The utterly sensible argument
The logic of it.
Well done @AlexSharpe64 @BBCWomansHour for articulating the utterly sensible argument that cis women have nothing to fear from changes to the GRA. As Alex clearly stated, trans women have always been present in women’s toilets, refugees etc. That’s because trans women are women.
— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) November 26, 2018
By the same token, men have always been present everywhere. And? Does it follow that women have nothing to fear from men? Hardly. It’s not a vanishingly rare occurrence for men to use their superior size and strength to get violent with women. Even if you think it’s uncomplicatedly true that trans women are women, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that some men will pretend to be trans women in order to assault women. It doesn’t even rule out the possibility that some men could consider themselves trans women while not actually being trans women. (What? What does that mean? Isn’t saying it the same as being it? Well that’s the issue, isn’t it. What, exactly, is the difference between saying it and being it? If it really is just a matter of saying, why can’t people just say it for the moment and then unsay it 30 seconds later? How do we know they mean it? How do we know they’re not just having a laugh? How do we know they’re not being sarcastic? How do we know it’s not a ploy? How do we know anything? When trans is both a profound and intense inner [lived] experience and a simple matter of self-declaration, what is it at all?)
Sally Hines might as well have said men have always been married to women therefore women have nothing to fear from marriage to men. Most women don’t, of course, but some do, and the men who are going to turn violent don’t come with labels saying so.
Ophelia,
Is your concern about the bathroom issue per se, or just the general “your gender is whatever you say it is” argument? Because I have really never understood how, as a practical matter, laws on who can use which bathroom are or could keep anyone safe, at least not without a big change in how bathrooms are monitored.
Most public restrooms I’ve encountered aren’t really policed. There’s no police officer or private security guard watching who goes into which room. (I’ve accidentally walked into the wrong one once or twice, either because I was not paying attention, or was confused by the cutesy signs/terminology that some oh-so-hip places use. Nobody came to haul me out.) So as a practical matter, who is ever going to get charged for using the “wrong” bathroom? Anyone who’s willing to commit an assault in a bathroom isn’t likely to respect the rule against using the bathroom, so there’s no real deterrent value. Otherwise, it’s only going to happen because someone goes to flag down a cop and say “I saw that person in the ladies’ room!” and the cop ends up chasing down someone who really did just peacefully use the bathroom. (Or is there a phenomenon I’m unaware of where people just hang out in bathrooms indefinitely?)
It’s much more the second than the first.
But about the first: true, restrooms aren’t generally policed, but if the rules do change women will no longer be able to ask men to leave or ask management to tell men to leave. It seems like a small thing now because it’s not happening all that much, but given the way it’s snowballing, that could change.
And it isn’t just the restrooms – it’s all the women-only spaces. The refuges. The battered women’s shelters. The women’s clubs. The locker rooms. The sports teams. The affirmative action lists. The women’s prisons. Everywhere women go, even (maybe especially) those places they go where men can’t follow, some of which are monitored, will be open to any man who says he feels he is a woman. Women’s safe spaces will no longer be safe.
Not to mention feminism itself.
For some people, that could be the real target.
I read a tweet by a transwoman who said her gold purse and red lipstick proved she was a woman to everyone.
That’s a person who doesn’t know anything about what it’s like to be a woman, and doesn’t care about women.
I don’t think I’ll be taking advice from people with similar views on women’s safety and privacy.
My local gym remodelled its toilets and change areas to include multiple single stall unisex toilets and change booths. Brilliant. Trans activists could be campaigning on Twitter and talk shows for more of the same, but they’re not. Instead they put all their energy into insisting women submit to them. It’s very ugly.
‘Anyone who’s willing to commit an assault in a bathroom isn’t likely to respect the rule against using the bathroom, so there’s no real deterrent value.’
These aren’t really the same circles I (or, probably, most of the people who read and comment on this blog) hang out in, but I know there are lots of men (quite possibly a large subset of the kind of men who are physically dangerous to women) who are literally terrified of even getting near the door of the women’s room–either because they think it will make other men think they’re gay, or they genuinely believe whatever the grownup equivalent of ‘girl cooties’ is. I think I posted a story on this blog before, some time ago, about a male colleague who flipped out when I offered to lend him my umbrella–it wasn’t even particularly girly, just not black, but it was enough for his terror of being associated with anything feminine to kick in. (I speculated in this blog, though not at the time, that this kind of actual physical terror must be the result of being beaten as a kid for liking/touching/etc. something feminine.)
@7: I think I remember that umbrella story.
There was a time when opponents of gay rights conflated every campaigner with NAMBLA. Of course, out in the evangelical swamp, and in much of the Catholic apologist spheres, they still do. But the overwhelming majority of GLBT…folks had no difficulty distancing themselves from that crackpot subgroup.
Why aren’t the bulk of transpeople ready to respond to Karen White? In the U.S. we had a succession of ‘bathroom bills’ more or less crafted to get out the deplorable vote. Many failed, as the threat they were supposed to answer was almost entirely imaginary. BUT, we now have a level of pseudo-trans mania that has made the worst claims being to look plausible.
learie @6, “My local gym remodelled its toilets and change areas to include multiple single stall unisex toilets and change booths. Brilliant.”
There was a lengthy article a few months back (I think in the NYT?) about how private changing areas are becoming more common in gyms — and even where they don’t exist, people below a certain age change in the shower stalls, or wait until the last minute to drop their towels, and just generally avoid being naked in locker rooms. The article was fairly even handed but did seem to have a note of lament, as if semi-public nudity is some wonderful thing that those of us who didn’t have group showers in gym class or the military are really missing out.
I also recently saw an advice column letter writer struggling with how to handle her daughter’s newly-out-transboy friend — can he still come to sleepover parties, and if so, isn’t that denying his stated gender given that no other boys are/would be allowed?
It seems to me like a lot of old simple rules that supposedly “worked” in the old days need to be re-thought, and not just because of gender identity concerns. I used scare quotes because the old rules assumed that everybody was heterosexual, so all you need to do is separate men from women and bingo, your problems are solved. (As an added “bonus,” those rules gave an excuse for hating gay people — i.e. “I don’t want them ogling me in the locker room!”) Even putting aside for the moment the question of trans or nonbinary people, we know the “everybody is straight” part isn’t true. Like, maybe a lot of people would appreciate not having to be naked around strangers, regardless of the gender or orientation of those strangers. Maybe children’s slumber parties should be based around whether you trust your children not to engage in sex when the lights go out rather than relying on the hope that none of the group might want to do so.
Screechy, that is a good point about people not wanting to be naked around strangers. I usually hid in the locker room in gym class until everyone else left because I didn’t want to be naked. This was mainly because my poverty in a rich town made my underwear unacceptable, even more than my outer wear, but it was also an incredible level of shyness and fear of people in general, and the girls in my school in particular who were never hesitant to be awful to me. I was from the “wrong side of the tracks”. I was “white trash”.
In addition, as long as people indulge in continual body shaming, even having other girls see you naked can be a fearful thing for girls. I just knew I was fat (I wasn’t; I was actually anorexic and quite thin). In a world that relentlessly pits women’s actual, real bodies against an impossible standard, having to dress and undress around other people can be extremely unhealthful…
Screechy Monkey #10,
Well, and the problem *is* solved, if the “problem” we’re concerned with is male violence against women.
That’s somewhat flippant on my part, and of course privacy concerns are important, but I just wanted to make that point.