Trans vs other protected characteristics

[Rudest75]

As somebody who has always been an advocate of both women's rights and LGBT rights I'm struggling to get my head around the recent trans debate. It seems to be an issue where you can't really support both sides, yet it's so less clear to me than is the case between most opposing ideologies like conservative vs liberal, nationalist vs multiculturalist, etc.

A common question around the bathroom debate seems to be "what rights exactly are trans people being denied?" When I try and apply this question to other protected characteristics I'm even more confused!

If we take the statement "trans people shouldn't be allowed in women's spaces because of a minority of dangerous men" how does this differ from the following examples?

"Muslims shouldn't be allowed in Christian spaces because of a small minority of terrorists/suicide bombers."

"Immigrants shouldn't be allowed in native spaces due to a small minority of rapists."

"Black people shouldn't be allowed in white spaces due to a small minority of gang members/Bloods/Crips."

I can't get my head around it!

OP you might also google autogynephilia.

Because the 'small minority' you are talking of comprises a significant number of sexual fetishists.

And since they, according to Stonewall, are every bit as transgender as your genuine transsexual, their access is equally legitimate.

How is it a personal question

To say

Given the analogies you have given

It sounds as if you disagree with segregation on the basis of sex

?

It follows directly from what you have said.

This is highly disingenuous:

"To give an honest answer, I'm not sure how I feel. I suppose my belief is that public areas are exactly that and are assigned via the will of the majority and not the individual. The only place you have full jurisdiction over is your home and if the public vote decides an area should be unisex then so be it. At one point in time, many people would've felt threatened changing in the presence of a black person but this had changed with the times and those who would prefer apartheid have had to suck it up."

What public vote? I have heard of no public votes. So for example, prisons. Prisons are institutions that are run and paid for by the public purse. Any member of the public may be sent to a prison. They have been sex segregated for always as far as I know. The reason they would have been sex segregated is to protect female prisoners from being raped and impregnated by male prisoners, in case you were wondering.

There has been no vote on this, it just seemed bloody obvious. You don't think it is obvious? You see men and women being locked up separately as akin to apartheid?

As a relatively privileged white middle class woman fortunate enough never to have been subject to sexual assault, who accesses public toilets in nice civilized spaces (e.g. my public library, newly re-developed, with individual cubicles opening onto a public corridor, floor-to-ceiling doors), it personally doesn't bother me. However, when I read up about women in India unable to go for a crap without the risk of rape because there are no women-only public toilets available, I realise it doesn't bother me simply because I am privileged beyond belief in global terms.

So if another woman tells me toilets do matter to her, I'm going to listen to her, not to a transwoman who wants to come into my toilets to validate their identity when they could equally well go into the men's toilets.

I think it's quite simple. Women have a right to access to women only toilets. Trans women are officially currently categorised as women. People who can't accept trans women are women feel like their rights are being violated. People who do accept trans women are women don't feel like their rights are being violated. So for many people there is no conflict.

People who don't believe trans women are women are fighting hard to take that status off them. The strongest and most common justification for removing that status from trans women is usually based on the criminal behaviour of some people pretending to be trans or criminal behaviour of trans people.

People who do believe trans women are women still feel their rights are perfectly in tact and see people pretending to be trans women with criminal intent as simply criminals.

"People who do believe trans women are women still feel their rights are perfectly in tact and see people pretending to be trans women with criminal intent as simply criminals."

Under self-ID, how do you tell the difference, legally? If self ID amounts to being prepared to sign a form saying "I identify as a woman", how legally do you distinguish between someone who has signed that form truthfully (a trans woman) and someone who has lied on the form (people pretending to be trans women)? If there's a distinction to be made, there has to be some means of making that distinction that a court of law could apply, and none of the proponents of self ID have ever told me what that means is.

Its that simple if you dont see the invisible women who for reasons of race or religion cannot share a toilet with a biological male and also have no public voice.

Its that simple if you have never had to deal with a potentially violent male in a confined space.

Both rely on you being so privileged you cant see those examples, cant understand them, and can dismiss them.

But we are not just talking about public toilets, we are also talking about women who may or may not be permitted to go for a smear test.
Whio may or may not be able to access mental health services.

Tallula it all depends, I guess, on whether you think transwomen are women. I do not. I think they are men. They are men who feel more comfortable dressing and "presenting" in the way our society thinks is appropriate for women, and that's fine. I think they should have full human rights (the right to live free from harrassment and violence, the right to dress and call themselves what they like, the right to employment and to housing). But they do not get women's rights. Because women's rights are there to protect us against the oppression we face specifically because of our biology.

Will these proposed changes benefit all trans people? Or will it actually REMOVE protection and safeguarding.

There are areas where it would harm some trans people and they would be worse off than under the current system.

You need to assess and add this to the conversation too.

The assumption is that changes will help all those who are trans identifying. That in itself is an assumption and a deliberate fallacy.

I'm happy with gender neutral toilets if they are single toilets like the disabled toilets tend to be. So once you are in one, you are locked in your own space.

I am less keen on cubicles with open tops and bottoms like most toilets are.

It really boils down to changing sanpro and feeling quite vulnerable with my pants down.

Perhaps years of boys pinging bra straps and trying to glimpse my knickers leaves me feeling that there are plenty of blokes who wouldn't dream of rape/assault but would have a cheeky look if the opportunity arose.

The shower cubicles at a campsite I went to last year were unisex. The dutch men all seemed to be really tall and a few did tip toe and see over the top and all said 'oh I was just seeing if it was empty - sorry'

Ah

"I think it's quite simple. Women have a right to access to women only toilets. Trans women are officially currently categorised as women. People who can't accept trans women are women feel like their rights are being violated. People who do accept trans women are women don't feel like their rights are being violated. So for many people there is no conflict.

People who don't believe trans women are women are fighting hard to take that status off them. "

The current situation around GRA and the proposed and already implemented in many orgs approach of self-id are sticking points here.

I don't think many people had too much issues with the old-style trans-sexuals, there were so few of them, most had had surgery etc etc. Women have been turning a blind eye if they even twigged they weren't female.

Self ID opens things up much more and also shuts down our ability to complain if people do stuff that is just the right side of legal. Men are very good at freaking women and girls out without actually laying a hand on them.

Justanotherzombie Wed 17-Jan-18 16:50:55
I think it's quite simple. Women have a right to access to women only toilets. Trans women are officially currently categorised as women. People who can't accept trans women are women feel like their rights are being violated.

Actually, this is incorrect.
Trans women are officially categorised as trans women.
women are officially categorised as women.

Trans women are, by a legal fiction, allowed to access places reserved for women, as long as there is not a good enough reason to exclude them.

Some women are protected by the characteristic of 'women ' and also by 'race' or 'religion'.
Trans people want to remove those rights.

Trans people can ask for a third gender neutral space or service but choose not to. They will only win if they are more privileged than the women who's rights they want to remove.

You think having spaces and facilities for women is like the apartheid. Wow.
Women’s spaces exist because of Male violence, I’m sure most women would rather that they weren’t at threat of rape or violence rather than have to change in a sex segregated area, but as that’s not going to happen anytime soon keep your penis at the door, thank you.

And thanks Tallula for that! I should also add I see the situation as very similar in some ways to religious belief. I am an agnostic. I don't believe in immortal souls, for instance. Someone who is religious generally will. I have no problem with them holding different beliefs. I would take issue with them trying to force me to adhere to their beliefs (I always opposed the blasphemy law, for instance). I also have issues where religious belief has practical consequences: as a feminist I believe strongly in women's reproductive autonomy and would object massively to a Catholic politician trying to outlaw abortion for instance.

I carry that over to gender debates too. You believe transwomen are women - I have no problem with you holding that belief. New York City makes "misgendering" a criminal offence - I have a massive problem with that. It's akin to imprisoning or fining people for blasphemy or heresy. The state has no business interfering in people's freedom of belief. A convicted male rapist like Davina Ayrton being moved to a women's prison on the basis that transwomen are women - again, massive problem with that, I think it's completely wrong and unacceptable.

It's not about the beliefs - I'm live and let live about those. It's about the practical consequences of those beliefs.

I am 50 and have changed in front of/used toilets alongside black women/girls since about the age of knowing what the concept of age was. This really is an insulting sentence.

So, prior to apartheid a black person could just walk into a white changing room, right?

"People who do believe trans women are women still feel their rights are perfectly in tact and see people pretending to be trans women with criminal intent as simply criminals."

Wrong. Because their rights are not intact. Their rights have been removed. It's just that they don't mind.

You can't 'feel' as though you have rights or not have rights. They don't change based on your subjective attitude towards them.

Rights are there to protect people. Should you not avail yourself of them, or think they don't benefit you, that's not a good reason for relinquishing them.

Rudest75 Wed 17-Jan-18 17:05:53
So, prior to apartheid a black person could just walk into a white changing room, right?

could a man walk into a womans changing room? black or white?

So, prior to apartheid a black person could just walk into a white changing room, right?

What is your point? That telling men they are not women is some sort of apartheid?

If segregation of any sort is like apartheid, you still owe us an explanation of why it's okay to say to a man "you can't come into our toilet"? After all, most men are okay. Only a percentage are rapists. So all your arguments should apply to them.

(In fact, personally, if this madness goes ahead, I'd prefer the removal of all sex-based segregation, because the sort of man who'd pretend to self-ID to get into women's spaces is precisely the sort of man I wouldn't want in there, and I'd actually feel safer if they were "diluted" by the presence of decent men... But that is just me, speaking from the massively privileged position of never having been sexually assaulted.)

I was reading an article the other day about trans people and airport security.

It was interesting in that TIMs, were funny about having to press the male sex button for a scanner and were mortally offended because the machine set off an alarm about a suspicious item around the groin. This is apparently transphobic. (No the scanner is just doing what is programmed based on biology and how you get around this, without asking personal questions or risking being offensive is difficult to get your head around)

Conversely TIF were mortally offended because they were subjected to being strip searched. (Which were obviously discriminatory and nothing to do with the fact that binding your breasts going through airport security is going to raise a red flag in case you are concealing something - which of course you are - the real shape of your body.)

Should we forget this and not search trans people because of the fear of being accused of being transphobic? Thus possibly exposing us to a terrorist threat?

(If you want to use the terrorist example, then lets do exactly that.)

We accept certain infringements of liberty if we gain some other form of protection in return. This is based on an assessment of risk.

But all that aside what I found most curious about the article was not the issue that biology was rather important in determining whether someone might appear to be suspicious but the example of how TIMs and TIFs had different concerned when it came to how they wanted to be searched sensitively and in a way they didn't feel was distressing and offensive.

The comment that TIFs didn't want to be searched by the people of their own gender. They wanted the right to choose the SEX of the person who searched them.

Whereas TIMs actively want to deny this right for women to choose the SEX of someone who searches them and it must be based on gender because gender is more important than the sex we are born with.

So even within the bubble of the transcommunity, you have a conflict over the importance and relevance of biology.

What is telling is who is most vocal and who is pushing the legislation, is just a small section of that community.

There is a number of quieter voices within the community who are critical.

^Men are responsible for 98% of sexual assaults.

Why should women be forced to share our private spaces with people who are biologically male and no different (on a population level) in terms of patterns of crime, than men?^

Black people commit homicide more frequently according to stats but nobody is advocating a return to apartheid. I encounter a lot of misandry in feminism in general and I really want to believe that this anti-trans narrative isn't just elicited by a general disdain of those born with a penis.

loos and changing rooms seem to be the areas latched onto the most quickly in debates around trans issues. My personal concern is that a man can assert he is a woman. No surgery, no counselling or recognition of having a genuine mental illness, that he can simply decide this and that then becomes the truth which cannot be argued with unless you want to be called a bigot.

(In fact, personally, if this madness goes ahead, I'd prefer the removal of all sex-based segregation, because the sort of man who'd pretend to self-ID to get into women's spaces is precisely the sort of man I wouldn't want in there,

Well you won't get that either prickly. It's incredibly incriminating that transwomen do not want unisex bathrooms.

They actively want to segregate based on sex and then identify as that sex to gain access.

They explode if you suggest an end to segregation. How anyone can fail to ascribe a nefarious motivation to that, god only knows.