Genuine question: Male & Female segregation

[Fandangoes]

Why were toilets, changing rooms, sports, prisons etc segregated for men and women in the first place. What was the original logic for this happening?

Although as with anything in history there's always a precursor

what sex segregated loos were like in the 15th century www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-59785477

In your experience, would you ever deliberately choose to use the men's toilets/changing rooms? And if not, why not? Surely it's not very difficult to figure out!!

I expect that one of the reasons for gaols/jails being segregated was to prevent pregnancies.

There is an idea that we (women's rights campaigners) have to prove that transwomen pose the same threat as men, when of course it should be that the onus is on trans activists to demonstrate that transwomen do not have make pattern violence/are as safe as women.

A point about the point you raised that your friends will simply say ‘TWAW’. The problem with that is at what point should a male be considered to now be a TW? If TRAs had just been lobbying for access to female-only things for castrated, GRC-wielding males, this chat board would barely exist. But because the definition of TW is now ‘any male who says she is’ that’s when you get a problem. Some men will lie to get the TW status while others who are ‘genuine’ TW will still be a danger to women as they have male crime characteristics rather than female ones. On a risk assessment basis an unaltered make presents the same risk as a non-TW male. Arguably the lowest risk (which doesn’t mean no risk) is a castrated male who has gone through the two-year GRC process - at least he seems genuine in his endeavours.

Crikey, can you guess what happens to a woman in a large, unsupervised group of men? It happens in war, it happens in crowd situations, it happens in cities after nights out…it happens anywhere a woman is outnumbered and there is a power differential. There will be some shit ready to exploit, abuse or hurt a woman who has a vagina, who is weaker than him and who is unprotected.

Re sport, men are 40-50% stronger than women, their pelvic & shoulder geometry and generally longer limbs mean they can run faster and throw harder. There is a trans researcher at Loughborough Uni, but they haven’t yet been able to demonstrate transwomen can compete fairly with women. Conversely, there are studies showing how much advantage transwomen retain even after lowering testosterone. Sorry, I don’t have the references, but many sports have now outlawed transwomen in women’s categories on that basis (I think rugby was first?). Given the skeletal issues, it’s obvious really.

There are numerous pictures and videos circulating which graphically demonstrate the difference between women & transitioned men - a photo of Lia Thomas diving into the pool alongside women, a woman being hit by a volleyball struck by a transwoman (I think she was concussed) a trans man being accidentally hit by a transwoman in an trans icehockey game & sustaining concussion injuries as she hit the side of the rink.

If transwomen are allowed to compete in women’s sport, there will always be men who are not quite good enough to make it in men’s sport, but are prepared to declare themselves trans. There will be no elite women’s sport, and many women will refuse to play at grassroots level because of the additional danger

And that’s before you consider the implications in the changing rooms

I have had a glass of wine and am sorry (but not sorry) to be so blunt.

That soft, sensitive passageway between our legs is nothing more than an opportunity to an abusive man. If you have one, you are vulnerable and that’s that.

If you have any doubt, watch Channel 4 ‘Rape on Trial’. That programme changed the way I see my place in the world, sadly.

I totally understand why so many poster have simply applied outraged common sense quite emphatically to the OP, but I have genuinely learnt plenty from those posters adding the historical perspective that the OP asked for.

And all women staffing the dual sex Peterborough prison 😖

*prison kitchens

Depressing.

I usually say, "you know why we had single sex spaces in the first place? [wait for their guess about violence] Has that circumstance gone away?"

The other issue is that they genuinely think, as with transubstantiation, that the man has literally changed into a woman - abracadabra! This is at the bottom of much of these people's thinking.

Agree with this, if a person has a penis then he has the potential to be a rapist, and there is no way women can tell which one will and which one won't. So sadly all men have to pay the price of not being allowed in some spaces due to the actions of a few beasts.

Also I don't think men generally have any idea how many women have experienced sexual assault on some level. I would say most of us have, every woman I have spoken to about this issue has experienced some form of abuse at the hands of a man.

Yes it's awful separating people by biological sex. 🙄🙄

It’s an important topic.

I am fully aware @OriginalUsername2 I was initially responding to the OP, pondering whether or not she was another of the Usual Suspects here to berate us. Happily she responded and we have moved on since then...

Yes

I'm quite shocked at these questions. I should think that cavemen and cave women used separate ends of the cave!
Women do a lot more in toilets than men do. I spent the 80s and 90s with men asking me "what took you so long?".
The onus is on those men who want to use the women's toilets to explain why women should give up their peace of mind, dignity, safety and many other reasons.
The lack of respect shown to women is shocking. Women say no and no means no.

toilets,

Safety. Privacy. Practicality biological differences in the processes involved, urinals are not really so practical for women.

changing rooms,

Safety. Privacy. Convenience, pre 1970s there were very few cubical based changing rooms. Neither men or women in general wanted to be naked around unknown members of the opposite sex. Most newly built municipal facilities have cubical systems which achieve the same objective more efficiently.

sports,

Sexual dimorphism. A number of sports have no rule restricting women playing against men (in the areas referred to as the “mens” sport), however biology means that women are biologically different to men, so women only leagues are required. This should be the universal. If all sports were “open” and “female” then there would be no issue of trans people feeling “excluded” they just compete in the “open” category. Also if a Woman wanted to compete against men in Rugby she could try (though she would be almost certain to not get far).

prisons

Safety. Privacy. Practicality, even of consensual relationships formed in a mixed prison, is that something the prisons should be set up to address?

If you could (and for the absence of doubt, you couldn’t) remove all violence, sexual violence, and exploitation from a mixed sex prison facility, what exactly would you do with the inevitable babies?

Wasn't the Sex & Gender section specifically created for these types of discussions?

You don't think the sex based differences between man and women, and the resultant need for sex segregated spaces is a suitable topic for Feminism: Chat? Is it not rather fundamental to feminism?

That's not really the point. The other section was specifically created to stop these topics usurping this board and burying other important topics. Why would you deliberately go out of your way to contravene this?

Posters who want to discuss this stuff will be well aware of that separate section. Trying to force it down other people's throats with faux innocent questions is just tiresome and pushes people away.

What topic do you think this thread is about? It's about why facilities for men and women have been segregated and why they are needed. That's a feminist topic to chat about.

The boards were split so that people who are incapable of ignoring threads they don't like the topic of could be pandered to, and have all the threads they objected to shunted off. It was apparently necessary because they felt utterly unable to start threads about their own chosen topics. Yet, after the split this board is like a ghost town and hardly a single one of those vociferous posters started any threads about any of the apparently much more important and relevant topics. What a shock!

If you too cannot stand to see a thread that you don't like the topic of in this section, then report it to MN and demand they move it. Your wish will be their command.

It's quite clearly another trans thread. I even guessed it from the title, just as I guessed the 'genuine question' would be anything but.

I think it's pretty clear that the biggest threat to single sex spaces isn't transwomen, who are a vanishingly small percentage of the population. It's mostly the Liberal feminists and woke crowd that have overthrown gender critical/traditional attitudes. It's arguably our job to sort them out much like it's men's responsibility to sort out the violent members of their class.

Vast majority of blokes couldn't give a shit about toilets. Most find crossdressers etc a bit creepy even if they won't say it openly and are probably pretty happy that there's another space for them to inhabit aside from the men's toilet.

So report it then and request it gets shunted to the naughty step so as to not trouble your eyes with it.