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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.
Why is this such an issue? Restrooms have stalls. I couldn't tell what gender was in one if I tried.
I hear that women tend to change & reveal more skin in women's locker rooms. In men's restrooms, we pretty much do their business and leave. From that perspective, the men's locker room is more 'gender neutral'.
Yes, it was a woke rallying-cry. But in 2024, it's become a tier-1 losing issue.
AOC is the democrat's weathervane. She's scarily opportunist and makes radical position changes right before a movement runs out of gas. She broke rank with the squad on Israel right before the campus protests turned ugly. She recently removed pronouns from her twitter bio. It's Joever.
As for people being naked in locker rooms, I'd be happy to see the practice die out. Trans people or not. I don't wanna be looking at random dick and balls. It's the old men who're the worst. Dude, don't spread your legs on the bench to clean your saggy balls, and what the fuck's up with being naked while having socks on !! Please No !
To me, it’s the lack of understanding. I don’t think Transgender people in general get how dangerous it is to open the door to the idea that any man can put on a dress and walk into the women’s restroom anytime they want to. There are safety issues here. Men can so easily overpower women that it’s not even a contest. And without the very firm rule of “biological men are not allowed in women’s spaces, particularly where dressing and undressing are happening, it’s impossible to prevent a rape from happening. If you’ve ever wondered why women generally use the public restrooms in pairs, the reason is men who might enter the restroom and try to rape a woman. And the trans community hasn’t even glanced in the direction of understanding the issue or reassuring women that they too are opposed to men in the women’s restrooms and locker rooms being an issue. If anything, their attitude is “women, you aren’t allowed to object to this for any reason. The only reason you care is that you hate trans women.” Followed by using authority to force women to shut up about it. Not a thought about rape, secretly being photographed naked for porn, or being harassed, or worse these things happening to children. I feel like the entire rest of society, particularly the woke end has decided that the rape of women is a small price to pay for feeling progressive about letting transgender women into women’s spaces — without vetting at all.
I think what's more accurate is that they've convinced themselves that it simply "doesn't happen", or that "no one transitions just so they can use women's bathrooms".
This doesn't seem more accurate, but rather the "how," to the quoted part's "what." Deciding that such a cost is worth the benefit can be very unpleasant, depending on what the costs and what the benefits are. So unpleasant, that many people might be unwilling to make such a decision if they perceive it that way. So they decide to perceive it a different way, by convincing themselves that the cost isn't actually real, which allows them to make that decision. I see this pattern repeated all the time both in culture war contexts and not.
Nobody seems to be having that conversation. The consensus on the left seems to be that only a bigot would even ask the question. I mean the dominant position seems to be forcing businesses to open their bathrooms to trans women. Then complaining and calling women bigots for objecting— even for extremely vulnerable places like homeless shelters (this is how JK Rowling became such a pariah).
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