Do you avoid the bathroom if there is a transwoman?

[PeachyDaisy]

I’m going to an industry event next week and I know there will be a transwoman attending. Should I use the disabled bathroom to avoid an awkward encounter or just continue to use the women’s and hope not to run into them?

Adding this:
Here is data from the MoJ
Here is an FOI request from 30 April 2024
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/populationoftransgenderoffend/response/2641337/attach/html/7/FOI%20240322022%20Annex%20A.xlsx.html

Up to the 31st March 2023, the MoJ stated that of the 88 male transgender prisoners with one or more sexual offences.

The breakdown was
48 rapes,
0 attempted rapes,
10 Sexual assault or attempted sexual assault,
13 causing or inciting a child under 16 to engage in sexual activity,
0 indecent assault or gross indecency
6 sexual activity with a child under 16
0 other
77 listed here.... BUT there is a total of 88 in the total so there is 11 crimes not noted.

Possessing or making indecent photographs or pseudo photographs of child has not been recorded in this FOI.

However, there is are further discrepancies in the data of the following when you look at TOTAL NUMBER OF TRANSGENDER PRISONERS SENTENCED FOR A PRINCIPAL SEXUAL OFFENCE.

1 causing or inciting a child under 16 to engage in sexual activity
3 rapes
2 sexual activity with a child under 16
3 Sexual assault or attempted sexual assault,
This equals 9 additional... however the sum for TOTAL NUMBER OF TRANSGENDER PRISONERS SENTENCED FOR A PRINCIPAL SEXUAL OFFENCE is 99.

Therefore 2 more sex crimes have been hidden from this data.

There were 203 males who were declared as transgender in the prison at the time.
There were 24 NB who were not segregated into male and female.

What is key here, is that THIS IS NON-GRC HOLDERS. And we all know that males holding GRCs have increased and they are excluded from this data. NO female people with transgender identities were sentenced to a principal sexual offence. There were 41 female people with transgender identities in UK prisons at that time.

As a comparison, I have stats that say as of April 2019 that the general male MoJ data for male sex offenders was just 16.8% of the male prison population.
And there were 3.3% of female people in UK prisons were sex offenders.
I will leave you to do your own sums. But... even using the figure of 88/203 is 43.3%. (And that doesn't include making or possessing indecent photographs of a child remember.)

By the way this exercise was done in 2021. And I checked this data myself from the data source and it was correct at the time. So, it will give some back ground to the above.

The ones that say that in the March/April 2021 data collection period, the MoJ stated that of the 97 transgender prisoners with one or more sexual offences.
The breakdown was
40 rapes,
8 attempted rapes,
31 possessing or making indecent photographs or pseudo photographs of child,
32 Sexual assault or attempted sexual assault,
20 causing or inciting a child under 16 to engage in sexual activity,
10 indecent assault or gross indecency
9 sexual activity with a child under 16
27 other
The 97 sex offender transgender prisons collected 177 sentences between them.

And that according to that FOI 197 prisoners are transgender.

This is why NO SUB GROUP OF MALE PEOPLE SHOULD BE EXEMPT FROM RISK ASSESSMENT. This group of male people still retain the same male pattern of committing sex and violent crime, at ANY STAGE OF TRANSITION.

Gosh, if only you’d let us know sooner. You could have saved us 10+ years of discussing this issue!

Did you read the paper that Mordaunt posted?

I don't understand these references to 'hate' - it's not about hate, it's about a basic principle: If there are Women's and Men's toilets, they are segregated by sex not gender ID.

So men of any kind with any gender ID, should not be in the women's toilet, full stop. There shouldn't be any need for convoluted arguments about which men are lovely/pass/are rapists/wouldn't hurt a fly/are intimidating/are vulnerable/have been using the ladies for years - it doesn't matter, they are men.

Any suggestion that a trans-IDing man is 'just living his life' or 'just wants to pee' is contradicted by the fact that he knows he is male [he couldn't become a transwoman if he wasn't male, could he?] and he knows he is transgressing by using the facilities designated for females.
He could nip into the men's, pee, wash his hands and nip out again, as unfussily as he claims he can do in the women's.

Women shouldn't be put in the position of having this discussion- the good men stay out so the transgressing men who don't care about women stand out.

And by the same token, able-bodied people stay out of the accessible toilets, they are there for people who actually need them.
But that doesn't mean we hate able-bodied people IDontHateRainbows, it's a matter of principle not hatred

I agree with you! I was genuinely trying to answer the OP’s specific question in good faith - ie what should she do regarding this specific person at an event next week. That was why I asked about her concerns regarding a known person.

My response would have been very different if it had been a more general question. It definitely wasn’t intended as a “just be kind” response.

There may be other trans women there that you don't know about that use the bathroom at the same time as you, just carry on as usual I would say.

I've clearly pissed you off 😂Is it because you can tell I'm not particularly bothered by you, or do you just really dislike people standing up for women's rights?

Grain of truth? Yes I agree there is, but I would argue that women who hate men only hate men because men have repeatedly been the cause of great harm to them in their lives.

Have you come across the rules of misogyny in your feminism at all?

Incidentally I was immediately reminded of a joke bit I saw on a tv program, but decided not to write it because I was absolutely sure you'd take it entirely seriously... but hey I do like a laugh so I'm going to write it anyway!

Man: "You hate men!"
Woman: "I don't hate men, I've just never met a real one."

I know that men account for most of the violent crime and nearly all sexual crime in the world.
I like lots of men, I even have a few in my life that I love. I know people of both sexes that I don't like. I don't really hate anyone when I sit and really think about it. I do wish that women and children were not so often the victims of violent men, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I understand that for someone like you it's probably just easier to say my feminist centring of females is just hatred of men and call it a day, or say that centring females puts you off feminism. I think that's a really daft opinion which is often spouted by misogynists.

Meh, oh well.

If you are female, I'd fight for your rights if we were ever in a situation where that was necessary, even though I'm sure we'd disagree on a lot of things.

"Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don't like, including all the women you don't want to be around, including all the women who used to be your best friends whom you don't want anything to do with anymore. It doesn't matter who the individual women are."

. - Andrea Dworkin

Edited: Spelling

The research you posted has been very often misquoted and is actually not relevant to the point being made that male people in the UK (the post you posted the study in reply to was UK specific, iirc).

Either way, the study you posted doesn't also mean that those male people with transgender identities should included in female single sex provisions. If they are considered by some people as 'more vulnerable to victimisation' than all other male sub groups in a population, then they and their support groups need to identify other solutions. The solution was never to allow those male people access to female single sex provisions .

However, it can also be true that a group of people are both considered vulnerable and at the very same time pose a risk to other people. It is that risk of harming others, evenly not deliberately or intentionally causing harm, that is why male people should not be included in female single sex provisions.

Here is an example of where a group of people are both vulnerable and at the same time they also pose a risk to others.

FINNISH STUDY INTO BULLYING OF ADOLESCENTS, INCLUDING THOSE WITH TRANSGENDER IDENTITIES

This is an interesting bit of information that the Biggs & North paper highlighted..
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6182901

Transgender students reported being bullied more than their peers did, but they also admitting bullying others more. The study’s data enable victim/perpetrator ratios to be calculated. For all students in total, the ratio was 2.0; for transgender students, it was 1.4. Thus transgender students were relatively more likely to bully others (or at least to report it).

It was from this paper.

www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.612424/full

Transgender Identity Is Associated With Bullying Involvement Among Finnish Adolescents

Heino, Elias, Noora Ellonen, and Riittakerttu Kaltiala. 2021

Abstract

Background:
During adolescence, bullying often has a sexual content. Involvement in bullying as a bully, victim or both has been associated with a range of negative health outcomes. Transgender youth appear to face elevated rates of bullying in comparison to their mainstream peers. However, the involvement of transgender youth as perpetrators of bullying remains unclear in the recent literature.

Objective:
The aim of this study was to compare involvement in bullying between transgender and mainstream youth and among middle and late adolescents in a general population sample.

Methods:
Our study included 139,829 students in total, divided between a comprehensive school and an upper secondary education sample. Associations between gender identity and involvement in bullying were first studied using cross-tabulations with chi-square statistics. Logistic regression was used to study multivariate associations. Gender identity was used as the independent variable, with cisgender as the reference category. Subjection to and perpetration of bullying were entered each in turn as the dependent variable. Demographic factors, family characteristics, internalizing symptoms, externalizing behaviors, and involvement in bullying in the other role were added as confounding factors. Odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) are given. The limit for statistical significance was set at p < 0.001.

Results:
Both experiences of being bullied and perpetrating bullying were more commonly reported by transgender youth than by cisgender youth. Among transgender youth, all involvement in bullying was more commonly reported by non-binary youth than those identifying with the opposite sex. Logistic regression revealed that non-binary identity was most strongly associated with involvement in bullying, followed by opposite sex identity and cisgender identity. Transgender identities were also more strongly associated with perpetration of bullying than subjection to bullying.

Conclusion:
Transgender identity, especially non-binary identity, is associated with both being bullied and perpetrating bullying even when a range of variables including internal stress and involvement in bullying in the opposite role are taken into account. This suggests that bullying during adolescence may serve as a mechanism of maintaining heteronormativity.

Just to pull this out:

Both experiences of being bullied and perpetrating bullying were more commonly reported by transgender youth than by cisgender youth.

Why do you not care that men are in female spaces? It boggles my mind that you are so accepting of this predatory behaviour.

"Trans women are just trying to live their lives" is so often used against anyone arguing for sex based rights so I'm sure you can see why I jumped to that conclusion even though you said "people" and not "trans women"?

What would your advice be if the OP did have a reason to be wary of a specific person versus if it were an unknown male in a female toilet?

The point people are making about predatory behaviour and transgressing female people's boundaries can be seen in these types of self published videos.

The harm to women is not just about being physically attacked. There are many other forms of harm that occurs with male people being in female single sex provisions.

For instance, the Billings video below is the reaction to being told ‘no, you should respect female people’s needs for single sex provisions’ by a celebrity. Why have we been led to believe that male people who believe they are women are different to any other male person who ignores women’s boundaries and reject women saying ‘no’.

Alexandra Billings self published these videos . This one first I believe.
https://x.com/gaynotqueer1/status/2032811484271817092?s=46

Then the chilling and menacing response to women saying 'no' here stitched into Amy Sousa’s response.

https://x.com/knownheretic/status/2032639781658833142?s=46

The menace is chilling to see. Yet, apparently we are supposed to welcome these same men into provisions designated as single sex for our protection from men threatening and intimidating us.

It becomes so clear that these men hate female people in general when they gloat over not being able to stop them accessing provisions that they should be excluded from and lack the inclination to self exclude from. Just as they gloat over organisational decisions to remove female single sex provisions in response to law changes that exclude male people from those provisions.

At the same time, we are supposed to believe that these men are most vulnerable and marginalised.

Here is another set of videos that shows the same dynamic.

Daviana. Who started posting videos about how he knew he was a man etc. He was considered to be 'one of the reasonable ones' because of that.
Of course, as he has made more videos more has come out about what and how he really thinks. .

https://x.com/KnownHeretic/status/2031523680136868150?s=20

https://x.com/KnownHeretic/status/2031873045682667588?s=20

https://x.com/KnownHeretic/status/2031975467725832460?s=20

These men are chilling once you see what they really think. We see it regularly when male people with transgender identities intimidate and threaten us at women’s events. From Baker (‘punch a terf’) to the man yelling at us to stop murdering children just the other weekend.

The gloating from Daviana and Billings as they envision negative impacts on female people because they rejected his demands seems to be highlighting just how common that reaction is from men who don’t get what they want from women.

Billings and Daviana are just two men who are showing women who they really are. It seems some men really cannot help themselves in showing that these demands are also part of the power dynamic.

So, are who are supposed to believe? The men telling us they are women and as a group are no threat to women at all, or do we consider the MoJ statistics and understand that these men are a greater threat to female people than other female people. In far, that they are likely to still be at least the same risk to female people as the general male population. Because they are still male?

You see this attitude a lot but I suspect it is from women who have never actually been in a women's space when a man walks in. The reaction and switch to being on alert when it does happen is instant and completely involuntary. You might convince yourself it is all fine in the seconds afterwards but your spidey senses will be tingling until you are out of there.

Just living their lives with the expectation that their sense of entitlement to inhabit female single sex spaces, as a male, should be accommodated at the expense of the comfort of women who don't want them in a female space. That's not "just" trying to do anything; it's forcing yourself into spaces at the expense of women's sense of safety. People who do that are making a choice, their wants trump anyone else's needs or wants.

Yep - I’m not there to shore up their womanly feelings.

Imported American nonsense which I bet not a single feminist here subscribes to.
Why the hell would we include males in our feminism? Thats the most pathetic whinge I’ve heard on this thread so far.
”oh but what about the menz?”

I have to thank peachy. There are so many new usernames on this thread.

I’m genuinely not offended, I was just trying to explain why I wrote that. I understand why you responded as you did.

If she was wary of a specific person (which I was genuinely asking), I’d probably have deferred to more knowledgeable posters for their advice.

(Btw more and more lately I’ve seen men taking their daughters into the women’s loos and I’m sick of it. Last summer at a campsite a man was in the shower block directing his young daughter who was taking a shower. Why the FUCK does he think his daughter shouldn’t be exposed to strange men in the men’s showers and yet I should be happy to stand there wrapped in a towel in front of a fully clothed man? Fucks me off.)

It would bother me far more that someone without a disability was using the accessible toilets.

Ugh that's horrible!

I'd be hustling my girls and myself out of there immediately and would say something to the man at the time, but I understand that not everyone feels comfortable confronting a man directly in that sort of situation. I'd also complain to the campsite.

There's a reasonable expectation that women and girls would be naked in a female shower block, there is no excuse for an adult man to be in there.

I don't mean to derail but this pisses me right off.

I was in a mixed sex shower/toilet block (absolutely hate these anyway) recently where a man was standing having a pee with the door wide open, in full view of everyone. I'd actually shared a shower with my DH so he was with me, and the guy looked up, MADE EYE CONTACT, and carried on. The only word I could muster was "Seriously?!" and his response was "What? I forgot it's not a male toilet".

He didn't forget, he was a manky exhibitionist perv!

Sorry that happened to you

It's no wonder women self exclude from so many situations these days with so many boundary invading men around to take advantage wherever they can, and none of them come with a sign around their necks so no one knows which ones are the bad ones until it's too late. Which brings us "nicely" back on topic of trans identified males in female spaces doesn't it, and people still try to pretend they don't see the issues or defend the men who are invading female spaces just because they've said some magic words 🙄

Sorry for the derail, I couldn’t help myself.

wrt the campsite, I was staying in a friend’s static van so didn’t want to rock the boat. I was seriously pissed off though.

I think some (most?) of these men just assume that it’s fine because they know they don’t have ulterior motives. But how do we know that? And I don’t want to be half-dressed in front of an unknown man anyway, however uninterested he might be. I just don’t.

My father always sent us (I’m one of 2 girls) in to the Ladies’ and waited outside.

Perhaps these dads are worried about doing that because they know there might be men in the women’s loos 🤣

I used to take dc to swimming lessons at a leisure centre.

the amount of young, up to teenage boys using the women’s toilets and facilities was astounding. I once opened a shower to find a completely naked boy in there, about 12 years old. His mum wasn’t even in the change area, he’d finished his lesson and she was watching the sibling on poolside.

i also saw a mum walk her 6’ male child through the open plan area with her hands over his eyes saying “don’t look” so he could use the women’s toilets at the far end.

i did complain to staff multiple times but i was a small voice, apparently none of these women felt safe sending their older boys into the men’s toilets/change. So it was generally accepted.

So it wouldn’t surprise me that men continue to feel like it’s not a problem to use women’s spaces. Because they grow up with the message that women are ok with it.

Either an exhibitionist perv, or so arrogant he just didn't give a fuck. I wish I'd complained, but I felt worried I'd be dismissed as some pearl-clutching woman and that would have just made me more angry. It was in December last year and I'm still annoyed about it. Men do not belong in spaces where women are isolated, undressed, or otherwise potentially vulnerable, whether they're wearing a dress or not.