I can’t find a story that corroborates this. Do you have a link? And do you think this is different than saying “Only women can get cervical cancer”?
Log in to Twitter, and search for the hashtag “onlyfemalesgetcervicalcancer,” it’s caused a bit of a ruckus and you’ll see the evidence fairly quickly.
Is that different from “only women get cervical cancer?” It’s vaguely different; girls, not women, could get cervical cancer, and transmen, who are women but identify as men, can get cervical cancer, so if you are only referring to women who are “cis,” they’re slightly different statements.
I want you, though, to consider that a person was accused of hate speech for saying that. That’s hate speech?
I know what you mean. I’d like to say we should just use common sense, but it’s really not that common. For trans people who pass, it’s not a big issue, but for those who don’t it’s always going to be awkward unless single rooms are available. Defo don’t want people calling the police just to get someone in trouble, just want to avoid enabling those who are blatantly taking the piss, too.
Have you used unisex bathrooms? I have a few times and it felt pretty uncomfortable; not sure how much of that is because I’m not used to it, but I do feel this is a worse solution for everyone else.
That’s what I was wondering. I wasn’t really aware of it until recently.
You’re probably right that attitudes towards locker room use are similar in the US. I compared the UK polls with the US ones and couldn’t find any identical questions, and since the wording makes such a difference it’s hard to get an idea of who is more supportive.
Yeah, and we keep coming back to them in this thread too, despite the fact they are probably the least important issue. This whole discussion has been extremely frustrating and circular.
I have never used (or seen) a true unisex restroom, one with multiple stalls. The only ones I’ve seen are single occupancy rooms that are a handicapped accessible. This is what my office has. There is a very minor awkwardness involved because we have sex-segregated restrooms too. So if folks see me going into the unisex room, there’s always this thought in my head that they might I’m some kind of special snowflake that can’t pee/poop within earshot of others. A friend of mine avoids using it because she has anxiety over someone knocking on the door while she’s inside.
I think true unisex restrooms would really need to be more private than typical public restrooms for the majority of people to feel comfortable, at least until the novelty wore off. I once was at a hotel that had a public restroom where the stalls were actually little rooms, with doors and walls that went all the way to the floor and ceiling. I know it’s more claustrophic like that, but it was AWESOME. Each stall had a bidet and a toilet. So maybe in a less fancier place, there could be a toilet and a urinal.
I totally agree with you that people are overly fixated on restrooms. I think this is intentional. If you can get people to agree that peeing and pooping next to someone with different sex organs isn’t a big deal, then you make people who aren’t thinking too hard about it to go along with the idea that all sex-segregated places are outdated. Well, no. Public restrooms are public restrooms. They are their own thing. In all 40-something years of my life, I’ve never seen someone else’s genitals while using a public restroom. Women’s restrooms have always been equipped with privacy stalls (I know men’s restrooms are not always so discrete). They aren’t anything like a locker room, a prison cell, or a shelter.
#WhyisChangeSoSexist is about to take off, too. If you click now, you’ll get a front row seat.
I can’t believe I’m living in this timeline. Feels like we’ve been captured by some malevolent entity and all the stops are being pulled right now. Its almost enough to make want to get on my knees and start praying, @RickJay. This is not a small thing for me to say.
It’s nuts. Actual hatred is allowed, but scientific facts are hate speech and get you banned. And when women try to talk about their issues, they get lectured about ‘excluding’ men.
The ones I’ve used were just like a normal single sex one, except there were urinals behind a wall. I should think it’s more embarrassing for men, using a urinal with women in the same room, but on the other hand men never worry about their safety (even when they really, really should).
There has been a push to make school toilets unisex in certain areas, even though it’s against the law for kids over 8, but I don’t know whether these have normal cubicles or separate little rooms.
I work(ed?) in a very small office and we only have two single occupancy toilets, one being the disabled one. I’ve never had a problem with this, but recently we were amalgamated with another office, and the HR rep from there really wanted them designated male and female since their office was afflicted with a ‘phantom pooer’. However, she didn’t get her way because it’s a male dominated industry and one toilet wouldn’t have been enough for the number of male employees.
It probably is. I feel like instead of trying to persuade the majority of the justice of the ‘trans cause’, the charities and lobbyists are aiming to get laws passed without too many people noticing, which is why they are so desperate to silence anyone who disagrees. But maybe it’s just part of a bigger shift towards less tolerance of different opinions.
If I go onto social media right now and say things like “Testicular cancer is a unique challenge for men” I will not be banned by any platform, and no one will hurl abuse at me. Men are not attacked the way women are if they say things like “sex is a real thing.” It’s an order of magnitude different.
The vast majority of people who identify as transgender just want to earn a living and do fun things and walk their dog and eat ice cream and live in peace, like anyone else. But the leading edge of this movement, the people screaming “trans women are women” the loudest, are disproportionately likely to be men who are incredibly hostile to women.
I’ve encountered them I college dorms. IIRC two or three toilet stalls and shower stalls. I don’t remember if the one on my floor had a urinal. But I remember some in other dorms did.
I think when people like iiandyiiii hear “anyone who says they are a woman is a woman”, they think of the transwomen they personally know and love. So they think to themselves, “Well, of course that’s true!” Because the transwomen they personally know are going to be like majority of transwomen, who do think biological and social realities are important to gender membership and thus put in some effort to express their gender identity in a way that conforms to the ways of cis folks. They think that everyone who posits this idea is coming from a similar vantage point. As iiandyiiii expressed several days ago, there’s an implied message in this slogan–one of “long-term lived experience”. But that interpretation isn’t universal. There are folks who take the slogan quite literally. I don’t think a lot of progressives know this. They think all progressives are thinking about transgenderism the same way they are. They aren’t thinking of the more fringy folks.
There’s a challenge to talking about the fringe. Fringe by definition is comprised of freaks who no one would take seriously. So if you talk about the fringe, people can dismiss you as a hysterical fear-monger who is making a big deal out of invisible monsters hiding under the bed. But in internet discussions, the fringe is quite loud. They aren’t invisible at all. They are all over the place, shouting people down for voicing anything that pushes back on their fringy ideas. Well-intentioned people who don’t really care that much to pay close attention to a discussion will hear the shouting coming from one side and think, “Well, if they are screaming like that, it must be for a good reason.” They will reflexively side with the fringe because the fringe is pro-trans right, and of course being pro-trans rights is what well-intentioned people are.
The problem fundamentally is it’s so damn easy to be considered an activist nowadays. Everyone is a spokesperson now. Prior to the internet, you had to prove yourself to represent an entire movement. You had to demonstrate eloquence, expertise, diplomacy, tactfulness, reasonableness, and yes, some respectability. The Black Panthers didn’t just like Joe Blow off the street spout off about the Black Panthers in front of the camera. No, they chose their leaders to do that, because they’re leaders were chosen for staying on point. I shudder to think what would have happened to the civil rights movement or women’s liberation movement if they had unfolded during the internet age. There’s no easy way to winnow the fringe element from the majority element on the internet.
It should be no surprise that the more radical positions are going to come out on top when the discourse is happening almost exclusively through the internet, because those are the radical positions provoke the most emotions, both good and bad. “Trans women are women” is always going to carry the day before “Trans women who put in some effort are women” does. The people don’t want to put in some effort are the ones who have plenty of time and energy to upvote and tweet and shout down the “Karens”. They are the ones who don’t give a fuck about how crazy they sound or how alienating they appear to people who haven’t really made up their minds on everything.
It doesn’t seem like it’s the more fringy folks. People are getting banned for pointing out basic biology. The bar for hate speech is so low that signage in your typical gynecology office would count, if it was posted on social media.
This wouldn’t be happening if it was just a few loudmouths shouting into the wind. There seems to be concerted effort from people in powerful positions.
I think the fringy folks have a disproportionate amount of influence on the internet. And I also think there’s a lot of people who aren’t so fringy who don’t know they’re supporting fringy, because they haven’t thought everything out. They just know they want their trans friends to be protected.
I think the vast majority progressives who hear “anyone who says they are a woman is a woman” thinks the message is actually “anyone who says they are a woman [and makes substantive changes to their physical appearance and biology after suffering from life-long gender dysphoria] is a woman”. They think the part in the brackets doesn’t have to be said out loud for everyone to knows that is what’s being communicated. They just think it’s a slogan that no one is going to take literally.
The fringy folks are exploiting this big time.
You may be on to something, but I would modify the latter to be “There’s no fair way to set a minimum threshold for when one can acceptably declare oneself to be a particular gender, and it’s distinctly unseemly to start commenting on whether someone is ‘man enough’ or ‘woman enough’ to be accepted as same, so let’s focus on the majority of trans individuals who are doing the best they can and who probably wouldn’t label themselves as trans without a good reason, given the marked drawbacks of doing so.”
I don’t know how to square this circle. It’s wrong to force vulnerable women to be exposed to people who look and sound like men in women-only spaces, and it’s also wrong to prevent transgender individuals from participating fully in society as the genders their brains tells them they are. Those two goals are at odds and I don’t know if there’s any way to compromise.
Powers &8^]
The people sending death threats are an internet fringe. But Stonewall and Mermaids and similar groups aren’t fringy, they’re invited into schools and advising the government on policy. And they are also pushing the ‘anyone who says they are a woman is a woman idea’, in theory and in practice. Their model countries like Ireland and Argentina have written that into law, and it’s what they are asking for in the UK. And I’m pretty sure they mean it, too. If for example a trans teenager was too afraid to come out to their family and therefore continued to present as their birth sex, these organisations would still say they should be able to use the locker room of their choice at school. I don’t get the impression they care at all that they are enabling the fringe elements or that these policies could have an impact on anyone else.
Why is that a bad thing? Should a trans teenager’s ability to be comfortable in school be predicated on whether his parents are raging transphobes or not?
Powers &8^]
I would say that as long as people are free to identify however they want, free from discrimination and violence and bigotry, then people are “fully participating”. Not being able to go to a women’s domestic abuse support group because the organizer of that support group thinks your physical appearance is too triggering for some of the members is unfortunate for you, especially if you’ve taken great pains to be as female-presenting as possible. But maybe that just means you need to seek out a transwomen support group. And if your presentation is indistinguishable from your average cismale, then a trans support group really does make more sense for you and you’d be an ass (IMHO) if you kept pressing the issue. Being rejected sucks, but it simply isn’t up there with job discrimination or being beaten or being called a slur. It’s down there with “life isn’t fair and we don’t always get what we want, but maybe one day that will change.”
I’d like to see locker rooms adopt policies that are supportive of trans rights while equally supportive of women’s safety and security. Install privacy stalls and private showers for individuals who desire extra privacy and/or don’t want to provoke hostile/fearful reactions out of others. Or create third spaces for anyone who is indifferent about the genitalia in their general vicinity as long as everyone behaves. I think maintaining sex-segregation makes sense. But third spaces make sense too. We need more third spaces and less “let’s cram into this one space because we’re afraid of the other space” spaces.
It means we’d have someone who looks and dresses like a boy undressing in the girls locker room, or someone who looks and dresses like a girl undressing in the boys locker room. You know, that scenario people keep saying will never happen and we’re worrying about unnecessarily?
It’s not clear to me why a trans teenager wouldn’t feel comfortable changing in a room with other people that share their naked anatomy.
I’m a woman who feels most comfortable undressing in the women’s room. Not because my gender identity is “woman”, but because my body is female. If I were to umdress in the men’s locker room, I would be worried about being starred at and causing a distraction that might cause trouble. So I go to the women’s room, where I don’t have to worry about any of that happening.
If I was only female “mentally”, there would absolutely be no reason why I would need to use the women’s locker room. Feeling entitled to that space would feel wrong, because I know my body would be perceived as male and would cause a unnecessary distraction. Such a distraction is a cost that doesn’t come with any real benefits to anyone, since a locker room is just a place to don and doff clothing and maybe shower. Not a critical thing at all, and yet it’s being treated integral to trans acceptance.
Can you explain why is it so vital for a trans kid to undress with girls? What rights are denied if the rule is simply that all people with penises stick to the one room and all the people with vaginas stick to the other room?
I understand the concern with this, but I think it’s not as big a problem in practice. Most kids are pretty private when it comes to locker rooms, even if they’re cisgender. Transgender kids even more so, I’d think. In most cases, I believe schools provide them with private changing areas for just that reason. That certainly seems like a better solution than making someone known to be a girl change in the boys locker room just because her parents still think she’s a boy. Now there’s a dangerous situation.
Powers &8^]