Educate me! Trans women who have undergone surgery accessing changing rooms, women's toilets...

[sandinmybellybutton]

So, I'm clear on where I stand with trans women who have not undergone any surgery accessing toilets, changing rooms, etc and women's "safe spaces.

But what about those who have had their male genitals removed and made a conscious effort to look like a woman? I know this does not change their biology but how does this impact on the argument about trans women posing a threat of violence to women in their spaces. I'm a wee bit torn on this one to be honest but am sure someone out there must have a good case to make either way to help me make up my mind.

Come educate me Ladies !

And are we then saying trans men must still use the female toilets? As that would cause far more comment and worry as you'd assume it was a man in the toilets. Until they say they are really a woman. But then any man could also say that if they wanted too!

This is why I think the only possible solution that does the least harm is single sex spaces plus third spaces.

@LastTrainEast

A rule of thumb. If a man would take advantage of any loophole to do something which he knows will distress women and girls then he is NOT someone you can trust. He is exactly the kind of person you want to keep out.

Women have made it plain how they feel. Any man who walks through that door has to know that and not care.

Some women have made this feeling clear. You don't speak for all of us.

Tbh, I never cared about TW using womens loos when I thought that was what it meant. That they had had surgery etc.
Thats not whats happening

Catpoooffender--many TRAs argue that transwomen are not dangerous to women because they are not likely to commit crimes. But statistically, transwomen commit crimes at the same rate as other males. That should be clear.

My objection to having transwomen with surgery in women's private places is that males are males. They are larger than females, with greater upper body strength, hand grip, denser bones, etc., etc. Women live in a world where they are constantly surrounded by people who are taller and stronger than they are and who don't always have their best interests at heart. They need women's rooms for their privacy and for safe spaces.

I think a key part of this conflict on this issue is that ‘trans’ now refers to an incredibly broad spectrum of people, and to lump them all together when discussing where their place is, is almost impossible.
Sex based spaces in my view must be always protected as sex based, but in terms of other aspects of the general argument, it actually does no favours to what we used to call transsexuals, that those who simply ‘feel’ like the opposite sex (and maybe make no other attempt to even pass, and maybe change that identity frequently) are considered equivalent.
I do think there is a difference between someone who has had surgery to try to remove physical evidence of their sex and someone who decided today that they ‘feel’ like a different gender and change their pronouns (and potential that’s all) but now want to be treated as if they actually are the opposite sex.

Passing transwomen can use whatever space they like as they always have. There's no way to stop them.

Non passing transwomen dont come with a sign on their forehead detailing what surgery they've had and it would be inappropriate to ask.

Ergo, there's no reason to distinguish between transwomen and any other man in this situation. We segregate by sex not gender.

Transmen are not a threat to men so their situation is not comparable, and its up to men to have the say on who they let in to their single-sex spaces, equality legislation permitting.

I have been discussing this with different male friends, some gay some straight and one a socialist worker
My opinion is that the males who are happy to go into female spaces and are not bothered that women may be uncomfortable with them there are the ones you would least want to share a space with
All the men I spoke to agreed with me except for the social worker who thought that women should not only accept males in their spaces but actually believe they are women. So compelled thought

But to reiterate, nobody on that spectrum is actually able to magically change their biological sex, so opposite sex based spaces and rights shouldn’t apply to them.

Perfectly reasonable question to ask especially as many women may be coming to this group for the first time, especially after what’s been happening to JK Rowling and had been previously very supportive of the T in LGBT without realising what was happening.

I don't think your first sentence makes sense. People can be divided into any subsection of society according to their characteristics - whether that's race, gender, religion, age, socioeconomic background etc.. Each of those groups will have different 'levels' of criminality, so it's meaningless to apply those 'levels' to individuals.

No one is applying it to individuals. They are applying it to a cohort. That cohort is male.

Men commit 98% of all sex crimes. 90% of all violent crimes.

Last time I looked at the statistics, there were 14,000 men in prison for sex offences and 120 women.

Twenty percent of women will have been sexually assaulted or raped during their lifetime.

Irrespective of whether a man, individually poses any risk, we separate the sexes when women are vulnerable because, as a cohort, men present a risk.

It is not just with their penis that men pose a threat to women.

How on earth would people enforce a rule that allowed a certain type of transwomen in? Apparently only 15% of transwomen have surgery and even then most only have boob-jobs. So we are talking about 3-5%

sleepyhead You nailed the argument for me.

And yes to the posters who say that if a member of the opposite sex is accessing facilities not designed for them, they are already ignoring boundaries.

When I enter any area of this debate, I am never considering transsexuals - individuals who have body dysphoria, who have had some kind of medical intervention, who have been through a medical process to assess their condition accurately - these people have existed forever, peacefully for the most part, and have always been very rare.

However, in the current climate it seems that you can claim to be a transwoman without even having to shave your beard off, or present as a woman in any other way. I cannot imagine why any man who does not have genuine body dysphoria would claim to be a woman and insist on the rights to enter women's spaces unless with nefarious intent. And those individuals far out number the genuine transgender people we have always know and supported by many times.

It is a real shame that any kind of gatekeeping would disadvantage genuine transgender individuals, but the only real solution I can see is to improve the provision of same sex safe spaces across the board, and this takes money! That's why suddenly making public facilities 'gender neutral' or 'unisex' has become so popular. Disgraceful all round.

Previously I’d never thought about transwomen not being gay effeminate men, and never had an issue with sharing a bathroom with a gay man in a dress if that makes sense because I perceived no threat from them.
I knew some cross dressers but those men never wanted to use women’s spaces or access women’s services.

Everything has changed now. There’s another post on that thread near the start about Autogynephiles, the men who are turned on by wearing women’s clothing. This for me is where I start to feel unsafe. And this is now where I absolutely wouldn’t want my daughter in a bathroom with a transwoman, because how can she ask which type they are? How can I?

It’s a line in the sand. Woman have a right to single sex spaces. As do men. But for women, the safety, however fragile, of single sex spaces, are what allow many women to participate in society.

For vulnerable women in hospitals, prisons or shelters, single sex spaces are even more important. Those women are already at risk: any additional danger created by allowing men into those spaces is a fundamental breach of their human rights.

No matter what individual women think is OK, any transgression beyond the “no men” rule gets into the murky waters of passing privilege. A few transsexuals will look convincingly “feminine” in
appearance, intact tackle or not.

As a feminist I don’t believe women should be rewarding men with entry into women-only spaces, on the grounds that they can imitate female stereotypes more convincingly than a 6’ 6” truckie in pinafore and maryjanes.

That ends up with privileging feminine stereotypes over biological reality. The end result of this is wearing arguments over the rights of butch women or transmen to use women’s facilities because they don’t look “like women”.

It’s a tedious nonsense designed to wear us down. It’s so much easier and more rational to exclude all men.

Where do you draw the line?
The safe space is safe not because there are hogwarts style male-ejection devices, but because it's policed by general public consent, and by the fact that if you see someone male in there you know it's a red flag and can get out/get help.

So penis/no penis doesn't really work as a dividing line. Or legal status. Both scupper the ability to maintain the safe space because women have no way to tell "male without penis" from "prospective offender lying about being without penis" until offender has offended which is too late.

@rabbitwoman

When I enter any area of this debate, I am never considering transsexuals - individuals who have body dysphoria, who have had some kind of medical intervention, who have been through a medical process to assess their condition accurately - these people have existed forever, peacefully for the most part, and have always been very rare.

However, in the current climate it seems that you can claim to be a transwoman without even having to shave your beard off, or present as a woman in any other way. I cannot imagine why any man who does not have genuine body dysphoria would claim to be a woman and insist on the rights to enter women's spaces unless with nefarious intent. And those individuals far out number the genuine transgender people we have always know and supported by many times.

It is a real shame that any kind of gatekeeping would disadvantage genuine transgender individuals, but the only real solution I can see is to improve the provision of same sex safe spaces across the board, and this takes money! That's why suddenly making public facilities 'gender neutral' or 'unisex' has become so popular. Disgraceful all round.

This is what I am thinking too, which is why OP’s question is a good one. And definitely why third spaces is the humane option.

Actually you are applying it to individuals. You're saying that because men and trans women as a group commit X% of crimes, that means that individuals who are transwomen are Y times more likely to commit a crime than ciswomen. And on that basis they should not be allowed to use female spaces. To me that's not very different from saying because that in London, young black men commit a higher percentage of knife crime than young white men, individual young black men should be subject to a curfew. You're using population-wide statistics to justify placing restrictions on individuals.

Twenty, thirty years ago, there was a tiny population of MTF transsexuals, primarily homosexual, and more likely to pass than now, with a massive lack of public acceptance - similar to homosexuals generally.

Overall, little harm was (immediately) done by unofficially letting them into women's toilets, as to not do so could casually out them in public life, and potentially open them up to significant harm. There was never any serious suggestion of letting them go further than that - into single-sex shelters, sports, etc. And it was always unofficial - if any had given trouble, there would never have been any issue getting them ejected. The potential resulting brouhaha basically guaranteed good behaviour.

Circumstances have changed. Public acceptance of MTF transsexuals and others under the umbrella (transvestites, Alex Drummonds, Pip Bunces) is significantly up, to say the least. And institutional acceptance is beyond a joke (see Harry Miller/FairCop). Many are explicitly out, and those who aren't are less likely to pass any more, given the public attention. The "outing" argument is largely dissolved, due to this combination of acceptance and visibility.

And at the same time there is a massive "thin end of the wedge" push to let any male into any female space for any circumstance, no matter how blatantly unfair or dangerous. Unsurprisingly, there is pushback from women. Including regretting the leniency that was given some decades ago that in some way led to the current situation. It is no longer clear that a woman could get a misbehaving male ejected.

As of 2020 any MTF transsexual who sees the new TRA/MRA activism, and women's rejection of it, and does not realise they should be denouncing it, saying "not in my name", and withdrawing from any attempt to use female spaces, including basic toilets, should be ashamed of themselves.

Any male person continuing to attempt to enter female space in the current situation is clearly far more likely to be someone not to be trusted than a MTF transsexual doing so in the previous century.

Not realising the harm their boundary violation was doing is one thing. Not caring is quite another.

@Datun

A man without a penis isn't a woman.

I'm baffled that women who say they understand, still fail to understand this.

Women are, strangely, human beings in their own right. As a concept, an entity, a physical presence and a material reality. They share characteristics which put them in the same category.

They're not service humans. Or support beings. They are not there to validate the feelings of men, however they identify. It seems quite a few people have a lot of trouble understanding this.

Women's spaces are for women to occupy, largely when they are at their most vulnerable. Not vulnerable to dogs, snakes, or scorpions. Vulnerable to the opposite sex.

It takes a mind wholly disinterested in women to imagine that their spaces are designed to actually validate the opposite sex.

All of this, but also saying "you must have surgery in order to access women's spaces" would be encouraging people to have surgery. I don't think anyone should be having unnecessary surgery

To roll out an oldie - how are you going to police that? Genital inspectors?

male/female is easily recognisable for most people. Males who've had hidden bits removed, no matter what they're wearing, are indistinguishable from male who haven't had those bits removed. It's just not workable.

I don't think it's complicated at all. There are 2 sexes. We have facilities for both, for good reasons. Men who look feminine and have problems using male facilities (and they do exist) will have to find a solution to that which doesn't involve all female private spaces becoming unisex-because allowing some men access makes every female space automatically unisex.
I am not scared of men, I rarely feel unsafe around them (lot's of women do though) so that's not even my issue. I just have the right , in law, to change, take refuge and go to prison in places where there are no men at all in there with me. I don't need a reason. I don't need to ask permission, or justify this with a story of past abuse, or inspect anyone's genitals.
If a man truly passes as a woman (unusual) and gets away with using female facilities, then hooray for him, he has fooled me
I am genuinely sorry for men who feel unsafe around other men, but that is their problem to solve, just like women worked hard on trying to solve things like places for domestic abuse victims to go and be safe, for example.
Men have walked on the moon, they have the capacity to solve their own problems. This is not women's problem, it is not up to us to fix it. We have plenty of problems of our own to be going on with.

I saw a post somewhere which talked about it being up to men to look after each other. It is up to men to deal with this issue, firstly to keep their fellow men safe in toilets if those men wear women’s clothes and secondly to keep the women in their life safe, their daughters in women’s toilets.
Most men apart from men like Glinner however have no interest in this conversation unless it’s Owen Jones giving our spaces away. But it’s men responsibility.