Article in today’s Guardian about toilets and trans users.

Comments have already closed. Didn't go their way.

I can't believe they didn't allow my last comment (way before closing) which said:

If you cut through the gender smoke and mirrors, you are left with a story as old as humanity: humans with penises working to prevent humans with vaginas from defining and asserting their own boundaries.

Probably the problem was that the author of the article with the pronouns she/her belongs to the former of the two categories I mentioned.

Or maybe it’s an office-friendship group that happens to be female, and for some inexplicable reason, you’re not in it. Thought of that crossed your mind?

'Course it hasn't hipster because that would involve self reflection, considering other people (ie actual women) and their feelings and preferences when it is so obviously all about "muh feelz" and "muh oppression" - fucking witches not immediately centering this brave and stunning trans feminine paragon.

I am fucking so over these men and their actual misogyny and narcissism.

yes, what the fuck is a 'women only cake thing'?

I’m going to a ‘women only cake thing* we’re going to be filling in the GRA consultation together.

If you’d like to organise your own see:

fairplayforwomen.com/

yes, what the fuck is a 'women only cake thing'?

I mean it sounds great. i love cake, I love the company of other women, what's not to love?

I'm just not sure it's a thing

unless you lot have all been having women only cake things and not inviting me all these years?

IT IS NOT ABOUT THE FUCKING TOILETS!!!!

Every time its reduced to being about the toilets we don't talk about the totalitarianism of language and the suppression of the ability to express our own reality of experience.

Is "visibly trans feminine" code for "doesn't pass"? Or is this a new thing we have to educate ourselves about?

Perhaps anatomically correct signs are required, instead of a silhouette of someone with or without a dress (or one trouser leg and half a dress )

If I tried to have a women-only "cake thing" I'd be trampled by the stampede of blokes getting in there first.

But only because they know it's a Mad Max style deathmatch to get any cake before it's all gone. Baked goods take no prisoners.

And they've just closed the comments. That was quick!

It looks as if the comments were generally pro single sex toilets!

I’ve posted this before. I wish people would stop confusing sex with gender.

"Transmisogyny is when only the ciswomen are doing one of those women only ‘cake things’ in the work kitchen and you weren’t invited, and then you walk in for a glass of water as you do, and at best one person says hello."

Or maybe it’s an office-friendship group that happens to be female, and for some inexplicable reason, you’re not in it. Thought of that crossed your mind?

"Transmisogyny is when only the ciswomen are doing one of those women only ‘cake things’ in the work kitchen and you weren’t invited, and then you walk in for a glass of water as you do, and at best one person says hello."

Sounds like those women have got the measure of you, love.

So transmisogyny would be some (I'm betting) white middle class bloke being oppressed by females because of his feminine gender presentation (that's the trans feminine bit)?

Fuck the fuck off to the far side of fuck. Absolute fud.

I'd love to see my boss' reaction if he was told he needed to provide gender neutral toilets.

He already finds it very annoying that his female employees keep having babies and only reluctantly employs mothers because 'we're more reliable and good at our work'.

Thanks OP, you've just reminded me I have to cancel my subscription to the Guardian!

Those comments include ones from poeople saying they are not keen!

This one is hilarious:
"One interesting discovery from coming to live in France from the UK is the difference in toilet culture - and the irrelevance of the anglo-saxon male/female/transgender debate to most public, cafe, etc toilets in France: most are mixed, and culturally there is a much greater acceptance of going to the toilet as something perfectly natural, not anything slightly dirty, shameful or sexualised."

I have been to France, a few times, and they have mens and womens toilets the same as they do here. Maybe it's different parts of France? This is like the USA TA statement that "In Europe" toilets are mixed sex loads. Really? I've never spotted this phenomen.

That person also says going to the toilet is "sexualised" which is frankly just weird as all fuck.

I don't think they are being entirely honest in who they are or where they are

Urinoirs are causing quite a stir in Paris:

www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/13/urinoir-furore-paris-residents-peeved-at-public-eco-friendly-urinals

www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/29/protesters-damage-sexist-open-air-urinals-in-paris

Thanks, CAAKE, that fits exactly with my interpretation of "visibly trans-feminine".

I've never really thought that which toilet I use says anything about me beyond I am a woman who needed a piss or a shit. Am I womaning wrong, again?

"The public restroom is not only a place to empty one’s bladder or bowel, change a tampon or clothes, wash hands or reapply lippy; it’s an arbiter of gender, with its mostly cisnormative inhabitants to police it."

Oh, do fuck off you self-obsessed, navel-gazing tosspot.

Lang, this author (use that term loosely!) seems to have come from the Dan Brown school of massively overwriting. Can you imagine their perception of what, say, a girls sleepover would be?!

(Exclusive preview: "...as she loosed her waist length flaxen locks and looked suggestively over a shoulder, Beatrice-Ashlynn pouted, her berry red lips glistening as a bra strap slipped off a shoulder..."oops!" she whispered to Genevieve-Lauren..."could you help me here?")

At DH's workplace they now have male, female and gender neutral toilets. He has yet to see anyone use the gender neutral toilet. Perhaps better if they had used the money to upgrade disabled facilities with an understanding that these were gender neutral and could be used by anyone who wanted such facilities.

From the author's twitter feed:

"Transmisogyny is when only the ciswomen are doing one of those women only ‘cake things’ in the work kitchen and you weren’t invited, and then you walk in for a glass of water as you do, and at best one person says hello."

Sounds like those women have got the measure of you, love.

twitter.com/simonacastricum

I got deleted for saying males carry out most violence and sexual assault.
That’s it.
You could make it up. Particularly the name of the writer. A women would just never ever come up with that.

"The common assertion that gender non-conforming people who use bathrooms present a threat to the personal safety of cisgender people is rubbish"

These people don't seem to understand that massive numbers of the general public are gender nonconforming.

It's the "teenagers inventing sex" phenomenon.

The article is very confused as it seems to be saying that for "Non Binary" people (aka most of the human race) toilets should be labelled for function not form ie BIOLOGY. Has this person checked with their trans friends on this? As the idea most trans actvisists have is that biology should be ignored and the labellig should be taken to mean GENDER (sex role / whether you dress feminine or masculine).

These two ideas are in total conflict.

Interesting.

Utterly exasperating that, while there are a number of comments taking issue with the article, the Guardian "picks" are all comments agreeing with it. What is wrong with the Guardian? Can't they see how much they're out of kilter with their readers?

'Why can't we have gender neutral loos? They do in France and it's fine. I did not feel threatened at all. I do not understand the resistance to this or the panic it seems to create.'

Since the Strauss Kahn affair and whatever else it brought up a, we all know they do a lot in France. Much of it to the detriment of women.

"We then had bathrooms with no reference to gender, just one marked “toilet” and another marked “urinal”."

They did this in the barbican and it was a disaster.
The men took both options to mean for them.
The women didn't obv.

So the men could use any, the women had less, teh queues for the ones the women could use were even longer as there were now men in them as well.

They changed it back.