@tomcar, I have started a new thread over here to explore your comments, because I feel to properly understand you will be a serious hijack from the topic of this thread.
I know the bathroom discussion was one example I used, and several comments have followed that issue. But I started the thread to talk about the issue in broader terms.
And you seem to be demonstrating my point very succintly. People don’t believe trans women are women, they think they are men. And are thus suspicious of their motives.
And I will highlight what @thorny_locust brought up, the fact that all this talk focuses on trans women and ignores trans men as if they don’t even exist. I think that also touches on my point. Part of that is that hormone treatments can adapt the physical appearance of a trans man more fully than of a trans woman because of the nature of testosterone. They won’t grow taller, but other secondary sex characteristics will change. Beards, getting stockier, etc.
Blending in better is a big part of that. Also, culture indicates surprise penis is much more humiliating to a guy than surprise no penis is to a woman. YMMV.
And basically the payoff angle is assumed to not be there. Women sneaking into the men’s room to spy isn’t a thing, and few men are worried some secret woman is going to try to take him.
But protectivism for women from “creepy men” triggers men to discount trans women as much as women fearing those “fake women”.
Probably scent, too.
My SIL dated a trans guy for a while. The first time i met him, it was hard for me not to think of him as a tall butch woman, and SIL kept using male pronouns really prominently, speaking in ALL CAPS. i ran into him about a year later, and didn’t recognize him. Because i was looking for a tall woman, and he has become a short guy to my hindbrain.
A friend is dating a trans man now. When i met the trans guy, i had to warn some old guys to stop misgendering him, they just couldn’t avoid saying “she”. (It’s my official responsibility in that social group to step into that kind of situation, and he asked me to help him with the old men.) It’s been a few years, and no one would misgender him now.
Yeah, it’s easier for trans guys to “pass”.
I don’t think this necessarily follows.
For example, it could be that women think 99% of trans women are women but are still nervous because the remaining 1% either appear too masculine for them to be comfortable, or are outright frauds if the law became that anyone can use any bathroom without any trans history without consequence.
Probably, but it’s worth reemphasizing that this isn’t a thing.
From my anecdotal experience, trans women that present female but have a penis are popular with many men and women. If all they want is to get laid, they don’t need to trick anyone.
Meanwhile, doing this kind of stunt, and producing the unexpected genitalia in the bedroom is a pretty dangerous thing to do for no reason.
With all this being said though, I agree that being nervous about trans in bathrooms say is not necessarily trans hate; there can be real concerns and real risks. And a lot of the solution is not educating people on trans but bearing in mind the legitimate fears as we amend laws.
What “legitimate fears”? The danger is all one way; trans people are assaulted and murdered and persecuted on a regular basis.
Firstly, two things can be true (this is really becoming my motto recently); trans people being most at risk doesn’t mean there aren’t other risks we should address.
Secondly, to clarify I was speaking hypothetically in that part.
I agree, that with the status quo, women aren’t at risk and it’s completely a threat being imagined by the right for political, bigoted reasons. Or at least it was…I think the hate train has largely moved to the claim of trans targeting children, or operations on children, as that works better for a moral panic.
I’m just saying, in the abstract, I can see people being nervous about the rules becoming “anyone to any bathroom, no consequences” because, at the very least, we’d see at least some MAGA bigots try to abuse said rule, either for a stunt or to genuinely get off.
In several states the rule is that anyone can use any bathroom. In practice, people use the bathroom that they “look like”, and people with ambiguous presentation usually use the men’s room. And… this hasn’t led to assaults.
Not that no one is assaulted in restrooms, but there hasn’t been any increase when laws changed. Most restroom assaults are cis men attacking cis women.
When you think about it, it’s obvious that people who are willing to rape and otherwise violate major laws are not the people who are deterred by a law that says, “you aren’t allowed in this space”.
Right, and I have made this point myself in past threads. The thing that makes bathrooms safe isn’t a force field or alarm that goes off, but that it’s still a kind of public place; someone who actually wants to commit a sexual assault is not going to pick a place where any number of people can walk in at any time (and their boyfriend outside might want to have a word).
Maybe I can clarify what I am saying with a hypothetical:
Right now, if I, a cisgender man that presents male, were to walk into the ladies changing room, what would happen?
Well, leaving aside specific actions that would get me arrested, it may be that I am not breaking any law, not for the first instance of doing this. After all, people walk into the wrong room by mistake sometimes (I’ve walked into the wrong bathroom thanks to badly-designed trendy male / female signs).
What would happen is likely that the women there would ask me to leave, and if I refused they would go get the manager and they finally would make me leave.
I think there is a concern though that, if the rules were to change, such that I could just say that I am trans, and challenging me in any way would be discrimination – no evidence of prior-trans or presenting female required.
Yeah, this would be a bad scenario, as, at the very least, you’d have some right-wing idiots doing this as a stunt.
I’m hoping we can come to some agreement on the hypothetical…I’m not enjoying playing devil’s advocate…
I have a friend who is a non-gender-conforming man. He wears woman’s clothing, and looks like a woman from behind. He uses the men’s room, like most people with an ambiguous presentation. He gets approached by men telling him he’s in the wrong room pretty frequently. He turns, and tells them sadly that there isn’t really a right room for him. Then he heads to a stall and does his business.
He doesn’t travel to states that have bathroom laws. It’s crippling not to be able to use a public rest room.
If you, cisgender man, walked into a ladies room i was in, i would probably assume you were the janitor and hope you’d wait until i finished. It’s actually a pretty common occurrence. I’ve also seen people whom i assumed to be masculine-presenting trans women in the rest room. I just ignored them, fwiw.
I don’t use public restrooms that are isolated, for fear of violence. But if they are busy, i don’t worry about who else is using them.
I sympathize with your friend. I absolutely do not think the rules should be “everyone must use the bathroom that corresponds to their birth assignment”.
Again, I was just trying to say that some degree of concern from women is understandable, even if it is almost entirely something the right has created and fanned.
(And also, as previously mentioned, where I live about half of facilities are unisex and no-one cares. It’s just not a problem)
You are presenting a more nuanced version that is likely more correct. I was summarizing the essence of what @WalterBishop said.
Even your version is essentially what I said, just limited to some cases and not a blanket disbelief. If they appear too masculine for the woman to feel comfortable, then that is not believing the trans woman’s claim to identity. “You’re faking it,” essentially.
As far as "anyone can use any restroom without repurcussions, assholes being assholes, I can’t discount some MAGA man or douchy teen pulling a stunt. But this is still a manufactured issue built on disbelieving trans existence.
And yes, I’m aware surprise penis isn’t a real thing. The more real version is discovering the women you are attracted to is trans. That has a similar psychological effect without the dramatic reveal.
Sadly, I fully expect that here in Texas, group unisex bathrooms would be one more issue to rail against as “too woke”. Even with full-wall stalls.
Individual rooms seem to be acceptable.
One, it’s wrong because it’s pernicious. Two, it’s wrong because it sexualizes trans women out of proportion. See Julia Serano’s book Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back (New York: Seal Press, 2022).
I’m a 65-year-old trans woman who has no interest in dating anybody. My hair is still dark, but since I developed a gray streak, men have stopped hitting on me and good riddance to that! I just want to live my life as a regular woman. In society that amounts to being addressed as “Ma’am” by store clerks and using the women’s room, and I’m happy to say my life is going quite well on both accounts.
So stop sexualizing us against our will! It’s gross.
That’s a good point; to most of these people’s way of thinking, there’s no practical difference between them.
I feel like it’s largely a worldview that comes from having really rigid gender roles and perceptions- “real men drink straight whiskey”, “real men like football”, “real men like cigars”, etc. Being a man who acts/dresses like a woman bucks those perceptions and roles hard. It’s not men having long hair, it’s literally up-ending the roles.
And the people that put a lot of stock in those roles are extremely agitated by this; that’s a large part of how they make sense of the world and the people in it, and trans/drag people are perceived as making a mockery of it, and being just wrong because they’re disrupting their comfortable gender roles/norms.
I assumed it was a reference to the Toupee fallacy.
Thank you for the explanation.
“Fears” don’t have to be legitimate. They are just how someone feels for whatever reason they feel that way. The expectation is that a person should then choose to behave in a rational manner.
That said, I wonder if “trans fear” is unconsciously driven by a sort of “uncanny valley” effect. Maybe not so much a conscious fear that someone is trying to deceive us as it is a more unconscious rejection of the individual as a suitable mate for reproduction. Almost like an instinctual, almost primal reaction like “this creature looks and acts and otherwise appears to be a female but something is very off about it which only means it’s trying to lure us close to kill and eat us!”
I don’t mean to put you personally on the spot. I certainly don’t mean to ask you to justify your life or your decisions or your perceptions. But I’m curious what you mean by this snipped bit. I’m not asking for justification of whatever your POV is. I’m only asking you to explicate your POV enough that I can understand what you mean to say. Really.
In particular, IMO every human of whatever gender path through life, is a sexual being. Kids mostly not yet, oldsters maybe mostly past tense, but it’s there nevertheless for all of us every day we’re alive.
Are you meaning to say you believe transwomen as a class are inherently more sexualized by the observing society than AFAB women as a class? Or did I miss your point entirely?
For whatever unusual tail-of-the-bell-curve feature of humanity, there are fetishists to go with it. It’s the Rule 34 of real life.
Missing a limb? There’re people with a fetish for that. Monstrously 99.99th percentile fat, skinny, pale, dark, short, or tall? There’s a fetish for that too. Etc. But is the existence of such fetishists relative to fat, skinny, pale, dark, short, tall, or trans folks (M or F) the same thing as “society sexualizes me/us as a group”?
I’m not sure one can say this. I do not think Trans people set out to deceive anyone but are there social norms about this?
I mean, when should a Trans person inform someone that they are Trans? Immediately upon meeting? 15 minutes in? Just before getting naked?
People are different. Perhaps a Trans person is really hitting it off with someone and having a real connection. They will naturally be afraid to say something that could ruin the moment. It depends on the other person but you never know. They may have an instinct to just keep going so the other person gets to really know and like them and then tell that person. But that comes with risks too. The other person may feel they should have been told sooner.
The reality is this one will truly depend and will vary all over the place. It can’t be easy for a Trans person to navigate that. I do not know if the Trans community has reached some consensus on when is the “right time” to tell someone they are Trans.
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Just look at the majority of posts in this thread, starting with yours. Almost this entire thread has been objectification of trans women, with a few exceptions like LSL Guy and Banquet Bear. Read Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano (New York: Seal Press, 2007).
ETA: @Whack-a-Mole two posts up.
Heck, earlier this year when I was a married, separated, but not yet divorce-finalized cishet male I struggled with when, where, and how to explain my less-than-simple status to women I was hoping to date or was actually dating. The marriage was over; there was no going back. Attitudinally and emotionally I was single, but that wasn’t the practical or legal truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
So when to say it? Hard question to answer. For a trans person that’s got to be 10x more fraught. Minimum.
@Johanna: Thank you for the clarification. It’s now on my list.