get home, or until they are certain there's nobody else in the toilet. And they'll always go in groups, never being alone in those areas.

It will result in limitations on how much females can take part in society.

Fortunately, I don't think it will come to that.

The way I read the political landscape around this issue is that very few people are actually affected by this in any meaningful way, so what is happening is people are drawing up sides based on ideological alignment rather than practical concerns of day to day life. Some of them are traditionalists who see transgender concerns as a threat to traditional values. Others are people who are seeking a way to stand up for an oppressed minority. It's like a left/right proxy war. Some real people are actually being caught up in this, like the ones I always cite in Washington with Colleen Brenna, or the Palatine schoolgirls, but, honestly, there aren't very many people affected. As long as that number remains small, people won't pay much attention. The majority of people will almost entirely ignore the issue, and not understand what's actually happening. The rest will fight their fight on principle, without paying much attention to the reality where it exists.

In the scenario you described, it would have to mean that a significant portion of the populace was actually affected in a practical manner by this, and if that were to happen, I think the majority would stand up and say enough was enough.

I could be wrong about that. Maybe the majority will decide that it's ok to have the transgenders around and sharing the bathrooms and locker rooms. If that's the case, then your scenario also won't happen, because women will just give in and decide it's not worth the trouble.

I don't see that happening, either, because I think that a few extreme cases go a long way in influencing public opinion. I think the majority of transgenders are pretty harmless, and if you happen to belong to a gym with one of them, I think a lot of women would shrug their shoulders and deal with it, sort of going back to the "old days" when everyone looked the other way. However, one Jonathan Yaniv or Colleen Brenna goes a long way. I think that what will happen is that, if transgender acceptance becomes commonplace in changing rooms, there will be a few high profile problem cases, and that will be enough to turn public opinion in the opposite direction.

So, I don't see your scenario taking place, but mostly because people will see it go slightly in that direction, and will put a stop to it. i think there will be some more cases like the British Home Office where someone puts forward the new order, thinking that everything will be just fine, and will be surprised that everything will not be fine, and while the people who put those policies in place mutter about "antediluvial" attitudes, voters will put people into office who support segregation by sex, in the traditional manner, with additional privacy options, and separate changing rooms recommended for transgender people, where it isn't cost prohibitive to do so.
 
In Washington... where the law sided with the be-penised transwoman's right to be nude in the women's locker room with the children's swim team that held their practices at that pool.

The majority of the girls opted to take turns changing in the admin locker room, taking turns, instead of being in the large locker room and showers with the male-bodied person.

Could you please provide a link to that?
 
I rather expect that the result is going to be an under-the-rug reintroduction of the urinary leash. Females will simply not use those services, and will stay dirty/sweaty/covered in chlorine until they can get to the safety of their own home in order to bath and change. They'll hold their bladder until they get home, or until they are certain there's nobody else in the toilet. And they'll always go in groups, never being alone in those areas.

It will result in limitations on how much females can take part in society.

That's quite the active imagination you have there.

Is this the case in any of the places that have codified recognition of trans gender identity into law? Have cis-women in Canada taken to wearing adult diapers?
 
there is no push to eliminate trans-exclusion.
The debate is simply which set of sex-segregated private spaces they will be excluded from.
If Trans-women are legislated to belong in Women's' private spaces- they are then excluded from Men's.
Unless the law is set to claim that being Trans makes one immune from deferring to a segregated space at all. That does'nt seem like a civil right, more like a "special" right.

Characterize it however you like, do you not have a solution to the problem?

Say you're in charge of a gym in a place where trans people can have their gender identity officially recognized by the government and it's unlawful to discriminate on that basis. In this hypothetical, you are bound by law to respect a trans person professed gender identity in regards to using the facilities.

What would you do to ensure your patrons felt their privacy and safety were secure? Is it an intractable problem, or are there other measures that could be taken to address the issue while still complying with the requirement to respect transgender identity?
 
there is no push to eliminate trans-exclusion.
The debate is simply which set of sex-segregated private spaces they will be excluded from.
If Trans-women are legislated to belong in Women's' private spaces- they are then excluded from Men's.
Unless the law is set to claim that being Trans makes one immune from deferring to a segregated space at all. That does'nt seem like a civil right, more like a "special" right.

I'm pretty sure that the last one is what the objective is - by claiming trans of some sort or other, one gains a choice that cisgendered people don't have.

That's already how it works in California prisons. Trans prisoners can choose whether they want to be in the men's prison or the women's prison. Natal females don't get that choice... nor do they get the choice to decline to share rooms with people with penises if those prostate-havers decide that's where they want to be.
 
Some truths, one lie

200 million women live with female genital mutilation.

650 million women alive today were forced into marriage as a child.

70% of women experience sex based violence.

71% of trafficking victims are women

75% of those are trafficked for sexual slavery

Violence against women costs the USA $500 billion annually

Half of all women will experience sexual violence in developed counties

A woman is raped every 15 minutes

Women cannot vote in 12 countries

In the USA:

1 in 3 women experience domestic violence

1 in 10 women are raped by an intimate partner

20k calls to domestic violence hotlines a day 19% of domestic violence involves a weapon

If a firearm is present, the rate of domestic violence homicide increases by 500%

Half the world still denies women property ownership

82% of children molested are female

Females age 16-19 are 4 times more likely to experience rape

830 women die every day due to preventable pregnancy related causes

Period poverty

Beauty industry standards

Sexism

Economic Inequality

Campaign to normalize misogyny

Reproductive rights

3.82 billion women experience the above. 1.4 million adults identify as trans.

"Trans rights are human rights" is used to insinuate women opposed to losing their sex based rights are egregiously violating the rights of trans people. This is a lie. Access to female only spaces is not a human right. They exist because of the above.
 
And here is the essence of the debate.

Is modesty, especially female modesty, a natural feeling, or to use a different phrase, a valid lived experience? Or is it a societally imposed prejudice?

More broadly, do we believe that females deserve any sex-specific rights and/or representation? It sounds like there are some here (ST, London John) who would argue 'No'- those should be divvied up based on self-identified gender.

Do we believe woman/girl are biological descriptors/realities or are they states of mind/performances?

I think the UK (& NZ, possibly others) feminists realized that these questions were being raised by some aspects of the Trans movement before their counterparts in the US. That and/or the fact that the US has a right wing that is genuinely hostile to trans folks - i.e. which may make other US women less likely to speak up for fear of being associated with that group (though the recent sports issues seem to be prompting some non-right wing blow back).
 
I have no problems about trans rights as such. The few issues I have relate to self-identification as the sole criteria of being a trans in the context of specific areas of society and social life, such as sports and certain private spaces which have traditionally (and often rather logically) been separated between biological sexes.

To me it's pretty clear the mere self-identification is not enough as regards sports: a non-transitioning biological male has an unfair advantage in most competitive sports and should not be allowed to compete against biological women. As regards issues of modesty and safety, I believe practical solutions will be found, even though the issues can be very complicated.

Also, I am very tired of relentless conservative efforts to polarize and divide, to find wedge issues in their never ending culture war. Now gay marriage is largely over as such a useful too, so on towards trans rights as political weapons. There is so little genuine appreciation of complex and serious issues and the sensitivities of long persecuted minorities, instead a gleeful drive towards division, hyperbole and ridicule.
 
Characterize it however you like, do you not have a solution to the problem?

Say you're in charge of a gym in a place where trans people can have their gender identity officially recognized by the government and it's unlawful to discriminate on that basis. In this hypothetical, you are bound by law to respect a trans person professed gender identity in regards to using the facilities.

What would you do to ensure your patrons felt their privacy and safety were secure? Is it an intractable problem, or are there other measures that could be taken to address the issue while still complying with the requirement to respect transgender identity?
As expressed by others in this thread, we would all like private changing rooms- one gets spoiled WRT privacy as soon as they get a taste of it.

However, it seems like prescribing individual private spaces for all is a bit of a "let them eat cake" solution IOW not really a solution at all.

Considering that the number of individuals who are trans is such a small portion of the general population, legislating against the rules, mores, and meanings, that exist seems likely to only cause resentment against trans people.

Frankly, the only "problem" that is being presented here is that a very small percentage of the population feels uncomfortable using the sex segregated spaces set aside for them- and feel that that means that a much, much larger segment of the population needs to be made to feel uncomfortable instead.
In a democratic society, it is almost axiomatic that the "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". I think that is a pretty well internalized understanding- so the argument must switch to re-defining who is the many' and who is the few if the small minority is to have a logical underpinning to their demands. I reject that as not only unsustainable- but full on Orwellian in the corrosive effects it has on public discourse.

Long story short, while it is abhorrent that one might shame or ridicule someone who is dealing with the problems associated with their predicament/identity/reality/disorder, there appear to be few ways of remedying it without causing more harm than good.

One would hope, in a free society, that a trans person might find spaces specifically set up to cater to their demands for the sake of turning a profit. Those who may not access those remedies have my sympathies. Learning to accept that reality is going to bruise ones feelings once in a while (some feelings more than others) is a tough thing, and the amount of bruising the feelings of a trans person must endure is probably beyond most of our abilities to grok.
Best "solution" I could offer would be some public funding for healthcare to help trans persons deal with that.

That comes across as a "suck it up buttercup", I am aware, yet there is little else proposed that has a reasonable basis.
 
I think the UK (& NZ, possibly others) feminists realized that these questions were being raised by some aspects of the Trans movement before their counterparts in the US.

Different feminist tradition. UK has:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Pay_Act_1970

and Gender Pay reporting

Since April 2018, employers with over 250 employees are legally required to publish data relating to pay inequalities. Data published includes the pay and bonus figures between men and women, and includes data from April 2017.

so focus has not been driven by "bathroom bills".
 
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