Guest post: Let the men solve their own violence problem
Originally a comment by maddog on More compash, but not for you.
The Liberal Democrat leader insisted discussions around single-sex spaces were not new and that more compassion towards trans people was needed in society.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment, but he’s making a huge unstated assumption there: everyone in these discussions simply assumes that it’s only the (actual, biological) women who need to have “more compassion” — in the usual, patriarchal, and sexist-steteotypical way of giving up and ceding to the desires of the men. T advocates like Sir Ed Davey are talking (down) to entirely the wrong party. Their exhortations to show “more compassion” to trans-identified males ought to be directed to the other men.
The entire supposed “justification” for allowing trans-identified men into women’s spaces is that other men will commit violence against insufficiently masculine trans-identified men. That is 100% gold-plated male-on-male violence. That is a problem for the males to solve among themselves. It is not women’s job to solve it for them. Let the men solve their own violence problem. If men had more compassion for men who do not perform typical norms of masculinity, then the “justification” for trans-identified men to invade women’s toilets and locker rooms vanishes. If a (trans-identified) man fears going into the men’s room because other men might attack him, let him carry the burden of figuring out how to do so safely. Let him ask a male friend to go with him. Let him advocate for men to be more compassionate toward one another, including gender-nonconforming men. Take responsibility for yourselves, men. It’s not women’s problem.
That’s exactly the same sort of thinking that puts women in bags in the Muslim world; men misbehave, so women must give up everything to prevent their misbehavior.
They don’t even think of it as men misbehaving though. They think of it as women luring, tempting, corrupting. Men are helpless and women are evil.
Yeah, I know. I was just putting it from my perspective. ‘Cause I’m one of those unreasonable women who think we should be allowed to be full people in our own way.
Maddog is not wrong about this. It’s a men’s issue, and it starts young. Some of the adult human males who prance around in lipstick in the ladies’ room were probably called names for not performing masculinity correctly when they were children. Homophobic bullying is alive and well, having survived the brief period of homosexual acceptance and found new modes of expression. Now creeps like Ed Davey can not just exclude the pooftas from their company but pretend they’re being compassionate while doing so.
I’m not so sure this is really a men’s issue. Violence is already prohibited by law and a transgendered male who tries to use the same bathroom while someone’s wife is also using it is, if anything, more likely to be confronted and possibly assaulted. Instead, I think that for transgendered males the object of using female bathrooms is to be validated as the sex they aren’t. Davey’s shunting aside this matter by downplaying the matter of sex is due to him also supporting the validation of transgendered males, while avoiding the fact that this isn’t fair to women.
J.A., obviously it becomes an issue for both sexes. But I believe that it starts as a men’s issue, and could better be addressed as a men’s issue.
Ridiculous self-congratulatory garbage like the op-ed in today’s NYT cover up the extent to which it’s a men’s issue:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/24/opinion/anti-drag-laws-anti-trans-law-suits.html
The title displayed on the main page is “All Americans Have the Right to Dress Exactly How They Want.” And that links to, and has become the headline for, the article about how oppressed transgender people and drag queens are. It’s not about what she pretends it’s about at all. “Attacks on gender nonconformity — and cross-dressing in particular — have a long history in America,” she says. And she goes on about men who have dressed as women in the past. There’s a little snippet of an old law in there:
I agree with the author that it’s good this is no longer the law, but that’s where we part company. Now we’ve swung off the other end – it’s been made illegal in some places to even point out that someone has disguised their true sex.
Yes, I agree with MX. Redburn that men and women shouldn’t be required to wear identifiably sex-based sets of clothes. I agree it was terrible that Toni Mayes was arrested repeatedly for wearing women’s clothes, and subsequently mistreated in jail. But why don’t men have the right to dress how they want in the men’s bathrooms and on the men’s sports teams? Shouldn’t men have the right to wear a dress if they want to, and also not get harassed or beaten up by other men? Can they do it without people deciding they’re not men at all?
No, and it’s in part because men like Davey don’t want to deal with them. A lot of men don’t want to be around other men who they feel aren’t acting out their masculinity properly, or who are homosexual. They’re disturbed by them, and quite happy to foist them onto women, they always have been. But now, with special gender theory, the bros get to pretend they’re grand for doing it, not just bullies. They can get the swishes out of their men’s club and proclaim they’re on the side of liberation at the same time.
It’s easy to be in favor of people being liberated somewhere else, isn’t it?