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I don't propose banning trans people (whatever that means). I don't propose rounding trans people and herding them into camps. I propose making people use the public facilities and compete in the sporting events that concord with their sex. I'm not saying "trans people can't compete in sporting events ever"; I'm saying "if they wish to compete in sporting events, trans people must compete in the sporting events corresponding to their sex, just like everyone else".
Read the entire sentence. They're banning trans people completely from using toilets or doing other sex-segregated activities. Let's set aside sports and consider only toilets. In what way are cis women harmed by sharing toilets with passing trans women? Note that women's toilets don't have urinals, only stalls. Users will never see other people's genitals. If the trans woman passes, other users won't even know she is trans. On the other hand, sharing the toilet with a passing trans man might actually be unpleasant.
I did read the entire sentence and, again, no they're not. Trans people are not forbidden from using toilets. No conservative politician is demanding that trans people be denied access to toilets of any kind. No conservative politician is demanding that trans people be forced to shit on the street. Conservative politicians are demanding that trans people use the toilets concordant with their sex, just like everyone else. You might disagree with this policy, but lying about what it entails helps no one.
Do I have to spell it out for you? Can you not infer from context that I meant banning trans people completely from using toilets or doing other sex-segregated activities concordant with their gender?
Trans people are demanding that they be allowed to use the toilets concordant with their gender, just like everyone else.
If they knew trans men existed, they'd want to exclude them from both men's (because "they're women") and women's (because they look like men) spaces. This is not hypothetical. Regarding last year's landmark UK Supreme Court ruling:
What about people like me, who insist we do not have a gender identity of any kind? Which toilet do we use?
Trans activists claim that the women's toilets are intended for anyone who has a woman's gender identity, and that bathroom bans are denying them access to a facility that female people are entitled to. People like me, by contrast, deny that women's toilets are intended for anyone who claims to have a female "gender identity", but are rather intended for individuals of the female sex.
"Gender identity" is an unfalsifiable concept, and basing public policy on unfalsifiable claims individuals make about their subjective inner experiences is a bad idea.
My flippant response was meant to highlight that you're just assuming that your viewpoint on the central topic this entire debate is about is correct and framing it as obvious and uncontroversial.
Indeed, which is why I believe there should be some minimum standards for trans people to be allowed to use their preferred facilities beyond just stating they're trans.
Well, it is obvious and uncontroversial that sex is an objective fact which can be trivially verified and falsified, which "gender identity" is not. Hell, it can't even be defined in a non-circular manner, although countless people have tried.
Testing chromosomes is not trivial. A hundred years ago, Imane Khelif would have been considered a weird woman. No one would to think to classify her as male because she doesn't menstruate. And what about people who have a set of chromosomes other than XX or XY? What about people with mosaicism?
How about defining gender such that "my gender is 'woman'" means "I want to be treated, in most social situations, as you would treat the average person with XX chromosomes (however you refer to such a person)"?
This definition is internally consistent and non-circular. The only problem with it is that it doesn't match how any trans person uses the term "gender identity".
Trans-identified males don't claim that they want to be women. They claim that they are women, in some ineffable sense of the term which transcends mere anatomy.
It also makes every associated word collapse into incoherence. According to your definition, the term "woman" refers to both "a person with XX chromosomes" and "a person who doesn't have XX chromosomes but wishes to be treated as if they did". Doesn't it strike you as strange, using exactly the same word for the thing itself and for people who wish to be the thing itself? Is this how any other word in the English language is defined? The word "billionaire" solely refers to people with a net worth of 1 billion or more; we do not use it to also refer to people who wish they had a net worth of 1 billion or more (for that, we have "aspiring billionaire"). The word "lawyer" refers to someone who is licensed to practise law; we do not also use it to refer to people who wish they were licensed to practise law (for that, we have "aspiring lawyer" or "lawyer in training"). I genuinely can't think of an example of a word in the English language which refers to both the thing in itself and to anyone who wants to be the thing in itself.
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