Thread 2: Why can't people respect the rules around toilets!?!?

[Underbudget]

Darn it the thread filled and I wanted to ask @tandora a question. Is this within site rules to start another to do this as I don't seem to be able to tag her? Feel free to report/delete if it is.

Previous thread here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5372111-why-cant-people-respect-the-rules-around-toilets?page=1

'Tandora · Today 07:51

Eh? Mental health is everyone’s concern that’s why we have a health system.

No one’s rights come “first”- we need to find solutions that respect everyone’s rights.

There is no “female suffering” involved in respecting and including trans people. It will have virtually no impact on your life whatsoever.'

I wondered @Tandora if you'd read my post earlier on that thread, where in my head, children's rights come first? As the basic premise of child protection?

My post (in response to a different poster) if you missed it, was this:

Underbudget · Today 00:51

Slow to reply and expect thread has moved on, but surely you can empathise with a girl victim of csa feeling terrifed at finding themselves alone with a very male bodied person in a public loo between them and the door? Why does that child's feelings mean less than the adult males?
And what if that particular male bodied person WAS a rapist? That people saw entering from the outside but didn't want to "offend" by challenging them. And a child was born from a child as a result?
Doesn't a child's right to safety and protection come before ANY adult's feelings? Especially when a child can be born from rape as a result? As could ONLY happen to a female?
Fellow survivor of CSA here so I can understand you may have issues in thinking around this. I have spent years in therapy due to being overtrusting because my boundaries were fucked.'

I genuinely want to be in a place where all rights are respected, but I can't personally process this risk in any way that makes sense to me. I simply cannot agree with or process that allowing a male bodied person, unsupervised access to a child victim of CSA in a vulnerable space, whether a real or a perceived risk, does not harm that child. As a male, they are not being discriminated against on the basis of their sex, as ALL males are excluded from that situation, rightfully so. No right minded person believes all males are rapists, just as and no right minded person believes all transwomen are. But some of both ARE and that's a fact. I accept that a trans person may feel excluded from having their social transition recognised by not being allowed in the single sex spaces of the gender of their choosing, but equally, a girl in that situation also feels distressed. Why does that adults discomfort trump the discomfort felt by the child? A trans person deserves somewhere safe to go to the loo, but that's not in the women's loos. If that protects just one single child from reliving horrific trauma or worse, then that's what has to happen.

I would truly like to understand your view, ideally in a way that acknowledges the trauma of a child in this situation.

I don't accept the premise of your statement. When you ask:
"What I would like to understand from you is if you accept that there is any difference at all between a "trans woman" and a "man"? I would answer that I believe transwomen exist and think they are a subset of men. So I don't erase them or deny their existence - I just categorise them differently from the way you do.

Discussing how they should be treated is obviously important. I believe they should, like all other humans, be treated with care and consideration; but that doesn't include denying physical reality.

I don't have answers to the questions of practical life. I see that using men's toilets/changing rooms would be difficult. I equally see that not all venues have the physical space, not the money required, to create 3rd spaces which are gender neutral. But I don't think the answer is to force women to give up their safe spaces. For the transwomen who say they are women and that they have the right to use women's spaces and that they aren't willing to use gender neutral spaces, I say "tough". You don't get to award yourself the right to impose yourself on women. I feel that women have had enough of being imposed on by men

Umm… do you mean you want all services mixed sex? But I thought TW couldn’t use male facilities cos the mean men might scare them. If all services are unisex,TW will be sharing facilities with mean men who might scare them. How will they be safe then?

On the one hand, you accept that sex and gender are different, because you accept that trans people exist.

Actually I don't think gender can be meaningfully separated from sex for reasons that I tried to explain above.

On other hand you believe there is a connection between sex and gender

Of course there's a connection - the two are fundamentally intertwined.

what the link between sex and gender actually is

I tried to explain it above. Gender is simply the knowledge that recognises/ establishes/ gives meaning to sexual differences.

As for what being trans is I've explained it over and over again on Mumsnet.

Although it's really hard for a cis person to relate/ empathise with trans experience, I feel like it shouldn't be that difficult for people to make sense of it intellectually, These things - what sex is, what being trans is - are clear to me, I don't quite understand what the barriers are to making it clear to others. (The relationship between sex and gender in feminist theory is harder work admittedly).

I have tried my best to overcome these barriers, but always fall woefully short. Sometimes I feel like there's a glimmer of hope - such as our exchange earlier - but it always returns to the same place.

If we can't resolve this through coming to some mutual understanding of science, knowledge, theory, then a mutual understanding of human decency is all that is left. I remain hopeful that there is a way through at least with that.

Thanks for your response.

I just wanted to respond on one discrete point:

that doesn't include denying physical reality.

To be clear there is no denial of physical reality involved in recognising and respecting a trans person. We can agree on the physical reality of someone's chromosomes, their observable sexual and reproductive anatomy, etc.

Where we disagree is:

• on the science of sex development and ihts complexity/ consequences;

• the language that should be used to describe these things

• the relevance of chromosomes for defining human experience, and what sort of social and political consequences should follow from what chromosomes a person has.

Thanks,

Gender is simply the knowledge that recognises/ establishes/ gives meaning to sexual differences

Whose knowledge?

The shared cultural knowledge that physically, born-as male and female people exist and that Man and Woman are the words we use for them?

The shared cultural knowledge of/belief in additional characteristics of mind and personality that are assumed to apply to male and female people ie sexism and these things are also meant by those words?

The individual knowledge/belief of an individual as to whether they themselves are a man or a woman?

As for what being trans is I've explained it over and over again on Mumsnet.

You really haven't. You've only ever said that a trans women feels he is a woman and you don't know what that actually means but you accept tthat is a real and meaningful thing just as someone like me feels to be female rather than male of body is a real and meaningful thing.

You've never explained why my understanding of myself as female should justify lumping me and the trans woman into the same social group, under the same name, other than "well you both think the word woman is important"

You've never explained why someone like Dr Upton's belief that his hands are a woman's hands means a woman who wants a female doctor should experience Dr Upton's touch as a female doctor's touch.

You've never explained how you think it's possible for female (born-as) people to have their own name and history while also requiring that the word woman includes trans women.

You often say "no, it's not that" to other posters trying to suggest what we think you are getting at but you really do never actually pin down what it IS, nor why you think it's entirely reasonable to treat is as a sort of mental overlay to body sex that makes body sex irrelevant is situations where it usually is relevant.

I would, genuinely, really appreciate you explaining not just what Gender is not, but what you believe it is and how it intersects with sex.

In your understanding are trans people people who feel a mental sense of being the sex they are not which makes their life very hard so they deserve sympathy and support including cross-sex access and rights, or are they people who feel aligned to a shared and meaningful experience of gender that we all have even though cis people may not realise it, and which is more meaningful in terms of commonality between the humans who share it than the differences they may have due to their sex, so what is needed is not cross-sex access and rights for trans people but a rethinking of what we have previously based on sex for everyone in order to base it on Gender instead?

All knowledge is gender. Our awareness of sex - that is gender. Our knowledge of sex - that is gender. The (social/ cultural) meaning that we give to sex - that is gender. Our experience of sex - that is gender. My awareness that I am a woman - that is gender. Your awareness/ cognition that you are a woman - that is gender.

I'll try again, in very brief

-A trans person is a person for whom the observable aspects of sex development (chromosomes, sexual reproductive anatomy) (which then leads to registration of sex at birth) does not align with their development of their awareness/ cognition of sex. Some recent research has suggested a polygenic underpinning to this, related to sex-hormone signalling genes which influence neurodevelopment. It is not a conscious 'belief system' over which a trans person has control, it's a subconscious psychic experience/ mental process that operates at the level of a cognition such as hunger. It claims nothing about who you are, how you experience being a woman, what being a woman involves, none of this. It's quite simply not about you.
If I say I am hungry, I'm not saying anything about how you experience hunger, I just know that I am hungry. This is all it is.

All knowledge is gender. Our awareness of sex - that is gender. Our knowledge of sex - that is gender. The (social/ cultural) meaning that we give to sex - that is gender. Our experience of sex - that is gender. My awareness that I am a woman - that is gender. Your awareness/ cognition that you are a woman - that is gender.

Fine. So I am not the same "gender" as a trans woman then.

If I say I am hungry, I'm not saying anything about how you experience hunger, I just know that I am hungry. This is all it is.

Just because you're hungry, doesn't mean you can come and steal the food from my fridge. You've got your own food already.

Oooookay.

All knowledge is gender. Our awareness of sex - that is gender. Our knowledge of sex - that is gender. The (social/ cultural) meaning that we give to sex - that is gender. Our experience of sex - that is gender. My awareness that I am a woman - that is gender. Your awareness/ cognition that you are a woman - that is gender.

Fine. So you've basically taken the concept of "sex" and the various ways we can think about it, physical and cultural, and labelled all of that as Gender. That is a lovely self consistent philosophy but totally useless for any practical application - Turtles all the way down 😂.

Why is it useless? Because in the real world these things are not the same. Even you know this because you've been able to describe them. So by making "Gender" just a catch-all name for knowledge you've also proved that Gender is a meaningless world for, for example, segratating services.

My awareness of being physically female and the social and physical consequneces that come with that and a trans women's "awareness/ cognition of sex" as being female despite actually being physically male with the social and physical consequences that come with that are still not the same thing. And calling them both "Gender" because "All knowledge is gender" doesn't make them the same thing.

Axioms:

• Physical sex is real and has real material consequences in this world.
• People of female body face physical and social consequences because of their sex that people of male body do not (and vice versa of course)
• This means physical sex has material consequences regardless of ones personal understanding of gender.

To take your "hunger" analogy, indeed you do not know if what you experience as "hunger" and what I experience as "hunger" feel the same. However we are both labelling something that if ignored or not satisified will lead to material and observable results - we will show measureable signs of starvation and eventally starve.

And when our starved bodies are examined even though we are not there to speak about it, those who examine us will know we starved and so know that before that we felt "hunger" and they will imagine that "hunger" as they feel it even if they cannot know how that felt for each of us individually.

So because of that we know that "hunger" is a material thing.

We also know also that it is a different thing to what you and I label "thirst" even though maybe what "hunger" feels like to me could be what "thirst" feels like to you and vice versa, because regardless of our subjective internal experiences we can see that thirst has one set of material effects and hunger has different set.

My point is and always has been that what matters is the real world challenges and results. I don't need to know if your "hunger" and mine are the same, I need to know that hungry people need food and thirsty people need water.

I can therefore definitively say that a trans women's "womanhood" and mine are not therefore like "hunger" because their real world consequences are so different. Whatever the TW is using the word "Woman" to label it is not the same thing as being female and it negates my own self knowledge and expereince to pretend you can subsume one into the other.

So you still need to explain:

Why my understanding of myself as female and that needs that goves rise to based on my body should justify lumping me and the trans woman who does not have that body or those needs into the same social group, under the same name, sharing the same support structures. Because whatever may have happened in his development of awareness/ cognition of sex to make him genuinely feel aligned to my body and my lived expereinces in that body the material reality is that he is not. "Well you both think the word woman is important" is not a good enough reason.

Why someone like Dr Upton's belief that his hands are a woman's hands means a woman who wants a female doctor should experience Dr Upton's touch as a female doctor's touch.

How people how are female bodied can have their own name and history while also requiring that the word woman includes trans women.

@Tandora you also seem to subscribe to the idea that something has gone "wrong" with trans people such that their mind believes itself to be the opposite sex. As far as I know every study that has been puported to show this has been debunked.

But even if it had not, surely it is clear to you that "thinking you are a thing" and "being a thing" are not interchangeable?

A much better analogy would be that there's a public fridge full of food in the park. We are both hungry and need to eat, but you stuff your face and deny me anything. When I try to take some food from the fridge you say that I am a predator and am trying to steal your food from your fridge - that fridge is for hungry people and you are the only hungry person here!! Everyone can tell, because when most people experience hunger their faces turn red. A tiny minority experience hunger without red faces, but you refuse to accept that. My face is not red, and there's no test that can objective prove to you that I am hungry.

I try to politely explain to you that I am also hungry, really, truly I am, really hungry and it's making me quite unwell. But you call be a LIAR, who is DENYING YOUR REALTY. I can't possibly know how YOU experience hunger as a red faced person, therefore I can't possibly BE hungry, because in order to be hungry I'd have to know how you feel about as a red faced person of course!!! HUNGER is the word for an adult human RED FACED PERSON!!! How dare I appropriate YOUR word to try to name MY experience.

Then you call me a narcissist who is crossing your boundaries.

You sue me with all your might about how I dared to name my experience of hunger as hunger and how it infringed on your rights to eat everything in the public fridge.

Analogy doesn't work as all human being experience hunger. Only roughly half of them experience what being a woman is. Anyone not in that half really doesn't know what he's talking about. How could he?

No @Tandora , it's more like I have a nut allergy so the host made sure there was nut free food for me, but it was your favourite so you ate it instead and left a nutty spoon in the dish.

And when I said "hang on, that's mine, I need it to stay nut free" you pointed at me and told everyone I was being selfish and nasty and they all agreed I was a terrible person to be so mean.

You weren't even being deliberately cruel. You genuinely did enjoy it more than anything else on offer and genuinely felt that meant you had equal right to it. You didn't think my nut allergy could be that big a deal.

But I needed it. I had no other options. So I because I know I need it I arrange for it to be there.

You did not need it. You hadn't asked for it to be there. If it hadn't been there for you to see it probably would never have crossed your mind. You only wanted it once you saw it was on the table.

It was there, you felt entitled to use it to but you didn't understand what it was there for and messed it up so now I have to go hungry.

But the point that you are missing is that I needed that food too, because I also had a nut allergy, it just didn’t look the same as yours so you didn’t believe it or understand it.

When you eat nuts your body swells up- everybody can see your nut allergy- it was identified at birth.

My nut allergy didn’t have these same observable / visible signs, so you refused to accept it was real. You said I just chose to eat the nut free food, because I liked it better for whatever silly reason. (Maybe it was giving me sexual kicks. Maybe I was just desperate to sit next to you at the table because I’m a bit of a creepy pervert and generally obsessed by people with nut allergies).

But what you couldn’t understand was I needed the nut free food just as much as you, because eating food with nuts was poisoning me- from the inside out.
I tried everything I could to explain to you what was happening to me inside my body, but you refused to listen because you couldn’t see it. You said I was a liar, a gaslighter - part of the oppressive class of people with no nut allergies trying to take away your hard won right to nut free food.

plenty of scientific papers had been written documenting the experience of people with nut allergies just as mine, but no definitive scientific test had yet been invented that could say whether someone had it or not, so as with any number of medical conditions diagnosis rested on clinical observation of symptoms and self report.

But the public weren’t persuaded of this science and the issue of who has nut allergies became increasingly politicised.
You successfully got the SC to rule that in the law , people with nut allergies were definitionally those who experienced visible body swelling. This was subsequently widely interpreted as meaning that whenever I ate any food , anywhere in public, I must only eat food that contained nuts . This restricted my ability to go very many places and to participate in public life.

Nope that is a terrible extended analogy and not at all reflective of the real life situation being discussed.

Tandora is quite adept at moving conversational goalposts, along with being evasive and selective in what Tandora replies to. That's on top of dictating how other people should use language, whilst simultaneously using words interchangeably when they aren't interchangeable, or in such a way as to totally divorce them from the commonly understood meaning.

Nothing at all about Dr Upton and his intent to assault his female patients then Tandora? No. Thought not.

Alright then so you have a nut allergy too. Rapid onset nut allergy right?

Anyway, you could have shared the nut free dish (third spaces, campaign for trans services, better medical care which recognises sex is crucial for y'know not killing your patients, and so on and so forth), but instead - and knowing that by eating all the nut free dish you were leaving a woman with a nut allergy to go hungry - can I use starve here, it feels more appropriate because there will never be any more nut free dishes for the women ever again - you ate it all selfishly.

Honestly I am aware that I've just "played the game" by Tandora's rules and that that ^ was such a ridiculous contortion of discussion, but I think it makes sense... for what given value of sense there is left resulting in a discussion with Tandora.

ETA: Swapped "Sudden" to "Rapid" - little brain fart moment.

ETA 2: the bit in bold to finish the thought.

So many edits there I feel like NHS Fife comms dept 😂😂😂

My nut allergy sends me into anaphylactic shock within minutes and death within hours. I have to carry an epi-pen and plan trips away from home carefully.

Your nut allergy has never been diagnosed. No test has detected anything. Eating nuts have no physical effect on you - indeed, you ate nuts happily for the first three decades of your life, and when your job requires you to socialise with that senior client who thinks people with nut allergies are whinging snowflakes you laugh with him and eat nuts too.

You have classified Snickers bars as "not nuts" because you really like them and didn't want to give them up. You explain that this is ok because you are expanding the possibilities of what it means to have a nut allergy and how it does not have to be limited to the old restrictions. Everyone tells me how wonderful you are and how grateful I should be to people like you who are creating such new possibilities for nut allergy suffers like me.

I still can't eat Snickers.

As a nut allergy sufferer who took a different route than most you feel very very strongly that it is crucial for society to accept that your nut allergy is just like mine. When I explain how restrictive mine is to my life compared to how yours seems not be to you tell me how hard it is to have this undetectable nut allergy that makes you feel deeply deeply sad but has no actual physical effect on you, and that you wish you had my anaphylactic shock so people saw you as the nut allergy suffferer you really are, and that I'm lucky that people can see my allergy is real and I should check my privilege.

I check my epi-pen. You say you need it because you are a fellow sufferer. I say no, I need it, I might die without it. You tell me that you will also die because not being recognised as a nut sufferer is like dying to you. You complain to my employer on social media. There is a local campaign to make me do the "right thing", stop being a pen-hoarding dinosaur and give you my epi-pen. You arrange an event where I have to hand over my pen and aplogise to you.

The next day you are invited to the Whitehouse to represent nut allergy suffers. You tell the President about how you knew you had a nut allergy when your mind went into anaphylactic shock state that was not detectable by medical tests but that the doctors said was even more real because of that, because it meant your mind was so deeply aware of the nuts that the shock hit it anyway.

While you chat to the President you absentmindedly eat peanuts. No one notices.

Everyone agrees after seeing you on TV that if they have to employ people with nut allergies, you are exactly the type they think of because you are so positive and don't make every little nut into a drama.

@FlirtsWithRhinos 👏👏👏

Put the vodka down mate.

Gaun yersel!

Congratulations, you win the prize for the shittest analogy I have ever heard.