heywood on 8/7/2020 at 15:48

---

Bringing #metoo into this is a non-sequitor. #metoo was about sexual harassment. A trans woman changing in the women's changing room or peeing in the women's bathroom is not sexual harassment.

For the last time, trans women don't want to use women's facilities so they can show off their dicks to other women. That's a figment of your imagination. Hell, most are ashamed of their dicks and don't want people to see them. They want to use women's facilities because their gender is female, not male. And they should use the women's facilities because they are female, not male. If you don't understand that, you don't understand gender.

It's clear we're can't discuss this rationally until you can recognize the difference between gender and genitalia.

And you shouldn't be shocked by the thought of an underage girl possibly getting a glimpse of penis in a non-sexual situation. It's as if you think that ANY viewing of the opposite biological sex is automatically a sexual situation, which is religious nut territory.

SD on 8/7/2020 at 16:42

---

Oh the irony.

The argument is that people with certain genitalia be blocked from certain spaces utilised by people with other genitalia.

In a case of blatant misdirection, it is the opponents of this stance who are introducing gender into the situation.

Nameless Voice on 8/7/2020 at 17:34

---

I feel like this thread has gone full circle now.

At the end of the day, when you boil it right down, this entire "bathroom discussion" is about fear.
Leaving aside trans people for a moment (as it's not really a subject any of us are knowledgable enough to argue about), women like J.K. Rowling appear to be afraid of men (which in her definition also includes trans people). She seems to be afraid that men are dangerous sexual predators and that women need to be kept safe from them.

Let's take a step back from that for a moment. Why would women be so afraid of men?
I'm going to suggest that one reason is because the small percentage of bad men tend to get away with it. For various reasons, our society and our courts tend to always favour the accused in these kinds of cases.
The existence of a small number of dangerous criminals is bad, but the fact that they rarely get punished for their crimes and are often free to repeat them makes it far worse.

Compare that to something like murder. If someone is murdered in a town, the culprit is usually caught and arrested, so you don't have to fear also being murdered there, unless there is a (statistically unlikely) second murderer. But if someone is sexually assaulted, the culprit is often released shortly afterwards, so the threat of that one bad actor doesn't actually go away after the crime.

I'm going to argue that our society making (some) women that afraid of men is a much bigger problem than the sub-problem of which bathroom or changing room someone should be using as a result of that fear.

Since we've already established that our society and courts currently don't deal with cases of sexual crimes against women, then it stands to reason that we need to reform our society in some way.

How can we do that? Well, for one thing, we can start by making sure that the perpetrators of these kinds of crimes face the consequences of their actions, by for example refusing to associate with them or refusing to support them. A kind of "consequence culture" for misdeeds that currently don't have appropriate consequences in our society.

And you know what? Someone who doesn't like the idea of a consequence culture and wants to diminish it might decide to mis-label this as a "cancel culture".

rachel on 8/7/2020 at 18:04

---

I want to reiterate that the vast majority of feminists I know and know of are in fact largely open and intersectional. Women like J.K. Rowling are a minority that makes a lot of noise to destroy all the progress that's been made in the last decade, but in my, admittedly limited, experience, the LGBTQ and feminist community Venn diagram is pretty much a single circle. I'm lucky to be in Barcelona though, which is one of the most inclusive cities in the world, so my perception may be skewed.

Transgender people are vulnerable, and victims of the same men these women claim will attack them if trans people have their way e.g. with restrooms. There's a growing movement, in France anyway, to recognize and commemorate feminicides, but for years every November, the trans community have been remembering their dead too. What TERFs claim is irrational but it dominates the debate because it plays on very old, very obvious and very real fears, and it also makes trans people an easy target to point at, because transphobes latch on this valid fear to double down on hate and harassment.

In actuality, feminists and LGBTQ collectives often work hand in hand to fight transphobia and patriarchy, and create safe spaces for everyone. We must do the same and fight this harassment, educate people better about LGBT issues, while also addressing what makes these fears so present. That's kind of been my intention in this thread.

rachel on 8/7/2020 at 18:35

---

That's more genderqueer/non-binary identities, which depending on who you ask is part of the transgender spectrum.