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New Culture war fodder from the UK: The Guardian (I read it for the math puzzles):
Seems like the TERFs (including JK Rowling) won this one.
The process for obtaining a GRC is detailed in the WP Article on the Gender Recognition Act 2004 . It seems that you require a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and then a panel will rule your case.
Now, I have no idea how much of a hassle this is. For all I know, it could be a rubber stamp process where any bearded 40yo can get his diagnosis and GRC with minimum hassle and then proceed to jerk off to random women in communal showers. Or it could be a long journey to get the diagnosis.
How many perverts who got their GRC just to watch naked women are there in the UK, anyhow? Is this a practical concern, do women get raped by m2f GRC holders in safe spaces, or is this a moral panic?
On the matter, I don't think there is a great "one size fits all" solution. Allowing biologically male perverts to intrude on women safe spaces just by yelling "I identify as a woman" seems bad. Forcing someone who underwent HRT and surgery and passes as female even naked to shower with the guys also seems bad. For that matter, making a passing f2m with beard, muscles and a dick shower with the women is also not helping anyone.
Also, should I don't think it is a good idea to let the government regulate which groups get safe spaces where. If a private swimming pool decides to establish unisex communal showers, let them try it. If some weirdo religious organization tells people who they think are non-straight to use individual changing rooms lest anyone is aroused, let them. If a lesbian organizations requires all their members to menstruate, let them. (Yes, this leaves public bathrooms and the like as a point of contention.)
On a more meta-level, this feels like legislation from the bench. From my understanding, the 2004 GRA updated the legal definition of "man" and "woman". The Equality Act was passed in 2010. Presumably, parliament was aware of changed definition when they passed the Equality Act. If they meant "biological woman", not "legal woman", they should have specified that. If we allow people to change their legal gender, then their gender should also be recognized in all aspects. If you are f2m and the men get drafted, you get drafted. If a judge orders a mass DNA test of all men, then the f2m gets swabbed as well. If NHS pays for a mammography for women of a certain age, then the m2f gets their fucking mammography.
Finally,
Now, I don't know this circumstances. Perhaps one in 30 board seats is reserved for women, and on half of the boards they were filled with trans-women, leading to everyone on that board having the Y chromosome. If that is the case, then I apologize for the following misinterpretation.
Quotas suck in the first place. Most people are not on some Board Of Important People, and the ones who are on them take care of their class, not their gender cohort. Sure, an all-male board of directors will fuck over working class women in the company, but they will just as eagerly fuck over men in the company. The childless career female board member will not care more for the plights of a single mother than her male colleagues. But whatever, apparently we have quotas. If you have, say eight out of 20 board appointments thanks to your quota, and then you bitch that one of them is a trans-woman when that seat is clearly the birth-right of a biological woman, that seems incredibly petty.
Step me through this, why are statistically significant amounts of rape the only valid reason for keeping trans women away from women's spaces? If trans women don't get raped in the men's bathrooms, can we just declare that they have no right to access women's batrooms?
Why are we limiting the analysis to perverts? If that was the only problem was perverts, we would have simply allowed all other men int women's spaces, or every space would be unisex.
Why?
Also, how common do you think this case even is?
The most disturbing thing about seeing a naked FTM with a dick, is that you get to see the frankensteinian nature of "gender affirming" surgeries in all their glory, not mistaking them for a cis man.
"When I am weaker than you I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles".
The GRA, before this ruling, was actively forcing anyone who wanted to implement traditional sex segregation to include "trans women" in the women's category.
Yes, a "I didn't expect the leopards to eat my face" moment for the TERFs. Doesn't change the fact that no one on the trans side has a problem with quotas for women, until they're taken away from trans women.
Well, rape is a very bad outcome, and this is why it is fielded as an argument by both the TERFs and the trans activists.
Of course, it is not the only argument -- we could likely prevent some rape in bathrooms through extended video surveillance, and yet nobody argues for that.
It has the added advantage of being somewhat quantifiable. If we instead judge purely on how uncomfortable it makes people to be oogled by someone who is attracted to them (divorced from how threatened it makes them -- that is related at least to the subjective perception of rape risk), we run into all kinds of problems related to quantifying that. Presumably, some men are uncomfortable being oogled by gay men (likely a reason why openly gay people were banned from the military), and likely some women would prefer not to undress in front of a lesbian. And some trans people will cause someone to be uncomfortable no matter where you put them.
I haven't really seen it used as an argument by TERFs to be honest.
Anyway, you haven't answered the other part of the question. If rape is the argument, and there isn't enough of it to keep trans women out of women's bathrooms, what is the evidence that trans women will be raped more in mens bathrooms?
Somehow we haven't seen a massive outcry about gays in mens bathrooms, or lesbians in women's bathrooms, so probably any discomfort created is much lower than the one caused by males in women's bathrooms.
The question is will it be less or more.
I do not have statistics, and I am also not sure if anyone who is not blatantly partisan has collected statistics.
Anecdotally, I think that there is a minority but significant fraction of men who assume that anyone with tits in a men's bathroom is looking for cock (and not just avoiding the queue in front of the women's bathroom). Some of these men will be willing to fuck anything which resembles a female with a pulse.
Well, I'd say whatever argument for preventing that from happening by not letting cis mes into the same room with trans women, applies to not letting trans women into the same room with cis women.
If the argument for forcing establishments, by law, to let trans women into women's bathrooms, is "well, where there really that many rapes?", that same argument should apply to just letting them go to the men's bathroom to begin with.
If you're just going to say "I don't trust either side's statistics on this", then we need a different argument entirely.
While I think that nobody deserves to get raped, I will also say that in most cultures, the behavior of a person does empirically affect their odds of being victimized. Ideally, a woman could walk naked through a biker bar without getting any unsolicited comments, but that is just not the world we are living in.
We do have strong norms against men going into the women's bathroom. We do not have strong norms against men sexualizing a person which is somewhat passing as female in the men's bathroom. Imagine a cis-he-said vs cis-she-said rape trial about some sex in a bathroom whose consent is in dispute. If it happened in the women's room, the prosecution is going to argue that the defendant is a sex pest who was intruding into women safe spaces to rape. If it happened in the men's room, then the defense is going to argue that the alleged victim clearly intruded into a space where she does not belong looking for sexual adventure. This might not decide the case -- clearly some men have consensual sex with women in the women's bathroom, and clearly some women get raped when they go into the men's bathroom just to avoid the queue, but without ironclad evidence either way, it will likely influence the jury's verdict.
Personally, I would give any m2f who is passing at more than about 50% probationary access to the women's bathroom, with the understanding that they are expected to be on their very best behavior. If you hit on people in there, flash them, masturbate in the stall, or try to look over or under the stall walls, you are out. (Incidentally, I think these are generally sane rules to enforce also for cis people in their respective bathrooms.)
Or one could tie m2f bathroom privileges to the testosterone level. Presumably, that hormone is correlated with the likelihood of someone raping, and someone on T blockers will be a lot less likely to rape than the median man. (On priors, I would expect that 80% of the men accused of rape would be in the top 50% of male T levels.)
At the end of the day, the other thing about bathroom segregation is enforcement. We probably don't want to declare any man who is in a women's bathroom a sex offender. Based on priors, the likeliest explanation is that a man who walks into a women's bathroom was just absent-minded or blackout drunk and got the wrong door, if we crucify all the men (and -- for fairness -- women in men's bathrooms) who do this this would make a massive dent in our population. So we can't get rid of the sex pests the moment we catch them in the wrong bathroom for the first time. Sure, there are certainly some sex pests who claim that they are trans and use that to annoy women in their bathroom (and we should not let them get away with that!), but I think that the median would-be rapist in a women's bathroom will not try that argue that they deserve to be there (which would entail waiting for the police, making the argument and leaving a paper trail), but simply say "oops, terribly sorry, I thought this was the men's room" and get lost.
But trans activists were arguing (and for quite a few years were very successful) for a significant exception to the norms against men going to the women's bathroom. The original interpretation of the GRA even made it illegal to refuse certain men access to the bathroom. You originally phrased your objection as one based on liberty and skepticism of solving the issue through law, and I find it odd you're glossing over this aspect now.
Maybe the pre-existing norms make it less likely for women to be raped by MTFs, then for MTFs to be raped by men, but the argument is completely speculative, while your original objection was:
So is this a practical concern for MTF GRC holders being raped by men, or is this a moral panic? I think you should answer the question the way it was asked, or concede that it was not a valid argument to begin with.
Personally, if they really feel unsafe in the men's bathroom, I'd say they can use the disabled ones. There's plenty of them, and new buildings are mandated to have them.
Sure. I think it's enough if women get to be able to scream "Eeeeek! A man!", and have the nearest security guard or concerned citizen kick the interloper out, and for establishments to be able to ban repeat offenders from their premises without exposing themselves to lawsuits.
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