Is it safety or separation?

[OneFlakyMaker]

When opposing transgender people in women's spaces, are you looking for safe spaces or separate spaces?

They may overlap but are not the same thing, and while a lot of the discussion is focused on safety, the tone and some arguments hint that addressing safety won't be enough for many people to feel comfortable. Instead, a place without males is sought.

I read one woman described it "At the club we used the women's bathroom to get a break from interacting with men".

The depressing reality is that male predators are everywhere. The Dominique Pélicot case shows that in the starkest possible terms. The male work colleague you make polite small talk with at the coffee machine may turn out to have a secret life you don't know about, one in which he arranges with a stranger on the internet to come round and rape his drugged wife, or covertly films up teenagers' skirts on packed train carriages, or views images of child sexual abuse, or rapes his own wife or daughter.

The reason we need segregated toilets but not segregated workplaces is because this man is no danger to me in a team meeting, where I know his identity and we are surrounded by colleagues, and where I could talk in front of him or even contradict him without being at any risk of harm. In a professional environment, I might even be his boss, and have the power to get him to do things for me, even ultimately fire him for not doing what is required of him. But if I were to meet the same man in a mixed sex toilet, perhaps at 11pm in a motorway service station with no one else around, he is very much a danger to me.

My next bullshit bingo prediction: "Most women are harmed by men they know, not strangers, so there's no point taking steps to try and protect women against being harmed by strange men."

"I want a women-only space so I can feel more comfortable speaking": that makes sense. In the past 60 years, (US) society generaly accepts such arbitrary preferences in the private realm, but won't enforce such preferences in the public realm."

There are two words you use in the above that I think may justify closer examination.

"Arbitrary" is something of a weasel word. In the literal sense of groundless - without rational cause - it feels dismissive of a widely researched and well-recognised power imbalance.

Of the 31 conversations, 10 were between two men, 10 between two women, and 11 between and man and a woman. In the two same-sex groups combined, the authors found seven instances of interruption. In the male/female group, however, they found 48 interruptions, 46 of which were instances of a man interrupting a woman.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2017/01/03/gal-interrupted-why-men-interrupt-women-and-how-to-avert-this-in-the-workplace/

IANA(British or American!)Lawyer, but your brief qualifier of "generally" regarding the distinction between public v. private seems designed to shift focus away from the highly relevant exceptions that may blur this boundary eg. Title IX exemptions for eg. single-sex schools, sororities etc.?

After all, equalities law is so often (always, maybe?!) about exceptions to what is "generally" permitted precisely due to a recognised and far-from-"arbitrary" need.

@OneFlakyMaker 'single-occupant bathrooms are unsafe due to isolation'

You may be missing a crucial component of the argument regarding safety. I recommend you look out for the very informative posts (on other threads) by @Keeptoiletssafe . For both women and men, communal toilets are safer than single-use toilets because of the high likelihood of a medical emergency (e.g. heart attack, stroke) happening on the toilet. In cubicles with door gaps, it is easier to see from outside if the occupant has collapsed. Yes, there are particular medical emergencies specific to women (e.g. miscarriage), and yes, door gaps also make it more difficult to hide sexual assault. But overall, this safety issue is relevant to both sexes.

This is primarily why posters here get angry when we hear about institutions going to all the expense of ripping out their communal single-sex toilets and replacing them with (fewer) single-use toilets. It's unnecessary, it reduces overall provision of toilets, and it's less safe for all users. A better solution all round would be to keep the old communal single-sex toilets and provide a few additional single-use toilets.

BTW we don't socialise in toilets, so that's not our secret agenda in wanting them to remain single-sex. I just felt I ought to make that clear.

@OneFlakyMaker I hope, if you are linking this thread for any others to read, they are able to read the whole thread for themselves.

You obviously haven’t read the posts as you are not making sense about toilets.

Attendants or chaperones are not feasible economically or practically in every out-of-home set of toilets in your country or here.

You appear to be from the US. Our toilets are different here. We don’t have the side gaps along the toilet doors and the gaps aren’t the huge ones that create a saloon bar door.

However, there have been some influences from American transactivist toilet designers that have a business called StalledOnline! These two are referenced in a uk government commissioned document to look at the toilet requirements for people with long term health conditions. Your phrasing and the ‘solutions’ you come up with remind me of their business.

You say ‘Essentially, safety concerns can be addressed with practical solutions, e.g. physical barriers (closed stalls) chaperons, monitoring. Segregation cannot be solved in any other way. I'd support public funding for safety solutions (e.g. grants to create single occupant stalls), since making people feel safe and diffusing this wedge issue is a worthy cause. But if separation is the goal, than that solution will be misguided.’

I agree safety concerns can be addressed with practical solutions and that means open cubicles leading into a single sex space. ‘Open’ by a 150mm gap floor to door, then a door not over 2000mmm in height and then a space above that to the ceiling. Same with partitions. This allows ventilation, the floors to be disinfected properly, supervision in case of a medical emergency, and in case two people are in the cubicle with one being assaulted, and to make sure that if there’s any misuse going on like using the toilets for drugs, hiding cameras or vandalism, it can be prevented as much as possible. One American mom called the design you appear to advocate for a ‘rape cubicle’ in a school setting.

Separation is not the goal. Safety is. And absolute safety is not a ‘feeling’ it’s a reality for everyone. The toilets you advocate for have not been safety tested against single sex designs. There are millions of Americans with heart conditions for example that would head to the loo if they felt ill and then be in a cubicle where no one would be alerted if they collapsed. A practical solution to this is to have all cubicle doors opening outwards (or have the ability to like building regs have here) but this is more a retrospective safety measure designed to be able to get a body out rather than preventative.

I doubt you will read this. But the above can be summed up by this if you’ve skipped to the end:

Why do we have a gap under public toilet doors? For health and safety
Why do we get rid of the gap when toilets are mixed sex? For privacy
What are we getting rid of by doing that? Health and Safety

Turn the question on it's head.

Why are we being forced to have a conversation that it's either separation or safety?

The answer always comes back to this.

It's a Trojan horse.

It's a Trojan horse to try and draw parallels between the (American) civil rights movement and racial equality.

It's introducing a weasel word to undermine the principles of safeguarding.

By even asking the question, you question the legitimacy of safeguarding.

You then have to go on the backdoor and justify principles of safeguarding. Rather than those who believe males should enter female spaces being in a position where they have to do the running around to prove that it's safe for them to do so. Why have they done this? Because they know they can't demonstrate it's safe for men to enter women's spaces. Thus the only option open to them is to undermine safeguarding principles.

This of course allows access not just to nice males, but every other male who is a complete creep.

The other thing that's interesting is women make this argument that makes should not enter female spaces for a) safeguarding reasons AND b) privacy and dignity reasons.

You will see this reoccurring pattern where women talk about the subject mentioning just talking about privacy and dignity aspect of this, then you'll get a Bigfoot come wading in going "Why are you treating all transwomen as if they are dangerous and pervs?" And the women will say, actually we weren't talking about that we were saying we have different bodies we are self conscious about and have physical experiences which we find embarrassing and harder to deal with in the presence of men so just want some privacy away from them because they can't ever understand that humiliation aspect. Or because we don't want to be seen by males for various reasons (might be religious, might be due to previous trauma or even because they just don't like it without consent). In this conversation they haven't raised the safety concern.

But the point is the TRA turning the conversation back to safety debates, means the argument about privacy and dignity gets drowned out and ignored. Because they have no real way of arguing this one easily. Having said that, it is notable that we've started to see posts appearing lately twisting language in this department too. Describing women who walk around changing rooms naked as 'parading' or 'exhibitionist' and women who feel uncomfortable with this as 'voyeurs'. This is all about the process of delegitimising women's concerns and painting them as the same as creepy blokes. It's an attempt to normalise the criminal behaviour of men and to persuade women they should be tolerating it.

It's creating a narrative of the victimhood of the abuser, whilst disempowering women and gaslighting them into questioning whether their concerns about safety and dignity are actually legitimate.

It's psychological manipulation and it's about power and control.

Look at what's happening. It's centring on the males needs, time after time. It's not looking at matter objectively. It's poisoning the well of discussion of the very existence of safeguarding.

It's dishonest.

The example of separation v safety is particularly grim as it uses American political history - which isn't particularly relevant to the UK anyway, and weaponises racism against women to try and convince people that women asking for their safety, privacy and dignity is not ok.

None of this is feminism which centres women and their needs, feelings, lived experiences and what actual data says in terms of offending patterns against women.

Stop having the conversation these creeps want. Identify what they are doing and say,

"No we aren't having this conversation."

"The data on male pattern behaviour is all there. Which part of it do you think is problematic? Would you care to explain? What proof do you have that allowing males into female spaces will be safe?"

"How can women who have issues in this scenario, safely report this without the additional fear of being labelled transphobic? Can you explain how the current political climate and mass reporting of women to the police 'for harassment' wound fit with this? Wouldn't it actually to reduce reporting of legitimate crimes because women would have this additional new layer of fear?"

"How would current laws on vouyerism and flashing even better possible options for women, if a male can claim they were "just behaving like any other woman", and it's 'prejudiced' to suggest differently?"

"The answer is, and always will be, No."

They are trying to fuck with language again.

This entire thread is based on the premise of an egregious manipulation of good faith and desire to do the right thing, twisted by DAVRO in order to control and manipulate women by gaslighting.

Indeed RedToothBrush to look at the OP using sexed words

When opposing transgender people men and some women in women's spaces, are you¹ looking for safe spaces or² separate spaces?

They may overlap but are not the same thing, and while a lot of the discussion is focused on safety, the tone and some arguments hint that addressing safety won't be enough for many people women to feel comfortable. Instead, a place without males is sought.

I read one woman described it "At the club we used the women's bathroom to get a break from interacting with men".

¹you= implied its only women who care and
²or= implied women must choose between the two.

I simply can’t have space where there is a man I don’t know on the other side of a closed door and I am alone on the other side of that door.

im sure I’m not the only woman to feel that way, for all sorts of reasons.

why is our safety so unimportant to so many people that they want to debate it as some sort of “thought experiment” rather than acknowledge our actual lives experiences that inform our decisions?

And why are all these trans women so keen to break the law in the U.K.?

I think the Supreme Court judgment is a threat to trans activism all over the world because it's a statement that trans identifying men are not women which cannot credibly be dismissed as far right rhetoric or blamed on Trump.

And there's a danger that where the UK leads, others will follow.

That's why people who don't live in and are not citizens of the UK are up in arms about British women having sex based rights. In case the women in their own countries decide they want them too.

OP returns in a 'thread not in good faith' shocker

astonishing

Possibly true.

especially since the EA mirrors EU requirements.

I had to take my own advice and have a lie down and a cup of tea.

Thanks for the lecture!

Back to the old rights-hoarding dinosaurs argument again.

But women only spaces like toilets were introduces specifically to allow women to access public life away from the vileness and dangers of the gents. And men still make the most awful mess and are still a danger / perceived danger.

You can't go around advocating for us to include men while men still behave as they do.

All your arguments fade away in the light of actual reality - the needs of women for safe, clean toilets, and the nasty behaviour of many men.

My God people are willing to waffle and wangle endlessly in their mission of suppressing and silencing women so that men can use them.

No. The law provides women with protections against exactly this kind of fuckery. End of. It's done.

And that was the purpose of the question - not a "gotcha", not a "you should let AMAB in your stall" (that was never argued), but instead - "what do you really want?"

Oh, you’re back, OP. How lovely. Are you on to the false comparison with apartheid and racism yet? That seems to be a fucking offensive favourite of US posters 🙄 TBH, I can’t be bothered to read all your second post but I feel no guilt as you clearly didn’t read any of the thoughtful responses to you here.

”What do you really want?” Why are you still asking a bloody obvious question that’s been explained to you many times? Why are you putting words into posters’ mouths (eg that men don’t need single sex spaces)? Why do you think you’re the omniscient, superior being lecturing us like we’re little children who haven’t quite thought about things properly? FROATFOSM.

If you weren’t in the US, I’d assume you were my ex. He was a patronising git too. He used to ask me what I wanted to order at a restaurant, wait for me to answer, then sit back in his chair with a smug, arrogant smile and hold forth about why what I wanted was wrong, and did I want to think again as I clearly hadn’t thought properly the first time. He’d then launch into an ‘explanation’ of precisely why I was wrong. He’d cover all kinds of random, unrelated crap in his lecture to me to ‘prove’ why I was wrong and hadn’t thought properly. It used to upset me and confuse me but now I’d laugh in his face at the sheer bloody cheek of it.

You’re his little twin. You asked a (stupid) question, were given answers, and now you’re back again, repeating the same idiotic question, like we might as well not have spoken. Pathetic.

'feminism as a separatist, if not a supremacy, movement'

Oh, aye?! Women are on the point of enslaving men, are they? Good fucking lord.

It really was MRA language.

Women wanting privacy from men sometimes is supremacy now, didn’t you know?

needy fucking losers

yeah,its going really well in Afghanistan.

"women need single-sex spaces while men don't need them (that's a cornerstone of feminism": that's a problematic stance. It frames feminism as a separatist, if not a supremacy, movement. It renders anti-feminist rhetoric more plausible since the movement is inherently willing to create different classes of citizens.

You misunderstand. Women currently need single sex spaces and opportunities that men do not because we currently face an unbalance because society's current social and structural mores were formed by Patriachy and so they advantage men over women.

So while the ideal end goal is, aside from what is additionally necessary for women to allow us to carry the heavier reproductive of our sex without that meaning worse social and financial outcomes for us over our lives, to treat both sexes the same, you can't start from a situation of unbalance and say "oh we'll just treat everyone the same going forward" because all that does is perpetuate the existing imbalance.

It is through ensuring women have refuges (physically and virtual) within society to avoid the things men do that intimidate us out of public life, to take off the burden of noticing and placating men to heal and learn from each other without having our expereinces manterpretted back to us, that we grow our confidence and our voice so that we can be visible and active and show our value in wider society.

It is through this sex specific support that society finally gets to a point where women no longer feel threatened, intimidated or overspoken by men and men have stopped belittling women's abilities, encroaching on women sexually or expecting more attention, support and respect from women than they give to them and reacting with anger and rage when these expectations are not met, and single sex supports are no longer needed.

In other words, reading single sex provisions as an end goal of Feminism is a misunderstanding. They are just a tool to use on the way as we women make our journey out of marginalisation and oppression.

Its so fucking absurd. Given the context of the rape stats, the violence stats, the poverty, health, stats. A look at culture, sport, media, politics, economics, almost any field.

This thread be like...

😁

Well over the past day I have learned it is a badge of pride to be ‘super feminine’. I mean, I just thought we wims aimed to be ourselves and have diverse interests and skills. Now I have assumed that the links being posted about behavioural traits that make women women was actually an aspirational target for the poster. Gosh…. Whodathunkit?

Why do women have to justify why they want single sex spaces, why are the men who demand access never required to explain why they should be in there? All this discussion, just so men can go into spaces they were told not to go.