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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   23643 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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For the purpose of this post I will use the following terms in the following ways:

Woman = Biological woman. Man = Biological man

Well it seems like we are on episode >9000 "transgender bathrooms".

There is currently a man named Sarah McBride who has been elected to congress. This person (a man), who wishes to be seen as female, has caused another member of congress named Nancy Mace (a woman) to start whining and complaining on various social media videos and news interviews about her (Nancy's) concern that Sarah will try to use the female bathrooms, lockerrooms, etc. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has said that the policy of the House is that women's restrooms/lockerrooms are for women, and men's restrooms lockerrooms are for men. There are a number of non-gender specific bathrooms around the house grounds that are open to anybody who doesn't want to abide by this.

Here is what I actually think a reasonable framing of this question is: "can men with a cross dressing fetish involve non-consenting women in their crossdress-play?" In a reasonable society I think the answer to this question should be: no, obviously.

Everybody seems intent on being dishonest towards each other when talking about this, so here is what I think is a reasonable answer to "why does anybody care? Just let everybody pee in peace!".

Bathrooms are extremely vulnerable places; they usually have one exit, you are often in there alone, and you are often doing something which makes you physically vulnerable (using the toilet). It seems completely reasonable for women to want to keep men out of these spaces.

To put some additonal context here: I think that the tide is turning pretty sharply on gender ideology within the democratic party (at least for anybody mildly near the center). I've seen several prominent-ish democrat spokespeople openly blame transgender people for the 2024 presidential loss. You also have the UK making it illegal to trans your kids, as well as a recent, prominent NYT article that was critical of transing your children (unfortunately the google index seems very intent on not showing me links to the article, but has plenty of links to people talking about it.

I think people who have never been involved in criminal law, particularly sex crimes, do not understand is the difficulty of proving a case. The fact that a person is in an area they shouldn't be in is very good evidence they committed a sex crime compared to what normally is submitted.

Most sex crimes happen in private with no witnesses and no corroboration.

But a sex crime where a man is in the ladies locker room and can be seen going in or out? That can be charged. This is the difference between a rapist going free or being charged.

Sex crimes are both some of the most egregious crimes, and some of the hardest to prove crimes in our system. They are much harder than murder to prove, for example.

Here is what I actually think a reasonable framing of this question is: "can men with a cross dressing fetish involve non-consenting women in their crossdress-play?" In a reasonable society I think the answer to this question should be: no, obviously.

What question are we framing? Because if it's "Should transgender people be allowed to use gendered bathrooms of the opposite biological sex?" Then it's an unreasonable framing because trans people are not people with a cross dressing fetish.

Then it's an unreasonable framing because trans people are not people with a cross dressing fetish.

Some and some.

Some people purporting to be trans could just be using it to legitimize their cross-dressing fetish, but it’s not a significant enough number to justify the framing, and definitely not in the Sarah McBride case to justify the framing in this circumstance.

How big would the number have to be to justify the framing, in your opinion?

Good question. Just off the cuff I feel like it should be the majority to justify the framing.

I do not think that describing trans women as 'men with a cross dressing fetish' is very close to reality.

There is a small fraction of people who are genuinely very uncomfortable with their biological gender. They sometimes take hormones, get surgery and go through byzantine legal processes to change their legal gender. They kill themselves at elevated rates when forced to conform to their biological gender. This is not just some kink.

Different cultures have dealt differently with non-conformists of all sorts. Killing them at the earliest opportunity is certainly a popular choice.

Modern liberal democracies generally frown on that and try to do better than just applying whatever solution would suit the majority of people. We don't accept "most straight men would prefer if they knew for certain that the man peeing next to them was not sexually attracted to them" as an excuse to kill all the gays and bisexuals, or even kick them out of the military.

The bathroom issue is simply an issue of trade-offs. Having to use a gendered bathroom which belongs to a gender one does not identify as clearly can be humiliating. Imagine getting told that you are too small or weak to qualify for the men's bathroom, or that you are too large, ugly or flat-chested to qualify for the women's bathroom.

On the other hand, there is both a perception of danger if people who are not cis-women are allowed in women's bathroom as well as possibly some actual danger.

I think that the actual danger is over-rated. 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. Nor would punishing someone who disregards the gender sign on a bathroom (for example, to avoid waiting time) with a lengthy prison sentence be proportionate.

There will probably be some sick fucks who like to jerk off in the women's bathroom who can use the excuse 'but you see, I actually identify as a woman' if they are seen entering or exiting, but this is a lesser concern.

At the end of the day, it is a numbers game. 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.

As things stand, I don't think it is a huge practical issue. At the risk of sounding like some woke, I think most women I know would very much prefer having to share their bathrooms with trans women to losing access to abortions.

A decade ago, Scott argued for drawing a more complex gender boundary than 'has Y-chromosome' as a cheap and easy way to improve outcomes for a lot of people. I think that his article is still spot on.

I think that the bathroom safety argument frequently is used by anti-trans people not because preventing rapes is their first and foremost concern, but because it is one of the few issues with trans rights that the average person will care about.

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 want to undergo bottom surgery - indeed, the overwhelming majority haven't) 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.

I addressed this here.

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.

The bathroom issue is simply an issue of trade-offs. Having to use a gendered bathroom which belongs to a gender one does not identify as clearly can be humiliating.

I don't think it's an issue of just humiliation. A trans woman who is on estrogen for a substantial amount of time and has developed breasts or had bottom surgery is likely to be at risk of sexual assault if she is forced to use a men's bathroom or a men's locker room. There's also the risk of regular non-sexual assault by transphobic men against someone who has had the hormone profile of a cis woman for years and has the accompanying muscle mass. I agree that bathroom assault risk is pretty low for each individual use, but a trans woman in a space where 99% of the other people are cis men has two orders of magnitude more encounters with potential assailants than a cis woman in a woman's room where 1% of the users are a trans women.

I have a trans friend, she passes pretty well now but a thing I witnessed happen a couple times when we were hanging out in bars earlier in her transition was men hitting on her without realizing she was trans, realizing she was trans as the encounter went on, and getting aggressive once they figured that out. I would fear deeply for her safety if that encounter was playing out in private in a men's room and not in a crowded bar where she had friends around. To say she's forced to use men's restrooms is to force her to take on a substantial risk of assault (sexual or otherwise) to exist in public, and frankly for some people I think that's the point, to exclude trans people from public life.

I mean, the solution for this poor unfortunate is to work through whatever issues drive interest in transgenderism rather than transitioning. Make your bed and now lie it, I suppose- using the men’s locker room is a risk for some biologically male transgenders, but society oughtn’t to be in the business of protecting individuals from the consequences of their own bad decisions at the expense of people who haven’t made such bad decisions.

I mean, the solution for this poor unfortunate is to work through whatever issues drive interest in transgenderism rather than transitioning. Make your bed and now lie it, I suppose- using the men’s locker room is a risk for some biologically male transgenders, but society oughtn’t to be in the business of protecting individuals from the consequences of their own bad decisions at the expense of people who haven’t made such bad decisions.

This proves too much¹; your argument could be adapted to defend either cancel culture or Jim Crow laws!

I mean, the solution for this poor unfortunate is to work through whatever issues drive interest in transgenderism [wrongthink] rather than transitioning [expressing their opinions]. Make your bed and now lie [in] it, I suppose- using the men’s locker room [disagreeing with grievance studies departments] is a risk for some biologically male transgenders [white males], but society oughtn’t to be in the business of protecting individuals from the consequences of their own bad decisions at the expense of people who haven’t made such bad decisions.

or

I mean, the solution for this poor unfortunate is to work through whatever issues drive interest in transgenderism [race-mixing] rather than transitioning [integrating]. Make your bed and now lie [in] it, I suppose- using the men’s locker room [using the whites' water fountain] is a risk for some biologically male transgenders [[racial epithet redacted]s], but society oughtn’t to be in the business of protecting individuals from the consequences of their own bad decisions at the expense of people who haven’t made such bad decisions.

Your argument also begs the question² of whether transitioning is a bad decision; furthermore, even if it were, if the 'consequences of a bad decision' include extralegal violence, protecting people from it is one of the most fundamental functions of society, and protects you from somebody else deciding that some aspect of your life-style is a 'bad decision' that they are entitled to assault people over. (You still Kant dismiss univeralisability.)

¹Proving too much: an argument which, if valid, would also prove something known to be false; elaborated here.

²In its older sense of 'a proof of P that assumes P'.

Your argument also begs the question² of whether transitioning is a bad decision

This question, on a fundamental level, resolves to postulates, and postulates are unfalsifiable so this turns into idiotic definitional debates.

even if it were, if the 'consequences of a bad decision' include extralegal violence, protecting people from it is one of the most fundamental functions of society

Transgenders larping as women should learn self-defense, I guess. Society has to pick and choose whose safety to prioritize in this instance and it should come down hard on the side that's doing what its supposed to do.

Society has to pick and choose whose safety to prioritize in this instance

Prioritise the safety of who whoever is in more danger.

it should come down hard on the side that's doing what its supposed to do.

And where will you stand when the leopards eat your face? When someone bigger and stronger than you decides that something about your life, that contravenes no legal code in the jurisdiction, is 'not doing what you are supposed to do', and that he is entitled to suppress it by force?

Consider Thomas More:

And, when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – Man’s laws, not God’s – and, if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

A transwoman, in existing publicly while appearing as the gender opposite that associated with her genitals at birth, has broken no law of Man (at least in North America or Western Europe); do not cut down Man's laws against assault, lest you call up that which you cannot put down.

if the 'consequences of a bad decision' include extralegal violence, protecting people from it is one of the most fundamental functions of society, and protects you from somebody else deciding that some aspect of your life-style is a 'bad decision' that they are entitled to assault people over.

Donno man, there are a million 'bad decisions' a guy can make in a bar that will 100% get him beat up -- wearing a dress probably isn't even top 50.

And yet somehow society, while it will sometimes intervene if the aggressor is too hard to ignore -- mostly treats barfights over dumb shit as plus-or-minus consentual, and the response trends in the direction of 'even less than if you report your bike stolen'.

That seems incompatible with 'fundamental function of society' -- maybe you meant to say 'protecting women from extralegal violence?'

...there are a million 'bad decisions' a guy can make in a bar that will 100% get him beat up....

...society ... mostly treats barfights over dumb shit as plus-or-minus [consensual]....

Yes, I am aware that there are many ways in which our society fall short of perfection.

If Adam and Bob get into a bar fight, with Adam being the first to escalate to physical attack, then Adam not being charged with assault does not mean that Bob was not wronged, any more than a lack of response to Charles stealing David's bicycle means that the bicycle in question was Charles' property all along.

(Although I could see the case for dismissing charges against Adam if Bob had referred to Adam's ethnic group as 'cockroaches', or called Adam's disabled relative a 'useless eater' or a 'life unworthy of living', or accused Adam of some grave act of moral turpitude such as sexual assault against an infant; but anything short of that....)

if the aggressor is too hard to ignore

...which includes any instance in which the aggressor is substantially stronger, or arranges to have a half-dozen friends when the victim is alone. (If it is two people of approximately equal strength inflicting approximately equal damage on each other, one could make the case for limiting the societal response to a sternly-worded "Don't. Do. It. Again.".)

maybe you meant to say 'protecting women from extralegal violence?'

No, when I said 'people' I meant 'human beings.' The principle¹ that Alex should not be obligated to follow the demands of Bob the Random Nobody merely because Bob happens to be stronger than Alex does not depend on Alex's gender.

¹A principle originally dating back to at least the Bronze Age, even if inconsistently applied.

To bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, so that the strong shall not harm the weak."

-- Code of Hammurabi.

(Although I could see the case for dismissing charges against Adam if Bob had referred to Adam's ethnic group as 'cockroaches', or called Adam's disabled relative a 'useless eater' or a 'life unworthy of living', or accused Adam of some grave act of moral turpitude such as sexual assault against an infant; but anything short of that....)

So it's all who/whom after all. If Bob does something you find offensive, Adam is excused for hitting him.

No, I was merely acknowledging the circumstances in which the argument for an absolute never-respond-to-words-with-violence-never-ever-never-forever policy is at its weakest. (They are also circumstances in which it would be reasonable for Adam to fear that Bob, if not deterred, might escalate to violence against Adam or his relatives. Prior to the genocide in Rwanda, certain Hutu radio broadcasters regularly referred to Tutsi as 'cockroaches' (inyenzi); 'Useless eaters' (Nutzlose Fresser) and 'Life unworthy of life' (Lebensunwertes Leben) were terms used to refer to disabled people by the Nazis prior to murdering them in 'Aktion T4'.)

If Bob said to Adam "Your mum threw herself at me and ten of my friends last night.", or "You can't $OCCUPATION worth beans, they just promote you because you're golf buddies with half the C-Suite and have pictures of the other half in flagrante.", or "It looks like you have a dead rodent glued to your scalp.", Adam would be justified in being upset, but would not be justified in escalating to assault.

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which includes any instance in which the aggressor is substantially stronger, or arranges to have a half-dozen friends when the victim is alone.

Sure doesn't -- first-hand observation here. I'm talking about 'kicking a guy in the head just a cop happens to round the corner' or something -- I've seen both of your examples happen IRL (first one way more than once) and if anything there's even less sympathy for the 'victim' who did something (non-violent) that everyone knew would spiral into a fight with somebody way way bigger and tougher than him.

You moron. Why would you do that?

is the approximate response of everyone from bouncers to cops.

The principle¹ that Alex should not be obligated to follow the demands of Bob the Random Nobody merely because Bob happens to be stronger than Alex

That's not what we're talking about here though -- we're talking about Alex doing something dumb, which he knows will insult or otherwise rouse Bob's personal ire. And doing so in a masculine environment.

This has consequences -- every man knows it, whether or not he will admit it and/or try to hide behind other dudes with guns.

(interesting principle though -- does it also apply to the actions of crybullies who are much weaker than their victims, and yet still issue demands expecting compliance?)

A principle originally dating back to at least the Bronze Age, even if inconsistently applied.

I doubt it, actually -- men fight each other over slights real and imaginary, whether you like it or not -- it dates well before and after the Bronze Age, and up until very recently if they punished everyone guilty of that there'd be nobody left to bring the grain in and whatnot.

everyone knew would spiral into a fight

And then the poltergeist shows up and plates start flying out of the cabinet!

Fights start when someone chooses to attack someone who has not attacked them. Society has an interest in getting them to make better choices.

You moron. Why would you do that?

is the approximate response of everyone from bouncers to cops.

And it is every bit as insensitive as asking a woman who has survived a sexual assault 'why she was dressed that way'.

The principle that Alex should not be obligated to follow the demands of Bob the Random Nobody merely because Bob happens to be stronger than Alex

That's not what we're talking about here though -- we're talking about Alex doing something dumb, which he knows will insult or otherwise rouse Bob's personal ire.

Which, if taken as licence for Bob to assault Alex, allows Bob to impose demands on Alex by becoming personally irate if his demands are not followed.

And doing so in a masculine environment.

Which is why 'masculine environments' are increasingly frowned upon by many of the institutions of society.

(interesting principle though -- does it also apply to the actions of crybullies who are much weaker than their victims, and yet still issue demands expecting compliance?)

Yes. We have a system for establishing a policy of "Do not do $THING or There Will Be Consequences." The Legislative Branch passes a law against $THING; the Executive Branch takes necessary action if someone does $THING anyway, and the Judicial Branch makes sure that $THING isn't something one has a right to do (such as 'voting while black' or 'printing a column questioning Professor What's-Xir-Face of the Department of Oppressed People Studies's opinion on the best way to oppose racism').

If the government votes that $THING should remain legal, or the courts find that $THING is a civil right, it is not generally appropriate to turn around attempt to impose Consequences for $THING on one's own initiative, especially if $THING, to quote Jefferson, "neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg", because that way lies madness.

People have spent thousands of years moving us up the entropy-slope, from a world in which the strong can do whatever they feel like and expect the weak to cater to their whims, towards a world where The Rules Are The Same For Everyone; they do not appreciate attempts to shove us back down into the abyss.

Civilisation began when the un-fittest decided that they would like to survive too.

--Jon Stewart

men fight each other over slights real and imaginary, whether you like it or not -- it dates well before and after the Bronze Age

Which is why we have laws against it. Seldom do people make laws against things that nobody does anyway.

and up until very recently if they punished everyone guilty of that there'd be nobody left to bring the grain in and whatnot.

In which case one approaches the problem by degrees -- prosecute the man who becomes violent over a tiny slight before the man responding to a more serious insult; prosecute the man who attacks someone smaller than himself before the man who picks on someone his own size, &c.

As the more egregious incidents decrease in frequency, one can establish stronger standards, and move the Overton Window in the direction of "use your words, not your fists.", or in some cases (things which don't affect anyone else) towards Tim Walz' Golden Rule.

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legal processes to change their legal gender. They kill themselves at elevated rates when forced to conform to their biological gender. This is not just some kink.

They also kill themselves at elevated rates after transition.

Like, ‘it’s entirely a kink’ is legitimately a bad argument, but it doesn’t mean transgenderism is valid. We can just… not accommodate crazy delusional people.

We can just… not accommodate crazy delusional people.

Yes, but that raises Overton window concerns among the people first in line to accommodate this brand of crazy. If we stopped accommodating obviously crazy delusional people then it becomes more rhetorically difficult for the less-obviously crazy but still delusional people to maintain those delusions.

As far as which delusions they are... well, the modal champion of trans rights is an unmarried college-educated white woman in a education or managerial career. Surely that demographic has no delusions surrounding gender, and even if they did, surely it wouldn't threaten their socioeconomic standing if we started reconsidering our accommodation of those delusions?

I do not think that describing trans women as 'men with a cross dressing fetish' is very close to reality.

There is a small fraction of people who are genuinely very uncomfortable with their biological gender. They sometimes take hormones, get surgery and go through byzantine legal processes to change their legal gender. They kill themselves at elevated rates when forced to conform to their biological gender. This is not just some kink.

I've been arguing for something similar elsewhere in the thread so it's only fair that I push back gently on this too.

First, pedantic point, you mean "biological sex". The people who get suicidal are uncomfortable with their bodies. That aside:

A large fraction of MtFs have autogynephilia. Even before the recent (20 yrs) runup, it was most likely more than half; now, it's probably more like 90%. This is even when you include only the people who get some form of medical transition; if you include all the "dude shaves his legs and wears a skirt" crowd it's probably even higher (though at that point you probably just start getting general weirdos who aren't in the same clade as people who seek medical transition).

Do the AGP MtFs who seek medical transition and official name changes fit your description? Maybe! Depending on exactly how you cash out terms like "dysphoria" (or your "very uncomfortable"), possibly the vast majority of them! But also.... AGP has a sexual element. Almost nobody medically transitions because it gets them off to do so, that's completely crazy (and sometimes they get surgeries to remove their genitals or reconstruct them as pseudo-female-genitals, come on; and sometimes they find that cross-sex hormones prevent them from getting off and still continue to transition). But at the same time... if you've got AGP, then you do have an arousal response to the idea of being female, and for many AGPs, this is especially triggered by cross-dressing. So there's a sense in which a lot of MtFs... do, in fact, have a cross-dressing fetish, if you look at it that way. It's not why they're transitioning, in the sense that they wouldn't be doing it if it was just a fetish, but it's there. I've heard it becomes less... stimulating... once they've been doing it for a long time, though. It's complicated.

the McBride situation aside, these bills are nothing more than performative measures meant to publicly express disgust with the idea of trans people in general. They do nothing to actually keep trans people out of whatever bathroom you're trying to keep them out of, excepting whatever mild deterrent effect comes out of making something technically illegal. What would it take to successfully prosecute such a case? Suppose a woman sees someone she suspects is a trans-woman in a public restroom. What can she do? The first option would be to alert the staff, who may or may not care to do anything about it. Eventually, the police will have to be called by someone. Assuming the police arrive and the suspected man is still on the premises, to what extent does a person have to look masculine enough for it to constitute probable cause for arrest?

You might argue that the officer could ask them to produce ID, and if the sex was listed as male this would give them probable cause (states with bathroom bills generally require the sex on ID to match that of the birth certificate). While the cop may have a valid argument that he had the requisite reasonable suspicion necessary to require identification, identification in this context is limited to providing a correct name, address, and date of birth; producing a government-issued ID is not required. At this point, there's no probable cause to arrest. There's no probable cause to get a warrant for a medical examination.

The only option at this point would be to run the name and dob through various government databases to determine if the sex listed in the records matches that of the bathroom they were in. But nobody is doing this. And even if they did, it isn't necessarily dispositive, since the person could have been born in a state that allows amended birth certificates. Given that police can't just look at people's genitals based on a complaint alone, actually enforcing such a law would be burdensome to the point that it's unenforceable absent some extraordinary circumstance. Even the state officials supporting these bills, when asked about enforcement, admit that they have no clue.

If the trans community were smart, they'd stop complaining about these bills and shrug them off. Red state legislators know that the bills are unenforceable, but they pass them anyway. I think their motivations are partially sincere, but partially cynical—trans issues are an electoral loser, and passing these laws induces their opponents to take unpopular positions. If the trans community simply announced that they had no intention of complying because the state couldn't do anything about it anyway, it would put increasing pressure on the government to actually attempt enforcement. there would likely be few prosecutions, if only due to a dearth of complaints, but one can imagine a situation where the only arrests of note are of normal women who are mistakenly believed to be trans. This would result in a PR disaster that doesn't require any Democrats to take unpopular positions.

If the trans community were smart, they'd stop complaining about these bills and shrug them off.

Agreed, but that's kind of the problem here - the trans community has not been smart, and instead doubles down defending bad actors (or denying they exist).

Had trans women limited themselves to peeing in peace, you might have had an occasional Karen freaking out seeing someone who looks like a man in the women's restroom, but most people wouldn't have cared. My recollection is that this wasn't an issue for many years. Trans women have been around since long before the current iteration of the culture wars. Why do you suppose suddenly they are a major front in the culture war? I don't think it's because conservatives suddenly discovered they exist.

Had trans women limited themselves to peeing in peace, you might have had an occasional Karen freaking out seeing someone who looks like a man in the women's restroom, but most people wouldn't have cared. My recollection is that this wasn't an issue for many years.

Really? Before the trans debate, do you think men could just occasionally walk into the women's bathroom and pee in peace while only being freaked out at by rare Karens?

Men in a dress and a wig? Yes.

Really? Before the trans debate, do you think men could just occasionally walk into the women's bathroom and pee in peace while only being freaked out at by rare Karens?

Men who were making a genuine effort to dress and pass as women (even if they didn't really pass)? Yes.

I think people with androgynous physiognomy wearing female-coded clothing (such as Sarah McBride, or indeed Nancy Mace as Twitter trolls took considerable delight in pointing out) used to be able to walk into a woman's bathroom and pee in peace. Most of these people were and are cis women, and they shouldn't have to get their ladyparts out to prove eligibility before they go into a stall.

Bad actors using the wrong bathroom for nefarious reasons is a problem we have, empirically, managed to solve without bathroom laws for about a century. Assaults by strangers in public bathrooms are not exactly a common form of sex crime. It isn't worth creating a new problem of Karens harassing manjawed cis women in order to fix it.

I don't think it's because conservatives suddenly discovered they exist.

I agree with the general thrust of your argument- there were transgenders in the ‘90’s and while it wasn’t acceptable among cultural conservatives nobody cared that much- but trans issues got big all of a sudden partly because Chris Rufo was able to magnify some high profile cases of trans making progressives look bad and republicans won a governors race in a blue state out of it.

Why do you suppose suddenly they are a major front in the culture war?

You're not wrong, but I think it's several reasons:

  • As you mention, that community has defended and/or denied the existence of obvious bad actors, especially sex pests who either are or claim to be trans (there's high profile examples of both).
  • There's been an enormous growth (like, orders of magnitude) in the number of people transitioning medically (as in cross-sex hormones and/or surgeries) and an even bigger growth in the number of people self-identifying as "trans" in the last ~15-20 years, which has resulted in:
  • A lot more "visibly trans" people, who a lot of people find disturbing (especially MtFs),
  • The demands made by the movement getting louder and applying more frequently.
  • A lot of "holy crap what is happening" reaction as people's family members get (apparently suddenly) sucked in to the movement and often start doing things like changing their names, insisting on being referred to as the opposite sex, even things like taking cross-sex hormones and getting irreversible surgeries.

Even without the bad actors issue, I think this would be a major CW front. Maybe bathrooms specifically wouldn't be as big of a flash point, but there was always going to be something.

Okay, so you have crafted a hypothetical situation where police wouldn't have probable cause to arrest a person who is guilty? Now what?

This doesn't mean the law is unenforceable, it doesn't even mean this law is special. There are dozens of laws which are hard to prove, especially when not witnessed by a cop, and sometimes the cop goes to investigate it starting with a "voluntary" talk and the person doesn't given them the necessary evidence for there to be probable cause for arrest despite that person being guilty. Are those other laws unenforceable, despite hundreds of people being arrested and prosecuted for them daily in the US?

What constitutes probable cause for a search, arrest, detention, etc. if a cop smells marijuana? Well, how much of a smell? What kind of smell? From where was the smell? Funny enough, all of these quandaries were answered and guidelines were produced as to what was enough to constitute various standards of suspicion. Institutes of serious training were created so officers could get a certificate of expertise in the smelling of drugs.

It turns out the court system is capable of coming up with answers, however unsatisfactory, to answer this sort of string of questions which look more like an attempt to overwhelm to stop them from trying as opposed to informing. These aren't actually hard questions to answer and enforcement of such a law could be just like every other law which is regularly enforced all over the country. All that is necessary is the will to expend resources to enforce them.

Whether or not these laws or weed laws are stupid is another question, but it hardly makes these laws special or these questions some sort of unique hurdle for enforcement.

My grandfather, back during segregation, conspicuously used the colored bathroom many a time. Nothing was ever done because no one gave a shit(it, uh, might have been different the other direction, but a wage slave at a store has Better Things To Do than get in a confrontation with a customer so lots of them presumably got away with that too- I think some of the segregation cases involved blacks who got away with using the white section over and over again before anyone called them on it).

Of course the real benefit to these laws from a red state perspective is it makes it impossible for blue cities to force bathrooms to be gender neutral.

Here is what I actually think a reasonable framing of this question is: "can men with a cross dressing fetish involve non-consenting women in their crossdress-play?"

This is about as reasonable as asking why we tolerate bondage fetishists in the police force. We don’t; the handcuffs have a practical, unobjectionable, non-sexual purpose. Anyone abusing such privileges for sexual gratification can and should be punished.

Has McBride done or said anything to convince you her presentation is sexualized? Because if you’re going off base rates, I think you might have the wrong idea.

We are literally tolerating Puppy/Dog/Furries in the military. There are even images of them wearing their uniforms with the bondage dog masks. None of them have been dishonorably discharged for their shenanigans.

None of them have been dishonorably discharged for their shenanigans.

Though if you look under the dog masks, there’s a good chance you’ll find some dishonorable discharge

I don't think the two situations are the same. Men are allowed to become policemen already because they provide obvious benefits if you aren't Leto Atreides.

The presumption is against men being in the women's toilet at all, presumably because there's no benefit that outweighs potential issues.

So the question is why an exception for this sort of man? I really don't care whether it's sexualized or not. I think we should maintain the original taboo

You seem to be coming from a liberal position where there are valid trans people and some number of bad actors that overlap. That line from OP strongly suggests they are not, so your simile doesn't work across that gap of understanding.

I suppose not.

Not sure how I can effectively challenge their assumption, though.

You can’t.

‘Transgender is a real thing and not a mental illness’ and ‘transgender is some kind of delusion or mental disorder’ are both unfalsifiable because they come down to object level postulates in definitions. You would win the argument by convincing someone that your postulates are better than theirs, the same as they would convince you.

Has McBride done or said anything to convince you her presentation is sexualized?

Why does he wear fake breasts? Is he planning on nursing a baby with these fake breasts? Signaling his (non-existent) fertility with these fake breasts? Or is it perhaps that male sexual fixation on female breasts informs the things that he does as a part of what appears to be a crossdressing fetish?

This is about as reasonable as asking why we tolerate bondage fetishists in the police force.

Police handcuffs serve a practical function that assists the public generally. Do Sarah's fake breasts serve a similar practical function? (No).

They’re about as practical as replacements after a mastectomy, augments on a post-menopause trophy wife, or whatever the hell Rudy Giuliani was doing. Which is to say, not very.

Not everything impractical is a fetish.

Are you arguing that he had a mastectomy or is post-menopausal?

And in those cases, yes I agree with you that there is a sexual attraction component to it. This seems like an example that supports my point, not detracts from it.

Let's take your example to a similar place: suppose a woman got large fake breasts implanted, and then insisted on wearing revealing clothing to a children's birthday party, or insisted on brushing them up against married men at her workplace. Would you agree that this was inappropriate?

If somebody wants to wear...whatever they want, in their own private home, then by all means they should and nobody should interfere with them. Even if they want to wear just about whatever they want out in public, that's fine too (to an extent).

The problem here is that there are women who are clearly requesting not to be involved in the bathroom part of the fantasy, and there are people want to force them to. That's not okay.

Yeah, flashing the fake titties would be inappropriate. Has McBride done that? Or posted provocative pictures, or stolen women’s luggage, or whatever?

Last I checked, most women have their breasts even when they aren’t nursing a baby. This doesn’t lead you to assume they are sexual deviants. Unless, I suppose, you take the fundamentalist view. Would you feel better if McBride wore a burqa?

There is a whole world of impractical signals out there. I think you’re picking one to back up a mistaken intuition.

Has McBride done that?

No, but what he has done (until recently) was insisted on coming into the women's restroom, which is really strange behavior.

Any guy who is making a big deal about wanting to go into the women's restroom, or the women's locker-room, to the point where the speaker of the house has to address it, and women have to come out and fight to stop it is acting inappropriately.

Surely it's less strange than all the other stuff he's done to get to this point, right? Like, a random guy in drag insisting on using the women's room, that's separately a strong signal of weirdness/sketchiness. But if he's convinced himself that he's a woman at this point, and (quite possibly, though I couldn't say for sure) been on hormones and had surgeries to get there, then surely that's the strange part, not the part where he subsequently wants to use the women's restroom.

It's all strange. Trans activists themselves acknowledge that it is strange when they continue to insist that without transition they'd die. That's how strange it is, that's what it takes to make this palatable even when it's not affecting others.

These are both strange behaviors.

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Do you know that McBride wears fake breasts vs. being on estrogen (which produces natural breast growth; yes, even in biological males)? I couldn't discover either way from a quick search, and ... weirdly ... this seems relevant for your point.

Look I'm not trying to get into an argument about some guy's fake tits here, and I don't really care to keep googling photos of it. If you think that estrogen makes somebody look like that then I guess we just disagree.

... weirdly ... this seems relevant for your point.

Why would this seem "weirdly" relevant to my point?

Have you never heard of gynecomastia? Estrogens produce breast growth in men, too, sometimes quite a bit of it. There are boys who have to get mastectomies because of endocrine issues, even! McBride seems to have been "trans" ever since his early 20s more than 10 years ago, so while that amount of growth would be unusual, it's not unheard of.

It's relevant because your point seems to be that McBride is just acting out a fetish in which he expects the whole world to be involved, as evidenced by his "wear[ing] fake breasts" (I assumed you meant prosthetics, though maybe you mean implants?), and if he's actually on hormones for 10 years, and made permanent changes to his body, I don't think that's very likely.

I don't think you need to insist that every MtF transsexual is just acting out a fetish in order to have a good argument against blanket letting any man who claims to be a woman into women's bathrooms. I actually agree with you on the conclusion! Bathrooms are vulnerable places and women are uncomfortable when men are in the bathroom with them, and that's a good enough reason to forbid it. You don't need to assume the worst about people in order to make the point.

(FWIW, on priors I wouldn't bet against McBride being AGP, but that's not always the same thing as just a fetish, and I would not expect someone who just has a crossdressing fetish to commit literally his whole life to the bit.)

if he's actually on hormones for 10 years, and made permanent changes to his body, I don't think that's very likely.

What's so unlikely about it? Implants are usually... pretty permanent as well, it's not like he's swapping them in and out.

I agree that the 'wearing' addition is an odd turn of phrase, but 'fake breasts' to me applies equally well to ones produced by hormonal as surgical intervention.

Maybe we're talking past each other but the thing I think is unlikely --- conditional on his making permanent changes to his body --- is that the whole thing is just acting out a fetish. Most people with fetishes don't make permanent changes to their bodies or try to constantly act on them in public, and the ones who do are generally disturbed and disregulated enough that they'll get themselves into trouble with undeniably inappropriate behavior pretty quickly.

Maybe -- but this is the same thing as saying 'men who commit to physical transition don't do so for AGP reasons'. Which I'm pretty skeptical of, given the prominent examples. I'd be surprised if Bruce Jenner didn't have at least aspects of this for instance.

the ones who do are generally disturbed and disregulated enough that they'll get themselves into trouble with undeniably inappropriate behavior pretty quickly.

Either that or they reshape society such that people who complain about their inappropriate behaviour are the ones who get into trouble!

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I think it was Aella that wrote about how passing was actually meaningfully important in the whole trans issue, and I have to agree. If a man can successfully pass as a woman then he should be allowed to use women's restroom, although it seems like saying we "allow" that is pretty meaningless in that case. If we can't tell that it's a man how could we stop him? To me this basically feels like the norm thirty years ago, kind of an unofficial don't ask don't tell restroom policy. If you look like an absolute freak then yes women should be able to scream and shout at you and summon security to harass you for an hour or so.

Edit: In a way it reminds me of this classic. I feel like they both come down to "know your place" and act accordingly. Now how do we codify that into law? I'm not sure how, but I'm not sure it needs to be.

If a man can successfully pass as a woman then he should be allowed to use women's restroom

Here's the thing with that, they never do unless they are literally pre-puberty (so not a man) or on T-blockers from before puberty or asian (inherent low T). That's why they are pushing the acceptability boundary even to those who don't try to pass. Trying to make it so its taboo to question the ones who obviously don't even while trying. Like those absolute delusional people on reddit who claim trains woman are all around you and you simply can't tell, the reality of the situation is anything but.

Now how do we codify that into law?

Take any provision that protects women's spaces and clarify that "woman" is, as intended by the authors, a sex term and not a claim about "gender identity". Whatever that is.

Yeah. I think acknowledging a sex/gender distinction would cut through most of the newsworthy categories.

That’s still unworkable because you can’t separate outside knowledge.

If you’re sentencing someone to women’s prison, do you really rely on passing? If I’ve got a vendetta against a trans coworker, can’t I out her no matter how well she passes? If my buddy Big McLargeHuge, manliest of teenagers, wants to get into the women’s locker room, what’s stopping me from playing wingman by accusing him of insufficient T?

If a man can successfully pass as a woman then he should be allowed to use women's restroom, although it seems like saying we "allow" that is pretty meaningless in that case. If we can't tell that it's a man how could we stop him?

The problem here is that the percentage of MtF who “pass” is vanishingly low. It’s nearly always spectacularly easy to “clock” an MtF - especially once you hear the voice.

I’m actually agnostic about so-called “bathroom bills” myself, but however we end up resolving the issue, “an MtF can enter the women’s bathroom if nobody notices it’s an MtF” is not a solution, because it will lead to 98% of the same outcome as “no man can enter the women’s bathroom.”

The voice is, yes, usually a giveaway. But there are a lot of masculine-looking actual women out there (even some with deeper voices) due to genetics / endocrine issues, to the point where I'd be often be uncomfortable guessing --- certainly from looks alone --- whether a given person is a lucky MtF or an unlucky actual woman if encountered out of context.

Oh definitely. The first trans friend I had, I did not clock him, but that’s only because I assumed he was just a very unfortunate-looking and unfortunate-sounding woman. This was when trans was starting to get public attention but before it was everywhere; if I’d known then what I know now, I think my “trans alarm” would have gone off, but I agree that there are some women out there (“stone butch” lesbians, people with medical situations) who also risk setting off “trans alarms”.

It’s nearly always spectacularly easy to “clock” an MtF - especially once you hear the voice.

Are there studies on this or is this anecdotal? If the latter, you wouldn't be able to account for the MtFs you're missing precisely because they do pass.

You can see a distribution of some that pass better than others, and notice that it tails off towards the end of the distribution so the amount that completely pass is small.

I’m not aware of any studies on it, but my experience is that every single time somebody tells me about a “passing” transwoman, I end up seeing the person and it’s obviously a man. Sure, it’s true in a sort of unfalsifiable way that there could be all of these undetectable transwomen walking around among us, but at that point you’ve reached a sort of Russell’s Teapot, “invisible dragon in the garage” level of claim.

I would kill to see some high quality studies using blinded (I'm not sure double blinding is possible, since presumably a trans person would know they're trans) trials of test subjects interacting with both trans and cis people to see just how common it is to truly "pass." Sadly, the academic political environment makes it so that basically no one who would be positioned to do the research would be interested in having an answer. And even if that were not the case, the number of trans people is so small that getting sufficiently random or representative members of that group seem likely to be impossible.

The way I think of it is that, given how incentivized the current "progressive" trans movement is to present MTF as being exactly the same as females in every way that matters, if there were some fairly significant population of MTF trans people who "pass," there would be quite a few such people who are either held up as examples or who become mini-celebs as activists for the cause. There's certainly no shortage of MTF trans people who obviously don't "pass" that you can find both online and in-person (at least in my neck of the woods around Boston) despite the fact that, again, the number of such people is very small relative to the population. The only person like that who comes to my mind is Blaire White, whom I don't follow, but who I believe isn't on the side of the "progressives" in this.

We need a definition of what passing means before we can test, or even properly argue over it.

Passing is on the one hand used by TRAs to mean "polite people treat me as a woman when I obviously visibly signal that I wish to be treated as such." Which almost everyone can achieve.

On the other hand, anti trans types define passing as "absolutely no outward indication whatsoever of any physical difference from a median/modal member of the target sex." Which no one achieves.

The degree to which someone passes is also dependent on context.

If I saw a tall masculine looking middle aged woman at mass, I would assume she was an unfortunate looking tall woman. Even a slight mustache wouldn't throw me off.

I assume everyone at Pride Night at my rock climbing gym may not be what they appear. The slightest hint of GNC and I'm going to be circumspect.

It would be tough to account for all that in testing.

ETA: Two differing study designs that would likely yield different results, both of which would measure "passing" in different ways.

  1. "You're going to talk to a series of 20 people. Some of them are trans. Please indicate which people are trans on your scantron sheet. The more you get correct, the more money you will receive on your way out."

  2. "You're going to talk to a series of 20 people. After you finish, please write down a description of each person in order."

I posit that very few trans people will "pass" in test 1 unless it's really rigged, and that a great many CIS people would get false positives. On the other hand, under test 2, I think a good number of people would not write down "trans" or "obviously (other gender)" in the description for trans people.

Passing is on the one hand used by TRAs to mean "polite people treat me as a woman when I obviously visibly signal that I wish to be treated as such." Which almost everyone can achieve.

If that's how TRAs use "passing," I've never encountered it, and it also seems like a vapid meaning, because the "polite" in your quote tends to refer to the characteristic of submitting to such wishes.

The way I understand it, the "test" that's being "passed" in this context is essentially the trans Turing Test (Turansing Test? Turans Test? Trunsing Test?). Now, obviously there are many tiny nuances and details of what qualifies as passing the Turing Test, but broadly, I think the idea is that, after interacting with a trans person, you can't tell that they're trans, then they "pass."

There are likely multiple ways to measure something like this. One theoretical study I imagine, blinded test subjects would interact with a group of people, some trans, some not, and then answered what sex each person they interacted with was born as. If a trans person had >50% of people answer as the opposite of their birth sex, that person would "pass." Another option would be to have test subjects interact with pairs of people, one trans and the other cis, of opposite sexes and the same gender, and if the subjects can correctly guess the trans person at >50% rate, then that person doesn't pass. Could also adjust it to be 1 trans and 9 cis, and if the rate is >10%, or any variation of this, I suppose.

The context also certainly matters a lot, but that can be both controlled for and also studied, to see how people's ability to "pass" change in different environments. What I'd personally love to see is correlations on the type and length of interaction. If you're just talking to someone, does their chance of "passing" go down or up as time goes, and is there some inflection point at which the "passing" rate suddenly skyrocket or plummet? What about if you add hugging to the mix? What if you're in a group setting, where all the other test subjects are confederates who have been instructed to treat the trans person like they do/don't "pass?" What if activities involving physical strength or severe emotional topics are involved?

It'd be fascinating to see some break down just what specific characteristics and interactions maximize and minimize the odds of "passing." 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.

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. (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...")

If that's how TRAs use "passing," I've never encountered it, and it also seems like a vapid meaning, because the "polite" in your quote tends to refer to the characteristic of submitting to such wishes.

That's absolutely what's often cited as the experience of "passing." "I went outside, everyone referred to me as a woman, and no one called me out as trans, ergo I passed." Tbh, if anyone thought I was trans but never brought it up out of politeness, how would I know? My experience would look exactly the same on the day to day: I go outside and act like a man and people treat me like a man. Maybe some people are uncomfortable with me or don't like me, but who knows, maybe they're Cowboys fans who cares?

There are likely multiple ways to measure something like this. One theoretical study I imagine, blinded test subjects would interact with a group of people, some trans, some not, and then answered what sex each person they interacted with was born as. If a trans person had >50% of people answer as the opposite of their birth sex, that person would "pass." Another option would be to have test subjects interact with pairs of people, one trans and the other cis, of opposite sexes and the same gender, and if the subjects can correctly guess the trans person at 50% rate, then that person doesn't pass. Could also adjust it to be 1 trans and 9 cis, and if the rate is >10%, or any variation of this, I suppose.

But that's not what real life looks like, which was my point about context. In real life I don't walk around suspecting people's genitals might not match their presentation. So the moment you ask people to identify trans people from a group, you've radically altered their normal calculus! The moment you bring up "trans" you've radically altered their normal calculus. You see this a lot with people talking about true crime stories, "oh how did no one suspect, there were all these clues!" But the people didn't know they were in a mystery, they weren't looking for clues. If you tell people that the sex of the person they're talking to is a mystery, they'll seize on all kinds of clues. If they don't, they'll slide right by the clues. So the moment you run a study on the basis of "spot the tranny" you vastly alter the odds compared to baseline.

Hell, the moment you tell people they have to make a decision one way or the other, you're throwing off what passing means in reality. Because non-passing can also mean something like "Idk, she makes me uncomfortable but I can't put my finger on why..." Uncanny valley stuff. So what do we do with that? Where does that fit into either a day-to-day understanding of trans life, or into a Turing test?

Passing is, weirdly, vastly harder in queer spaces than in non-queer spaces, even if queer spaces are much more likely to hug-box trans people about how great they pass and bend over backwards to avoid mistakes. It's not odd at all for me to see a middle aged woman with a whispy little mustache at church, I wouldn't think she's packing a cock under there just has unfortunate hirsute characteristics.

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It's also dependent on the level of interaction. Passing to a friend or coworker is going to be harder than passing to someone they interact with as a bank teller or cashier. In the context of public restrooms, this would be the easiest place to pass, in that they're only spending a few seconds dealing with strangers who probably aren't paying them much attention.

And the urban myth of Boys Don't Cry or the Trap, a trans person who passes so well that they get all the way into bed before the genitals are discovered.

Hunter Schafer would be the one I think a lot of people would point to as the pinnacle of “passing trans”. I won’t go so far as to say that Schafer looks “obviously like a man”; rather, Schafer is in a weird sort of androgynous zone. Certainly not someone I would ever see as an attractive woman, but I can imagine not clocking Schafer if I passed him on the street.

Laverne Cox gets my vote. Of all ethnic groups, black women tend to be the most androgynous looking anyway, which probably helps.

Schafer usually gets cast as trans characters, so I wouldn't say they're the "pinnacle of passing", because they being noticeably trans is part of the point.

I'd probably go with someone like Ángela Ponce: if you already know, you'll find a lot of tells, but they clearly resemble more an attractive woman than a man.

Schafer is closest probably but even she probably drops a point when the photo is candid and unstaged.

Then again, I do know she's trans so...

Is 98% of the same outcome not a solution? It’s a solution that comes down hard on one side, but a solution nonetheless.

The problem this creates it that any tomboyish looking woman is now a target for harassment.

Why do trans people need to use the bathroom they don’t belong in so badly? We literally have them sex segregated to protect women. Why do these men need to be in the enclosed, single exit room with women?

The grace here should be going both ways: I’ll call you the name you are asking me to, but you need to realize that your fetish is your own fetish, and shouldn’t be imposed on women who are simply trying to exist. Just let them have the bathroom FFS.

but you need to realize that your fetish is your own fetish,

Well first you have to establish it is a fetish, which you haven't done here. Assume for a second it isn't a fetish. Assume that there are people who are born into the "wrong body" and this person is one of them. How would that change the framing of your argument? And your understanding of the argument, people who disagree with you are making?

Because the alternative could be "Your belief it is a fetish, is your own bias, and shouldn't be imposed on trans-women just trying to exist. Just let them have the bathroom FFS".

Your argument need some kind of underpinning otherwise, it can simply be turned back around on you. It hasn't any logical construction. Not saying you are wrong, but your argument is just not very good so far. You need to buttress it.

I actually think a reasonable framing of this question is: "can men with a cross dressing fetish involve non-consenting women in their crossdress-play?"

I think a better formulation of the question is: Can men who pretend to be women justifiably expect identical treatment as women? I'd say the answer is no, they can't expect it, they can attempt it and expect push back if/when their pretence is revealed.

Can men walk around dressed in women's clothes? Yes, I don't think a person's outfit requires the consent of other people assuming it adheres to basic modesty. That doesn't mean other people have to approve of it though, they just can't formally prevent it.

Can men wearing women's outfits walk into a women's toilet and expect to be treated as if they belong there? No.

Can men become so skilled at pretending to be women that they successfully deceive people into thinking they belong there? Yes, some of them can.

Does that mean they really do belong there? No, they're men.

And finally, some men and women are not accepted in their own toilets. You should't start masturbating at the sink or shitting on the floor, grabbing people to dance with them, asking them to show you their dick, tipping the bin over, smashing the fixtures or offering around a plate of finger foods. Being the correct sex is not an unrestricted licence to misbehave in a single sex area. Pretending to be the opposite sex is one of those unacceptable behaviours.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has said that the policy of the House is that women's restrooms are for women, and men's restrooms are for men

Why is this such an issue? Restrooms have stalls. I couldn't tell what gender was in one if I tried.

I hear that women tend to change & reveal more skin in women's locker rooms. In men's restrooms, we pretty much do their business and leave. From that perspective, the men's locker room is more 'gender neutral'.

Yes, it was a woke rallying-cry. But in 2024, it's become a tier-1 losing issue.

I've seen several prominent-ish democrat spokespeople openly blame transgender people for the 2024 presidential loss.

AOC is the democrat's weathervane. She's scarily opportunist and makes radical position changes right before a movement runs out of gas. She broke rank with the squad on Israel right before the campus protests turned ugly. She recently removed pronouns from her twitter bio. It's Joever.

As for people being naked in locker rooms, I'd be happy to see the practice die out. Trans people or not. I don't wanna be looking at random dick and balls. It's the old men who're the worst. Dude, don't spread your legs on the bench to clean your saggy balls, and what the fuck's up with being naked while having socks on !! Please No !

AOC argued against the bathroom ban on Capitol Hill by saying that it will be bad for women who will need to be stripped searched to prove they are women. https://thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/5002529-ocasio-cortez-mace-johnson-transgender-bathroom-ban/amp/

Does that mean she’s backing away from the trans rights argument, or just using a talking point that will resonate with most women?

As for people being naked in locker rooms, I'd be happy to see the practice die out. Trans people or not. I don't wanna be looking at random dick and balls. It's the old men who're the worst. Dude, don't spread your legs on the bench to clean your saggy balls, and what the fuck's up with being naked while having socks on !! Please No !

You're wrong, this argument is bad, and the intense modesty that leads to men never seeing other men naked is making the world a worse place. Men should be able to be naked in the locker room without shame. Seeing other men naked reduces body anxiety, not seeing other men naked produces it.

She broke rank with the squad on Israel right before the campus protests turned ugly.

Wait, she did?

Why is this such an issue? Restrooms have stalls. I couldn't tell what gender was in one if I tried.

Because it is an issue. Normie not-very socially conservative women really care about there not being biological men in their or their daughters spaces of partial undress.

Why is this such an issue? Restrooms have stalls. I couldn't tell what gender was in one if I tried.

This is a fully-general argument against having women's bathrooms at all. Which is fine if you want to argue for unisex bathrooms, but it's not an argument for keeping bathrooms nominally segregated while letting males into the women's bathroom.

It's the old men who're the worst. Dude, don't spread your legs on the bench to clean your saggy balls, and what the fuck's up with being naked while having socks on !! Please No !

If it's any consolation, my wife has told me that old women are just as bad in their locker rooms. IDK what it is with old people and nudity, but it seems to apply to both genders.

To add onto other replies, I think it's simply "you stop giving a fuck about decorum and propriety as you get older."

They’re from a generation where it was more normal.

What's with old people is that if you have had a serious medical issue you lose all sense of embarrassment and shame concerning your naked body because you deal with doctors and nurses looking at it, and you stop caring about how you appear when naked in front of others.

No serious medical issue needed, just reach the age for routine colonoscopies and you're there.

Heck, I'm middle aged but not quite at that age yet, and I'm pretty much 99% of the way there. The older I've gotten, the more I've realized that there's just no good reason to care about how other people perceive my body outside of a certain small subset of cases. Certainly not when they're strangers who are males in a locker room or other communal changing space. If other people dislike the sight of certain parts of my body, first of all, I empathize, but second, that's their problem, not mine. If the sight of my junk displeases them, I'm not going to lift a finger to help them solve their displeasure; I've got enough of my own to take care of, thank you.

This whole problem with being or viewing same-sex nudity in these kinds of contexts seemed pretty strange and somewhat arbitrary to me when I immigrated from Korea to America at the age of 6, and it took me some effort to adapt to it. In Korea, already by the age of 6, I was accustomed to going to public bath houses where men and boys (and, I presume women and girls as well, in their own half) of all ages would just freely walk around with everything out and minimal effort to cover anything up.

but second, that's their problem, not mine.

In all fairness, taking steps to mitigate the externalities of your actions is a pretty core component of being generally pro-social.

The US used to be like this, but it changed at some point during post-WW2 America. Communal showers and pools were common. When I was young (90s and 00s), we still used communal showers, but it was a dying practice. I realized in college it was a dead practice in most other parts of the US.

My great grandpa would tell me about swimming naked with other men/boys at the YMCA in the 1920s. I'm not sure why it changed in the US, but there are a bunch of "coming of age" movies made in the 70s and 80s with teens becoming adults who have anxiety about the dreaded communal showers in high schools.

Nude swimming disappeared because swimsuit technology improved; communal showers i’m pretty sure went out of style due to increasing wealth making individual stalls more affordable.

communal showers i’m pretty sure went out of style due to increasing wealth making individual stalls more affordable.

Don't think so Tim -- at my high school the girls changeroom had separate stalls, while the boys' was prison-style. (but with nicer tile-work)

Fairly sure it wouldn't have killed the school budget to build the male changeroom to the same specs -- this is just what locker rooms were supposed to be like. (for bonding or something? IDK)

Why is this such an issue?

Bathrooms are extremely vulnerable places; they usually have one exit, you are often in there alone, and you are often doing something which makes you physically vulnerable (using the toilet). It seems completely reasonable for women to want to keep men out of these spaces.

As for people being naked in locker rooms, I'd be happy to see the practice die out.

Then how the fuck are you supposed to change out of your wet/sweaty/dirty clothes?

Assuming you're taking a shower. In the shower.....

If no shower, changing clothes without flashing is a standard skill. Just need a towel.

If no towel. I'm fine seeing butt cheeks in my peripheral vision for a couple of seconds. But, don't stand there with your dick hanging out for ages. Get it done.

Fair enough. I don't quite agree but that's more reasonable than it sounded.

To me, it’s the lack of understanding. I don’t think Transgender people in general get how dangerous it is to open the door to the idea that any man can put on a dress and walk into the women’s restroom anytime they want to. There are safety issues here. Men can so easily overpower women that it’s not even a contest. And without the very firm rule of “biological men are not allowed in women’s spaces, particularly where dressing and undressing are happening, it’s impossible to prevent a rape from happening. If you’ve ever wondered why women generally use the public restrooms in pairs, the reason is men who might enter the restroom and try to rape a woman. And the trans community hasn’t even glanced in the direction of understanding the issue or reassuring women that they too are opposed to men in the women’s restrooms and locker rooms being an issue. If anything, their attitude is “women, you aren’t allowed to object to this for any reason. The only reason you care is that you hate trans women.” Followed by using authority to force women to shut up about it. Not a thought about rape, secretly being photographed naked for porn, or being harassed, or worse these things happening to children. I feel like the entire rest of society, particularly the woke end has decided that the rape of women is a small price to pay for feeling progressive about letting transgender women into women’s spaces — without vetting at all.

I feel like the entire rest of society, particularly the woke end has decided that the rape of women is a small price to pay for feeling progressive about letting transgender women into women’s spaces — without vetting at all.

I think what's more accurate is that they've convinced themselves that it simply "doesn't happen", or that "no one transitions just so they can use women's bathrooms".

I don’t know if any specifically transitions to use women’s restrooms. I will say that especially given the trans community’s abhorrence with the idea of having to prove that they’re actually trans and under treatment is basically an end run around the norm. If a guy in a beard and a short dress walked into a women’s restroom, the business is under the civil rights gun and thus can do little about it no matter how much of a pest he’s being until he actually rapes someone. And I find that enabling of crime to be telling.

I feel like the entire rest of society, particularly the woke end has decided that the rape of women is a small price to pay for feeling progressive about letting transgender women into women’s spaces — without vetting at all.

I think what's more accurate is that they've convinced themselves that it simply "doesn't happen", or that "no one transitions just so they can use women's bathrooms".

This doesn't seem more accurate, but rather the "how," to the quoted part's "what." Deciding that such a cost is worth the benefit can be very unpleasant, depending on what the costs and what the benefits are. So unpleasant, that many people might be unwilling to make such a decision if they perceive it that way. So they decide to perceive it a different way, by convincing themselves that the cost isn't actually real, which allows them to make that decision. I see this pattern repeated all the time both in culture war contexts and not.

Nobody seems to be having that conversation. The consensus on the left seems to be that only a bigot would even ask the question. I mean the dominant position seems to be forcing businesses to open their bathrooms to trans women. Then complaining and calling women bigots for objecting— even for extremely vulnerable places like homeless shelters (this is how JK Rowling became such a pariah).

Why is this such an issue? Restrooms have stalls.

If I’m allowed into the women’s bathroom, I’m 100% going to listen to women pee and it’s going in my spank bank for later. So if women don’t want that, they should keep men out of their bathrooms!

You... may be an outlier. (Not disagreeing that it's good to keep men out of women's bathrooms, even with stalls, though.)

Undoubtedly so! Although the point is that I'm less of an outlier when compared with the transsexual population, as they're more likely than average to be hypersexual and have a wide range of paraphilias.

Sadly relevant The Oatmeal

That's excellent.

My eyes are burning. It's so graphic.

as well as a recent, prominent NYT article that was critical of transing your children (unfortunately the google index seems very intent on not showing me links to the article, but has plenty of links to people talking about it.

The WaPo article you cite is from June last year, and the three NYT articles it discusses (all first result on Google for their titles) are from over two years ago.

I believe this is the article I was trying to find. I found it by appending "themotte" to my query, since it was discussed here quite a bit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/opinion/transgender-children-gender-dysphoria.html

Here is what I actually think a reasonable framing of this question is: "can men with a cross dressing fetish involve non-consenting women in their crossdress-play?" In a reasonable society I think the answer to this question should be: no, obviously.

I would propose an alternative framing of the question: "Can people who have official government documents that document them as women, involve non-consenting members of the public in their use of spaces for women?" To which the obvious answer is: yes. Just like my driver's license is valid whether you think I should have one or not.

What is your proposal for how trans men (biological women) who have medically and legally transitioned should be dealt with? Do you think most women who are scared of men would be comfortable with this guy sharing a bathroom with them? While I certainly could imagine a standard that looks like:

  • Bathroom 1: For men, trans women, trans men, and any iffy dykes who freak the chicks out.
  • Bathroom 2: For feminine women

I can't see how you could actually write or enforce the laws and social norms around that in a consistent way that actually works out in pratice. The only two reasonable standards are "biological" or "legal documents" in my opinion. Either standard will involve some women sharing a bathroom with some people that they might read as "men", so that can't be the deciding factor.

Bathrooms are extremely vulnerable places; they usually have one exit, you are often in there alone, and you are often doing something which makes you physically vulnerable (using the toilet). It seems completely reasonable for women to want to keep men out of these spaces.

How far are you willing to take this? Should we systematically look at how certain rooms are used, and if it would ever be the case that there's a woman alone in the room with a man, should we relocate activities or force the man to stand outside or something? Should we have far more women's only spaces than we currently do in society? What rooms besides bathrooms should we be sex-seggregating?

"Can people who have official government documents that document them as women, involve non-consenting members of the public in their use of spaces for women?" To which the obvious answer is: yes.

My completely male cousin had a drivers license that identified him as female due to pure governmental incompetence. I think even the most extreme trans advocates would agree that this ought not give him a pass to use the women's bathroom.

Passing the buck to the government only passes the buck. The question is over what exactly makes one a "woman" in the sense of deserving bathroom privileges, and the answer is not "the infallible government said so".

"Can people who have official government documents that document them as women, involve non-consenting members of the public in their use of spaces for women?" To which the obvious answer is: yes.

My answer is no.

Males do not belong in women's spaces.

Whether those males identify as transgender is irrelevant, because my view is based on sex, not gender identity.

Whether those males have government-issued certificates recognizing their gender identity is also irrelevant, because my view is based on sex, not gender identity.

The only way government records could be relevant if they accurately record a person's sex, but governments of all developed countries have decided to stop doing that.

Just like my driver's license is valid whether you think I should have one or not.

Your government-issued driver's license mostly prevents that same government from putting you in jail for driving a car on the public road. Nobody else is compelled to accept it as proof that you are a competent driver.

In practice, driver's licenses are widely accepted as evidence of baseline driving competence, but that's because the government requires you to prove it before issuing your license. If anyone could get a license simply by self-declaration, even contradicting a professional's judgement, then the value of that license to determine driving ability would plummet.

Bathroom 1: For men, trans women, trans men, and any iffy dykes who freak the chicks out. Bathroom 2: For feminine women

I feel like this is the unofficial rule for everything, or at least it should be in our intuition. Like the NBA is not the men's basketball league, it's the open basketball league and no women are good enough to play there. So we have 2 leagues, open (NBA) and women (WNBA). At my college there were two kinds of recruiting events for computer science majors, job fairs for all and job fairs for women only.

You'd have to codify the actual-but-unspeakable moral intuition that most people have, which is something like: the only sacred/protected category is femininity, and once it has been tainted with masculinity it forfeits its protections. Gender segregation, discrimination and reservations all only serve the purpose of elevating "pure" females.

This is why the anti-trans faction is primarily concerned with MtF as an intrusion upon female privileges and FtM as a threat to impressionable girls, while the pro-trans faction (to a lesser degree) exhibits a preference for focussing on MtF rights as something that men must be compelled to grant and FtM rights as a freedom that women ought to have (and why radfems are a massive nuisance that they would rather forget about). Both sides understand that "protect women" is the only widely shared moral foundation.

Well, it’s certainly a shared moral foundation among traditionalists (anti-trans) and progressives (pro-trans), to the point that “man bad woman good” is the root of both positions. Liberals don’t do this as much, but they have their own problems and aren’t as dominant as they once were.

The fact this is maladaptive and contrary to reality (for traditionalists, bad TFR means women are shirking their duties; for progressives, they’re just being turbo-selfish about equity since if their ideas were applied correctly they’d lose all social license) doesn’t generally enter the picture for either one. That said, it’s only been 100ish years since that came true and humanity has evolved in the natural state for 3 orders of magnitude more time, and old habits/instincts die hard.

In some ways, I kind of want to reject the idea that all of our social policies should be aimed at minimizing female deaths like an autistic actuary.

As a simple example from another domain, I kind of don't care if the facts on the ground are maximally unfavorable to me in, say, the gun control debate because I am pro-liberty and am willing to bite the bullet on this. Even if an angel came down and gave me divinely inspired tablets that showed with 100% certainty that we could reliably remove, say, all ~40,000 gun deaths per year in the United States by repealling the 2nd Amendment (and the vast majority won't convert to knife deaths or whatever), I would still say we should prefer 40,000 annual deaths to the infringement of liberty that would involve.

I don't want to empower the government to enforce any kind of bathroom policy, and so I'm willing to put up with a few women falling victim to men and ex-men in the name of liberty. My opinion wouldn't change if an angel came down and gave me divinely inspired tablets showing that such a policy reliably leads to X female victims of violence each year.

I feel the same way about casual sex with strangers, and a number of other issues. I'm willing to bite the bullet on the idea that freedom often comes with negative consequences for part of the population. I still think the government should enforce contracts that turned out to have been bad bets (which is why I was angry when Scarlett Johansson was succesfully able to cow Disney during the pandemic when they shifted movies to streaming where she got a worse deal - she made a bet, and it turned out to be a bad bet. If Disney wants to smooth things over with her, they can do that outside of the context of a contract dispute as a show of good will, but in an ideal world Scarlett Johansson should have been forced to live with the original bad deal, because that's what contracts are for.)

I agree with this, with the quibble that I thought the point of contracts was that either party is free to break a contract if they feel like they aren't getting what they want, they just have to deal with the consequences of breaking said contracts. Real-life contracts tend to have escape clauses and ways of dealing with breaches.

(Failing that, you can always just go the Westinghouse-Tesla route and just burn it.)

I feel the same way about casual sex with strangers

As in, you're opposed?

No, for. My position is that freedom sometimes makes people worse off, but in the vast majority of such cases we should still let people be free and have the bad outcome.

To tie it back to the trans issue. I would be okay with the government banning kids from transitioning, but against the government preventing adults from transitioning - even if reliable information emerged that medical transition lead to worse outcomes than the alternative. People should be allowed to sterilize themselves, allowed to cut off their breasts, and be prepared to face all consequences of it.

This is also why I favor tattoos and piercing being legal, even if I personally dislike them and suspect they have long term effects on employability and life outcomes.

Gotcha.

Both sides understand that "protect women" is the only widely shared moral foundation.

Yes. Although this is not a stable equilibrium either. A society that enshrines "protect women" but doesn't enshrine "respect men" ends up becoming horribly biased against men.

Example #1: Ukraine. Women flee the country and are living their best life clubbing with rich Germans. Men are press ganged against their will and go die in a ditch somewhere.

Example #2: Men perform nearly all the dangerous jobs in the U.S. (Probably 99%+). These jobs, which have high rates of death and dismemberment, often pay more. However, any time men make more money than women, there is talk of a "wage gap" which must be corrected.

The recognition that sexes are different must come paired with the recognition that both sexes have special needs and duties. Women are not inherently morally superior, but we've evolved as a species to see them this way because of the intense demands and vulnerability of motherhood. In an anti-natal society women might as well just be weak men.

The male/female dynamic to me appears to very closely mirror the adult/child dynamic and I'm not sure why more people don't frame it this way. Most norms or policies that are criticised as misogynistic are really more paternalistic in my estimation, based on the intuition that women aren't as strong, capable or accountable and so are in need of special protection and consideration from men, who might even be asked to sacrifice their lives, but on the flip side people traditionally see men as much more capable and agentic and independent and generally worth taking seriously.

Women benefit a lot from this dynamic obviously and it's even embedded in a lot of progressive ideas and campaigns if unwittingly, but you can see how it's not exactly as flattering to them as it might first appear, framing them as more of a beloved subordinate than a respected equal.

The male/female dynamic to me appears to very closely mirror the adult/child dynamic and I'm not sure why more people don't frame it this way.

Such a comparison is "saying the quiet part out loud", and so it's only said explicitly by /pol/acks who don't care about optics and only intend to maximally offend. It's rhetorical suicide in the same way that saying "we want women to have the right to kill babies" would be.

I can't express these thoughts in a more coherent manner right now, so here's an array of tenuously connected musings vaguely related to the subject of women's role in society. If this sucks, let me know.

  • On the whole, the concrete utility that women provide to men is sex and reproduction, their biological prerogatives. This affords them a certain intrinsic privilege, but it must be disheartening to know that much or possibly all of your value to society is fundamentally animal in nature, divorced from your sapience. The golden goose is well cared for, but it is still caged.
  • The most egalitarian societies have been those where women are economically productive. If every woman refused to go to work tomorrow, what would actually happen?
  • Fertility rates seem to be bimodally distributed between <1.8 TFR liberalized societies and >3.0 TFR patriarchal societies. Much concern is had over sub-replacement fertility in the West, but is is possible to increase fertility up to "just" replacement levels?

The Greek-Catholic belt in Eastern Europe, Georgia the country, and the American red tribe have TFR’s ~2. It’s achievable even if I couldn’t really point to the unifying factors- western social conservatism, religiosity, and ruralness, I suppose.

My main concern isn't whether a ~2.0 TFR is attainable, it's whether it's sustainable. The reactionary route of mostly/entirely restricting women to the homemaker role seems to result in fertility rates higher than really needed, and all other approaches seem to converge on sub-replacement fertility. For as much as we've avoided Malthusian collapse, the prospect of population growth outpacing productivity is theoretically sound, and I don't want to push our luck much further.

For nearly all of human history, populations were kept stable despite TFRs of 4.5+ by massive infant mortality, appreciable maternal mortality, and more death in general. The social technologies that ensured fertility was kept that high are now mostly unneeded, potentially harmful, and crippled by the Pandora's box of contraception. In their absence, the paradigms that have emerged haven't been any more adaptive, to say the least. I have no idea what the optimal arrangement for fertility in industrial society might be, but I'd bet it won't be as simple as retvurning to tradition.

I'm not sure we have "evolved as a species" to see women as morally superior. Plenty of societies in antiquity (and even more recently than that) treated women as basically defective (morally, intellectually, and physically) men whose sole redeeming quality was babymaking. Even when Christianity (with a much more egalitarian attitude, at least on the "morally" front) became widespread, it took a long time to purge those ideas from the zeitgeist, to the point that you can find them even in some early Christian writers.

Yeah, the Romans were pretty misogynistic, but where did all the "protect women" stuff come from if not evolution?

‘Protect women’ is not actually a historical norm, and societies which are not western today often have no problems harming women.

I was objecting to the implication that we're evolved to see women as morally superior, not to the corresponding claim that "protect women" is to an extent hardwired.

I would propose an alternative framing of the question: "Can people who have official government documents that document them as women, involve non-consenting members of the public in their use of spaces for women?" To which the obvious answer is: yes. Just like my driver's license is valid whether you think I should have one or not.

How is that an obvious answer?

Why do you think we even have "man" and "woman" as a legal category? I never got the impression they're a permission to perform masculinity / femininity the way a driver's license is a permission to drive, or an arbitrary badge of honor like knighthood in the UK. I always thought they're meant to reflect physical reality. If you're saying that giving a man government documents that document them as a woman necessarily implies that they get to use women's facilities, and take advantage of all the special rights and privileges we grant women, that just sounds like an argument for never giving a man government documents that document them as a woman.

What is your proposal for how trans men (biological women) who have medically and legally transitioned should be dealt with? Do you think most women who are scared of men would be comfortable with this guy sharing a bathroom with them?

This argument worked great.... right up until the point that the issue gained more prominence and people got a good look at what trans men actually look like, rather than when they're photographed or filmed from flattering angles and favorable lighting. The majority look like manlets, have a funny voice, and distinctly feminine mannerisms, they might pass as a gay man on a good day.

To your question - unironically yes, even with non-zero amount of transmen passing convincingly IRL, I think fewer women would end up uncomfortable with trans men in women's bathroom, than with trans women in women's bathrooms. Especially when everyone is aware the law only allows females to use them, and a male would be penalized for trying to slip in, if caught.

and take advantage of all the special rights and privileges we grant women/especially when everyone is aware the law only allows females to use them, and a male would be penalized for trying to slip in, if caught

You kind of bury the lede here, but this is an equity question.

The problem with ex-men and ex-women are that they double-dip in an extremely and intentionally obnoxious -> harmful way.

Ex-men retain the biological specialization for toil while claiming the social benefits we give the people whose sex enables them to birth children. (Men's specialization is general toil, women's specialization is childbirth.) This is why "it's ma'am" and the male schoolteacher with fake breasts so large they'd be a serious medical condition were they real are problems, and it's the root of why their using the wrong bathroom is a big deal (sure, it pattern matches to being a sex pest, but this is the root of why we [can] instinctively only treat men as sex pests when they do this).

Ex-women are a reflection of this, but importantly, not a mirror image- because they become a problem when they assert the advantages men have don't matter, and then can't perform. The mirror image of the obnoxious ex-man screaming "wax my balls, it's ma'am" is not the self-aware/competent tomboy, or even the average ex-woman [that's what the steroids are for], it's the "I'm just as strong as you, that's why I belong on the front lines, there's nothing special about this ability, therefore womankind should not honor men but men should continue to honor womankind".

This is why, instinctively, it's not really an issue for ex-women to use the men's room (especially the ones on steroids), while it is an issue for ex-men to use the women's room. The problem comes from refusing to negotiate this problem in pairs (because we don't understand that men and women are different, or our sociopolitical standing is contingent upon not understanding it).

Why do you think we even have "man" and "woman" as a legal category? I never got the impression they're a permission to perform masculinity / femininity the way a driver's license is a permission to drive, or an arbitrary badge of honor like knighthood in the UK.

I think we do it for similar reasons to why we track whether people are married, whether they've adopted a child, etc. Because it gives the otherwise blind goverment a way to see what's happening with its citizens.

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. To put it bluntly, no woman who is afraid of this sort of thing seriously fears that it will be someone they knowingly meet up with for sex that will assault them when they change their mind and say "no" this time.

I'm about as okay with trans women using the women's restroom, as I am with fathers using the women's restroom to change their baby's diaper when there is only a changing table in the women's bathroom. Both cases involve biological men in women's restrooms, and both have plausible ways they could be abused (men using realistic baby dolls, or men cross-dressing), but I don't think any of that kind of thinking is necessary. If women are vulnerable in restrooms, then men will use whatever attack vector society leaves open. On the marigin, I don't think anti-trans bathroom bills make women safer.

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.

This argument worked great.... right up until the point that the issue gained more prominence and people got a good look at what trans men actually look like, rather than when they're photographed or filmed from flattering angles and favorable lighting. The majority look like manlets, have a funny voice, and distinctly feminine mannerisms, they might pass as a gay man on a good day.

To your question - unironically yes, even with non-zero amount of transmen passing convincingly IRL, I think fewer women would end up uncomfortable with trans men in women's bathroom, than with trans women in women's bathrooms. Especially when everyone is aware the law only allows females to use them, and a male would be penalized for trying to slip in, if caught.

I just don't see it. We're talking about the kind of hysterical women who would answer "bear" to the infamous "Would you rather meet a man or a bear in the woods?" I think even a manlet would trigger such women. Or do you think their answers would change if the questions was changed to, "Would you rather meet a 5' 4'' man or a bear in the woods?"

I think there is also the problem that there are far more "mannish" biological women than there are either trans men or trans women. I don't pretend to have any way to independently verify it, but this is an example of a story about a butch lesbian getting negative confrontations from her use of the women's toilet. I'm not sure how policing bathrooms in this way doesn't end up harming "ugly" women and non-gender conforming women, which seems to go against the stated goal of helping women.

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.

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!"

David Cross came up with a jingle to properly communicate this notion over a decade ago.

I doubt very much that she would be consoled if said male person yelled out "don't worry, I'm not a rapist!"

As an aside, you reminded me of a lecture I once listened to about the brilliance of Odysseus' first words to Nausicaa after washing up on the beach naked.

He's an older male addressing a young girl, and he can't say something like, "Don't worry, I won't rape you," since that will just make her more worried by bringing the possibility out in the open. So instead he says, "I beseech thee, O queen,—a goddess art thou, or art thou mortal? If thou art a goddess, one of those who hold broad heaven, to Artemis, the daughter of great Zeus, do I liken thee most nearly in comeliness and in stature and in form."

This immediately does a few things:

  • It puts him in a subservient position, as he is speaking respectfully to a superior.
  • Comparing her to a goddess is a compliment, but comparing her to Artemis, a virgin goddess with stories of punishing men who try to see her naked, puts Nausicaa more at ease without having to say that he won't rape her directly.

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?

How about "I think I know your father, he is a police officer, right?"

Good one.

That just sounds like an implication you're a gangster who isn't afraid of cops and likely has a blood feud with one, to me.

think we do it for similar reasons to why we track whether people are married, whether they've adopted a child, etc. Because it gives the otherwise blind goverment a way to see what's happening with its citizens.

I don't think this answers my question. When they keep track of marriage, they're keeping track of which couples have entered a specific relationship with sweeping implications on rights to each others' property, and duties to one another. When someone adopts a child they're declaring they're assuming responsibility for them until they come of age, which grants them power to make decisions for that child until they grow up. What are they keeping track of when they designate someone a "man" or a "woman", and why is it important to not remain blind about it?

I also just don't take the bathroom argument too seriously.

Alright, then why are you arguing for letting men-documented-as-women into women's bathrooms instead of just abolishing sex segregated facilities?

Certainly, I don't think anyone's fears that Sarah McBride would sexually assault someone in the bathroom are super justified.

These kinds of laws aren't about specific people, they're broad rules.

We're talking about the kind of hysterical women who would answer "bear" to the infamous "Would you rather meet a man or a bear in the woods?"

I can only pity the fool that took that meme literally (as opposed to seriously).

I think even a manlet would trigger such women. Or do you think their answers would change if the questions was changed to, "Would you rather meet a 5' 4'' man or a bear in the woods?

I'm saying most of them could tell a difference between a trans man, and a 5'4" male, and the event where they couldn't would be less frequent than the event where they clock a trans woman.

I'm not sure how policing bathrooms in this way doesn't end up harming "ugly" women and non-gender conforming women, which seems to go against the stated goal of helping women.

Personally I'm pretty sure it's a temporary state resulting from the ambiguities that come from blurring the category of "man" and "woman" to begin with. Once it becomes clear that men entering women's bathrooms are penalized, people will be more likely to trust that whoever entered a woman's bathroom is a woman.

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.)

One thing to note is that, for at least some men identifying as women, part of the fetish appears to be that women are made uncomfortable by their presence. That is, they don't want to be accepted as women, but rather they want women to be intimidated into pretending to accept them as women. If people actually just perceived them as women without a second look, then it would lose some of the appeal. I think any man who wants to go into the women's toilets should need to disclose their porn consumption habits. If they did I am quite sure, in most cases, women wouldn't even want them on the same planet never mind in the same bathroom.

I'm not going to deny that such people exist --- there's apparently a fetish for everything --- but I've never seen evidence that this is an appreciable fraction of the population in question. Do you have any?

My preferred standard is based on legal status, not mere identification. That's what stops your "just long enough self-ID" hypothetical scenario.

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.

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.

Transgender woman, 18, sexually assaulted girl, 10, in Morrisons toilet

Here, now you have a better case.

Here are a few more.

Fair enough, my mental model was not that trans women are perfect little angels who never do anything wrong ever. (Though investigating one of your second link's cases at random showed that the assailant, Hannah Tubbs, hadn't transitioned until after the assault. So it's not exactly a central case of what I argue for - which is legal sex seggregation, not self-ID or biological sex.)

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. The problem seems to be more a function of having a semi-private space, than anything involving society leaving specific openings. I would be against turning every bathroom into a Panopticon, even if it would make people safer, and I would be against banning fathers from using changing tables in the women's restroom if they need to. Why would I be against trans women in women's bathrooms?

I don't think it nudges women's safety much in either direction.

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.

Or do you think their answers would change if the questions was changed to, "Would you rather meet a 5' 4'' man or a bear in the woods?"

If the question was changed to "would you rather meet a boy [as in, non-adult male human] or a bear in the woods" the answers change, because boys are by definition not capable of being a physical -> sexual threat.

This is the reason why some women accept/welcome ex-men in their bathrooms. 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. Historically, [male] eunuchs had the same kinds of privileges, for the exact same reasons; women have a more limited version of this for gay men.

Women who understand this are currently incentivized (through a bunch of other social mechanisms) to use this knowledge for the purpose of bullying other women who haven't yet figured this out. The cost to their safety, as you noted, does not exist.

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.

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

Bizarre and patently false claim.

All evidence suggests trans-identified males have the same level of criminality as other males, i.e., much higher than females and much higher than 3 year old boys (the main source is a paper by Dhejne et al, though generally gender activists taboo this kind of research for showing undesirable results).

And besides, over 90% of trans-identified males opt to keep their penis and testicles. So unlike their female counterparts, trans males are almost always physically intact. They are very much capable of raping women and have done so on many occasions.

This is getting at one of my questions for the OP - what exactly is meant by "biological" and "trans"?

To me, an MtF "woman" lacks a penis and testicles. Does the calculus change if that is what "trans" means? In general, I am pretty much of the opinion that this is not an area in which the government should get involved, thougb I am grateful for an effect of previous bathroom controversies being that most restaurants and bars changed to genderless bathrooms, making it more likely that there won't be a line. However, lacking a penis seems like a reasonable standard for someone being allowed entry into the women's bathroom regardless of sex at birth.

To me, an MtF "woman" lacks a penis and testicles. Does the calculus change if that is what "trans" means?

That's been considered transphobic in the mainstream identity politics crowd for probably close to a decade now. The only thing that is indicated by someone being "trans" is that they identify as the other sex because they feel like the other sex. No change in presentation is required to be considered a transwoman or transman, so certainly no requirements for hormones or surgery either.

I understand this - what is not clear to me is if OP would accept this definition of woman being given access to ladies' restrooms. They seem to want only "buologically female", but it is not clear to me if that means "female at birth" or more like "post-op".

AIUI this is pretty much the "tucute" vs "truscum" (what is wrong with people and these juvenile names?) debate, which the "tucute" side won in the mainstream (how on earth did we get to the point that any of this is mainstream?) trans movement.

If the question was changed to "would you rather meet a boy [as in, non-adult male human] or a bear in the woods" the answers change, because boys are by definition not capable of being a physical -> sexual threat.

Depends on where you draw the man/boy line honestly. There’s lots of women who would call most teenaged boys who would not find it a physical challenge to subdue and rape them ‘boys’, and a smaller but still substantial number who would call most college aged men boys.

A boy is a male of an age such that, if a Karen saw them walking into town alone, would call the cops and report it as child abuse.

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