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So can we also safely assume that the man strutting around with their cock on full display in the men's locker room is also a bad actor?
Is "strutting around naked" really an unusual thing to do in a locker room? Are your genitalia somehow NOT "on full display" while you shower? We have had very different experiences of the men's locker rooms if you've never seen another guy's cock.
I feel like it's pretty easy to come up with an alternate explanation for why someone might be naked in the locker room, beyond "wanting to make others uncomfortable". But if we really do care about comfort, why not move to single stall designs so that no one has to see unwanted genitalia?
Do you have any statistics there? Are trans women more dangerous than cis women? Are trans women more dangerous than cis men? All the statistics I've seen about assault and rape say that intimate partners are the major threat, not strangers in bathrooms.
I mean, realistically, probably not! Media is a massive bubble of filters, there's dozens of sources out there, and we probably live in different parts of the world.
If I want to understand an issue, I consider news a terrible way to learn. Keep in mind that news reports are mostly heat, not light - the very fact that it made the news means it's unusual enough to report on that event.
Yes.
Post-op trans women are 18 times more likely to be convicted of a violent crime (including rape and sexual assault) than cis women.
Okay, so... trans women are no more of a threat than trans men, or cis men are? Are you suggesting we also kick trans men out of the bathrooms?
Isn't it odd that trans women don't commit crimes any more often, despite having access to bathrooms and locker rooms? If trans women and cis men are equally violent and criminal, that suggests that we don't need gendered locker rooms or bathrooms at all - there's literally no change in crime rate when we let people use the bathroom they want.
That's neat information, thank you (I am honestly surprised to learn hormones and even surgery don't affect that for MtF but do for FtM. I had assumed things would be more symmetric!)
I'm guessing this study isn't the one you were referring to? Or are there a lot of post-op trans women who don't bother to get a gender recognition certificate? I don't know the UK that well.
Either way, 76 trans offenders vs 13,234 cis male offenders makes me think there is, once again, not much evidence that trans people are actually that much of a threat. That seems like you've got some lopsided statistics from a small sample group (especially since, again: "Prisoners with a gender recognition certificate were not counted as transgender")
A bit of a tangent, but: "Made to penetrate" is now widely regarded as a form of rape, and it turns out that when you don't explicitly gender the crime, the gender bias is vastly weaker. At least in the US, the male:female rape rate is somewhere near 1:1, maybe 2:1. Hardly something women are innocent of. It's a bit difficult to take gendered claims seriously, when you've cheated and used a definition that explicitly excludes cis female offenders.
I have zero interest in addressing this until a source is provided. (Though I must say, I find it interesting that you're recycling manosphere/MRA talking points from a decade ago.)
I thought "female" just meant "anyone who looks like a woman, or who gets addressed as ma'am"? A definition which would include many trans women who haven't undergone bottom surgery, and who are hence perfectly capable of raping people? Sounds like you know exactly what "female" really means when it suits you.
"And now the real surprise: when asked about experiences in the last 12 months, men reported being “made to penetrate”—either by physical force or due to intoxication—at virtually the same rates as women reported rape (both 1.1 percent in 2010, and 1.7 and 1.6 respectively in 2011)."
https://time.com/3393442/cdc-rape-numbers/
I feel like the CDC is a pretty good source.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8360364/
Or maybe the NIH?
At least for me, the Google Search "made to penetrate" produces quite a few other good sources
People I dislike are often right about things! That's the benefit of debate; sometimes it turns out the facts don't actually align with your beliefs, so you change your mind. I was pretty blown away when I first ran into this, but it would certainly seem like Feminist anti-rape efforts have done a remarkable job leveling the playing field in recent years.
I think the word has like six different definitions, and everyone handles that just fine for every other English word. But it's still cheating when 99% of the category is incapable of the crime. I don't think you're actually willing to count trans women as women so it's hardly a "gotcha", just pedantry about how I use language. I don't think you're really confused here, you're just trying to score petty debate club points.
If you simply want to chide me for a minor slip in language... okay, fine. I'll go edit it since it's so incredibly important to you
Sorry, but when you're telling me that my definitions of the words "woman" and "female" are wrong and I should be using your definitions instead (and our definitions are mutually exclusive), I am absolutely going to pull you up on it when you start using words in a fashion which is not remotely consistent with the definition you yourself are advocating for. That's not pedantry, that's just consistency.
I have never and will never be persuaded by passive-aggressive whining of this sort. It has no place here.
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Maybe, though I'd be more inclined to think he's just socially oblivious. Generally speaking, men aren't threatened by seeing other guys' cocks.
Walking naked from the shower to your locker, standing naked under the hair dryer, maybe standing naked in front of the mirror while you do your grooming, not really. But ambling around the room sporting an erection (a scenario I've read about happening more than once) would definitely strike me as "weird" if done to other men, and "bordering on threatening" if done to women.
I'm just saying I think if I saw a naked guy in a locker room, I could distinguish between "He is naked because he's in the process of dressing/undressing/showering" and "He is naked because he really wants me to see him naked."
My bad for the confusion there - I was specifically talking about trans women assaulting women in prison.
This is fair, which is why I have tried to reserve some judgment. I don't like LibsOfTikTok style nutpicking, finding the very worst and most deranged examples of trans people and blasting them as examples of what "trans people" are like. Graham Linehan does the same thing - for all that I sympathize with a lot of his grievances, "Here's a trans person who committed a crime" is like 90% of his output at this point.
That said, I'd be less cynical about trans rights if every trans person who does act in bad faith didn't seem to be a hill that trans activists are willing to die on defending.
This becomes much more sympathetic when the media is actively trying to mislead via the headlines of the "Brighton woman guilty of flashing genitals" variety.
It's unfortunate that we have to depend on Twitter-deranged people for counter-messaging but it really shouldn't be allowed to stand imo.
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Again, this seems like heat instead of light if we're talking about "this happened once". I'm sure there's been guys with erections in the men's locker room at least once as well? Sometimes those things happen involuntarily, and it's terribly embarrassing. I remember that much from my time as a guy.
Yeah, there we agree. I've certainly met reasonable trans people, but they're quieter. Even us trans women get shouted down by the loud ones if we try to be moderate, which is part of why I'm here.
In case it's not clear: if someone is deliberately making women uncomfortable, I think we should have procedures to deal with that. I don't think these procedures need to be gendered - I think women making other women uncomfortable, and men making other men uncomfortable is also a reality you've got to deal with there.
At the same time, I think a lot of people try to sensationalize the slightest incident, like "simply being naked", so I'm going to be slow to condemn any specific individual without knowing the full details. In general I tend to be a very "innocent until proven guilty" sort who doesn't like the idea of trying people in the public spotlight.
I mean, definitely more than once. Graham Linehan and various TERFs have lengthy "This never happens" lists of times that happened. I don't because that's not my crusade, but I have certainly read about it happening enough that I don't think you can dismiss these as "Just that one crazy guy and not a pattern."
C'mon, this is disingenuous. You know we are not talking about someone accidentally popping a boner.
Okay, but how? Because in the case of our boner-popping trans woman making women uncomfortable in the locker room, "her" first line of defense will be "Of course I didn't have control over it and I wasn't doing it deliberately to cause anyone discomfort" (which would be hard to disprove) and her second line of defense will be "Women just need to get over seeing female penises in the locker room." It's easy to say "We should just have procedures to deal with bad actors," but we do. The problem is that trans (or trans-pretending) bad actors, specifically, are exploiting gaps in those procedures. A man who walks into a woman's locker room and waves his penis around will be dealt with quickly. A man who walks into a woman's locker room and waves his penis around and when challenged, says he's a woman and you're being transphobic - well, how do you suggest we deal with that? Because clearly "Use common sense and call the bearded dude with the smirk out for what he is" doesn't work.
I understand your desire to extend them the benefit of the doubt. But again, once you've declared that literally anyone can identify as a woman, especially if they don't have to prove they've made an effort at transitioning or even passing, how do you keep the bearded guy with a smirk out of the locker room? Maybe he really does identify as a woman and that smirk is the euphoria of finally venturing into the space she belongs? Sure, mostly these are sensationalized examples, but they happen - repeatedly - and when we aren't even allowed to accuse someone of being fake or "transitioning" for disingenuous purposes, aren't allowed to impose conditions or gatekeeping, you get huge loopholes that predators can and will exploit. Thus the anger you are seeing now.
I mean, I think it is a fair point to say "some of these stories are sensationalist bullshit, trying to tar ordinary human behavior simply because the person hates trans people." I think it is equally valid to say "yes, but there are also real bad actors out there."
The point is, the number of bad actors is not equal to the number of stories out there.
It is really amazingly easy to put together a very long list of horrible things that basically any group has done. I'm absolutely positive I could give you a list of a hundred times TERFs made false accusations, or at least accusations with outrageously little evidence behind them. That does not mean that every TERF claim is false, of course, or even that most of them are.
It just means that in a world with billions of people in it, we can easily create an overwhelmingly large list.
The only antidote I know of for this is numbers. If you're worried about a group of anecdotes, that's what, 100, 200 people? I'm going to suggest you build a functional civilization and sort out those individuals. There's 66 million people in the UK, and you're really telling me you can't handle 100 criminals?
And, I mean, if you can't handle them, that's hardly the fault of trans people, is it? We're, what 0.5% of the population or so? I hardly think there's anywhere near enough of us to stop much of anything. Seems unfair to prevent the other 299,900 of us from peeing in peace just because you can't deal with the hundred that are off fucking everything up for everyone. Certainly, we don't want the bad actors either - they're making everything awful for the rest of us.
(The converse of all of this, of course, is that if you've got numbers showing "Hey, when we give men access to women's restrooms, the rate rape doubles" or "90% of non-surgical trans people are bad actors who haven't socially transitioned", that's a completely different story!)
P.S.: Probably worth noting, every day I meet trans people online. That's at least 365/year. Of the thousands of trans people I've known, I've heard credible allegations against exactly 3 of them. Each time, it's for harming other trans folk. The vast majority of trans people I meet either change in a stall, are post-op, or most frequently: avoid the situation entirely because it's too stressful. I'm getting quite the opposite message you get!
Obviously, I don't think this is proof that all trans people are pure and pristine - I'm just saying, I've probably got 100x as many positive stories as you've got negative ones. It is really, really easy to produce a HUGE list when the world has so many people in it!
Absolutely true, and is probably the origin of a large share of discussions here on the Motte. People will tend make a true observation ("Blacks are lower IQ and more criminal than whites, on average"; "women tend to be hypergamous"; "Jews have disproportionate influence in Hollywood and finance") and overgeneralize to fit their biases ("Blacks are violent and stupid "; "Women are faithless sluts"; "Jews control our society").
I've already acknowledged that the sensationalized stories are, well, sensational, and I know the vast majority of trans people are not waving their penises at women or trying to get them to wax their balls, or taking medals from them in sporting events. But the fact that a small number are, and the ones who aren't will not allow any sort of guardrails that might prevent this, means unfortunately you are basically siding with the predators.
I mean, that seems unfair. I'm off in the middle saying "no, I think some guard rails are fine, obviously this 100% self-identification experiment failed". How is that siding with predators? What would I have to do to switch sides, if that's not sufficient?
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