@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie
Yes, it's bigger than changing rooms - but that's what some people are citing as the reason for their feelings.
Women are potentially in danger from men every day (as are men, to be fair). Nothing here is convincing me that women are in more danger from people who have chosen to self identify as a woman than they are from men.
I really do think that MN has more than its fair share of transphobia, and that scares me.
It's not all about danger though, whether real or perceived. That's just part of it although I would point out that in the case of prisons and refuges the danger is very much real. Women have been and are currently being harmed in the worst imaginable ways in the countries that lock up violent male sex offender and murderers with women on the basis of self identity.
It's also about privacy and dignity. On a day to day basis I don't feel in any particular danger from my brother in law or the guy who delivers the post but I sure as hell wouldn't strip naked next to them in the female change rooms. Women and girls have a right to feel comfortable in our own spaces.
In addition to that there's the issue of fairness and structural inequality that isn't fully addressed for women yet.
It's not fair when men take women's spaces in sport, take our medals, records, sponsorships and scholarships with ease. What happens to the women and girls who have devoted thousands of hours of training to be the best they can just to have a low ranking (in men's leagues) person waltz in and clean up. This isn't a hypothetical scenario it's something happening right now.
Ditto when awards that should have gone to women go to men who have barely 'lived as a woman' for a year. To men who are 'gender fluid' and pick which day of the week they feel like a woman.
Or perhaps even worse we lose women's categories altogether in favour of the nebulous gender neutral category which almost always ends up being very male centric (no matter the identity of the men).
Can you truly say none of it bothers you at all?
-A vulnerable woman in California (or insert other country) who may already have experienced abuse in her life ends up in prison due to debt or drug offences and is expected to shower and sleep next to a convicted male rapist because he told the prison authorities he felt like a woman.
- Women losing their jobs and being hounded out of public life because they believe in biological sex and that women exist as a sex category.
- Young women being silenced by their sports coaches and sporting authorities and being too scared to speak out other than in complete anonymity about the man dominating their swimming competition and making them uncomfortable in the change room by exposing himself. The whole time people are falling over themselves to laud him as brave and give him magazine covers whilst the young women feel desperate and terrified that this is being done to them.
So absolutely none of this makes you think for even a second "Is this something that should be happening to women and girls? Is it right that they have so little power or agency that even things designed with them in mind can be taken away if a man wants it?"