Article on "arguing with a TERF"

[MyAmpleSheep]

I love to keep up with the other side, so here's a lot of words just to say "it's complicated." meanwhile he ignores the obvious answer to his own question.

www.fasttrackfemme.com/p/why-you-cant-win-an-argument-with

Always the focus on the man. What he wants, how he feels, the risk to him. What he's had done, his identity.

If one shifts focus to the women in the space, what they want, how they feel, the risk to them, what they've done, their identity, the whole argument rather falls apart.

Women don't want men in women's spaces.

The fact that men want to be in them doesn't override that.

And as I expect our visitor will protest at a lack of stats and facts and data, here we go:

https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/51545-where-does-the-british-public-stand-on-transgender-rights-in-202425

'Almost half of Britons say that transgender men should not be allowed use men’s toilets (47%) or changing rooms (49%) – higher than the 32-35% who would permit it. For transgender women, resistance to allowing toilet and changing room access increases to 55% and 58%, respectively. Additionally, 52% of Britons say trans women should not be allowed to use women’s refuges for victims of rape or assault.
Such opposition increases further in our follow-up questions asking specifically about transgender people who had not undergone gender reassignment surgery.
In terms of the wider principle, most Britons (55%) say they believe that allowing transgender women to use spaces reserved for women, such as women's toilets or changing rooms, “presents a genuine risk of harm to women”.'

I think you are likely thinking of the 2017 paper by Alexis Dinno published in the American Journal of Public Health.
In which case, you might be slightly misremembering it.
The Oxford paper (by Biggs & North), that ArabellaScott shared, references that study on page 3:

"The only study estimating the homicide rate of transgender people suggests that their rate was lower than the overall population’s, though the rate for young black transwomen possibly exceeded the rate for young black males"

"If your standard"

https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/accuracy-criminal-statistics-matters

'One of the few things that criminologists will agree on is birth-sex is the single most important determinant of whether a person will be prosecuted or convicted of a crime. Males account for 75 per cent of all convictions each year. They account for 93 per cent of all murder convictions and more than 99 per cent of all rape convictions.'

You can ask her
I don't know her arguments, since the essay wasn't about that
I could only assume

As we're looking at stats, this page is absolutely astonishing.

https://rainn.org/facts-statistics-the-scope-of-the-problem/statistics-perpetrators-of-sexual-violence/

RAINN omits the one most overriding and salient commonality of perps. Which is sex.

they talk about male victims, and female victims.

But the perps remain undescribed.

Amazing.

'An estimated 91% of victims of rape & sexual assault are female and 9% male. Nearly 99% of perpetrators are male'

U.S. Dept. of Justice, Violence Against Women Report, 2002.

From the study's abstract -

The overall homicide rate of transgender individuals was likely to be less than that of cisgender individuals

However, the homicide rates of young transfeminine Black and Latina residents were almost certainly higher than were those of cisfeminine comparators,

(My italics)

Black and Latino transwomen (or trans identifying men) were more likely to be murder victims than black and Latino actual women.

Not comparing them with the rates of murder of men but of women.

Ive seen the figures before (can’t remember which years) and I dispute that. It’s possible as it’s very small numbers that in 2017 the number of black trans identified males killed was higher than the proportion of other black men, but I highly doubt it. Black men in the US are at much higher risk of murder than all other race/sex groups.

Ah I see we’re imposing an arbitrary sub category of “young”. With the trans identified male murder rate we are already dealing with extremely small numbers, why reduce that even further?

Going back to the title @MedicalConsensus , if you ever come up with a good argument why the toilet design you thought was a good idea, is actually a good idea, then tag me in. I have many real- life examples and plenty of scientific and academic articles to prove you wrong. It would be interesting to hear why you think you are right.

That's a really practical critique.

It's true that for decades, institutional approval often used rigid gender stereotypes.
For a credential system to be valid, it would have to be based strictly on objective markers (like sustained chemical testosterone suppression).
Which, fair enough, implementing that without it bleeding back into institutional sexism would be a challenge.

And yes, the second option would have costs, though money is a much easier problem to manage.

Ah, so @MedicalConsensus got it the wrong way round? Or was it Biggs et al?

As men are more likely to be murdered, it’s unsurprising that trans identity doesn’t completely negate this. But it does modify.

Here, have a link to the abstract

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2017.303878?role=tab

That does NOT say what MedCon claims. I did read the full thing at the time, and black men were far more likely to be murder victims than black transwomen.

What the abstract says is that trans identifying people are less likely to be murder victims than 'cis' (stupid term) people. Men are much more likely to be murder victims than women.

It's only when you contrast black and Latino (men) transwomen and black and Latina (actual) women that you get a result that more transwomen are murdered per population than women.

Which makes perfect sense because make on male violence is the biggest issue.

However, the obfuscating language of 'cis feminine comparators' makes it easy to miss the point.

Why should I care what his arguments are? He’s a man. He shouldn’t be in women only spaces. He can write as many essays as he likes.

I don't know which one (Briggs or MedCon) fluffed it, but it's a very common mistake when using Butleresque language to confuse everyone.

Look at the number of people who thought a transwoman was a woman who wanted to be a man and not the other way around. The blurring of previously understood language is a feature not a bug.

Why are you even taking his “essay” seriously in the first place? Violence against women is a serious problem, and spaces with any men in make women and girls less safe. However, it’s a straw man to characterise that as the only harm caused by men in women’s spaces. It isn’t.

If someone says, "Transwomen are likely to be murdered" you could ask, "Is that because they're women, or because they're men?" Consternation might ensue.

To blazes with "statistical risk" anyway. One ten-year-old girl sexually assaulted in a women-only lavatory, by a male who could not be excluded from that lavatory, is one ten-year-old girl too many. And almost any predatory male, whatever hormonal treatment he may or may not be taking, is likely to be stronger than a ten-year-old female – or one his own age who is not a boxer or weight-lifter, or an elderly one, or one with arthritis, come to that.

The point has always been that if transwomen were allowed into women-only spaces, any man who claimed to be trans, however fleetingly he made that claim, also had to be allowed in. So the difference between a sweet nice kind harmless oppressed sad little trans male of fifteen, and Paula Stanton aged over sixty, (look him up for information about how sweet etc he is) has been made irrelevant for so long as merely claiming to be trans has been the magic passport to the women's hospital wards (mental wards in particular), prisons, and so on, rape crisis centres and women's refuges a bonus for perverted males.

And it's likely Paula Stanton, who is clearly a bit confused in many ways, may in fact believe he is female at least some of the time, for all he can still beat the meat at women to upset them. There are not a few who don't hold such a belief even for an instant, but can still make the claim in pursuit of their own sexual gratification.

The amusing thing is that TRAs, allies and fellow-travellers are finally, ten or twenty or more years late, realising the fact women have known all along: that not all trans-identifying people are lovely cuddly bunnies who just want to pee in peace. The way they are manifesting this realisation is by asserting that any trans person who is a violent thug is "not really trans": hoax-trans, fake trans. This assertion is not the "gotcha" they seem to think it is. Sigh. In the end they may grow up and catch up, with luck.

On a slightly different point, I would like to have actual data about what the risk is to transwomen using a men's public lavatory: not self-reported but actual police data. Do such data exist showing the incidence of assault by men against the transwomen in lavatories, and what the assaults are? If all an assault consists of is the same assault that might be suffered by a butch woman (or me wearing an anorak) in the women's, that is, someone saying "Oy, are you in the right loo?" and needing to explain that yes, she or he is, I don't feel it is in quite the same category as the assaults on women by men. Drag artists always used to be able to use the gents, after all. Barry Humphries was quite amusing on the subject.

Nice, Option 3 is actually the solution I think makes the most practical sense as well.
The thing is, if the purpose of LGBTQ organizations is to ensure the quality of life and safety of their members, like minimizing dehumanization, then fighting over women's bathrooms seems counterproductive.
That debate is one of the most effective wedge issue used by politicians and media to vilify the demographic.
If they stopped pushing for access to those spaces, they would stop handing the media free political ammo. They would be forced to latch onto a much weaker premise to justify their aversion.
I have no idea what they do with their donations, because why not fund and build single-stall bathrooms themselves? Like, they can buy those portable outside ones and place them around the city, since I believe it's the cheapest approach, and problem solved, I believe.
Logistically, it seems like the best way to bring the maximum long-term benefit.
I listed those 2 solutions because I was asked specifically about the context of self-id, which for third spaces is irrelevant.

MedicalConsensus

Sigh. This machine sometimes sends when I try to scroll down. Sorry about that.

Good stuff. Now go and make that suggestion on the blog that sent you here.

And afterwards, ask yourself why men are so grimly determined to access women's spaces.

Also consider that there are often complaints from transwomen, after gaining access to women's spaces, that women have stopped using those spaces.

Why would that be?

MedicalConsensus
Nice, Option 3 is actually the solution I think makes the most practical sense as well.

Option 3 is "provide single user unisex facilities for anyone who doesn't want to use the single sex facilities for their sex"

Clearly this is a subject about which you are not expert. As Keeptoiletssafe would tell you, single cubicles with floor to ceiling doors can be actively dangerous, even fatal, for their users. (And that's not even allowing that many of them are large enough to be used for a spot of nice private rape, if a woman is dragged into one; they are by their nature private.)

Ask her why that is?