If bathrooms are dangerous, its because they are usually dead-ends and the locations and layouts often favor privacy over safety. It has very little to do with what women are doing in the bathroom - during the few minutes that you are securely bolted inside that stall you’re probably in the safest place you’ll be all day — the only danger being a very slight chance that a friend of a friend will peep into your stall.
Now one thing I DONT get is why these religiously conservative God-fearing Republicans want to share a bathroom with transwomen. I think these are guys that might have trouble peeing if a beautiful woman is hanging around the urinals.
And to the extent that the imagined crimes of transsexuals are imaginary sex crimes like prostitution or furtive wide-stance glory hole assignations - why, if they used the women’s room they wouldn’t be able to commit those imaginary crimes at all because those imaginary crimes require cisgender men.
Possibly yes - and I say that as a person who feels adequately happy and safe living in a culture that has stabilised as gun-scarce.
It’s actually the same as any situation where drastic change is proposed that adversely impacts an overwhelmingly innocent majority, in order to notionally, but not actually, address some rather small risk.
-So yes, that sort of fits the scenario of taking all the guns away from America. It also sort of fits the scenario of adding lots of guns to the UK.
Imagine being so afraid to use public restrooms, for very good reason, that you had to arrange your life to avoid doing so as much as possible. This is reality for god knows how many thousands of people in the US - many of them juveniles. “Liberals” and others who care enough about these people to try to change that reality should be commended for it.
ZPG Zealot was responding to a hypothetical scenario where she does not need to be an expert at spotting trans people because the individual is someone who she already knows for a fact is a cisgender troublemaker:
It seems like people are taking her response about calling for security and being afraid this man was a predator as being her general feelings about trans women who use women’s bathrooms, but she was responding to a hypothetical that was not about trans women. It was about a cisgender man claiming to be transgender because he wanted to go into the women’s room and make trouble. IIRC ZPG Zealot has said in other threads that she’s fine with actual trans women using women’s bathrooms.
The bigger problem with the loophole is that “bathrooms” also includes changing rooms/ locker rooms / showers. Someone born as a male goes into the ladies locker room and showers at the city pool and sits around for a while. Is there anything wrong with that? They watch females changing in and out of swimsuits; have they done anything wrong? The females being watch feel uncomfortable with it, are they just bigots?
That’s an actual issue, on the other hand, since it’s a conflict between two legitimate interests (assuming that neither has an ulterior motive, and both are acting in good faith), and there’s no objective reason to give precedence to the concerns of either party.
Of course, these concerns are cultural. Make these two people naturists, and the issue evaporates. Makes the woman concerned about a transgender checking her out a woman concerned about a regular man entering the locker room and checking her out, or a man concerned about an homosexual man entering the locker room and checking him out, and the opinion of many people will change even though the concern is objectively exactly the same.
The part I can’t understand about this is that, surely, by now everyone acknowledges that homosexual people exist, right? Regardless of what you think about their rights, you know that there is such a thing. But no matter who we allow into what bathroom, we’re going to end up with some people in the same bathroom as people they’re attracted to. And we’ve clearly decided that this is acceptable, or we wouldn’t have public bathrooms at all. What changes when one introduces transsexual people into the equation, or cross-dressers?
I think it should have been obvious that I was referring to random men off the street. However, usually when a male janitor is cleaning he puts up a sign that says Restroom Closed for Cleaning. He is also usually wearing a a uniform and has an I.D. badge indicating who he is and what he’s there to do.
Yes, women being dragged into restrooms for robbery, rape, or assault is a problem. There are places where female students are advised to only use the restrooms in groups. Read over the original question again, please. The persumption is the person trying to enter the women’s restroom is unquestionably male. I never claimed to be an expert on whether someone is a MtF trans because that has nothing to do with the original question.
The numbers of people affected either counts across the board or not at all.
It is disingenuous to brush off the issue of more male predators attacking women in public restrooms if their access to them becomes backed up by law based on small numbers, but then say small numbers don’t matter when the issue is transexuals getting to use the restroom of their choice.
I think there are many more male sex predators around than there are transwomen who want to use the women’s restroom, and they take their opportunities where they can get them.
I’ll ask, yet AGAIN: for those who are so concerned about women being assaulted by perverts disguising themselves to get into the ladies room, why has there never been any big worry over little BOYS being molested in the MENS’ room???
“We” might have decided that it’s acceptable, but plenty of people in fact don’t think it is and hate the idea that they could be sharing a locker room with a gay man.
Apart from that, if “we” have decided that sharing a bathroom/locker room with people who are attracted to us is acceptable, “we”, on the other hand, have also clearly decided that sharing a bathroom/locker room with someone of the opposite gender is unacceptable . So, inevitably, it’s going to be an issue if someone perceive, rightly or wrongly, that the person entering is of the wrong gender, or expect that people perceived as being of the opposite gender will be allowed in their bathrooms/ locker rooms.
Until you change the whole culture, either by having everybody feel that a transgender woman is exactly the same as someone who is born a woman (good luck with that…even people as “progressive” as radical feminists won’t have any of this) or by having everybody feeling fine with sharing locker rooms with people of any gender (good luck with that too), the issue won’t go away. It takes ages for such cultural perceptions to switch.
And look at the case of AHunter3 : man, not a transgender, attracted to women , but perceive his/her gender identity as female, and would want to be treated as such. If someone like him/her wants to use the female bathrooms and locker rooms, what is the proper response? Good luck with this one too.
I’ll answer it although I can only speak for myself. It is in no way a zero sum game so I’m not sure what the point of the “SO” concerned with is, as if it’s an idiotic concern for some reason. When I had little boys, I took them into the ladies restroom with me and when they got old enough that it no longer seemed appropriate but they were still pretty small, I had them use the “buddy system” and go in together.
I approach public restrooms the same way I approach, I dunno, parking garages or anywhere else that can be somewhat secluded in public, with a bit of extra caution. I don’t let anyone tell me that’s ridiculous.
Not sure where this fits into the conversation but just for discussion, I have never in my whole life even seen a transwoman that I recognized as such in a public women’s restroom or locker room, that I can recall.
If I did, I am sure I’d just leave as soon as possible if my own personal feeling was of not being safe. If I did not feel possibly unsafe, I would just proceed as usual.
Also, I hear that in Europe, for example, there are no separate women’s and men’s restrooms in the first place and nobody seems to care. That is something to think about, too.
What I don’t like in discussions like this is they seem to often devolve into people basically just picking a side and chanting it and ridiculing the other side with hyperbole and such, rather than thoughtful discussion that includes respect and listening.
I’m separating this from your ‘numbers should count across the board’ argument, because your argument is flawed due to being based on a false assumption.
The false assumption: that laws protecting transgendered persons’ rights to use the facilities of their choice are equivalent to providing ‘access’ to predators.
*An attack in a public restroom, just like an attack taking place anywhere else, is unlawful. *The attacker will be prosecuted. ‘The law gives me the right to go into that restroom’ is in no way a defense for the attack. The attacker receives no legal benefit from the existence of laws protecting transgender persons.
This ‘argument’ appears again and again from those opposing transgender rights, and it is an exceptionally poor and fallacious one.