Help me make sense of how I feel? Transgender person in the loo.

[ScottishLottie]

I think of myself as very liberal - very 'live and let live', love is love and people should be absolutely free to be whomever they want to be.

Went into our local city on Fri last week and noticed a higher amount of transgender folk (specifically man to woman), socialising in the area. "Good on them!" I thought. Love living and working in a society where they're able to do this. I was actually interested and looked up why there might have been so many more trans people around and apparently there's some sort of 'First Friday' trans event whereby trans people congregate in trans-friendly bars and restaurants in the area on the first Friday of the month.

Fast forward to the next night and I was in the city again, having taken by 15 yr old DD and her friend to the theatre.

On coming out of the theatre, she needed the loo before we left, so her and the friend went in and I waited outside. As I was waiting, a transgender woman (quite a big, strong, butch-looking person underneath the dress and the makeup) entered the female bathroom and I had a completely visceral reaction. I was horrified that DD and friend were in a space where they might be a bit more vulnerable and they should be absolutely safe in a female-only environment.

Nothing happened of course, but I was surprised and ashamed that I felt the way I did.

What is the reason behind this? Why do I have opinions and feelings that I wasn't aware of? I feel awful but want to understand why I felt this way?

A cock check?

FFS. What part of being a male changes if that male has their cock cut off?

What do you think exactly happens to these male people that they miraculously change into female people? Or is it only penises that you are concerned about? There are still many many reasons to be concerned about any male who is in the female single sex spaces, with or without a 'cock'.

Seriously, I don’t know how we navigate this.

How about third spaces, and ALL male people over the age of about 8 years old, respect female single sex spaces and find an alternative space for them, regardless of their cock status.

And if that male person doesn't feel safe to use male single sex spaces, then that group of male people need to get their support groups to campaign the fuck out of the UK nationwide media to get the message across that male people come with many different non-conforming presentations. And that all male people should be welcome in the male toilets.

Seriously, just because YOU have no issues with sharing a toilet with a male person, you don't get to welcome those male people in. If you cannot correctly sex a male person from their body cues, that doesn't mean that others also cannot. And it doesn't mean they should be in female single sex spaces.

women have been socialised for years to be kind and accommodating but we're mammals underneath all the social conditioning and we know that males pose a potential threat to women. And we also know that trans women are male.

Not this shit again!

"Transvestigators are suggesting J K Rowling and Sharron Davies are trans."

WTAF!

this is the answer …over and over and over again.

Yes, you said that so much better than I could!

This!

I think of myself as very liberal - very 'live and let live', love is love and people should be absolutely free to be whomever they want to be.

The trouble with "everyone should be absolutely free to be whomever they want to be" is that it is equivocal. In one sense it is an obvious basic freedom that everyone agrees about (eg "anyone who wants to be a doctor should be able to pursue that dream and expect some degree of social support") and on the other hand it is a licence to tell lies and exploit people (eg "anyone who feels like it should be able to put on a white coat, walk into a hospital and treat patients").

The way you phrase your op makes it seem like people who object to the second interpretation are bigots who fail to accept the first.

I'm not sure why your reaction to a man in the toilet is so puzzling to you. Would you have been puzzled by the same reaction if the man had been wearing trousers, or if his make-up was of the more suble 'guyliner' variety? What is it about a dress or foundation that makes a man less potentially dangerous?

This could be solved easily by making men’s spaces the gender neutral ones. Transmen could still use women’s spaces if they feel unsafe in men’s because they are biological women. If transwomen don’t feel safe in men’s spaces that’s nothing to do with women.

Exactly why I am concerned - this whole push has made the world so much less safe for them.

I don't want to scare them and stop them doing things - but at same time have to try and get the to do risk assessments as predatory men just are a daily risk in life. DD1 at 19 has the invincibility of youth against her as well.

DD2 was actually told at one point by her primary school -in context of disability but a wider point was made - that others making her feel uncomfortable is something she should put up with . While I don't want her being rude or discriminatory frankly if she made to feel unsafe she need to leave immediately and get somewhere public. This was at age she was just venturing out into world on her own - I was fuming - though she pretty savvy now.

There are a great deal of privileged toilet users it seems on this thread and others. It is almost like they have never used the toilet to do anything other than 'just having a pee'.

What do women do in toilets?

I spent many days, often 2-3 times a week, where I had a stroller or pram jammed in the door because I had no one but myself to do shopping. And I didn’t need the change table so didn’t use the accessible toilet if there was one. That included at period time with flooding periods and hormonal diarrhoea. Particulary after pregnancy. Often with a crying infant.

I have also had to take my wheelchair bound elderly mother to a normal cubicle when there was no accessible toilet available. Where I couldn’t leave her to sit without assistance to remove the wheelchair to lock the door .

I, too, have washed clothing out, and at times had to unbutton shirts to get them dry from baby vomit, or leaking breasts.

I have even had to do this at work when I was stuck in an event for hours and could not leave to express so ended up with significant leakage. More than once. Because breastfeeding women work too.

And got dressed in work toilets for various reasons.

And cried there and comforted others. And hid there from men who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

I know I am not the only one because several times this past year I have come across half stripped women in the toilets while out dealing with similar issues.

The solution is not demanding gender neutral toilets. It is not suggesting fully enclosed cubicles. A female taking up a cubicle to wash and dry clothes is putting an undue time demand on those waiting to use that cubicle.

So, who does 'fully enclosed cubicles' actually help? Only those male people who wish to use the female spaces ultimately. Because now the line up for the toilet is longer. And if those cubicles are 'unisex', the male people are now also lining up. What a great solution!

There are many reasons that women do not want males in the toilet.

I often think it must be nice to never have had to deal with just period flooding the number of times I have since being a teenager. What a wonderfully privileged position to have been in! Well done those who have had this privilege who lack the understanding of that privilege and are happy to dismiss other's needs to retain female spaces as single sex with no male people.

I realise that I have very heavy periods compared to some people, but it certainly made me very aware of the need for single sex spaces. In fact, now in peri, I am on a menstrual leash. I cannot leave the house some days due to the flooding incidents, which is fine as those days I can work from home.

However, the female toilets have never been used just to ‘pee’. I am always surprised when people either never realised this or never acknowledge it.

A few other points to deal with a bit of 'whataboutery':
99.999% of the time human instincts are far too deeply-embedded over millenia to allow trans people to 'pass'. Massive amounts of surgery can help, but most transwomen don't have that, and in any case, the fundamental biological realities of things like different gait due to different pelvis shape, relative size of hands and jaws etc. mean that 'passing' is unrealistic.
Males aren't going to have the same issues with transmen. Some may feel uncomfortable but they won't feel threatened because at population level females are not a physical threat to males.
If transwomen, who are male, are genuinely too scared to share spaces with males, then females can hardly be expected to share their spaces with males either.
It's actually all quite simple: biological reality is what it is. We can be nice, polite, liberal, non-conforming etc but sex is binary, and males are more dangerous than females.

I couldn't care less if men want to call themselves women or vice versa but they need their own separate spaces.
Men bowling in to women's spaces like they belong there make me so angry.., Especially spaces that woman spent decades protesting to have in the first place (like rape crisis groups ect)
It's beyond entitled but like I said, if this is now the norm in society trans people obviously need to be catered for... so in this case a third option toilet should have been made available.

And rightly so. Men are incredibly dangerous and women are killed, raped and abused by men that know them aswell as mate strangers every single minute or every single day.

A man putting on a dress and lipstick doesn't aye their entitlement or bandit patterns. What it DOES do is cause women to "be kind" and stfu which actually makes the genuine predators work much easier. I do not believe that ANY men should be allowed in women's toilets as trans women are not women.

I've been raped and sexually abused. The absurd fear I experience when I am sat on the loo with my pants round my ankles and hear a urine stream hitting water from height sends me into a blind panic that I can't control. Hearing men's voices in changing ribs and toilets is the same. And there is ZERO rain for men to be in women's sex protected spaces.

Call it out. Every . Single. Time

Are you quite all right dear???

Transvestigators 🤣🤣🤣

Both JKR & SD have given birth (& are both clearly female!!)

it's going to be discussed on and on and
on until the day that women can have their exclusive same sex rights and spaces back.

Answer this, OP.

Why does this person's desire to live their best life trump your daughter's right to be safe in a women only space?

Males who 'pass' are under no obligation to use the female facilities. It still remains a choice to do so.

'Feminine' looking males should be challenging men about prejudices about how they look.

Just as women have been trying to fight sexist and regressive ideals of beauty and how women should look for a number of decades.

It's not for women to tolerate the prejudices of men and the demands of men.

Why should we put up with males in female spaces because the male claims they will get beaten up? Deal with the actual problem of violence. Cos forcing women to accept males put them at more risk from violence from males. How is that ok? If transwomen want facilities and service then they need to campaign for ones that cater to them and their needs rather than at the expense of the needs of women.

The issue is regressive gender stereotypes not women trying to 'exclude' males. It's women trying to uphold their existing rights and protections rather than go back decades on this.

I thought like you too, OP, as do many reasonable women. Pic of Eddie Izzard queuing for the womens' loo a while back, dressed in short skirt, black tights and boots - the consensus of the discussion on MN was that he was living authentically and was quietly going about his business(!) with no threat to the women around him. This is no doubt true. But the problem with letting men unchallenged into women's loos and changing rooms is that any old bloke who wants to can also, dressed appropriately, enter unchallenged. It's not safe and it's gone too far.

Your reaction is an instinctive safety measure to protect and keep you and your family safe

Interesting that the "transvestigators" are suggesting stuff they think will upset JKR and Sharron D - almost as if they don't really think trans is a good thing to be, eh?

That Dadjoke person constantly appears on these threads, telling us we shouldn't object to males in our spaces and insisting we can't tell anyway - on threads where it's very clear that people CAN tell.

You feel as I would. A female toilet should be a safe space with no men (or, to put it bluntly, no pee-pees). We do 'things' in there and it's important that we can do them without men being around.

Eddie has a fun anecdote about being challenged in a women's toilet by three teenage girls who weren't happy about him being in there, and his own aggressive response.

Yup. Terrible!

What happened is that your knowledge of what is real ( that person is a man and you know that men can pose a danger to women) over-rode what you tell yourself you should believe.

People who lose their belief either secular or religious belief systems have these moments.

People should be able to dress and present as they wish, but no-one should be forced to believe men actually are women in all and every situation. And you have just realised that you don't believe that they are women either.