Talking to non GC people

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I've been chatting to a few people recently about gender issues, and their opinion runs roughly like this ' we should all listen to each other, and not be so unpleasant. But of course, men shouldn't be in women's sports'
Which begs the question that, if GC people hadn't been 'unpleasant' men would have been firmly in women's sports.
So, should I be pleased that public opinion has shifted slightly, or should I be banging my head against the wall?

Ultimately @financialcareerstuff I just don't understand why anyone is arguing that men should have access to things that belong to women. Can you expand upon your thoughts on this?

I also disagree with framing this as a human rights issue. There is the right to not be discriminated against, of course, which we would all support. But why would there be a human right to treated as if you're the opposite sex?

Which comes back to the point about vetting reasonable versus unreasonable demands. It seems to me that Transwomen have made unreasonable demands on women and yet not many seem prepared to call them out on that. On the toilets issue for example, have you thought about how reasonable it is to ask women to give up what's theirs, for men?

Fully agree.

Anyone posting about 'Human Rights', probably means Article 8. However, when discussing human rights, it should be made clear that there are restrictions to that right as well.

It is very often ignored.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/human-rights/human-rights-act/article-8-respect-your-private-and-family-life

Article 8 protects your right to respect for your private and family life.

The EHRC link covers what this means. Including these restrictions:

Restrictions to the right to respect for your private and family life
There are situations when public authorities can interfere with your right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence. This is only allowed where the authority can show that its action is lawful, necessary and proportionate in order to:
protect national security
protect public safety
protect the economy
protect health or morals
prevent disorder or crime, or
protect the rights and freedoms of other people.
Action is ‘proportionate’ when it is appropriate and no more than necessary to address the problem concerned.

These restrictions keep getting missed out.

And in the ECHR documentation

https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/conventionENG_

page 11

Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

The concept of privacy is also often posited as a blunt human right where others are said to have no right to know the sex of someone. Whereas, there is a proviso to that where it is possible that this right will be dependent on issues relating to safety of others.

The human rights argument also doesn’t work because in the provision of public spaces by organisations, for instance such as changing rooms, as there is no human right that states that someone has the right to privacy from a person of the same sex under those conditions.

Meaning in the provision of publicly accessible single sex spaces, perople can be excluded based on sex category from that the space if they are not the sex category the space is designated as being accessible for. If a male person rejects the male single sex space provided by an organisation, they can ask for an alternative. The organisation doesn’t have to provide that alternative space though. That could be considered an unreasonable request.

A male person rejecting a provided single sex provision does not get to access the opposite sex single sex space just because that person has a belief that they are not a male person when they materially are.

When the term human rights is introduced, it is all too often misused. It is used falsely as an appeal to authority.

YY, I don’t understand why people don’t see the double standard.

It's interesting, because the thinking is clearly 'if women can demonstrate that they need it badly enough, then ok fine, they can have it'

But why is the onus on women to defend and argue these needs (again)? Why are male demands taken so seriously?

Why can't we start from the position that women's historical rights to single sex spaces should always be upheld?

I think they don't see the double standard because they, personally, don't have a need for privacy and safety in toilets. It really is one of those privileged positions that is rarely pointed out.

They think that just because they think they know what all other female people need toilets for, that they personally can dismiss any other female person's needs as irrelevant, bigoted or whatever.

I get that, but why are they listening to men whining about being excluded from women’s toilets and taking it seriously? Why are men’s claimed needs more important? (Rhetorical obvs)

Thing is, I'm pretty sure there is an underlying explanation! I'm thinking either neurological anomaly or unconscious trauma response, but it could be something else still. Problem is: nobody is trained to figure it out. There's - literally - nobody I can turn to to investigate those avenues. So I just went with what's offered, even if it's only treating the symptoms and not the cause.

💐💪

The fuckers that led this whole sorry mess have a lot to answer for. Looking at you, WPATH/Endocrine Society... and everyone within and outside these organisations who jumped on board nefariously.

I'm glad you've found a way to navigate through it that is working for you but angry at how utterly fucked up this situation is.

I'm also very aware that it's largely due to the information I've learned on this board, from all sorts of different viewpoints, that is what's helping me to hopefully stay ahead of the risk that it brings to my autistic daughter. Thank you for being a part of that xx

I actually completely agree with all of that, including the 25 year minimum. I have no doubt that there would be very few of us remaining if this happened. And hopefully, there would be no young detransitioners anymore. The very fact that they exist breaks my heart; they should have been protected!

❤️ I wish Helen Joyce could read what you said here. She took a lot of stick for saying pretty much the same. It's bloody obvious (to anyone who chooses to listen properly to her intent) that it came from a very similar place of caring about those who have been harmed.

Just a reminder of how female toilet spaces are used and why single mixed sex cubicles should not be accepted as the only toilets available in areas outside of very small businesses.

Toilets are not just used behind a closed cubicle door. There are quite a few aspects of female toilet usage that happen in the public space, or even now still occur with a toilet door jammed open.

Don’t forget there is the safety aspect where people may rely on the gaps under doors and walls for their safety. We already had someone mention helping a woman who was on the floor that they could see because of the gap. We have had others on other threads point out that they feel safer with gaps after being attacked in mixed sex toilets that are fully enclosed and no one could see them.

From my personal experience here is a list.

I have had to use the toilet while having a pram / pushchair jammed into the door with groceries.

I have had to have my mum use the public toilet because the disable toilet was not available and had her wheelchair jammed in the door because I couldn't leave her sit to move it and shut the door.

I have had breastmilk leaks / children's vomit / food spilled on my clothes and needed to have an unbuttoned top to dry the top under the hand drier.

I have come across other women quite regularly washing out their tops or their skirts etc and drying them enough to put back on .

I have friends who have miscarried in toilets and needed assistance and for that to be female people to make it more comfortable.

Even with mixed sex cubicles with basins, they don’t usually have the space needed for prams. And if a woman is trying to dry themselves using a drier in the cubicle, it restricts traffic flow and causes the line to grow. Even if it is just internal pressure that she feels, there will be pressure on her to leave the cubicle quickly. In an open space she will less inclined to feel that pressure.

If you as a female person have not experienced these issues, that doesn't mean it is not happening. I am glad that you have never needed to do this things, it is uncomfortable and can be quite humiliating. But at least, in a female only toilet, it is a little better.

I think when people think of toilet usage, maybe they have never had to use the toilets in any other way other than behind a closed door. That is a privilege in that respect.

But the needs are still there and they are real for many female people to be able to engage in public life.

To allow any male person toileting spaces (over the age of about 8 years old) removes some of the usability of this space for female people.

Demanding that all toilets are changed into single cubicles doesn’t mean that the issues where women and girls need the extra space and privacy for everyday occurrences go away. That style of toilet means female people will just self exclude because of a loss of provision.

And maybe @financialcareerstuff might consider when I am next out and about and have a need such as on my list, and suggest which toilet should I use so that my needs are met?

Maybe my question should be:

With those needs above, how do I articulate those needs so that those female people who dismiss them as unimportant actually consider them as important enough to accept for keeping single sex toilets exclusively for female people?

@financialcareerstuff I'm going to be absolutely honest here, and you can make of it what you will.

When I read your post what I heard was a transactivist saying 'okay, okay you can keep the sports and rape crisis centres but please, please, pleeeease give us the toilets'.

I agree 100% with your second and third points. It's clear who the men are.

Not the first, unfortunately. I only wish it were "ok fine, they can have it". But we are still battling for it, demonstrating over and over again we need it. With FWS for example, and all the court cases, and BP's delays. And still we don't have it.

You can't. Because unfortunately those needs make those with internalised misogyny turn away like its a bad smell.
Your list includes the unglamorous, basic, 'icky' aspects of being a woman, that many, especially those who are invested in fragrant femininity prefer to ignore, or imagine happen only to women who aren't them.
Leaky breasts, periods and disability are just not very 'nice', are they? So really you should be doing everyone a favour and not bringing them into a public toilet where nice women and male women are brushing their hair.

It's almost like it has nothing whatsoever to do with toilets, and is 100% about men being important, women not so much.

I can evidence why we should have single sex toilets with door gaps for all of those exceptions even National Security!

You are quite right 5128gap.

In the past, I have had some ‘wavering middle-ground public opinion’ posters tell me I have fetishised toilets, I am 'skeevy', I am icky and that other women most certainly don't want me using the toilet in this way either. Also that I must hang out in public toilets a LOT to even have to do these things. And on and on and on. From posters who had previously posted how supportive they are of women and what great feminists they were.

And when pressed, they admit that they drive many places and don't have to walk or take public transport meaning that a lot of those issues disappear. Or they have lots of support at home and don't have to take their children or their disabled mother out with them. Or they never go anywhere that they don't have access to family toilets or reliable accessible toilets (in that the accessible toilets are never out of order).

I looked at a thread from 2018 last week and there were lots of woman posting about having to deal with the issues that I have mentioned. Since then though, it seems like there is this magic era where women don't have to deal with it.... It is a strange inconsistency that I noted.

You have been brilliant at pulling it all together.

I wonder though if those 'middle ground' readers are interested.

Please give us the National Security one!🙏🕵

Even you, Helle, are falling into the TRA trap here though.

There are two separate questions.

1. Is a single sex space/resource (in this case, toilet facilities) justifiable?

1. If not, what is the rationale for the inclusion of trans women but no other men?

The two get conflated all the time but they are totally unrelated.

The first does centre the question of women's needs and whether or not they are justified. I think it is always a reasonable question to ask because we should be able to justify the accomodations we ask for. And god knows the evidence is there - I think the more it gets laid out in black and white why these provisions exist and are needed the better.

The second is based on the presuppositon that trans women are meaningfully, materially more "woman" than other men are. That it is a reasonable question to ask how far these a-bit-womanny men get to be treated as women instead of men. That's a totally different proposition that is based entirely on men's needs and self image but gets slipped in unchallenged under the "I don't care who pees next to me" argument.

Last week I was in a toilet where a young Muslim girl was helping her friend remove her hijab, which had become uncomfortable. She brushed her hair and put it back on.
The walls had several posters with the Ask for Angela information.
There was a poster from a women's DVA service with a QS code to scan.
One visit. Three excellent reasons why women's toilets are more than just a place to pee.

Ahhh but you know Flirts what I think. I am posing the questions for people to consider from that 'middle ground' position that the specific poster has posted.

I am interested from the perspective of what exactly needs to be said to get past some people's 'I'm alright Jack' attitude so they might actually understand that there are female people who have different needs to them. I don't think they perceptively realise that they are doing the 'I'm alright Jack' tactic regarding toilets. I would like to know why in detail rather than this 'you have a locked cubicle what are you wanting other than this' reason and the 'I don't care why do you?' tactic we see so much.

If pp's are going to give us advice on how to approach the discussion so we don't 'turn them off', I think it is a good opportunity to ask how they model this with specific examples.

Yes. Three very excellent reasons.

The question remains, what do those female people do if they no longer have a single sex space? Where do they go?

It is question that I have yet to see answered by anyone asked it and women have been asking it on FWR threads for years.

"The concept of privacy is also often posited as a blunt human right where others are said to have no right to know the sex of someone."

I have a right to privacy away from people who want to take my photo. I exercise this right by staying in the privacy of my own home. When I leave my home and enter public places I have chosen to give up my right not to be photographed. [Caveat - I still have the right not to be harassed or threatened, and photography could become that dependent on how it was done and for how long].

I see no reason why it should be any different for sex.

I have a right to privacy away from people who want to know my sex. I exercise this right by staying in the privacy of my own home. When I leave my home and enter public places I have chosen to give up my right not to be seen, and therefore I have given up my right to keep my sex a secret.

But I'd go further. I genuinely believe that we all assess the sex, size, fitness / strength, and demeanour, of everyone around us at all times. Dependent on who you are you might be (a tough man) wary of big men with strange demeanours, or (a typical woman) and be wary all men plus the odd woman who looks to have the potential to be violence or abusive.

I genuinely believe that, to a large extent, it is inherently anti-social to hide your sex, and the right of people to correctly sex you is greater than your right not to be sexed. If there is a middle ground it involves tolerating people who hide their sex, and not giving them a legal framework to help enable them to keep it a secret.

I doubt it. There is a consistent theme of inclusiveness being a mixed sex private wc then shared washbasins in a mixed sex area. Trough sinks are popular - you can watch the blood from your hands trickle down to the person next to you. Outted damn period.

The only (untested) reasons they justify it’s safe is they’ll always definitely be more people about and one of those (presumably male) will step in and tell the bad men off. Or somehow they will sense something bad is having in the private cubicle and unlock the door in time. Like a hero at a theatre clearing the way for the pregnant women to use the men’s.

No one has worked out how to solve health and safety problems that rise in mixed sex, private spaces in a public space. The Japanese come close with glass walled toilets where the glass goes opaque when you close the door so you can see a little bit of movement.

Thank you for your honesty Fallensloppy and that’s an interesting insight….…. you hearing it like that (and seems like you are not alone) indicates why it is so hard to actually discuss. I’m not a trans activist. Never have been. Never been remotely tempted to be. And much closer to being the opposite if I had to choose (I could quite possibly be completely converted with one calm, respectful conversation if anybody bothered). My post was free of sarcasm (and sneer). I stated explicitly that I was muddled, and moving in my views, and included numerous statements of belief that are much more aligned with most people on this thread. Yet I’ve been greeted with quite a few accusations that I think obnoxious things I don’t, been interpreted as sneering, as dictating or deciding other women’s needs don’t matter, a fake feminist etc….. I feel that I’ve been told if I don’t agree with everything, right now, even if I am clear I’m not fixed in my beliefs, then I am to be condemned and my points to be misrepresented and obliterated at speed.

Several of the posts have been very informative and useful - above all on the toilet issue. And one or two were in a similar tone to my post, so I am grateful for those. As I said, this has not been the issue I’ve engaged on greatly. And the difference in safety between semi open cubicles and closed cubicles is something I hadn’t thought about. It does make me think of the safety of spacious disabled facilities, which are closed but aided with an alarm and big enough to have companions in together if desired…. Perhaps we could reclaim and separate out half of the male toilet space (always infuriates me when they have no queue), to create more spacious units like these. anyway, I have no illusions I will solve this, and if I were to try I would first set about informing myself far better than I am now. But I am grateful to those who took the time to share more detailed information (and no I am not unreceptive to hearing about messy femaleness, I am a very messy female myself!)

The accusation of privilege? Quite possibly. We all have it in different ways in whatever dimensions of life we haven’t had to experience, although certainly I have had my days negotiating a pram, shopping and period accidents. But just to be clear, I never denied anybody the right to want, need or campaign for female only toilets. I didn’t even say I don’t support the preference for it myself. I much prefer a female only toilet. I said that in the case of trying to persuade people, the rhetoric that has built around this issue, and the less clear cut aspect to it (that there are many toilet situations when we don’t have these regardless of the trans issue) means it’s not the best to lead with and it’s less clear to me.

And I do disagree that there is not a spectrum (rather than either or) in terms of which spaces must be female only. The further extrapolation of this debate on one side would be to say mixed prisons and rape centres were fine. And on the other side, would be having female only streets after 7pm. or female only hotels. That would be fantastic, and we would make us all far safer and more comfortable - the statistics for it benefiting women’s safety would be monumentally borne out. I could definitely see myself voting for that- I’m really not being sarcastic. We have all made a decision on where the reasonable stopping point is on the spectrum, and at what point we will get passionate enough to campaign…Where segregation is a must and a should be a protected right, versus better when possible. We have already come to different conclusions for different types of venue And different countries of course have come to very different conclusions on this too). The fact that toilets is on a slightly different place in the spectrum for me, for now, than for GC women, does not mean I don’t care about other women’s needs.

A last point to highlight, is I disagree strongly that I am shaming victims by saying that individual horror stories can be scaremongering. I was not saying to not talk about the problems or that any bad experiences we have are shameful. Or even that we can’t share and listen to such stories. What I am saying is that for me at least, a factual aggregation of problems is far more convincing than individual horror stories in deciding the right position on an issue. Individual horror stories have been used since the beginning of time to stoke fear, prejudice or pity, to galvanise crowds to unanalyzed action - often against specific groups. Being told that assaults globally have risen by x% since y change I find Highly informative, as long as rigorously sourced. Being told that one person was assaulted in a specific place and circumstance by a specific type of person will certainly horrify me, but is not the same kind information and can be misused to stoke emotion. And one poster suggested I am saying GC women have done equally horrific things. No, I didn’t say that. I’m not saying GC women have done anything horrific. I said the other side call on equally horrific stories (eg of Individual trans people being beaten up), which you rightly dismiss as not the point. Similarly, I would like to know percentages of people who regret transition, versus say it saved their life…. I don’t find it particularly useful to hear personal stories of either position, as I already know both exist. They are moving on a human level, but they are not the kind of data that helps me decide what my position is.

Hope that makes sense.