In years when there isn’t a pandemic, i run an event that includes housing for a weekend. We put everyone in cabins, each of which has 4 bedrooms (holding 2-4 people) and two bathrooms, which each have a shower, two sinks, and either two toilets or a toilet and a urinal.
One of the questions we ask attendees is whether they prefer unisex or sex-segregated restrooms, or don’t care.
Every person who isn’t unambiguously a cis male or cis female requests “unisex”. So do all the parents of small children.
(One or two people request sex segregated, and the majority says “don’t care”.)
I think transwoman don’t want to “invade” female spaces as much as they want to avoid being shoehorned into male spaces.
This isn’t the impression trans rights activists are sending. If this thread is any indication, anything that doesn’t grant transwomen equal access to anything reserved for women/females is objectionable for being insufficiently gender affirming.
For me, the character of Daddy still reads as female to me…so I don’t find her attractive even though she’s masculine-ish. Maybe after 10 yrs of a life sentence I would start to see Daddy as sexually attractive, I mean idk. Someone like Prince was very sexy to me, the eyeliner and heels didn’t decrease his sexiness at all. I 100% agree with your last sentence.
I’m not sure what the answer to that is or if I even really understand the question, probably someone who’s attracted to gender expression could answer it better than I could.
I don’t want men-looking people using women’s restrooms or locker rooms, unless those men-looking people just happen to be masculine females.
If we’re gonna have a space that’s functioning like a unisex space, then I think we should call it that. That way, no one will assume it is a safe, protective space for women.
But if someone insists on calling it a woman’s space even though a motley crew of males are told they can use it, then they’re setting up a false expectation that it is only for female-looking people. What constitutes “female-looking” is broad and hard to describe. But pretty much everyone over a certain age knows what that means. I think there is harm if we treat “female” like a nebulous subjective mental state that can never be described concretely. I want “female” to always be “person with the anatomy resembling the sex class capable of carrying children.” Note the emphasis. I’m OK with “resemble” to take care of all those intersex folks or trans folks who are putting in a decent effort to conform to femininity. But I’m not OK with “female” being reduced to “individuals who identify as female”. Because then women’s spaces are essentially unisex, and thus will take on the elevated hazard profile of unisex spaces (while still keeping the ‘women’s space’ theater). I want the spaces reserved for people like me to not be degraded like that. I also want the value of the labels we use in reference to ourselves to not be degraded either.
I think transwoman don’t want to “invade” female spaces as much as they want to avoid being shoehorned into male spaces.
If shoehorning people by their biological sex is wrong, then I think we need to abolish sex-segregated spaces completely. I think that’s what the movement should be about. But it sounds like gender ideologues think gender segregation in public spaces is the ideal since it gives trans folks a chance to feel good about themselves. Folks seem to think affirming gender is more important than providing a sense of security. I think that’s wrong. I don’t think public spaces should be devoted to affirmation. I think they should be devoted to security and functionality. So if shoehorning is bad, I say let’s get rid of separation and just try to make spaces safe and functional. And if this isn’t possible (it probably isn’t everywhere), then I say we need to tell some trans folks that their self-ID doesn’t entitle them to be everywhere they want to be. If your maleness is apparent and you’re in a women’s space, you may be allowed to use it. But you may also be asked to show government ID that indicates you are a female just in case someone does not feel comfortable with you being there. You may be asked to leave if you are acting in suspicious ways, like lingering in the shower or exposing off your wang while you sit in the sauna. And you will go along with this nicely because you will understand you aren’t entitled to be in that space anyway. This is want I wish to see in this brand new world of self-ID gender. It isn’t a view compatible with gender ideology, but I do think it is respectful of the vast majority of trans folks.
Because you’re extrapolating from your own experience. Such a thing wouldn’t happen for you, so you find it harder to imagine that it might happen for someone else.
But I’ve heard of more than one gay man – not many, but more than one – who once in their life felt attraction for a butch woman. Never went anywhere. The women were lesbians, as you would expect. But something pinged anyway. If she had just happened to be straight… who knows?
Any people for whom “gender” is a bigger component to attraction than physical sex will likewise be extrapolating from their own experience, and they’ll likely be wondering why more people aren’t attracted to them if they hit all the right gender notes. Or for another example: I’ve come across several bi people who simply can’t imagine that other people aren’t bi, the whole “Everybody is in the middle of the spectrum” sort of belief. I’ve been told to my face that I’m deluding myself when I say I’m not attracted to men. Now obviously, this person was mentally childish, but hey, this kind of thinking is fairly common. Swinging just one way, and not the other, is not a thing for them. It does not exist in their head. So they have problem imagining it could happen in anyone else’s head. They simply don’t know how that would work.
Their imaginations don’t stretch very far.
My guess is that trans people’s sexuality is more likely to split gender and physical attributes. Seems pretty likely, really.
Which will lead some of them to extrapolate incorrectly onto other people, and make false assumptions based on that.
I don’t think it’s necessarily an “ideological” belief, but rather a fairly natural trap to fall into. Typical Mind Fallacy. Our own experiences are the touchstone we use to try to understand others, but this will lead us wrong to the extent that others are not like us.
For such people, I would say the ideology is built on top of that.
On such personal questions, individuals should generally be left unbothered and unjudged.
The goal of reducing prejudice is hope for a better future, which might possibly include two people finding happiness in one another, which would not necessarily have happened in a more rigid world. This is romantic hope for a better tomorrow. It’s most definitely not specific admonishment or advice for specific people. Or it shouldn’t be.
Earlier in the thread an article was posted about a teenage transgirl who sued, IIRC, the school district because her school provided her with a curtained off space in the boy’s locker room and then a unisex changing room separate from the boy’s and girl’s locker room. That wasn’t good enough, she wanted to be in the girl’s locker room so she took them to court over it and won.
Granted this is one person who doesn’t represent the entire movement, but it’s hard to believe that transwomen don’t want to “invade” women’s spaces when as a whole they come across as being extremely reticent to embrace unisex spaces. If all transpeople were working towards/asking for were unisex spaces, civil rights, and respect for their pronouns, this thread would probably only be a page or two long because we’d all be in agreement.
Although “transwomen” as a group will have certain characteristics, each transwoman is an individual. Just like any group, some will be kind, some will be mean, some will always do the right thing, some will take advantage of any loophole, etc. I’m sure most transwomen are good people, but I’m also sure that some transwomen are total assholes who are only looking out for themselves–you know, just like any group of people. So while I’m pretty sure that most transwomen are generally respectful about what it means to be a woman, I’m also absolutely certain that a small minority of people who call themselves transwomen are going to cause a lot of problems. I think it’s important to discuss these corner cases since they are going to be the source of the problems. The kind-hearted transwomen that are your friends are not going to be the ones who are making the other women feel uncomfortable about being naked in the locker room.
It’s similar with just about everything. Most people will generally do the right thing, but it’s the few trouble makers who ruin it for everyone. The reason spam emails happen is because a few people took advantage of the email system that didn’t have any security. You can leave your car unlocked and 1 person out of thousands will break in. During a pandemic, most people will only buy what they need, but someone will buy every pallet of wipes and sanitizer from Costco. If we only consider what good people do, then the troublemakers will have free reign.
So with something like locker rooms, we absolutely need to be discussing what to do about the “sincere” transwoman who looks exactly like a man and hangs around in front of her locker reading the newspaper or watching TV. Men do that today in the men’s locker room, so the behavior itself isn’t problematic. But if that same man sincerely becomes a transwoman but doesn’t look any different, what happens when she now wants to read the newspaper and watch TV in the women’s locker room? And what about when she wants to chat up the other people in the locker room in the same way she did when she was a man back in the men’s locker room? Again, this wasn’t a problem behavior when she was a he, so would it be a problem when he is a she?
It really is confusing, isn’t it? In that video, TLC went out of their way to contrast themselves with the ultra coifed and high-heeled runaway models
I’ve seen that video a million times, but I just watched it again because youtube thinks I’m on the TLC tip. I never noticed how much they are practically screaming “WE ARE NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS!” before today. This is a message that would usually irk me, but I celebrate it in this case because TLC wasn’t using this message to identify themselves as special snowflakes deserving of special labels. They were actually screaming “WE ARE REAL GIRLS JUST LIKE YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS! FUCK THE BITCHES WHO DON’T THINK WE ARE SEXY, CRAZY, COOL JUST BECAUSE WE AIN’T OUT HERE LOOKING LIKE FAKE-ASS MANNEQUINS!”
I love me some TLC. They are the role models young girls need today.
I don’t disagree with you in principle. I just believe the way to fight prejudice is to avoid politicizing and moralizing sexual preferences as much as possible. That care hasn’t been taken and here we are, discussing lesbians wearing transphobe shirts.
No other minority struggling for social acceptance gauged it’s progress by the sexual receptiveness of other people.
So… They didn’t make a general-use unisex space that she was welcome in. Instead, they created a little ghetto that only she could use. They highlighted, “you are weird and different from everyone else here, and none of us accept you”.
Surely you see the difference between that and the unisex cabins I provide?
Try “Your exposed penis in our shower room makes us uncomfortable, because it is totally normal for girls to feel uncomfortable when naked in the presence of people with penises, especially exposed ones, since from a young age our parents have taught us to be uncomfortable about this exact situation.”
Both of those videos you linked to were dropping lessons on us that we didn’t even know we were absorbing. At no time as a teen do I remember thinking they were making a political statement. But they were, weren’t they?
Makes me wonder if Generation X is having a harder time than other generations accepting gender ideology because pop culture was awash in gender nonconformity in the 80s and 90s. I don’t follow music now as much as I did growing up but I suspect the spirit of those times has been replaced with something less liberating.
In middle or high school, a general-use unisex space might as well be called a male space because that’s the only people that would be using that space. Most girls are too self-conscious to undress around boys. I can’t even see trans boys wanting to do this because most aren’t old enough to have had mastectomies.
You know my “non gender conforming male” friend i mentioned above? He’s high enough in his company that when they built a new office they asked for his opinion. And he requested all (or mostly) single-user restrooms, instead of gang restrooms with any label. He said he would feel ghettoized if they put one unisex restroom somewhere, and if he were eIsewhere on campus he would feel like he wasn’t allowed to use any of the gang restrooms.
To make anyone comfortable in a unisex restroom, you need private stalls. And you need European-style stalls that aren’t open around the edges. I have no idea why so many American bathroom stalls are designed so it’s easy to peak around the walls. It’s a stupid design.
Shower stalls, with a little curtained area for changing, work, too.
I’ve used lots of facilities that are designed that way. That is, either the whole restroom is designed for a single user, or there are enough walls and curtains for everyone to have meaningful privacy. This isn’t some exotic fantasy.
Is it reasonable for a high school student to expect that to appear overnight? Probably not. Is it reasonable to ask? And to push at least some schools to move in that direction? Yes, i think it is.
Fwiw, my high school gym, in the 70s, had private shower stalls and privacy cubicles for changing in the girls changing room. The boys just had benches and gang showers. I have no idea why. But i never saw another girl naked when we all had to change for gym. If one of the girls had had a penis, i would never have known. (At least, not from the changing room.)
So i feel like it’s probably possible to build something like that today, too.
I would be all for unisex facilities for everyone. I think if they were designed thoughtfully, with privacy in mind, then no one would have to worry about feeling weird using them.
I’m struggling to understand how a brand new, private, changing room created specifically for the one person in the entire school who “needs” it, could possibly be described as a ghetto. Plenty of teenagers would love to have a private changing room at school.
But what bothers me the most about this is how the wants/needs of the transgirl supercede the wants/needs of every other girl who has to use the girl’s locker room. Why is the comfort of the transgirl more important than the comfort of the other girls?
The thing about the event you plan is that you ask beforehand who is ok with using a unisex space and who isn’t. The people who are ok with it, use the unisex space and the people who don’t want to, don’t have to.
No one has asked these teenage girls if they want to get undressed around a male or if they want a male getting undressed around them. It’s being forced on them…if you don’t get changed for PE, you get an F. If you don’t get changed for practice/games, you can’t be on the team. It’s not fair to value the feelings and wants of the one or maybe two trans students over the feelings and wants of all the other students.
I mean that sounds like an awesome unisex space…but I still wouldn’t want to use it. And I don’t think that I should have to. Some people are cool with going to an opposite sex doctor and some are not…neither group is right or wrong. In the same way, some people are cool with using a unisex space and some are not. Which is why if it were up to me, there would be a men’s room, a women’s room and a unisex bathroom or locker room. That way the people who want to use the unisex space can and the people who don’t want to aren’t forced to. I don’t really care if the unisex space is tricked out and the men’s and women’s rooms are small and basic…that would be perfectly fine with me.
I 100% agree. When making my posts in this thread, I think of all the harassment that I’ve received from men…I think about all the times that I’ve actually hidden in the women’s room to get away from some creepy guy and how screwed I would’ve been if any of those guys could’ve followed into the bathroom with impunity. But the thing is, those experiences comprise a very small percentage of all of my interactions with men…but that didn’t make them any less frightening or decrease my need for a single sex bathroom. So, while I don’t think that most men would fake being trans to walk into a women’s locker room, it’s the ones who would who are the problem.
I can’t tell if you meant for this to be a rhetorical question or not, but if not, yes i do think it’s a problem. It still hasn’t been explained why people with male bodies who have no intention of changing that body wouldn’t use the locker room for people with male bodies.
Locker rooms are divided by the physical body, not feelings or a person’s mental state. We don’t have a locker room for people who are super happy and another locker room for people who are pissed off at the world and another one for people who are anxious etc…we have locker rooms for male bodies and female bodies.
So for me, a person with a male body who has made no alterations to that body but has a genuinely held belief in their mind that they’re a woman, should use the men’s locker room…because they have a male body.
What do you think? Which locker room would you want them to use and do you think that the behavior you described is OK for a male bodied person in the women’s locker room?