FAQ

@teawamutu In my hypothetical civilised debate (which will never happen) I would compel both sides to consider the existence and the rights of both "lovely" and non-lovely transpeople, AND lovely and non-lovely not-trans people.

I ignored a toilet thread yesterday (a first!) because I have received a large dataset of incidents in toilets used by the public and I was analysing it. I have been collecting evidence, looking at toilet design and how and why it’s changed and the impacts this has on occupancy or avoidance.

I am looking at this objectively in terms of health and safety.

The posters that want to use toilets that are different from their sex that I have explained this to in the past have never been able to argue against what I say.

I am trying to find the safest designs for everyone so it is useful to hear a diverse range of views.

What I am finding (with evidence) is the trend that older men who don’t want to use men’s toilets, don’t want to use universal toilets. They want to use women’s toilets.

Younger women who don’t want to use women’s toilets, campaign for ‘gender neutral’ designs (a variety of unregulated designs). Some single sex designs get changed for neutrality purposes and lose health and safety properties. Interestingly, some women desist and go back to the women’s toilets when they realise the drawbacks of the ‘gender neutral’ designs.

However, by people using toilets designed for the different sex it means that regulatory-wise designs have to change to universal design. We all lose the health and safety benefits of single sex designs. If informed people were truly being kind and protecting the most vulnerable in a toilet (people having physical or mental health emergencies or people being assaulted) they would realise this. We are all at risk of something happening in a toilet but some demographics are more at risk. This includes children, elderly, people with known or unknown heart and neurological conditions, immunosuppressed people, drug users, people having a mental health crisis, people choking, young women and men. For them toilet door and partition gaps can make the difference. But, only single sex toilets in a single sex environment can have this design.

If people who don’t want to use the toilets for their sex want to have mixed sex toilets with door gaps advantageous for cleaning, ventilation, supervision and prevention of misuse, then you would need to change lots of regulations, standards, legislation and refine parts of the Sexual Offences Act. I predict they would end up defaulting to be a men’s toilet.

To the uninformed, we all need a toilet but we lost the majority of public toilets to misuse (sex, drugs and vandalism).

I want to inform people so everyone gets a toilet they need rather than one they (think they) want. Health and Safety comes first. It’s fundamental to good public design. As a society we need non domestic toilets to be single sex designs as the main provision.

If you want to get theoretical rather than practical, health and safety is at the bottom of the Marlow’s needs pyramid. Actualisation is at the top.

Quite. It’s ridiculous.

I think the thread title 'FAQ' was a reference to how surprisingly frequently the same questions are being asked recently, not actually asking for answers - did I get that right OP?

There have always been posters who clearly haven't read anything on this board and think they are making convincing points by saying 'TWAW' 'TW are the most marginalised in society' 'TW only want to live their lives in peace' 'You all hate TW' 'I don't mind peeing with TWs'
and so on, as if these are new, original points that nobody has ever made to us before, and gosh if only we had been told that sooner, we'd never have developed these hateful gender critical notions🙄

I've always been careful in how I respond because obviously some posters are genuinely working out what they think about commonplace statements like 'TWs are the most marginalised' 'both sides are as bad as each other' etc, and deserve to hear the GC arguments in order to make up their minds.

But recently, there have been so many threads started which seem to be a vehicle for promoting the idea that MN in general, and this board in particular, hates transgender people.

That's all. No debate, no exchange of reasonable words, no sharing of evidence, just 'you hate transpeople', over and over. There are some deviations into sports, toilet arrangements etc, equally devoid of facts, but it boils down to fingers-in-ears la-la-la 'you all hate transpeople'.

I get drawn into it sometimes, but I'm getting more choosy about if, how and when I engage, because there's so much blatant hectoring going on recently.

Yes, the wide-eyed, faux-naif 'why are you being so nasty - I'm a good handmaiden cis woman and I count it a privilege to share my spaces with my lovely beautiful TIM bestie who absolutely passes and definitely exists' approach.

They're all happy and convinced they're fooling the horrible mean mummies, while looking very like a 4yo with chocolate round their mouth, stoutly denying all knowledge of the empty Advent calendar.

I doubt a FAQ will discourage the scolders.

This forum is being brigaded

I can't help laughing at the posts, because they think they are so clever and well informed and clearly imagine they are dropping conversation stopping zingers that will shut us pesky women up, but the things they say are just so silly that it's like reading the stream of consciousness of a toddler

I also think this is a sign of desperation. Court case are being lost time after time, female sport is being protected, groups that bullied and lied and whipped up the 'anyone who doesn't agree that a man who says he is a woman is a bigot and must be punished' fervour are losing their power, the public narrative has swung back towards allowing people to question trans dogma...

Side 1 is the side that points out that men can be violent
Side is is the violent men who threaten women with rape with their splintery baseball bats.
Pretty obvious really.

It was fascinating listening to that parliamentary debate following the petition recently. There were so many insightful, facts based speeches from politicians. And then the transactivist supporting politicians gave emotive, rainbow flag waving speeches that completely ignored the all issues raised.

They have no intellectual or moral arguments beyond "this is what I want and do as I say". It was so stark. To be fair, none of them issued the threats of rape / abuse that women are so familiar with but as an exercise in exposing the lack of arguments for transactivism, it was illuminating

Well, when I was debating, we were quite formal (again, it was a long time ago). We referred to the Proposers and the Opposition. Which is which obviously depends on how the premise is worded.

Suggestion for the FAQ:
Why don't you want to share the faculties in which you undress with the lovely laydees who threaten to rape women who are unkind say no to them with splintery rolling pins?

And in that civil sensible debate, how are the sides to refer to each other?

If only one could set up a civil debate in which facts and evidence rather than feelings are to be used as the tools and potentially false statements are called out, with the person who has made the potentially false statement made to back up the position. And every point made by one side has to be answered by the other side. Without rudeness, personal attacks, emotional manipulation etc.

When I was debating the chairman or moderator or whatever they were called in my debate environment (very long time ago, I can't remember!) would get the team to respond to points made by the other side if they tried to ignore any of the points. You weren't allowed to just skate over a point that had been made, you had to answer it.

I think these threads are good for the lurkers and hopefully there are more lurkers than ever given recent developments.

I remember the first one I followed and

1. I was shocked that the TRA had nothing beyond you’re being unkind
2. Regular posters countered all the emotive wah, wah, wah posts with ease backed up by academic studies and govt statistics most of the time

It was a revelation and I already thought it was snake oil projected with smoke and mirrors as I came here because I have a DC that got sucked in at school.

I do admire the regulars who can put forward reasoned arguments backed up with facts and evidence time after time.

I'll admit I am a TERF if that stands for Tired of Explaining Reality to Fuckwits 🙄

There have been efforts to steelman genderist arguments, I think. I try to every now and again, but trying to engage with TWAW like arguing with a wet tissue tbh.

Facts and evidence do matter in debate (obviously more so in real life than in a high school competition, which is of course more of a game, using debating techniques). You use facts and evidence to back up whatever your stance is, and in most subjects in life it is possible to find points that can be made on both sides. It is also, importantly, the case that in debates each side gets a chance to address and rebut the other team's points. To do that they actually have to listen to and engage with those points. I was a very good debater because I listened, not solely because of what I said.

I would value a civilised debate using facts, evidence, and rebuttal. I haven't seen a proper one here yet.

All TRA’s have is DARVO and projection. They couldn’t cohesively argue themselves out of a paper bag.

Yes indeed.

Your timing is exquisite @RoyalCorgi

It's funny that you bring up debate club....

You know that debate doesn't care about facts, right? It's all about erudition and swaying the public, facts do not matter at all, there is (almost) never a fact checker on the panel taking away points for accuracy. Just latch to whatever supports your case, make far flung persuasive leaps, and bask in belittling your opponent with made up hostility.

Oh I can see why transphobes love that.