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?

This is a version of <insert country OP is not from> and falsely act like mixed sex toilets are the norm. Mixed sex toilets in the UK are almost invariably single occupancy and are found in places like small cafes where there is only room for one toilet cubicle. Otherwise, the law dictates single-sex whether through the workplace act or provisions in the ea.

Anyway, back to the OP. The fact that a man overrides the privacy of women and basic social manners and consideration to use women's toilets automatically marks him out as dangerous. Avoid in all circumstances.

Id guess because hes a man and has no right to use the women's facilities

If a man enters a woman’s toilets then he is already ignoring boundaries and undermining women’s privacy, safety and dignity, and using women for his own pleasure. Any man in a women’s toilets is a ‘wrong un’.

Mixed sex toilets in the UK are required to have floor to ceiling partitions and doors, and be fully enclosed including a basin. That's very different to the usual provision within a female-only toilet.

I don’t know why you have felt the need to be so rude when I simply answered the question?

I don't know what I would do. I felt on edge when a male cleaner came in. The solution to this is having single use bathrooms. Why are we all going to the toilet together anyway ?

This is an interesting case of the fallacy that if you swap male parents and female parents around, everything stays the same.

Fathers have been bringing daughters to public places since time immemorial.

It has always been the norm that a father sends a little girl into the women's toilet. He will hover nervously outside the door. If he's nervous he might [ in my personal experience] ask a woman going into the toilet to accompany his little girl which I've been happy to do. If he gets very worried, he might stick a very apologetic head around the door and call out his daughter's name, and the women inside will say something like 'Don't worry she's grand, she's coming out to you now'.

That is possible because women tend not to abuse random children. It is statistically safe to let a child, boy or girl, go unaccompanied into a women-only space, and so fathers have up to now trusted that they could let their little daughter use the women's toilet on her own without fear.

(The possibility of the presence of men identifying as women in women's toilets is a worrying challenge to women's toilets being a statistically safe space for an unaccompanied child.)

The same cannot be said of men, who unfortunately present a much higher risk of abusing a random child, and for that reason traditionally - and as the Supreme Court asserted - legally, very young boys are allowed to use the women's toilet with their mother/carer.

It is telling that it has never been seen as a good idea for a man to bring his little daughter into the men's.

Being a parent of a girl does not make a man any less male, and does not give him the right to use women-only facilities.

If you can watch the full documentary, it might help you understand things from a different perspective.

I do understand your fears, but if you have been part of the community you would realise that this isn’t clear cut black and white. There are trans people I know who look as feminine as you and I, and you wouldn’t even know if they were in the bathroom with someone who wasn’t born female.

If you are disabled use the disabled loo.
If you are not disabled then dont.

Nope. It very rarely comes up and in any instance it has, they have been minding their own business and I mind mine. I can't say I plan around it. I genuinely find the women who insist on bringing their sons into the women's toilets far more frustrating. When you're boy is as tall as I am, he should be going in the men's.

I think there's a reasonable limit past which boys should not be in the women's toilet - did the Supreme Court state an age? I'm thinking the guideline is 8 years old, but I'm not sure.

I am GC but I used to work with a TW. I was often in the loos when she was and tbh for the first few weeks I didn’t even notice that she was a TW 😳

Why would using a bathroom whilst a transwoman is there cause an "awkward encounter"?

The only problem I can see is the one you'd make yourself due to ingrained prejudices that, given you've posted a thread about it, are very evident.

Single use bathrooms are not safe for those who then have medical issues while using the toilet, or are being attacked in the toilet.

The gap underneath the door is there for a reason, and that reason includes being able to see a person who has fallen onto the floor or if a person is being attacked.

here is my personal list of things that I have had to use the female single sex toilets for:

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.

The cleaning up of clothes for breastmilk leaks and for other spills has happened to me in a work situation. In fact, it has also happened in a conference situation. One of my friends miscarried at work.

At work conferences it is not uncommon to find women drying their clothes under the hand drier because they have spilled something on their clothes.

That you (a general you) have not experienced these issues doesn't mean they are not happening. I am glad that some people 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.

And no. Waiting for things to be dried if a cubicle has a hand drier is going to cause congestion and therefore stress for a person having to clean and dry themselves off in a mixed sex environment.

Because he’s a man. Going into a space he knows isn’t for him so he’s already a boundary pushing arsehole.

None of my lovely male colleagues would attack me in a work bathroom but I don’t want to piss near them. How is that so difficult to understand? That doesn’t change if said colleague woke up and felt like he was a woman that day. Privacy and dignity, which every woman has a right to.

Yes my son was 7 or 8 when I stopped taking him in and just sent him alone to the men's. I can remember it be a worrying experience. So I do have sympathy for men taking their daughters into the women's. If they sent them in alone there could be a predator hiding in there

No
I also use unisex toilets . As far as I'm concerned it's a non issue

No because I’m not a terrible and discriminatory person

Men have lived their lives as woman for centuries, as long as they do so respectfully who can tell and who cares. Similarly women have lived as men throughout history and again who knows or cares. If a man poses as a woman to get into female spaces for nefarious purposes that is a different thing. No one mentioned predatory behaviour in this case just potential embarrassment because she does know.

There is actually no valid reason for any male above the age of about 8 years old to be using a female toilet (without notice being given in exceptional circumstances where a male toilet is not available).

There really is no need to 'understand things from a different perspective.' Making statements like that is emotionally manipulative.

Single sex provisions are single sex for a reason. They rely on the discrimination of that single sex provision to be done for a legitimate purpose. That purpose is based on the sex class of people. Exceptions are made for children requiring their parent's care.

The source of discrimination for single sex provisioning is based on sex and not on an individual's subjective belief about their identity that doesn't reflect material reality. This is based on safeguarding principles for publicly accessible provisions. Those principles are based on the 'black and white, clear cut' category of sex because it is not a limited and monitored provision.

If you, personally, cannot correctly identify a person's sex category, please don't assume that your experience is the universal experience. The majority of female people are highly likely to correctly identify a male person's sex category through interaction including observation. It is completely irrelevant as to how 'feminine' they look or what they are wearing.

Female people can observe how male people move, their gait, their skeletal proportions which are also observable through most clothing with movement, even the shape of their skull.

At least male cleaners announce their arrival, or put up signs, so you know where you are!

But why on earth should we have single use 'bathrooms'? Apart from the well-established health and safety dangers of them, why? just why?

The traditional configuration of men's, women's and [after decades of campaigning by disabled people] accessible toilets has worked fine up to very recently.

There is a tiny tiny percentage of the population that claims they are not the sex they are born into, and mixed sex toilets are suggested as a solution for them - two problems with that:

1. it's unreasonable to expect every venue to have a fourth space on the off-chance that one of the 250,000 or so out of a population of nearly 70m may pop in, need to pee, and refuse to use the toilet designated for their sex.
2. many out of that 250,000 or so don't particularly want to use mixed sex toilets anyway, not validating enough it seem.

It's not like the country is awash with money to rip out all the existing facilities which comply with the regulations that require sex-segregated toilets and changing rooms, and replace them with single use 'bathrooms' - I'm guessing you mean toilets - which are demonstrably less popular and less safe.

It is a predatory behaviour for a male person to enter a female single sex provision to use it knowing that it is a female single sex provision.

For instance, what other word would you suggest describes the actions of a male person in the UK who understands that the Supreme Court judgement clarified that single sex provisions exclude male people and who understands that there may be a female person present that will be distressed by the knowledge that they are in a single sex provision with a male person? I call that predatory behaviour based on the power imbalance between that male person and the female people who need that space to be female only.

Men have lived their lives as woman for centuries

Men have never lived their lives as women - they can’t, they are men. Women’s lives throughout history has been shaped by our biology.

There is a tiny tiny percentage of the population that claims they are not the sex they are born into

I don't know about that. On reddit I am frequently seeing trans and non- binary people. I think with rights laws opposition to trans rights will be a thing of the past soon.

And the more normalised it becomes, the more children are taught it's normal to be trans in school, the more the numbers will increase. I imagine it will be a vast amount of people in future

I think this video is useful here. It is another video that analyses the arguments used that we so often see. Often they are in the same post or in subsequent posts. We have certainly seen some on this thread including the 'appeal to permanence' that is 'Men have lived their lives as woman for centuries'

x.com/hothingsgirlsay/status/2051375505362784316?s=46

“This is a masterclass in persuasion layering:
– Presuppositions disguised as questions
– Emotional stacking (past harm → present threat → urgency)
– Moral framing that makes disagreement feel unethical
– And a critical factor bypass at the end
“Even if you don’t understand…”

That line removes the need for thinking and replaces it with alignment.
That’s not accidental. That’s design.”

It covers things like the emotional manipulation we see.

The ‘if you don’t understand our identities, that is ok, you just need to support us any way you can’.

This speech she is analysing even uses moral arguments to support groups and people financially through ‘giving back’ or making purchase choices. And it is an interesting one because it uses the sacrifice argument we sometimes see. The ‘it is hard to make ethical decisions about supporting this group but it is worth it’.
The swerve that ‘well-informed people need to see us as people, not as political ideologue or ideological’ was a great to see this male speaker try to us.

He then swivels into the historic reference. The false leverage of historical groups opressed for being same sex attracted that actually have nothing to do with transgender identities. And then ties it to this ‘new wave of trans hate that seeks to erase’ trans people.

The next segment tries to then use the ‘you know us’ plea which reassures people that people with transgender identities are in everyone’s lives in an attempt to reassure people. MJ Murphy points this out as Proximity anchoring as a part of the emotional manipulation. Well, this one we know and what is strange is the number of times though, that activist posters accuse us of not knowing any trans people. It seems to always be an exaggeration - they are everywhere and never cause any concern or we have never met them.
I think she raises some good points here.

The most significant point though was the call to ‘bypass critical thinking’. That bit about ‘if you don’t understand us, that is ok, just support us’ but understanding the emotional manipulation is important.