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Notes -
For the purpose of this post I will use the following terms in the following ways:
Woman = Biological woman. Man = Biological man
Well it seems like we are on episode >9000 "transgender bathrooms".
There is currently a man named Sarah McBride who has been elected to congress. This person (a man), who wishes to be seen as female, has caused another member of congress named Nancy Mace (a woman) to start whining and complaining on various social media videos and news interviews about her (Nancy's) concern that Sarah will try to use the female bathrooms, lockerrooms, etc. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has said that the policy of the House is that women's restrooms/lockerrooms are for women, and men's restrooms lockerrooms are for men. There are a number of non-gender specific bathrooms around the house grounds that are open to anybody who doesn't want to abide by this.
Here is what I actually think a reasonable framing of this question is: "can men with a cross dressing fetish involve non-consenting women in their crossdress-play?" In a reasonable society I think the answer to this question should be: no, obviously.
Everybody seems intent on being dishonest towards each other when talking about this, so here is what I think is a reasonable answer to "why does anybody care? Just let everybody pee in peace!".
Bathrooms are extremely vulnerable places; they usually have one exit, you are often in there alone, and you are often doing something which makes you physically vulnerable (using the toilet). It seems completely reasonable for women to want to keep men out of these spaces.
To put some additonal context here: I think that the tide is turning pretty sharply on gender ideology within the democratic party (at least for anybody mildly near the center). I've seen several prominent-ish democrat spokespeople openly blame transgender people for the 2024 presidential loss. You also have the UK making it illegal to trans your kids, as well as a recent, prominent NYT article that was critical of transing your children (unfortunately the google index seems very intent on not showing me links to the article, but has plenty of links to people talking about it.
I think it was Aella that wrote about how passing was actually meaningfully important in the whole trans issue, and I have to agree. If a man can successfully pass as a woman then he should be allowed to use women's restroom, although it seems like saying we "allow" that is pretty meaningless in that case. If we can't tell that it's a man how could we stop him? To me this basically feels like the norm thirty years ago, kind of an unofficial don't ask don't tell restroom policy. If you look like an absolute freak then yes women should be able to scream and shout at you and summon security to harass you for an hour or so.
Edit: In a way it reminds me of this classic. I feel like they both come down to "know your place" and act accordingly. Now how do we codify that into law? I'm not sure how, but I'm not sure it needs to be.
Take any provision that protects women's spaces and clarify that "woman" is, as intended by the authors, a sex term and not a claim about "gender identity". Whatever that is.
Yeah. I think acknowledging a sex/gender distinction would cut through most of the newsworthy categories.
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