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

[Jarhyn]

Our local YMCA while having a communal shower room also has individual shower stalls with a small changing area.

Yes, I know that many facilities offer private showers and changing areas and have done for many years. People have many reasons for preferring privacy.

I was not being original any of the times I suggested this. And I knew it.

Yeah, I think one of the first contributions I made to threads like this almost a decade ago was saying something similar, and I know I wasn't the first to suggest it either.

This guidance is so old we might as well call it "conservative" at this point, and yet it still has never been seriously pushed because we ALL know that those inconvenienced by pennies on the profit dollar will scream bloody murder over it.

I don't think the pennies/profit has a damn thing to do with it, tbh.

It's like abortion. It's a red meat issue for some people, certain to generate a lot of ire. Bonus if it gets to traumatize or endanger (dangers of pregnancy, birth control, abortion, childbirth) women in any way.

I'm very sleep deprived and my joints ache and I'm disappointed with myself about how little I've gotten accomplished the past week so feel free to read that taken down a few notches. But it's my current state of mind. No need to worry. I'll get over it. But it's still true.

It does though, because the question is based around initialization and reconfiguration costs.

I don't know how to communicate the ideas well here?

Essentially, it's easier for a penny pinching asshole to pinch a penny at the start and then ball at the much more expensive cost to fix his cheapness later, but even that will cost the owner of the space.

I don't know how much experience you have with "property owners", but my experience is that they will bend over backwards to refuse paying a single cent towards upkeep if they can avoid it, let alone refurbishment.

 

[Toni]

Our local YMCA while having a communal shower room also has individual shower stalls with a small changing area.

Yes, I know that many facilities offer private showers and changing areas and have done for many years. People have many reasons for preferring privacy.

I was not being original any of the times I suggested this. And I knew it.

Yeah, I think one of the first contributions I made to threads like this almost a decade ago was saying something similar, and I know I wasn't the first to suggest it either.

This guidance is so old we might as well call it "conservative" at this point, and yet it still has never been seriously pushed because we ALL know that those inconvenienced by pennies on the profit dollar will scream bloody murder over it.

I don't think the pennies/profit has a damn thing to do with it, tbh.

It's like abortion. It's a red meat issue for some people, certain to generate a lot of ire. Bonus if it gets to traumatize or endanger (dangers of pregnancy, birth control, abortion, childbirth) women in any way.

I'm very sleep deprived and my joints ache and I'm disappointed with myself about how little I've gotten accomplished the past week so feel free to read that taken down a few notches. But it's my current state of mind. No need to worry. I'll get over it. But it's still true.

It does though, because the question is based around initialization and reconfiguration costs.

I don't know how to communicate the ideas well here?

Essentially, it's easier for a penny pinching asshole to pinch a penny at the start and then ball at the much more expensive cost to fix his cheapness later, but even that will cost the owner of the space.

I don't know how much experience you have with "property owners", but my experience is that they will bend over backwards to refuse paying a single cent towards upkeep if they can avoid it, let alone refurbishment.

Sure, sure. There is that. But I also think it's an easy excuse. There are never any qualms about spending money on men's sports: locker rooms, transportation, coaches, training facilities.

Private stalls to make (primarily) women feel comfortable? That's expensive! And yeah, I'm aware that there are plenty of men/boys who also prefer not to be undressed in front of others and that the ethos is that you're just supposed to suck it up and be a man about it and be one of the boys, too.

So while I have some experience with penny pinching landlords/property owners, I've also had plenty of experience being told ....what was that line in that song in that movie? "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" Not to mention the many ways that women's feelings, fears and pain are greatly exaggerated and we just need to toughen up and quit the theatrics/ bids for attention.

Like I said, I'm in a pissy mood.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Emily knows what women want. She is always telling us what women want, what women feel, what women need. No penises in public showers, mainly.

No penises in women's public showers is what she is against.

It's a difficult issue to figure out how to honor and accommodate everyone. Not everyone is opposed to seeing genitals of a different gender than they are in a public restroom/locker room/shower. Some people are. The reasons may be religious prohibition or other types of modesty, or sexual trauma. The reasons are not necessarily anti-trans so much as they are about violations of personal boundaries. I think that many men do not understand that women by cultural indoctrination and by reasons of safety and based upon past trauma may have stricter boundaries.

I find it pretty misogynistic to not recognize this.

Universal privacy stalls with doors would help this. But some women will still be leery. Some women will be excluded because of their religion or culture or because of past trauma.

It is interesting to me that men here are much more willing to insist that we must accommodate a person with a penis than they are willing to acknowledge that some people have very good reasons to not wish to have to deal with an unexpected penis in the shower--for instance, someone who has been raped.

And no guys have been raped?

Either past trauma is a reason and thus all penises (including in men's facilities) must be hidden, or it's not a reason and thus none should be required to be hidden.

The problem here is you are thinking of only of minimizing harm to your ingroup, not minimizing total harm.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What "conversation" can be had with someone whose only solution to the prevalence of sexual assault is to scapegoat trans women for a crime almost exclusively committed by cis men in reality? There's no compromise being offered, only jail sentences to innocent women. That's not a dialogue, that's just more assault of women under a different guise and rationale, targeted at the minority subset of women with the least ability to defend themselves.

I can't speak for others, but the main thing for me is the violation of privacy. I really don't like being naked in front of strangers of either sex, but it would be 10 times worse to expose myself to a random female than a male. Especially if its someone I see regularly in the gym/locker room. I don't want her judging and gossipping about my junk (not that there's anything wrong with it)! I think women are the same way with regard to sharing naked space with men.

And guys won't gossip??

Hint: reality is that so long as you do not dramatically stand out nobody is going to be looking at the details, any more than they'll be noting other details of your body. Our society has a very fucked-up attitude towards nudity. Guess what? When people end up in a situation where nudity/seeing others nude is essential nothing bad actually happens.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What "conversation" can be had with someone whose only solution to the prevalence of sexual assault is to scapegoat trans women for a crime almost exclusively committed by cis men in reality? There's no compromise being offered, only jail sentences to innocent women. That's not a dialogue, that's just more assault of women under a different guise and rationale, targeted at the minority subset of women with the least ability to defend themselves.

Nobody is scapegoating!

Why can you not realize that except for transphobes, who are found in all genders, that there can be a visceral negative, frightening reaction to finding someone with an exposed penis when you expect to see only female genitalia?

Or, a lot of parents would be quite alarmed if their 12 year old daughter emerged from the locker room at the Y and said there was someone in the shower next to her with a penis.

The first thought is not: ah, a trans individual. It’s what the hell. Because there are hell of a lot more perverts and rapists with penises than there are pre/non surgical trans women.

Teaching your children mindless fear doesn't help them. The reality in the situation you describe is that the odds are very high it's a trans person. There are two possible scenarios:

1) The facility is all but empty. Nothing stops a guy from walking in without a disguise.

2) The facility is not empty. No attack would go undiscovered, thus there's very little chance it's a pervert.

Stranger Danger killed far more than it saved.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's a difficult issue to figure out how to honor and accommodate everyone.

Actually, it's not.

Not everyone is opposed to seeing genitals of a different gender than they are in a public restroom/locker room/shower. Some people are. The reasons may be religious prohibition or other types of modesty, or sexual trauma. The reasons are not necessarily anti-trans so much as they are about violations of personal boundaries. I think that many men do not understand that women by cultural indoctrination and by reasons of safety and based upon past trauma may have stricter boundaries.

These arguments are all very strong arguments for not having communal showers, locker rooms or restrooms.

If all such facilities provide personal privacy, as they absolutely should, then the entire problem vanishes.

The existence of such communal facilities owes to an historical error - the false belief that single sex facilities are both an actual thing, and that people of the same same sex don't (or shouldn't) value privacy from each other.

I don't want the law to protect people from seeing the genitalia of the opposite sex without consent. I want the law to protect everyone from seeing the genitalia of anyone without consent.

At which point, it matters naught who has what genitalia.

The existence of communal facilities is because they are cheaper. Privacy is a luxury that simply didn't exist for the average person in the past. You don't have to go all that far back to find the average child was in the room at the conception of their younger siblings.

 

[Emily Lake]

Emily knows what women want. She is always telling us what women want, what women feel, what women need. No penises in public showers, mainly.

I'm rather more inclined to say that men like you don't get to tell women what women want.

And I think excluding penises and prostates from women's intimate facilities is a perfectly reasonable thing to expect in a society that actually values female citizens. Anything else is transparently giving flashers and peeping toms legal backing to perv on women and girls.

 

[Emily Lake]

What "conversation" can be had with someone whose only solution to the prevalence of sexual assault is to scapegoat trans women for a crime almost exclusively committed by cis men in reality? There's no compromise being offered, only jail sentences to innocent women. That's not a dialogue, that's just more assault of women under a different guise and rationale, targeted at the minority subset of women with the least ability to defend themselves.

They're crimes committed by males, Poli. How those males present is irrelevant, as is whether they think of their brain fucntion as being more in line with regressive stereotypes about women. Their subjective internal gendery soul is irrelevant, they are still males of the human species.

I'm not scapegoating anyone at all - I'm refusing to play pretend that the thoughts in someone's head makes them a different somatic sex.

 

[Emily Lake]

What "conversation" can be had with someone whose only solution to the prevalence of sexual assault is to scapegoat trans women for a crime almost exclusively committed by cis men in reality? There's no compromise being offered, only jail sentences to innocent women. That's not a dialogue, that's just more assault of women under a different guise and rationale, targeted at the minority subset of women with the least ability to defend themselves.

Nobody is scapegoating!

Why can you not realize that except for transphobes, who are found in all genders, that there can be a visceral negative, frightening reaction to finding someone with an exposed penis when you expect to see only female genitalia?

Or, a lot of parents would be quite alarmed if their 12 year old daughter emerged from the locker room at the Y and said there was someone in the shower next to her with a penis.

The first thought is not: ah, a trans individual. It’s what the hell. Because there are hell of a lot more perverts and rapists with penises than there are pre/non surgical trans women.

Transwomen are still male, and will always be male.

Intimate facilities, sports, jail, etc. are not separated on the basis of our feelings about regressive stereotypes or whether we like bras and spinny skirts - they're separated on the basis of sex.

 

[Toni]

Emily knows what women want. She is always telling us what women want, what women feel, what women need. No penises in public showers, mainly.

No penises in women's public showers is what she is against.

It's a difficult issue to figure out how to honor and accommodate everyone. Not everyone is opposed to seeing genitals of a different gender than they are in a public restroom/locker room/shower. Some people are. The reasons may be religious prohibition or other types of modesty, or sexual trauma. The reasons are not necessarily anti-trans so much as they are about violations of personal boundaries. I think that many men do not understand that women by cultural indoctrination and by reasons of safety and based upon past trauma may have stricter boundaries.

I find it pretty misogynistic to not recognize this.

Universal privacy stalls with doors would help this. But some women will still be leery. Some women will be excluded because of their religion or culture or because of past trauma.

It is interesting to me that men here are much more willing to insist that we must accommodate a person with a penis than they are willing to acknowledge that some people have very good reasons to not wish to have to deal with an unexpected penis in the shower--for instance, someone who has been raped.

And no guys have been raped?

Either past trauma is a reason and thus all penises (including in men's facilities) must be hidden, or it's not a reason and thus none should be required to be hidden.

The problem here is you are thinking of only of minimizing harm to your ingroup, not minimizing total harm.

No one suggested that male persons have not experienced rape or other sexual assault.

I have offered an option that would benefit anyone whose modest, past trauma or other reason for preferring privacy as a universal standard. Repeatedly.

The problem with your POV is twofold:

1. There are many more females who have experienced sexual assault than exist transsexual men or women. One in three women will experience sexual assault in their lifetime. Your hand waving at a potential goal issue that does not actually affect you is that you prefer to consider the potential trauma to transsexuals ( although I dont get that: I’ve repeatedly advocated for a UNIVERSAL solution) who are much less common than women and girls who have experienced sexual assault. BTW: this would protect trans women from trauma as well.

2. You do not see a problem that does not bother you personally as being worth any expense or trouble. This is a moral failing in your part.

Your complete lack of empathy is a serious character flaw.

 

[Toni]

It's a difficult issue to figure out how to honor and accommodate everyone.

Actually, it's not.

Not everyone is opposed to seeing genitals of a different gender than they are in a public restroom/locker room/shower. Some people are. The reasons may be religious prohibition or other types of modesty, or sexual trauma. The reasons are not necessarily anti-trans so much as they are about violations of personal boundaries. I think that many men do not understand that women by cultural indoctrination and by reasons of safety and based upon past trauma may have stricter boundaries.

These arguments are all very strong arguments for not having communal showers, locker rooms or restrooms.

If all such facilities provide personal privacy, as they absolutely should, then the entire problem vanishes.

The existence of such communal facilities owes to an historical error - the false belief that single sex facilities are both an actual thing, and that people of the same same sex don't (or shouldn't) value privacy from each other.

I don't want the law to protect people from seeing the genitalia of the opposite sex without consent. I want the law to protect everyone from seeing the genitalia of anyone without consent.

At which point, it matters naught who has what genitalia.

The existence of communal facilities is because they are cheaper. Privacy is a luxury that simply didn't exist for the average person in the past. You don't have to go all that far back to find the average child was in the room at the conception of their younger siblings.

In the more immediate past, indoor plumbing was nonexistent. When it became available, it was a luxury

Your point seems to be that the safety and well being of women is not worth funding.

Further, your point seems to be that if it is t a problem for Loren, it isn’t a problem. Such self absorption is unbecoming past age 9.

Misogyny is a deep character flaw. You should try to address it.

 

[Emily Lake]

You insult us by ignoring that the trauma, the PTSD is real, ongoing, long lasting and does not stay squashed down inside of you when you are in what you assume to be a place where you can enjoy privacy and just: BE without unexpectedly be confronted with what we are conditioned to fear: an unexpected penis in your private space. To have no place where you can lay down, for just a few precious moments, the burden of your constant vigilance.

It's schoredinger's cat, only intimate facilities.

Single sex women's space are so irrelevant and unimportant that women shouldn't mind giving them up... and indeed only evil nasty transphobic bigots would ever object. Simultaneously, however, they're so consequential and necessary that transwomen will die if they can't have them.

Transwomen can't use male facilities, out of fear that they'll be assaulted. But actual women should be completely open to having obvious males in our facilities and if we're afraid of assault, it's just because we're horrible evil people.

I want transgender people to have the freedom to express themselves however they want (within appropriateness for the venue), be free from harassment of attack on the basis of their identity, and have equal rights to employment, housing, etc.

What I don't want is the creation of a gigantic loophole that lets ANY male access vulnerable women solely on the basis of them saying they "identify" as a woman. They are still males. And 95% of them are physically intact.

 

[Emily Lake]

Because there are hell of a lot more perverts and rapists with penises than there are pre/non surgical trans women.

Thousands of anti-trans bills aren't reducing the danger from those indivduals in the slightest.

I vehemently oppose anti-trans legislation. I am not anti-trans in anyway. I detest the bigotry and cheap political theatrics around opposing trans rights. I have nothing but compassion for trans men and trans women who must face struggles that I cannot begin to imagine.
8
One in three females will experience sexual assault. I’m one of them. I cannot pretend that I do not have compassion, born from experience, for what survivors must navigate.

You insult us by ignoring that the trauma, the PTSD is real, ongoing, long lasting and does not stay squashed down inside of you when you are in what you assume to be a place where you can enjoy privacy and just: BE without unexpectedly be confronted with what we are conditioned to fear: an unexpected penis in your private space. To have no place where you can lay down, for just a few precious moments, the burden of your constant vigilance.


I’m thrilled for you that this is one trauma you do not have to try to manage. From what you have shared, I know that your life has not always been easy or straightforward.

Can you not have some compassion for people who have have been sexually assaulted and who now must know that they can never assume that a women only space will be free from something that may trigger their PTSD?

Because, my friend, refusing to recognize those traumas? that is misogyny.

How is that better than the anti-trans phobia you accuse me of for:

1. Re-stating another poster’s stance
2. Suggesting that universal stalls with doors would go a longways towards eliminating the issue.

I mean: How DARE I?

It's true that I have no idea whatsoever what it would be like to feel "safe" in a locker room, but I do believe, strongly, that hurting other innocent people can never expiate one's own trauma. A politics of stoking fear only creates more fear, it does not make us safer.

And I do not accept your argument that this is a question of men versus women, that's absurd. Misognyny drives the entire anti-trans movement, and almost all of its major supporters are male politicians, not female ones. Opposing Donald Trump and his Christian nationalist allies is not misogyny, that doesn't even make sense. They would happily see you all in chains. Do you have any idea how cis men talk about you in their locker rooms? It's not good. It's not safe. You should not trust them at all.

MALES talk about women that way. Males with trangender identities are no exception to that.

I don't trust males in female intimate spaces, as a general rule. How they express themselves is irrelevant.

Most transwomen are heterosexual - they're males who are sexually attracted to females. And they commit sexual offenses at least as often as any other male does.

 

[Toni]

What "conversation" can be had with someone whose only solution to the prevalence of sexual assault is to scapegoat trans women for a crime almost exclusively committed by cis men in reality? There's no compromise being offered, only jail sentences to innocent women. That's not a dialogue, that's just more assault of women under a different guise and rationale, targeted at the minority subset of women with the least ability to defend themselves.

I can't speak for others, but the main thing for me is the violation of privacy. I really don't like being naked in front of strangers of either sex, but it would be 10 times worse to expose myself to a random female than a male. Especially if its someone I see regularly in the gym/locker room. I don't want her judging and gossipping about my junk (not that there's anything wrong with it)! I think women are the same way with regard to sharing naked space with men.

And guys won't gossip??

Hint: reality is that so long as you do not dramatically stand out nobody is going to be looking at the details, any more than they'll be noting other details of your body. Our society has a very fucked-up attitude towards nudity. Guess what? When people end up in a situation where nudity/seeing others nude is essential nothing bad actually happens.

You mean like rape? That involves at least partial nudity and often full nudity.

The problem with your post is that you seem to believe that your experiences are universal and that no one else’s feelings or experiences are worthy of consideration. You are the sole arbiter of what is right and proper, in your own mind.

That seems self absorbed to an extreme rivaling that of Donald J Trump.

 

[Emily Lake]

I'm the monster. I'm the bigot.

No more of this bullshit.

Welcome to the shitshow.

In my experience, calls for reasonable solutions that allow actual women the privacy and safety we desire while ALSO making accommodations for transwomen will be rejected in their entirety, and you'll be called names for it. The only acceptable solution is the complete capitulation of female women to the wants and desires of males, even if doing so introduces risks we already face at significantly disproportionate rates.

I started out simply wanting the right to evict pre-op males who identify as trans from showers and changing rooms. After years of this discussion, I've come to realize that there is no possible solution that will be accepted by transwomen other than real women completely surrendering everything - including our language - to them.

It's the most blatant act of appropriation and colonization I've ever run across.

 

[Emily Lake]

So you're just, what, doubling down on the nasty personal attacks, while also demanding empathy? An interesting strategy, to be sure.

Whereas the empathy that you demand is that actual women capitulate entirely to the desire of some males to be affirmed in their subjective gender identity, and for actual women to play along with their make-believe.

 

[Emily Lake]

Our local YMCA while having a communal shower room also has individual shower stalls with a small changing area.

Yes, I know that many facilities offer private showers and changing areas and have done for many years. People have many reasons for preferring privacy.

I was not being original any of the times I suggested this. And I knew it.

Yeah, I think one of the first contributions I made to threads like this almost a decade ago was saying something similar, and I know I wasn't the first to suggest it either.

This guidance is so old we might as well call it "conservative" at this point, and yet it still has never been seriously pushed because we ALL know that those inconvenienced by pennies on the profit dollar will scream bloody murder over it.

Let's also not gloss over the fact that even when separate unisex facilities are available... transwomen refuse to use them, and insist that the only acceptable solution is for them to have complete and unfettered access to female single-sex facilities.

 

[Emily Lake]

Sure, sure. There is that. But I also think it's an easy excuse. There are never any qualms about spending money on men's sports: locker rooms, transportation, coaches, training facilities.

Private stalls to make (primarily) women feel comfortable? That's expensive! And yeah, I'm aware that there are plenty of men/boys who also prefer not to be undressed in front of others and that the ethos is that you're just supposed to suck it up and be a man about it and be one of the boys, too.

So while I have some experience with penny pinching landlords/property owners, I've also had plenty of experience being told ....what was that line in that song in that movie? "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" Not to mention the many ways that women's feelings, fears and pain are greatly exaggerated and we just need to toughen up and quit the theatrics/ bids for attention.

Like I said, I'm in a pissy mood.

You might be in a pissy mood... but nothing you've said here is false. It's not even expressed in a particularly pissy fashion. You've been fairly mild-mannerd and reserved in the face of several males who are absolutely insistent that you have to let males into spaces where we're naked and vulnerable.

 

[Emily Lake]

And no guys have been raped?

Either past trauma is a reason and thus all penises (including in men's facilities) must be hidden, or it's not a reason and thus none should be required to be hidden.

The problem here is you are thinking of only of minimizing harm to your ingroup, not minimizing total harm.

Some few males have been raped by other males... therefore female women MUST let in any male women who want to be there! See, males might be at risk from other males, and they need females to use as human shields. We'll just ignore the fact that it literally lets in any male who desires to be there whether they identify as women or not, since all they have to do is say magic words. It doesn't matter if it harms more female women - we have to protect the males at any cost!

 

[Emily Lake]

Hint: reality is that so long as you do not dramatically stand out nobody is going to be looking at the details, any more than they'll be noting other details of your body. Our society has a very fucked-up attitude towards nudity. Guess what? When people end up in a situation where nudity/seeing others nude is essential nothing bad actually happens.

You know what really stands out in female intimate facilities and jails?

MALES.