@rainrelief
Thank you for your intelligent and considered response. It’s nice to have an actual discussion!
You are right that men are the problem. You are wrong that men can become greater or lesser risks by giving them 'cis' or 'trans' labels.
I don’t think they do become a greater or lesser risk (other than in numbers). So a woman’s chance (god forbid) of being assaulted by a male as opposed to a transgender person is much higher, and yet the energy and vitriol against transgender-perpetrated abuse is vastly disproportionate to its prevalence. If it were about the abuse, much more of that energy needs to be directed at men. Not the transgender community, surely? It’s cognitive dissonance. Most women know and love a man a two - they have fathers, sons, brothers and husbands - but most people don’t personally know an openly trans person, so they can hate them as a group without having to think of them of as people.
Actually a study on reports of sexual crimes in changing rooms in the UK did find that the overwhelming majority of them were in 'gender neutral' (mixed sex) facilities
Indeed. So surely we should be raging that there are mixed sex changing spaces at all, if they’re so dangerous to women? But no one cares. They only care that trans people are being allowed into female spaces. If you just re-designated all spaces as mixed, there wouldn’t be anything like this backlash, even though that’s effectively all that’s happened (and no, I’m not in favour of that) Not that there are fewer female spaces than there should be, and that mixed sex spaces are inherently unsafe. It’s focusing a large part of the solution on a relatively minuscule part of the problem, at best.
It’s placing enormously disproportionate blame for assault in any changing spaces on trans people, when it’s largely plain men responsible. It is in fact, scapegoating. Gaslighting by the patriarchy. If, as women, we want to see real change here we have to continue to challenge rape culture and misogyny and not be de-railed into directing it at trans people. After all, the problem is not that genuine transwomen might assault women, any more than lesbian women might assault them. It’s that predatory men will pretend to be transwomen. It has less to do with sex and everything to do with keeping all women (trans or not) down.
What I am interested in is why you believe, if males can now enter female spaces, males with motives to intimidate, expose themselves, voyeur or other sexually motivated crimes against women, will choose to self-exclude from these spaces?
I don’t think they will. And I think they will likely exploit it. And the fact that they may is much more of an issue for me than where genuine trans people change (which is why I believe I can be pro trans and pro woman’s spaces) but if your argument about mixed sex changing spaces is valid, they’re already doing it and it’s already happening. Why aren’t people raging about that already? They don’t need to identify as trans, so why draw attention to themselves in a space that will at the very least make them stand out? They can just use a mixed sex space as they have been. So are changing spaces are the issue, not the single sex changing spaces? Do we need to look at why changing spaces leave women vulnerable? Are gay assaults more likely in male changing spaces? How can we make all changing spaces safer for all women (oh yeah, and any men subject to assault. I assume it happens, but mostly women, I’m sure we can agree).
And I think this is the biggest issue out there. HOW you identify and police a trans person who has a right to use a female space. It can’t just be because they want to, can it? (I can see that gatekeeping is not popular, but I don’t think you can just have unregulated self ID, which is where KS has fucked up and his male privilege is showing) There needs to be some sort of entry criteria that is not hailed as discriminatory. That is likely male privilege in action. If you’ve never had any reason to mind a man your space because you are one, you are not going to appreciate why this matters to women who have good reason to fear men, as you pointed out. I think it’s unfair to just blanket ban trans people because plain men (who are already responsible for almost all rape and assault) might abuse it. It unfair that it’s drawing so much (indeed almost all) the fire from these already-criminal men onto non-criminal trans people, who are in general fairly blameless. And that is devaluing the responsibility of men and the experience of the vast majority of rape and adult victims. But I also think it’s deeply unfair for men (trans or pretending trans) to retain their masculine appearance and thus be treated as men when they choose (largely by other men to enjoy the advantages of being part of the patriarchy) and yet also to avail themselves of women’s rights and spaces. You can’t have your cake and eat it, mate! One or the other, in my book. You want to be female, you have to put up with the patriarchy while we do! At the moment, it’s part of the package. I’m incredulous that anyone would want that. And I also wonder if this trans backlash, while being publicly about trans women is actually because the patriarchy is deeply worried about trans men getting some of the patriarchal cake? Because this going to go both ways, isn’t it.
I think that’s what I mean. Women assaulted by plain men far, far, far outnumber women assaulted by trans people, or even by predators masquerading as trans people. So having THEIR common experience massively overshadowed by a hugely disproportionate reaction to a very few (but still equally awful) criminal trans people must be unbearable.
Every point comes back to male privilege, rape culture, substandard provision for women and abuse of power by largely non-trans males. In short, the patriarchy. Yet the solution is to vilify trans people? It can’t be, can it?
The bloody patriarchy must be cackling with delight. Imagine sweating over the ‘me too’ movement and the erosion of your victim blaming rape culture that’s worked in your favour for years, and then finding out you can scapegoat transwomen, get women to blame them too (or accuse them of sexism against women, if they are pro-trans. Oh the irony of eroding women’s rights in the name of women’s rights!!) and completely forget about your crimes. Probably the Tories (who are largely Patriarchal anyway) will get to stay in power over it and continue to leech the public and crush the disabled, non-whites, non-monied classes and anyone else not serving the patriarchy and it’s pockets. And likely break up the NHS. It’s a very high price and ALL women will pay it disproportionately. I don’t think it’s worth the price, and I think almost all individual women will be worse off because of it. It’s just like Brexit. Sold to the public on anti immigration, but really all about tax avoiding by the very rich. A fucking con, both.
Perhaps I’m not even pro trans. Just really, really anti-patriarchy!!