Split Trans Issues, Split from Roe v Wade is on deck

[Toni]

What do you think happens to trans women in men's bathrooms?

Hear me out on this, Poli.

Transwomen are males. Generally speaking, males are bigger and stronger than females - and that holds true irrespective of whatever gender identity any given male may or may not have. A male with a transgender identity, who thinks of themselves as a woman in a subjective internal way, remains a male - and their thoughts do not in any way reduce the physical advantages that they have as males.

If a male is attacked by another male... there's a reasonable chance that by fighting back they can avoid being seriously injured or raped.

If a male is attacked by a female, there's an extremely high chance that they can fight her off - even if she identifies as a man, she's still a female human being, and a male human being will pound for pound and inch for inch be able to overpower her.

If a female is attacked by a male, there's a much much lower chance that she can fight him off. Because pound for pound and inch for inch, males are bigger, stronger, and faster than females. Even if he identifies as a woman, he's still a male.

So if a transwoman is attacked by another male in a male single-sex space, that transwoman has a pretty decent chance to defend themself from their attacker. But if a female woman is attacked by a transwoman in a female single-sex space... that's a female being attacked by a male, and it's highly likely she's fucked - literally and figuratively.

I'm just over 5 ft and in my youth, under 100 lbs. I would beg to differ about a woman's ability to fight off a male attacker. Sure, usually the male is larger and stronger and often will win. I've successfully fought off someone a foot taller and twice my weight who was not fat but extremely fit. It helped that he did not expect resistance, true. Not as much as the fact that I was absolutely determined.

While often men will win in a physical fight against women, not always. Women are not helpless creatures.

 

[Emily Lake]

Which is exactly what makes being a trans woman so uniquely dangerous. They are very few in number, so cis women don't see trans women's issues as their issues, even though the exact same men prey on all women. They are on the receiving end of all of society's hatred for women, without any guarantee of female solidarity to create any sense of community or safety.

The issues that transwomen face AREN'T the same issues that female women face. Male women are NOT subjected to the same rates of sexual violence, nor are they as physically vulnerable. In fact, transwomen have nearly the same offending rate as other males do.

Transwomen do not face stigma and ridicule for having periods. They don't have to deal with asshole boys making fun of the blood stains on their pants when they leak. They don't have to work through the pain of periods, especially the pain caused by endometriosis or fibroids or PCOS. They don't have to worry about pregnancy and abortion. They don't have to face being sexualized by pervy old men from the age of 12 onward. They aren't faced with the reality that nearly any male can physically overpower them.

Transwomen have all of the physical advantages of other males. The vast majority of them also have they experiential advantages and privileges of having grown up male in a male-focused world. The vast majority have built careers as men, with all of the privileges of men, before they found their true inner self in middle age.

And at any point, the vast majority of transwomen (around 90% of whom are physically intact) can simply stop taking cross-sex hormones and go right back to enjoying all the benefits of being a man in a man's world.

That's not an option available to actual female human beings.

 

[Politesse]

I still don't see how attacking trans women for things they didn't do is supposed to teach cis men who do bad things moral accountability. Do you also believe in shooting horses while they are eating grass, to teach wolves what happens when you steal chickens? Connect the dots for me. What man has ever learned an important moral lesson from passing an anti-trans policy? If anything, it just gives them more power and less accountability, since men usually get to enforce those laws, many of which require invading a woman's privacy to enforce. If the law says "arrest little girls for peeing in what you think is the wrong room", the arresting officer not only has the opportunity but the duty to terrify a little girl asking her questions about what she did in the bathroom.

Who the fuck in this thread is attacking trans women? Who is advocating for attacking trans women?

Are you seriously trying to pretend that the anti-trans lobby is not one of the most powerful and active forces in contemporary American politics?

How is that a relevant response to Toni’s question about who in this thread?

Because the thread isn't occurring in a vaccuum. We live in a time when women, both trans and cis, are under serious assault by an increasingly authoritarian government that does not have any woman's best interests at heart. That's the problem. Not someone on the internet getting their feelings hurt because they think "trans rights are human rights" is a personal attack on them.

 

[Emily Lake]

I've had my genitals and butt groped against my consent a couple times.

"Why can't women..." Why can't anyone ?!?

Its far from a woman problem.

Which is what I have repeatedly been told is ‘too expensive.’

The difference is that I don't think it's too expensive. In fact, I really really want to see people forced to actually handle that expense. I WANT the economic turmoil involved. I want to see construction and inconvenience for every last damn asshole who shirked doing it for so fucking long.

I want to see piles of money thrown at achool districts with the only caveat that they use the money to update bathroom and shower facilities for privacy.

I want to see small businesses given grants for updating the buildings they own, or given tools to pay rent to escrow in lieu of their landlord fixing their shit.

I don't think it's too expensive. I will fully employ the violence of the state to make it happen.

But I guarantee you "expense" here is what is going to get people crying bloody murder over how all of the above will inconvenience them.

And to whom it may concern on the use of violence:

And I'll note, I don't think I would feel safe as a woman in a women's locker room. But it's not rape I would fear but social injury every time I showed my body in front of women who might be socially violent individuals.

And as to violent response for social attacks... This is 100% how our society is supposed to handle it according to our laws. But understanding how violence is the response to such attacks and how such attacks are violence requires actually understanding violence in an abstract way.

The thing is... Women are violent and violence can as easily be inflicted socially or "indirectly" as it can physical ones. Instead of causing someone to bleed blood, they bleed money or career or friendship, but it's still fuckibg bleeding them.

This is why the response to a verified social assault is a visit from someone just as armed with a fucking gun and badge with the right and strength to haul you down, shove you into handcuffs, and drag your ass into a cage.

I have sent these at people before, and will probably do so again.

The last time someone was so much as unrelentingly rude to me, I saw him physically dragged away, out of a vehicle, and onto the sidewalk.

Do you think that wasn't violent?

I just also think that violence should only be marginally more violent than it absolutely needs to be to be effective.

Do I need to reference another time where the intended violence was much greater to demonstrate how it always comes down to an attempt at violence, however indirect?

All slander is an attempt to get someone else to do violence of some kind and is itself attempted violence.

The response to that... Is more violence that is allowed and let happen without further response in the execution of behavioral modification attempts - which are also violent attempts to kill someone, not into a corpse but into a similar but different-in-one-way person.

Might makes right, and you reserve the right to beat the fuck out of people who don't do what you want them to do. Sounds rather tyrannical and authoritarian.

 

[Politesse]

I pay as little attention to the GOP as humanly possible.

Then you lack any meaningful sense of moral accountability whatsoever, and no one should take any of your poltical opinions seriously. I can see how a ruling parties' policies and agendas could be right. I can see how they could be wrong. But I do not see how they could be unimportant. People are dying.

 

[Emily Lake]

That doesn’t mean that any of those people did not abhor sexual violence. They just did not want to or know how to deal with the actual fact that it involved a family member/someone they knew and not a big scary black stranger.

Like... the media portrayal of trans women in bathrooms. A terrifying, hulking rapist in a bad muumuu, leering at the passersby.

Which is why I see anti-trans hysteria as the opposite of protecting women. It's making a scapegoat of innocent, scared teenage girls, while actual rapists seldom face serious consequences.

And now every woman who is large, hairy, or wears a mumu will now feel less safe going to the bathroom.

Its almost like these "women" who back such efforts are really just judgemental assholes encouraging stochastic violence against insufficiently "feminine" women.

Alternatively, they're female human beings who understand that male human beings are not female human beings, and they don't want males in female intimate spaces.

 

[Emily Lake]

You shouldn't have to differentiate between folks who are "safe" or not.

I agree. That's why I think that ALL MALES should be excluded from female intimate spaces, sports, and prisons. Because we shouldn't be expected to try to read the mind of a strange male who is in our single-sex spaces.

If they actually really pass, then nobody is going to take note at all. But pro-tip: as soon as they show their dick, they no loger pass.

 

[Emily Lake]

But we’ve been told that trans people eschew unisex bathrooms because it ‘outs’ them.

Hence the pivot.

In some respects, labeling them as anti-rape bathrooms specifically alleviates the problem: now, instead of the "trans" person using the unisex bathroom to avoid being outed, she can use it to avoid "being raped".

Or maybe, just maybe, the people terrified of penises for whatever reason could deign to use those rooms instead.

If there's always an alternative to what you fear, you have no excuse for the fear doing more than pushing you to the alternative.

Then there's also no excuse for transwomen to demand access to female facilities out of fear either.

 

[Emily Lake]

Why is it the responsibility of women to ignore our fears? Which are well founded?

Adults are responsible for both their safety and for their actions. No one should be specially condemned nor get some special pass on account of their gender.

I agree. No males should get special passes to female spaces on account of their self-declared gender.

 

[Emily Lake]

Why is it not the responsibility of men to quit attacking others?

It absolutely is. I support the illegalization of sexual assault 100%, no exceptions. But a girl using a restroom stall is not committing sexual assault, just because she is trans.

Translate that to reality: A boy who thinks of himself as a girl in a subjective fashion is not necessarily committing sexual assault just because he is using a female restroom.

On the other hand... changing policies and norms to allow boys who say they're girls on the inside access to female facilities also allows ALL BOYS to use them, so long as they say the magic words. So let's just set aside physical sexual assault for a moment, and why don't you challenge your mind and think about voyeurism, exhibitionism, hidden cameras and videos loaded to porn sites, and just general creepiness.

And just so we're being clear here... transwomen and transgirls HAVE attacked actual women and girls in female restrooms.

https://le.utah.gov/interim/2024/pdf/00000308.pdf

 

[Emily Lake]

If you are looking to me to find a solution, I’ve offered the best I can

The only solution you've offered is your desire for more single use, sex-neutral stalls. I agreed that those are a good idea. They do not solve the problem of either anti-trans persecution or rape. Partly because very few parties are actually building such stalls, partly because shared bathrooms and stalls don't increase the likelihood of rape, and partly because while that inaction is happening, explicitly anti-trans rhetoric, policy, and laws grow crueler and more widespread by the day, and these do increase the likelihood of sexal assault. Saying, "your problems aren't my problems, but I would support a half-measure to solve them if someone else were proposing it" is a position that puts you squarely in line with pretty much all moderate Democrats today, very much the dominant position in the so called liberal states. How's it working out so far? Do you feel safe now, as a woman?

Women aren't human shields to protect males from other males.

 

[laughing dog]

I still don't see how attacking trans women for things they didn't do is supposed to teach cis men who do bad things moral accountability. Do you also believe in shooting horses while they are eating grass, to teach wolves what happens when you steal chickens? Connect the dots for me. What man has ever learned an important moral lesson from passing an anti-trans policy? If anything, it just gives them more power and less accountability, since men usually get to enforce those laws, many of which require invading a woman's privacy to enforce. If the law says "arrest little girls for peeing in what you think is the wrong room", the arresting officer not only has the opportunity but the duty to terrify a little girl asking her questions about what she did in the bathroom.

Who the fuck in this thread is attacking trans women? Who is advocating for attacking trans women?

Are you seriously trying to pretend that the anti-trans lobby is not one of the most powerful and active forces in contemporary American politics?

How is that a relevant response to Toni’s question about who in this thread?

Because the thread isn't occurring in a vaccuum. We live in a time when women, both trans and cis, are under serious assault by an increasingly authoritarian government that does not have any woman's best interests at heart. That's the problem. Not someone on the internet getting their feelings hurt because they think "trans rights are human rights" is a personal attack on them.

I see. Your post was therapeutic in nature, not informative.

 

[Emily Lake]

I have never suggested that trans women and girls do not belong in women only spaces.

I do.

You and I disagree on this, but not because I have any desire for trans people to be harmed. We disagree because I've been having this argument longer than you, and I've both witnessed and seen the documentation of the most abhorrent ways that women and girls are treated by males who claim to be women. There have been several cases of transgirls or transwomen sexually assaulting female women in bathrooms. There have been several cases of fully intact males who identify as transwomen exposing their dicks to women and girls who didn't consent to it. And repeatedly, the law has come down on the side of the males, protecting their feelings above the safety and dignity of women.

I started out much, much more willing to compromise and to try to dfind a reasonable accommodation. But every attempt was rejected. The only solution that transwomen and their allies will accept is the complete capitulation and submission of women. The only thing they'll accept is for every woman to pretend that they're just as much a female human being as we are, and that we can never ever tell the difference.

And the sheer vitriol, hatred, threats of rape and death aimed at women by transwomen is astonishing. It's frightening, and it's an entirely male behavior. Identifying as a transwoman doesn't make a male any less of a male, and it sure as hell doesn't alter their male aggression and threatening behavior.

So I'm done. I started out from a place of compassion and a desire to find some reasonable solution. But no more. There is no solution protects women from increased risk. And we already have more than enough risk. It's on men to find a way to be more accepting of gender non-conforming males.

It's not our problem to solve. We have enough on our plates already.

 

[Emily Lake]

Why is it not the responsibility of men to quit attacking others?

It absolutely is. I support the illegalization of sexual assault 100%, no exceptions. But a girl using a restroom stall is not committing sexual assault, just because she is trans.

No one here has said she is or that she should not be using a girls restroom/changing area.

I do.

You didn't say that, and Poli's response to you is unwarranted.

But I absolutely say that a boy that identifies as a girl has no business being in a girl's restroom or changing area. Their internal identity does not make them any less of a male.

 

[Emily Lake]

I know that women’s feelings and needs do not matter to men. That is exactly why some women want to have women’s only spaces

So you would define yourself as a feminist, but a trans-exclusionary feminist perhaps?

I define myself as a male-exclusionary female when it comes to intimate spaces, services, and sports.

 

[Emily Lake]

I still don't see how attacking trans women for things they didn't do is supposed to teach cis men who do bad things moral accountability. Do you also believe in shooting horses while they are eating grass, to teach wolves what happens when you steal chickens?

Lol, as opposed to arguing that we should let the wolves that identify as horses hang out with the chickens because that wolf over there that looks just like any other wolf as far as the chickens are concerned is totally safe - just trust the wolf, after all the wolf told you it was a chicken!

This fox got attacked by other foxes, so you want to house him with the chickens. You don't give a fuck what the impact on the chickens is - all you care about is that the fox is protected from other foxes.

Connect the dots for me. What man has ever learned an important moral lesson from passing an anti-trans policy? If anything, it just gives them more power and less accountability, since men usually get to enforce those laws, many of which require invading a woman's privacy to enforce. If the law says "arrest little girls for peeing in what you think is the wrong room", the arresting officer not only has the opportunity but the duty to terrify a little girl asking her questions about what she did in the bathroom.

And your alternative is for girls to just suck it up and let any man who wants to be there share the same space that she's changing in, and if he shows off his dick, well, don't worry - it's a lady-dick, it's totally safe and that girl is a bigot if she objects!

 

[Toni]

I still don't see how attacking trans women for things they didn't do is supposed to teach cis men who do bad things moral accountability. Do you also believe in shooting horses while they are eating grass, to teach wolves what happens when you steal chickens? Connect the dots for me. What man has ever learned an important moral lesson from passing an anti-trans policy? If anything, it just gives them more power and less accountability, since men usually get to enforce those laws, many of which require invading a woman's privacy to enforce. If the law says "arrest little girls for peeing in what you think is the wrong room", the arresting officer not only has the opportunity but the duty to terrify a little girl asking her questions about what she did in the bathroom.

Who the fuck in this thread is attacking trans women? Who is advocating for attacking trans women?

Are you seriously trying to pretend that the anti-trans lobby is not one of the most powerful and active forces in contemporary American politics?

How is that a relevant response to Toni’s question about who in this thread?

Because the thread isn't occurring in a vaccuum. We live in a time when women, both trans and cis, are under serious assault by an increasingly authoritarian government that does not have any woman's best interests at heart. That's the problem. Not someone on the internet getting their feelings hurt because they think "trans rights are human rights" is a personal attack on them.

Who on earth is that saying that trans rights are human rights is a personal attack on them?

Previously you stated that anti-trans lobby is one of the most powerful and active forces in contemporary American politics.

I think that anti-woman lobby is one of the most powerful and pervasive and active forces in contemporary American politics. Which, btw, anti-trans lobby is a small subset of. It's just the one that personally bothers you the most and you've decided to take that out on me.

Cool then.

 

[Emily Lake]

There was a place/space until a few years ago.

When was that place ever peotected by authoritarian laws that give the state sole discretion in defining who is or isn't a woman? A general location and date range will do.

We didn't used to NEED a law.

Then some authoritarians came along and made laws that gave males the special privilege of violating female boundaries solely based on their declaration of internal gendery feelings.

All I want to do is clawback the laws that overrode women's rights, dignity, and safety in favor of affirming the beliefs of males who think their affinity with regressive sex-based stereotypes entitles them to show their dicks off to women who don't wish to see them.

 

[Toni]

I have never suggested that trans women and girls do not belong in women only spaces.

I do.

You and I disagree on this, but not because I have any desire for trans people to be harmed. We disagree because I've been having this argument longer than you, and I've both witnessed and seen the documentation of the most abhorrent ways that women and girls are treated by males who claim to be women. There have been several cases of transgirls or transwomen sexually assaulting female women in bathrooms. There have been several cases of fully intact males who identify as transwomen exposing their dicks to women and girls who didn't consent to it. And repeatedly, the law has come down on the side of the males, protecting their feelings above the safety and dignity of women.

I started out much, much more willing to compromise and to try to dfind a reasonable accommodation. But every attempt was rejected. The only solution that transwomen and their allies will accept is the complete capitulation and submission of women. The only thing they'll accept is for every woman to pretend that they're just as much a female human being as we are, and that we can never ever tell the difference.

And the sheer vitriol, hatred, threats of rape and death aimed at women by transwomen is astonishing. It's frightening, and it's an entirely male behavior. Identifying as a transwoman doesn't make a male any less of a male, and it sure as hell doesn't alter their male aggression and threatening behavior.

So I'm done. I started out from a place of compassion and a desire to find some reasonable solution. But no more. There is no solution protects women from increased risk. And we already have more than enough risk. It's on men to find a way to be more accepting of gender non-conforming males.

It's not our problem to solve. We have enough on our plates already.

Sigh. Which makes trans women seem an awful lot like cis men.

 

[Politesse]

I still don't see how attacking trans women for things they didn't do is supposed to teach cis men who do bad things moral accountability. Do you also believe in shooting horses while they are eating grass, to teach wolves what happens when you steal chickens? Connect the dots for me. What man has ever learned an important moral lesson from passing an anti-trans policy? If anything, it just gives them more power and less accountability, since men usually get to enforce those laws, many of which require invading a woman's privacy to enforce. If the law says "arrest little girls for peeing in what you think is the wrong room", the arresting officer not only has the opportunity but the duty to terrify a little girl asking her questions about what she did in the bathroom.

Who the fuck in this thread is attacking trans women? Who is advocating for attacking trans women?

Are you seriously trying to pretend that the anti-trans lobby is not one of the most powerful and active forces in contemporary American politics?

How is that a relevant response to Toni’s question about who in this thread?

Because the thread isn't occurring in a vaccuum. We live in a time when women, both trans and cis, are under serious assault by an increasingly authoritarian government that does not have any woman's best interests at heart. That's the problem. Not someone on the internet getting their feelings hurt because they think "trans rights are human rights" is a personal attack on them.

I see. Your post was therapeutic in nature, not informative.

No, it's political in nature. This being a thread on politics, womanhood, and the law. More specifically the right to privacy under (and from) the law, the principle upon which Roe v Wade was decided.