I gave you an example of how it goes already in places that have self-ID laws, like here where I live in California, and it’s still not good enough for you.
Obviously I’m not talking about what is policy at this time. I’m thinking forward, something you and others seem incapable of doing. There is a bandwagon right now and it is growing. People are jumping on this bandwagon for a variety of reasons, largely due to the internet. Voices on the internet are convincing people–especially young people–that their birth gender/sex is all wrong and that the solution is transitioning. Guess what? Not all of these people believe that transwomen have to be female-presenting. There are people who think this expectation is just as oppressive as expecting them to take HRT and surgery. This is why I keep talking about male-passing males so much. It’s easy to figure out a policy for males who are female-presenting. It’s a lot harder when the males claiming to be women look no different than all the other males, and yet they’re still playing the “you’re denying me my humanity!” violin when they are questioned.
Qenderqueerness is a new fangled thing. I think it is also a bandwagon that’s going to keep growing. If I see a genderqueer man in the women’s restroom, he’s probably gonna look like a Alex Drummond-type person. A male with mustache and beard in a skirt. Does the skirt magically make him “safe” Or is he an intruder since he goes by masculine pronouns and doesn’t identify as a woman? Should a woman accept this individual as a woman anyway and keep it moving? Or should she try to kick him out to preserve the gender purity of the space? This is where the “female-presenting” rule falls apart for me. We’re also in era of dressed-downness. People are wearing pajamas bottoms and crocs out in public. It’s not hard to sorta kinda look female-presenting even when you’re not, because female-presenting can be anything.
If transwoman are women but it’s perfectly reasonable for women to feel some kind of way about masculine males, then is it OK for ciswomen to feel some kind of way about butch transwomen lesbians in their spaces? At least where I live, which is a bit socially conservative, I would not expect to find a butch transwomen lesbian showing up in my locker room because there is still enough social opprobrium against masculine males using women’s spaces. But I don’t trust that this will always exist, given current social trends. I don’t know why I must pretend this kind of individual is less triggering than a straight cisman. They wouldn’t be. And it seems to me it shouldn’t have to fall on ciswomen’s shoulders to be the Karen and push back against an individual like this using the women’s locker room. It should be transwomen’s responsibility too. If it’s only ciswomen who are brave enough speak out, then we will be called TERFs and ultimately dismissed and silenced. And the men who want to be in our spaces will be super pleased about that.
You can are acting like I’m too stupid to know that transwomen have already gain access to women’s spaces. Of course I know this. But I’m not just thinking of the current crop of conventional transwomen that everyone knows and sympathizes with. And I’m not assuming that trans people will always be less than 1% of the population. Policies might work OK when the number of special cases are small. What happens when the number swells dramatically? I just want us to be prepared for that and not be fools.
And one can go and up and down the categories as they change weight, it’s not static.
Your sports player could be Mid T this year and may want to go for high T next or scale down to low T to gain access to a desired category. It’s whatever you want to be subject to the gatekeepers of Testosterone.
They might look like women…to you. This wouldn’t necessarily hold for everyone. Alex Drummond doesn’t look like a woman to me. She looks like a man trying to play a part.
Thanks for posting the terms of the state law, @Cheesesteak. The fact that it states it is inappropriate to request documentation of a person’s gender identity (ID check) when investigating potential trespassing is the loophole we’ve been talking about. This basically means we’re using the honor system when excluding creeps from the locker room. Since we know the honor system didn’t work to keep the two perverts out of the women’s shelters, what should we should we conclude from this?
I think the conclusion many will draw will either be that the women victimized by this honor system would have been victimized anyway or that it’s a shame that some women will be victimized and even lose their lives, but the harm will be worth it so that a small number of people get to have their gender affirmed. I don’t know how else trans rights activists and allies can rationalize the situation other than to insist that no one would ever be victimized. Which of course is stupid.
We should conclude what the data tells us to conclude. 3.4 million women and 3.4 million men have been living under this exact law for 4 years. Roughly 50% of the US population has been living under comparable laws, laws that do not require documentation of gender identity, for years as well.
We are long past the time to “logically conclude” anything about these laws. Presuming, assuming, or believing that women will be victimized is no longer valid. We should be identifying, cataloging, and analyzing what has actually happened, and decide what to do based on that.
In this thread, I have provided studies suggesting that there is no increase in violence due to these laws. I have provided public statements from law enforcement in areas with these laws that they are not seeing an increase in incidents based on these laws.
You are not providing any evidence that these laws increase danger to women. Everyone in our society is subject to the risk of being victimized, the fact that women get victimized from time to time is not evidence that these laws are causing the problem, or putting women at identifiably increased risk.
If you go just by violence, then you aren’t necessarily getting the whole picture. Major incidents will be reported. But what about behaviors like leering? We have a whole thread going on about catcalls where women say it makes them uncomfortable and men are saying it’s no big deal to give complements. But how many of those incidents get reported? Are those things a problem if we don’t hear about them?
I’ve mentioned many times about the men creepers in the men’s locker room and how nothing can be done about them. For me it’s just a nuisance, but I would imagine that a woman would legitimately feel fearful if a male-looking person was checking them out when they were naked and alone in a locker room. And if the woman felt that the front desk would blame her for being a prude, I would expect she would just not deal with it and not use the locker room again. Just because the leering person didn’t attack her does not mean the behavior is okay.
But I suspect one reason we don’t hear about these kinds of incidents is that the presence of an XY person in a traditionally female space is rare anyway. Transwomen are just a small percentage of the population, so they are only going to make up a small percentage of people in these spaces. And if most transwomen act appropriately, most of the time it won’t be a problem. I don’t think that there’s something magical that makes transwomen never be creepers. There are men creepers in the men’s locker room. I see no reason that some transwomen wouldn’t also be creepers. If 1% of the men in the men’s locker room are creepers, then I wouldn’t be surprised if 1% of the transwomen are also creepers. But since transwomen make up such a small percentage of the locker room population, it’s going to be 1% of 1% or something which are transwomen creepers in the locker room. So it will likely be very rare and not likely to be reported when it happens.
Claim:
There are places across the country that are intended to be restricted access, for very good reasons.
The law does not require positive proof that a person is authorized to gain access, but relies primarily upon the word of the person.
This means a person can fraudulently claim authorization, which we all agree is bad.
Those supporting the current mode claim that adding restrictions to the system is discriminatory.
So… Transwomen in Bathrooms, or Voter ID?
In both cases, as there is a significant body of existing use of the ‘faulty’ law, I will require evidence that false claims are common enough to justify further restrictions.
To piggy back on what @filmore said, avoidance is also a form of harm. You will never hear about the women who backed out of the locker room when they saw a male in there and didn’t want to take a chance.
Since no one has been bold enough to say what they consider to be an intolerable amount of harm, then I don’t see the point of the conversation anymore. We could show studies that show an significant increase in violence towards women by allowing a motley crew of males in women’s spaces, and it will just register a shoulder shrug out of most people. And there’s a part of me that can gets it. Once something becomes normalized, it’s easy to adopt a “Suck it up, cupcake. This is just how it is!” mentality. Like, we all know air pollution is a leading cause of illness and death, but it’s too hard to come up with a solution that doesn’t cause great inconvenience. So we accept it for what it is and try not to think about it. But the problem is that ciswomen aren’t allowed to say “suck it up, cupcake” about transwomen’s fears and outrage over injustice, while it is OK for transwomen and their allies to say this (explicitly or some other way). One group is portrayed as hateful and hysterical for not wanting to take one on the chin anymore. Another group is portrayed as courageous and sympathetic for not wanting to take one on the chin anymore. It’s all very fucked up, yo.
Well, that’s what I would like to see supported with data. The UCLA study that @Cheesesteak posted didn’t look at incidence of complaints and crimes in public accommodations after the state law went into effect. It looked at ordinances at the local level. That’s important information, but the public tends to be less aware of local laws than they are of state-wide ones.
IMO, there are two separate questions we should be asking:
Do gender affirmative policies facilitate crimes by men falsely calling themselves trans to gain access to vulnerable women?
Do gender affirmative policies increase female victimization by male predators (regardless of if there’s evidence the predator has falsely claimed a gender identity).
It seems like the first question is being conflated (and erroneously) conflated with the second one. Because its going to be inherently difficult to prove that a Peeping Tom has falsely called himself trans, the “transpersonator” data will suffer from underreporting. But that doesn’t mean Peeping Tom won’t feel more emboldened by a gender affirmative policies; that’s why answering the second question also is important.
Restrooms is only one part of it, too. Locker rooms and women-only shelters, hospital wards, dormitories, and prisons also need to be looked at.
I posted the story of this groper earlier in this thread. When apprehended, he tried to fault the store for not having a transgender bathroom. He wasn’t reported as posing as trans, but its clear to me that he was attempting to construct some kind of excuse involving a transgender identity. It is men like this who probably wouldn’t be counted as someone “exploiting a loophole”, and yet there’s evidence to suggest he was.
I never got why you’re all so het up about voter ID. Why not just provide everyone with a free state ID and be done with it? It would also be useful proving age for those who don’t drive.
I would guess a contributing factor in her not wanting to take a chance is because it’s typical for her concerns about harassing behavior not be taken seriously in public or the workplace. If a pesky man is harassing a woman is in a coffee shop, it’s likely up to her to solve the problem herself. Complaining to the manager will typically result in the problem being pushed back to her (“Ignore him”/“Ask him to stop”/“You can sit somewhere else”, etc) rather than the manager telling the harasser to stop. And even if the manager tells him to stop, the woman may have to deal with the man escalating harassing behavior because he feels offended. There’s no reason for her to think that these kinds of interactions in a locker room would be appropriately addressed when they aren’t handled that way anywhere else.
I hope you can appreciate the difference in potential harm caused by fraudulent voting and the fraudulent use of space reserved for a vulnerable population.
Someone voting a few more extra times doesn’t pose a safety threat. No one is at risk of being harassed, assaulted, raped, or spied upon if John Smith is able to finagle himself a ballot in Macon County and Fulton County.
It isn’t the violations that are equitable, it’s the fact that, if the ‘more restrictions’ side is correct, both violations should be occurring thousands of times a year, right now, and be trivially easy to discover. Despite this, the ‘more restrictions’ side is only able to dredge up a handful of cases, and often cite cases that don’t actually reflect the violations being claimed are the risk.
Thanks for this. If Massachusetts has allowed self-certified trans-people to use shared bathrooms and changing rooms since 2016, and if there haven’t been any reported instances of creeps taking advantage of that to con their way into those spaces, that’s good evidence that my worries may be unfounded and I may need to change my view.
I obviously can’t speak for others who may have different concerns, but I’m tentatively willing to drop my objections in light of this information.
If cis-women felt that trans allies were also looking out for the interests of cis-women, they would probably support them more. But it seems that trans allies are not necessarily cis-women allies. Cis-women are expected to accept transwomen regardless of how well those transwomen conform to female norms. A transwoman with a beard must be welcomed as a trailblaizer expanding the meaning of what women can look like. A woman fearful of a male-looking person in the women’s shower is a bigot and can only complain if the transwoman is actually physically violent. Over in the catcall thread, some men are acting like they can’t live a fulfilled life unless they can complement a woman’s blouse even though the woman doesn’t appreciate it. I guess cis-women should now embrace those kinds of catcalls and complements from male-presenting transwomen since anything a transwoman does should be embraced as expanding the meaning of womanhood. I think if trans advocates want cis-women to embrace TWAW, trans advocates should uphold that transwomen should highly conform to gender norms as much as possible.
I have no problem with Alex Drummond calling herself a transwoman even though she has a beard.
She does have some female qualities and may feel more like a woman than a man. But I feel she is a detriment to the acceptance of the TWAW movement if anyone who questions her beard is called a bigot by trans allies for not embracing it.