When your moral panic isn't working...

[solarbird]

When your moral panic isn't working, go do the thing you're claiming you want to legislate against. Anti-queer activists are encouraging cisgendered men to 'occupy' women's restrooms, claiming they have a "right" to be there under rules protecting transgendered people, particularly transwomen. But they hate transmen too, of course.

Here is a better approach... Pick a large public restroom or locker room, like, one of the YMCA changing rooms. Get the male protesters to occupy the female locker rooms... you will shut down the business. Try that at one of the stadiums during a sports feature.

Another one:

A group of men should go "occupy" all the women's restrooms in the building to prove the point that men should not be welcome there.

There are a lot more at The Stranger's article, including a note that, "yesterday, a commenter on the Family Policy Institute of Washington's Facebook page suggested that men ought to undress in the women's restroom in the state's Human Rights Commission building. Commenters on news stories have proposed similar stunts."

Comments

[vatine]

Fffffff... I do not understand this moral panic. Are women prone to able around in the nude outside the stalls? If not... Oh, wait, American stalls tend towards having a fairly big gap at the bottom, but surely that's still not causing people to be able to ogle each other?

[birke]

American stalls also have gaps between the wall panels and doors, such that it's actually pretty easy to ogle the person next to you. If you were so inclined. Fortunately, that's usually not the case in women's bathrooms -- because they're sex-segregated.

There are real privacy and safety problems with this trend toward making bathrooms more open.

[solarbird]

Allowing transgendered people to use the washrooms appropriate to their gender does not create "real privacy and safety problems."

There have been more instances of Republican Senators sexually misbehaving in washrooms than of transgendered people doing so.

[birke]

Actual trans people don't present the problem. The problem is that if you remove practical restrictions on who can enter a women's bathroom, it will be difficult-to-impossible to challenge men. And if you make multi-stall bathrooms unisex, then there will inevitably be abuses, because male predatory behaviour is opportunistic like that.

If women are going to be naked or half-naked in public spaces, it's important to protect them. Us. It's important to protect us. ALL of us.

[vatine]

Most workplace toilets in Sweden are unisex. Pubs/bars less frequently (having a urinal trough is a massive increase in throughput when you can expect most people using the facilities are doing so for the purpose of urination), but I have certainly seen places that do male-only urinal-only and mixed-use stalls.

[birke]

I've never been to Sweden so I can't comment. But I think it's a mistake to assume that the social conditions that make that possible in Sweden are also present in the US.

At my college, most dorm bathrooms were unisex. There was one floor that mutually agreed to separate their two bathrooms into men and women, and I think it was the same on the one dorm floor that was reserved for women only. Every floor I lived on just shared their bathrooms. That was fine. It was fine because we knew and trusted one another, the dorms were locked to non-residents, and it was a small college with a sense of community and campus safety.

The University of Toronto made its dorm bathrooms gender-neutral, and the result was some dick filming women in the shower. That was a predicable outcome.

I think these conversations about bathrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-segregated public spaces have a really disturbing dismissive quality when it comes to cis women's fears. There are solutions that would provide some comfort and safety to everyone, but to get to those solutions we have to take the real threat of voyeurism and sexual violence into account.

Possible bathroom solution 1: Much more private bathroom stalls, like little rooms. Would limit voyeurism. Wouldn't necessarily keep the other benefits of having a women-only space. (Somewhere to retreat to and find protection when there's a creepy man in a bar, for example.)

Possible bathroom solution 2: Three bathrooms by default. Men, women, gender-neutral. Would avoid transwomen having to use men's bathroom/transmen having to use women's bathroom. Would also allow women or security staff to spot creepy men and bar them from entering women's space. Might be difficult to retrofit in a lot of buildings, but there's no reason not to do it in new builds and buildings with a lot of bathrooms.

Possible bathroom solution 3: Lockable single-stall bathrooms as the norm. Slower throughput and doesn't offer that safer women's space mentioned above, but in a lot of buildings that would be fine.

[enotsola]

I think 2 is way too close to "separate but equal" here.

Also, this http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2015-11-28-1448716337-2054399-IJustNeedToPeex400.jpg right here says a whole lot. With these kind of laws, demanding he use the ladies room just seems like it would be problematic.

I'll admit, as someone living life from the lowest difficulty setting, I'm maybe not the best person to say this kind of thing, but esriously.. if someone is living as a gender, they should use that restroom. I would assume that a trans woman using a male restroom is way more likely to be attacked than a trans woman is likely to ogle you.

[birke]

The "separate but equal" thing just isn't relevant in this context. Before the issue of trans rights came up, no one made this comparison about the separation of men and women -- because that separation was what allowed women to exist in public.

I've seen that photo a lot, yeah. And that guy, if he looks that male in real life, is not going to have a problem using the men's room.

FWIW, I don't support laws that demand segregation based on genitalia. I just oppose laws that demand gender identity recognition in all spaces, with no questions asked. "These kind of laws" is a vague way to describe something that's just in the beginning stages of being defined right now.

And again, the problem is not transwomen doing the ogling. It's men posing as transwomen, or not even bothering to pretend, depending on what they can get away with.

The problem with this entire discourse is that the bathroom issue is just as much about validation as it is about safety. I think that's where the comparison to "separate but equal" comes from. Otherwise, separation would be just as valid a way of preserving safety as any other option. And validation isn't a good enough reason to throw cis women's tenuous access to safety in public spaces under the bus.

[enotsola]

Separate but equal when you're saying "make a third bathroom for trans people to use" is pretty much exactly that. They're women. They should be able to use that bathroom.

And looking like that, you're saying you'd rather he use the women's restroom?

I don't get how you can say you don't support laws demanding segregation based on genitalia, while arguing that exact thing. One of my best friends is a girl who happened to be born with the wrong bits. Lives as a woman, ID says she's a woman. You're saying she should have to use the men's room. Where the odds are much higher she'll be attacked.

I don't think anyone is saying "hey, let's give men free access to women's restrooms!" other than those trying to use that as an argument.

[birke]

Actually, just going by the accounts I've come across, the odds are higher that she'll be attacked in the women's room.

And I'm not saying that your friend should have to use the men's room. I'm saying that she shouldn't feel entitled to use the women's room in the face of female protest when it is genuinely a question of female safety, and she should make HER effort at solidarity by supporting laws that don't mandate free and easy entry by men, which is what loose "gender identity" laws do. The legal definition of gender identity in Washington is so broad it would be legally impossible to restrict entry by anyone to any bathroom. As more employers get serious about following the law, I think they'll start experiencing unexpected repercussions.

[solarbird]

And I'm not saying that your friend should have to use the men's room. I'm saying that she shouldn't feel entitled to use the women's room in the face of female protest when it is genuinely a question of female safety
But she is female. That's the end of the story. It's not a "favour" to use the women's washroom if she is a woman. Protection against discrimination based on assigned history is not an "entitlement."

What these laws are about are forcing these woman to be treated as men.

Butch cisgendered lesbians face this too. There have been cases - recently! - of butches being arrested in women's washrooms for looking too butch. Should they also not feel "entitled" to use the women's room in the face of "female protest"? Are these women not "women enough" either?

And you're flat out wrong about the more-likely-to-be-harassed in the women's washroom. Transwomen are on the receiving end of the outright majority of all anti LGBT violence.

[birke]

And no, you know what? They're not women. They're transwomen. Womanhood is a physical state of being. Transwomen seem to have some female wiring, but they're still male in anatomy, and in this case, it does make a difference, because it means that you could look 100% male and be trans, meaning that there is literally no way to enforce gender segregation at all in a bathroom open to both cis women and transwomen with no ID requirement. It's important to at least acknowledge that, even if you don't think it's important.

[solarbird]

And no, you know what? They're not women.
Okay. Well, I guess at least you came out and said it. Have a nice life.

[enotsola]

This was where I was just going to walk away, because this is generally the point where I go "well, we're not going to come to agreement no matter what" and that continuing is just going to lead to conflict. Thank you.

[solarbird]

I will put up with a tremendous amount of shit, but policing of femininity is pretty much a one-way express trip to the trashcan with me. It has caused so much harm to so many women in so very many ways, and here we go with it being used exactly the same damn way, and I'm just...



Done.

[solarbird]

For that matter, there have also literally been more instances of fundamentalists making up fake stories about transgendered people misbehaving in washrooms than of transgendered people doing so.

Remember that big kerfluffle a couple of years ago, where they finally had their poster child for hating on transgendered teens? Where they were all spreading this harassment story about this case in - I think it was California - where a transwoman teenager was harassing other women in the washroom, and all these other media outlets were taking it at face value...

...until someone actually contacted the school in question, and it turned out to be made up?

Yeah. That.

[solarbird]

Here's the thing, right?

They used to say exactly the same things about gay men and lesbians. It was exactly the same. Queers will rape your children (and if male, give them AIDs) because that's the kind of horrible pervert child-molesting child-rapists They All Are.

And because of fear, it resonated. I was fighting that shit for decades. And it was horseshit. They'd go back to it in a second if they could, but it stopped playing in the late 1990s, so it's faded out. You see embers of it popping up again, because they like to test those waters, but it hasn't been catching anywhere...

...until now, because they found an even more vulnerable target for it. But it's is exactly the same playbook, moved to a new set of victims.

That is exactly all it is, and I will not have it.