I am not, and have said so. Repeatedly. What I am trying to do is balance law with practicality. As I said... repeatedly... I want women to have safe spaces for their modesty, comfort, and privacy. But our courts have said with one voice that it violates our laws. So I am looking for a workaround. It doesn't take much mental horsepower to understand that.
That's exactly what segregationists used to say when justifying white-only spaces. Not your best argument.
Laws and civil rights principles. We have them. And not to keep sledgehammering this over your head, but I am not proposing a solution. I am still looking for the ideal that works better than the legally required inevitability.
In large places, a gender neutral area combined with individual privacy areas seems doable, much like the Portland school setup described above. But some women have pointed out that getting a little help from other women is a real thing in women's rest rooms. I asked my wife about that, and she concurred- especially when being 'dressed up', she might ask for help with zippers breaking and stuff, which as a guy, we don't deal with, so we overlook that sometimes.
And admittedly, as a guy, a lot of this stuff slips my mind. We don't generally get naked with the guys. We go into a rest room, do our business, wash out hands, and leave. It's a gender neutral experience, so we find it a little foreign to see someone we are not familiar with in the fest room. I've had women and trans people in rest rooms with me, and.. it just didn't register as much. Little odd, but a shoulder shrug, mostly.
So again, mostly for the benefit of you and cooky: I'm like 90% with you, but trying to torque out that last 10% fairly and staying within our discrimination laws. It's a tough needle to thread. I think the key is to make a hard line distinction between sex and gender. If they are the same, all is lost. Discriminating against gender is the same as discriminating against sex, and that's a no-go. If we legally acknowledge the difference, we have a loophole to maintain practical sex segregation. That keeps Lia Thomas as an average male swimmer, not a record holding female swimmer, and keeps women-only spaces sex segregated.
If you and the cooky and others don't get it this time, and continue with your dishonest reframing of my position, I give up with you. There's no intelligent wiggle room for you to claim you misunderstand.
Yet again, no. I think the resolution is going to be in there somewhere, but I am confident a resolution can be found that works.
One thing that might work is a female only space, and a gender neutral in place of a dedicated men's, because the men don't really care if a woman or transwoman or transman is in the restroom. But females do, just as a practical concern. Then we have to make that 'non-discriminatory', which is why we need to sharpen that sex/gender line.
