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?

Thank you for this - you are so right - we all have painful things in life that we have to deal with, some much more so than others, but it is not realistic to expect the world to always be censored so we don’t have to deal with painful experiences or situations.

Many trans people make it abundantly clear they are going to continue using their preferred toilet. And why wouldn't they? It's not illegal for them to do so.

Because at work they are, must, and will be subject to disciplinary procedures for doing so, and in the provision of services to the public, service providers must prevent them from doing so to avoid costly and expensive lawsuits.

You are correct that it’s not “illegal” to do so only in the sense that it’s not a criminal offence. To which I say, only: yet.

If you’re determined to drag this to war, so be it. Trans-identifying men will stay out of women’s facilities by choice, or by compulsion of sanction if necessary. Women will win. It has already started.

It is always enlightening to see the tactics used to attempt to stop female people from discussing their need to have female single sex provision.

The emotional manipulation of telling us that by us expecting male people to self regulate and to respect our needs for female single sex provisions and not access them, that we are supporting male people undergoing extreme body modifications is not new. Not just ‘supporting’ those extreme body modifications but forcing them.

Those types of accusations are completely unreasonable and yet we have seen them before and will see them again. It is a DARVO style move.

If a male person requires additional provision for safety or specific unique needs, those male people should be campaigning for solutions that don’t negatively impact on female people.

The emotional manipulation of telling us that by us expecting male people to self regulate and to respect our needs for female single sex provisions and not access them, that we are supporting male people undergoing extreme body modifications is not new. Not just ‘supporting’ those extreme body modifications but forcing them.

Now look what you made me do. Said by abusive men, everywhere.

Yep.

Social constructionist ideologues disavow the impact of social construction? You would think they would understand their own doctrines. 🤪

Maybe you should provide the research proving medicalised trans people from youth can't 'pass' to back this claim up? Oh that's right it doesn't exist.

If you’re determined to drag this to war, so be it. Trans-identifying men will stay out of women’s facilities by choice, or by compulsion of sanction if necessary. Women will win. It has already started.

How will you know you won if you can't tell?

It's astonishing how people hurl themselves towards self sabotage.

Have you provided a study that prove that they do pass? No?

Even anecdotally there are several well known male people who had their puberty blocked and who are identifiable as male people even in photos, yet some people declare those male people ‘pass.’

We are well ingrained in the myth of passing distraction again.

'A few people in the media who divulged they are trans surprisingly 'don't look' trans to raging anti trans ideologues ergo all trans people don't pass'

The number of illogical rationalisations never ends.

Have you provided a study that prove that they do pass? No?

So now you are admitting you don't know for sure? That's progress.

Do I need to provide a study? Setting aside the huge ongoing advancements of modern science, human diversity means I don't have to. That you imagine humans are all cookie cut out copies is monogenist not to mention contra science.

I don’t believe there’s anything more than a tiny proportion of trans-identifying men who aren’t clockable within a couple of seconds of real life observation, and even they won’t be able to “take the win” without giving themselves away eventually, because of the pleasure they get from boasting about how they have women “fooled”.

Its true that we can’t stop every single man from entering a women’s facility, but we can’t entirely stop men raping, assaulting or murdering women either. The work goes on.

Even if this were true (and it's not)

ITS NOT MY FUCKING PROBLEM WHEN IM USING SINGLE SEX FACILITIES

And it could be remedied by closing down some of these dodgy private health care clinics and actually bothering to prosecute those behaving unethically. And rather than continuing with this bullshit that if you pass you will be accepted, saying 'nope you cant change sex it's impossible'. But no one wants to do this.

If we go down this line of thought process that it encourages transition then everyone who goes along with 'being kind' is actively enabling and willfully perpetuating the violation of women and removing their privacy and dignity of women. We, of course, never have it framed in THIS manner do we?

Encouraging transition and positive affirmation is FAR more of a pipeline to medicalising than telling men no. This business of forcing pronouns and changing documents is a far bigger one than telling men to fuck off out the ladies and then trying to emotionally blackmail women by suggesting we are somehow responsible for the decision making of grown adults. No we are not.

I am no more responsible for a man medicalising transition than I am for any other drug addict's addiction. Stop it with this nonsense.

Anyone claiming that we are encouraging trans people to stealth and disguise their sex needs to take a long hard look in the mirror and the think about the legal framework around sex by deception and how this deception of passing is inconsistent with women's rights to consent.

Every male who uses single sex facilities is violating women's privacy and dignity and is proving themselves as a safeguarding risk. No matter how 'nice' they are or what the contents of their pants.

And most STILL don't pass anyway.

We can damn well stop medical professionals from refering to males as females and sticking them on women's only wards. We can damn well stop prison officials from refering to males as females and sticking them in women's only prisons. We can damn well stop HR from telling women they need to suck up their newly transitioning colleague from using single sex provision at work.

That would be a start.

🤣🤣🤣🤣 First laugh of the day! Thanks!

To answer your question about how will we know when we’ve won, I suppose one victory will be when everyone acknowledges once again that it’s simply not acceptable for men LARPing as women to use women’s facilities. Just like we all acknowledge that driving under the influence of alcohol is unacceptable. There are still people who drive while intoxicated; but they don’t get fêted as stunning and brave and held up as examples to us all.

It will take time, but we’re on the way.

Actually interesting proposition. Do you think any research like that would be approved? How do you go about it? Try and sneak men into the womens toilets or changing rooms and then ask women if they noticed? Have men in various stages of undress to see if there is a difference? Ensure you have masculine men in dresses and feminine men in trousers to ensure you cover the whole range of presentation? Basically experiment on unsuspecting women?

Be interesting to see if this kind of research passes the ethical board.

I know there are no studies that show that male people with blocked puberty will be identified as being of the female sex by all female people. But you might have posted something that ‘you’ believed supported such a claim.

I don’t consider believing there are two sexes and that sex categories are clearly defined and that personality and behaviour do not make reliable boundaries for sex class classification contradicts human diversity. And until a machine is invented that will reduce human bodies to sub atomic particles and rebuild that body as the other sex while also completely reconfiguring the brain to change every interaction, every learning, reaction etc to being as if the body was always female, I don’t believe that ‘advances’ will make a significant change to the categorisation of human sex class.

Not only that, but expecting future developments to shape which sex class of human accesses which single sex provision does seem to rather nonsensical. A call to future authority simply doesn’t work for this issue.

It is absurd to assert that a male person with a transgender identity can 100% of the time be identified as female by 100% of female people. And yet, we keep being told it is happening.

It is all vapour used as distraction though. Because it doesn’t matter if such a male exists.

If a male person cannot respect the needs of female people and stay out of female single sex provisions, that is a legitimate issue for female people to discuss.

I'm not suggesting the availability of medicalisation doesn't encourage trans people to partake in it. My point is predicating their acceptance into single sex spaces based on visual assessments which toilet sex segregation policing effectively does regardless of intention also encourages it.

If you make the rules, you own them to a degree.

As I said, people who claim societal pressures are responsible for sex stereotypes ought to understand better than anyone that their societal demands also contribute to the cultural zeitgeist.

You can't be a part time social constructionist.

Oh & the availability of medicalisation isn't only from private practices but the black market. As we have witnessed with restrictions on reproductive care in the US, online self medicalisation of terminations has skyrocketed.

It amazing how people who think that whether you are a man or a woman is down to which clothes you wear and how long your hair is think that lots of males pass as female whereas people who think sex is real and immutable think that largely and on the whole they don't.

It almost as if one group look for hair, clothes and make-up and the other look for biological markers.

For a group who claim to be women I'm seeing remarkably little empathy for women, a stunning disregard for the needs of women and a whole lot of male entitlement.

Women say no.
The law says no.
TW say but we're going to anyway and you can't stop us. I don't care what a trans barrister thinks the law says (or can be twisted to say) the courts say women means biological women. Men can take their hurty feelz and shove them because they give not one solitary shit about the fear, distress, or discomfort that they cause women.

Imagine having to use the bathroom that is biologically assigned to you…must be terrible 🙄

People thinking they can change their gender is a mental illness and should be treated as such. A man can’t become a woman and vice Versa. You can’t roll shit in glitter and call it a puppy

I like to call myself “real woman” but what’s really distressing is that trans people won’t validate it.

Yes and I think the vast majority of them are cosplaying feeling ‘unsafe’ as well. Like the American man who applied for asylum in Norway because he was so miffed at not being allowed to use the ladies.

He quickly realised what actually feeling unsafe was like as the asylum centre was full of violent men and everyone was genuinely unsafe, dresses or not.

“I'm not suggesting the availability of medicalisation doesn't encourage trans people to partake in it. My point is predicating their acceptance into single sex spaces based on visual assessments which toilet sex segregation policing effectively does regardless of intention also encourages it.”

“If you make the rules, you own them to a degree.”

The ‘rules’ are that male people take responsibility for their own decisions and behaviour and don’t access female single sex provisions whatever they look like.