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.

they are still men though for all your big words 🤷🏻‍♀️

Tandora is very keen to police other people's language but doesn't have a single word to describe an adult human female.

The word woman according to Tandora means adult human females plus adult human males who identify as women

If we are all trying to be honest not rude, you can’t debate my health and safety posts because you know you can’t. So you are left with theories and philosophical concepts.

What actually matters is reality. I am trying to keep everyone safe.

Actually what happens in real life is that more horrible things happen to people in private cubicles/rooms in public spaces. This is exacerbated when the toilets are mixed sex as it means people expect a man to be next to a woman’s cubicle etc.

As I said above, transwomen are not women. You yourself acknowledged there is a difference between transwomen and "cis" women.
The words "woman" and "cis woman" are interchangeable, and so I just use "woman".
Therefore, there is no circumstance where it is appropriate for transwomen to be in women's spaces.

I am sorry that you find my words intolerable, but there is nothing wrong with them. I really have enjoyed our conversation, but here is the impasse, as I knew we would reach. My view is that even if we acknowledge that transwomen are distinct from men, that does not automatically make them women. You seem to think that it does.

If this were the case, how and why did the case progress to the SC in the first place?

I am kind of thinking out loud here, but your interpretation of the judgement means the sequence of events makes no sense...

FWS wanted equal representation on public boards, and for woman to mean biological woman in such quotas. And had to fight Scotsgov through multiple layers of court to achieve this.

It was determined that this hinged on the definition of sex in the EA.

So surely they ONLY needed to go to the Supreme Court because the defintion of sex in the EA was critical to whether the Scottish government were entitiled to use a non bio definition of woman in their policies. If SG thought, as you seem to, that they could lose the case and still have flexibility to consider TW as women in their policies, why did they bother to contest it at all?

It isn’t my opinion, it is a cold hard fact. Sex is immutable in mammals. Humans are mammals. Someone born male will remain male their entire life.

Man is the term for a male human being who has reached adulthood. Nothing more than that. The only thing every man who ever lived shares with all the other men is his biological sex.

No matter what social gender markers someone adopts or treatments they choose to undergo, sex is an ever-present reality. I know some people wish it weren’t (and there was a time I was one of them).

I know the transmen in my life desperately wish there was an opt out of being female and I’ve every sympathy. But sex isn’t something you get to alter. It’s not a haircut or an outfit. It’s coded into every cell of your body. We’re stuck with it.

Baffling. Utterly baffling.

These “single room toilets” are a bit like the ones on Scotrail trains - tiny and stinking of piss, although at least not moving.

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"?
If you answer "no" to this question, then you are essentially refusing to accept that being trans is a real, meaningful category of human existence.

Logic fail.

Easiest to show with an example where this same logic clearly does not hold.

What I would like to understand from you is if you accept that there is any difference at all between a "Christian" and a "human"?

If you answer "no" to this question, then you are essentially refusing to accept that being Christian is a real, meaningful category of human existence.

That is clearly nonsense.

Christians are a clear and meaningful group who can have specific rights, language and spaces while still being humans. Sometimes they just need to be included in whatever the general humans get. Sometimes they need something that is Christian-specific. One does not negate the other.

What they are not is Hindu. Because the state of being Christian requires things that are excluded by the state of being Hindu and vice versa. Christian and Hindu are mutually exclusive categories.

And so it is in the case of trans women we can recognise that the "difference" in question is a specific additional characteristic shared by all transwomen and no other men. They exist and their difference to other men can be considered meaningful whilst they still belong to the wider group of men.

The logic gap is not that trans women are not different to other men. Perhaps they are. The logic gap is that they are any closer to being women (in the original sex based sense of the people who lived the history of women, to whom almost everything ever written or spoken about under the name Woman referred, who suffered under patriarchy and for whom women's rights, spaces and protections exist) than any other man is.

So to your question about language. I am more than happy for trans women as a human grouping and as a subset of male humans to have any name they want and to divide themselves as much or as little from other men as they want.

My line is crossed where they go beyond saying "I'm not like other men" or even "I'm not a man" into "I am like you", "I am a woman" and expect to be included in things (spaces and protections yes, but also language, dialogue and history) that are distinct to women.

So as long as trans women don't do that, don't try and slyly and dishonestly slip from "I'm not like other men" to "You must treat me like a woman", we are golden. I'll probably fight on their side for their right to be whatever type of not-a-man man they feel they are. Just not a woman, because women also exist in a way that is not simply a feeling of a subset of men, and that also matters.

@Tandora lets take a look at your b) toilets in a pub.

Pubs and clubs are where most spikings take place. Let’s imagine the pub has toilets that everyone can enter. A person is drinking in a pub and starts to feel ill so they make a sharp exit to the loo. The spiker who spiked the first ones drink follows them to the loo and lets themselves in. Can you see why single sex toilets would be safer for women? Overwhelmingly spikers are male and young women are the ones being spiked.

Taking drugs is common in pub toilets. So is sex. In fact toilet designs were ‘refined’ around public houses as the gaps in doors prevented the ‘wilful misbehaviour’ that occurred in them.

@Tandora , what possible reason could you give us to think someone we are agreed was born male should be able to co opt the female estate?

Several of us have explained honestly and in good faith that yes, we understand transwomen are a subset of men, that they present or wish to be perceived differently, and that they should be free from discrimination and abuse for that.

Nothing in any of that says “and therefore have all the stuff women have carved out for ourselves.” Because it’s not for transwomen; it’s for women.

We should absolutely encourage our sons, brothers and male partners to be more accepting of transwomen. Just as we accept our trans and nonbinary identifying sisters and their diverse gender presentation.

A male lived experience: balls dropping, voice breaking, wet dreams, morning erections, risk of testicular cancer, risk of prostate cancer, getting a woman pregnant or fearing having gotten a woman pregnant.

Do you likewise acknowledge that referring to trans women as women, based on the belief that the mental commonality claimed by trans women with so-called "cis women" is more significant than the differences in their bodies, is extremely offsensive to many women who do not in fact experience this claimed commonality of mind but do experience the significant impact that being female bodied has on their lives?

Also, the ability to know that he has the power differential over practically every woman he meets.

Why are some still pretending there is a special category of males that are always safer to be around? Transwomen retain male offending patterns. They are just as likely to be violent than other males. What else needs to be said about it? It's your sex that matters, and that can't be changed. It's not an insult to any individual males, it's just statistics. It doesn't really matter how you as an individual feel about it.

So now we have to look at the position of trans people. We have to first understand what it actually is to be trans, and then we have to understand what would be the impact on trans people (in the context of that understanding) of forcing them into spaces according to their 'birth sex', or requiring them to always use a 'third' or 'other' space.

We have to first understand what it actually is to be trans?

Hell yes! Let's get that finally out there!

What exactly is it that means a trans woman's belief that his eyes are a women's eyes is more true and more important than a woman's experience that she is being watched by a man? That his hands are a women's hands is more true and more important than a woman's experience that she is being touched by a man? That his perspective and experience that he is a women is more true and more important than a woman's experience that she is being redefined by and spoken for and over by a man?

I can agree with Tandora that transwomen can be considered a separate group than men, but I would like to see a clear characterisation of that for legal purposes. The current EA states that even contemplating gender reassignment means you can have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. Not sure how mind reading works..

But even if we all acknowledge transwomen as being a separate group than men, it doesn't mean they are then part of the group of women. Women is still a separate group to transwomen. And yes, you can exclude transwomen from anything designated for women when it is a legitimate aim, for example if some women can't use the service if any male person uses it, transwoman or man.

@Tandora, do you feel that transwomen would respect services aimed at women and not for transwomen? Such as women changing rooms, women only gyms, spa days, womens officer positions etc? And if not, do you think the reason is that they feel it others them as non women?

To clarify your belief wrt b), can you show, pointing to the SC wording, why you believe the SC judgement can be read in such a way as to allow discrimination against men without a single sex exemption as long as a small group of men (transwomen being men under the EA act definition of men) are not excluded?

And there's the impasse. Because in telling me that to avoid offence and triggering severe distress, I should refer to transwomen as people registered male at birth, rather than as male, you are not expecting me to change my language, but my belief. Referring to transwomen as male is an accurate reflection of my belief. Referring to them as people registered male at birth suggests I believe that someone once erroneously registered them as male when they are not, which doesn't accurately reflect my belief.
So we've come full circle and are back where I started, which is that the fundamental lack of consensus as to whether TW are men or women will always prevent us moving forward, because whatever solution I might see as fair and appropriate to protect their rights whilst also protecting those of women won't be acceptable. Because to me they are a subset of men, with different needs and rights from women, to you they are women who should access all the single sex rights available to women, and, I'm guessing, some extra ones on top, on account of being a subset of women.

Because some people wanted to argue that A) was not allowed if trans people have a gender recognition certificate. The court decided that A) is allowed regardless of a GRC.

I don't believe they intended or contemplated B)

In that case you have fundamentally misunderstood GC feminism.

A male lived experience is the lived experience of a male person. In its entirety it is unique to each male person but includes the knowledge that ones body is considered male, the experience of being treated as male in childhood and in adulthood, the physical sensations and capabilities of the male body, the comparing of oneself to other males and to female people, the recognition of male roles and stereotypes in culture and the understanding that one is supposed to be like that and the self knowledge of whether one is, and so on. All male experiences, no experiences exactly alike but all points of more or less commonality with other males and all experiences that are not shared by females. And of course the experience of awareness of there being specifically female experiences one does not share.

A GC feminist recognises many of these male experiences and the influences they have on men's personalities and expectations are cultural rather than innate, and as such there is the possibilty that "male" traits and behaviours that are harmful to women can be changed rather than juat accepted and managed.

That is not the same thing as saying that in the here and now they don't exist.

Absolutely this

You claim there is such a thing as a "male lived experience" which 'includes knowledge of the body', yet at the same time you claim that there is no such thing as a "female lived experience" beyond simple 'knowledge of the body'.

You also assume that 'knowledge of the body' itself directly follows from chromosomes or genitals. it doesn't.

Why did you cut out the words pertaining to male bodies in your response?

She was talking about the male experiences extending to a male body. A male cannot have ever had a lived experience of having a female body. You do get that right?

Female lived experience is the only thing women have in common that men also don't have.