Trans people to be JAILED in Alabama town if they go to "the wrong toilet"

[katmanwho]

Unbelievable. There has been a lot of hate recently in North Carolina with the bathroom bill. But this has got a lot worse. [ www.al.com/news/anniston-gadsden/index.ssf/2016/04/oxford_passes_law_aimed_at_tar.html]

So a transwoman will have to go the male bathroom. A transman in the female one. There's been cases of butch women being hassled already in female toilets.

Oh - and if you're in North Carolina and witness someone who you think is in the wrong bathroom, you can call the hotline.

Meanwhile, a convicted sex offender (who is also Ex Republican House Speaker) is allowed to go the male bathroom with boys.

The only good thing about this bill is that it's made people react to the discrimination and to show that many people think this is discrimination. Just like in the 60s. Apparently trans people are sexual deviants.

This is the real effect of hate.

I don't know what to make of this. If this is exactly as you say, I can't understand why there isn't a bigger noise about it here? I know about the American issues, but this has bypassed me.

How could a woman from a faith where genders are separated in religion (Muslim, Jewish) be able to use toilets at all if men are in there?

What have Rape Crisis Centres and refuges said about this?

Is the objection mainly to self-identification, without anything else in the GRC process? Because personally I don't think I have an issue with the previous system you describe to get to GRC, and a woman who has undergone that process using bathrooms etc. When the American debates have been going on I assumed the hate speak was aimed at women who had fully undergone the gender transformation process? I'm imagining humans who look and behave just like woman from being turned away or vilified at toilet doors and this seems wrong to me.

But if 'Danielle' walked in, I'd be very unhappy.

Danielle "feels like a woman". With "her" ladybrain. Danielle's penis is a "female penis". I'm not making this up.

The vast majority of people transitioning from make to female would not wear a beard

Maybe not but most still have a penis.

The loo issue is really a gateway into the obliteration of women's spaces and safety. Were unlikely to see anything other than a fully dressed person in a loo, and TAs are using this relatively trivial example as an anchor to make anyone who opposes their stance to look bigoted and hysterical. I think most people don't look beyond the loo issue and share their support on FB to look like they're "right on"

What have Rape Crisis Centres and refuges said about this?

They have been silenced. Maria Miller has not included them, or other women's groups, in her consultation

The truly feminist response, Ono, is not to defend my little bit of female turf but to reuse to compete over it with someone who is not my enemy but, in fact, my sister and one who needs my allegiance.

I can't understand how it is 'truly feminist' to unquestioningly allow men into hard-won female-only safe groups/spaces and refer to them as 'my sister'

tea, what are your thoughts on the rapist Davina Ayrton, who requested imprisonment in a women's prison? Do you believe that he/she should have been sent to a women's prison? Do you believe that the women imprisoned there would have been safe from the risk of rape?

Tea What do you think of the instance of the TW who sued the rape crisis centre for not allowing her/him to be a volounteer?
Do you feel it fair that victims of rape would be sidelined purely to validate the feelings of that one individual?
Does that make them 'silly women' refusing to 'live and let live'?
I'm confused by your opinions because you seem to just essentially be saying that most trans people would not be a risk to women, and others are saying that they don't care about 'most', they just care about the minority who would cause harm, ie happily hurt women to validate themselves, or physically hurt women in prisons hospitals etc.

I'm not trying to antagonise you, but I'm really struggling to see how you can't see how this 'it doesn't matter what I look like, it matters what I feel like' could be exploited to harm women.

.... I'm not sure how happy I am to be encouraged to go with my female socialisation and sort out the problem because men obviously can't, that seems rather misogynist. I think this needs to be a two way street and that is much of my problem with it.

Leave the loos aside for the moment. Am I happy to have a smear test with a transwoman chaperone? It depends entirely on the transwoman. Some I would be comfortable with because they are clearly living as a woman with a woman's identity. Someone not at all transitioned, entirely bodily male who is a woman purely by self definition and feels his body is beside the point - no. I'm not comfortable. And it's losing the right to choose and have my need for privacy and comfort respected that makes me very uncomfortable.

I'm aware that in the down the rabbit hole thinking, it would be argued that I have the problem and it is to do with degree of what I perceive as feminine physical characteristics, I'm bigoted and need to get over my rigid limited perspective of femininity. And if I have to see all transwomen as one unit identity with no distinction between those transitioning and those with female penises and beards who just say I feel like a woman inside so am, then I'm forced back to harder lines such as if that person has a penis I'm not ok with them in that particular situation with me where I am or feel vulnerable.

YY shins many TW refer to their "lady sticks" and never have any intention of using them

My friend runs a pub, and she prevented a 6'3" man, male presenting, in a dress entering the women's loos the other day. Got called all manner of names of course but it's good to know that people are thinking of women, and terrifying to know that soon she may not be able to do this.

I'm imagining humans who look and behave just like woman from being turned away or vilified at toilet doors and this seems wrong to me

I think that's what most people think, hence the support for the boycotts etc...

In some ways it's quite terrifying to have someone like cake on these threads because it's only when you start to explain it from the beginning that you realise how threatening this all is for women. Not just the actual changes that will happen when the legislation goes through, but the silencing of women that's going on in the process. It's like the women's movement never happened.

I can't understand why there isn't a bigger noise about it here

I don't think the majority of people have considered cases such as 'Danielle', as it seems so unlikely that a man with a beard and a penis would insist that he was a woman.

if you believe, as I do, that trans women are women

In what sense are they women? What definition of 'woman' are you using?

And to repeat what I said easier: it's important to say that not all of MN is anti trans women in women's spaces.

I'm aware of this. Most of us started out round about where you are in your views on this. I was certainly shocked the first time I came across 'bigoted' views about trans on MN. Then I did some reading ...

As others have said, toilets are not the main issue. They're kind of symbolic of the whole debate because they're the facility that pretty much everybody uses on a frequent basis. Sorting out safe and dignified toilets for everyone (i.e. providing extra, unisex toilets) would actually be a piece of piss if there was some genuine goodwill coming from transactivists. It would cost some extra money but so what? Different groups have different needs and we should do what we can to accommodate everybody. Right now everybody is bending over backwards to accommodate trans people so if this was what was being campaigned for I'm sure they'd get it. Transactivists are not campaigning for extra unisex toilets because their fight has nothing to do with safety and dignity for trans people and everything to do with validating themselves as the 'gender' they 'identify' as (whatever those words mean), regardless of how this adversely affects women.

Much harder to solve are issues to do with prisons, hospital wards, support groups, DV shelters, rape crisis centres, same sex chaperones ...

There's another big area of issues as well. I don't believe any trans person was made more safe by the trashing and demise of MichFest, the cancellation of radfem conferences because of 'security issues' or the constant no-platforming of gender-critical speakers at universities and elsewhere.

I'm imagining humans who look and behave just like woman from being turned away or vilified at toilet doors and this seems wrong to me.

In fact, actual women are thrown out of McDonald's restaurants for using the women's toilets while having short hair and wearing comfortable clothes.

That is what we get as a result of the "gender is more important than biological sex" thinking.

Can't seem to find the article, but a young lesbian, who by her voice would have been obviously female, was accused of having entered the women's toilets as male because she didn't have her passport with her to prove that her gender is female. (The employee who threw her out could not have been mistaken about her sex; she has breasts and an obviously female voice. It was all about gender.)

A friend of mine many years ago was in a loo at a London Railway station, when she heard an odd noise. Looked up and a man was leaning over the top of the cubicle obviously masturbating. He was caught and eventually convicted because she ran out the loo screaming and the station was busy. But it destroyed her. She'd have nowhere to pee at all if she believed men had almost free right to the loos.

My DH refused to change DD's nappy in a men's loo. He said he thought it was utterly wrong that men stood at urinals pee'ing watching a tiny girl getting her nappy changed. And the tiny girl curiously watching strange men pee. If he can't use the disabled loo, DH knocks on the women's door and asks if they mind if he comes in. He has never been turned away. I just asked him how he felt about the possibility he'd still be changing a girls nappy in front of 'Danielles' - not happy.

I expect if this goes ahead and Danielle-types demand access to women's loos, then the queues outside disabled loos will be quite long!

I do have sympathy with men in the process of fully transitioning (looking like a woman but not yet undergone surgery) having to find somewhere to pee. What are these people meant to do?

And no, I wouldn't want Danielle to do my smear test, but surely I can refuse...? Just as I can refuse to have a particular female mid-wife care for me in labour if I want.

I can't see how this can actually happen. Every single woman I know would not be OK having 'Danielle' in a hospital bed near her, and surely the majority - when the penny drops - will object. My 80 yr old MIL would probably die of shock if that happened.

They might get jailed for using their non birth sex toilet but I might get jailed for calling a Trangendered person him when he is actually a her.

As I understand it it is going to be like racism so if I say I don't want that black person (in appearance) to join my ladies rugby team I can go to jail, if I say I don't want that 6ft bloke (in appearance) to join my ladies rugby team I can go to jail. He may have transgendered so I would be breaking the law.

I can see that in most situations the sex of the person in the next cubicle doesn't matter but there are many extraneous problems with this legislation, eg my case above, which no one can debate as they are threatened by twitter etc.
I can see that transgendered people wish for law changes but I just want new law to be properly thrashed out and sensible before anyone passes it.

And in democratic countries I don't think media stars should dictate what the laws should be. In democratic countries there should be an opportunity for everyone to have their say. When you shut people down you get laws like the Alabama one.

More language: what is meant by 'non-binary' and 'inter-sex'?

Intersex is when you have a medical condition which means you're not definitively one sex or the other. Most people who are intersex are still recognisably male or female, but might have hormonal imbalances for example and might be sterile.

The existence of intersex people have been co-opted by the trans movement to argue that biological sex is a spectrum, when it isn't. This generally pisses intersex people off.

Non binary people have no medical condition, are biologically one sex, but identify as neither, or different sexes on different days.

Trans people are also definitively one sex, but "identify" as the other.

More language: what is meant by 'non-binary' and 'inter-sex'?

Intersex: There are a number of conditions that will cause biological sex to be ambigious, or just seemingly obvious. Androgen insensitivity, for example can cause XY-persons to seem female until menstruation fails to set in. I believe those conditions are all lumped under "intersex".

Non-binary: That is a gender identity that is neither male nor female. Unlike intersex, it has nothing to do with biology; it is something people identify as. The difference to "bigender" apparently is that people wo identify as non-binary subscribe to the believe that there are more genders than just female and male.

(There is also agender, which means that a person perceives themselves as having no gender, but does not extend that courtesy to others.)

Not believe, belief.

Also, Hermione was faster and had a better answer. Because of course she did.

"women are disadvantaged and vulnerable - but trans women are far more disadvantaged and vulnerable"

People born blind and without a limb are far more disadvantaged and vulnerable. People born autistic, blind, and without a limb are even more disadvantaged and vulnerable than all of the above. It is not a competition. What is your point?

Hard as their struggle may be, transwomen are not female, defined as "Of the sex that can bear young or make eggs". They are males who "feel like women". As such, they don't belong in female spaces.

Non-binary, agender, gender-fluid and all the other made-up categories of special snowflakes people who don't see themselves as exclusively male or female are another good reason for having extra, unisex facilities.

''Women are disadvantaged and vulnerable - but transwomen are far more disadvantaged and vulnerable''
What is your source for this statement?

What have Rape Crisis Centres and refuges said about this?

My local women's centre has a special flat separate from the main centre. The flat is used for women with teen boys, so she didn't have to leave them with her abuser, the centre does not welcome teen boys into the main centre for the protection and well being of the women.

They accept Transwomen though. 13 year old boy fleeing with his Mum, big no no. Male bodied adult, come on in!

Sorry, presumably it was tea that made that claim. I'd like to see some evidence.

"born women and trans women are both at risk from the same group of people: violent men."

Gay men are also at risk from violent men. Do you think they should also be using female toilets and common changing rooms at pools, for example?

Female spaces are not there to shelter potential male victims of violent men. They are there for females.

"Yet such is the hardwiring of our female competition the we are fighting each other"

Hardwiring of the "ladybrain" - is that what you mean?

"The truly feminist response is not to defend my little bit of female turf but to refuse to compete over it with someone who is not my enemy but, in fact, my sister and one who needs my allegiance"

(1) To be a sister, by definition, one has to be female - i.e. Of the sex that can bear young or make eggs.

(2) The truly feminist response is to say that my allegiance is to other females, and my goal is to help the world a more equal and safer place for them. Not to compromise female spaces to accommodate males with functional genitalia, or even to commit scarce resources to the completely different problems and challenges of males who "feel like women".

Transwomen are not my enemy. Neither are gay men. I sympathise with their unique difficulties but female spaces are not for them because they are not female. That is all.