We have to have a serious discussion
Hmmm. What are we saying here?
I think we have to have a serious discussion about what's more important – your right to feel comfortable, or your right to be safe. These rules are supposed to ensure EVERYONE is safe, not just you. Trans women are not safe in male changing rooms.
— Jacob (@wellhat) July 2, 2019
Trans women are not safe in male changing rooms, so women and girls have to share changing rooms with them.
But women and girls are not safe in male changing rooms either, so why do they have to make their changing rooms less safe for them in order to make them more safe for trans women? Why does the obligation always run that way? Why is there maximum concern for the safety of trans women and zero concern for the safety of women and girls?
Can we have a serious discussion about that maybe?
Show me evidence for this claim.
I’ve seen evidence of males, both trans and not-trans, preying on women in changing rooms, bathrooms, and the like.
Show me evidence that trans women are not safe in male changing rooms.
This just gets me spitting mad.
The reason for SEX segregation is not merely that women are not safe from men. Women are at risk of a harm from men that no man has to be worried about: sexual assault or rape with risk of pregnancy. It’s not merely not being beaten up by someone bigger, tougher, stronger, or more angry. Women need SEX segregation because of the realities of sexual consequences for women that don’t apply to men.
Trans women aren’t safe in the men’s room? How do they know? “Not all men” are violent towards trans identified males. They only have to be careful how they dress, or what they say, be aware of their surroundings, take someone else in the bathroom or dressing room with them, hold their keys a certain way, or adopt any of a number of other measures that can be employed to prevent male violence against them.
Seriously, though, it’s MEN’S problem, it’s not women’s problem to ensure safety for men in the men’s room or men’s locker room. Gay men aren’t safe either, nor are other insufficiently masculine men. They are victims of toxic masculinity and misogyny every bit as much as trans identified males are. We don’t solve the problem of male violence by letting the bullies have the floor and sending all the other men to invade women’s spaces.
And it’s a false dichotomy to say trans identified males are concerned about safety, whereas women’s concerns only amount to “discomfort.” That’s a gaslighting lie. When you allow male-bodied people into women’s spaces, WOMEN AREN’T SAFE. And they are unsafe in ways that will NEVER HAPPEN to trans women in the men’s room.
The lack of safety to trans women in the men’s bathroom or locker room is something that they, being male-bodied, have a fair chance of being able to protect or defend themselves from. Not so with women being able to protect themselves from men. That’s the actual REASON for SEX segregation in the first place: women in general don’t have a fair chance to protect themselves from male violence.
Again, how men treat other men is the MEN’S problem. It’s not WOMEN’S problem to solve for the men at the cost of their own safety and autonomy (as always ).
Lady Mondegreen @#1
Good point.
*round of applause for maddog*
Translation of first part: “i’m going to keep on about this until you agree with me, or shut up and leave the discussion, so I’m the only one left speaking.”
Also, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that, since his name and picture sure look like those of a guy, the rights he’s being so eager to spread around are not his to give away.
It seems to me this same 21 year old dude was in on another, similar discussion, making bold claims and assertions, at some point during which he realized and admitted that he didn’t know what he was talking about, and would have to think more, study more, etc. Well, I guess he’s all done thinking, studying, etc-ing and is now an expert who is ready to wade into this discussion.
An excellent point maddog, and one which bears repeating.
For people who are indistinguishable from non-trans women, transwomen seem to have little understanding of (or interest in) non-trans women’s lives. Whatever happened to “allyship”? Is that another thing that only runs one way?
Ben, women have to be the ally of everybody; nobody has to be the ally of women. Because women, that’s why. We are supposed to take care of everyone else, make everyone else feel comfortable, center everyone else.
And no one else is even asked to center women, let alone harassed until they shut up and put women at the center. The women’s movement is no longer allowed to be about women.
Excuse me but… “or”? Women’s comfort and safety are simultaneously decreased by male inclusion into their spaces, or increased by barring it; inclusion reduces safety which reduces comfort.
What an incredibly silly false dichotomy. This is not a matter of “A OR B” but rather “(A AND B) OR (notA AND notB)” – safety and comfort*, or neither.
*by changing room standards, where many are not especially comfortable to begin with)
#6
That ship sailed long ago.
This discussion reminds me a lot of the one a year or two ago about Schrödinger’s Rapist. Most men are not rapists. That’s statistically true. But the few who are pose enough danger to women to justify all sorts of accommodations. Self-declaration — But I’m one of the good guys — is a non-starter for good reasons that a moment’s reflection will reveal. The onus is on the good guys to demonstrate their goodness by respecting women’s boundaries.
Trans activists are refusing to accept that their self-declaration — But I’m a woman! — is a non-starter for exactly the same reasons. Trans is not a Schrödinger-free card.
Nualle, and it’s not just rape. There are many other forms of violence perpetrated against women, and one of the things that isn’t nearly as rare is the desire of men to see women in various states of undress. Boys have been sneaking into the girls room ever since I can remember, even though there is little titillating about watching anyone urinate. It’s partially sexual, but I suspect is about 80% domination.
Making women feel uncomfortable isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. The goal is to make women feel uncomfortable, to make us feel like men are always watching us, always waiting for the moment to spring. We know that, in general, men are larger and stronger than women, and we feel the strong need to be constantly on our guard. That is one way they drive us out of the office, drive us off the internet, drive us back to the kitchen and to home and hearth where we can feel safer, more comfortable, and protected by men.
Do we need to be protected from *real* transwomen? That’s difficult to know at this point, but there are cases where transwomen have attacked women sexually (and they can say they are not *real* trans, but by the definition of woman that they offer up, that a woman is anyone who says they are, then they are, in fact *real* trans). The data are scanty on this point right now, so we can’t be sure of the extent of threat to women that transwomen might pose. It is probably rare, but as you note, so is the prevalence of rapists in society. Most of the men I meet are not going to rape me, or anyone else, but that doesn’t mean I can let my guard down with strangers.
So we can either grit our teeth and bear it, retreat from public life altogether, or find a way to keep women safe. Right now, that means safe spaces, since no one is willing to stand up and tell the men “don’t rape” and give them severe consequences when they do. No one is willing to tell the men it’s their responsibility, not the woman’s, to keep them from raping. (When I say “no one”, I don’t mean that literally, Skeletor, since on this site, we are obviously doing that; it is more of a societal no-no, not an absolute one!). We have worked around that by providing safe spaces. These spaces must be maintained, or eventually we will have the situation where most women retreat from public life – which is clearly the goal of most misogynists.
Ben’s point @ 6 and Nualle’s @ 10 are important, though, however long ago the ship sailed. This total absence of understanding of or solidarity with women’s actual point of view is a dead giveaway, and also the reason the resistance is building. This “you just have to let us put you in danger, tough shit, stop whining about your safety, this is about our safety” thing – it makes it so fucking obvious.
Ophelia —
And the SAME DAMN PEOPLE who just a few years ago were busy explaining the Schrodinger’s Rapist concept to others are now calling women who are uncomfortable with males in their changing rooms and toilets bigots and Nazis, and telling them to shut up.
You couldn’t possibly be talking about someone with the initials PZM, could you?
You can believe that trans people exist. You can agree that trans people are not dangerous, deviant, disgusting, or insane. You can say that trans people should be free from violence, disrespect, etc. You can believe in the underlying equality of all people. You can understand that your way of life isn’t the only way of life.
But if you don’t believe that gender identity is a useful concept, if you don’t think people are men or women as a result of the way they see themselves–or of how they “know” themselves to be–then you are obviously an abusive, hate-filled bigot who must be silenced. You are clearly a fascist who thinks that anyone who’s different is subhuman.
Many different kinds of people are at risk in a changing room. There are countless ways of being vulnerable to bullying, harassment, abuse, violence etc. What’s special about females is that there are loads of them. So they might as well have their own changing room. Male on female harassment and violence is a significant problem and it’s harder for it to happen if males can’t access a room full of undressing females whenever they like.
Trans people are a protected minority, or should be, but they are also a small minority. And i’m not sure that their vulnerability to abuse comes from their identifying, say, as a woman, rather than from being trans. I.e. why put trans men in one changing room and trans women in another? Is anyone honestly saying that trans men are safest in men’s changing rooms?
Given the prevalence of male on female harassment and abuse, sex segregation makes sense. Insofar as harassment or abuse of trans people is a problem, a third changing space for trans people makes sense, although it will be a small space.
But trans people are human after all. Some are good people, some not so much. And they are normally biological males or females. So to give them access to the wrong sex segregated space is just a pointless risk to women.
Those who disagree need to think this through. Should females who identify as men be barred from female spaces? Can a male really identify himself out of posing a relatively high statistical risk to females? How do you explain the cases where a trans person has abused a member of the opposite sex? When that happens isn’t it usually a male perpetrator identifying as female? Why’s that?
This cartoonist seems to get it. In the midst of a long series examining male privilege as zombifying:
https://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2019-07-03
https://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2019-07-04
https://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2019-07-05
Power exists only in its exertion. And it seems to be felt (by those who have too much already?) only insofar as it is arbitrary.
Data regarding attacks by transwomen aren’t scarce at all; they just aren’t being collated by anyone important enough.
There’s a Facebook page and a website called “This Never Happens” (after the claim made by transactivists) which has hundreds of cases.