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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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