Transwoman using women's loos at work

[CharlieSierra]

I've posted a bit about this over the past few days on the MN response to Spartacus thread in site stuff, but someone suggested I start a new thread about it here.

Earlier this week I was surprised to encounter an apparently male person in the women's loos at work. I understand from a colleague that they have just started the transitioning process, and it appears from all the research I have done that there is no way to avoid them invading our space. It would be discriminatory to prevent them.
We also have showers, presumably the same applies. I plan to take it up with HR, since none of the women in the building were told this could happen, but I haven't managed to speak to anyone about it yet.
I feel angry, powerless, silenced. It's obvious using the next cubicle that they use the toilet as a man would. We will have to adapt our behaviour, hide any discomfort so as not to make them feel uncomfortable. There are unisex accessible loos on every floor, but no, they want to be in ours.

How about you read this diary and see if you feel the same www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/series/transgender-journey

Becoming mtf is an incredibly difficult and painful journey. They deal with abuse, threats, often being excluded from families and friends.... In the past being fired etc. frankly many would not be safe in the male toilets.

For me I see it as a situation where someone is going through some incredibly difficult stuff. So the kind of 'othering' going on here which is basically - this person can never be one of us and must be excluded and is probably a pervert is basically mean girls.

Obviously like in any other situation in case of harassment or actions that are disrespectful or whatever there should be consequences. But thats not going to happen just because they are trans and if you think that the two are linked then that is bigotry.

'is probably a pervert'

waaaa who said that? (no one, before you look back at the thread)

so they have a hard time, they should get their own places to be private
if they really knew how women felt they wouldn't want to make them nervous, anxious, uncomfortable and scared

Yes WW and MTT males will be demanding access to Girls' schools too.

Like I was saying upthread, I don't run off road alone because I don't feel safe. If men are allowed in women's private changing area etc, the only place I feel safe will be my own home.

I read Juliet Jacques' account at the time. Just because we disagree does not mean that we are ill-educated or unaware of the problems. I have every sympathy with genuine FTT people like Juliet. However, you don't seem to be getting your head round my point: the proposed laws make it impossible to tell the difference between someone like Juliet, and a male sexual pervert who takes advantage of "no GRC, just self declaration" to say "it wasn't voyeurism, your honour, on the day in question, I felt like a woman."

You cannot draft laws based on people's self-declarations about the internal contents of their minds, because those are in principle unverifiable by a third party.

Winchester - on the pervert thing I was thinking about hermioneweasley's post.

Mean girls!

Give me strength.

Also figures are something like 41% of trans people have attempted suicide - I suspect (and you can prove me wrong) that it's pretty rare for people to just faff around so they can access the other sex's toilets

Yup, Exit - I need a bigger bingo card.

Lumpy, I don't agree with them, just in case anyone has interpreted that wrongly.
They would have some cubicles but i don't think they realise how long the queues would be...

Matilda - looking at the thread I don't think everyone is as open as you

Mean Girls

BINGO!

Hermione is talking about the likelihood of transwomen being perverts - based on the fact that they're men and most sexual offences are carried out by men. Not that they're especially going to be perverts because of being trans.

looking at the thread I don't think everyone is as open as you
Like who kitty?

I'd say 'suicide - bingo' if I was feeling really, really, really like a mean girl

'mean girls'

OK Kitty, I see where you're coming from now - the use of that misogynist trope tells me what your attitude to women is and why you find women's feelings and needs to be lighter than air when you weigh them in the balance against transwomen's.
Transwomen can have a very difficult time. So we should look at ways to make that easier. But what we should also do unless we seriously don't think women count at all, is to look at the places where their needs will conflict with women's, and try to find ways to get the best outcome for all. Which does not mean self identification, ignoring male violence, disallowing correct use of the terms male and female, opening up every single female space to anyone who claims to be trans. And if you are arguing for those things you are making it pretty clear you regard women as lesser.

kitty I think my post specifically says I don't think all TW are perverts. But it's undeniable that there's a sexual element for some.

also "I don't think everyone is as open as you". I'll bet I've been campaigning for gay and trans rights for longer than you have. I was a vocal trans ally for many years. I have trans friends. It's just they're not delusional or misognist so they understand that they are TRANS women, not women. Which is a fine and legimitate thing to be.

Just in case you're in any doubts about my position, kitty. I want trans people to have equal rights in employment, housing etc. I want to see trans people protected from violence. I want to see ways of lowering their suicide rates (which includes counselling, and acknowledges the fact that the rate of suicidal ideation doesn't actually change much post-surgical transition, which has some quite interesting implications).

However I don't think trans people change sex, they remain biologically their birth sex. I don't want penises in female spaces. I don't think people with penises should be able to work as rape counsellors in women's refuges and rape crisis centres. I don't want them being counted as women for the purposes of obfusticating official statistics - whether that's crime stats (esp violent sexual crime) or numbers of women in STEM subjects, and I don't want them feted as "the first ever female soldier" (or for that matter "the first woman to win an Olympic decathlon"). And I think the concept of the cotton ceiling is rapey as shit. So you might want to hesitate a little before deciding I'm the acceptable face of TERF-dom.

My point is that it's doesn't just go against women, there are plenty of men who have to suck up a transitioning woman to man, Going into their toilets.

I'm sure there were a lot of white folks who felt uncomfortable when black people started getting on whites only spaces in apartheid SA. I'm sure there are plenty of men an women who are uncomfortable with gay, disabled, black people in their workplace. But they will have to just get on with it. The world is changing, and if you don't like it there are plenty of other countries that don't tolerate trans people.

comparing it to black civil rights - bingo

conflating trans with black and disabled renders me almost speechless.

That bingo card is mighty full.

zippey men have complained about TM using their facilities. But they don't actually have anything to fear from TM as men will typically be bigger and stronger. It's also very unlikely that a proportion of the men will be traumatised by female violence.

No, I won't just suck this up. It is in no way like segregation based on race. Black people weren't oppressing white. We segregate based on sex for a myriad of obvious reasons.

I do wish people would stop with the false analogy with racism. Why do we have sex-segregated toilets and try to stop men coming into them? Is it because men are seen by society as lesser beings? Erm, no. It's because it's a very well documented fact that men carry out violent crime, often sexually violent crime at a much higher level than women, and that biologically, women are smaller and more vulnerable. We have sex segregated toilets and changing areas for reasons of safety, not prejudice. And having a penis is not like happening to have skin of a different colour - the penis is the very thing used to carry out rape, one of the major forms of violence against women. So women are legitimately scared of being naked and vulnerable in intimate shared spaces with a naked penis.

It is not like pre-apartheid South Africa or the American South in the 50s, and to pretend that it is is to complete obscure and ignore the history of male violence against women. We are not the oppressor class, we are the oppressed.

Zippey - my last question to you was - would you be happy to walk into a room where a rape victim is being counselled by a transwoman with a penis, or having a smear test by a transwoman with a penis, would you walk into that room and tell the rape victim she has to 'get over it?' (sic)

Yes Zippey cos rape victims not wanting to be vulnerable in intimate spaces with biological males are exactly like racists. Ffs.