Lesbian mistaken for trans woman in woman's bathroom in Arizona

[Christinapple]

https://www.advocate.com/news/lesbian-mistaken-transgender-arizona-walmart

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/masculine-looking-cis-woman-confronted-by-cops-in-walmart-restroom-kalaya-morton-demands-justice-video/ar-AA1AdWpn

But I thought people "can always tell"?

It also led to the irony the only males in the bathroom were two male police officers who were notified by a store employee who mistakenly thought a male had entered the woman's toilets.

"In an alarming incident at a Tucson, Arizona Walmart, 19-year-old Kalaya Morton*, a Black cisgender lesbian, was confronted by two male sheriff’s deputies while using the women’s restroom, sparking outrage and a demand for accountability.
Morton, who identifies as masculine-presenting or a “stud,” recounted the humiliating encounter that occurred when a store employee erroneously assumed she was a transgender woman. The saga began innocuously enough: Morton had entered the restroom with her ex-girlfriend, who was kindly handing her a tampon— an act of friendship that, unfortunately, soon spiraled into something far more troubling. In an exclusive interview with The Advocate, Morton detailed her shock when the two deputies barged in, shining flashlights into the restroom stall.

“You have to get out of here. You have to come out. We need to talk to you.” Imagine trying to pee in peace, only to have the police storm in like it’s an episode of Cops: Restroom Edition.
“I’m still using the restroom. I’m sitting down, I’m peeing. What is the issue?,” Morton incredulously told the deputies as she sat there.
Now, while most people hope for a streamlined bathroom experience, Morton was treated more like a suspect than a bathroom user. The deputies apparently needed to crack the case of “Who Looks Like a Man in the Ladies’ Room,” a particularly absurd mystery, if you ask us."

I’d just like to make it absolutely clear to everyone…I do not advocate for trans women being allowed in women’s spaces. I am saying keeping trans women from women’s spaces doesn’t keep us safe. Those two things can exist at once.

What keeps everyone safe are genderless single toilet cubicles instead of gendered toilet blocks.

For example in a shopping centre if you walk straight from the shopping centre promenade directly into a toilet cubicle no one, of any gender or gender identity, can attack you without being seen by everyone walking around the shopping centre.

Attackers tend to follow lone women into toilet blocks, or enter empty toilet blocks and lay in wait for a lone women to enter. Single toilet cubicles completely eliminate this. Then men can dress as women and call themselves Janet all they want, who gives a fuck.

What keeps everyone safe are genderless single toilet cubicles instead of gendered toilet blocks.

No they really don't. But I'll let @Keeptoiletssafe answer that!

In any case, you are talking about one scenario - a shopping centre. It is really not possible to redesign all buildings to accommodate the single cubicle model.

https://fairplayforwomen.com/unisex-changing-rooms-put-women-in-danger/

Just fyi...
The percentage of males who claim to be women out of the whole population of male people is potentially 100%. Because all they need to do is to declare a subjective belief about themselves and hey presto. Potentially any and every male person.

For a woman, being challenged in women's single sex spaces is not a big deal. It's happened to many of us.
Losing the right to exclude male people from women-only spaces is a disaster for all women. If male people stay out of women's facilities, both problems go away.

Again, probably addressed already, but in the light of the actual incident of an attack in station toilets posted a page or so before this, its naivety (or ruthless straw-manning?) makes me quite angry.

Lucy, I've always been cautious using station and other public toilets. For obvious reasons. You know what my MAIN safeguard used to be? I'd consciously check there were other people on the platform able to see the toilet entrance before entering. Because I KNEW that the SOCIAL CONTRACT meant that, if a man followed me in, there was a high probability that those other people would see it as suspicious and intervene.

Now? I've lost that. It's gone. A few brave people may, but I'm confident that the majority would trust that he has a "right" to be there, or be fearful of challenging him for fear of being accused of transphobia.

This ideology has removed an imperfect but invaluable safeguard. It has also compromised our ability - arguably our right - to risk-assess and act accordingly.

There are actual notices put up in female toilets in universities telling girls NOT to question a male entering. Do you honestly, truly believe this makes no difference whatsoever to their safety, and perception of their safety? That would be crazy!

So enough with the "men don't 'need' to dress up as women" trope. That's a laughably bizarre argument - NEED?! who the heck would ever argue that they do? And enough with the argument that men only ever sneak in when no one's watching. There are no absolutes or certainties here (but, frankly, I imagine, such furtiveness was far more necessary in the recent past than it is now - have a think about why that could possibly be). These are misleading, reductive absurdities that avoid two fundamental truths:

1. We can never prevent all attacks.
2. We can make them less likely.

In the '00s, I felt safer entering single sex loos than I do now. Shame on the people who have enabled that.

The bad ones AREN’T standing out though because people are hyper fixated on trans women. That’s the point. We are looking towards a population of 0.1% and saying exclude them to make us safe, but the reality is it makes us no safer. The 48% of the population who are cis men are the problem. So we need much, much more robust solutions than excluding trans women from womens spaces.

& btw Co-op Insurance completed a study where they asked ex con what would put them off breaking into a house and 89% said a home security system, so your “we lock our doors despite burglars breaking into locked home” doesn’t “make sense from a safeguarding issue”. A home security system is an effective deterrent to crime. Banning trans women from women’s spaces is NOT an effective e deterrent to crime because that crime is overwhelming committed by coz gendered men, so we need another deterrent.

To your burglary example, banning trans women from women’s spaces to “keep women safe” is the equivalent of putting a gnome on your doorstep to ward off burglars. It just does not address the issue whatsoever.

I and XXylophonic aren't defining 'presents as masculine'. The woman in the article defines herself as presenting as masculine, or a stud. Therefore, she herself is agreeing that there are gender stereotypes. She has chosen to present as what she defines as 'male' in line with those stereotypes and then got offended that someone else perceived her as male!

Pretty much guaranteed that this incident was a set up. Someone called the police to report that a man was in the women's restroom. The masculine appearing woman was STILL using the facilities when the police arrived. She and her friends filmed the entire episode and released it to the media. Have you ever called the police for a non-emergency? It can take hours for them to arrive, if they come at all. For something like this, a store employee would almost always handle it themselves and never even think of calling police.

You've been told before, we can basically always tell a MALE (transwoman).

Oh, and using a source like 'advocate' is just asking to be mocked.

Lastly, butch women have often been queried over the years - with no problems, and it was never reported, until recently. So why now?

And this is all a result of women being on HIGH ALERT due to your ilk putting males in female spaces. So take some personal responsibility for this yourself.

‘Why are we hyper focused on trans women?’

Because they’re men, they’re just as likely to offend against women as men who don’t identify as women.

It's really not about being "hyper focused", whatever that's meant to mean.
It's about knowing that there are two sexes, and one of them doesn't belong in women's toilets.

Really? Females losing our hard won safe single sex spaces instead of a potential male being targeted is acceptable to you? Wow.

Blame the trans activists. This is their fault and their doing. Maybe take some personal responsibility yourself for your part in this, instead of DARVOing and victim-blaming the female sex class for being on high alert which is due SOLELY to your ilk's actions.

Of course gender stereotypes exist. Saying we reject them doesn't mean that we think they don't exist. How could we reject them if they didn't?
It's genderists who think that if they don't like something they have to pretend it doesn't exist.

I think you may be confusing gender stereotypes with sex characteristics, which are unconsciously registered to sex other people. Like the male brow ridge, the female jawline, etc. A butch woman will still have a female skull and female gait.

Gender presentation is actually what we're talking about here. We know that long hair is coded feminine nowadays, for example. But just because a man has long hair and has quite feminine features doesn't mean he is a woman. Short hair is masculine coded these days. If a woman has short hair, we might think she is a man at first glance if she is also tall, long-legged, broad-shouldered and solidly built. Many women don't dress particularly feminine or masculine. I find it interesting that you think that because we know what masculine and feminine presentation looks like, we are therefore embracing gender stereotypes as a good thing.

According to Ministry of justice inmate figures, the men identifying as women are far more likely to be sex offenders than men who aren't identifying as women.

Plus, you've got autogynephilia. The proponents of which will be presenting as women.

And finally, it is this subset of men who are deemed more acceptable in women's spaces. So obviously they are going to be a focus.

It might have escaped your notice, but there are currently two employment tribunals where this subset of men were deemed, by the NHS, as completely acceptable in women only spaces. Where men who don't identify as women would not be.

it is, of course, ALL men, but when you've got prison figures saying they're more likely to be sex offenders, and institutions like the NHS saying they're okay in women's spaces, then go figure.

.

I did see it - it was posted after my own post.

A question.

Can you see that the error in the opening post has become more likely in the current context of people advocating for transwomen (now an "identity" far removed from the transsexuals of yesteryear) to be permitted entry to previously single-sex spaces?

It used to be understood that females only would enter. The differentiator was biological sex, not outward presentation.

This recent shift to focussing on outward presentation as the differentiator for using such a space (reflected in posters advocating for transwomen's access referring to femininity and dresses) is entirely new.

This movement has changed the criteria for access in a way that encourages 1) a focus on outward signifiers that used to be of little to no significance to the women using those spaces, and 2) an associated hyper-vigilance deriving from the understanding that what used to be a predominantly sacrosacnt female-only space no longer is.

It's such a pity.

You may have missed further up when I shared that I have been sexually assaulted TWICE by men in women’s toilets. Trust me, no one is more concerned with women’s safety in women’s spaces than me. That is why I am fed up with people obsessing over trans women in women’s spaces as if that is a solution to the problem. It isn’t.

Your safeguarding of thinking that if people saw a man entering a women’s toilet block they’d do something about it in the past but wouldn’t now…naive and wrong. It didn’t help me. Twice. People didn’t intervene then and they wouldn’t now. You may feel less safe now but you aren’t safe now and you also weren’t safe then.

We need to stop being distracted by the trans issue. We need to stop feeding into the media frenzy…such as claiming one article in the Daily Mail about Plymouth University putting a sign up outside all of the toilet blocks is “universities (plural) putting signs up specifically in women’s toilets telling them not to challenge men”. & btw I have never at any point whatsoever said I think trans women should be allowed to use women’s spaces, and I certainly never intimated that I agree with the signs at Plymouth University.

We need to look at solutions that actually make women safer. Not just “feel safer”. Make them ACTUALLY safer. You are right. We can never prevent all attacks but banning trans women from women’s spaces just does not make us safer. It doesn’t. We need broader context. We need better solutions. Not just this lip service bullshit.

As a side note I didn’t share one story of a man attacking someone in train station toilets. I posted four different story of men attacking women in women’s toilets. If you read the circumstances of these attacks it was not a witness saying “oh I saw a man who is very obviously a man because he looked and dressed like a man entering the toilets behind a woman, but because of all the trans stuff I thought oh I better not say anything”. So this idea you have that people are “too afraid” to say anything is simply not true. It just isn’t that simple. I wish it was, but it just isn’t. This article is literally about someone calling the police on a masculine looking woman entering women’s toilets so we are actually hyper aware of trans women in women’s space and seemingly naive to the ways into which men are actually attacking women in women’s spaces.

Yeah, it's really suspicious the.... random detail. I mean, just....why?? What's the point even adding that in? It's over-egging it. It smells set up to me, especially since this woman ran to the 'Advocate' to give an in depth interview. Something smells rotten. And it's not just the smell of the loos.

I see that the transactivists currently frothing about all the mean women on here denying the fragrant transwomen access to women undressing, toileting etc have completely ignored the damning statistics you cite.

Kathleen Stock had an excellent article in the Time last week highlighting that our national data is showing that "70 per cent of trans-identified prisoners are incarcerated for sexual assault or violent crime, compared with about 19 per cent of the male prison population generally".

Time people stopped ignoring these damning facts.

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/gender-cannot-be-a-get-out-of-jail-card-for-violent-men-zcnntrw2f

https://archive.ph/qTirZ

That is why I am fed up with people obsessing over trans women in women’s spaces as if that is a solution to the problem. It isn’t.

You can be as fed up about it as you like, I still don't want to share female only spaces with men. It's not about you.

It's as simple as that.

Oh for goodness sake it's not a TRANS issue it's a MAN issue.

TRANS identifying men aka transwomen ARE MEN!

Not at all true because they make up only 0.1% of the population compared to cis gendered men who are 48%

So what are we going to do about the 48% of men who pose a risk to women? Because they are attacking women in toilets too and there are much, much, much more of them. So we ban trans women from women’s bathrooms and what? We are (less than) 0.1% safer? Ok cool. Or how about we find a better solution that keeps us safe from men in all there various forms? & the small percentage of women who assault other women. Maybe we should aim a little higher than making women and girls (less than) 0.1% safer?

So this idea you have that people are “too afraid” to say anything is simply not true.

of course it's bloody true.

You've got a nurse being hounded out of her job, harassed, and told she needed to work under supervision, on the basis that she objected to a man in her changing room.

Turns out there are 20 other women who felt the same, but we're too scared to say anything.

Women are arrested, hit, fired, hounded, stalked, threatened and doxxed for objecting.