Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

[GlennB]

Surely such violent men should be arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law just as we would expect prosecutions of those who violently mete out their own extra-legal punishments of people who had done nothing wrong? Is it too much to ask to say that violence by transwomen and by vigilantes should both be condemned?

I don't honestly believe that either you, GlennB or Rolfe, would appreciate living in a world in which people decide to beat the crap out of others who have broken no laws but somehow violate their own head-cannon laws.

Looks like you'd allow the fox into the henhouse and then punish it for the harm it does, rather than make the henhouse secure against foxes.

 

[angrysoba]

Looks like you'd allow the fox into the henhouse and then punish it for the harm it does, rather than make the henhouse secure against foxes.

Nope. Never said anything like that at all.

But now your analogy is curious to me. Are you saying that people should basically beat up transwomen who go into women's toilets even if they are legally allowed to? (As a means of making women's toilets secure). Because that is what I am objecting to.

If, on the other hand, you are saying that transwomen should not legally be allowed into women's toilets, then we could agree.

So tell me what you are saying and stop me having to guess the meaning of your riddles.

 

[GlennB]

Nope. Never said anything like that at all.

But now your analogy is curious to me. Are you saying that people should basically beat up transwomen who go into women's toilets even if they are legally allowed to? (As a means of making women's toilets secure). Because that is what I am objecting to.

If, on the other hand, you are saying that transwomen should not legally be allowed into women's toilets, then we could agree.

So tell me what you are saying and stop me having to guess the meaning of your riddles.

Nope. Never said anything like that at all.

But now your analogy is curious to me. Are you saying that people should basically beat up transwomen who go into women's toilets even if they are legally allowed to? (As a means of making women's toilets secure). Because that is what I am objecting to.

If, on the other hand, you are saying that transwomen should not legally be allowed into women's toilets, then we could agree.

So tell me what you are saying and stop me having to guess the meaning of your riddles.

Where did I, or anyone else, advocate beating up transwomen who venture into women's bathrooms etc??? Simply don't allow them access. If they go in anyway then call security or the police.

 

[angrysoba]

Where did I, or anyone else, advocate beating up transwomen who venture into women's bathrooms etc??? Simply don't allow them access. If they go in anyway then call security or the police.

This post does exactly that.

As Thermal points out, we are not talking here about a transwoman who is molesting someone, just "following" them into a toilet in which they are legally allowed to.

That is a complete misrepresentation of what I posted.

I posted this meme

Please note: It says "If you follow my daughter or my wife.... " NOT "... just for entering..."

And I stand by that. After what happened to my daughters at a couple of the public toilets in my home town (two separate occasions) I have armed them with the necessary "tools" to deal with biological males who accost them in women's bathrooms.

If you want to make it illegal for transwomen to use public toilets, then I can support that (although I would prefer to have the option of exceptions to this rule rather than self-ID, but that is a separate issue).

But one thing I do not condone, and I don't think anyone here should, is some blanket declaration of support or glorification of pre-emptive vigilante justice.

 

[Thermal]

Looks like you'd allow the fox into the henhouse and then punish it for the harm it does, rather than make the henhouse secure against foxes.

And how exactly are you securing the henhouse? With a sign on the door that says "No Foxes"?

Hey, if you're right, we can just put a sign up that says "No Attackers" and problem solved! You know, because violent criminals care so much about the signs.

 

[Pixel42]

And how exactly are you securing the henhouse? With a sign on the door that says "No Foxes"?

By ensuring the hens know that, if a fox ignores the sign and enters the henhouse, all they need to do is raise the alarm and the farmer will immediately come running and deal with it.

Not by telling both hens and farmers that foxes have a legal right to enter the hen house, so long as they claim to identify as hens.

 

[Thermal]

By ensuring the hens know that, if a fox ignores the sign and enters the henhouse, all they need to do is raise the alarm and the farmer will immediately come running and deal with it.

Not by telling both hens and farmers that foxes have a legal right to enter the hen house, so long as they claim to identify as hens.

How do you raise the alarm in a way that is different from the existing ways of raising the alarm, if say a male rapist or murderer walked in to a womens rest room and attacked? Who is going to come running, that wouldn't have come running for a regular male attacker?

I mean, are you proposing armed guards hanging around to enforce this? Because if not, it's the status quo.

A flip side argument might be that if a transwoman was in the rest room when a bio male came in and attacked, you'd have a physically stronger ally in there with you.

That's the part I'm having trouble with, here. You sound like you treat this as opening the door to a unique threat, and giving an attacker some advantage. I don't see it as any different from the threat in the here and now since a violent attacker is indifferent to permissions or signs on a door.

 

[d4m10n]

I thought it was a very good article but it hinges, IMHO, on the definition of mental disorder: "a lack or alternation in a function possessed by most healthy individuals that causes demonstrable harm."

Harm is a bit vague, the DSM-5 is much less so.

What I find strange about that Neurologica article is that (at least for now) medical ethics are such that hormonal and surgical interventions are justified in terms of averting dysphoria, that is, "significant distress or disability in social, occupational, or other important activities." These are the "demonstrable harms" which make it okay for endocrinologists and surgeons to make GNC people into lifelong patients. Novella seems to minimize the existence and role of those harms in the decision making process, but it's hard to tell since he doesn't provide an example of what it is like to have a trans identity while at the same time being free of any diagnosable disorder which might require treatment.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Apologies. You often drop a bunch of replies at once on multiple threads and tbh, I sometimes think I responded to you when I hadn't, or confused with responding to you on another thread. My paperwork and returning phone calls responses are similarly disorganized. Also, "literally everyone" was meant as the kids use it today, meaning "not at all literally everyone but at least a couple". I try to stay relatable to the kids.

I really try not to, and I've reduced the number of posts I make when I'm behind. But the reality is that I have very limited time to engage in discussions, and sometimes things move faster than I realized. Like sometimes this thread will have four new posts in a week... sometimes it will have 340.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Honestly, female posters here seem to spend an awful lot of time in gang public showers with each other. I have never as an adult taken a group shower with guys for any reason. I dont know which one of us has the unusual lifestyle, here, from the "commonly showering with strangers" approach.

Not so much "gang showers" as areas with communal space. Like we're not literally sharing a shower head, nor are the showers generally completely open to view - there are usually curtains or something. But they're also small spaces, and it's not like there's room for us to go in fully clothed, strip down, shower, dry, then put on a different set of clothing. It's not totally self-contained.

Most of the showers I've used in gyms, yoga studios, high school, college, etc. end up having a changing area and a row of showers. You go to your locker and you strip down, put your dirty clothes in the locker, and wrap a towel around yourself. Then you go to the shower, clean up, and dry off. Drying off can sometimes be done in the shower stall, but a lot of times you end up bumping the curtain or having to step out for at least some of the drying. Then you wrap a towel around yourself again, go back to your locker, and you get dressed.

There almost always ends up being a fair bit of body exposure while we're undressing and dressing. In every shower room I've been in since high school, I end up seeing other female's nude or mostly nude bodies. Because we're all female, we don't view each other as risks... end even the lesbians don't ogle each other because we all know it makes us uncomfortable and we're all respectful of that.

 

[Thermal]

I really try not to, and I've reduced the number of posts I make when I'm behind. But the reality is that I have very limited time to engage in discussions, and sometimes things move faster than I realized. Like sometimes this thread will have four new posts in a week... sometimes it will have 340.

I hear you. When you pointed out I had not replied to you, my alerts drag down menu had something like 16 alerts with your account attached. It can be overwhelming, especially because you are actually saying something that deserves to be thought about before responding.

 

[Thermal]

Not so much "gang showers" as areas with communal space. Like we're not literally sharing a shower head, nor are the showers generally completely open to view - there are usually curtains or something. But they're also small spaces, and it's not like there's room for us to go in fully clothed, strip down, shower, dry, then put on a different set of clothing. It's not totally self-contained.

Most of the showers I've used in gyms, yoga studios, high school, college, etc. end up having a changing area and a row of showers. You go to your locker and you strip down, put your dirty clothes in the locker, and wrap a towel around yourself. Then you go to the shower, clean up, and dry off. Drying off can sometimes be done in the shower stall, but a lot of times you end up bumping the curtain or having to step out for at least some of the drying. Then you wrap a towel around yourself again, go back to your locker, and you get dressed.

There almost always ends up being a fair bit of body exposure while we're undressing and dressing. In every shower room I've been in since high school, I end up seeing other female's nude or mostly nude bodies. Because we're all female, we don't view each other as risks... end even the lesbians don't ogle each other because we all know it makes us uncomfortable and we're all respectful of that.

It's funny you say that, because I remember training with a guy I knew to be gay, and we got changed in the same men's locker area. I never gave it a thought, even though we were pretty much stripped down putting supporters and cups on and stuff. It's just a kind of asexual vibe.

I fully sympathize with the idea of a pretend trans woman getting off by going in the women's changing area specifically to get himself off though. In fact, I can't imagine a largish group of kids/teens/ adults not doing so. That's actually a stronger argument (to me) than the suggestion of murderers who are foiled by a rule or sign.

 

[Pixel42]

How do you raise the alarm in a way that is different from the existing ways of raising the alarm, if say a male rapist or murderer walked in to a womens rest room and attacked? Who is going to come running, that wouldn't have come running for a regular male attacker?

There's attacks, and then there's harrassment, verbal abuse, indecent exposure, groping, voyeurism ... a whole range of offences which some men like to inflict upon women. Anything less than an attack which causes injury and those offences can be hard to prove, because it's usually just "he said, she said" - except if they occur in a female only safe spaces, where the man has no excuse to be at all. That's why they are the only places where females are safe from such ... attentions. When any man can enter such spaces, commit such offences, and then say "She's lying, I'm trans and she's a transphobe" when she complains, there will no longer be any such thing as female safe spaces.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I know. I'm relaying what a trans woman told me about her own misunderstanding of what she was as a teen

So yeah. I know one transgender identified male who expressed their dysphoria in the same fashion. Even to the extent of constantly being a bit surprised to look down and see a penis.

The thing is, that this is what it used to be expressed as - that's what it was thirty years ago, and it's what a whole lot of people still assume it to be. But it's not that anymore. Not even remotely. Even when it was that, we were all largely misinformed - we tended to assume that all of those transsexuals were 1) attracted to males and 2) had genital surgery. Turned out that even then, less than 20% of them had genital surgery. And at present, the majority of males who identify as transgender right now are sexually attracted to females. They refer to themselves as "lesbians" and there have been multiple cases where same-sex attracted females end up being pressured to have sex with males who have gendery feels, and are told that they're bigots if they refuse to take some dick. Or they get told that it's not a male penis, it's a female organ, it's a "ladydick" or even an "oversized clitoris".

I know it sounds like I'm making this up, becuase it's so absurd and wrong. But I'm not - go google it if you don't believe me. Hell, Planned Parenthood had a seminar on "The Cotton Ceiling" so that transgender identified males who are attracted to females could learn techniques to be accepted as sexual partners by lesbians.

It's easy to think "well that's so ridiculous it must be made up". But it's not, and what we end up discussing in this thread is far LESS crazy than what is actually out there in reality.

 

[Thermal]

There's attacks, and then there's harrassment, verbal abuse, indecent exposure, groping, voyeurism ... a whole range of offences which some men like to inflict upon women. Anything less than an attack which causes injury and those offences can be hard to prove, because it's usually just "he said, she said" - except if they occur in a female only safe spaces, where the man has no excuse to be at all. That's why they are the only places where females are safe from such ... attentions. When any man can enter such spaces, commit such offences, and then say "She's lying, I'm trans and she's a transphobe" when she complains, there will no longer be any such thing as female safe spaces.

Right, I get that. What I'm arguing is that the murderer/rapist fear of trans woman access to safe spaces is maybe not realistic, or at least any more than it is right now. But the perv angle is easily (and very likely) going to be exploited.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The post I had asked about that prompted all this was to your assertion that allowing the less than 1% of transwomen in would jeopardize 100% of females in their safe spaces. What I wondered about is if 100% of women or anything remotely close to that would be faced with a new threat.

Your question, your entire premise, relies on there being some category of "true trans" that we can all tell is genuinely 100% legit transsexual. So I'll direct you back to some of the fundamental questions that kicked this thread off and has kept it going for 15 chapters.

How do you tell the difference between a) a genuinely true trans male, b) a delusional or mistaken male, and c) an opportunistic predator?

How do you tell the difference between a) a safe male who would never ever harm a female, b) a male who views themselves as safe and doesn't realize they're causing harm or intimidation, and c) a predator intentionally harming a female?

Let's say that less than 1% of wolves are actually sheep in the wrong body. How are sheep supposed to tell which wolves are internally sheep and which are not? How are the sheep supposed to determine whether the wolf in sheep's clothing is one of the safe wolves who is just living their life as a sheep, and which of them are mimicking sheep in order to opportunistically prey on them?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Oh, don't get me wrong- I'm still staunchly in favor of bio sex segregation for safe spaces. It's a simple safety and even a basic modesty concern, and a totally, inarguably valid one.

But at the same time, I am acquainted with one transwoman who is sincere as all hell, and I want the place to be just as non-exclusive to her as it is to anyone else. So I'm trying to work out if there even can be a middle ground.

If there can't, as Pixel42 seems to think, then I guess we have to defer to pure sex segregation. It's gotta be safety first. I would think a medically transitioned woman would be "ok" in a women's rest area though. Surely they are demonstrating sincerity and not just being freaks and pervs? It's no small commitment to the act, if it were an act.

Look, there's a policy approach and a practical approach here.

From a policy perspective, I have come around to being 100% no tolerance single-sex when posted as such. If a company or venue wants to decide ALL of their spaces are mixed sex, fine, as long as that's clearly posted so that consumers know what they're getting into. But if it says "Women's Shower" it means FEMALES ONLY regardless of how anyone identifies. That's the only policy I will support.

We've gone over the reasons for this across several pages. The very short version is that we can't tell whether someone is "safe" or not, whether they're "in the wrong body" or just cosplaying their sexual fantasy. And on top of all of that risk exposure... nobody else can consent on my behalf*.

There's also a practical approach. And while it sounds trite, the practical approach is that if females cannot tell that they are male, then we cannot tell. That doesn't make it right, it doesn't make it an entitlement - it just makes it successful sexual mimicry. If a transsexual male has had enough surgery done, and has practices the movements, gait, and common behaviors of females well enough that nobody suspects they're males... well, then they're going to be able to use whatever the hell bathroom or shower or sauna they want. Again, that doesn't make it morally acceptable.

The problem is that just because Blair White might go unchallenged because they successfully pass as female doesn't suggest that Eddie Izzard shouldn't be challenged - Izzard doesn't pass at all, not even a tiny bit.

* As an aside, the idea of consenting for someone else got used as a justification for multiple of the males who raped Gisele Pelicot while they were drugged - their rationale for why it was okay for them to have sex with Gisele without Gisele's knowledge was that Gisele's spouse consented for them. They asserted that Dominique had given consent for them to have sex with Gisele, so they thought it was okay.

 

[Thermal]

Your question, your entire premise, relies on there being some category of "true trans" that we can all tell is genuinely 100% legit transsexual. So I'll direct you back to some of the fundamental questions that kicked this thread off and has kept it going for 15 chapters.

How do you tell the difference between a) a genuinely true trans male, b) a delusional or mistaken male, and c) an opportunistic predator?

How do you tell the difference between a) a safe male who would never ever harm a female, b) a male who views themselves as safe and doesn't realize they're causing harm or intimidation, and c) a predator intentionally harming a female?

Let's say that less than 1% of wolves are actually sheep in the wrong body. How are sheep supposed to tell which wolves are internally sheep and which are not? How are the sheep supposed to determine whether the wolf in sheep's clothing is one of the safe wolves who is just living their life as a sheep, and which of them are mimicking sheep in order to opportunistically prey on them?

Right, and they are fair questions. My knee jerk is to say use the same standard we use everywhere else. How do you know the UPS guy at the door is not a predator, or the cop pulling you over? You assume people are normal until you have good reason to believe otherwise.

But on the flip, there's just no way every Beavis and Butthead nitwit in the country is not going to exploit this for jollies.

I don't have the answers, but I lean strongly towards the bio line. Innies in one space, outies in the other. If you get medically transitioned, maybe you should qualify as the reverse of what you were born as?

Eta: also, I'm squirming a little at framing this as "how can WE tell?" It sounds like everyone is declaring themselves an enforcer, and all trans people are guilty till proven innocent. No one demands my papers to prove I'm not a rapist in any other situation.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Let me ask you a serious question. Do you understand that rape and murder are very serious violent crimes, commited by attackers who would have no qualms whatsoever, right here and right now, of walking into the "safe space" no matter what the sign on the door says? Do you seriously think a freaking murderer would stop and say "damn, she's in the women's room. I can't go in there. Foiled again"?

This is a fallacy.

I get where you're coming from, but you're failing to understand that most criminals are opportunistic predators. Murders choose locations where the likelihood of getting caught is very, very low. So do rapists. The only ones who don't are the actual psychotics who are delusional and lack a solid grasp of reality. All the rest of them actually do consider the location and the chance of apprehension.

Just try a bit of an intellectual exercise here. Compare two scenarios for a would-be rapist.

In the first scenario, the female restroom is considered off-limits. It is understood that if a male enters the restroom, and females raise a cry, someone will come to the female's aid and evict the male.

In the second scenario, the female restroom is available for anyone who says they're a 'woman', regardless of what their actual sex is. There's no requirement to pass, there's not even a strong expectation that they dress in female-typical attire. Pretty much all they have to do is throw on some lipstick and say out-loud words "I'm a transwoman"... and they're deemed to be allowed into the female restroom on the basis of their professed gender identity. Not only are they allowed, but now it's understood that if a female complains, that female is being a bigot and will face social repercussion - maybe even legal ones.

Which of those two scenarios is going to be preferred by an opportunistic rapist?

Now let's take it a step further, and instead of a rapist we're talking about a voyeur or an exhibitionist - a peeper or a flasher. Which scenario do you think they will prefer?

 

[Thermal]

There's attacks, and then there's harrassment, verbal abuse, indecent exposure, groping, voyeurism ... a whole range of offences which some men like to inflict upon women. Anything less than an attack which causes injury and those offences can be hard to prove, because it's usually just "he said, she said" - except if they occur in a female only safe spaces, where the man has no excuse to be at all. That's why they are the only places where females are safe from such ... attentions. When any man can enter such spaces, commit such offences, and then say "She's lying, I'm trans and she's a transphobe" when she complains, there will no longer be any such thing as female safe spaces.

That's what I am arguing. There are violent attackers, and pervs. I don't think there would be any difference regarding violence, but pervs would be having a field day.

Most here seem to agree straight self ID is unworkable. I agree. What I'm trying to work out is whether accommodations can be reasonably made for trans women who aren't Hannibal Lechter. I am confident they exist. Some here aren't.