Bloody trans toilet obsession taking precedence over women's issues. Again.

[TokyoBouncyBall]

So, last night I went to an online seminar about gender-based violence and how signs and placemaking can help this. It's connected to my work, so fine. A panel of four were all presenting, and then a discussion.

First panellist, fine - about women and transport in Karachi and how not having a map makes a big difference to how you travel (I will never take the tube map for granted from now on).

Next TWO presentations were all about toilet signs and gender. This is relevant to violence how? The literal violence done to their poor trans feelings? There was also a video about poor trans people talking about their poor trans feelings, and the whole thing ran on for so long that by then there was only 10 min of the seminar left.

So the actual woman who was talking about women and girls in spaces and how this might be designed better to make them feel safer, had to rush through her presentation in five minutes.

I have never seen a better demonstration of how the trans issue a) takes up all the space and b) makes it all about them and c) marginalises women from a debate which is actually theirs. How many trans people get attacked vs how many women? How much of the debate do they have to take up to talk about the toilet signs (and if any one ever says that cis women - a term that got used a lot - are obsessed with toilets, I will point to this seminar and say that it ain't the women who are obsessed).

And it all left me so raging that I am still furious today.

Any chance of feeding back? Your questions are reasonable imo, especially the relevance to the topic of the two discussions about toilet signs. Was there any actual evidence or factual info in those two talks about "gendered" violence that results from toilet signs?

Yes agree with PP. please give feedback pointing that out.

I did message the organiser during the session but yes, perhaps I should send some considered feedback.

I have some similar experiences, i.e., the trans issues, however important to address, quite often seem to take all the limelight in some women's rights conversation so that 99% of other issues get short shrift. The reasons are probably in the oppression pyramid -thinking (most marginalised etc.), in #bekind, and that old reason about focusing more on issues which might affect male people.