Folamh3
User ID: 1175
The other night I rewatched a movie I liked when I was younger, Heartbreakers. If you want a light comedy featuring a funny performance from Ray Liotta and a hysterical one from Bob Hoskins (and also a leading turn from Jennifer Love Hewitt in her prime, displaying acres of leg and cleavage), check it out.
The premise of the film (this is revealed in the first ten minutes of the movie so it's hardly a spoiler, but the movie would probably be more entertaining if you go into it blind) is this:
Folamh3
3hr ago
They, at least figuratively and sometimes very literally, cut off the part of their body that makes them capable of being a sexual threat- they're no different than a 3 year old boy who needs to use the women's room for pragmatic reasons.
While it's true that males who have undergone penectomies or vaginoplasties can no longer rape women (according to the UK definition of the word, defined as forcible penetration with a penis) or forcibly impregnate them, this does not mean that said males pose no sexual threat to women. They can still grope them, spy on them, take photos of them without their consent, digitally penetrate them etc. And if they choose to physically overpower a woman, they will almost always have a very easy time doing it, unlike a 3-year-old boy.
Folamh3
3hr ago
Laverne Cox gets my vote. Of all ethnic groups, black women tend to be the most androgynous looking anyway, which probably helps.
Folamh3
3hr ago
It could give birth to a sort of "trans-o-sphere" equivalent of the "man-o-sphere" where trans people optimize on the traits that allow them to "pass" most effectively and efficiently, following a sort of "passMaxxing" strategy, if you will.
Why are you talking about this like it's a hypothetical? This space arrived years if not decades ago. Like some sort of weird bizarro-world version of rule 34, if you can think of some trait or activity which is even remotely gendered, you will find an online community of trans people tearing their hair out because they aren't "doing" it properly and/or a guide on how to do it more effectively:
- Feminine handwriting? Check.
- Vocal training? An entire subreddit.
- Gait? [Check].(https://old.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/11b5nj/female_walkcyclegait_mtf/) (Bonus points because the post commences with "This is probably gonna sound like I'm way over-thinking / over-analysing this, but bear with me...")
Folamh3
5hr ago
This article made me laugh probably more than anything I've ever read on Substack: https://suedonym.substack.com/p/the-real-lesbian-master-doc
(Mods, please delete if it's too culture-warry.)
Folamh3
6hr ago
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.
But the point habitually made by gender-critical feminists is that, once these policies are in place, a bad actor doesn't even need to invoke the concept of gender identity as an excuse to enter the ladies' room. Once you've established a precedent that certain male people are allowed to use the ladies' room, and you're not allowed to kick up a stink about it even if they have fully intact male genitalia (because not all trans women - indeed, the overwhelming majority - want to undergo bottom surgery) or if they're making zero effort to pass (because "trans women don't owe you femininity"), it is inevitable that bad actors (many of whom don't even consider themselves trans) will exploit this ostensibly well-meaning policy for their own ends.
A policy of allowing certain male people to enter the ladies' room presents obvious risks for female safeguarding even if literally 100% of people who call themselves trans women are perfectly pure angels who would never hurt a fly. (It need hardly be said that many are not.)
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.
Folamh3
6hr ago
They kill themselves at elevated rates when forced to conform to their biological gender.
I see this asserted all the time, but would love to see some hard data backing it up. I have seen the results of one study from Sweden which found that trans people who underwent sex reassignment surgery had higher suicide rates than trans people who didn't.
Folamh3
8hr ago
Then it's an unreasonable framing because trans people are not people with a cross dressing fetish.
Some and some.
Folamh3
23hr ago
Clever. I wonder what the modern equivalent would be. Asking a woman if she's X, where X is an Instagram influencer famous for demonstrating self-defense techniques women can use to escape from dangerous men?
That's just kicking the can down the road. No bathroom has a bouncer stationed outside checking people's IDs to ensure that their legal sex matches that of the bathroom they wish to use (and if such a policy was proposed, you and I both know that trans activists would be the ones most fervently opposed to it). Once you've established that at least some obviously male people are permitted to use the ladies' room (because they've legally transitioned), inevitably perverts will take advantage of this by trying to pass themselves off as people who've legally transitioned when they haven't.
Addendum to my "genderfluidity" hypothetical: an obviously male person walks into the ladies' room, gets some funny looks, and falsely asserts "don't worry, I've got a gender recognition certificate". The women in the bathroom aren't entirely satisfied by this, but what can they do? It's not like they can demand that he produce his gender recognition certificate on the spot. Shortly afterwards, the obviously male person sexually assaults someone/spies on someone without their knowledge etc., then walks out of the ladies' room and goes about his day.
And besides, the object level question in this case is "should congresswoman Sarah McBride be allowed to use the women's restroom?", and I think it is reasonable to answer, "She should have the same right that an XY androgen-insensitve cis woman should have to use the restroom, based on the government's tracking of her as a woman." Certainly, I don't think anyone's fears that Sarah McBride would sexually assault someone in the bathroom are super justified.
That's not how rules or heuristics work. If a person is volunteering at an event and there's a possibility that they may have to supervise children, the person is generally required to undergo police vetting to ensure that they can be trusted to supervise children. It's irrelevant if the person truthfully says "I shouldn't need to go through the police vetting, I'm not a child molester" - an actual child molester would say the same thing. That's what the police vetting is for: to determine who is a bad actor and who isn't.
Likewise if a woman is walking home alone at night and notices a lone male person walking some distance behind her, and begins to form a suspicion that said person may be following her. I doubt very much that she would be consoled if said male person yelled out "don't worry, I'm not a rapist!" And even if the male person yelled out "don't worry, I'm a trans woman!", I don't think she should be consoled by this either - trans women commit violent crimes at the same rates as cis men, so this male person revealing how he "identifies" has provided the woman with zero additional actionable information.
And you might scoff "maybe some trans people are creepy perverts, but surely a high-ranking politician would know better". Think again.
Folamh3
1d ago
I'm also not convinced that the fig leaf of "(bio)sex seggregating" bathrooms makes much of a difference here. A quick Google search was able to show there are some cases of cis men sexually assaulting women in bathrooms without the need of cross dressing.
To quote myself:
While Freddie is correct that, under a policy of sex-segregated bathrooms, there is nothing stopping a male rapist from simply walking into a women’s bathroom, a trans-inclusive bathroom policy makes it dramatically easier for such people to get away with committing an opportunistic rape, as bystanders will be less likely to intervene if they see a male person entering a women’s bathroom for fear of being accused of being transphobic. The reasoning is similar to regulations in which adults are not permitted to enter public playgrounds unless they are the parent or guardian of a child: obviously a child molester can simply ignore the regulation, but the regulation is designed to make bad actors more obvious to bystanders.
If a woman is in a public bathroom and an obviously male person walks in, there is no reliable way for her to tell if that person is a harmless trans woman just minding her own business, or a rapist exploiting well-meaning inclusive policies for malicious ends. The fact that the person has a penis is not dispositive in one direction or the other (as Freddie acknowledges not all trans people may wish to medically transition); nor that they are bearded and wearing jeans and a T-shirt (because “trans women don’t owe you femininity", and a trans woman presenting as male does not in any way undermine her trans identity).
You'll never get sexual assaults in bathrooms down to zero, but as argued in my other comment, there's some evidence suggesting that they're more common in gender-neutral bathrooms compared to sex-segregated bathrooms. A common understanding that male people are not supposed to be in a particular space (and hence that any male person who violates that rule is up to no good) seems to go a long way towards preventing sexual misconduct.
I also just don't take the bathroom argument too seriously. The best case I've seen people come up with is that one high school bathroom assault, and that involved a couple who had met up for consensual trysts several times in the same bathroom.
When I wrote my post criticising Freddie deBoer's stance on trans issues, I admitted that, of all the demands made by trans activists, "using our preferred bathrooms" is the one I find least objectionable, even though I understand why it makes some women uncomfortable.
Many feminists appeared in the comments of the Substack article providing sources which suggested that my agnosticism on this issue was misplaced, and in fact women are at far greater risk of sexual assault in gender-neutral bathrooms than in single-sex bathrooms:
Unisex changing rooms put women at danger of sexual assault, data reveals:
The vast majority of reported sexual assaults at public swimming pools in the UK take place in unisex changing rooms, new statistics reveal.
The data, obtained through a Freedom of Information request by the Sunday Times, suggests that unisex changing rooms are more dangerous for women and girls than single-sex facilities.
Just under 90 per cent of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment are about incidents in unisex facilities.
What’s more, two thirds of all sexual attacks at leisure centres and public swimming pools take place in unisex changing rooms.
Of 134 complaints over 2017-2018, 120 reported incidents took place in gender-neutral changing rooms and just 14 were in single-sex changing areas.
Unisex facilities account for less than half the changing areas across the UK, but the number is on the rise - doing away with separate male and female changing rooms and toilets is seen as a way to cut staff costs and better cater for transgender people.
As I also pointed out in the post, it's no good saying "we're not advocating for gender-neutral bathrooms - we just want trans women to be able to use the ladies' room". There is zero practical difference between the two. After all, trans women don't owe you femininity, so if you're a female person in the ladies' room and an obviously male person walks in, you're not allowed to kick up a fuss about it even if said "trans woman" is making zero effort to pass and has fully intact male genitalia.
"How dare you say that trans women are rapists?!" trans activists will howl. No - a policy of gender-neutral or trans-inclusive bathrooms poses obvious risks for female safeguarding even if literally every trans woman in the world is just a delicate little flower who wants to use the stalls in peace. (At least some demonstrably are not.) If you're taking the stance that
- women are permitted to use the ladies' room
- every person who says they're a woman is a woman; no criteria must be met (medical transition, dressing in a conventionally feminine manner) to meet that standard.
an inevitable byproduct of that is that perverts will exploit trans-inclusive policies for their own nefarious ends. It is literally unavoidable under this rubric.
Hell, trans activists even acknowledge that "genderfluidity" is a thing, and one can "identify as" a man at some times and identify as a woman at other times, perhaps hopping back and forth multiple times a day. What's to stop a pre-transition male person from "identifying as" a woman just long enough to go into the ladies' and sexually assault someone, then walk out and immediately resume "identifying as" a man? (I say "what's to stop" like it's some far-out hypothetical; obviously I'm sure this has already happened somewhere.)
Folamh3
1d ago
Have you had anything published? Or do you just mean sharing things among your friend group?
Folamh3
2d ago
How many people who were complaining about the "kids in cages" at the southern border are ardent Zionists and don't see any inconsistency in their beliefs about the morality of border enforcement?
I don't see any inconsistency between "when policing a border, a certain level of stringency and invasiveness is required when the people trying to enter the country include underage terrorists who have been groomed into committing suicide bombings; but that level of stringency and invasiveness is inappropriate when policing a border to prevent economic migrants from gaining illegitimate access to a country".
Folamh3
2d ago
Day 19 of NaNoWriMo. I crossed the 30k mark last night. This has been a very bipolar experience, I find myself wildly vacillating between "this book fuckin slaps" and long dark nights of the soul. I swear I'm hitting every point on this graph several times a week. I'm on an upswing now: between the amount I wrote on the train this morning and the amount I wrote on my lunch break, I've completed nearly half of my daily quota today already. Can't wait to get home and finish today's quota.
Funnily enough, I'm actually feeling pretty good about the style of the book, on a sentence-to-sentence, paragraph-to-paragraph level. It's only the story, pacing etc. I'm unsure about. But I feel emotionally invested enough in my characters that I'm legitimately feeling guilty about the fate that's soon to befall one of them, which must be a promising sign. No turning back now, just a week and a half left. The only thing I'm disappointed about is that I was looking forward to having a first draft by November 30th, but realistically at 50k words I'll probably only have between 60-66% of a first draft. Planning to take December 1st off, then resume writing on the 2nd, maintaining the pace of 1,667 words/day until I have a complete draft. Hopefully that means I'll be done a week before Christmas.
Folamh3
3d ago
I wonder what your therapist would have made of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Doublethink promotes wellness?
Folamh3
3d ago
Weirdly enough, in the parody series Barry Trotter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gerber_(parodist)), Barry and Ermine get married and have a son who's a Squib. Because their son has grown up around magical people, he experiences a "grass-is-greener" effect in which Muggle culture seems impossibly exciting and exotic to him. His childhood ambition is to become an actuary in an insurance firm.
Do you have a source for this?
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