The thing is, it’s inherent in the fact that you refuse to share what your position actually is. There’s no reason not to say it if your position is that “transwomen are fully women.” That would only help your argument that it’s not about that issue. The only reason not to say it is if you think that people could actually see your positions on both as related.
This happens a lot. What you say allows people to infer your position, even if you never actually flat out state it. We can’t be sure to what degree you don’t think trans men are really men, but we can tell that you would say it if it were your position.
It’s the same way we can read what politicians really mean by what they don’t say.
But we, generally, do do that (minding our own business) – there’s no genital check, no body scanners, etc… most people don’t take any action to verify the gender of the people around them in a bathroom.
Even with this laissez faire attitude of most to bathroom access, very few people go to the “wrong” bathroom, because almost no one is interested in doing that. Almost everyone wants to go to the bathroom that matches their gender identity. I hold that this will continue, without requiring genital checks (or gender identity checks), if/when transgender people are allowed to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity, and thus this concern is trivial and, without some further evidence of changing attitudes/behavior about verification of those around one in a bathroom, not worth being concerned about at this time.
Whereas most of the rest of us are trying to have meaningful discourse.
And in the vast majority of places in the United States, there are only two options: the men’s room, or the women’s room. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a single-stall or unisex bathroom, maybe a month ago or so.
It really is a binary state question in all practicality. I’m certain you know this, from the practical experience of being a person who presumably ventures into public once in a while and sees public bathrooms. Or is that not an apt presumption?
So answer the question: which bathroom do you personally believe should I have a full legal right to use? Two choices, pick one please.
It’s not coming across that way, that’s for certain. I hardly seem to be alone in that camp. It rather looks like you’re trying to White Knight alleged hordes of cisgender people who are having the vapors over where someone pees, out of sight in a private stall in a bathroom.
You guys (and my country also!) need to catch up with Europe already and have unisex bathrooms. The aversion to bodily functions of the opposite sex is a pretty silly one in my opinion, bordering on the superstitious and primitive.
If anyone seriously doubts the violence awaiting trans people trying to pee, read the comments on our Lt. Governor’s ridiculous press release. People are asking to sterilize trans people, saying they need to be catheterized so they don’t ever get to use the restroom, threatening to beat up any trans woman who goes into the bathroom when their little girls are in there, etc.
Oh, is that all? Last comments section I read said all trans people should be thrown in volcanoes so humanity didn’t have to deal with their “perversions.”
Granted I’ll admit that as far as ways to die go being thrown into a volcano is pretty fucking metal.
No, that’s not “the thing”. The thing is really something else. You’ve missed the context here.
I am not sitting here trembling in fear that someone somewhere will come away thinking they’ve exposed me as a secret heretic who denies one of their sacred principles. I’m not even a member of that religion. What this is about is my reluctance to be drawn into a discussion of that matter in this thread. So in context, what’s relevant is not whether you think you’ve deduced something from my reluctance to declare outright this or that, or even what my position actually is. What’s relevant is whether my position on that question (whatever it is), is logically tied to anything I’ve actually stated in this thread. That’s “the thing”.
It sounds like you’re saying that you don’t think the whole cis discomfort aspect is a big deal. This is remarkably similar to what I myself said, in my first post to this thread. But I don’t know that you can dismiss other people’s concerns as trivial. Everyone has different feelings about things like this. Once you accept the general principle that you can segregate bathrooms based on people’s discomfort, then what counts is how discomforted people are, not how discomforted you think they should be.
OK, so I take it you’re doubling down on your bogus claim that I’ve said “that some people being “uncomfortable” outweighs other people being attacked”. I think I’m beginning to see a pattern here …
It’s worth noting that your apparent tendency to make things up has a broader implication. ISTM that much of your advocacy on this issue is based on your own testimony about incidents that you personally know. At this point I suspect that these incidents are being presented in distorted and exaggerated form and should be discounted accordingly.
If there’s a general principle about discomfort, it’s this: you can segregate bathrooms based on people’s discomfort as long as the segregation causes no harm (and I don’t consider discomfort to be harm). No harm has been demonstrated, that I know of, from gender-segregated bathrooms – while harm has been demonstrated (conclusively, in my opinion) from preventing transgender people from using the bathrooms that match their gender identity (as well as other forms of segregation, such as by race).
On a personal level, I dismiss any discomfort regarding trans people in the bathroom as bigoted – just as I’ll dismiss any discomfort regarding gay people or black people in the bathroom as bigoted. But even on a practical level, whether or not it’s bigoted, I dismiss this discomfort because honoring it by law or practice would harm transgender people.
A 16 lesbian was thrown out of a UK McDonalds either for being part of a group of youngsters causing trouble… Or because staff saw her using the female toilet but refused to believe she was female.
Dammit I knew somebody was going to ruin my pie in the sky, the grass is greener elsewhere naive idealism with the facts! I for one am stifled, but not deterred from becoming even more divorced from the harsh realities of life.
Also the governor fellow Left Hand of Dorkness mentioned seems like a total dunce, and the people posting on his facebook page in support of him even more so. Is that kind of fear mainstream in America?
But FWIW, you’ve misconstrued what I wrote. I did not “mockingly and scathingly disparage the idea that “transwomen are women, transmen are men””. I mockingly and scathingly disparaged the idea that it’s a big deal if someone departs from that position, or if someone thinks I did (which was the point of BigT’s post).
I could have sworn I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t intend to discuss that issue in this thread. There’s been all sorts of discussion about the propriety of that itself, and everything. Must have all gone over your head.