Guest post: The children are being used in a rescue drama
Originally a comment by Sastra on Hoo yoo aw.
It’s turning into a vicious cycle. Children who identify as trans are encouraged to violate boundaries and use the bathrooms, showers, sports teams, etc that they feel “comfortable” in. There are then people (including other children) who resist this and some of them do so violently, say by beating up a “trans girl” in the girls’ locker room. It’s safe to say that in that particular situation the catalyst wasn’t that a boy was behaving in an effeminate manner, but that a trans-identified male was in the girls’ locker room. They were attacked “for being trans.”
Yet they wouldn’t have been attacked if they hadn’t been where they shouldn’t. This recognition of truth sounds like victim-blaming and an excuse for violence. It’s not. They shouldn’t have been attacked regardless. But here we have adults who have created a situation which involves passive aggression by the future victim of active aggression. Denying that the first part is aggression is part of the setup. The children are being used in a rescue drama.
I think I’m gonna disagree on one point: physical force actually is an appropriate response to males’ presence in female spaces. It’s the least desirable response and ideally the final option, but it is appropriate. It’s appropriate because a male’s presence in a female space is per se a threat of and precursor to violation and violence. Female spaces, especially intimate spaces, must not be allowed to be soft targets.
They should not be taught that they have the right to be there. They should not be taught that the girls’ room is a safe haven in the first place and the ACLU is placing them in danger by reinforcing that idea that they have a human right to be in the girls’.
NIV:
Disagree. I used the example of beating someone up in a locker room and that level of violence would only be justified by actual violence, not a potential. If the interloper looks like they identify as trans, right there we have a probable reason for their presence which doesn’t in itself involve violence: they think they belong in a woman’s locker room because they’re a woman and society says they belong there.
Besides, we’re not even talking about an adult male here, but a child or teenager. Unless they’re actively assaulting someone, striking them is unwarranted. “Beating them up” is probably unwarranted under any circumstance. That implies revenge.
Forcible removal though?
Nullius said physical force, not beating someone up. I think physical force to remove the boy or man from the locker room is justifiable. That can just mean outnumbering him, taking him by the arms and ushering him out the door.
I suppose it comes down to details. If the boy is very naive, or autistic, or both, that might be too harsh. But the norm seems to be more triumphal “ha ha you HAVE to accept me in here” bullying than gullibility.
This.
Forcible ejection doesn’t begin with fists. (Such removal would still be called an attack by TRAs, of course.) When fists do become necessary, women and girls should be morally permitted to win the fight. They should not be expected to be passive, glass-eyed kine because of some illusive dream of utopia wherein violence is transcended.
This was the extent of my point.