J K Rowling and the trans furore

In My Humble Opinion
1524

How do you figure this “capitalizing” would actually work? A male predator who wants proximity to children already has that option in male-only spaces (and as another poster pointed out, pedophiles tend to be more opportunistic than gender-specific when it comes to the gender of their targets). And a male predator who wants proximity to children in female-only spaces already has the option of disguising himself as a woman.

If the predators are already so determined and cunning and will stop at nothing in order to infiltrate female-only spaces, then I think worrying about “encouraging” them if we don’t require some specified level of gender conformity to “feminine” appearance in female-only spaces seems fairly pointless.

So your objections seem to me to fall down in at least three places:

  1. Because of the comparative rarity of transgender identity, and the high prevalence of gender-conforming practices among transgender people, users of female-designated spaces (whether cisgender or transgender) are going to remain so overwhelmingly dominated by people with conventionally female appearance that unambiguously “male-looking” people will always stand out there as unusual.

  2. It is already very easy for most men to disguise themselves as some type of (say, lumpy and middle-aged) woman sufficiently convincingly to be mistaken for a woman among clothed users of female-designated spaces.

  3. Given that unambiguously “male-looking” people are always going to stand out in female-designated spaces even if we’re not policing gender conformity, and given that most men could manage to disguise themselves as women well enough to pass muster when clothed in female-designated spaces even if we are policing gender conformity, there doesn’t seem to be any effective screening policy that would realistically make sense in either case.

So no, I just don’t see how banning transgender women from all female-designated spaces, or even merely requiring some arbitrary standard of gender conformity within them, is realistically going to do anything to protect women and girls from predation.

I think my own proposed solution is far more sensible and practical. Namely, everybody uses the restroom of their preferred gender identity, and we take action against individuals’ criminal or suspicious behavior rather than their appearance. (And for facilities that are low-traffic, the facilities should favor lockable single-user restrooms to forestall predatory lurkers, no matter how they’re dressed.)

For locker rooms and other clothing-optional spaces where many people just don’t want to see penises, some type of “third-space” accommodation seems reasonable. But that’s about personal comfort zones, not safety. I haven’t seen any persuasive arguments that transgender-exclusive policies would be either effective or practicable in genuinely promoting safety of women and girls.

We are certainly entitled to our fears, but we’re not entitled to enforce irrational claims on the basis of our fears. All that anybody’s presented so far are highly speculative scenarios, and IMHO that’s not a sufficient basis for denying other people reasonable rights.

I honestly don’t think women should budge on the issue of protecting the rights and safety of transgender women, especially where discriminating against transgender women has no clearly demonstrated benefits in protecting the safety of other women.

1525

The same evidence that’s used to justify the dangers that transwomen face can also be used to justify the evidence that all women face. If we accept that men are so hateful they will attack individuals who wear feminine clothing in their urinal next to them, then we should also accept the likelihood that those same men won’t hesitate to come into women’s spaces and inflict their hateful there on anyone who is in there.

The problem with the “let’s wait for the harm to happen before we do something” approach is that we can’t seem to agree with what acceptable harm is. Without having an agreed-upon threshold for corrective action, I kind of feel we’re going into this blindly and way too idealistically. Personally I don’t want anyone to be one of the victims that must be sacrificed before we collectively realize that giving the “woman” card to anyone who wants it is stupid, but I accept that some acceptable harm is always to be expected with adjustments to the status quo. I still want the conversation though. I still want folks to admit that it would be wrong for us to accept any and all harm in the quest to accommodate trans folks. And it really does seem like some folks are OK with that. I shouldn’t have to prove that hateful men are out there who have no qualms about masquerading as something they are not. I believe there are just as many men like that as transwomen. Just like I believe that most transwomen really are taking their lives in their hands when they go into men’s restrooms and locker rooms. I can believe these things jointly, without demanding irrefutable evidence for either.

If 1% of women will face increased victimization to give 1% of women an increased sense of security, then I don’t know how I feel about that, Kimstu. I’m just being real with you. And I don’t want to run the experiment to see if this the result we get. I’d rather go into this accepting that hateful people will try to subvert things for nefarious purposes, because I think only by accepting this from jump street can we mitigate the harm before it happens. That might mean that instead of catering to 100% of what 1% of the population wants, society meets them at 75% of what they want by telling them that if most women don’t accept your presence in their spaces, please go find another option. Which might mean using a unisex option or using a men’s space. I don’t think women should be shouldering the burden of all this new gender ideology stuff. If ciswomen need to expand their minds and eagerly accept all the discomfort and negative ramifications that could follow, fine. But let’s also be yelling at men to make their spaces more gender-inclusive and welcoming. And trans folks need to appreciate that gender is inherently discriminatory (in a social context) and it is OK for folks to not perceive you the same way you perceive yourself. We all need to be pressured to be more enlightened and compassionate and understanding. We all need to be asked to sacrifice something. As long as I feel like everyone is being listened to and reasonably accommodated, I’m OK with budging. Right now, though, I am not at that point.

1526

See this article for a good summary:

https://standpointmag.co.uk/issues/november-2019/discussions-with-a-stone-wall/

1527

Extension of that logic suggests people’s fears of integrated pools or gay teachers shouldn’t be the basis of policy. Quite the limb you’ve gone out on.

1528

…you’ve cited an opinion piece written by someone well known for their transphobic positions . I read it: but I see little evidence that “little of its lobbying or publicity now concerns gay or lesbian rights” when just a cursory look through the Stonewall news page shows Joyce’s claim to be complete bollocks. It hasn’t “given up its mission.” And Stonewall’s mission (that I’ve cited) still looks pretty uncontroversial to me.

1529

In this context ‘transphobic’ just means someone who doesn’t believe in gender ideology. Any way, it makes no difference. Facts don’t change depending on who reports them, and an argument does not become valid or invalid depending on who makes it. Stonewall is refusing to acknowledge, let alone consider, the effects of the changes it is campaigning for on women and even on gay and lesbian people (its own constituents).

1530

Just to expand on this.

If 1% of everyone will face increased victimization to give 1% of everyone an increased sense of security, OK, fine. I’m down. I guess.

But if 1% of women can expect to face increased victimization to give 1% of everyone an increased sense of security, while 0% of men will have to experience increased victimization, then no. I’m not down. You can’t convince me this is fair. If the discussion is about how we make men shoulder some of the costs too, then my ears are all open. But if all I hear is how it’s no big deal for women to accept whatever might happen to them as long as all transfolks are happy, then I just can’t.

I’m reminded of the lessons learned from environmental justice. Oppressed, marginalized groups have shouldered a disproportional amount of environmental hazards. They become used to these hazards and start accepting them as normal. Because they aren’t used to having any power, they feel helpless as more and more hazards are dumped on them. But when they do start to speak up, the privileged always tell them it’s no big deal. “We’re all in this together!” the privileged always say. Well, no. You don’t get to tell me we’re all in this together when I’m the one living next to a landfill and you’re the one who gets to live next to a park. But maybe you can get me to the table if you promise me some things. Like, if you want to build yet another landfill in my neighborhood, you need to build my neighborhood a park too. A park just as nice as the park in your neighborhood. And how about you pay the costs to remediate the brownfield across the street from that brand new park so that we don’t have to look at an eyesore anymore. We won’t budge until you agree to our terms. kthxbye

That’s how I’d like to see the political aspects of gender discourse go. Women need to be treated as a stakeholder group just the same as any other stakeholder group. They should be able to say, “We will go along with your plan as long as you accept some terms, OK? Because we have already been dealt a shitty hand as it is. It’s time for the privileged group to make some sacrifices and not expect us to do all the hard work.”

I think one concession should be that it is continues to be socially acceptable for women to reject some claimants of the “woman” label from their spaces. Another concession could be the creation of third spaces so that the women’s room isn’t treated as a sanctuary for everyone escaping toxic masculinity. A woman who pushes a claimant out of a women’s space shouldn’t have to endure a lecture on how she’s giving that individual a death sentence. Women are not the ones responsible for the death sentences. So women should not be held responsible for the death sentences.

1531

…in this context “transphobic” means transphobic.

What “facts” say are dependent on context, and the context in the article was provided by the author. It you want to provide “just the facts” then maybe don’t present “facts” that have been presented by someone with a clear and obvious agenda. If Stonewall were as problematic as you seem to want to make them out to be then it wouldn’t be hard for you to present a more neutral cite.

Stonewall clearly campaigns for gay and lesbian people, it is an organization populated by gay and lesbian people, and it clearly has the support of many gay and lesbian people. I don’t see any evidence that they “refuse” to acknowledge or consider the effects of the changes it campaigns for.

And you’ve convinced me: I’ll be sending a donation to Stonewall tomorrow. They look like good people and an organization out to protect the rights of the LGBT community.

1532

One complication is that the offensive behavior may not be anything overtly obvious. As I mentioned before, men’s locker rooms currently have lookie-loos who seem to join the gym just to check out the scenery in the locker room. Their behavior is just walking through the locker room a lot and taking more showers than typical. That behavior could easily be explained away and isn’t anything which could get them thrown out. If they were to do the same in the women’s locker room, they could easily say they were being harassed for their gender identity.

And what’s to stop cismen from claiming their preferred gender identity is female for the sole purpose of using the women’s locker room? I am certain that predatory men would exploit that rule to invade women-only spaces.

One advantage of requiring some kind of substantial transition towards the preferred gender is that it will filter out the opportunistic predators. If all it takes is saying “I’m a woman” to go into the women’s locker room, then lots of predatory men will do that. But if instead there had to be a show of a significant effort to transition, then it’s much more likely that the person going into the women’s locker room is doing it because it truly is their preferred gender rather than they want to sneak a peak.

1533

Kimstu

How do you figure this “capitalizing” would actually work? A male predator who wants proximity to children already has that option in male-only spaces (and as another poster pointed out, pedophiles tend to be more opportunistic than gender-specific when it comes to the gender of their targets). And a male predator who wants proximity to children in female-only spaces already has the option of disguising himself as a woman.

I’m annoyed that even after I provided evidence that Julie Marshall targets teenage girls, this is being ignored in favor of a demonstrably false assumption about pedophilic preferences. Pedophiles absolutely can be sex specific in their attraction. I mean, Jeffery Epstein and Jared Fogel, anyone? How else do we explain the sex disparities that exist in juvenile victimization?

Just by making an unfalsifiable claim (“I’m trans”), male sexual predators can now identify their way into spaces where nude females are present. Those spaces include women restrooms and locker rooms; it also includes shelters and prisons. That’s all it takes to for them to “capitalize” on trans-supportive accommodations, and it takes a massive failure of the imagination not to understand this.

If the predators are already so determined and cunning and will stop at nothing in order to infiltrate female-only spaces, then I think worrying about “encouraging” them if we don’t require some specified level of gender conformity to “feminine” appearance in female-only spaces seems fairly pointless.

Burglars are determined and cunning too, so I guess that means we should completely abandon the concept of locks, door chains, and security alarms. In fact, let’s just go head and repeal laws criminalizing breaking and entering altogether. It’s not like burglars follow those laws anyway, right?

“Specified level of gender conformity”. Do you really think this is about being feminine rather than being female?

So your objections seem to me to fall down in at least three places:

  1. Because of the comparative rarity of transgender identity, and the high prevalence of gender-conforming practices among transgender people, users of female-designated spaces (whether cisgender or transgender) are going to remain so overwhelmingly dominated by people with conventionally female appearance that unambiguously “male-looking” people will always stand out there as unusual.

Between the two of us, you’re the only one making this be about gender conformity.

  1. It is already very easy for most men to disguise themselves as some type of (say, lumpy and middle-aged) woman sufficiently convincingly to be mistaken for a woman among clothed users of female-designated spaces.

In other words: “Predators have always been able to impersonate women, so making it even easier for them to do this totally makes sense!”

  1. Given that unambiguously “male-looking” people are always going to stand out in female-designated spaces even if we’re not policing gender conformity, and given that most men could manage to disguise themselves as women well enough to pass muster when clothed in female-designated spaces even if we are policing gender conformity, there doesn’t seem to be any effective screening policy that would realistically make sense in either case.

Has nothing to do with screening, and all about empowering women to raise an alarm if a man shows up in a space reserved for women. Right now, women are discouraged from doing this because society is treating “woman” as an identity anyone can claim. Women run the risk of being called TERFs if they dare even look sideways at someone with a penis who has entered the shower area. This environment has made it more difficult for women to protect themselves, even while their risk of predation is increasing.

I think my own proposed solution is far more sensible and practical. Namely, everybody uses the restroom of their preferred gender identity, and we take action against individuals’ criminal or suspicious behavior rather than their appearance. (And for facilities that are low-traffic, the facilities should favor lockable single-user restrooms to forestall predatory lurkers, no matter how they’re dressed.)

Why not have everyone use the restroom of their birth sex, and we take action against individuals’ criminal or suspicious behavior? So all those violent men who represent a threat to trans women? They should be reported rather than allowed to continue to drive trans women out of men’s spaces.

The problem with your proposed solution is that it turns the concept of sex-segregated spaces into a silly fiction. It means basing policy on a meaningless definition of woman. If any man can claim to be one, the women’s locker room is equivalent to the “anyone who wants to be with naked females” locker room.

For locker rooms and other clothing-optional spaces where many people just don’t want to see penises, some type of “third-space” accommodation seems reasonable. But that’s about personal comfort zones, not safety. I haven’t seen any persuasive arguments that transgender-exclusive policies would be either effective or practicable in genuinely promoting safety of women and girls.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for the 3rd space be for people who fine with undressing around females and males?

1534

Since merely presenting these arguments is regarded as evidence of transphobia, you’re not going to find a ‘neutral’ source. Check for yourself if there is something you don’t believe.

I remember what you said about Quillette, you do believe in dismissing evidence and arguments if they don’t come from a pre-approved source, so I’m not expecting you to actually do this.

LOL. If that’s what it takes to get you to give a charitable donation… Planned Parenthood is also very keen on trans rights:

1535

Most men will admit that their locker rooms have a weirdo/creepy element. Like the jerks who spend an inordinate amount of time naked for no good reason. Or guys who seem to think that using a hair dryer on their balls is totally normal.

If a weirdo male came into the women’s locker room to do their weirdo things in front of a female audience, I think it should be OK for a woman to complain to management that she feels uncomfortable about this particular male being given access to the women’s locker room. It’s one thing to allow penis in the women’s locker room. But allowing penis isn’t also agreeing to immodest displays of penis. Immodest displays of vagina and breast are acceptable in the women’s room. But if you want to flaunt penis? Go to the men’s locker room with all that.

Women have their own locker room weirdos. It’s not fair to expect women to silently endure both female and male weirdos.

As long as we can come up with social rules that everyone feels comfortable with, I’m OK with being flexible on who gets to be treated as a woman. But without laying down the social rules first, I’m not going to be go-along-to-get-along. I don’t think I’m the only progressive who feels like this.

1536

…yet you “merely presented the arguments” here, and I didn’t use that to claim you were transphobic, so obviously your assertion here is incorrect.

A source doesn’t have to be “pre-approved.” But it does have to be credible. And you simply aren’t citing credible sources. I’ve already done my research on Stonewall. They don’t appear to be doing anything I find problematic.

Planned Parenthood is a worthy organization. But I’ll donate to Stonewall thanks.

1537

Though then that raises the issue of whether such calling out will be presumed to be done in good faith, or presumed to be itself harassment.

Fair enough – so “presenting female” to the level that the current mainstream finds satisfactory may not be enough of a criterion, therefore Miller’s “calling out” would have to wait until some sort of actual undesirable behavior happens, which anyway should be the case already within today’s normative-gender-segregated spaces – when you notice some guy being creepy in the men’s room or some lady being creepy in the ladies’ room, you notify management who should verify what is actually happening and deal with it (though as monstro points out, there is a certain level of implicit looking-the-other-way; that should itself be addressed).

TBH I would say it should be our goal, to create enough of a sense of justice, safety and trust for everyone to be confident that one human’s mere presence among others anywhere is not a perceived threat (be it a burly person in a restroom or a different-color person walking at night in your neighborhood) and that any perceived problem will be dealt with on its merit.

Do I expect to live to see that? Ain’t holding my breath at this age but a step is a step. Some people feel that it’s been long enough already and we need to get there now. Some people feel that’s too risky a speed. And some people on both sides are judging those on the other to be not just wrong beyond valid debate, but making the danger worse.

1538

I appreciate your post.

It seems to me if we make the political aspects of gender disourse all about feelings, then it is only fair to give all voices a platform that’s proportionate to their share of the population. Is it awkward to have to show that you deserve the “woman” label before you get considered for a scholarship? Of course. But it is also awkward to have to compete for a scholarship intended to help women against individuals who have spent their whole lives inhabiting male bodies and presenting as men, who don’t have to prove they live as women. One awkwardness isn’t more valid than the other awkwardness.

If we focus the political aspects of gender discourse on rights, though, then one side really should be listened to more. Treating trans folks as a protected class in job employment and housing doesn’t contravene anyone else’s rights. It doesn’t necessitate anyone swallow their feelings or endure additional pain.

As long as we keep the discussion of rights separate from the feelings stuff, then I feel like we have the grounds for a productive discussion. I get a bad taste in my mouth when the discussion of feelings is conflated with the discussion of rights. Human emotions are naturally wrapped up in sex and gender, so it’s bullshit to act like humans aren’t going to have negative feelings about people who push sex and gender category boundaries. It’s bullshit to act like humans don’t sometimes have very valid reasons for having those negative feelings. But it’s not bullshit to say everyone is entitled to safe restrooms, safe locker rooms, employment, and housing.

1539

The question that no one seem willing to engage is this one: is it unjust, impractical, or dangerous to restrict biological males to the men’s room and biological females to the women’s?

That question is not the same as this one: Is it wrong to profile someone as not belongIng in the woman’s locker room just because they are gender nonconforming?

To my mind, the first question should be the starting point. If the answer to that question is “no, it is not unjust, impractical, or dangerous; and in fact, we have centuries worth of data to support that it works pretty well for the most part,” then the second question is distracting and doesn’t get us anywhere.

It makes no sense to treat the exclusion of a man from a woman’s locker room as a social justice issue. Comparing this to racial segregation is absurd. Males haven’t been the victims of sex-based oppression by the hands of misandrist matriarchs and they are not disproportionately the victims of female violence. So what rights are being denied to males when we deny them a claim to female-restricted spaces?

I see nothing wrong with encouraging women to notify authorities if a man is in a space reserved for women. If the man is asked to show his ID and it shows a big M, then it is not unjust to exclude him. I will be telling my daughters to vacate any public restroom if they see a man there, because their survival in this world depends on them understanding that bad men sometimes go through doors they aren’t supposed to go through. My girls will not be told to wait until the man starts acting suspiciously. That is too much leeway for a kid to navigate.

1540

If, after you have demanded an ID from a fellow bathroom traveler, their government issued ID has a big F on it, will you let them be, even if they have a beard and penis?

Don’t want to just jump in here towards the end, and I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but would that be enough, that the person in question has gone through the effort of legally changing their gender?

I can understand why you wouldn’t want people changing their gender on a lark, or for convenience or even more nefarious purposes. But if they are legally recognized, then that’s more than just as a lark.

1541

k9bfriender

If, after you have demanded an ID from a fellow bathroom traveler, their government issued ID has a big F on it, will you let them be, even if they have a beard and penis?

I wouldn’t have the legal basis to exclude them, so yes.

But I don’t think legal sex should be changed if a male hasn’t had sex reassignment surgery. I’m against self-identification laws that would allow a male to be called a female without first meeting some objective and measurable criteria.

1542

Do you have any idea how much that costs? You’re basically saying that only upper middle class and wealthier people can legally change their gender.

1543

It might be nice to ask YWTF how she feels about universal health care before you accuse of her saying something like this.