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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 do not think that describing trans women as 'men with a cross dressing fetish' is very close to reality.
There is a small fraction of people who are genuinely very uncomfortable with their biological gender. They sometimes take hormones, get surgery and go through byzantine legal processes to change their legal gender. They kill themselves at elevated rates when forced to conform to their biological gender. This is not just some kink.
Different cultures have dealt differently with non-conformists of all sorts. Killing them at the earliest opportunity is certainly a popular choice.
Modern liberal democracies generally frown on that and try to do better than just applying whatever solution would suit the majority of people. We don't accept "most straight men would prefer if they knew for certain that the man peeing next to them was not sexually attracted to them" as an excuse to kill all the gays and bisexuals, or even kick them out of the military.
The bathroom issue is simply an issue of trade-offs. Having to use a gendered bathroom which belongs to a gender one does not identify as clearly can be humiliating. Imagine getting told that you are too small or weak to qualify for the men's bathroom, or that you are too large, ugly or flat-chested to qualify for the women's bathroom.
On the other hand, there is both a perception of danger if people who are not cis-women are allowed in women's bathroom as well as possibly some actual danger.
I think that the actual danger is over-rated. With the possible exception of Hogwarts, gender restrictions in bathrooms are not strictly enforced. Someone who is entering a women's bathroom to commit rape is unlikely to care that he will also break some trivial statute about not going to the women's bathroom. Nor would punishing someone who disregards the gender sign on a bathroom (for example, to avoid waiting time) with a lengthy prison sentence be proportionate.
There will probably be some sick fucks who like to jerk off in the women's bathroom who can use the excuse 'but you see, I actually identify as a woman' if they are seen entering or exiting, but this is a lesser concern.
At the end of the day, it is a numbers game. If half of the rapes are committed by men in women's bathrooms who had previously invoked their gender identity as an excuse to be there, then I would agree that this was a huge fucking problem and we should restrict access to improve women's safety.
As things stand, I don't think it is a huge practical issue. At the risk of sounding like some woke, I think most women I know would very much prefer having to share their bathrooms with trans women to losing access to abortions.
A decade ago, Scott argued for drawing a more complex gender boundary than 'has Y-chromosome' as a cheap and easy way to improve outcomes for a lot of people. I think that his article is still spot on.
I think that the bathroom safety argument frequently is used by anti-trans people not because preventing rapes is their first and foremost concern, but because it is one of the few issues with trans rights that the average person will care about.
I don't think it's an issue of just humiliation. A trans woman who is on estrogen for a substantial amount of time and has developed breasts or had bottom surgery is likely to be at risk of sexual assault if she is forced to use a men's bathroom or a men's locker room. There's also the risk of regular non-sexual assault by transphobic men against someone who has had the hormone profile of a cis woman for years and has the accompanying muscle mass. I agree that bathroom assault risk is pretty low for each individual use, but a trans woman in a space where 99% of the other people are cis men has two orders of magnitude more encounters with potential assailants than a cis woman in a woman's room where 1% of the users are a trans women.
I have a trans friend, she passes pretty well now but a thing I witnessed happen a couple times when we were hanging out in bars earlier in her transition was men hitting on her without realizing she was trans, realizing she was trans as the encounter went on, and getting aggressive once they figured that out. I would fear deeply for her safety if that encounter was playing out in private in a men's room and not in a crowded bar where she had friends around. To say she's forced to use men's restrooms is to force her to take on a substantial risk of assault (sexual or otherwise) to exist in public, and frankly for some people I think that's the point, to exclude trans people from public life.
I mean, the solution for this poor unfortunate is to work through whatever issues drive interest in transgenderism rather than transitioning. Make your bed and now lie it, I suppose- using the men’s locker room is a risk for some biologically male transgenders, but society oughtn’t to be in the business of protecting individuals from the consequences of their own bad decisions at the expense of people who haven’t made such bad decisions.
This proves too much¹; your argument could be adapted to defend either cancel culture or Jim Crow laws!
or
Your argument also begs the question² of whether transitioning is a bad decision; furthermore, even if it were, if the 'consequences of a bad decision' include extralegal violence, protecting people from it is one of the most fundamental functions of society, and protects you from somebody else deciding that some aspect of your life-style is a 'bad decision' that they are entitled to assault people over. (You still Kant dismiss univeralisability.)
¹Proving too much: an argument which, if valid, would also prove something known to be false; elaborated here.
²In its older sense of 'a proof of P that assumes P'.
Donno man, there are a million 'bad decisions' a guy can make in a bar that will 100% get him beat up -- wearing a dress probably isn't even top 50.
And yet somehow society, while it will sometimes intervene if the aggressor is too hard to ignore -- mostly treats barfights over dumb shit as plus-or-minus consentual, and the response trends in the direction of 'even less than if you report your bike stolen'.
That seems incompatible with 'fundamental function of society' -- maybe you meant to say 'protecting women from extralegal violence?'
Yes, I am aware that there are many ways in which our society falls short of perfection.
If Adam and Bob get into a bar fight, with Adam being the first to escalate to physical attack, then Adam not being charged with assault does not mean that Bob was not wronged, any more than a lack of response to Charles stealing David's bicycle means that the bicycle in question was Charles' property all along.
(Although I could see the case for dismissing charges against Adam if Bob had referred to Adam's ethnic group as 'cockroaches', or called Adam's disabled relative a 'useless eater' or a 'life unworthy of living', or accused Adam of some grave act of moral turpitude such as sexual assault against an infant; but anything short of that....)
...which includes any instance in which the aggressor is substantially stronger, or arranges to have a half-dozen friends when the victim is alone. (If it is two people of approximately equal strength inflicting approximately equal damage on each other, one could make the case for limiting the societal response to a sternly-worded "Don't. Do. It. Again.".)
No, when I said 'people' I meant 'human beings.' The principle¹ that Alex should not be obligated to follow the demands of Bob the Random Nobody merely because Bob happens to be stronger than Alex does not depend on Alex's gender.
¹A principle originally dating back to at least the Bronze Age, even if inconsistently applied.
-- Code of Hammurabi.
Sure doesn't -- first-hand observation here. I'm talking about 'kicking a guy in the head just a cop happens to round the corner' or something -- I've seen both of your examples happen IRL (first one way more than once) and if anything there's even less sympathy for the 'victim' who did something (non-violent) that everyone knew would spiral into a fight with somebody way way bigger and tougher than him.
You moron. Why would you do that?
is the approximate response of everyone from bouncers to cops.
That's not what we're talking about here though -- we're talking about Alex doing something dumb, which he knows will insult or otherwise rouse Bob's personal ire. And doing so in a masculine environment.
This has consequences -- every man knows it, whether or not he will admit it and/or try to hide behind other dudes with guns.
(interesting principle though -- does it also apply to the actions of crybullies who are much weaker than their victims, and yet still issue demands expecting compliance?)
I doubt it, actually -- men fight each other over slights real and imaginary, whether you like it or not -- it dates well before and after the Bronze Age, and up until very recently if they punished everyone guilty of that there'd be nobody left to bring the grain in and whatnot.
And then the poltergeist shows up and plates start flying out of the cabinet!
Fights start when someone chooses to attack someone who has not attacked them. Society has an interest in getting them to make better choices.
And it is every bit as insensitive as asking a woman who has survived a sexual assault 'why she was dressed that way'.
Which, if taken as licence for Bob to assault Alex, allows Bob to impose demands on Alex by becoming personally irate if his demands are not followed.
Which is why 'masculine environments' are increasingly frowned upon by many of the institutions of society.
Yes. We have a system for establishing a policy of "Do not do $THING or There Will Be Consequences." The Legislative Branch passes a law against $THING; the Executive Branch takes necessary action if someone does $THING anyway; the Judicial Branch makes sure that $THING isn't something one has a right to do (such as 'voting while black' or 'printing a column questioning Professor What's-Xir-Face of the Department of Oppressed People Studies's opinion on the best way to oppose racism').
If the government votes that $THING should remain legal, or the courts find that $THING is a civil right, it is not generally appropriate to turn around attempt to impose Consequences for $THING on one's own initiative, especially if $THING, to quote Jefferson, "neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg", because that way lies madness.
People have spent thousands of years moving us up the entropy-slope, from a world in which the strong can do whatever they feel like and expect the weak to cater to their whims, towards a world where The Rules Are The Same For Everyone; they do not appreciate attempts to shove us back down into the abyss.
--Jon Stewart
Which is why we have laws against it. Seldom do people make laws against things that nobody does anyway.
In which case one approaches the problem by degrees -- prosecute the man who becomes violent over a tiny slight before the man responding to a more serious insult; prosecute the man who attacks someone smaller than himself before the man who picks on someone his own size, &c.
As the more egregious incidents decrease in frequency, one can establish stronger standards, and move the Overton Window in the direction of "use your words, not your fists.", or in some cases (things which don't affect anyone else) towards Tim Walz' Golden Rule.
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