Guest post: Just a feeling and not something you can see
Originally a comment by Artymorty on Decrease is a symptom of the thing decreased.
Did you see today’s article in the New Yorker by Masha Gessen about trans rights and the Supreme Court?
I greatly admire her writing about Russian politics and gay rights, but I think she’s very wrong about bathrooms and trans rights.
I became a journalist at a time when one was not supposed to cover issues that concerned one personally. The (very few) black reporters working in the mainstream media were not assigned to write about the civil-rights movement. Women were not assigned to stories on feminism. The handful of openly gay reporters were not allowed to write about gay-and-lesbian rights or the aids epidemic. The underlying logic of this approach was that reasonable people could disagree on issues that people with a stake in the outcome would be unable to cover in a fair and balanced manner.
And yet she’s doing exactly that — not covering this issue in a fair and balanced manner.
She identifies as non-binary (like so many butch lesbians do these days), so she sees the whole debate in terms of her ability to feel comfortable using a men’s washroom despite her having been “assigned” (ugh) female at birth.
For all her defense of trans people’s right to use the washroom of their choice, she didn’t even try to define who exactly counts as a genuine trans person, how gender non-conforming a man has to be in order to be permitted to use a women’s washroom, or what mechanism we could use in practice and in law to distinguish men from transwomen, since trans is not the same as gender-non-conforming: trans is just a feeling and not something you can see, and many men who claim the label aren’t all that gender non-conforming at all.
Masha Gessen may look and dress in a way that’s perceived as more male than female, and Laverne Cox may look for all intents and purposes like a biological female, but following right behind her through the door to the women’s loo are six hulking middle-aged men with an erotic fetish for penetrating into women’s private spaces.
Brilliant use of ambiguity there by OB. But that inevitable reality pushes towards single-user only public toilets, change rooms and washrooms in order to protect womens’ right to privacy. Not so difficult with dunnies, shithouses and such, but harder for changerooms as at the beach.
An insulting reference from my wilder and all-too-misspent youth, commonly used against any male out of favour with the speaker: “He’s only interested in his gut and what hangs from it.” (NB: it never applied in my case.) If what hangs from it is certifiably a (male) donger, and he (however personally sex-assigned) is in a females-only area, then the other female users of the facility should call the cops and have him arrested, without having to put up with any bullshit in the process.
End (one would hope) of story.
Chase Strangio wrote on Gessen’s Twitter
Frankly, I think the bathroom issue is a done deal, now or in the future. Transgender will be able to use whichever they’re comfortable with. Women who argue for privacy and modesty are being successfully framed as prudes and bigots, seen as similar to the white women who didn’t want to sit on toilet seats used by colored folks. Statistics on violence and rape are being swamped over by common personal experiences: “why I use public toilets all the time and nothing happened to me and when a trans gender came in it was no big deal.” I just don’t think this one is winnable.
And once it’s law, those hulking middle-aged men are going to be the price paid. It’s very hard to walk a ‘civil rights advance’ back.
The question I have then is whether a legal right to obtain women’s bathrooms is going to have a cascade effect for changing rooms, shelters, sports, etc. I don’t know. There seems to be a critical gulf between “a trans woman is a man who identifies as a woman and should be treated with respect and consideration” and “a trans woman is a woman and should be treated like any other woman.” That first one allows a piecemeal approach. Second one — doesn’t.
Omar, the brilliant use of ambiguity is by Artymorty; this is a guest post.
Sastra, the effect will be to keep women out of public bathrooms, except for that handful that are providing the personal experiences, who will continue to use the bathrooms defiantly and proudly and smugly until the day something happens to them, after which they will also never use a woman’s bathroom again.
Since for most people it is impossible to work an 8-hour day without using the bathroom at least once, and since most businesses do not have single user toilets (I’ve worked in only one that does, and that’s my current job, where my building, and only mine, has one single user toilet provided for the dental clinic patients, but we can use it too), the overall effect could be what many have been craving for the past few decades: women being driven out of the workplace, back into the home.
Unless we get work at home rights, which seem to be slow in coming to many businesses, and I’m not sure I like that solution anyway. It is a very isolating solution, even if you have Skype meetings, and it puts us into our own bubble even further.
The first one allows a partial redistribution of rights. The second one abolishes Title IX and makes the ERA OBE.
I still can’t imagine the current supreme court, most of whose members widely proclaim a judicial philosophy of interpreting the text of a law as written and as meant at the time it was written, deciding that in 1964 “sex” really meant also “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”
@iknklast #5;
Maybe, but I think it’s much more likely that most women will continue to keep their jobs and go to the restrooms a bit more cautiously. It’ll be something else women get used to putting up with. Sometimes you shrug, sometimes you worry, sometimes you turn around and wait. In a regular setting like an office, you learn who merits which reaction. And when it’s crowded?
Oh, we’re already used to that.
OB @#4:
Be that as it may, but with sincere and due respect, the words I quoted were yours.
What? No they’re not. They’re the words of the author of the post: it’s a guest post.
OB: Ah yes. I get you. Silly me. Apologies.
Quite all right. I just don’t want to steal any glory from the actual authors!
@Omar #1:
“If what hangs from it is certifiably a (male) donger, and he (however personally sex-assigned) is in a females-only area, then the other female users of the facility should call the cops and have him arrested, without having to put up with any bullshit in the process.”
This is how insidious it is. Not “other female users …” Rather, “the female users.” Women aren’t “other females,” to be contrasted with male pretenders. The women are the ONLY females present.
Simple test. If you leave the seat up after peeing, you are not a woman.