High viz
There’s visibility and then there’s visibility.
What a good idea: training children to “escort” adults to toilets for the opposite sex.
SW Londoner has the exciting details.
A BBC TV presenter has launched a new campaign calling on UK workplaces and schools to make visible commitments to trans inclusion.
Dr Ronx Ikharia’s ‘Safe With Me’ initiative invites allies to wear a yellow badge with bold black text, signalling to trans+ individuals that they are safe to approach, especially when using public toilets or navigating other gendered spaces.
How does the doc know that wearing a badge=safe to approach? How does the doc know that sane people won’t wear the badge and then ask the men who want to barge into the the public toilets for women what the hell they think they’re doing?
Launched by Dr Ronx – a Black, non-binary, transmasculine emergency doctor and BBC presenter – the campaign responds to the Supreme Court’s judgment that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act refers strictly to biological sex, a decision that campaigners say has heightened fear within trans+ communities.
Dr Ronx said: “I have often been kicked out of toilets because people don’t know where to place me. But when I’m with someone, it happens less. This badge is about making allyship visible. It’s non-confrontational. It’s a signal to a trans+ person that they can come up to you and feel safe doing so.”
And it’s a signal to women that you’re eager to help men barge into their toilets. Thanks, Dr Ronx.
The campaign encourages badge-wearers to accompany trans+ people if asked, without needing to speak or intervene, and to simply be present as a silent form of solidarity.
Dr Ronx added: “Most people aren’t trying to deny our humanity, they just don’t understand what being trans+ means or how to help. This is a way for people to step out of the shadows and into visible support.”
But Dr Ronx, denying that a man is a woman is not denying his or your humanity, it’s just denying that he is the sex he is not. This would apply to any such magical claim. If you say you’re a rabbit and we say you’re not, that’s not denying your humanity. It’s denying your lagomorphity, and affirming your humanity. Accuracy in naming is not an attack on anyone’s humanity.
They suggested that many institutions have used the Supreme Court’s judgement, the practical implications of which can be found here, to justify excluding trans people or failing to protect their safety at work.
Yap yap yap. Always with the carefully vague wording. To justify excluding trans people from what? You know what, which is why you carefully don’t say it.
So… a badge for children to identify that they are willing to go into the toilets with strange men.
No, I can’t think of anything that could go wrong with that plan.
So if a ‘safe with me’ badge wearer escorts a trans woman to the women’s room, and said trans woman assaults a woman while he’s in there, does that make the ‘safe with me’ badge wearer an accessory or accomplice? Or is it all right to escort men to their female victims, as long as said man tells you he is really a woman?
I wonder: What is the goal of all this? What is the end game? To make all toilets mixed-sex? To abolish the concept of sex?
So Dr. Ronx is a woman, right? (“Non-binary, transmasculine”–that means female, no?)
Also, yellow badges? That might not be the best choice.
There was a similar campaign, years ago, where people would wear a safety pin (yah, “safety,” geddit?) to show you were a safe person to be with. I think it was in the wake of some Muslim women on a bus being harassed by bullies; a couple of guys intervened to protect the women, and one of the protective guys got stabbed iirc. I think it was during heightened anti-Muslim sentiment following 9/11, or something like that. Anyway, part of the idea was to give a subtle signal that, if someone was intimidated getting on public transit, you could sit next to a safety pin person and they would be your friend during the ride, so you wouldn’t be alone.
As ever, the T glommed onto campaign, and added on that a pin-wearer would escort T to the bathroom of T’s choice, i. e., the one for the opposite sex.
It was when I reached Peak Trans and realized that T dogma was not only an empty shell, it was actively aimed at dismantling women’s rights, that I put my safety pin emblem away. I absolutely would NOT participate in helping men use accompanying “allies” to more effectively silence any women who might protest.
Since my Peak Trans moment, I have maintained that, if the supposed justification for trans identified males to use women’s spaces is because they are afraid of getting beat up if they use the men’s room, then that is a problem of male-on-male violence. I think it’s a reasonable apprehension, but it’s a problem among the men, for the men to solve. Fearful men shouldn’t be allowed to solve their problem with other men on the backs of women. Women have nothing to do with it. The real goal is to make it safe for gender non-conforming men to use their own bathroom without being attacked. Now, that’s where the “escort” approach could be useful. At school, for example, don’t ask the girls to accompany a gender non-conforming boy to the girls’ bathroom; teach the BOYS to escort the boy to the boys’ bathroom, so he can use it in safety. Let the men use the “safety in numbers” principle to make it safer for at-risk guys to use the men’s room.
Same thing here: the “safe with me” badge can signal that a boy or girl will “escort” a pupil of the same sex to the appropriate sex-segregated bathroom, regardless of “gender identity.” Comply with the Supreme Court ruling: safely accompany the gender non-conforming classmate to the correct-sex bathroom. Problem solved. Everyone knows where to go, and can do it in a safe manner. Make it blow up in the campaigners’ faces with “malicious compliance.”
@GW #3
Queer Theory’s what’s behind this.
In an article on Queer Theory, James Lindsay quotes Queer Theorist David Halperin, from Halperin’s book Saint Foucault:
It’s basically about destroying boundaries.
https://newdiscourses.com/2024/03/queer-theory-doctrine-sex-based-cult/
Badges! Designed to advertise what a good, obliging, person. you are — someone who thinks all the RIGHT THOTS! I think that any child who is begged to put on one of those badges should, before she or he agrees, be obliged to listen to Saki’s brief story, “The Story-Teller”, in which the tale is recounted of Bertha, who was so “horribly good” that she won three large medals, for “obedience”, “punctuality” and “good behaviour” which she proudly wore, and which clinked against each other as she walked. The Prince of the country hears about Bertha, and as a reward for her goodness she is allowed to walk once a week in the Prince’s private park, where no children had ever been allowed to walk before. Bertha enters the park for the first time, where there are little parti-coloured pigs, humming birds that hum all the popular tunes of the day, and a variety of other attractions. But, alas, a ravening wolf has also entered the park in search of a fat little pig. He spies Bertha and pursues her. Bertha runs away as fast as she can, the wolf in hot pursuit. She jumps into a myrtle bush where she can’t be seen, or scented because of the strong odour of myrtle. But as she hides there, trembling, her medals clink together. She is dragged out of the bush and “devoured to the last morsel”. “All that was left of her were her shoes, bits of clothing, and the three medals for goodness.”
The three children to whom this story is told, and who are fed up with with the boring and moralising aunt in whose charge they are on a railway journey, are naturally delighted with the story, which is told to them by a stranger who happens to be in the compartment with them.
I am pretty sure the story can be found readily on the internet, if anyone is interested in reading it.