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?

And they still think that having to use the facilities corresponding to their sex is such a great, horrible, persecution event? I doubt it.

Have some folk been left off the mailing list of Shite TRA arguments from GIHQ or something? It's like we've travelled back to 2018. Bets on 'you have a gender neutral toilet in your house' or some such shite as the next argument.

I think you are genuinely erasing and denying the existence of trans people, there.

How do they think we feel? If it’s humiliating for them to have to go in a male toilet with a penis, how do they think it feels to me to have to stand next to a six foot man in fish nets in the female toilet (actually happened). Or the day I had to wash my hands side by side with my horrible male manager in this confined vulnerable space. It’s all about them.

How about, no one's checked my DNA

I've suggested before that it will have to be made a criminal offence for a male to enter a female sexed space before this is over.

Where you and I differ is that I don't take everything personally - I have never been harassed by a trans person going for a pee, I might very well have sat on the same toilet seat, given that men refusing to respect women's spaces is not as unusual as it should be..

But that's just anecdote, and behind the anecdotal there is a whole universe of principle and social convention and law and regulation and respect and so on.

Just as I support workers' rights to job security even though I've never actually been unfairly dismissed myself; I support women's rights to designated spaces even though I've never personally been harassed by a trans person going for a pee.

It makes things a lot less complicated if you look at the big picture instead of individuals' anecdotal experiences - a small number of spaces are segregated by sex, and 'sex' in this case means biological sex. Not gender, not gender ID, not how you present yourself, not whether you think your brain is male or female, not what clothes you wear - simply your biological sex.

You're probably right that some transwomen have failed to respect women's spaces over they years, or have mistakenly believed they had a 'right' to do so; but that's been clarified recently, they have no such right, and if they are thoughtful, respectful people, they will stay out of them in future.

A campaign to make sure that men's toilets are kinder and more inclusive would be useful, so transwomen can be reassured that they can safely do what they always say they want to do, i.e. 'just pee in peace', in the men's.

Believe me, I'd love never to have to talk about toilets ever again, Tryingtobenormal124, but everything seems to come back to transwomen insisting on peeing in the women's toilets, so much so that I think that the 'T' in LGBTQ+ may stand for toilets🙄

It's always been easier to tell women they are responsible for men's behaviour than control men's behaviour.

most are now scared to leave their home

What are they scared of? I mean that literally. What do they think is going to happen if they leave their home?

We didn’t start the toilet conversation

we tend to be more interested in the harmful treatment of young girls , the prevalence of transgender sex offenders and that kind of thing

I don't really care how men feel about not using women's toilets.

They don't belong to them, so they shouldn't have access. Simple as.

If they have terrible difficulties using the men's, then they can campaign for third spaces. Just leave women out of it.

So if it's no big deal for women to pee beside a man, why would it be a big deal for a 'transwoman' to pee beside a man?

They just want to live a quiet life

Do you know, this has been said so many thousands of times here on FWR, it's become nothing but a cliché.

Where are all those trans-identified men who want to live a wild, exuberant life, but are still expected to respect the rule of law, and respect that female single sex spaces are not for them? Why don't you talk about them for a change? Do you know any?

Why does it have to be 'a quiet life'? Or does the Rule Book say it has to be 'quiet'?

Is it though?

I can imagine going through the actual-sex door might be more like going through a door marked "Bereaved" or "Childless" or "Old". Reality, but harsh.

The constructive comment at the bottom of the thread about using unisex toilets and naming a retailer that reliably offers them is dismissed as ‘degendering binary trans people’. Which caused my sympathy to shrivel. If it hadn’t already been quite low reading the pro-suicidal responses.

Like many people I have lost a partner to suicide and he suffered hugely. However, using a toilet was not part of that suffering. My first husband desisted from transitioning, I have several trans people among my friends and family and I simply cannot take the ‘terrible oppression’ stories very seriously. Those who suffer are in pain from other issues for which dysphoria and transitioning are a distraction or coping strategy that has relevance in the contemporary culture. That thread is a bunch of people trying to shout performatively over each other.

If the Reddit Wall of Sad is upset, I'm afraid there aren't enough onions in my house to assist in mustering a single tear for them.

We all have to accept our lot in life. If they need therapy to do so, they should go get that.

If the sex of the person in the next cubicle doesn't matter, then why can't they use the mens?

You can't have it both ways. Either it does matter and women are entitled to single sex spaces or it doesn't matter and transwomen can use the gents.

Either way, there's no argument for men in the ladies.

I get confused by the swinging between 'it's no big deal so what's the fuss' and 'it's devastating for a man with a gender identity to not be in a space marked women'. Either it's a big deal or it isn't.

Unfortunately women have feelings and needs that are just as important as those men's, and were not put on the planet to serve them at their own expense. And thankfully the law - obviously very much needed - to prevent women's rights and needs being trampled beneath the louder and heavier feet of men who have needs and don't see women as equals, has been confirmed.

If men feel de gendered in gender neutral spaces that's unfortunate, and that is something they should probably seek help with. Along with their belief that women's rights and needs and voices are so utterly beneath theirs.

The thing is, this is totally self inflicted. There was a social contract, despite the law, effectively saying 'if you behave, we'll let it slide'. Well many didn't, so we didn't, and here we are, back to obeying the law as it already was. FAFO.

My feeling is that, if transwomen are scared or distressed at using the correct facilities for their sex then that is a problem for other men to resolve. Women are busy.

Perhaps those men with gender identities could take the same advice that they would give a woman who is distressed, afraid or unable to enter a women's space if he is in it?

I mean I have been harassed by a trans woman in the ladies. He followed me in and masturbated at the sink.

Am I allowed to say that I don't want to share loos with men?

What about the girls Katie Dolatowski assaulted in the ladies'? Do they get a pass?

WTF is one of those.

‘They just want to live a quiet life’ 😂😂😂😂😂
BTW, have you never heard of Katie Dolatowski? He did a double whammy of sexual assault of females in the female toilets and assaulting female prisoner in a female jail. But I guess he just wants to live a quiet life. He’s just one of thousands of men worldwide who use the cover of claiming to be women in order to gain access to women’s single sex spaces for nefarious purposes.
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/tag/katie-dolatowski/