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 !

Single sex provision for women has as its primary rationale the protection of human females from human males because of their physical make up.
Female only should mean just that.
If some females identify as male and take measures which result in them passing as male, then they will not face the same dangers from human males as other females, as they will not be recognised as being female and physically vulnerable. Human males who pass as female do not share the same danger in using male facilities as they physically are a match for other males.

"It's so mind blowing, to me, that the facilities women need, through no fault of their own, and had to work bloody hard for, purely in order to lead normal lives and be protected because of their sex, should now be repurposed as a validation tool, for the very people they they were provided to protect us from in the first place."

This is it in a nutshell. Anyone arguing against this should not be trusted. At all.

@CantThinkOfACleverOne

Having read through all the comments on this thread (and similar previous ones on FWR), the one question that nobody seems to address is which toilets should transmen be using?

If it's based just on biological sex, then they should be using the women's, right? So if women see what to all intents and purposes looks like a man in the women's loos they should assume they're a transman and leave them alone, but if they look like a man in female drag they should assume they're a trans woman and confront them?

Seems to me that it would make it easier for men looking to rape or assault women to invade women's spaces, rather than harder.

That has been addressed, actually.

We have a huge shortage of disabled loos in this country. I think we need to double the existing disabled loo provision, and make one restricted, as now, to disabled people, and the other unisex and open to all. It should have a changing table on the wall for parents, and it should be private, self contained etc. That would help a large number of invisibly disabled people, who cope with glares and even challenge when accessing the conventional disabled loos, and it would help parents of opposite sex kids (especially dads - very few male loos have changing tables, and what about urinals, with little girls?), as well as carers. And it would mean non-binary people have a non-binary loo.

It would mean no trans person needed to feel either stigmatised (because it would be a loo open to all) nor to have dysphoria triggered by having to use the loos of their natal sex. It would be safe, for trans men (who rarely pass either, and can feel very unsafe in men's) or trans women (same on both counts). Nobody loses, and everyone gains. Dignified, inclusive, and respectful of all.

There are fewer trans people than disabled people in the country, so this could benefit lots of groups. The only issue would be those transwomen who are angered by not having the validation of women's loos - the ones who demand women validate others with the very presence of their bodies.

The reality is, a lot of trans people are perfectly normal, reasonable adults who recognise the issues and deplore what is being done in their name. They would welcome a solution that provided a dignified alternative, and they get abused as 'truscum' for their pains. And they're the ones I care about. The ones who want a two way, reciprocal alliance, and not the colonisation of women.

@DialSquare

"It's so mind blowing, to me, that the facilities women need, through no fault of their own, and had to work bloody hard for, purely in order to lead normal lives and be protected because of their sex, should now be repurposed as a validation tool, for the very people they they were provided to protect us from in the first place."

This is it in a nutshell. Anyone arguing against this should not be trusted. At all.

Absolutely.

There isn't a legal way to protect women's sex-based rights and allow exceptions. It's a contradiction. I'm not conflicted. OP's hypothetical transwoman is just going to have to not get everything she wants, for once.

OK, that does seem like a workable arrangement - though expensive.

Something like this should be front and centre of GC feminists' position on this issue, shouldn't it? Maybe with a name for the policy ("equitable toilets" - whatever). So that we don't appear to be just saying "no men in women's toilets", but instead we have a put forward an arrangement that would best cater for everyone's needs (other that transwomen demanding access to women's toilets as some kind of validation), while preserving women-only facilities.

At the moment the GC position (or at least the way it gets presented, even on here) seems too easily misrepresented to the wider public by TRAs as being bigoted.

wellbehaved
Adding extra loos would indeed be ideal
but in pubs and restaurants and public buildings
there is not the physical space to carve out such a thing

but instead we have a put forward an arrangement that would best cater for everyone's needs

Why?

I was just about to ask the same thing Rufus! Fuckinell. If someone wants to get me to come up with elaborate solutions to a problem that isn't mine they can pay me for my time!

If someone presenting as a woman is in the next cubicle and then at the basins peacefully washing their hands or fixing their hair or makeup, no way will I challenge them, even if they are 6'4" with size 13 feet. It's no business of mine what's in their underwear as long as they're not waving it around.

If, on the other hand, they're calling out to see whether any little girls want help with inserting a tampon for the first time, or going all "Little Britain" about their glitter period, I'm going to ask them to leave and stay till they do, to protect any girls.

If we yield on mixed sex facilities, every predatory male in town will be in there and I won't be entitled to challenge any of them. That's the point. Single sex spaces are exclusive. That's their purpose. If we lose that, we've lost everything.

It's not the odd transwoman we really want to keep out, it's all the men who will follow through the door.

the Haley cropper type?

A fictional TW who was played by a woman? Sure, why not?

Personally, maybe I wouldn't be bothered by post op transwomen in the same space. But that's irrelevant. What matters is that some women for a variety of reasons need various facilities to be kept (or revert to) being single sex or else they are excluded from them.

If your feminism is excluding females it's frankly rubbish feminism.

I'm quite comfortable saying no men (however they identify) in women's single sex spaces. TRAs perceive anything that's not total capitulation to their ideology as bigoted so I have no interest in what they think.

RufustheSniggeringReindeer

To win the widest public support and win the argument.

@ListeningQuietly

wellbehaved Adding extra loos would indeed be ideal but in pubs and restaurants and public buildings there is not the physical space to carve out such a thing

Such places often already have properly designed any-sex self contained cubicles with hand basin. One accessible and maybe one or two others. So long as they're cleaned often enough - which in cafes etc generally seems to be the case - they're ok.

Once, when it was just a small number of transexuals with gender dysphoria, women lived alongside them quite happily. There was no issue. But when the potential changes to bring about self identification through the GRC, suddenly that small groups of around 5000 trans people (men and women) (that the GRA sought to protect,) ballooned to around half a million, with no surgery / changes necessary. Since we cannot do a genital check, even though we can clearly see that people are transgender, then the only solution is to have single sex provision, and separate provision for anyone else who doesn't want to use the facilities of their own sex. I think the idea of ID for transpeople was touted, not sure what happened with that. Either way it throws transexuals under the bus. Which makes me feel sad. But the alternative puts women at risk. And seeing as women's rights are enshrined in law, I'm not planning to hand out rights and safeguards over to men. Thank the gender activists for that. They hung on to the coat tails of transexuals to gain the same rights that belong to women, and ended up dragging them down with them. It pissed me right off tbh. Selfish arseholes.

@ListeningQuietly

wellbehaved Adding extra loos would indeed be ideal but in pubs and restaurants and public buildings there is not the physical space to carve out such a thing

If there isn't space within those buildings then the options need to be Female Only, Accessible and Gender Neutral because they have both urinals and cubicles.

Which, again, is a workable route because transmen wouldn't have to feel that they would be obliged to use the female loo due to biological sex, transwomen being male would still be using the correct sexed loo and any woman brave enough to use the mens due to too long a queue could legitimately do so.

The people who would have a problem with it- the "transwomen" who feel the need to impinge of single sex spaces to feel validated- would therefore be shown to be exactly the sort of people who should not ever have access to those spaces.

Literally no issue at all with a TW in the ladies.

@ListeningQuietly

wellbehaved Adding extra loos would indeed be ideal but in pubs and restaurants and public buildings there is not the physical space to carve out such a thing

Not all bars and cafes have more than one loo to begin with, though. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have mixed sex, and disabled, in larger provision.

All those arguments were made against disabled loos. The most recent regulations say that new public buildings must have them equipped to Changing Places level as standard.

If there were a will, it could be done. Stonewall et al are hugely influential and very well funded lobby groups, with an astonishing degree of regulatory capture - yet instead of campaigning for a dignified solution such as this, they're full hammer and tongs aiming at dismantling women's rights instead.

I have to say though, the suggestion from another poster that it should be our responsibility to campaign for this, and that that would magically prevent our being seen as bigots, does make me smile a tad wryly. We live in a world where it's bigoted to think women's sport should be single sex. To think that there should be single sex provision for women seeking refuge from male violence. That it's bigoted for women to want intimate medical care provided only by other females. And that it's not in any way bigoted, or unacceptable, to defund the only women's rape crisis centre in Vancouver, and then nail dead rats to its door.

Genuinely interested: what would it take, for the bigotry of those seeking to force these abuses of our human rights upon us, to be seen as bigots, themselves? At what point does misogyny become unacceptable, and women's humanity recognised? Because given the examples we are constantly seeing, I keep wondering: when do we reach rock bottom? If Karen White wasn't enough to convince people that the most vulnerable, harmed and marginalised women of all deserve better - what will be?

There's nothing we could do or say to stop people insisting that we're bigots, because we are women, saying no to men. And that's all it takes.

We live in a time when 1.5% of women who report a rape to police ever see their assailant charged - charged, not convicted. Yet it should be our responsibility, never mind priority, to campaign for provision for the trans community, instead? Really?

When does it stop? When do we get the right to campaign for our own interests, and own rights, without apology, equivocation, or shame?

wellbehaved
I knew one of the most vociferous campaigners for disabled toilet provision - they were instrumental in the Radar key scheme.
And managed to get it into the heads of legislators that making dropped kerbs would help more than the disabled.
It was about improving things for one group by improving them for everybody.

Sadly the TRAs want to make things worse for a huge chunk of the population
without actually changing anything for themselves
especially on the days when they want to dress as men, Philip Bunce

hence why every inch of ground needs to be held
until the tide turns

@catpoooffender

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.

Try justifying your desire for single sex accommodation to be made mixed sex on it's own merits instead of veering off into some bizarre and irrelevant idea about a curfew. If you are unable to argue for what you want without dragging in something else entirely then you have no argument at all.

"Presenting as a woman"?
How does one do that exactly? We can't put requirements on transwomen to do stereotyped stuff that women don't do most of the time. Is having long hair enough to signal you think you're a woman and therefore are safe? Or wearing a skirt? What about women who don't do those things? Why wouldn't any old predatory male just pop on a wig or a skirt if that becomes a generally accepted exception to single sex?

To answer the transman question sortof I know one who generally uses his radar key. He is autistic and qualifies for it because of disability though. He used to use female toilets but he passes so was starting to freak other girls out a bit! I guess this is where we're back to third space

wellbehavedwomen

I never said it would magically stop GC feminists from being called bigots (patronise much). Whoever opposes TRAs will be called bigots, by them, whatever they say.

Nor is it about it being our responsibility to fix things for trans people.

What it is about is picking arguments that win in the court of public opinion; that then influence legislators and finally the laws that we live under.

Too many people here, it seems to me, just want to wallow in self-pity rather that compete to win hearts and minds beyond a narrow GC set.

Sexual violence doesn't always involve a penis. Digital rape and object rape, for example, as well as the assaults which don't involve genitals (groping, grabbing etc). Then there is verbal harassment and voyeurism, That's before you get to the question of autogynophilia.

But why do women have to justify/explain/provide statistical evidence of the risks involved at all?

Why isn't privacy enough?

Why doesn't no mean no?

A lot of assumptions on this thread which I will attempt to address.

1. I haven't argued for mixed sex toilets and changing rooms, nor have I argued for TW to be able to use female facilities.
2. what I take issue with is the use of the argument that men are more likely to commit crimes against women to justify not allowing this, on the basis that I consider it discriminatory. I know this will incite a range of furious responses, so let me save your thumbs from an unnecessary hammering: I know you think this is ridiculous and I don't care that you disagree.
3. I draw no parallels between this scenario and the racial profiling I referred to in my curfew analogy other than that it's a hypothetical blanket rule against a subsection of society based on one (protected) characteristic.
4. I don't need to be lectured on the injustices faced by people of colour over the years - for reasons I won't go into, you can rest assured that I'm not 'deeply ignorant' (as suggested by one PP) on this matter.

I long ago made the decision not to engage in these debates on MN because I am well aware of how it turns out for those of us who dare to suggest that there might be some middle ground to be explored between the opposing views that 'transwomen are women' and 'transwomen are men and if you were born with a penis you will never be anything but a man'. I must have been suffering when mild heatstroke when I wandered in. I'll leave you all to it, and wish the OP success in educating herself. Dare I say she may not get a particularly well balanced lesson here.