@Notcreativeatall
Because I don't know that anyone is actually hurt/concerned by it.
i know a lot of people are concerned by the thin end of the wedge argument/ risk of violence/risk of rape - but that feels very theoretical versus telling an actual person to go to different toilets!
I'm not a hostage of anyones emotions- i am just generally not inclined to hurt people unnecessarily. I could say the same about the theoretical women who would be hurt by Annie going in the women's toilets- why should i be a hostage to their feelings
Because Annie's wish to have options means the female people they displace have nothing at all.
This is the issue: it cannot be all about individual need and that's the attitude that's got us in this mess: I want x and I deserve x and feel I need x and so fuck everyone else they don't matter like what I do.
And this is what has led to females being excluded from any provision at all, no rape support, no escape from dangerous relationships, raped on hospital wards and in prisons by male people with this feeling of entitlement and the power to enforce it.
I hear what you're saying, I would find it almost impossible to say this to a friend, and this is why it cannot be about personal feelings and not my Nigel and a special exception for x who is lovely and very feminine and we don't mind.... (and we just won't look at those lovely, vulnerable, equally emotive anecdote females who just had to walk out and leave this space and abandon going to the loo at all so we could indulge our niceness....)
This is the thing. Behind all the niceness on the surface is something very nasty very quietly going on, but because it's only happening to females it's supposedly ok to shhh, don't mention it, don't look. It's not like those females have much power or a voice or very very rich charities advancing their causes or get invited to cosy cups of tea with government committees, or get to go be expensively paid trainers who can steer whole national services into being their enablers. And this is what has happened.
And I have the trans friend, (one of several) who did eventually push me to having to put up a boundary with them, I won't go into about what, and then shouted transphobia at me and made life very difficult. But not everything can always be about the trans person, or revolve around them. They are not more important than everyone else.
We are at a point where boundaries are having to be drawn very strongly by females. Because this was forced on females without consent, without the faintest conscience or consideration, and this experiment by males for males has gone hideously wrong for females. That male people are ok with this and would like to continue having what they want while it continues to be hideous for females? That's kind of exactly in a nutshell why females need legally gatekept accessible spaces away from them. That respect and equality isn't going to be given voluntarily, this lobby has no fucks to give about females. They are also now heavily relying on females to be so sorry for poor TW and the narrative of how hard it is for them as this policy starts to be re balanced that they continue to let.... any male who wants to do whatever they want regardless of impact on females.
Unfortunately other people's boundaries aren't negotiable on whether or not you like them, and how inconvenient they are to you doing what you want to do.
I have a lot of sympathy, I really do. I could not say to a friend no, don't use this space use that one - but I would not find it easy that they put me in this position of choosing between males and females with females losing, I would not find it easy to watch them show this disregard for females, and I would not want to be part of or in any way support their walking into a space to exercise meeting their own needs at the expense of the females in that space. It would affect how I felt about them.
This needs to come through law with provision of mixed sex spaces alongside female only. That part is easy, it solves all the issues. The problem will then be a firm boundary on the female only space that isn't up for debate or rearranging based on how a male person feels about it. Because the bottom line here is that no one ever considers or cares about those female people, only that male people never have to feel sad or be excluded or not have their needs met in the way that they prefer. That's the massive imbalance that has to be fixed. And the first resort is still to lean on female people's sympathies and consideration and other values they give which are not reciprocated, to let their boundaries down in male favour.
No. Female people matter equally in this.