Name any parts where?
Soooooooo let’s just start over from the beginning as if nobody had ever said anything over the past 5 or 10 years, that should be fun and productive.
In comes a flood of replies and quote tweets saying “You know where: everywhere except women-only spaces.”
This I think is partly the fault of all those Guardian and BBC and Independent pieces talking about trans people and transgender activists when what they mean is trans women. The media carefully obfuscate the issue, so it’s not entirely surprising that LP loses track. The media have trained her, and others, to lose track.
It’s still annoying though.
Ev. Ree. Where.
Yes but where though?
“Openly trans” needs a definition.
If it means “dressing and acting in a manner meant to resemble typical characteristics of the opposite sex, but openly making it clear that I am my actual sex and not the opposite sex”, then anywhere, in accordance with the world’s restrictions (including by sex) on who can be where. A woman who pretends to be a man, but is “open” about actually being a woman, is likely welcome in women’s spaces.
If, on the other hand, it means “claiming to be the opposite sex, and rejecting any claims that biological sex matters, and insisting that I be given admittance to sex segregated spaces based on my claims rather than in my biology”, then perhaps not in any sex segregated spaces that are of interest.
And perhaps it really means “secretly trans”, hiding the fact that they are of one sex and mimicking another.
My reply would be slightly different. A trans person can be trans anywhere, including sex segregated spaces… provided they match the sex of that space. Trans women are male, trans men are female, as gender identity does not trump this restriction.
That said, there will always be the possibility of people entering a space that does not match their sex, thanks to them passing as that sex. This is sometimes achievable without hormones, though they certainly help. If Buck Angel walked into the gents dunnies, I would not look twice. TAs seem to regard this as a fatal flaw to any attempt to have segregated spaces, arguing that total certainty as to the sex of someone entering a segregated space would require an impractical barrage of testing and examination. This position ignores two flaws that I can see:
– Sex segregated toilets have existed for over a century, and never needed such incontrovertible certainty, nor have they needed police or guards posted at each one. This is true for all law in general: it is not necessary for the enforcement of any protection to have police at every instance where that protection might be breached; laws against car theft for example do not require that a police officer be stationed on every street. It is enough that there is recourse available to report and pursue breaches of those protections.
– If we set aside the above and grant the TA position that such certainty is necessary, then that also applies if spaces are segregated by gender instead. I wonder how we can attain 100% certainty that someone’s stated gender identity is genuine, when the only thing we can go on is their statement. TAs have never addressed this inconsistency that I have seen.
This is actually one of the most infuriating things about their rhetoric in general. When they say “x things”, what you find when you drill down deep enough (often not very far) is that they’re actually talking about “not-x things”. However, most people don’t bother to get out their mental power tools, for any number of reasons; e.g.; misogyny, homophobia, tribalism, cultish gullibility, fear, weakness, geek social fallacies, etc.
The funny (read: frustrating as fvck) thing is that they can see the faulty logic in other domains. Gun laws, for instance. Yes, no laws will 100% keep guns out of the hands of bad guys. No, this doesn’t mean we should do away with gun laws. Or murder. No legislation can eradicate homicide entirely, but it doesn’t follow that we ought get rid of laws regarding killing people.
Likewise, that laws cannot 100% prevent people from using the wrong-sex restroom doors not entail that sex-segregated restrooms are a waste of time.
A good answer here, explaining why Penny is asking the wrong question:
https://twitter.com/runthinkwrite/status/1513265976841850881
At this stage, Penny’s behaviour reminds me a lot of Trump’s. All she does is turn to face the direction the loudest applause is coming from and stagger toward it. Local hill-climbing. The only difference is that Trump made so many wild, random, crazy directional leaps that he occasionally landed far across the map, where there were bigger hills to climb. That’s one of the reasons he was (is?) dangerous.
Penny has at least fenced herself into an area of relatively gentle slopes with her own lack of imagination and moderately consistent personality.
Yes, I saw Jon Pike’s response yesterday; exactly so.
As do the Guardian and the BBC etc etc.
Penny Redfull thinks it’s a matter of being GNC that we take issue with. So do many who claim we are hateful. They don’t understand the issue they champion, or else they purposely misstate it in order to sow confusion.
Even Fox News, which many think to “get it,” don’t understand. They posted a recent headline that JK Rowling had traditional views on gender and is criticized for that. She decidedly does not.
Mike, they don’t understand the “critical” in gender critical feminism. They just think it means we complain a lot, or criticize. They don’t understand the reality of critical analysis and what it entails. They use language like 10 year olds.
That said, there will always be the possibility of people entering a space that does not match their sex, thanks to them passing as that sex. … or else because they are fire marshalls checking that a building evacuation has been completed safely.