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

ooh, the AI doesn't like links to urban dictionary I think! I was noting that the term 'master debater' seems apt here

@BernardBlacksMolluscs
I take it when insults are thrown that a discussion is not asked for, which is fine.

mate, I tried

you just don't make any sense

now I'm just using you to entertain myself

'Fun' as this has been Stevie's original question was why can't a 'fully transitioned' middled aged woman buy a lipstick in Boots?

The short answer is he can

The long answer is hhheeeeee cccccccccaaaannnnn

Nailed it!

Any person of any sex with any gender identity or none can buy lipstick anywhere, and afaik there is no age restriction. Why would there be?

"Complete non-tolerance of violent reaction to gender nonconformity."
Nice, we can get back on the main subject of the thread. What I believe the essay was pointing out regarding this, is that such a stance should be made clear from the start.
If you state you will not ever change your mind regarding mixed-sex bathrooms, then me bringing them to you and offering arguments for it is completely useless.
It will save us a lot of time to not pretend it's productive to debate that subject, which is why I'll respect your boundary.

Now, the thing about what I proposed is that it's not exclusive to mixed-sex toilets. It can be implemented in single-sex ones and offer some of the advantages I mentioned.
You claim the 20th-century system had "no flaws," but you mention it failed to provide equal facility ratios for women and failed to provide accessible toilets.
Your proposed solution for safety is to hire a full-time, salaried "caretaker attendant" to act as a bouncer. I don't know if school districts or local council budgets could support that, but sure, it will be an improvement if we simply have such money. (And yeah, a sensor is cheaper long-term than continuing to pay a bouncer forever)
Without that full-time human attendant standing guard at every single washroom, the traditional gapped stall design breaks down as a safety model.
If a woman collapses from a cardiac arrest or a student has a seizure, they are just as invisible, just as silent, and just as much in danger behind a gapped door as they would be anywhere else.
This is why I believe that a fully enclosed, floor-to-ceiling private units integrated with passive environmental telemetry is better, regardless of what sign is on the main entrance door.

I am just reading through this thread.

"If a specific sub-cohort undergoes medical transition, specifically long-term testosterone suppression, their physical risk profile fundamentally alters.
I do not think you should lump a group with female-typical hormone levels into the exact same physical threat category as a group with male-typical hormone levels, as that would corrupt the data set.
That is why the distinction is necessary when calculating physical risk."

Why do you believe this? The IOC has recently joined the growing number of sporting federations that have modelled the available data and understood that the reduction of testosterone or elimination of the majority of testosterone production ability does not reduce the physical advantages that male people compared to female people.

It is an error to assume that a male person with 'female-typical hormone levels' is not a physical threat to female people. It does not corrupt the data at all.

Ok I’ll bite. @MedicalConsensus You seem to be getting excited about design. And you like the medical stuff.

So you’ve decided your cheap chemical plastic loo painted in bright colours isn’t the way to go.

You are now onto the universal toilet. And you’re going to kit it out with all sorts of AI alarms and suck up the maintainance costs. It’s still private and now it has to be in a room off a main circulation space ideally. This may require an expensive fire door on each unit. Fire doors have to stay shut. A good way of knowing whether a toilet is occupied is for the door to rest in the open position.

Physically space wise, it’s going to be difficult to change from single sex to universal without losing lots of units but we’ll ignore that. It’s still private. How do you do the ventilation? Often there’s no natural ventilation through windows or door gaps off a main corridor so you’re going to need mechanical ventilation for building control regs and safety. But you said you didn’t like the false ceiling tiles that typically house ventilation pipes?

There’s some cool experiments you can do with lasers that show where faecal plumes go when you flush. Experiments have shown they will disperse around the room to around 1.5m which covers the sink and dryer area in a universal toilet. Now you are faced with a quandary in public health terms. Do you wash your hands and dry them (microbes breed in air dryers in needs filters changing etc to stop you ending up with more microbes on your hands than when you started)? Or don’t you bother to wash and dry your hands in the area that’s been covered by faecal plumes of the previous occupants? There’s been experiments in hospitals with timed sensors on toilets and sinks to show how little men wash their hands compared to women so toilet door handles are definitely a point of concern so that disease doesn’t spread from when you touch the door handle when exiting the unisex toilet.

In fact, it has been shown that unisex (universal) designs are so much worse for hygiene in hospitals that academics have said that they are not a good idea. Does that extend to schools and other services too?
Obviously having more staff cleaning the universal rooms would be expensive but useful to keep on top of this. However. There’s a problem. Your doors and walls don’t have a gap. This gap is really useful when using a mop, bleaching floors (and walls) and letting it drain for a really good clean to kill pathogens. You can’t do that without leaving everything damp and detritus building up against the edges. One of the big problems is that doors get jammed at the bottom as they get damaged - sometimes by expanding through cleaning liquid they have touched from the floor if someone has had to mop out vomit or faeces. That too means that unit is out of order. A way to get round this is to have a gap at the bottom of the door as it prolongs the useful life with less maintenance costs.

In short, it’s much healthier to be washing your hands outside the area of the toilets. And to use paper towels rather than warm air dryers. All scientifically proven. It’s also cheaper. And safer.

Here’s a science bit:
https://salus.global/article-show/pathogen-findings-raise-concerns-about-move-to-unisex-hospital-facilities

The reason I came back is now you are on to universal toilets (and mentioned schools) you may be interested to know that The Good Law Project (also with no health and safety experience) thought it was a ‘sophisticated’ solution for schools in a consultation document for Keeping Children Safe in Education.

When I was a secondary school teacher, I was allowed 1 pritt stick per class. For the year. Where is the money coming from for these less hygienic and less safe designs?

It's a rather ridiculous question posed by the writer of the article this thread is discussing.

His point seems to be that the GC view is transwomen should not be allowed in Boots or at least not the makeup counter.

He is of course wrong.

He further seems to believe that because he has had lots of surgery and hormones we should let him into the ladies even if we don't let any Thomasina, Doris and Harriet in.

No suggestion as to how we work out who the 'genuine' ones or the 'nice' ones or the unpenised ones are or who will keep the ones who are not 'lovely' out. just a big a old whinge about how nasty GCs won't let him pee.

The IOC and sporting federations measure peak athletic output.
They are looking at metrics like fast-twitch muscle retention, lung capacity, and skeletal leverage in competitive environments where milliseconds and millimeters matter.
Retaining a slight bone density or wingspan advantage might make the difference between gold and silver, but it isn't the metric used by criminologists to calculate everyday physical violence.

Medical science is clear that long-term testosterone suppression drastically reduces overall muscle mass and upper body strength. Furthermore, testosterone itself is a primary driver in aggressive behavioral impulses.
Therefore, the physical risk profile does alter.
And when we put both averages side by side, we will see a very clear distinction

Also hasn't it been shown men can't reduce their T to female levels? Hence the males in female race line being set well above the women doping line.

I know its been said a million times before, but your toilet knowledge is second to none, keeptoiletssafe.

The dimensions of these toilets do not fit a pram in. They also don't give an alternative when accessible toilets are not available for whatever reason. These are just two uses of toilets that then depend on a communal space that is single sex only.

There was a reason that female single sex provisions included a communal area and those reasons have not changed or disappeared. Therefore, for publicly accessible toilets, female people still require female single sex provisions that will allow usage with doors open.

You will not discuss, because you do not respect, the reasons for my boundary:

Women's bodies and the habits derived from then.

Different needs related to our bodies functions.

A greater awareness of the need for cleanliness because of the physical vulnerability of our own bodies and those of children we may be gestating (we use shared sex loos on trains and in planes - the ones on trains are often filthy, the ones on planes have a de facto attendant)

Our vulnerability to male perversion, up to and including physical violence.

'So I think we're all agreed that as a healthy alternative to chocolate, from now on you'll all be exclusively eating my patented turd flavoured lollipops.

As a concession to palatability (and thank you for your input) I'll now be adding sprinkles, which we have all agreed will solve that problem.

I've shown you conclusive evidence of weight loss that will come as a side benefit of consuming the turd flavoured lollipop.

studies show that consumers with no access to any other food sources report that they will voluntarily eat the turd flavoured lollipop.

It's good that we've reached a consensus'

Mate, we don't want your turd flavoured lollipop and we don't want men in the ladies loos either. just deal with it

Transitioned men remain closer to men than they are to women in terms of physical advantage.

My 14 year son who weighs several stones (aka lots of pounds for our American friend) less than me and looks like he is built of string and wire coat hangers can pick me up with ease.

Our days of thumb wars and arm wrestling are long gone because there is no contest. His hands are so much bigger than mine and his grip strength is far greater than mine. He could lose a fairly large percentage of his strength and still be much stronger than me. Even if our strength was equal his height and reach give him a massive advantage.

And that is the scrawny 14 year old. His 50 something 6'5" father could have a massive drop in strength and still be able to beat a woman with one (bloody enormous shovel) hand tied behind his back.

wingspan advantage?

Men do not have wings.

This seems an opportune moment to reintroduce this article from Professor Susan Stryker. You may remember that Stryker and Sanders were used as evidence to support enclosing toilet designs in a U.K. government consultation document for people with long term health conditions written by a company who got a Stonewall Award. Sadly the company didn’t consider the fact that many long term health conditions mean people end up on the floor of the toilet, and didn’t look at the conditions where they do.

This is graphic in tone but mumsnet have previously given me permission to link to it. It shows the background and ‘reasoning’ to enclosed designs - none of which is for health and safety. The American ‘inclusive’ school literature also often references Stryker and partner Sanders.

https://aaa.org.hk/en/like-a-fever/like-a-fever/on-stalling-and-turning-a-wayward-genealogy-for-a-binary-abolitionist-public-toilet-project

I see AI is hallucinating again

To be fair to MC 'wingspan' is the phrase used to mean measurement from finger tip to finger tip of outstretched arms. Its talked about at lot in swimming.

The same physical advantages exist in male people regardless of their sport performance.

"Medical science is clear that long-term testosterone suppression drastically reduces overall muscle mass and upper body strength."

This is misinformation being presented as authority.

Long term studies have also shown that with training that reduction of muscle mass and strength may not be lost or can be reversed. Any person who chooses to limit their training and to restrict their performance will experience loss of muscle mass and strength. It has been modelled that the lowest quartile of male strength is still stronger than 90% of female people.

"Furthermore, testosterone itself is a primary driver in aggressive behavioral impulses."

And yet, it is not the only driver and robust safeguarding principles are not restricted to strength or testosterone driven behaviour as I have seen numerous posters point out on this thread.

There are many behaviours of male people that cause harm to female people that would be false to be attributed to testosterone levels.

"Therefore, the physical risk profile does alter."
and
"And when we put both averages side by side, we will see a very clear distinction"

If you have provided evidence for this and I have missed it, please direct me to the post where you posted evidence. Otherwise, this is a claim that is based of the previous misinformation about your own belief about loss of male physical advantage.

There’s a good reason you’ve always been one of my favourite posters on the site 😂

@Keeptoiletssafe

First, the researcher's scientifically proven solution to "fecal plumes" was not to install gapped doors or move sinks outside. It was simply that hospital toilets should have lids, which should be closed before you flush.

Your claim about door handles being the primary disease vector is challenged by the article, which states that floors and high surfaces yielded higher levels of aerobic bacteria and fungi than hand-touch sites.
The researcher theorized this is likely because hand-touch sites are cleaned more thoroughly than other surfaces.

Second, the study stated that every type of toilet in the three hospitals received the same cleaning every day.
If a universal toilet gets twice the foot traffic (because it is available to 100% of the population) but receives the exact same cleaning frequency as a segregated one, it will logically be dirtier. That is a management and scheduling failure, not a structural design flaw.

For your architectural points:

Door damage from mop water:
Modern commercial and universal cubicles use solid-grade laminate or phenolic resins, not porous domestic wood.
They do not expand or jam. Furthermore, you do not need a 12-inch visual gap to drain a floor.
A standard undercut of a few millimeters is standard for airflow and drainage while maintaining privacy.

Occupancy and fire doors:
Commercial universal doors use vacant/engaged indicator deadbolts.
You don't need a door to rest open to know it's empty.

Ventilation:
Mechanical extraction (HVAC) is already a mandatory building control regulation for commercial bathrooms without windows, regardless of whether the stalls have gaps or not.

Lastly, this design is cheaper to build by combining the separate work needing to be done on two separate rooms into one (like combining the plumbing) and the technology pays itself back over time.