Legal definition of woman is based on biological sex, UK supreme court rules

[Toni]

But barring males—or rather, continuing the bar of males in female only locker rooms WILL prevent almost all women from being raped in the women’s locker room.

I guess it might, if any such bar existed.

But it doesn't.

There are no bars, locks, swipe-cards, retina scans, etc., etc.

There is a sign that says "WOMEN" or "LADIES" or has a stylized sillhouette on it.

Exactly. 100% security theater.

In theory it would prevent a man from loitering in a women's room looking for targets--but in an environment where there would be a reasonable chance of that working there's also a good chance of being interrupted. And, remember, this is the US--the odds someone stumbling on it is armed is less than 1%, but that's an awful lot more than 0%. And restrooms rarely have more than one door--escape would mean running towards the person who stumbled on it. Said person is not going to be able to distinguish escape from attack.

In practice what happens now is the creep watches from outside.

This is effective in stopping rapists from entering, in exactly the same way that having the question: "Are you entering the USA for the purpose of committing a terrorist act?" on immigration applications is effective in preventing terrorists from entering the USA.

Actually, that question (and the Nazi and Communist ones) is useful. Of course it does nothing to catch terrorists, it's actual purpose is to make it very easy to throw them out if caught. Does the offense warrant deportation? Can be challenged. Proof they lied on the form is an open and shut case.

Seriously; If somebody wants to assault a woman in a bathroom, locker room, or change room, they need not put on a dress in order to do so. In fact, dressing up as a woman makes almost exactly zero difference to their ability to commit crimes against women in these locations.

I would think it would actually pose a slight hindrance. Guy dressed as guy--maybe they made a mistake. It happens, especially if someone is nearsighted and not wearing glasses. I have seen "obvious" signs I'm not sure my wife could read because they were mounted up high. Guy very poorly dressed as female--they know they are in the wrong room.

This here is the problem with banning transwomen from women's spaces "to protect women": Even if transwomen in women's spaces were an actual threat, such a ban would be completely ineffective in mitigating that threat.

The point I keep trying to make. Zero actual benefit, lots of clearly wrong reasons--reminds me an awful lot of justifying why <insert minority> doesn't belong doing <insert job>.

Wow. I am so very lucky to have men to explain to me that the fact that girls and women currently are able to perceive a male in a female only space might provide some advantage to them, from a pure survival pov is really just an illusion.

Women abd girls just need to accept our lot in life and allow whoever some man tells us is ok to be in the shower with us. No problem.

Thank you for explaining that.

 

[Arctish]

And why are you calling Semenya "he"? She's got a vagina.

Cite? I can find any number of medical sources saying guevedoces are born with "pseudovaginas" or "what appear to be vaginas", but none saying they have "vaginas". Perhaps your google-fu is better than mine.

Semenya is a guevedoce. That literally means "testicles at twelve".

Guevedoce means "penis at twelve". The testicles can remain underdeveloped and undescended.

According to wiktionary:

from Dominican Spanish güevos a los doce (“testicles at twelve”).​

(Actually "güevos” literally means "eggs", but it's common slang for testicles, rather like "balls" in English. Have you ever heard of Spanish-speakers using "güevos” to mean "penis"?)

Not that which part of male genitalia it refers to matters one way or the other -- the point is that on reaching puberty Semenya's genitalia became visibly male.

She calls herself a "different kind of woman". If you want to get rid of gendered pronouns, that's one thing. But if you're just being a dick, that's not cool.

Want it or not, English has gendered singular pronouns, and Semenya's gender is male, so using "he" is correct English.

Semenya has male sex traits. She also has female sex traits. Her gender is female.

What evidence is there that Semenya's gender is female?

Semenya's statements.

Sex is not the same thing as gender. In the past the terms were used as synonyms but even so, a sex role wasn't ever confused with a gender role during my mid-1950s to early-1970s childhood. Someone's sex was determined by their genetics and sex organs. Someone's gender was assumed to be the one that usually went with their sex (male-boy-man or female-girl-woman) but even my father's generation knew about "queers".

Whether you accept someone's word about their gender is your business. And whether you would accept into the Man Club someone with a vagina or vagina like opening where a man's scrotum is usually found, is also your business. I think most guys would give that a hard "no" but perhaps your ideas about men and the importance of man parts nowadays are more correct.

What grounds do you have for implying that telling the truth in correct English is being a dick and isn't cool?

It's not the truth. It's Emily Lake imposing her ideas about Semenya's gender on Semenya herself,

Emily Lake hasn't imposed anything on Semenya. She's expressed an opinion. Why on earth do you regard opinions as impositions? You claim Emily expressed an untruth -- is that you "imposing your ideas about Emily's accuracy on Emily herself"? (And at least Emily is here on iidb -- AFAIK Semenya isn't a member and is in no position to be affected by Emily's words.)

despite Semenya having stated her gender very clearly.

That sounds like an argument from authority. Can you offer us any reason we should accept Semenya as an authority?

No one knows the thoughts, feelings, self-image, and concepts in Semenya's head better than Semenya herself. If Semenya isn't an authority on her own gender, then no one is an authority on theirs, either.

Tell me something Bomb#20. If you asked 100 random guys if someone who has a vagina could ever be a man, and didn't reference DSDs or chromosomes, how many of them do you think would say "yes"?

You mean random Western guys? Probably about twenty-five. Ten of them would be left-wing gender ideologues who'd take it to be a question about self-id transmen, and another ten would be normal people taking it to be a question about female-to-male bottom surgery, and another five would think of DSDs on their own without prompting. If you mean random guys from all over the world, I have limited experience with how non-Westerners tend to think about subjects other than electrical engineering so I won't venture a statistical guess. But that wasn't really the kind of answer you were looking for, was it?

It was.

Your estimate is higher than I would have guessed, but I'm old. Perhaps you young 'uns talk about man parts and vaginas more than folks my age ever did. You did have the internet growing up. All we had was Playboy, Penthouse, and a few other "dirty" magazines.

Even so, by your estimate the guys who would say "no" outnumber the ones who would say "yes" 3-1. And if Semenya agrees with the majority that means she would not consider herself a man.

Your question appears to be based on some implicit unsupported assumptions. First, that what Semenya has is in fact a vagina. Second, that it's reasonable to ask a jury to reach a verdict after hearing only one litigant's witnesses. And third, that judging a territory based on a map is a reliable strategy. So let's turn it around. If you asked 100 random guys to examine 100 random adult guevedoces' genitalia and say whether they thought what was behind the person's penis was an actual vagina, how many of them do you think would say "yes"?

Before puberty? I think it would be near unanimous that the opening in the body between the legs was a vagina.

After puberty? I think there would be a lot of confusion, but I believe most would assume they were looking at a picture of what used to be called a hermaphrodite (assuming they had heard of such) or that the picture was a photoshop mash up of a genuine vagina and a pubescent boy's penis.

If you referenced DSDs and asked 100 random guys if someone who has a vagina and a penis and testes and a prostate and no ovaries and no fallopian tubes and no uterus and no cervix could ever be a man, how many of them do you think would say "yes"?

Again, I think there would be some confusion but I think nearly all would give a qualified "yes". If you asked if they would consider that person a man if they had their vaginal opening permanently sealed shut and the vaginal channel removed, then I think the answer would be a unanimous "yes". Once all the "lady parts" have been removed and the naturally developed penis and testicles aren't sharing space with a vagina, then IMO folks would feel a lot more confident about guessing the person in question could be a man.

And if you asked 100 random guys if Semenya is a man, and didn't reference DSDs or chromosomes or vaginas or penises or any conceptual map at all, and instead just asked them to examine Semenya's naked body (with Semenya's consent of course), how many of them do you think would say "yes"?

Impossible to guess without knowing how much Semenya's penis grew during puberty and if there was any enlargement of the scrotum around the vaginal opening (there wouldn't be if the testes remained underdeveloped and/or didn't descend), but I think it's unlikely more than 1 in 10 would be comfortable saying "yes" once they noticed Semanya has a vagina.

Who died and put the gender ideology subculture in charge of defining "dick" and "cool" for the whole Anglosphere? ... Is there some way you're an iota different from the Christians of my childhood? Do Emily and the other gender critical people here have some unscientific opinion of our own that you're volunteering to pretend to agree with for the sake of politely respecting our sensibilities? This "cool" non-"dick" lying you're advocating -- is it a one-way street? Is it a mission you'd send your troops on but wouldn't go on yourself?

What about Emily imposing her belief about Semenya's gender on everybody else, including Semenya?

Setting aside the language abuse involved in calling opinions "imposing", what makes her saying 'he" any more an imposition on everybody else than you saying "she"? Quite the reverse -- Emily didn't call you an uncool dick for saying "she". Looks to me like Emily's the one exhibiting the live-and-let-live attitude here. She uses the pronouns she wants to use; you use the pronouns you want to use; what's the problem? It's a free country. You're still sounding like the Christians of my childhood, telling me atheists shouldn't impose atheism on others while thinking it was perfectly hunky-dory for them to tell me to bow my head and say Our Father with them.

Bitch, please.*

Emily Lake posts in declarative statements all the time. She tells us what she thinks, which is fine, but she also tries to tell us what _to_ think, which can be inflammatory. And she can be very intolerant of people who disagree with her assessments. She has been deliberately calling Semenya "he" even though she knows Semenya was raised as a girl, accepted herself as a girl, and now lives as a woman.

Sure, Semenya isn't a typical woman. But she has a vagina, a body part that is widely considered to be the defining characteristic of a woman. And it's a body part that a lot of women have gotten a lot of belittling, demeaning shit about having for most, if not all, of our lives.

Emily Lake can think what she likes. She and I agree on a lot of things, and she has very good information on the biological aspects of sex and sexual development. But she's very rigid when it comes to gender, and I believe she's pretty conservative about gender norms.

Are you serious? Emily the "Agenderist"? Emily who expresses contempt for gender roles six ways to Sunday? Emily who named herself after a sci-fi character who violated every gender norm known to her Victorian background? That Emily Lake?

Yes, that Emily Lake.

The one who raged at me for mansplaining things because I disagreed with her until I let her know I'm a woman. Then it was okay for me to have an opinion, I guess.

That's fine for her to believe and advocate. But it's disrespectful and IMO pretty fracking arrogant to declare someone is mistaken about their own gender, especially when their self image conforms with social norms.

Yeah, and the Christians of my childhood figured it was pretty fracking arrogant to declare Jesus was mistaken about being the Son of God. I think it's pretty fracking arrogant to declare people are dicks because they won't accept an argument from authority. Do you have any substantive reason to think a person cannot be mistaken about his or her own gender?

You don't appear to understand why I used the word dick, or what behavior I was calling dickish.

Maybe in another post I will go over it. This one's long enough.

*see what I did there?

 

[Arctish]

Semenya has a vagina. For a lot of people, that is the defining trait of a woman - not her ovaries, not her uterus, not her breasts. It doesn't matter if she's had a radical hysterectomy and itty-bitty man titties. If she has a vagina, men will treat her as a woman.

Setting aside the question of whether what Semenya has is a vagina, you seem to be saying men will treat a person with a penis, testicles and a vagina as a woman. If so, that appears on its face to be an argument that men tend to be misogynistic jerks instead of an argument that having a vagina is the correct criterion for womanhood -- it sounds like those men are relying on the "women are failed men" definition of womanhood. What makes how "men will treat" someone the truth-maker here? Do women typically consider a person with a penis, testicles and a vagina to match the criteria for womanhood?

In any event, you seem to be stereotyping men as more simple-minded and closed to nuance than we are. English common law -- a legal system based on precedent and on trust in the common sense of common people -- has been making rulings on the sex of intersexed people for at least eight hundred years, and "Is there a vagina?" has never been the legal criterion. It was "Which sex predominates?". The opinions of men weren't given any special consideration; quite the reverse. Before such issues all got medicalized around 1750-1800, there used to be a special custom, the "Jury of Matrons", wherein the men running the legal system would explicitly defer to female judgment, for any questions of fact relating to femaleness where the all-male lawyers and judges felt they might be out of their depth.

You are conflating sex with gender. They are not the same thing.

"Is there a vagina?" is a question about sex. The question about what women typically consider a person with a penis, testicles and a vagina to be has a list of sex attributes but the embedded question is about gender.

My neighbor bringing his wife flowers after she gave birth to each of their first 6 children, all girls, and a fur coat after she gave birth to a boy was more about sexism in our society than anything else.

But it appears Emily Lake won't, even if Semenya makes it very clear that her gender is female and therefore, the correct pronoun in English to use to refer to her is "she".

What Semenya made clear was about gender identity, not about gender. Gender ideology equivocates between those constantly. Gender is a social construct. That means your gender is up to the collective, not up to you. People do not get their choice about what's the correct pronoun to use to refer to them.

Can you exhibit any language in the world where noun classes are based on personal choice and speakers are expected to learn and take into account the preferences of the referents of pronouns? For a language to work that way would defeat the entire point of having noun classes and pronouns in the first place -- languages evolve such features because they relieve the burden on memory.

I never studied languages, and I really don't know how noun classes are set in any of them. But I have read a bit about Native American cultures and how some of them recognized more than two different gender presentations, how some of them had specific words for "men who live as women", "women who live as men", etc. And I have read several articles about We'wha that attested to the fact that people who knew him/her used different pronouns for him/her, the choice of which reflected whether he/she was living as a man or a woman at that time.

Sometimes We'wha was a he and sometimes We'wha was a she. Apparently Caster Semenya is a she all of the time but not everyone acknowledges or respects that. Some people want her to be a he regardless of her thoughts about herself.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Seriously, men in this thread are absolutely discounting fears and concerns of women.

And they are right to do so.

People should discount fears and concerns, in the absence of evidence that those fears are based on actual threats.

Many fears are utterly irrational.

I feel the attitude here is almost to the level of mocking. Yes, there are natural born fears. Irrational fears (evolutionary) that are referred to as neuroses, that we generally need to learn to grow above.

A woman's alarm at a man in the woman's locker room isn't a neurosis and probably relates to actual trauma. Trauma that is far more common than people appreciate.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Setting aside the language abuse involved in calling opinions "imposing", what makes her saying 'he" any more an imposition on everybody else than you saying "she"? Quite the reverse -- Emily didn't call you an uncool dick for saying "she". Looks to me like Emily's the one exhibiting the live-and-let-live attitude here. She uses the pronouns she wants to use; you use the pronouns you want to use; what's the problem? It's a free country.

Yes, it is a free country. Is that the bar for decency though? For what is considered proper decorum? When you saw Roots, and Kunte is being whipped because he refuses to accept a third-party identity, were you thinking "it is a free country"? I doubt it. Is it okay, just as long as we don't torture the person?

Calling someone that truthfully feels like they are the alternate gender, their birth gender is presumptuous and really... nothing short of rude. Sure, it is a "free country", but unless someone has a particular insight into how someone else thinks, going with the original birth gender is nothing short of judgmental.

Yeah, and the Christians of my childhood figured it was pretty fracking arrogant to declare Jesus was mistaken about being the Son of God. I think it's pretty fracking arrogant to declare people are dicks because they won't accept an argument from authority. Do you have any substantive reason to think a person cannot be mistaken about his or her own gender?

I think that person is most likely in the best position to judge on that, not an independent third person. They can be mistaken or wrong or confused, but they'll know a lot more about how they reached this point than some third party who refuses to take how they identify with any sense of seriousness.

 

[Toni]

Seriously, men in this thread are absolutely discounting fears and concerns of women.

And they are right to do so.

People should discount fears and concerns, in the absence of evidence that those fears are based on actual threats.

Many fears are utterly irrational.

I feel the attitude here is almost to the level of mocking. Yes, there are natural born fears. Irrational fears (evolutionary) that are referred to as neuroses, that we generally need to learn to grow above.

A woman's alarm at a man in the woman's locker room isn't a neurosis and probably relates to actual trauma. Trauma that is far more common than people appreciate.

Rape and the threat of rape are very useful tools to control women.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Seriously, men in this thread are absolutely discounting fears and concerns of women.

And they are right to do so.

People should discount fears and concerns, in the absence of evidence that those fears are based on actual threats.

Many fears are utterly irrational.

I feel the attitude here is almost to the level of mocking. Yes, there are natural born fears. Irrational fears (evolutionary) that are referred to as neuroses, that we generally need to learn to grow above.

A woman's alarm at a man in the woman's locker room isn't a neurosis and probably relates to actual trauma. Trauma that is far more common than people appreciate.

Rape and the threat of rape are very useful tools to control women.

True, but I doubt bilby falls into that category. I think what we have here is a failure to communicate, with many positions from differing agendas or motives.

• transgenderism is a choice, so who cares about what they "want"
• perfect world, black and white view on morality and that people who honestly feel of a certain gender naturally have a right to such privileges of said gender
• need to balance the rights of cis-women and transgenders
• privileges for cis-women are in a lock box and no one else should have access

Some people may even come out on the same generalized position, but for different reasons.

 

[Jarhyn]

As a child, about 9 or 10, I had an experience that has stuck with me in a really visceral way. This would have been in the eighties. I was with my bio-dad for the summer, and one of his friends was hanging out. He had on extremely short shorts, the kind that were a bit loose around the thighs, late 70s to early 80s style running shorts. I was sitting on the floor playing with my 1-year old brother, and this guy was sitting across from me with his legs spread, and his penis visible. He kept looking at me and bobbing his penis. This guy was getting sexually aroused from showing his penis to me as a very young child.

I wasn't raised to think that nudity was shameful. Up until about 5, I would take group showers after being at the beach with my parents. We weren't nudists, but I was raised to think that nudity was natural and nothing to be ashamed of, but also to be respectful because nudity isn't always appropriate.

But you aren't describing a situation where nudity is the problem. Rather, sexual actions directed at a child. Very, very wrong.

Even though I didn't, and still don't think that nudity is shameful, I do think that nudity can present a risk... and that risk is greater for women than it is for men. That experience was intensely creepy at the time, even though I didn't completely understand why it was so creepy and intimidating. It's stuck with me my entire life.

Does that qualify as a "thing-breaking-edge-case" for you when it comes to views on whether or not mixed-sex nudity in some limited situations is a bad idea?

You're blaming nudity when that's not the cause.

Not to mention that a LOT of women direct sexual actions at children.

I mean shit, Emily seems to think I don't care about women when I find TransTifa or whatever her shit ass name is to be a sex offender, except that I also find every woman who ever flashed a gay kid a sex offender, too.

I think the biggest threat of mixed sex nudity to some of the most loud objectors is the confrontation with the fact that their world view about what they find "essential" to certain "sex features" is not so essential to those features, and that the essence is more complicated.

Having to explain this to a kid might (gasp!) allow that kid to question whether they need to reproduce at all, and for some reason people think that's a bad thing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You don't seem to be paying attention to what Emily writes -- you're arguing against some clueless Republican legislature, not against her. Of course she cares if a transman ends up dead; what she does not seem to care about is if a transman uses a men's room. Haven't you noticed that all her posts are about men in the women's room, not about women in the men's room? You're the only one talking about that. Well, you and those clueless Republican legislatures, who all seem to have bought into the dumbass notion that if we have single-sex spaces for women then it means we also have to have single-sex spaces for men. ...

So what do you propose for male-presenting female-anatomy people?

It's not about me; you need to stop misrepresenting Emily. But I laid out my proposal in post #2421. Male-presenting female-anatomy people should use the all-gender room if they're male-presenting on purpose; otherwise they get their choice. And if there is no all-gender room, chisel the "Men" sign off the men's room door and put up an "All Genders" sign.

And this has already been addressed. You just outed every trans person. Some will get killed because of this.

And this doesn't treat men and women the same, either. Dump them all in the men's is not a fair solution.

If you let them into the women's you make it effectively impossible to keep actual males out.

Why do you believe that? We spent the whole 20th century letting them into the women's while effectively keeping actual males out. Social convention worked almost all the time. Sure, it could be awkward for people like your SIL, who might need to mutter something about glandular conditions and/or produce an ID. But that was better than the current situation -- leftist ideologues insisting non-ops have a right to be considered female without even a psychiatrist's sign-off and getting support from spineless DMVs, thereby causing the public at large to no longer have a reason to believe an "F" on a driver's license is truthful.

Pay attention! The issue is if people use the bathroom of their anatomy you get male-presenting people in the women's. And thus you have a very hard time screening out actual males.

And do you realize how expensive that psychiatrist sign-off is?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When I was a kid it was generally taken for granted by social convention that everyone was a Christian. Anyone who had doubts about the correctness of Christianity was expected to keep quiet about them and pay lip service to the common "universally" shared belief. Anyone who failed to play his assigned role in that consensus-theater was considered not cool and just being a dick, by the Christians. This social convention of keeping our views to ourselves was of course asymmetrical -- Christians were counted cool and undickish when they made a public show of their opinions. Is there some way you're an iota different from the Christians of my childhood? Do Emily and the other gender critical people here have some unscientific opinion of our own that you're volunteering to pretend to agree with for the sake of politely respecting our sensibilities? This "cool" non-"dick" lying you're advocating -- is it a one-way street? Is it a mission you'd send your troops on but wouldn't go on yourself?

The problem here is that you're the Christian, not her.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Seriously, though, why would we think something with as many clear morphological "sliders" as the human body clearly has, would lack for "sliders" in the brain, or that important parts that vary would only vary in one dimension and all at the same time?

That's just silly, and would prevent mutations from surprising everyone.

While I agree with what you're saying you missed my point--I was saying she nailed it in they react as if non-standard is defective.

Ah, you're referencing the issue of forced normativity, of calling conditions "disorders" and villifying people through this purity impulse.

Yes, that's how people react to seeing what they do not understand.

It's not just don't understand.

It is of value to the group for such behavior to exist. That does not mean the individuals benefit. Religious groups attacking anyone not of the faith benefits the religion, it doesn't benefit the people in the religion.

And religions need bogeymen to protect people from in order to do "good". Benefit to the religion, not to the adherents.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But we have solid evidence for harm caused by having to use the bathroom that doesn't match your presentation.

What evidence is this? Where can it be found?

It was presented in this thread. Exactly as we expected--male-presenting individuals using the women's causes arrests and violence.

Sounds like you're talking about Strobel. And you're the guy who wrote:

"Except I see repeated references to very low quality evidence, no unquestionable cases.​

And reality has taught me that a sea of low quality data almost always means false."​

Strobel is low quality evidence if ever there was any. She isn't even what you're claiming her as an example of, "having to use the bathroom that doesn't match your presentation". She didn't have to use the women's room; that was her choice. What's worse, there's no indication that what happened to her was because of her male presentation. Before she went into the women's room she went into the men's room, and then she identified herself to the bar staff as a man. It's entirely likely that if she hadn't done those things and had just gone into the women's room in the first place, nothing bad would have happened to her. Strobel gave the bar owner every reason to think the "F" on her license was a lie; that's on her.

The problem was she didn't want to be visible in the men's room with a vagina. I don't blame her.

And the fact that the ID said "F" should have settled it. It went way too far.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The question is how. I don’t know the answer but having men tell girls and women to just get over it—when what women and girls are afraid of is violence at the hands of men! is more than a little rich.

The problem is that fear is not the same thing as risk.

We see no good evidence of actual risk.

We see the whole issue blowing up when the reich wing wanted a bogeyman. Previously it was working fine.

We see repeated objections based on things that aren't actually risks.

All in all it looks very much like the attempts to keep the colored out of the white bathrooms.

The problem is that if it isn’t a safety concern for you, you believe it does not exist.

I'm not saying the safety concern does not exist. I'm saying that your approach is not providing you any actual protection.

 

[Toni]

The question is how. I don’t know the answer but having men tell girls and women to just get over it—when what women and girls are afraid of is violence at the hands of men! is more than a little rich.

The problem is that fear is not the same thing as risk.

We see no good evidence of actual risk.

We see the whole issue blowing up when the reich wing wanted a bogeyman. Previously it was working fine.

We see repeated objections based on things that aren't actually risks.

All in all it looks very much like the attempts to keep the colored out of the white bathrooms.

The problem is that if it isn’t a safety concern for you, you believe it does not exist.

I'm not saying the safety concern does not exist. I'm saying that your approach is not providing you any actual protection.

Do you think that victims of sexual assault deserve any protection from unnecessary PTSD at times when they are most vulnerable?

 

[Toni]

The question is how. I don’t know the answer but having men tell girls and women to just get over it—when what women and girls are afraid of is violence at the hands of men! is more than a little rich.

The problem is that fear is not the same thing as risk.

We see no good evidence of actual risk.

We see the whole issue blowing up when the reich wing wanted a bogeyman. Previously it was working fine.

We see repeated objections based on things that aren't actually risks.

All in all it looks very much like the attempts to keep the colored out of the white bathrooms.

The problem is that if it isn’t a safety concern for you, you believe it does not exist.

I'm not saying the safety concern does not exist. I'm saying that your approach is not providing you any actual protection.

I’m not sure what you mean by ‘my approach.’ I haven’t actually proposed an approach.

Being confronted unexpectedly by a strange penis in a woman’s locker room is a valid safety concern. Both for cis females but also for trans women.

PTSD is result of trauma and can trigger a variety of responses, including panic attacks, but also outbursts of violence. A trans woman might be physically attacked or someone not understanding the situation might call for help which again, could lead to violence against a trans woman or arrest or just a lot of humiliation.

I’ve written this multiple times but certainly this is not something I want for anyone. I have absolutely not one thing against trans people. I want them to be able to live their best lives, just like anybody else.

It is extremely unlikely that a trans woman would do anything to harm another woman in a woman only space. It is also not terribly likely that a non-trans person would fein being trans in order to gain access to preferred victims in a vulnerable position but this is not unknown. Such instances have been mentioned in this thread.

No one deserves to be raped or sexually assaulted and no one deserves to have to live in fear of such assaults. No one.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yes, there is merit to the social sciences. But they are full of untestable stuff that has no business being called science. Real science needs either high precision observations or a whole lot of observations, and the social sciences have a very hard time actually doing this.

Funny story about that...

We aren't going to properly and humanely settle this issue without making two things clear, transgender people exist, transgender people are human beings. Once we can accept that as a culture, we can then provide them the medical support they need to be able to help determine and accept who they really are. Once we get there, we can cut this noise about danger because ultimately, the fear is caused by one simple thing, doubting who these people say they are.

The objective is to remove them from society.

That is an untestable sociological claim. You keep saying stuff like that, and it appears that your purpose is to tar reasonable arguments with guilt-by-association, as if it were up to you to pick among all the objectives of all the widely varying people you disagree with and issue a ruling on which of those objectives is "the" objective. You are effectively making an ad hominem argument. Ad hominem arguments are fallacies.

I won't claim it's a scientific conclusion.

But look at Project 2025. Presenting as trans = pornography. If a minor sees you that's showing pornography to a minor, which is already illegal.

Why in the world should I think they don't intend to implement Project 2025?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This is made worse by the fact that *some* people who assert to be transwomen are doing so as a means of feeding a paraphilia using women as live action props in their sexual role play. Even if it's not many, they do exist, and that's a problem.

There are a lot more lesbians than trans.

I’m not certain what point you think you are making.

It's much more likely you'll play a role in some lesbian's sexual object than some trans person's sexual object.

 

[TomC]

The problem was she didn't want to be visible in the men's room with a vagina. I don't blame her.

And the fact that the ID said "F" should have settled it. It went way too far.

All I know about that is what posters quoted from the story. But that's not what it sounded like to me.
An FtM was in a dive bar. He wanted to pee. The men's room had no functional commode. I've never heard of a men's room with no commode at all, I'm pretty confident that the commode was out of order, possibly stopped up. More likely it had been puked all over, that's been my experience in my long and checkered past.
Strobel was drunk, forced to use a restroom he didn't want to, got belligerent enough for the staff to call the cops. That's not the same as being arrested for being trans.
Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I think the biggest threat of mixed sex nudity to some of the most loud objectors is the confrontation with the fact that their world view about what they find "essential" to certain "sex features" is not so essential to those features, and that the essence is more complicated.

You say it is complicated, but you don't seem to be giving how Toni suggests that it is complicated much more than a hand wave, not even a glance.

You are being told by women this is going to be problematic and the response by you and some others is that it isn't a risk with legit trans females so that is that. Are the feelings of women negligible in this conversation, especially those who have been sexually traumatized?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This is made worse by the fact that *some* people who assert to be transwomen are doing so as a means of feeding a paraphilia using women as live action props in their sexual role play. Even if it's not many, they do exist, and that's a problem.

There are a lot more lesbians than trans.

I’m not certain what point you think you are making.

It's much more likely you'll play a role in some lesbian's sexual object than some trans person's sexual object.

And I wish women's rights were argued less by Emily Lakes and more by SoHys, Tonis, etc... This is nothing but a distraction.

Whether a trans person is legit or not isn't nearly as relevant here as how women react in a particular space reserved for women respond or react to what up to now would have obviously been a lewd violation. Women are saying they won't feel safe or those they know won't feel safe. This is countered by noting previous acts of discrimination with blacks, but the difference here is that we are discussing trauma victims, not racism.