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?

If this is happening (men being attacked by other men in men's toilets) I find it remarkably telling that the impulse has not been to call out this horrendous behaviour and censure the men doing the attacking.

The impulse has been to ignore men's dreadful behaviour and pressurise women to provide the solution by offering up their own spaces.

The misogyny is mind blowing

I think it means despite the claims of passing if I don't through a door marked ladies how will people know I'm a lady?

But we can tell in almost every case, why do you think we can’t tell? Once someone has been through male puberty the differences are in everything about them and how they move. Why do you think that’s some sort of gotcha? You don’t seem to be able to think very straight.

And while you are here, what is this legal requirement to ‘fit in’ that you mentioned earlier?

Access to toilets is not predicated on appearance or “passing”. That is not the law. The law is about a person’s sex. Hence single sex spaces.

Everyone knows what sex they are.

Enforcement is for service providers and employers. We don’t change other rules (eg not driving while using a phone) because they are difficult to enforce.

You are basically saying that men who think they are women will continue to use spaces set aside for females because female people can’t physically stop them.

Which tells us why we need spaces for protection of females in the first place.

They won’t willingly comply

https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1ux0t8f/a_reminder_guidance_is_for_service_providers_not/

its going to have to be made criminal and they will end up in such a worse place than before.

You are basically saying that men who think they are women will continue to use spaces set aside for females because female people can’t physically stop them

Disregarding women's boundaries, ignoring women's consent.

That's just incel behaviour, isn't it?

Young trans people have been sold a pup. They had their formative years with role models like Lily Madigan who was constantly promoted by people like Dawn Butler, Angela Rayner and given positions in the Labour Party. This boy clearly never passed as a woman, but we had to pretend he did. He’s disappeared back into the woodwork, thank goodness, but the legacy of the lunacy is hundreds of autistic young people calling themselves ‘she’ when they are boys with long hair and dresses, or girls who think they are men because they have had double mastectomies and have some facial stubble thanks to taking hormones. Shame on those who have encouraged this shit show.

That's a non sequitur: enforcement of single-sex spaces does not equate to encouragement medicalisation, any more than the police encourage drivers to buy false licence plates by putting up speed cameras. The police will book you without hesitation if they realise you have false plates on your car. They want you to obey the speed limit, not try to circumvent enforcement.

Single-sex spaces mean men stay out of the women's spaces. Medicalisation is irrelevant because no one can change sex.

You are trying to blame women for men's behaviour, which is a manifestation of misogyny.

It's rapist behaviour.

Are we supposed to be playing the tiny violin about this?

Transincels are Incels.

The unintended consequences can be catastrophic because they affect design. Single sex toilets have always been better for health and safety.

Yes. We've had ten years or more of people being told that if they claim this particular identity, the normal rules don't apply to them. They have been feted, affirmed, indulged, and often lied to.

This has not been to the benefit of anyone.

Nobody changes sex. The vast majority of people will never achieve a convincing imitation of the opposite sex. We have sex segregated spaces for several sensible and logical reasons.

No 'identity' means that you get to opt out of following the law.

Attempts to deceive people are dishonest.

And conversely, much of the narrative has also inflated risk and over emphasised public response/interest.

Most people just do not care if you are a man who wears nail polish or has his hair long.

Most people do not care if you are a woman with short hair and a check shirt.

Most people just want to get on with their lives, don't wish anyone harm for their individual style choices, and will not present any issue.

We have reams of data on the risk males present to women. There really is no sane way of suggesting that risk presented by males as a class is ameliorated purely by virtue of a declaration of their inner feelings of 'gender identity'.

Tiffany Scott is a good example. Terrifying man. Yes, vulnerable, not least for his propensity to self harm.

IN WHAT UNIVERSE was this extreme, dangerous, unbalanced and unhinged man considered for placing in a women's prison? An obsessive stalker of a teenage girl. Violent and deranged. But they considered it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-68442073

I can well imagine men wouldn't want him in the men's prison.

WHY THE FUCK WAS THE WOMEN'S CONSIDERED A RATIONAL RESPONSE?

A female-only service is for only female service users.

The plumber and cleaner are not service users, although it is good practice to warn women that a male worker is present or close the service for the duration of the work.

The five-year-old boy present with his mother is not a service user, but is there by virtue of being dependent on his mother.

You know that and I know that. But we also know that if I had written no men should be in female spaces the clap back would be but what about male cleaners? What if they have to call a plumber, what if, what if, what if?

Sexual Offences Act (2003) has a specific section on toilets. It’s already a crime to engage in sexual activity in a toilet the public, or a section of the public, have access to. Sexual activity is anything a reasonable person would consider to be sexual.

71Sexual activity in a public lavatory
F1(1)A person commits an offence if—
(a)he is in a lavatory to which the public or a section of the public has or is permitted to have access, whether on payment or otherwise,
(b)he intentionally engages in an activity, and,
(c)the activity is sexual.
(2)For the purposes of this section, an activity is sexual if a reasonable person would, in all the circumstances but regardless of any person’s purpose, consider it to be sexual.
(3)A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or both.

It will be interesting how this gets used in the future, especially when you see some of the photos or videos of men in women’s toilets that are put up on social media.

I read a few posts from the discussion and what strikes me is that medics, in beginning and continuing to treat dissatisfaction with sex by bending to that dissatisfaction, rather than trying to resolve it, they have created a monstrous situation which has created huge societal problems.

They have created a caste of people who no longer fit into the way society organizes itself and protects women. They did so as an experiment that has gone catastrophically wrong and now is going to take some major sorting out.

Take this comment from a FtM transitioner:

“Psychologically, I feel like a second class citizen. That I'm now viewed as a problem to society that needs to be solved, not a fully-functioning member, not entitled to assume I can simply exist in public life like a normal person can.”

Medics have taken a normal woman and created this situation for her. The individual is not “a problem to society that needs to be solved,” but the situation absolutely is. Presumably she blames society though and not her friends who pushed her and the medics who allowed her to change her body to the extent where she no longer feels comfortable in the space where she belongs, whether that is because she understands the discomfort she causes other women, or because it’s genuinely uncomfortable for her. I note that men in women’s spaces rarely, if ever, worry about how the women feel, which is ironic, in itself.

I’ve long thought medical transition will eventually go the way of lobotomy because I suspect it doesn’t actually resolve any of the problems the individual was experiencing, while creating a whole lot of different problems. However this is going to have to be resolved societally for the young people caught up in it.

Part of that might involve the kind of extensive psychiatric help that transitioning men used to receive, where they were counselled extensively on the limitations in transition and encouraged to understand that they could never become what they wanted to be. Another part will probably be in creating alternative spaces where possible, and promoting the expectation that those for whom those spaces have been created should use them, where they are genuinely uncomfortable using the sexed space available to them.

I can’t see a clear way forward at the moment, though hope that transitioning will be outlawed. The negligence cases in the US are beginning and that, I suspect, will eventually be what ends this appalling medical experiment that has caused so many problems.

I think this one is easy to address.

The presence of a male plumber/cleaner should always be signalled via a sign. That way, women who enter give their informed consent in doing so.

The problem arises when women enter into what they think is a female-specific space, only to find that men are in there. They have not consented to these men in their spaces.

Medics have taken a normal woman and created this situation for her. They have individual is not “a problem to society that needs to be solved,” but the situation absolutely is.

An awful lot of FtM girls are buying testosterone (an anabolic steroid) on the black market. Those claiming to be non-binary may take a bit of testosterone to make themselves look a bit more butch. It's reckoned that half a million men in the UK are abusing anabolic steroids even though possession without a prescription is illegal. The genie is out of the bottle so both girls & boys will continue to abuse anabolic steroids to change the way they look.

fullfact.org/health/steroids-bodybuilding-image-prevalence/

Yes that’s addressed in British Standards by putting out a sign etc. They also mention the advantage in matching the sex of the cleaners for both sex of toilets but obvious irl this can be difficult. There may not be many people who want to do the job, occasionally it can be dangerous and practically the same cleaners are going to do both sets.

I think it means that he believes the door he passes through defines his gender. So if he passes through the the door to unisex provision - in his terms the gender-neutral provision - his assumed gender is stripped and he is redefined as non-binary or agender.

I think it also means that he needs to re-engage with reality and develop some emotional resilience. It is not healthy for your sense of self to be entirely dependent upon what you believe others think of you.

I’m hearing David Walliams saying “I am a laydeee dontcha know” while doing his ‘laydee’ things.

Those sketches were very well observed - I have seen some perfect real life examples.

oh god no, but, over reach - the bounce back is always worse.

This is drug abuse.

We shouldn't be compelled to affirm drug abuse.