Ian Dunt’s concern for the sacred caste

I was so disappointed by his piece. He was great on brexit and now he is coming late to the discussion but hasn’t done his homework and claims the solution is easy. So naive.

"Outside of a few prominent gender-critical voices in the media, there was no great groundswell of complaints by cis women in hospital wards or in toilets."

= "I read a few tweets, but apart from that only listened to people who already agree with me".

His reasoning seems to be ‘an ambiguous fudge is helpful for people I like, and anyone who disagrees can be ignored because I don’t like them’.

Objectively, it’s not the strongest of legal arguments.

“Helpful” for who? I think we know.

"Until two weeks ago, formal trans access to single-sex spaces was based on the mercurial status of the gender recognition certificates. They were presumed to change someone's sex in law and you couldn't ask whether someone had one. This created a helpful veneer of uncertainty. Legally, everything operated in a world of fog. Furthermore, most people didn't care. Outside of a few prominent gender-critical voices in the media, there was no great groundswell of complaints by cis women in hospital wards or in toilets.

We had combined a legal muddle with politeness and tolerance, creating a classic kind of British fudge. But the ruling changed all that. It made what was benign and ambiguous extremely clear-cut. It took an impressionist watercolour painting and started carving out sharp legal distinctions."

From a man, who clearly isn't worried about his need for clear legislation on sex discrimination.

He is basically the MRA MP Philip Davies, just with slightly different tribal affiliation.

He seems to briefly accept that sport is relevant, but then bafflingly can't understand that women need rights as a sex class.

If he believes that sex segregated toilets are discriminatory because they exclude trans people, he is free to campaign for more unisex provision. (He seems unaware of health and safety legislation or research that shows increased sexual harassment, rape and voyeurism in changing villages, or that many changing rooms don't have cubicles at all, but those points would be part of any discussion, and hopefully he would listen).

However, the issue he can't address is that there is no intrinsic overlap between the group 'people who identify as women but are male' and 'people who are female', so he is effectively suggesting that sex discrimination legislation should be removed from the equality act.

I'm sure he is too intelligent to think that every trans woman is Haley Cropper, so what does he think?

I'm now starting to wonder about his Brexit book.

What exactly is the reasoning that men don’t want tranwomen around? What are men afraid of? Are they? Why are men not accused of being worse than Hitler because they can’t share a toilet with another man who has a different gender identity to them? Do they even feel this way?

All of this. And also: what happened to "You have a gender-neutral bathroom at home"? If that works for women who don't want to share toilets with men, surely it also works for trans-identifying men who don't want to share toilets with other men?

DL has a trans child.

It's MRAs. Pure and simple. Lundy Bancroft has written books about men who have lists of what they're entitled to and how people may NEVER treat them, but totally different standards of what they'll permit and do to women.

You may want to go and look at the performance currently in the second act on the disheartened thread and see one live in action. The hatred of women is front and centre. As is the absolute erasure and denial that anything ever happened to women via men in their spaces which enables it.

I just cannot get my head round the idea that if women say “no, we don’t want transwomen in our toilets, changing rooms, prisons, shelters, rape counselling sessions and sports” we are told we are bigots, we are accusing all trans people of being predators, we use right wing dog whistles and are all round terrible people etc BUT if men don’t want transwomen in their toilets (which I’m assuming is the general idea, or there wouldn’t be a safety issue raised about it) that’s A-ok, totally reasonable, mummy will sort it out.

What exactly is the reasoning that men don’t want tranwomen around? What are men afraid of? Are they? Why are men not accused of being worse than Hitler because they can’t share a toilet with another man who has a different gender identity to them? Do they even feel this way?

Now the Supreme Court had made its ruling there has to be a better conversation around provision for trans people. Because it looks like the only option will be unisex toilets, which won’t be suitable for everyone but will be ok in some places, additional unisex spaces along side male and female or acceptance from men. And male acceptance might be harder, and less fun than threatening and bulldozing women but given how wide the trans umbrella is (non binary men who ID as trans, the number of TW who don’t pass and are clearly read as male) there doesn’t seem to be much option.

They still don't get it, if it's proportionate to have a single sex space then it needs to be single sex and transwomen are male. They are still trying to claim it's a different bar for these males than those males (because those ones aren't proper males) who are the transphobic ones?

‘Unlike an open changing room in a gym, say, female toilets are composed entirely of individual loos with locked doors and walls around them. Given that they already have privacy built in, it will actually be very difficult to justify a ban on trans women.’

Why do you think privacy should be more important than safety?

Presumably you are a healthy male. So you will be the least needing of the door gaps which reduce the privacy built in, but increase the safety. You aren’t thinking of anyone outside your own experience.

But if you felt ill and rushed to the toilet and then had a medical emergency, you’d be really grateful for the design to be a single sex design.

Single sex toilet designs are the only ones that have door gaps. They are better for children and women because they have the safety of being seen if anything is happening inside the cubicle that shouldn’t. Because they are the ones that are more likely to be assaulted in toilets.

You do realise the tens of thousands of people with invisible disabilities are at a disadvantage because if they have a hypo, seizure, asthma attack, etc etc, they won’t be seen?

If you insist on mixed sex toilets, you are discriminating against women, children, those with invisible disabilities and anyone having a medical emergency.

Single sex toilets with door gaps are very reasonable adjustments to keep everyone safe.

Awww, men are sad, girls. Hands up. Who's going to volunteer to throw away their legal protections and have Police Officer Susan, all six feet of her plus beard, strip search you because it's part of Susan's privilege of identifying as a woman, (don't forget your hate incident police record to wreck your career and life time working prospects if you flinch or say you don't consent!)

Or how about spending the night on a hospital ward with a catheter in and a man who's watching you with all your bits out and the nurses managing you through gappy curtains and who if you're really lucky won't turn out to be a voyeur or a rapist, and will just be the cause of your major humiliation and being on alert all the time instead of being able to do any actual recovering?

Or take off your period stained clothes with this very nice man here who despite seeing your utter humilation wishes to stay in the room while you do it for reasons he.... hasn't really explained?

Or who's up for staying in their life threatening relationship because their trauma responses mean they can't share the refuge they've been offered with the several lovely men living there?

Come on, there's a bus to get under right here!

Someone posted one on another thread and I think it said something along the lines of “they are ok to be here” so I’d make the point that TW have the legal right to be in male toilets, changing rooms, etc but I’d imagine there’s a whole set of them with slightly different wording so yes, just pull the old switcheroo.

A sharpie isn’t even needed, is it? The posters just urges people to ignore others that they thought were in the wrong space. They just need to remove them from the women’s and put them in the men’s.

Ian. Poppet.

Your concern for men is noted.
That you had absolutely no concern about these things happening to women is also noted.

You seem to be missing the entire half of the story that was why women fought to their rights in law to be clarified and protected, maybe look into that. They didn't just do it one day when they were bored between manicures and felt like upsetting men.

If anything happens to men in men's spaces then yes that will be awful. I'd point out that the body count of women harmed, raped, assaulted, excluded etc is quite high now just in the ones that have gone through court. I'd also add what we were told by gender ideologists: that there was an acceptable amount of harm that just had to be sucked up for the greater good, and 100 or so murders or assaults wouldn't really matter in the big picture.

How do you and other men feel about that now that you're thinking it might be men that this happens to and not women?

Actually I am not saying myself I'm fine with anyone being assaulted or hurt, I am not disturbed enough that I'd ever consider saying such things to anyone, never mind someone in a vulnerable situation. But I would say that even if something does happen to a man, then it will still be a problem to be solved about third spaces or making mens spaces safer, not just dumping the danger and exclusion and humiliations etc back on women.

I applaud your great concern for men in mens spaces.

What do you plan to do to help with this other than try and dump these men back on women and make women suffer what you think men are too good for? Or destroy their legal protections to benefit men? And have you ever considered help with your obvious very serious male supremacism issues?

The GRA was passed in 2004. TRA have had over 20 years to sort out their own spaces that affirm their identities that dont impact on women.

But they couldnt be arsed. Why Dunt is blaming everyone apart from TRA is beyond me.

Well, exactly. Like all those universities with their posters in the women’s toilets, they’ll be binning them now when they could be recycling them with a flourish of the sharpie.

Dorian Lynskey is another disappointment. An expert on Orwell and 1984 but compelling people to say that men are women is apparently perfectly fine. Ian Dunt made a real point during the Brexit interim period (post vote, pre departure) of learning the laws and how they interact with the markets and real world and expressing that in clear terms. It is a huge shame he can't do that again here. His book on liberalism is good but he seems unaware that what appears to be liberal is actually regressive when it conflicts with reality.

I agree with the PP who said the Lib bros need to be visibly and vocally budging up to make the TWs welcome in the men's loos.

Ian Rhyming Slang can do one.

Stonewall already have the perfect poster. It says “Some people are trans, get over it.”

The fact that they are not pushing that line now is because that poster was only ever designed to get women to shut up about men in their spaces.

He was good on Brexit. Otherwise, he's a limp wokebro with classic leftie misogyny (rightie misogyny is different). A real disappointment.

“When she [sic] is outside in public, she [sic] would similarly be forced to walk into a men's toilet and face all the questions and dangers of that decision. Will the men in the loo shout at her [sic]? Will they mock her [sic], laugh at her [sic], come on to her [sic]? Will she [sic]be safe? Will she [sic] be respected?”

He won’t know until he tries. Likely it’ll be absolutely fine and, in the unlikely event it isn’t, he can call the police for help.

Had he started doing this when he first put on women’s clothes, or whatever, he and the other men would be used to it by now and nobody would have a problem.

It’s really not complicated.

Time to start putting up posters in the gents stating something like
“transwomen have a legal right to be here. Please do not stare or do anything to make them uncomfortable. Assault is a police matter and this establishment takes threats and acts of violence towards our staff/customers very seriously. We stand with the trans community #keeptranswomensafe”

y’know, do something actually supportive rather than just posting on the socials how tragic it is women have their rights recognised.

He needs to watch the guilty feminist on Trig. Apparently if you see enough bus drivers dressed as clowns over a period of time you will likely think that’s quite normal. I’m sure men will do the same when the occasional TW walks in to the gents.