Toilets - what do we want?

[Mxyzptlk]

We don't want men in women's toilets, okay.
Do we want single sex toilets as they've been until now? Can those be maintained against the trans onslaught?
What about the trans rights we say we care about? How can they be upheld without affecting women's right to safe toilets?

What do you think would be the ideal situation, fair to everyone?

Man

3 reasons you haven’t heard about It from women IRL

1. not on some women’s radar because the media they read doesn’t cover it

2. Left wing media that does cover it gives impression all trans women are post surgery / fully passing / identical to females so what’s all the fuss

3. women who are aware and have spoken up have been fired or arrested. They might not trust you not to tell their employer or everyone on social media that they are a bigot for not wanting a woman with a penis to do their cervical exam.

And 4 women don't always want to discuss everything that concerns them with men.

Has any woman explicitly told you they don't want 'ordinary' men taking a dump in the women's loos? Whether they have before or not, believe me they don't. So if you want to be helpful to women's rights maybe start by telling those blokes they're out of line before getting to the more complicated stuff?

There are two cubicles in each room @Goosefoot - I don't think it's possible to change that.

Right, if they plan to keep them like that they should be separate. I've seen ones like that turned into two large toilet rooms, though the idea was to make them accessible rather than unisex. They just became unisex because there was no reason not to at that point.

No. But I doubt it would have been any different. When someone is going to rape you, a bathroom is not going to stop them.

I'm not arguing that point.

I'm just trying to draw your attention to the fact that some women will self-exclude from public spaces rather than risk coming face to face with someone who has already raped them.

Women whose rapists still live locally to them, still use the same services and businesses as them - if these women don't even have the option of toileting without their rapists having the right to be in the vicinity, they're being directly disadvantaged by the inclusion of their rapists.

Having my leaving-the-house destinations limited by the need to judge the likelihood that my rapist might be there is bad enough. Further limiting potential destinations based on whether I could feasibly nip home for the loo and back out again as required is putting an extra, and rather sizeable, obstacle in my path.

Net result is you're inadvertently prioritising my rapist's wish to have his identity respected over a) my right to partake in public life and b) my ability to recover from the damage he's already done to me.

Not suggesting that was your conscious intent; just alerting you to the unintended consequence.

Feels like being kicked when you're already down, solely so that the person who kicked you can avoid being kicked by anyone else.

Bowing out now.

Tyro Like we haven’t heard those creepy, rapey comments a hundred tunes before.

@Tyrotoxicity
No human should be going through that.

However, I am making no discrimination against no one. The problem is not me, nor any woman like me who really do not mind which toilet a TW uses.

It's the government and the laws that should protect any person from having to share any space with a rapist, whether is a bathroom or a shop.

Ah yes, the last word in femininity...a penis

A lot of thing would insult me but really being called unfeminine has never ever been one of them. So if it's meant to be a mighty insult it falls very wide if the mark.

Why do I have the feeling 2BthatUnnoticed thinks I am a trans

No idea

I cant see what she has said that leads you to that conclusion

It's the government and the laws that should protect any person from having to share any space with a rapist, whether is a bathroom or a shop.

Schrodinger’s rapist. You don’t know which men are dangerous and identifying as trans doesn’t make them less of a threat, which is why we need single sex spaces.

giga it's not just protection from predators that's the issue it's the right to privacy and dignity for all women and girls.

Aahhh the old "you're not as feminine as a TW" thing ... coz as we all know woman-ness is all in the exterior appearance and fuck all to do with biology

coz as we all know woman-ness is all in the exterior appearance and fuck all to do with biology

Good old gender bollocks...

I love how posters like that think that it's some sort of gotcha to say that men with penises can be more feminine than women.

Because yes, that's sort of our point. It's not how feminine we are that makes us a woman.

It's the government and the laws that should protect any person from having to share any space with a rapist, whether is a bathroom or a shop.

And the single most effective reduction in risk is to segregate by sex.

How else exactly, do you keep rapists away from vulnerable women?

Strewth. Someone who has never had to give this in the slightest thought, should not offer an opinion about it.

It's not just an issue of safety, but one of privacy and dignity in an intimate situation. Male and female bodies are different, and this leads to different concerns and different 'intimate' requirements.

Plus, on some level there is an instinctive response when a strange/unknown male enters into an intimate female space. Most men don't pass as women; most trans people still have their genitals intact; and therecognise that someone is not what they are presenting as. this sets up an instinctive alert and feeling of discomfort.

Permitting men into women's toilets just because of how they identify is madness. Why can't trans women campaign for third spaces if they really feel so uncomfortable and unsafe in male toilets.That women might feel uncomfortable and unsafe seems to be an irrelevance.

All of these women saying they feel fine with mixed sex loos.....I wonder if they will be saying the same when in a toilet block, alone, at night, with several men present. Whether the men pose a genuine threat is irrelevant - it is the instinctive fear and anxiety that are the issue.

There is an instinctive recognition that someone is not what they present as

However, I am making no discrimination against no one. The problem is not me, nor any woman like me who really do not mind which toilet a TW uses.

It's the government and the laws that should protect any person from having to share any space with a rapist, whether is a bathroom or a shop.

if I could again politely point out the contradiction (because I honestly believe a lot of decent people have genuinely never had cause to explicitly think this through, and I am truly happy for them that they have avoided the personal experience that would let them intuitively understand this).

By saying things like "I think TW are better accommodated in the ladies'" you are signalling that you will raise no objection to the government changing an existing rule with the result of a) advantaging that small subset of males who are both trans-identified and also rapists, and simultaneously b) disadvantaging the subset of females who are that particular rapist's victims. You're forming part of the critical mass of non-objecters who give the government the impression they can change this rule with impunity.

Just because you're not doing it by conscious, deliberate, overt, rational, freely-chosen design, doesn't mean you're not contributing to discrimination. Because in the case of me, my rapist and his gender identity, and the public toilet debate, my needs/rights and his assertion of identity rights cannot be accommodated. We don't collectively have facilities that satisfy both of us. One of us is going to be told to suck it up.

And the one you're suggesting should suck it up and accept this violation of the right to participate in public life is the traumatised female rape victim, so that the male rapist may further impose his wishes to the detriment of her rights.

I struggle to understand how anyone could fail to grasp that this is a clear and obvious example of prioritising men's "needs" over women's even when that man is a rapist, or that this is one of the building blocks of oppression, but like I said, I'm prepared to give the benefit of the doubt.

Tyro, you're on fire. I love you.

Thanks, Lang. I'm not doing another thousand posts of countering sexist derailment and nitpicking though. Not until my brain's recharged and fully caffeinated, at any rate.