Always check the wording
The 2022 Census found that just under 0.5% of people in Scotland are trans. The Scottish Government employs 9,300 staff, so perhaps 40 are trans. Most will have been working at the government for years, and happily using the toilets in a way that matches their gender identity and appearance. For many of them, their work colleagues may not know that they are trans.
No.
Grown-ass adult people know a woman when they see one, and they know a man when they see one. The end.
There have been no reported cases of a trans person causing trouble or harassment in any of those toilets.
Oooh imagine that – in a climate of intense bullying of people who know what sex other people are, the people being bullied don’t dare complain.
But the group Sex Matters wants those trans people now to be forced to switch to using the other toilet – trans women required to use the men’s toilet, and trans men to use the women’s (“Seven-day ultimatum to ministers over trans toilet policy”, The Herald, July 4). That will be a mismatch with their presentation and appearance.
How fascinating; now think about what it will be for everyone else.
Such a change would humiliate trans staff and reveal their trans status to colleagues and other users.
Again. Fascinating; now think about other people. Think about the women humiliated by years of having men in their toilets.
If this does go to the legal action threatened by Sex Matters, we will see how the Scottish courts decide between the privacy and dignity of trans employees and the insistence by Sex Matters that everyone has to always be treated as the sex on their original birth certificate…
Er, no, we will see how the Scottish courts decide between the privacy and dignity of everyone and the bizarre unreasonable demands of a handful of people who claim to be trans.
effectively an insistence that trans people, as such, do not exist. Of course trans people do exist
Stop right there. Manipulative wording foul, as usual. Of course people who claim to be trans exist; the issue is that they claim to be the opposite sex, and that claim is absurd and impossible. Of course they do exist, but they are wrong (or dishonest) about their claims to be the sex they are not.
Of course trans people exist. They’re just like other people, plus a special delusion which characterizes them. It’s no reason to be mean to them. But we don’t have to agree with their delusion, any more than we have to agree with anybody else’s.
And that decision to allow people to change the sex on their birth certificate? That was a mistake. “Presentation” doesn’t change anyone’s sex. Not identity, not magic, invisible gender reelz, not desperately wishing, not even threatening and bullying. None of these can change people’s sex, because humans can’t change sex. So allowing people to pretend they can by falsifying information on official documents is as wrong and deluded as the people to whom they are pandering. Besides. sex and gender are completely different, right?.
While I have seen a number of transmen who passed well, it seems like most transwomen still look like men. In this instance, it likely would not throw transmen out of the men’s bathrooms, if they are using them, because someone may NOT know they are trans, unless they knew them before they transitioned. Transwomen are often easily spotted as men, leading to fear and anxiety for the women they share the toilets with because, guess what, wearing a dress doesn’t make you safe to be around women.
Even if only one trans woman uses the toilets, that is one too many. As women, we have no way of knowing which men are safe, and which are perverts. Our mind automatically will default to pervert if we see them in the women’s toilet, because violating women’s boundaries is a huge red flag.
And nothing has happened? It’s possible nothing in the Scottish government, but there are certainly many documented incidents elsewhere (which for some reason are always ignored by pro-trans advocates, who insist nothing has ever happened anywhere). Even if every transwoman currently in the Scottish government is innocent of threatening or assaulting women in the toilet, their presence by itself is a threat to our sense of safety and comfort (and dignity, a word they love to throw around). Even if every transwoman currently in the Scottish government is innocent of threatening or assaulting women in the toilet, there are no guarantees that these men will remain innocent tomorrow, or that the next transwoman hired by the government will be innocent.
I propose chamber pots for all transwomen who don’t feel safe in the men’s room. They will, of course, have to empty the pots themselves, because no custodial staff should have to deal with that. After all, it is the fantasy of the single individual, so they can handle the downsides of the fantasy, and not make anyone else have to handle their pee.
Nothing has happened because the “No true Scotsman” fallacy has been renamed “No true transwoman.”
Explain what toilets have to do with gender identities.
I quite agree, Mosnae. In some ways I think that’s the linguistic sleight of hand that’s actually caused all the trouble: pretending that the basis on which all these words/spaces/programs had always rested was *identity* and not *sex*. Female toilets weren’t established and used based on identity, but sex. Ditto female sports, medical procedures, all female shortlists, etc. It’s completely absurd to claim that these things have always been based on identity, but they do anyway, and an astonishing number of otherwise intelligent people credulously go along with it.
Ummmm…. Those things can’t both be true. Hm, I wonder where the problem is… Do these people EVER listen to their own selves?
ibbica, that’s from the whole ‘check the genitals’ nonsense. If transwomen can’t be spotted visually, no one is likely to kick them out of the women’s room, but that isn’t what the advocates want everyone to know. They want them to think there will be a sort of genital inspector stationed in every bathroom, making everyone drop their drawers before they can pee.
The idea is that not only transwomen, but all women, would be required to shed their underwear for someone who will check to make sure they are entitled to be there. No one really wants that, so they hope it will have enough fear incentive to save the day.
Also, they want to believe they pass, even though most of them are easily spotted as males (though some of them you can’t tell it from their pictures, because PhotoShop is so widely available).
Iknklast: the other reason for the “check the genitals” thing is that a lot of them have humiliation fantasies about someone pulling down their frilly panties and seeing their junk, and they like to get other people talking about it.