Single sex toilets and muslim women

[peonyred]

Since I am constantly being met with the "be kind" bollox and clearly am not perceived as being "kind", I have started asking people (mostly men and young people) how they feel about the fact that allowing men into women's loos means Muslim women and orthodox Jewish women cannot use them - at all. Therefore they have no access to any public toilets. TW can use unisex, mens or women's but their insistence on their rights to women's loos has shut out a significant number of women. This is without mentioning sexual abuse survivors (which appears not to register) First - am I right about this? Second, is there a Muslim woman out there who (with our backing) takes this to court? Is this the way though or am I kidding myself we'll ever get our spaces back?

Iran expects gay people to transition rather than be gay - because being gay is illegal. It’s supportive by default.

I honestly don't see the problem. People often put themselves under restrictions - whether that's not eating certain things, not doing certain things or not using same sex toilets etc. Most people can do all of those things - it's just that they choose to be bound by the beliefs and to not do them.

Are you saying that TW would refuse to respect female only spaces that permitted some females their only access?

Isn't that a bit transphobic? And a massive negative generalisation?

And frankly a theory that that it's pointless females trying to have boundaries because male people will never respect them anyway, regardless of how it impacts on females, is the case for law protecting single sex spaces.

Transwomen aren't women.

I couldn't agree more

So why is a person's belief that they are the opposite sex to what they were clearly recorded as at birth, and what every cell in their body is coded to, a more important type of self-imposed restriction which must override everyone else's views and preferences?

Why is a transwoman's belief that she is female something which others must accommodate, whereas a Muslim woman's belief that she must not be alone with a man outside her family something that she has to just cope with and work around by never being out the house long enough to need to pee?

Why is one set of beliefs more important than the other?

A clue to my guess at the answer is to think about the sex of the person being inconvenienced, and then consider the length of time the patriarchy has allowed men to do what they want and forced women to accommodate male behaviour

FlowerArranger · 01/05/2022 17:01
“The sad thing is that so many of my friends - women in their 50s, 60s, 70s - cannot see any problem with gender neutral toilets. Because the vast majority of men/people with penises/transwomen are 'harmless', and it would be wrong to 'discriminate'.”

I am in my 60s and I have a big problem with gender neutral toilets and all my friends feel the same .
I visited a restaurant in another town with DD and DGD and felt very uncomfortable. To reach the cubicles ( not full doors) we had to walk past urinals .
We left and used the disabled toilet .
it worries the life out of me that women and girls’ rights to safe spaces are being eroded .

@Artichokeleaves

And frankly a theory that that it's pointless females trying to have boundaries because male people will never respect them anyway, regardless of how it impacts on females, is the case for law protecting single sex spaces.

Exactly.

I'm in my 60s and have friends in their 70s and 80s and none of us want to share women's spaces with males. My younger female friends don't either.

I've also wondered about women and girls whose religions say they cannot be alone with males unrelated to them. There must be a great many of these women and girls and their access to public life has been taken from them.

No I don’t think anyone here is going to tell women to get over their trauma or abandon their religion.

Is it ever going to be possible or reasonable to guarantee 100% that there won’t be trans women in toilets anywhere? A Muslim community centre maybe. But everywhere else? Does that mean that some Muslim women currently can’t use the toilets in Asda in case there may be a TW in there? What about the last 30 years?

I think most categories of Jewish religion accommodate trans people to some extent and particularly if they’ve had full reassignment.

Are you saying that TW would refuse to respect female only spaces that permitted some females their only access?

oh dear! It is deja vu, isn’t it? We keep repeating this over and over and it never seems to sink in. Generally the poster asking disappears without answering. So… maybe this time we will get an answer.

The reason trans women trump orthodox jewish and muslim women is because trans women are men and men always want to prevail I suppose. Plus ca change - women at the bottom of the pile, real women.

But this is the thing, isn't it?

'Some' and 'most' is not all.

What are we going to do about the women who can no longer go into spaces like toilets, refuges, rape crisis services, because they're not part of the group of women lucky enough to be able to use mixed sex spaces?

Just accept that some females have to be excluded from anything so that male people can have their absolute freedom of choice to select their preference from everything?

Surely the answer is third spaces, and it being reasonable to expect male people to respect that female people have an equal need for access and inclusion?

They have done this in a large prestigious new building opened recently at the University I work at, too. All toilets can be used by everyone.

Apart from the cultural and religious issues, which are clearly really important, it worries me for all teenage female students who are often away from home for the first time and may be feeling vulnerable, and who may have suffered sexual abuse, or are the victim of stalking by a male student - or who have just split up with someone and wouldn't want to potentially end up in an enclosed intimate space with that male student (or males in general).

It seems very much (and unnecessarily) all or nothing at the moment.

Surely it would make sense to have a mix with some "free for all" facilities but also toilets on every floor that are female only.

No I don’t think anyone here is going to tell women to get over their trauma or abandon their religion.

I've been told on here to get over my trauma.

In Iran it is illegal to be gay. They have the death sentence for gay men and women. But being trans is totally fine. So there are no gay men in Iran. Plenty of trans women in relationships with straight men though. And straight women with trans men.

It's the epitome of homophobia. And every person who uses Trans as an example of inclusivity and freedom in Iran is guilty homophobia too.

That's what I hope for. But I believe we are going to have to fight for it - again.

The very reason that this is even an argument is (ironically) because these are men. This is how it plays out when a powerful majority invade a minority.

There's been unisex loos since I was a kid, they really aren't a problem in 99% of circumstances. In busy places it makes complete sense to have sets of male, female, disabled, parent and children and a gender neutral loo for all eventualities whereas in places with only a couple of toilets having a fully contained (including wash basin and sanitary disposal) toilet onto a corridor is just fine and it makes no difference what religion you are, you aren't sharing the space with others. The key is self contained

Don't be silly, of coures transwomen aren't women. If they were, the word 'transwoman' wouldn't even exist.

@gogohm - just out of interest, are you male or female?

LOVE how trans-activists are so quick to tell us that if our gender critical beliefs overlap with right-wing principles then we’re on the wrong side of history but TRAs will hold up Iran as the fucking liberals! Really? That’s your corner?

No one is complaining about fully self contained facilities - that's all many premises can fit in. It's obviously when those facilities have more than one cubicle and separate sinks that the issue arises. Did you really not understand that

The current implicit social contract is that men don't use women's toilets and women don't use men's toilets. The exception allowed in that contract has to do with children up to a certain age so that a young boy can go into the women's toilet with his mother, say, and so on.

This implicit contract is obeyed by most people, and it allows women who see a man enter the women's toilet to raise a rapid alarm. If that implicit social contract is ended and replaced by one where women are told not to question anyone's right to be in a single-sex toilet then they are told to wait before raising an alarm. That makes assault by a man who exploits this weakness without actually being trans more likely to succeed.

And once that implicit contract is ended, men who wish to film women in the toilets or sexually harass them there have more leeway to do so as they are less likely to be questioned about their presence.

So the real point is not that there would have to be genital policing by others. The real point is that most of us have done our own 'genital policing' by picking the toilet which matches our biological sex.