How trans people feel about correct-sex toilets, in their own words

[MyAmpleSheep]

This is an interesting Reddit thread where members of the trans community write about how they feel about not using wrong-sex bathrooms toilets facilities. (The original question doesn’t say toilets, but that’s how most responders have interpreted it, I think).

https://tinyurl.com/musmm897

There’s a mix of responses, some activist, some self-pitying, some stories that are sad. Genuinely useful and thought-provoking to read what people say.

I can’t very much influence how people should post here, but it would be very easy to only to highlight or mock the more unreasonable responses in that thread. Perhaps I’m allowed to ask Mumsnet posters to be thoughtful, though?

Men in spaces which have been set aside for use by female people only can make women and girls feel very uncomfortable indeed, at the very least.
Male people have no place in female only spaces. It really couldn't be any clearer; and anyone claiming to have empathy with women and girls would understand this and respect that.

Ridiculous. Either use the correct toilet for your sex or wait until you get home.

That's really hard when your prostrate is playing up.

Appeasement is off the menu. They burned all their bridges with blatant male entitlement and aggression.

Any empathy I had is long gone. I make no apologies for it.

Very true.

To be fair, I used to think that before I had thought properly about why we had single sex spaces - and that nobody can consent (to a male using women's facilities) on anyone else's behalf. It was being on this board that helped with that journey.

The other thing I eventually realised was that the act of "passing" is linked to the observer not the observed. The transperson doesn't universally pass or not pass. There is no threshold that they can ever cross to achieve this. Instead, it's down to those who see the transperson. Some won't necessarily realise that the person is trans, others will. When people say "we can always tell", they presumably see themselves as a good observer of obvious traits. I have noticed my own observational skills have increased significantly on this, since I realised what the obvious traits are. Sometimes it's so obvious though that even the least experienced observer can't go wrong.

If they refuse to comply in the workplace, I think they ought to lose their jobs.

It would certainly need to go through the disciplinary process.

And, probably, be built into recruitment and contracts from the off.

It’s refusing to follow rules and extremely provoking

Yes. They can be treated equally to all other men in the office.

It certainly would fall under the not following policy category of discipline.

It is remarkable to see posters crowing that others don’t understand the SC judgement and proudly declaring there is no ‘law’ about male people in female provision. All they mean is that it may not be considered a criminal offence as an act of simply accessing the provision.

There are laws that can be used to keep male people out of female single sex provisions through lawful remedies. Such as disciplinary action at work and being banned from a non-work organisations premises. That is just the start.

That is why this artificial narrowing of scope fails. But some posters are very proud to keep repeating the falsity as if it is meaningful.

Gives an increasing image of men bursting into women's spaces, shouting boo! and running away like kids playing knockdown ginger.

Using the men’s or the accessible are the options. The accessible is possibly more useful as it will have a bigger bin for sanitary needs. There’s ‘bins for boys’ and ‘boys need bins’ campaigns that have had success in getting a different looking sanitary bin specifically for men into men’s loos.

I can’t get past the first comment; they’re not restricted from breast cancer screening. Men get breast cancer .

cervical, yes, as they don’t have one.

its all based on fantasy and lies.

But there isn’t an NHS screening programme for men, I think that’s what they’re referring to. That only starts at age 50 even for women of course.

From what I can see online though, even trans women who take estrogen still have a much lower risk of breast cancer compared to women.

The latest comment I saw on LI was saying that a date in August (when I assume the EHRC code comes into force) will be regarded like Kristallnacht.

How offensive can you get? I can't get over the hyperbole generally but this is out and out offensive.

The much bigger issue is that there aren't enough loos full stop, not that you can't go into a woman's loo if you are male-bodied.

Second reddit thread covering just the same as the first:

https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1uy0wje/the_toilet_trouble/

a date in August (when I assume the EHRC code comes into force) will be regarded like Kristallnacht.

Good God. How overprivileged, pampered and sheltered do you have to be - not to mention how fantastically immature and egotistical - to think that?!

Welcome to Reddit TransgenderUK

It's all about them and what they want and what they will do, isn't it?

Actual women, so called "cis" women" are just the background scenery they need to make it (TaDaaah) A Woman's Toilet.

The thought that there might be a reason women's toilets aren't men's toilets that is related to the actual existence and needs of female people being different to those of male people isn't even registering so much as a butterfly's wings flapping on the other side of the world to their minds.

No. As far as they are concerned, Women's resources simply happen to ...exist as a fact of nature, and therefore as "women" they must have them.

Except that if actual women didn't use them, they wouldn't want them any more.

This petition to update building regs to require more women’s toilets isn’t going to get to 10,000 by midnight which is a shame. There’s already standards which say there should be twice as many women’s toilets as men’s for equality, it’s just not well known. Would have been good for that to be seen in writing.

Also not well known is that you should increase the number of toilets by 25% if the compartments have the sink in them because of the extra time spent in the compartment.

Trans identifying men can request breast screening via their GP, in most areas of the UK, as there is an increased risk with cross sex hormones (I don't know by how much).

It's the usual thing of there absolutely is access to services for people with gender identities and their specific and particular health problems caused by transition (and there should be). No one's going to not provide care.

It's just going to be a separate thing done on individual basis rather than being The Womens Service with all the validations involved in that experience. That's the real bone of contention.

Trans identifying men can request breast screening via their GP, in most areas of the UK, as there is an increased risk with cross sex hormones (I don't know by how much).

Additionally men taking oestrogen have around a 10x increased chance of a stroke & a 5x increase of coronary thrombosis.

‘code’. This is either the voice of an American, or of somebody who spends far too much time in an online echo-chamber, divorced from the reality of UK law and UK life.