Talking to non GC people

@financialcareerstuff I'm in disagreement on several points but perhaps the most pressing is "gender dysphoria", what we have is an ever-changing diagnosis, from gender identity disorder to gender dysphoria via an occasional flirtation with body dysmorphia, & over the last couple of years we've forged on into the splendidly woolly realm of mere "gender incongruence".

These are not proper diagnoses & there are no stable diagnostic criteria for their application. They are activist-led creations whose purpose is to afford the greatest possible number of people access to the widest array of body mods.

The vast majority of men who seek such modifications are motivated either by transvestic fetishism - these tend to opt for breast implants or (often temporary or on/ off) oestrgen & progesterone prescription to induce gynaecomastia, & procedures like trachael shaves & facial feminisation surgeries, they rarely if ever choose vaginoplasty. The majority of men seeking remodelling of their genitals are motivated by the paraphilia, autogynephilia. Always remember that paraphilias cluster &, by virtue of being paraphilias rather than mild kinks, are indicators of above average risk of sexual offending. It is not difficult at all for an AGP male robbed of his sex drive by castration to acquire sufficient testosterone to reawaken his libido.

Those two groups leave you with very few people to whom the lable "true trans" might be applied but among them we find the growing cohorts of detransitioners - the kids & adults dealing with internalised homophobia &/or the explicit homophobia of orgs like Mermaids & the rubes they've "trained", the neurodivergent kids like me, baffled by gender stereotypes & made to feel like imposters in our own sex by the reification of those stereotypes, the sexually abused seeking escape from the habitus of their victimisation, those suffering from misdiagnosed mania & other perfectly diagnosable, treatable, MH conditions who found themselves referred to gender clinics as soon as they mentioned gender issues to their GP but who, instead of the compassionate professionalism they ought to be able to expect, are left in the clutches of narrowly trained, overworked clinicians, with a profound ideological committment to the unquestioning acceptance & encouragement of cross-sex identification.

I once, like you, thought there was such a thing as true trans, for more than 20 years I thought it included me. I now believe neither of those things. The more layers of slogans, wishful thinking & obfuscation one peels away, the more it's apparent that there's nothing at the centre.

And always, always the unanswered question - if gender is distinct from sex &, per Butler, a mere performance, why should changing one's gender entail any change to one's bureaucratic sex marker, or afford access to any provisions made for the opposite sex?

(BTW, since you invoked Segregation, it's worth pointing out that there was often only one set of lavatories provided at work or in public buildings for Black people under that regime, & for all the same reasons of privacy, dignity & safety that motivate women to object to mixed sex lavatories now, Black women objected then.)

Edited for dyslexia, some may remain.

Unless the sight of a transwoman triggers a very specific kind of rage in men, I imagine male toilets are about as safe for a TW as they are for me, which is, very.

There are some men who enjoy trying to bully anyone they perceive as weak. This can include anyone who is camp, and anyone who is 'odd' in any way, and would certainly include many men with trans presentations. When I was (though I say it myself) quite a pretty teenager (for a boy), I experienced some of this behaviour. There are also men with sexual motivations who target the same sorts of men. I was fortunate enough to have enough inner strength and self respect to stand up to that kind of aggression, sufficiently to extricate myself from awkward encounters. But I grew up in a particularly rough area which had more than its fair share of kerb crawlers and people with obvious mental health issues and drug users, and I think in most places male toilets are relatively safe for all men. I have nothing other than personal experience in coming to this conclusion though, no statistics.

There are still some male toilets in which I feel uncomfortable, but the majority are fine even though most men are much stronger than me (I'm not young any more).

Pretending that people can change sex has done so much damage. Some of the biggest victims of this lie are the people with trans identities themselves. Every fistula, case of necrosis, or other medical issue due to the experimental surgeries is experienced by a real person. Incontinence (or other big medical issue) is not going to make anyone's life better. So much pain - yet not a single person has ever changed their sex.

I think that the personal accounts of detransitioners are worth reading by everyone. The TRAs also treat detransitioners terribly, which speaks volumes IMO. Think of Gruffin and her tragic death. The posters on this website were really sad that she died.

@SoftBalletShoes

Do you genuinely believe that knowing there are two sexes and that people can't change sex is 'far-right' and 'hate'?

@financialcareerstuff

This poster is a great example of what women here have to put up with.

Compare and contrast.

If hate now means 'to understand that mammals cannot change sex' (and not pretending that they can), then we need a new word that means 'to dislike someone or something very much.'

To be clear, do you classify women who do not believe trans women to be women as "haters"?

Is the simple act of telling a person who claims to be the same as you that you consider the factors they assess as significant commonalities to be far less significant to your lived experience than the factors they assess as insignificant diiferences, by defintion an act of hate rather than simply telling the truth?

Is it, in short, an act of hate not to allow someone else to tell you who you are and how you should understand your own needs, risks and experiences?

What a good thing though that I don't believe anyone on MN FWR 'hates' people with transgender identities. You should report hate of people with transgender identities when you see it and if it is not deleted, it is quite likely that your personal definition of hate doesn't meet the professional moderation standards.

And in reference to what you have posted in the link, Bob should be absolutely fine finding a group that will be inclusive of Bob, I certainly hope so anyway. However, it is also very important to note that not every group that excludes Bob legitimately is hateful and bigoted.

The groups that DO exclude Bob should have a very good reason and it should be a proportionate decision to exclude Bob and that it is not based on illegitimate discrimination.

I talk to gender critical people in the same way as I talk about it here.

I say no. For men to force their way in anywhere that women legally say no is a consent violation and those men are dangerous to women.

the law says men can’t enter
womens single sex spaces - women are entitled to those spaces. In my case it’s due to trauma, which I have already explained today and I really don’t want to have to do it again, but it can also be for cultural and / or religious reasons.

men cannot become women and women cannot become men. Trans identifying men are a subset of men and trans identifying women are a subset of men.

Finally, if trans identifying men are unsafe in men’s bathrooms, that’s a man problem. It isn’t for women to move up to accommodate those men.

How is saying that men cannot become women, and that women are legally entitled to single sex spaces and that everyone should obey the law hate? How is it?

I assume they wanted to point out that people are allowed to despise and be repulsed by things, but not to hate.
Got it, so let's get back to the topic of the thread.

Can you explain WTAF this has to do with Sausagenbacon's OP ?

Yet again can we applaud @Keeptoiletssafe and her knowledge and persistence. Always informative!

But it's nothing like 'hate' though is it? Acknowledging that men can't become women and women's sex based rights should be upheld is a million miles away from 'hate'.

There’s lots of useful advice on this Chelmsford website too.
That’s Chelmsford in Essex, of course. They have a Women’s Safety Charter! That talks about women and girls! Nary a mention of intersectionality!

Go Chelmsford!

https://www.chelmsford.gov.uk

@SoftBalletShoes

You do realise OP is asking how to talk to non-GC people from a GC perspective, right? Not the other way around...

OP, I think this link does a good job of essentially explaining why calling out hate usually has no effect. You tend not to get people who hate one group being tolerant of other groups. There's a big cross-over between people who hate trans people and people who hate other minorities. In other words, you don't get people who just hate one group - people who hate one group tend to hate other groups, too. I love the way the graphics in this link describe intersectionality.

https://www.chelmsfordma.gov/885/What-is-Intersectionality#:~:text=Intersectionality%20is%20a%20concept%20often,is%20disabled%20in%20your%20browser.

Haters gonna hate, basically. It's a deep, fixed, consistent character flaw that's stable over time, and there ain't no fixin' those.

OP, to answer your question, if it's safe to do so, I do sometimes call out despicable hate, prejudice, and ignorance, whether it's racism, anti-Semitism, or trans hate. It's generally a waste of time since bigots never change and are generally wedded to their hatred, but still, there are times I find their views so repulsive that I have to do it. They generally blow their tops at being called out and will weaponise anything to tear you down, including lying about what's written in black and white, hoping that others won't read the actual exchange, and including lying about anything and everything.

It's noticeable how they don't engage with what you're saying at all, they simply attack you personally and are, cringingly, very quick to lose control. Which is not only an ineffective tactic but makes them look really thick. They sometimes remind me of the people on Jerry Springer. 🤣 I don't find this with intelligent, educated people. They tend to have a much better handle on themselves and they respond to the content. You can always tell a bigot because they respond to polite discourse by frothing at the mouth and going nuts. I guess they thin they should be able to hate minorities freely and others should just nod along with their disgusting far-right attitudes.

Hate of any kind is unacceptable. Many people are into power, control, and are unfulfilled abusers, basically. But the saddest thing of all is that often, it's themselves they hate.

Happy people don't hate others.

As long as I live, I'll never understand why some people despise others who are simply going about their lives and doing no harm to them whatsoever.

Oh you did.

you said you thought WSSS was a document that I needed to prove my trauma.

You said I was vile for saying that your assertion that it was ok for trans identifying men to break the law and go in to women’s single sex spaces because the women wouldn’t be able to tell they were men. The logical conclusion to that is that you’re ok with men breaking laws as long as women don’t know - it didn’t matter that it was a consent violation and a law break because no one would know. So it’s ok for a man to rape me as long as I don’t know. And you called me vile for pointing out your logic.

and you absolutely did laugh at my trauma response - which informs my ability to detect trans identifying men - and told me I needed to go to specsavers.

Fits in with all the evidence I have about toilets. Men want the women’s. Women don’t want the men’s or women’s.

Reported. I said NOTHING OF THE KIND of any of those things.

I agree. I think F to M transitioners are actually trying to escape sexuality, or certainly escape male focused versions of female sexuality.

That's because male sexuality tends to be wired differently to female sexuality, including differently from those females who identify as male. Males are far more visual and far more object oriented, and as we know males are far more prone to fetishistic obsessions and compulsions.

@financialcareerstuff It’s really good you are thinking of location and design. What you are afraid of is being in a place someone could hide and you be isolated and no one around you. Why do you think a private toilet is better? You know it can be opened from the outside don’t you? If you had a floor-door gap at least you would have an idea who was in the vicinity and get on your phone/ yell for help if you needed. I do not know where this information will end up so I am not going to discuss all my examples but I hope you realise why I know this is the case after several years of collecting incidents.

Remember the options are:

1. Single sex are single sex
2. Single sex toilets and changing rooms are mixed sex but use single sex designs. Voyeurism laws have to change. Building Standards, building regs, 1974 and 1992 legislation and the Sexual Offences Act has to be modified. No risk assessments and EIA done because it would make this option null and void.
3. Single sex toilets all become mixed sex designs. Costs a fortune. Less provision. Discrimination against certain disabilities, religions, age, sex. Less healthy and less safe toilet designs for everyone (scientifically proven). No risk assessments and EIA done because it would make this option null and void.

There have always been known risks with the combination of unisex/mixed sex toilets and privacy. That’s why disabled toilets had a radar key to try and prevent misuse. Quote from the BBC 2013: ‘they are open to misuse by the general public. Most notoriously, they are sometimes occupied by drug users or people having sex’.

For those reasons disabled toilet location lead out onto a corridor. It’s why the unisex toilet in schools was opposite reception. They need to be the most consistently monitored and cleaned. There’s a good charity called Euan’s Guide that has a website which helps raise awareness about keeping disabled toilets safe for users.

In contrast, influential ‘inclusive’ toilet designers have no health and safety background. Two of the famous ones have a background in design inspired by cruising in public toilets, the other (I am trying to paraphrase here) in articles about phallic symbolism. So, for example they think, like you, having more people around may make it safer (because they are thinking only in terms of voyeurism). It doesn’t. Sexual assaults happen in the most public of places behind a closed door such as train carriages in school disabled toilets. Sex and drugs is what happens in private toilets of any type leading out into corridors too. What perpetrators don’t want is to be caught in the act and be shamed/prosecuted. They will avoid a place if they haven’t got an excuse to be there. Voyeurs and assaulters are now using the new excuse they are transwomen to be in women’s toilets. When is a man a transwomen? When he’s in the toilet?

There is truth in bad men stick out because good men stay out. In a mixed sex area all men have access but you have to rely on a good man to be there and that they want and will help even if they arrive after you and can’t hear or see you. This is particularly important in places like nightclubs.

Do an experiment and Google ‘toilet’ in your local paper website. It will have stories of toilets closing down because of the cost of repairing the misuse (sex, drugs, vandalism), women, girls and boys being sexually assaulted by men, voyeurism by men and maybe a death (from drugs/ medical event like a heart attack or stroke). These incidents will hopefully be few and far between. Perpetrators will all be male. What you won’t find is people being killed or murdered (which is an extremely rare though Victoria McCloud thinks it is so likely to happen to trans people that Victoria is fleeing the country) or anything about people being sexually assaulted because of being trans. To be perfectly honest anyone is more likely to die in a toilet of a cardiac arrest (11% of cardiac arrests happen on the toilet) because it’s the place people head to when they feel ill and the strain on the body from the Valsalva maneuver.

To answer people’s questions about what happens in toilets for trans people. Stonewall et al completely dominated the Document T consultation which made trans people the biggest demographic for safety concerns. When in fact you look in greater detail at the Stonewall literature quoted in 67% of all consultation responses (11,866) it talks about physical assault (an incident of a man been pushed out of the toilets by two women) and verbal abuse (men being shouted at for being in the wrong loos). In the consultation this translated to safety concerns for trans/non-binary as 79% whereas less than 2% had safety concerns for children and 1% for disabled people. From my data children and disabled people very much have safety concerns in toilets. Safety concerns for women were mentioned in 75% of responses and 88% of these were in the context of black women, lesbians and butch women (these subgroups were listed in a Stonewall phrase so interesting 88% of the safety concerns for women were also through the lens of Stonewall). The comments about ‘gender neutral’ toilets dominated design raising issues of no gaps above and below the doors, and later as a way of reducing the risk of predatory behaviour/spying. Interesting everyone gets the connection between a door gap and men spying. Making cubicles bigger was another highly related toilet suggestion. This last comment is interesting as I know some venues had a policy of deliberately reducing cubicle size in an attempt to stop people having sex in them. The analyser from the government used the term non-gendered rather than unisex or universal which is the standard term.

For the medical reasons of why only having toilets with total privacy will lead to more deaths: Amongst the population in general, there are known medical reasons for a disproportionally high frequency of cardiac arrests and strokes while an individual is in the toilet room. Whilst there’s no accessible data where people collapse, it is known there are around 100,000 hospital admissions due to heart attacks in this country, equating to one every five minutes. It is estimated there are 400,000 people in the U.K. with undiagnosed heart failure. There are also around 100,000 strokes in this country, equating to one every five minutes. Around 1% of people in this country have epilepsy and around 80 people are diagnosed with epilepsy each day. There are many other conditions that lead to collapse where you need to be noticed and accessed quickly eg. diabetes and asthma.

There’s scandalously little scientific study about unisex school toilets but here’s a study from India that concluded constructing sex-specific toilets in schools significantly reduces child rapes. The reduction was more pronounced in co-educational and secondary schools. Conversely, unisex toilets were ineffective, because girls feel unsafe to use them and continued defecating openly.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014292125000030

Heres an article from Wales about unisex school toilets that comes to the same conclusions as me: https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/education/drug-dealing-drinking-dirt-problems-28517175

In terms of health, unisex toilets are not good, particularly for women. The following article concluded ‘The move to convert traditional male and female facilities to unisex facilities in some hospitals raises concern that people might be exposed to higher risks of contamination’. https://salus.global/article-show/pathogen-findings-raise-concerns-about-move-to-unisex-hospital-facilities

Most men are good men but we all need to keep an eye out for each other in case of misuse or emergency. Because everyone (including Stonewall) is in agreement men as a group can’t not be voyeurs, the safest and healthiest solution is to have single sex toilets, with door gaps, with exceptions for children (and maintenance cleaning).

Remember gaps are there for ventilation, cleaning, supervision, prevention of misuse. Privacy means we lose those health and safety benefits.

I really have to go and sort out the kids now. I thought the above a good mix to keep you thinking.

Placemarking to come back later.

this morning’s particular highlights, from a non-GC person :

that it was hilarious that my rape trauma response has made me good at spotting males, even when they present as female, and I should go to specsavers.

see also calling me vile for saying I didn’t consent to sharing women’s single sex spaces with men, even if I didn’t know they were men.

that I needed a document to show people to prove my trauma.

And more but I can’t remember them off the top of my head.

If I had to characterise the difference between trans-identifying men and trans-identifying women in as few words as possible, it would be that it seems like the men are running towards the idea of some sort of hyper-sexualised woman (due to arousal thereby), and the women are running away from the same hyper sexual woman idea (due to trauma thereby).

There are definitely also some younger, not gay but probably autistic, boys who have been sucked in to the trans world because they are scared of their changing, pubertal bodies; I don’t have a sense of whether they eventually get pulled towards the more sexual side of things the longer they stay in that world.