Split Gendered spaces, split from Drag Shows

[Emily Lake]

Do you seriously believe that cis-male criminals posing as transwomen are a sufficiently common occurrence as to warrant any action specific to that scenario, given that we already have plenty of protections in place to deal with violent and/or sexual assaults?

Holy crap. Are you completely ignorant of the huge numbers of male prisoners who have quite suddenly found that their "true selves" are women, and are asking to be transferred to women's prisons because they're "trans"?

FFS, YES. YES men with nefarious intent will absolutely claim they're trans so they can gain "legal" access to a victim pool that they have previously been unable to get to.

 

[Emily Lake]

Again and again we make the comparison to what used to happen to blacks--and again and again it's deflected, not addressed.

Is it too inconvenient a reality to actually address?

It's a STUPID analogy. It's an analogy that relies on people being too dumb to understand that WOMEN are not the ones in power who are hoarding power for themselves by trying to keep a subset of males from participating equally in society.

That's why it doesn't get "addressed", aside from the many responses which have told you exactly why your dumb analogy is irrelevant and inappropriate.

All you're doing is trying to emotionally manipulate people into treating women as unimportant and undeserving of safety, dignity, and rights.

 

[Emily Lake]

Again and again we make the comparison to what used to happen to blacks--and again and again it's deflected, not addressed.

Why would you make that comparison? It makes no sense. Do you think black women are all okay with naked guys in the locker room?

Black women are LESS accepting of male-bodied people in their female-only spaces, generally speaking. Black women have an even higher rate of sexual and domestic victimization at the hands of men that white women do.

 

[TomC]

Not all males are violent, but violent people are overwhelmingly male.

It's not even just the violence.

A man can make a woman feel uncomfortable and unsafe with no more than a leering look.
This is going to be very situational.
The same behavior in the produce department of a grocery store might feel flattering to the woman on a busy afternoon and make her seriously uncomfortable late in the evening when she has to get through a dark parking lot.
Much less in a restroom at the back of the store where she's alone with the guy.
Tom

 

[Emily Lake]

The problem is you are focusing on penises as an obvious symbol of the problem, never mind that you haven't presented any cases where there wasn't already an obvious problem before any penis made an appearance.

Bepenised sperminators are the perpetrators of over 99% of sexual offenses, and are the aggressors in over 95% of violent conflicts.

I think the penis is part and parcel of the problem. The problem is males as a group. Males have penises.

You trying to gaslight women into pretending that people with penises are actually the fucking victims, and that we should surrender our boundaries and our right to consent so that those people with penises can do whatever they want is absolute misogynistic bullshit.

 

[Emily Lake]

The fact is, some day a person claiming to be a trans woman is going to rape someone in a bathroom.

Hate to be the one to break it to you dude.
But Hannah Tubbs isn't the first or only trans woman convicted of sexually assaulting a female. IIRC, it was in the restroom at a Denny's restaurant.

Please note that they were male-presenting at the time of the offense. This says nothing about the safety of allowing female-presenting individuals into women's restrooms.

What makes a person claiming a trans identity "male presenting"?

 

[Emily Lake]

Loren, why is it so important to you that male-bodied people have access to naked women whenever they wish, and that women have no say in the matter?

It's the two edge cases that matter:

1) Transwomen.

2) Caregivers.

So... if a male-bodied person say out loud that they are trans, then women have no say in the matter?
How do we tell that they're actually trans, as opposed to just a man up to no good? What are the visual indicators of a transwoman that are always correct? What will prevent bad men from pretending to be trans, especially when being trans does not require any actual physical transition of any sort?

As for caregivers - you're just wrong. I have the absolute right to deny services from a male caregiver. If I'm actually unconscious, I get whoever is there, but I 100% can decline to allow a male gyno to examine me, I can deny a male nurse to do a transvaginal ultrasound on me. I absolutely have the right, were I disabled, to deny any male to assist me in bathing or clothing myself.

But here you are, taking that right away from me. All because you have decide that women aren't human enough to actually have human rights.

 

[Emily Lake]

But to be clear - my problem is very explicitly and specifically self-id. That's the problem. Because at that point, it's not a transwoman doing the assaulting... it's any man who feels like it, who knows he can get an easier time of it if he just says the magic phrase "I'm a transwoman". That's the problem.

Keep gatekeepers and clinical diagnoses, keep a requirement for training on how to behave around women and in women's spaces, and for fuck's sake, keep your dick covered... and I have no objections, no problems.

Please note that I have said that I'm fine with requiring either female ID or an obvious caregiver situation to permit penises in female spaces.

The problem is that it's not YOUR decision to make! Who do you think you are to decide that if YOU think it's okay, then WOMEN aren't allowed to say no?

I DO NOT CONSENT TO ALLOWING MALES INTO FEMALE SPACES, REGARDLESS OF HOW THEY IDENTIFY.

I reserve the right to make case by case exceptions, but I 100% oppose granting LEGAL RIGHT to any males to gain access to me or other vulnerable women against our fucking will and without our fucking consent.

 

[Emily Lake]

I will agree it makes it not quite so easy--but reality is inconvenient, simple rules rarely suffice to cover all cases.

Somehow I don't think you would be so happy if a police officer thumped a violent hypoglycemic patient and tossed him in a cell to die.

Yeah? So how about you go with the "inconvenient" solution of being accepting and accommodating of male-bodied people in male spaces, regardless of how they identify? Why don't YOU make the changes necessary to keep them safe, instead of pushing that burden off on women?

 

[Emily Lake]

We are trying to determine how trans-women can access an area they have a right to be in

I'm like 95% on board with you, but not with this. No male has a right to be in female-only spaces. How they identify to themselves in their subjective and unverifiable minds is of no account. They are still male, that cannot be changed. And no male has a *right* to be in female spaces. They might have *permission* from women in some cases, but not a *right*.

 

[Emily Lake]

Sure. And when NOT used, it leads to the continued oppression and mistreatment of 51% of the fucking population!

It isn't just the 51% of the population that are female.
I'm a guy, I don't much care who joins me in those places. But I care about and know about enough women to understand that they generally feel very differently about that.

Very very differently.
Tom

I appreciate your care, Tom. But when it comes to the meat of the statement I was responding to - discrimination and oppression - it is females who are directly discriminated against and oppressed.

 

[TomC]

As for caregivers - you're just wrong. I have the absolute right to deny services from a male caregiver.

I don't think that's what he's talking about.

He's talking about opposite sex caregivers in public, sex segregated, facilities like restrooms.

I used to volunteer at an agency that provides low cost medical equipment. The bulk of our clients were either elderly or recovering from surgery. A couple of guys told me stories about that issue. They're taking their wives around someplace when she really needs "to go" or something. The big problem wasn't the women in the restroom. They'd call out "Hey! My wife really has to go and I need to help her."

The problem those guys had was never the occupants of the women's restroom. When he came in with a woman in a wheelchair they would be nice, polite, and helpful. It was always the guy blushing and embarrassed at violating the social convention.
Tom

 

[Emily Lake]

Not all males are violent, but violent people are overwhelmingly male.

It's not even just the violence.

A man can make a woman feel uncomfortable and unsafe with no more than a leering look.
This is going to be very situational.
The same behavior in the produce department of a grocery store might feel flattering to the woman on a busy afternoon and make her seriously uncomfortable late in the evening when she has to get through a dark parking lot.
Much less in a restroom at the back of the store where she's alone with the guy.
Tom

To a degree, sure. But realistically, leering and ogling a woman will make her feel uncomfortable no matter how many other people are around, and no matter how well lit. A brief appreciative glance and then minding your own damned business is no more of a concern at night than it is in a crowded store; a leering stare no less. The difference with night and day, empty and crowded... is only due to the fact that when there are other people around, women can generally expect that other people will provide a sentinel effect against malicious actions. It has nothing to do with whether or not the look given by the man is "acceptable" or not.

The same is true for men. If you're in a dark alley at night, most men are more on edge and more aware of potential threats from other people than if they were in the middle of a crowded grocery store at 3 PM. Not because other people are somehow more inherently threatening at night, not because it's a different type of person. It's because at 3 PM, all of the other shoppers serve as sentinels that prevent opportunistic predators from taking action.

 

[Emily Lake]

As for caregivers - you're just wrong. I have the absolute right to deny services from a male caregiver.

I don't think that's what he's talking about.

He's talking about opposite sex caregivers in public, sex segregated, facilities like restrooms.

I used to volunteer at an agency that provides low cost medical equipment. The bulk of our clients were either elderly or recovering from surgery. A couple of guys told me stories about that issue. They're taking their wives around someplace when she really needs "to go" or something. The big problem wasn't the women in the restroom. They'd call out "Hey! My wife really has to go and I need to help her."

The problem those guys had was never the occupants of the women's restroom. When he came in with a woman in a wheelchair they would be nice, polite, and helpful. It was always the guy blushing and embarrassed at violating the social convention.
Tom

You might note in your experiencecs, that those men asked permission, or at least gave notice and a good justification for their transgression of sex-separated spaces?

As opposed to Loren granting a blanket RIGHT to them.

That's what this keeps coming back around to. It's the aspect of granting a legal right to a group of males, in a way that deprives women of our rights, as well as depriving us of our consent and our boundaries.

As I've said before, and I will keep saying: The problem is not transgender people, the problem is self-declaration. The problem is the reduction of safeguarding and clinical guidance prior to issuing any male the legal right to trample women's rights.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

We are trying to determine how trans-women can access an area they have a right to be in, while respecting the concerns of women regarding safety from people that commit actions from the lewd to very violent.

Why do male women have "rights", while female women only have "concerns"?
Tom

Because the adults in the room have already accepted that women have a right to be the women's locker room.

 

[Emily Lake]

Hey Loren - if you want to make your terminally flawed analogy to black rights actually work... all you need to do is to retain race-based segregation, but then make an exception where any white person who self-identifies as black has the legal right to use the black-only spaces.

That is actually a reasonable parallel. But then it shows your analogy for the complete lunacy that it actually is.

 

[Emily Lake]

We are trying to determine how trans-women can access an area they have a right to be in, while respecting the concerns of women regarding safety from people that commit actions from the lewd to very violent.

Why do male women have "rights", while female women only have "concerns"?
Tom

Because the adults in the room have already accepted that women have a right to be the women's locker room.

Are you aware that in your prior post, you just blanket granted a *right* to males, and simultaneously downgraded the rights of women to be nothing more than concerns?

Women have a right to be in female-only spaces. Sure. But we also have the right to deny males the privilege of seeing us nude, and we have the right to deny males the privilege of exposing themselves to us, and we have the right to deny males entrance to our single-sex spaces.

I understand you're trying to be reasonable and supportive. But you're still giving away the rights of women, in favor of the feelings of males.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

We are trying to determine how trans-women can access an area they have a right to be in

I'm like 95% on board with you, but not with this. No male has a right to be in female-only spaces. How they identify to themselves in their subjective and unverifiable minds is of no account. They are still male, that cannot be changed. And no male has a *right* to be in female spaces. They might have *permission* from women in some cases, but not a *right*.

I get that. The trouble, your definition while in most cases is undeniable fact, we are talking about the few cases it is not, where it is gray, and muddled. And our understanding of what is and isn't gender extends past sexual organs. I get you don't want to go there, for whatever reason. But it seems undeniable that despite the organs trans people have, their gender (not merely how they "identify") is different from the organs. The only way for this to be true is that gender is a lot more neurological than it is physical. In general, these align nicely, but not always.

 

[TomC]

Because the adults in the room have already accepted that women have a right to be the women's locker room.

In what way have people like Toni, me, or Emily accepted that?
I absolutely do not accept it.

On multiple levels, I don't accept that.
Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Because the adults in the room have already accepted that women have a right to be the women's locker room.

In what way have people like Toni, me, or Emily accepted that?

Whoa whoa, slow down there. I said adults.