Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

[Hercules56]

...Sure, you can be 100% closed minded and demand that your way is the Way, the Truth, and the Light, and ◊◊◊◊ everybody else because they are all wrong because you say so. Knock yourself out.

Um, didn't you call folks who disagree with you on this issue "weirdos" and "abnormal" just a few days ago? Yeah, you did.

 

[Thermal]

*checks bag of Troll Chow*

Sorry, all out.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Sorry, Rolfe seemed to be a man's name to me.

Well how the ◊◊◊◊ would you know? You're the one asserting that females can't distinguish males from females anyway, so where do you get off making baseless assumption on something so flimsy as a user name on the internet? Especially when Rolfe's user title literally specifies adult human female.

 

[Rolfe]

That is actually why I requested the title change (from "Anti-homoeopathy illuminati member"). Because I realised that my user-name was ambiguous, that not all cat avatars are cat ladies, and I wanted people in this thread to be in no doubt that I was female.

So much for that good intention.

 

[Thermal]

I am not "reasonably" going to give a little, as regards the rules that should be in place. I might give a little in the actual application of them, but that's a different matter.

You really have no idea how a large chunk of women feel about this, do you? And I'm not even Moslem or Orthodox Jewish. Or a victim of serious sexual assault. (Like all women, I am a victim of relatively minor sexual assault.)

Not hugely relevant, but I had an older teen male literally try to rape me when I was a younger teen. And EC had put up a stat that 80% of women experience harassment and assault by males over their lifetime. Did you know that ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ 100% of males experience harassment and assault by males in their lifetimes?

I'm not trying to be dismissive of your concerns, but you ain't the ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ Lone Ranger when it comes to being on the receiving end of violence by males. How many fractures have they given you? How much blood have they drawn? I have answers to those questions for myself and virtually every guy I know.

 

[Rolfe]

Men can be horribly violent. I agree, that isn't really a good reason for letting them into women's single-sex spaces on demand.

 

[acbytesla]

Would you care to revise any of your replies to me in the light of that not-so-new information? Because I have to say I was pretty offended by your attitude several times.

I still believe all of this is an overreaction. That there is little justification for transphobia.

 

[Thermal]

Men can be horribly violent. I agree, that isn't really a good reason for letting them into women's single-sex spaces on demand.

Nor do I suggest they should. I *do* think there might be a little more wiggle room than the extreme entrenched views demand.

Like, you should never have to see an actual nude male right in your face without some pretty personal consent. I agree, and I think that's one of the lines that shouldn't be crossed.

But run of the mill bathroom usage? I think there's some wiggle room. The Portland school upthread seems to have a lock on a workable solution. Large open gender neutral area, and some individual private toilets scattered around. But conceded, not every place has the luxury of that much real estate.

Something weird today, though; I went to the men's room in Home Depot, and as usual, the door was propped open in full view of the aisle. There was a woman cleaning the floor, and a woman with her very young son at a urinal. I was the only adult male in the men's room.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Because like a lot of people, I'm still kicking around the conflicting ideas. I am viscerally supportive of hard line sex segregation, till I really start thinking about it. Then I don't feel so sure. Sometimes the fastest way is to get it all out and hash it out, and weigh the final result.

Eta: and the 'why' is not always gonna jive with the 'what' to do, and the more I'm looking at the 'why', the less confident I feel

Then let's go back to the build-up of the why:

Sure, vast majority in the first category, smaller in the latter two. I'm perhaps not as optimistic as you that it's well over 90%, but it's hard to pin down. And in the second category (no wish to physically harm, but less concerned about females feeling endangered) includes males who blatantly ogle females, who make comments about our bodies when we're just going about our day, who cop a feel in a crowded venue, cat-calls, etc. Perhaps a lot of males don't understand how this makes most females feel, how intimidating and violating it can be... but it really sucks for us pretty regularly. There's nothing quite like being a 12 year old who's already self-conscious about our changing bodies and then realizing that a 50 year old is staring at your boobs.

Anyway...

Some portion of males are "safe" all the way around; some portion of males will cause discomfort and/or harm to females - let's call them "risky". Is there a way for females to discern which males are safe and which are risky?

I'm not suggesting that females fear all males, nor that we should. But your reference to dogs is a good one. Some dogs are dangerous, most are not. Lots of people have been seriously injured by pit bulls. On the other hand, every pitty I've ever known has been an absolute sweetheart and gentle as you could imagine.

When I encounter a strange pitbull with whom I haven't interacted before, I'm going to be on guard - just as you note. Not necessarily fearful, but aware that this unknown dog has the potential to injure me, to do me harm. If you were to lock me in a room with an unknown dog, my level of guardedness is going to be escalated because not only is this an animal that could potentially injure me, but because my ability to get away from them is constrained.

Most females aren't constantly walking around in a state of fear about every male. In the majority of situations, we don't have any fear at all, and our guard level is minimal. When I'm at work, or at a crowded store, or out with friends, my guard level is pretty low. When I'm out with my spouse, my guard level is as about as low as it's possible to get (they're a big enough, tough enough, trained enough person that nobody ◊◊◊◊◊ with them either).

In some situations, my guard level is going to be a lot higher because of the nature of the constraints. If I'm alone in an unfamiliar part of town, or late at night, for example. Walking through a dark parking lot. And perhaps counter-intuitively to you, when I'm in very crowded venues like clubs or concerts or subway cars.

Sometimes, its the actual person that raises my guard level higher. I'm sure you've run across it, sometimes someone just gives off a creepy vibe - there's just something that gets your neck hairs up, that speaks to your inner caveman and says "danger". It might be an incorrect assessment, it might be a poor judgement, but it's still there, it's a real thing.

I assert that it's reasonable for people in general to have a variable guard level depending on the people they're interacting with and the venue in which they're interacting - the degree of perceived risk and the constraints placed on our ability to mitigate those risks all play into our internal defcon levels.

I'll further assert that in general, it's reasonable for females to have a higher defcon level around males than around females, all else being equal.

First off, remember that I'm female. I'm not a 6'x" brawny male like you. Keep that in mind as you think about the situation.

If the individual actually for realsies passes, I'm not going to notice them. And by passes, I don't mean they need to look like a supermodel. I mean they have a body shape that is within the normal range for females, they have the facial structure of a female, they have hands and feet that don't stand out as enormous for 90% of females. They don't have to be drop-dead gorgeous, but the do actually have to be shaped like a female in general. And unless they've had some really good voice training or are a naturally high tenor... they probably shouldn't talk.

So, let's talk about the ones that don't genuinely pass. You know what I notice first? That they're male. That's why they don't pass. Any notice of clothing or makeup or other adornment follows explicitly from the fact that they're a male wearing traditionally female clothing.

My guard level will be raised considerably because they're a male in an enclosed intimate space where I expect to only see females.

My guard level will be further raised because they're a male who doesn't care that their presence causes females to feel endangered and uncomfortable, a male who doesn't recognize and respect female boundaries. They're a male who feels that their internal perception of themselves and their own personal emotional satisfaction should be more important than the defcon level of females.

They've demonstrated by being present in a female-only space, that they think it's NOT reasonable for females to have a higher guard level around males in general, and a notably higher guard level around unknown males in an enclosed and intimate space.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

They don't have to be Dwayne Johnson to get my guard up. I'm female, and the vast majority of males are taller and bigger than me. And the reality is that if you put me up against a 5'2" middle-aged out of shape male... they will absolutely dominate me because pound for pound, inch for inch males are stronger than females.

Genuinely - the complaint that pretty much all of us in this thread have is NOT that the people in question are transgender - it's that they're male. If I meet a male out in public that looks like Dwayne Johnson, and they're wearing a fuchsia dress with 6" platforms and gaudy make-up... I'm going to say hi and probably even have a nice chat as long as they're not jerks. Same as I would with a female in unflattering attire, or a male in an out-of-place tuxedo. In an open, public space, they're just another human being that I'm interacting with, and aside from the low-level general awareness of their sex that comes with being female, it just doesn't matter at all. If they're kind and funny and smart, and have great conversations about things I find interesting... then great - they might be my transgender identified male nephew!

I don't care about how they identify, it's irrelevant to our conversation and its irrelevant to how I interact with them*. Hell, they could genuinely identify as an alien spacecraft with papaya-scented exhaust and it wouldn't matter. They could be a flat-earther who loves homeopathy, and spends their weekends searching for bigfoot - it doesn't matter. If the flat-earther-big-foot-homeopath is a female, I don't care.

But that exact same person in a different scenario will absolutely get my guard up. Not because they're trans, but because they're male. And that complete looney-tunes flat earther would cause me no material increase in my guard level in the semi-open showers of the yoga studio, because they're female.

From my perspective, the decency, modesty, and comfort are all elements of risk. Because at heart, they stem from the same guard instinct.

Males - not all of them but an awful lot - look at us as if we're meat. As if we're an object for their sexual titillation. I'm old and gray, my boobs sag, and I'm not so much "out of shape" as I am "two-day overripe pear shape". And I still get guys staring at my boobs when I'm out in public - they're not even big, they're just average boring 50-yo boobs! Just last summer I got my ass grabbed by a complete stranger when I was at an event with a friend, by some guy probably in their thirties (I can't tell, anyone under about 40 looks like they're 20, anyone under 25 looks like they're 15 so far as I can tell). And not some plausibly-an-accident brush of my backside, but a full-palm-and-I-could-count-all-five-fingers squeeze!

If there's a male around when I'm in an intimate space, I feel exposed, and vulnerable, and at risk. I feel threatened - not because I fear physical injury, but because there's somewhere around a 75% chance that they are thinking about me in a sexual way. Some part of their mind is thinking about my most intimate body parts and they're associating those thoughts with sexual connotations.

And I don't want males thinking sexual thoughts about my body without my consent because I have been subjected to an enormous about of sexual harassment, assault, attempted rape, and overall casual disregard for my dignity and boundaries, that such thoughts indicate an increased risk to me. I am not even close to being alone in that experience and that reaction. One in five females in the US has been the victim of attempted or completed rape. Four in five females have been subjected to sexual harassment or assault.

There's a reason we don't want males to have right-of-access to our intimate and vulnerable spaces, and it has nothing at all to do with how they think of themselves or how they dress and accessorize, or even their sexual orientation - it has to do with the fact that they're male... and males have harmed 80% of us.

That's spot on. And that's what keeps getting missed by so many of the people we argue with. It's not hate, it's not anti-trans. It's the lack of authority over our own spaces. It's the way it takes away our power over our own boundaries.

This is the basis of the why. Because even nice "safe" males are likely to be thinking about our bodies in a sexual way. Because 80% of females have been harmed by males.

And because if a male decides they want to harm us, there is nothing we can do about it.

Read that again, and try to understand the vulnerability here. I'm not saying "we're not allowed to do anything about it". We cannot do anything about it - we physically cannot force our will on males, but males can (and often enough do) force their will on females.

So to summarize... Females generally want to retain sex-segregated spaces because:

• Males ogle us and think sexual thoughts about us and that makes us uncomfortable because
• 80% of females have been subjected to sexual assault or harassment, which often begins when we're very young and have just started puberty and
• 20% of us have been the victims of attempted or completed rape and
• Being naked or vulnerable in an enclosed semi-private space with unknown males increases our threat level

Do you think those reasons why are unreasonable?

 

[Rolfe]

I still believe all of this is an overreaction. That there is little justification for transphobia.

That slur has ceased to have any meaning. According to the trans activists, absolutely everything the eye can see is transphobia.

If you mean I have a strong aversion to men coming into women-only spaces, why, guilty as charged. And calling me names will not change that. Why should women rearrange our personal lives to accommodate the demands of mentally ill men?

 

[Rolfe]

Nor do I suggest they should. I *do* think there might be a little more wiggle room than the extreme entrenched views demand.

Like, you should never have to see an actual nude male right in your face without some pretty personal consent. I agree, and I think that's one of the lines that shouldn't be crossed.

But run of the mill bathroom usage? I think there's some wiggle room. The Portland school upthread seems to have a lock on a workable solution. Large open gender neutral area, and some individual private toilets scattered around. But conceded, not every place has the luxury of that much real estate.

Something weird today, though; I went to the men's room in Home Depot, and as usual, the door was propped open in full view of the aisle. There was a woman cleaning the floor, and a woman with her very young son at a urinal. I was the only adult male in the men's room.

I thought you were in favour of sex-segregated bathrooms, and you got really really huffy when anyone thought you weren't? The mask slips, I see.

I have absolutely no interest in what you *do* think women should give up to pander to men's demands. In particular, the open male-free communal space in the washing area is very much valued by women, and a very large number of them are busy fighting tooth and nail to preserve it. You seem to have no idea how insulting your high-handed male opinion that we don't need that space and should have it taken away to appease mentally ill men actually is.

 

[acbytesla]

That slur has ceased to have any meaning. According to the trans activists, absolutely everything the eye can see is transphobia.

If you mean I have a strong aversion to men coming into women-only spaces, why, guilty as charged. And calling me names will not change that. Why should women rearrange our personal lives to accommodate the demands of mentally ill men?

I know too many trans individuals both male and female. To me they are just people trying to be themselves. That others see them differently is no different in my mind as any other prejudice. Sometimes, the cover doesn't match the book.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Rape centers over here are staffed by men and women. Transwomen get raped too. So do young boys, often incestuously. But lemme guess: ◊◊◊◊ them? You only acknowledge female rape victims? I don't think you know how sick that sounds.

Same. Do you know men and boys are even more frequently in domestic violence shelters than male rape victims? Lemme guess: ◊◊◊◊ them too?

This is the kind of post that pisses me off, and I know it pisses other people off too. You've complained that you're being maligned, that people aren't reading what you mean.

But here you are, making the malicious assumption that because smartcooky wants females to be able to access single-sex shelters, they want males to have no services at all. And you put words in their mouth that they did not say, nor were even reasonably suggested by any of their posts.

Somehow, it fails to have occurred to you that it's possible to have shelters that have different wings, different buildings even, based on sex.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Not hugely relevant, but I had an older teen male literally try to rape me when I was a younger teen. And EC had put up a stat that 80% of women experience harassment and assault by males over their lifetime. Did you know that ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ 100% of males experience harassment and assault by males in their lifetimes?

Yes, males experience harassment and assault from other males in their lives. What portion of that is sexual assault?

A lot of males don't seem to get it at all, but having the crap beat out of you is not at all the same as having someone violate your body. Getting punched in the gut is not the same as someone trying to stick a finger inside you without your consent.

80% of females have been SEXUALLY harassed or assaulted by males in their lives. If you widen that to include ALL assault and harassment, we're in that 100% along with you. The victims of rape are overwhelmingly female. Males also get raped, and that's horrible, I wish it would happen to no-body. But the portion of males who are raped is much smaller than the portion of females who get raped. The victims of sexual assault are overwhelmingly female. Males also get sexually assaulted, and that's horrible, I wish it would happen to no-one. But the portion of males who are sexually assaulted is much smaller than the portion of females who get sexually assaulted.

I'm not trying to be dismissive of your concerns, but you ain't the ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ Lone Ranger when it comes to being on the receiving end of violence by males. How many fractures have they given you? How much blood have they drawn? I have answers to those questions for myself and virtually every guy I know.

At what age? I've had blood drawn by males (and females) through elementary and into middle school. Luckily, about the time puberty hit, most males stop beating up females because there's a material difference in strength. But a couple of females drew blood in high school. On the other hand... I got lucky, and the two males who tried to rape me were opportunistic and didn't manage to injure me.

How many people - male or female - have tried to stick something inside your anus without your consent? How many have tried to pin you down and take your clothes off of you against your will? How many have grabbed a handful of your crotch in a nightclub?

 

[Emily's Cat]

I still believe all of this is an overreaction. That there is little justification for transphobia.

Do you think that females have no justification for being wary of males in spaces where we're naked or vulnerable?

 

[Rolfe]

I know too many trans individuals both male and female. To me they are just people trying to be themselves. That others see them differently is no different in my mind as any other prejudice. Sometimes, the cover doesn't match the book.

You're not the only person who knows trans people. To me they're all different. Some are friendly and try their best not to be threatening. Some are genuinely just trying to get on with their lives. And some are overbearing, entitled jerks who despise women while at the same time wanting everything women have. Yes, Andrew "Roz" Kaveney, I'm talking about you. And Michael "Elaine" Gallagher, you too.

So I don't want these trans-identifying men in women's single-sex spaces with me, for a start. None of them. Because they're men, even the ones who aren't behaving badly. (And they are the ones most likely not to go into these spaces in the first place.) And I don't want any other trans-identifying man in there either, because I have no idea what he's like, and plenty idea what rather a lot of them are like, given the TikTok videos they like to post of themselves claiming women's spaces as their territory.

And I know very well that a world in which any man is allowed into women's spaces is a world where they all are. Anyone can say the magic words, and in they come.

That you persistently frame women's lived experience with men, including trans-identified men, and women's modesty and dignity, as "prejudice", is blinkered men's rights activism in its purest form.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I know too many trans individuals both male and female. To me they are just people trying to be themselves. That others see them differently is no different in my mind as any other prejudice. Sometimes, the cover doesn't match the book.

Oftimes, the book matters far more than the cover.

 

[Rolfe]

80% of females have been SEXUALLY harassed or assaulted by males in their lives.

I'm sorry, but that is 100%. If you take the definition of sexual assault as anything a man might find himself in court over, we've all had it. (Look at the indictments in the Alex Salmond trial some time.)

Not every woman has been raped. Not every woman has been assaulted to the point of physical harm. But I flat guarantee you that every woman has been the victim of unsolicited and unwanted sexual touching by a man. I think I'm unusual in that it only happened twice to me. (Maybe three times - once I was quite little and I may have been over-reacting to a genuinely avuncular hug from someone who wasn't my uncle, but even without knowing what sexual assault was, that felt like it to me.) Most women have a list so long they don't really keep count.

 

[Rolfe]

Oftimes, the book matters far more than the cover.

You're right. I think @acbytesla is looking at the cover. The book is very frequently something else entirely.

 

[theprestige]

I still believe all of this is an overreaction. That there is little justification for transphobia.

Look at it this way: Transphobia isn't the issue here.

Everyone here agrees that nobody should be discriminated against in employment housing, etc. because of their gender expression.

Everyone here agrees that nobody should be harassed or persecuted because of their gender expression.

Nobody believes that people who report gender dysphoria should be denied scientific, ethical medical care for their condition.

Rather what concerns us here, and should concern you as well, is the current state of trans rights activism (TRA).

Broadly speaking, modern TRA manifests three deeply frightening characteristics:

First, proposals for trans accommodations that amount to men being entitled to override sex segregation whenever they want, no questions asked. You can try to frame it however you like, that's what it really is. And you should be concerned about this because accommodations of this nature harm women, don't help gender dysphorics, and do help predators.

Second, proposals for irreversible trans-affirming medicine for minors, that have no basis in medical science.

And third, an overall anti-science position that seeks to ideologically capture and corrupt as many government and social institutions as possible. This is perhaps the most horrifying development.

Fourth - because there's actually four - a strategy of condemning and dismissing anyone who raises these legitimate concerns as a transphobe. You bouncing into this thread to reflexively lash out at people who dissent from the TRA orthodoxy puts you on the side of anti-science, misogyny, and sexual predation.

I agree, there's little to no justification for transphobia. There is, however, ample justification to be terrified of the position you've adopted, and the people who have encouraged you to adopt it without question.