Staniland Question is so good. Can we think of others?

[aliasundercover]

The Staniland question:
Do you believe that male-sexed people have the right to undress and shower in a communal changing room with teenage girls?
is so clever. The fact that so many people refuse to engage with it - let alone answer it - means it's a quick, powerful, way of showing how ridiculous the TWAW position is.

Can we think of any others that would be as effective? Maybe we could come up with 5 or so really sharp questions that TRAs could refuse to answer. My first thoughts are something along the lines of:
Why is it racist to identify as another race but stunning and brave to identify as another sex?
I'm sure somebody can word that better.

So any suggestions? The questions need to be short and clear.

I am reminded of that Australian handball (?) player who as a transwoman, so male, not only wanted and was allowed to play in the womens team but when the women didn't want to share their changing rooms and showers with them, they threw a hissy fit. Luckily that also blocked their participation in the womens team for the Olympics.

Oh and there was that lawsuit in the US where a transgender male child was allowed to use the girls changing room to change for swimming, even though separate cubicles had been offered. Child gleeful and boasting they had won, girl swimmer in tears because what now?

Anyway, how can you exclude any male from female single sex spaces? Then you would be treating transgender males differently to men males and that is not allowed. You can't say you can come in because you say you should be allowed to and you can't even though you say you should be allowed as well....

No I agree. I don't want males in women's spaces regardless of surgery, so as long as they respect the consent of women and girls and stay out I have no issues with what they do or do not do with their bodies.

Question

If a female patient is complaining because she is being asked to share a room with a male bodied person, should a nurse lie to her by saying " that person is a woman" if the male bodied person in question has said they identify as a woman?

Disgusted

Gyms such as Virgin Active and Fitness First have communal changing rooms. Usually girls from the age of 16 are allowed to attend the gym. In some cases, 14 year old girls are also allowed to use the facilities.

This is not about adult women walking into girls' school changing rooms. However, for the record, I would not be happy with a mtf transitioner teacher in the girls' changing room, although I would be fine with a female teacher.

Sometimes on this board I think people lack imagination to consider scenarios outside their own direct experience.

In terms of questions, the one question I always ask but never get a proper response to is:

What features or characteristics do all women and 'transwomen' share that are not shared by any men or 'transmen'?

The only answer I ever received was to tell me that there wasn't an answer and that I needed to stop being so binary in my view of the world.

Funnily enough, I didn't find that a satisfactory response.

@sanluca

Why does it always come back to toilets, jj? Is that because that is the one that can derail a thread the easiest?

Shall we just leave toilets for what they are, a gray area and go bsck to the really good other questions on this thread?

Why does it always come back to toilets, jj?

I expect because most trans people hope they never end up in prison or have to resort to refuge, and not all trans people want to go swimming or to the gym, and even if they do many self exclude. You can't really opt out of needing the toilet though.

I'm happy to go back to questions though and perhaps look at it from the other side:

Should a teenage trans girl, with a vagina, be forced to undress and shower in a communal changing room with naked men?

Just catching up and slightly gobsmacked that
the communal ladies and gents changing rooms would be forced to close
just to pander to a few angry Transwomen.

The only Transwoman I see there still goes in the mens because they were a member for years before they changed their name and clothes
and its where their friends for a chat after the shower.

The communal changing areas have LITERALLY been life savers for members
(spotting anorexia, spotting domestic abuse, spotting cancers on other people backs, comparing notes about mastectomy surgeons)

Why should we lose out on that ?

@RoyalCorgi

jj - it doesn't matter how much you and your Stonewall chums lie about the law, it doesn't alter what the law actually is.

This law you mean: www.lawcentres.org.uk/policy/news/news/kirklees-law-centre-wins-landmark-transgender-discrimination-case

Funny how gender critical barrister Karon Monaghan QC didn't seem to think blanket bans on trans women from all women's spaces were legal when questioned by the WESC the other day.

Why should we lose out on that ?

Because lots of women hate them, they are discriminatory towards some minority religions and trans people and they are a safeguarding risk in the days that everyone has a video camera in their pockets.

Do female sexed people have the right to undress and shower in a communal changing room with ...other female sexed people?

Of course!

If you're a member of the female sex, and it's a communal room provided for that sex to undress and shower, you're entitled to use it. Whilst other female people of various ages are also using it. Hence, communal. How is that confusing?!

No member of the female sex can enter a communal changing area and subsequently expect to forbid other female people from undressing there! We can't, and don't, attempt to limit the rights of other women and girls to use a communal room for the purpose it was intended.

Every woman or girl who voluntarily steps over the threshold into a female-only communal space has done so on the basis that the other female people have the right to be there too.

Even teenage girls understand that they can't shower in a communal changing room and expect to prohibit other women or girls from doing the same. It wouldn't cross their minds.

It's almost as if I'm hearing a man's voice saying out loud "If I can't shower with women and girls, then women and girls must be banned from sharing communal space with each other entirely"

How extraordinary that some should find this difficult to understand.

I expect because most trans people hope they never end up in prison or have to resort to refuge, and not all trans people want to go swimming or to the gym, and even if they do many self exclude. You can't really opt out of needing the toilet though.

But women are constantly told that if they don't want to share toilets with transwomen they can just choose not to use them. I posted upthread about my daughter holding on all day because she was so frightened to find a man in the ladies toilets when she was just a child. You seemed fine with that.

Funny how gender critical barrister Karon Monaghan QC didn't seem to think blanket bans on trans women from all women's spaces were legal when questioned by the WESC the other day.

She's not a "gender critical barrister" she's just a barrister who looked at the judgement in the Maya Forstater case and found it wanting. So is her legal opinion only accurate when she agrees with you or do you also agree with her about Maya?

@persistentwoman

There speaks someone who is completely unaware or unbothered about the risks that men pose towards women and girls in terms of sex offences...

The risks may not be equivalent but that doesn't mean there is no risk.

Also surprisingly, women inmates are more likely to be abused by other inmates than are male inmates, disrupting the long held view that sexual violence in prison is mainly about men assaulting men. In juvenile corrections facilities, female staff are also a much more significant threat than male staff; more than nine in ten juveniles who reported staff sexual victimization were abused by a woman.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/sexual-victimization-by-women-is-more-common-than-previously-known/

I find the whole insistence that communal changing rooms must be maintained at all costs a bit creepy tbh.

I didn't know that some religions don't allow women to share communal changing with other women. I must admit, I was brought up in a very evangelical Christian church and 'modesty' was a big thing. I certainly was taught that it wasn't acceptable for women to strip naked in the changing rooms without covering up with a towel (although naturally no such rules applied to men ) but we weren't forbidden from actually using facilities at all.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

Funny how gender critical barrister Karon Monaghan QC didn't seem to think blanket bans on trans women from all women's spaces were legal when questioned by the WESC the other day.

She's not a "gender critical barrister" she's just a barrister who looked at the judgement in the Maya Forstater case and found it wanting. So is her legal opinion only accurate when she agrees with you or do you also agree with her about Maya?

She described herself as gender critical and is one of the leading human's rights lawyers in the UK. I haven't read her analysis of Maya's case, but I certainly wouldn't dimiss her opinion out of hand because I didn't want to hear it.

Why should women care at all what men think about our preferences for our own changing areas, I wonder?

That's right. We don't.
I imagine that stings a little for men to hear how irrelevant their thoughts are on how we women change and in whose company we consent to do it.

Ah well.

If I can't shower with women and girls, then women and girls must be banned from sharing communal space with each other entirely

I keep hearing those voices as well.

The risks may not be equivalent

Thanks jj, for admitting it. No one said there was no risk at all. But as you acknowledge, the risks are vastly different because males commit most sexual offences by some margin.

I haven't read her analysis of Maya's case.

Perhaps you should.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

I haven't read her analysis of Maya's case.

Perhaps you should.

I just did, she makes a good case. I was surprised myself at the verdict tbh, I'm not convinced she's likely to win overall but I expected it to pass the Grainger Test.

@persistentwoman

If I can't shower with women and girls, then women and girls must be banned from sharing communal space with each other entirely

I keep hearing those voices as well.

I think this is it, actually. I fail to see how communal changing spaces in places where it makes sense to keep them, supplemented with a small number of cubicles for those who need them, is not an acceptable solution.

I fail to see how communal changing spaces in places where it makes sense to keep them, supplemented with a small number of cubicles for those who need them, is not an acceptable solution.

Who has ever said it's not acceptable. The problem when it doesn't exist. There is no push from trans people to get into communal spaces, that's why you never see trans people in communal changing spaces.

@persistentwoman

There speaks someone who is completely unaware or unbothered about the risks that men pose towards women and girls in terms of sex offences...

Oh I am aware. Lets google "sex assaults by trans woman in UK communal dressing area since say 1950" ? Or "man pretending to be trans" maybe? The myth first propogated by MassResistance has been debunked so many times and even admiited to by the organisation. Unfortunately the baseless fearmongering has unsurprisingly triggered some people. Changing room assaults are in fact very rare, especially gendered ones, changing room assaults in communal changing almost unknown.

The bottom line is that the myth has created so called 'risks' to some people. Men are not allowed in female communal changing rooms, where they still exist. Personally, I wouldn't want my daughter to go in one on her own when she was younger but it had nothing to do with a fear of trans women.

“Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in. No, not by the hair of our chinny-chin-chin! Well, I'll huff and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in.”

Re Communal changing rooms
they are discriminatory towards some minority religions
Which ones?
Which religions ban women getting changed in all female communal areas
and trans people
as above, the transwoman at my gym is quite happy in the gents, where they have always gone
and they are a safeguarding risk in the days that everyone has a video camera in their pockets
If that were true,
how would allowing mixed sex changing rooms make it better?