Feel free to advocate for this. But, in general, people seem to prefer segregated-gender bathrooms and locker rooms. Yet, somehow, we haven’t had a plague of pervs, despite how incredibly easy it is to be deceitful (and always has been), mostly because virtually no one is interested in going in the “wrong” bathroom. This is a solution in search of a problem. Treating trans people with decency doesn’t change this at all.
For bathrooms and locker rooms, not in my experience. I’ve seen men go into women’s bathrooms/locker rooms (and the reverse) dozens of times in my life, if not more. Never did I see police involvement.
This already could have occurred. There’s nothing new here. He could have said “I’m a transman, but the rules say that I’m a woman so I have to go here”. Pretending to be a transwoman gets him into the ladies room under my set of rules… pretending to be a transman gets him into the ladies room under your set of rules. Either way, it’s very easy, as it always has been, for a man to go into the ladies’ room. But it doesn’t happen very often, because very, very few men actually want to go into the ladies’ room.
This is not a real, actual problem in the real world, aside from extremely rare cases that already existed and aren’t going away.
Sure there is – is one behaving lewdly? Is one assaulting people? Or are they just going into the stall and peeing? It’s really not hard at all. Predators predate; most people just go to the bathroom to do their business.
(No, the previous example mentioned isn’t that - Karen White is not “pretending” to be a woman; she’s just straight-up a woman, lived her life as a woman, and she wasn’t “lying” when she went to prison as a woman. She’s just a woman who happens to be a rapist.)
And, beyond that, is there any reason to believe this is a more serious concern than lesbians in public restrooms raping women (and thus equal justification to ban lesbians from public accommodations)?
Well, let’s start with reason to believe this is a more serious concern than roving gangs of biker mice from mars.
Rush said the man explained he was trying to protect his mother, an elderly woman who was also using the women’s restroom, although the mother did not seem to notice her presence.
“She didn’t seem concerned at all. She just walked right past me and went into the bathroom,” Rush said.
Once the man started to leave the bathroom, Rush confronted him and started recording. In the video she uploaded to Facebook, the man is seen arguing that he thought Rush was male because of how she was dressed. Rush said there have been numerous times when she has been openly judged or asked to leave while using a women’s restroom or a locker room. This time she feared for her life.
Footage of US police forcibly removing a gay woman from a girls’ toilet has begun circulating the internet, in a harsh example of America’s damaging new anti-LGBT laws.
The 50-second video, which was uploaded to Facebook by activist Tamara McDaniel, shows an alleged lesbian woman being told to leave the female restroom. She is called “sir” by the officers, asked for ID to prove her gender, and then pinned against the wall and escorted out.
“A lesbian was harassed and forced to leave a public restroom because the police insist she’s a man,” wrote McDaniel in the accompanying caption. “Is this what ‘Make America Great Again’ means?”
However, the couple’s night was ruined when Charlie was stopped by a security guard after leaving the women’s bathroom, who “aggressively told her to leave the premises.”
Walton said: “Char was incredibly upset and asked why. The guard said it was because she had used the women’s toilets.
“Char asked him to confirm that he was saying she wasn’t allowed to use the women’s toilets. He confirmed that she wasn’t allowed to use them, and that as she had she needed to leave the premises.”
And so on and so forth.
Look, if you want to relitigate the whole “should transwomen use the women’s bathroom” issue, there are threads from like 3 years ago where it was discussed in detail. You’re way behind the curve on this one.
“Your odds of being assaulted by a transwoman in a restroom are akin to your odds of being assaulted by Jeff Goldblum in a restroom. The kinds of predators who will assault like this don’t need an excuse to go into the women’s restroom; they will anyways. Transwomen in men’s bathrooms face extremely high odds of assault and harassment. And there’s more but I can’t be fucked to relitigate this issue again.”
Aww, see, I was looking for shit from the 70s and 80s, but apparently it never fucking stopped. :mad:
Like, there’s “not woke”, and then there’s “not awake”.
If you assert that there’s no compelling interest in having segregated locker rooms besides a vague preference, since they don’t offer any more safety for instance, obviously having transwomen in them isn’t an issue, but then again neither is having anybody else there, including an openly cis and straight male. Which obviously nullifies the “but what if the transwoman is actually a cisman” concern.
But many people argue that there’s such a compelling interest. If a woman was telling you that she should be spared the presence of men in locker rooms because she fears for her safety (even if she recognizes that the risk of being assaulted is objectively extremely low), or because it makes her very uncomfortable to have men possibly checking her up when she undresses, or because she shouldn’t have to see some stranger’s dick, would you tell her that in fact she shouldn’t have such an expectation, and that none of the reasons she advances are legitimate?
Because in this case, her interest in preventing access to the locker room can be valued at 0, which seems to be your argument, and the desire of a transwoman to go into this locker room will necessarily be more important than hers, even if it’s only valued at 0.001 for feeling good. But if you agree that she has some interest at least in limiting this access, say valued at 1, then you have to show that the interest of the transwomen in entering the locker room can be given some higher value because then there are competing interests, and you have to choose whose interest is more important.
So do you recognize or do you deny that women have any legitimate interest in limiting access to locker rooms on the basis of gender besides a meaningless personal preference?
Maybe, but limiting access based on gender doesn’t have anything to do with this discussion. Transwomen are women. Their gender is “woman”. If a woman wants to restrict access based on gender, then they aren’t blocking trans people from doing anything.
If they want to restrict access based on gender identity, which would serve no purpose except for bigotry, then they’re being hateful and bigoted.
Oh, lordy. Leave it to a bunch of mostly bio males to tell us what it means to be a woman and who should be unquestioningly accepted as a female, how they should be accepted, and how ciswomen should feel about it (or shamed into it).
It is not unreasonable to assume that a biological male may have advantages that result from their male physiology. There haven’t been a lot of convincing studies either way about whether hormone therapy mitigates all of those differences, and most people who claim that there are definitive studies usually cherry-pick those that support their own biases. I’ve encountered some conflicting studies when trying to satisfy my own curiosity on the topic.
There are good studies on brain differences between males and females, but not a lot yet on whether or not those differences hold true with people who are transgender. On the other hand, there’s not a huge population of transgender people available for comparisons, so I expect things to be murky for time being.
Until a body of fairly convincing studies are put together, we will have to believe our lying eyes. It does seem that some noticeably masculine-looking women are running away (heh) with a number of titles when competing against supposedly talented ciswomen. And, they seem to win consistently and overwhelmingly. Coincidence?
Why shouldn’t ciswomen be cynical about it?
RadFems are crazy, but they do have a point there. Just how much accommodation has to be made? And, do we accommodate and compromise ourselves to the point where we no longer have these venues or to where they simply become meaningless venues meant to showcase the talents of former males who couldn’t cut it in the male venues?
I don’t know the answers to those questions, but why is it always women who have to make these big accommodations and sacrifices?
How much disdain do you have to have for ciswomen to demand compliance based on something that is counterintuitive to them and flies in the face of their experiences? Is that what you really think of ciswomen when they voice reservations and concerns?
The thing that makes it difficult for ciswomen is the very thing that is also their strength in forming alliances with other women. Women have their own culture, in a manner of speaking, and a lot of that is predicated on biology and our shared experiences in those uniquely female biological processes - menstruation, child-bearing and child-rearing, peri-menopause, menopause - and we rely on the understanding and experiences of other women when it comes to these topics. To varying degrees, we share a lot of life phases with most other ciswomen. We consult with each other about personal experiences, ask for advice, and share information about our concerns with regard to these things. We take a measure of comfort from other women’s experiences and the equally important commiseration with each other.
Maybe it’s a metaphorical menstruation hut of sorts, and maybe people view menstruation huts as bad things, but they might be missing some observations. They provide an opportunity to get away, maybe form alliances with other women without male interference, and to simply take care of yourself out of the sight of male judgment. Even more so when you have difficult and painful menstrual periods. You don’t feel especially loving and social when uterine contractions and very disruptive hormonal swings take over your body. You don’t feel social when, every time you stand up, blood and tissue come gushing out from between your legs and make yet another mess. There is nothing pleasant and engaging about that at all.
In other words, we bond with other women due to the things we know about each other based on our shared physicality. Women are more trusting of other women. Surprise! We’re playing an odds game and it generally works out better for us that way. You can’t completely eliminate risk, but a woman will generally feel more comfortable with a strange woman than a strange man.
Which leads to the bathroom/locker room thing. While it is ostensibly about safety, because no 5 foot tall woman feels completely at ease if the person sharing their facilities during undress and/or toileting is a tall, broad-shouldered, intimidating stranger, I really think it is about the sex-segregated privacy that you are expecting when you use a specifically-marked facility. Maybe sex segregation and safety are intertwined, but they could probably be considered somewhat separate concerns in a way.
I want sex segregated privacy for personal things when it is available. If you indicate that a facility is sex-segregated, that’s what I expect to get. Otherwise, I’m being asked to trust based on absolutely nothing at all. In case no one has noticed previously, trusting others with male anatomy hasn’t always worked out well for women.
If I would hesitate to get into a personal vehicle alone with someone who gives off a male vibe, or if I had to think twice about walking alone down a a sidewalk where a male-like person was the only other person in the area, why would I want to share a disrobing event in their presence?
Ooh, do you have data backing this up, showing that transwomen tend to dominate any competition they take part in?
Or is it just the same handful of names so familiar to anyone who listens to TERFs that I can recite them in the cadence of “We Didn’t Start The Fire” by now?
Confirmation bias.
You don’t notice the transwomen in sports that don’t succeed, because they fade into the background. To quote Rachel McKinnon, after someone who beat her in 11 out of 13 races they were in accused her of an “unfair advantage” due to being a transwoman:
This is what the double-bind for trans women athletes looks like: when we win, it’s because we’re transgender and it’s unfair; when we lose, no one notices (and it’s because we’re just not that good anyway). Even when it’s the SAME racer. That’s what transphobia looks like.
But the moment a transwoman achieves something significant, a bunch of radfems are going to be screaming from the goddamn rooftops about how obviously it’s just because they’re a man.
Right, see, this is the kind of shit you’re going to get shamed for. Because it’s fucking shameful. People don’t transition because “they couldn’t hack it as men”. Neither in their professions/sports nor in general, no matter what that hack Blanchard has to say about it. That’s the toxic little assumption hidden in here. “Transwomen aren’t women, they’re men invading women’s spaces for reason X”.
Fuck that noise. Seriously, have you ever met a transwoman? Or spoken to even one? Do you know the kind of shit they go through in transitioning? Do you know how unpleasant HRT can be?
Giving transwomen access to women’s spaces is not “accomodation”. It’s not “compromise”. D’y’know why? Because trans women, and I will say this as often as I need to, are women.
I have plenty of respect for women. I have zero respect for bigoted fucksticks like the folks at WoLF, who ally themselves with the religious right wing to attack other women. I will disdain people who misgender transwomen or treat them like an invading force until the goddamn cows come home.
Given the rate at which transwomen assault women in restrooms, this is rank transphobia. What you’re describing happens about as often as men get their dicks bitten off by sewer animals while sitting down to pee. If you feel unsafe around women who don’t look like you, that’s your problem. Don’t make it theirs. Especially because a lot of people are really bad at telling who’s trans and who is merely butch, see my previous post on the subject.
Again: this is rank transphobia.
“States across the country have introduced harmful legislation or initiatives that seek to repeal non-discrimination protections or restrict transgender people’s access to gender-specific facilities like restrooms. Those who are pushing these proposals have claimed that **these proposals are necessary for public safety and to prevent sexual violence against women and children**. As rape crisis centers, shelters, and other service providers who work each and every day to meet the needs of all survivors and reduce sexual assault and domestic violence throughout society, **we speak from experience and expertise when we state that these claims are false. **
“Nondiscrimination laws do not allow men to go into women’s restrooms—period. The claim that allowing transgender people to use the facilities that match the gender they live every day allows men into women’s bathrooms or women into men’s is based either on a flawed understanding of what it means to be transgender or a misrepresentation of the law.”
“As advocates committed to ending sexual assault and domestic violence of every kind, we will never support any law or policy that could put anyone at greater risk for assault or harassment. That is why we are able to strongly support transgender- inclusive nondiscrimination protections—and why we oppose any law that would jeopardize the safety of transgender people by forcing them into restrooms that do not align with the gender they live every day.”
That fear has been an extremely effective tool for scaring people into voting against even basic protections for transgender people, which is why conservatives routinely use the phrase “bathroom bill” to describe laws prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations. When conservative media outlets attack non-discrimination laws for transgender people, they almost exclusively focus on bathroom and locker room facilities.
But that fear is baseless - completely unsupported by years of evidence from states that already have non-discrimination laws on the books. In a new Media Matters report, experts from twelve states - including law enforcement officials, state human rights workers, and sexual assault victims advocates - debunk the myth that non-discrimination laws have any relation to incidents of sexual assault or harassment in public restrooms:
There is no evidence that letting transgender people use public facilities that align with their gender identity increases safety risks, according to a new study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. The study is the first of its kind to rigorously test the relationship between nondiscrimination laws in public accommodations and reports of crime in public restrooms and other gender-segregated facilities.
“Opponents of public accommodations laws that include gender identity protections often claim that the laws leave women and children vulnerable to attack in public restrooms,” said lead author Amira Hasenbush. “But this study provides evidence that these incidents are rare and unrelated to the laws.”
(CNN)Transgender and gender-nonbinary US teens – those whose sexual identity falls outside the traditional male and female – are at greater risk of sexual assault at schools that deny them access to bathrooms or locker rooms that match their sexual identity, according to a new study.
Researchers analyzed data from 3,673 adolescents in the LGBTQ Teen Study, an anonymous web-based survey of US kids ages 13 to 17. Students who reported being told by teachers or staff that they could not use restrooms or locker rooms consistent with their sexual identity at school were classified as having “restrictive access.”
Just over 1 out of every 4 students in the study, or 25.9%, reported being a victim of sexual assault in the past 12 months. Transgender and gender-nonbinary teens who were subject to restroom or locker room restrictions had an even higher prevalence of sexual assault, at 36%, according to the findings, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
Whoops!
If you’re looking to prevent sexual assault, you’re on the wrong side of this one. Transwomen get harassed and assaulted in public places at rates that would qualify as “disgusting” if they were a fraction of what they are. Meanwhile, transwomen pose no real threat to women in women-only spaces. (Unless you count “making bigots uncomfortable” as a threat.) If you want to reduce the rate at which women are assaulted, stop forcing a population of women that are particularly at-risk to use the wrong fucking bathroom!
…
Lemme just take a deep breath here.
…
Honestly, this whole post is just drenched with transphobic rhetoric and talking points. Read between the lines, and what do we see?
[ul]
[li]Transwomen are men. [/li][li]Transwomen are merely pretending to be women. [/li][li]Women can’t be safe around transwomen because transwomen are men. [/li][li]Women can’t reasonably share in womanhood with transwomen because, to quote Natalie Wynn, “you will never squeeze life through your sacred passage”. (Like, I thought this was a bit of exaggeration for satire, but no, here you are, literally saying this shit.)[/li][li]Transfeminine athletes are men pretending to be women for easier accolades.[/li][/ul]
…And so on and so forth. Simmering inches below the surface is this boiling swamp of transphobic rhetoric and hatred, of fear and misunderstanding, of warmed-over talking points that were shown quite thoroughly to be bullshit back last time this discussion boiled over about the North Carolina bathroom bills. And yeah, if you think this makes me “disdainful”…
…Well, guilty as charged - I am extremely disdainful of hateful, abusive, nasty, transphobic rhetoric, no matter how many spoonfuls of sugar you use to help the poison go down. If you insist on being a dick to transwomen, then yes, I’m going to shame you for that.
It has something to do with the discussion. Because if they have a legitimate reason to prevent access to a man, they have a legitimate reason to prevent access to someone indistinguishable from a man. If they have a legitimate reason to want to not be exposed to the sight of a dick, for instance, it doesn’t matter how the dick owner self-identify.
Your position seems to variably rest on two different arguments : the first one being that women don’t really have any valid reason to be bothered (perv doing perv things are rare, and anyway they’ll manage to do them if they really want to, the presence of someone who might or might not be a man is unimportant and not a reasonable concern), the second being that a transwoman being a woman by definition, there never can be a valid reason to prevent her access (say, even if it’s demonstrated that a man in a locker room has a 80% chance of committing rape, someone who looks like a man claiming to self-identify as a woman should still be permitted access).
And it’s the same with sports. Here too, your arguments seem to rest of those two ideas : transwomen in fact don’t have any advantage in sports, and even if they had one, and were winning competitions 100% of the time, they still should be allowed to compete on principle.
And I think that the first position (there’s no cause for concern) isn’t clearly established (it’s at least highly disputed), and the second position (the desire of transwomen to be always recognized as women trumps any desire ciswomen might have, like feeling safe or having a shot at winning a competition) isn’t morally sound. And it’s in particular this second view that I have a big issue with.
RingsOfPylon, you’re not speaking for all cis women. Not by a long shot.
Leaving trans out of it entirely: yesterday I was in a grocery store and went to use the restroom, only to find a couple of other balked people outside it and a tape across the door saying ‘cleaning in progress’. A male store employee was visible through the door with cleaning gear. (He was taller than I am. I’m a bit shy of 5’2" and almost everyone over 12 and under 80, of any gender, is taller than I am.)
I said to the person in front of me that I had no objection to using a bathroom stall with a door on it while the person cleaning kept right on cleaning the rest of the place. She agreed with me wholeheartedly. We would both have rather done so than waited another ten minutes to pee. (I don’t, of course, know for certain that she was cis. I certainly am. It’s true I’ve never had a DNA check, but I sure pass the history-of-bad-periods one.)
I acknowledge that there are people who are disturbed by the possibility of having a person in the bathroom who looks like they’re another gender; and for that matter that there are people who’ve had life experiences that provide them reason for that. But that’s going to happen even under the law you’re proposing, and probably more often. Have you missed the fact that there are also transmen? A law saying that everyone must use gender as on the birth certificate means that they’d all have to use the women’s rest rooms. The number of such people who look male as they walk through a restroom door has got to be larger than the number of transwomen who look male as they do so; because transwomen who are going to use the women’s john are almost certainly presenting as female. If you want everyone in the women’s john to look female, then you want transpeople to use the restroom according to the gender they’re presenting as, not the one according to their birth certificate.
This doesn’t change anything. Lying pervy men can pretend to be transmen as easily as they can pretend to be transwomen. Or they can shave and wear a dress, as they always have been able to. With your rule, they pretend to be trans, biological females who look like men, but are forced by law and custom to use the ladies’ room because they’re supposedly biologically female. Or they just pretend to be masculine appearing ciswomen. Or a million other deceitful options.
But this happens almost never, and I see no reason to believe this would change if we treat trans people with decency and respect.
There’s no valid reason to restrict the access of law abiding real transwomen from using facilities. Especially when the alternative is to force them to use facilities that have a history of brutalizing them. There is no history of fake transwomen routinely brutalizing women by lying their way into bathrooms. This is a fake problem with no history to it. I’m more worried about the real problem with lots of terrible history - trans people being brutalized, usually by cismen. That’s happened many times in men’s bathrooms and locker rooms.
I’m more worried about real brutality than largely fantasy brutality.
The existence of transwomen doesn’t preclude the possibility that a man will claim to be a woman for other reasons. And the easiest it is to make such a claim, the most likely it is that such a thing will happen. If for instance the only requirement to enlist in a tennis competition with a big monetary prize is to state “I self-identify as a woman”, the likelihood of such a thing happening is rather high IMO. People will do much more than that for money.
And people obviously can and should wonder about the possible future consequences of a statute. For instance in the current thread about abortion, people are discussing the risk that this law could result in women sentenced to life for having a miscarriage. The fact that no women has yet been sentenced to life for a miscarriage doesn’t mean that nobody should wonder if it could happen if this law is passed.
Similarly, someone is perfectly entitled to think that if a law making transpeople a protected class is passed, with no onerous requirement to be recognized as trans, men will try to get an award, scolarship, medal or whatever intended for women by stating “I self-identify as a woman”. This doesn’t appear to me to be an outrageous or absurd concern.
And besides the claim doesn’t even have to be fully dishonest. I gave earlier the example of a somewhat genderfluid person feeling womanish today, for instance, opening the benefit of this law to many people for whom it wasn’t intended.
This still only address the issue of safety, though. And it’s not the only reason, not even the main reason, why people want gender-segregated locker rooms. Most women don’t want men around there, period (even if it were absolutely guaranteed that they wouldn’t be victimized in any way), and by consequence neither someone who they can’t tell the gender of, or simply who looks like a man or even more simply who has man’s part, and that regardless of what this person claims to be and even regardless of whether or not this claim is truthful.
Would you say that this preference is a completely illegitimate desire? Or simply that it’s a less important desire than that of a preop transwoman to access women locker rooms?
If it’s entirely based on pragmatic reasons, then fine, although of course your assessment of the relative risks can be disputed (and I would also point out that there’s always the option of using neither and changing at home, something you pointed at wrt ciswomen unhappy about the presence of transwomen).
But I’m still wondering if you would stop supporting the right of transwomen to use women locker rooms if if was shown to you that you were wrong and that it causes problems. For instance, the “protected class” statute is passed, and there’s in fact a number of cases of lecherous or exhibitionist men entering women locker rooms for sexual gratification, highschoolers entering the girls’ room as a prank, etc…
Also, you’re talking about “real transwomen”. How does the random Joe establish that someone entering a locker room, enlisting for a competition, claiming a scholarship, etc… is a real transwoman?
Yeah! The thing that precludes that is that transitioning sucks, transphobia sucks, everyone knows it, dysphoria sucks, and nobody would willingly go through that shit without a good goddamn reason!
Again, if you think people are just pretending to be trans for external reasons, and those reasons aren’t “the government will kill me if I don’t”, you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about and probably personally know approximately less than zero actual trans people. The idea is so utterly foreign to anyone who has even looked into this shit that it’s not worth taking seriously.
Seriously. Let me put this in terms anyone can understand.
If you say that cismen will transition for spurious reasons, you have failed gender 101 and should spend time speaking to trans people before you return to the discussion.
It’s like hearing “well if the earth isn’t flat, how come we can’t see its curve” or “if humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys” - the question betrays how little you understand about the subject.
I disagree. I think they are people with dysphoria, which is not the same thing. That said, they should do whatever they need in order to tame and control the misery that comes along with dysphoria. The same applies to other dysphorias. Do what you need to be at peace with yourself.
You’re going to have to clear a lot more hurdles to convince me that transwomen are women and that transmen are men. It sounds woo-y.
I have seen no evidence for those assertions other than self-reporting by those who suffer from dysphoria. I think they believe it and desperately want it to be so, but I’m not convinced that is the reality. If something comes up to change my mind, I’m open to reason. So far, it’s pretty unconvincing.
I suspect you want to think you have respect for women.
There are people who like causes but don’t necessarily like people. At least, not enough to keep from discarding them when they no longer serve a purpose.
I don’t have any love of WoLF either, but probably for reasons that differ from yours. I think their entire narrative is just wrong.
See how people with disparate beliefs can agree on something? We are pretty far apart on the reasons, but we both agree that WoLF is not a force for good.
This is a pompous and patronizing load of crap. I know all about hormones. You can come back and lecture me after you’ve been through 30 years of dysmenorrhea and PMS, a number of pregnancies, and peri-menopause. Until then, I’ll stack my hormonal bona fides up against anyone else’s.
Well, it sucks, but we have to live with what we have.
I’ve only known 2 transwomen. Three, if you count the DNA relative I’ve been corresponding with, but I don’t know her well enough to say much about her. It’s a small sample size, but I find they think differently than your standard issue ciswoman.
One was an over-the-top drag style, not your typical woman. I’ve known her for years and she has always been a dramatic person, so I guess going the drag route is not a surprise.
I was helping one in particular, at work, because the way the entire issue was handled at work - by both the woman herself and the management - was just so bad that I wanted to help make things a bit smoother.
Her fault in this was that she didn’t build alliances of any sort; never talked to people in the office, never tried to be friendly with others before her official transition. This is odd because she had a seemingly kind demeanor and her job was answering customer calls (go figure), but her breaks consisted of going away from everyone else and not even trying to participate in casual chat or friendly banter. She had worked there for years and I never heard her talk until she was a captive audience in the restroom.
You’ve got to recruit allies, and you start doing that by being friendly and at least pretending to want to engage with others. For most women, this is second nature and they can at least put up a facade of feigning camaraderie. People who feel friendly towards you are probably a bit more charitable when you drop a bomb on them.
The management part was a nightmare. On a Friday, shortly before we left for the weekend, we were told that, on Monday, Hisname is now Hername and, oh by the way, she will start using the women’s restroom. Okaaaaaay. Anyone see that coming? Needless to say, a lot of people were not terribly receptive to this bomb dropping.
I felt a bit resentful at first, but I also felt bad for her. Above all else, I’m a mom and tend to mother people who are at a disadvantage. Even though she had never been friendly before, I tried to exchange niceties and engage her in conversation. I thought maybe, if someone stepped up and could start the social integration, it could make things better for everyone involved.
On the other hand, she didn’t seem particularly interested in finding friendliness before, so maybe it wouldn’t have worked out.
We didn’t get to try that out because she decided to make a clean break and go somewhere else. I take some comfort in being kind and devising a plan that might have made things better. That’s more than anyone else seemed to do.
The best part is that we have a very diverse office, so it’s not like everyone is white and straight. We run the whole gamut of sizes, shapes, colors, preferences, etc. Everyone is also very friendly with each other, so it’s hard to grok why someone would completely avoid being friendly. There seems to be something for everyone in our office.
I’m not a complete monster and it’s hard to completely alienate me, but you have a good head start.
Does gender dysphoria come preloaded with a saintly glow? There is no reason to think their motives are somehow purer or more moral than the motives of other people.
As a woman, and a fairly small woman, after I was assaulted when alone in a mixed restroom (robbery by an addict, not rape - I don’t know whether to be thankful or not), it has served me well to maintain a healthy skepticism. It was a hard lesson to learn, but it was learned. I can’t afford to make too many mistakes.
In the meantime, transwomen with dicks are way less than 1% of the population, while the vast majority of penis-owning people tend to be dicks or worse. Let’s see - if we play the odds, the chances are that the person with the penis is a dick or worse. When in doubt, it’s best to stay away from them.
Regardless of what happens to the Equality Act, as a trans woman, I don’t see myself using gendered restrooms anytime soon. I’m fortunate that I live in Los Angeles, where single-occupancy restrooms are relatively common. I don’t want to deal with this.
The people you are talking at don’t get it, don’t want to get it, won’t ever get it, (To quote John Perry Barlow, “You ain’t gonna learn what you don’t want to know.”) because in their fevered imaginations they are Fighting On The Side Of The Angels and in their self-righteous zeal and indignation, they have lined up intellectually with the great thinker George W Bush and say in a firm, resolute voice, (blissfully unaware of the bitter irony) “You are either with us or the terrorists!” to the very people who want to be allies and agree with the vast majority of the positions, but have reservations that millions of others feel in their hearts as well.
But all is not lost, as when they wake up on Tuesday, Nov. 3rd 2020 to see President Donald John Trump re-elected and now free to be unrestrained and liberated to cause more worldwide shittaree than good ol’ Charlie Sheen and the ghost of Anita Bryant together on a 3 week bourbon & buttermilk enema bender in the steamy back allyways of Old Saigon, they will have their principles to console them.
It doesn’t matter to me whether it’s legitimate or not – it doesn’t trump the right of trans people to be treated with decency and respect.
If you have strong evidence that treating trans people with decency and respect puts people at risk, feel free to present it. But without it, I’ll treat it the same way I’ll treat uncited claims that being respectful to black people puts white people at risk.
