Where the community is generally opposed to it, they'll act accordingly.
— frank

I'd argue that democracy doesn't work that way, as if a vote occurs and the lovers take their lumps and the winner gets his way. The losers protest and continue to push back. I'm not suggesting that's a bad thing, but democracy doesn't equal harmony. — Hanover

I think as this situation matures, a trans woman will be satisfied saying that she's living as a woman, but that she's not a biological woman.

I think the issue you're pointing out is temporary zealousness. As Judith Butler said in that video, the important thing now is to nurture a climate where trans people aren't subject to violence. Over zealousness doesn't deescalate tension.

What do you think?

Antagonistic functions mean in theory someone can take an extreme left wing position to accelerate activity in the right wing. Butler is being completely genuine though, the futurist project of replicating the change of attitudes in psychiatry in the general population towards trans folk is neccessary, but not the same. In psychiatry it was codified and systematic. In the general population it will be like midwifing the birth of a new wisdom, but the wisdom has already been completely decided, it just up to everyone to learn what that is.

This question is usually a surrogate for: 'Is transgender identity legitimate?'
— Tom Storm

That's not what this thread is about. I made that clear. — Hanover

And I thought I made it clear that this is the unavoidable outcome of your question. It's how it looks the moment you explore it.

Either that, or I didn't think it mattered, so I chose MtF.

Do we want to create a separate category of female that forces all trans people to out themselves as trans?
— Tom Storm — Hanover

Sure, but I think this is instructive regarding how almost all aspects of this conversation are framed in general.

The correlation between appearance and gender identity is a choice, not a requirement. — Hanover

Hmmm. A choice for whom?

Carry on. :smile:

If it turns out to be the case that forcing trans women into men's toilets results in more violence overall against the innocent (whoever they may be) then it would seem the most humane policy would be not to do that. — Baden

I have a couple of problems with this. First, if you're saying that it's ok to put more women in danger as long as the overall level of danger is lower, I doubt that will sell very well. It certainly doesn't convince me. Second, putting biological men in women's bathrooms is very clearly going to increase the danger of violence for them because it's going to make people angry. If you want trans people to be accepted, it doesn't make any sense to make a big deal about an issue like this.

Which brings us back to the fact that 99.5% of people are not transgendered. My high school had about 1,000 students. That means about five of them would be trans. Even if it's significantly more than that, does it make sense to disrupt all the other students lives and make the community furious for the benefit of so few? The obvious solution is to provide a separate a smaller unisex bathroom and locker room for anyone who wants to to use it. It could have private dressing rooms and showers.

In 10 years, maybe it won't matter anymore. In the meantime, the trans community is going to have to be accommodating to public sentiment.

You have no idea about the darkness that lies within. — Hanover

For many of us, it seems; the result of the Good Lord putting the playground next to the sewerage works. Evolution, of course, would never produce something so ad hoc.

Good OP, by the way; enjoyably satyrical.

I still don't see why any of this philosophy/sociology/psychology/anthropology/politics makes any difference. Is it reasonable for women to object to sharing bathrooms and locker rooms with trans women. I say yes. What's the solution? Make reasonable accommodation, e.g. a separate unisex bathroom and locker room. Asking for more before the community has come to terms with the troublesome moral/religious/social/political issues involved is unreasonable. It will also obviously also lead to more conflict and more violence.

Hmmm. A choice for whom? — Tom Storm

Whether to present as a man or woman is a choice to the person doing it. Do you suggest otherwise?

As Judith Butler said in that video, the important thing now is to nurture a climate where trans people aren't subject to violence. Over zealousness doesn't deescalate tension.

What do you think? — frank

Safety first, yes. Should violence occur, I would blame the actor, to a much less extent someone specifically inciting it, to no extent someone who just has a different point of view, even if they hold it passionately.

It's interesting that no one ever raises the issue of female to trans-male. No one seems to care and perhaps this says something about attitudes to women more generally.
— @Tom Storm — Hanover

I raised that very issue in my post above.

Whether to present as a man or woman is a choice to the person doing it. Do you suggest otherwise? — Hanover

I'm no expert on this issue and certainly no spokesperson for the trans community. Nevertheless I suggest this might trivialize the matter - like it's a simple case of merely ticking a box. The word 'choice' can hide a multitude of sins. My trans colleagues would say it isn't a choice, it's who they are.

One of the criticisms we can make of the Cis understanding of the issue is that we often seem to think trans, or being gay for that matter, is a lifestyle choice and people can stop 'doing it' just like they should say 'no' to drugs, etc, etc.

I raised that very issue in my post above. — BC

You did. :up:

One of the criticisms we can make of the Cis understanding of the issue is that we often seem to think trans, or being gay for that matter, is a lifestyle choice and people can stop 'doing it' just like they should say 'no' to drugs, etc, etc. — Tom Storm

I've not suggested one can choose not to be gay, straight, CIS, or trans. I said one can choose one's behavior, which is true.

I can choose to not have sex with women despite being straight. Such is a prerequisite for consent, without which one can't legally have any sex.

But then one might ask, are F to M transsexuals at risk of attack while using men's toilets? I suppose it would depend on the toilet. A F to M could safely urinate in the toilets of the Campaign of Human Rights, but maybe the toilet at Tea Party HQ, or a really rough biker bar would not be a good place to test things out. Is anyone safe in a Tea Party toilet — BC

Since you point to this, I'll better respond.

I didn't focus on the safety issue as the basis for my bathroom signs, although I can see that as being an issue more a concern for CIS women than CIS men because CIS women are genetically physically weaker than CIS men and are statistically far greater at risk of assault than a CIS man is, so the FtM issue would be less an area of safety to consider.

But in any event, our dearth of women in this thread deprives us of the first hand account of whether they would feel threatened by a FtM in their gym locker.

You raise an important issue.

1 in 7 Americans have a disability that interferes with ordinary life activities. Even so, advocates and legislators have been working on accommodations for people with disabilities for over 50 years. The ADA federal bill was passed in 1990. There are still plenty of barriers which disabled people encounter, though a lot of progress has been made over the last 50+ years.

Transseuxuals / transgendered people have been present for the last 50+ years, but have become an organized advocacy group much more recently. In addition, the age at which some persons declare themselves to be trans has fallen into the years of childhood.

Perhaps there are as many as 1/2 of 1% trans people. What counts as "trans" varies. Some people's 'trans' status seems to be ideational and emotional. They may not alter their appearance at all. Conversely, some people require a change of costume, change in circulating hormones, and a radical restructuring of their anatomy.

Thousands of cities, businesses, and building owners have discovered that making the required accommodations for physical disability are quite expensive. Creating a fully accessible bathroom can run into many thousands of dollars. Eliminating steps into a building can require a lot of construction work. Establishing systems and facilities for the hearing and visually impaired, to cite another example, requires considerable institutional effort and commitment

My point is this: providing gender neutral accommodations--toilets, locker rooms, and so on is not a trivial expense, and the number of beneficiaries doesn't justify the required spending, especially when we have not met all the very definite needs of 60 million disabled Americans.

One of the criticisms we can make of the Cis understanding of the issue is that we often seem to think trans, or being gay for that matter, is a lifestyle choice and people can stop 'doing it' just like they should say 'no' to drugs, etc, etc — Tom Storm

I presume that being trans, like being gay or straight, is NOT a choice. The style in which one lives out his or her sexuality, however, is a choice, moderated by circumstances. As a gay man, I could elect to wear black leather and chains or corduroy suits. I could choose to be sexually promiscuous, sexually abstemious, or something in between. I could solicit sex from inappropriate people (like students, clients, choir boys, etc.) or not. There are all sorts of things that I could do as a matter of lifestyle choice. The same goes for heterosexuals. And the same goes for trans people.

here are, however, costs associated with any given choice. Sexually promiscuous men are likely to experience more infections and if they are reckless, are likely to get arrested or worse. Trans people have to elect their lifestyle options in light of their (social and material) environment, just like everybody else does. Society is no more obligated to accept all trans lifestyle choices, any more than they are obligated to accept all gay or strait lifestyle choices.

Accepting lifestyle choices is not the same thing as accepting someone's right to exist.

I don't see it that way, but you put your position well. :wink:

providing gender neutral accommodations--toilets, locker rooms, and so on is not a trivial expense, — BC

That's certainly not true to the extent that it is for the disabled. For almost all conditions they do not require special physical accommodation. The only things I can think of off the top of my head are bathrooms and barracks/dormitories. You don't really need a lot of special facilities. As I noted, simply including a few unisex bathrooms along with the regular men's and women's could suffice. Can you think of anything else? Gay people don't require special accommodation. Except as noted why should trans people?

[Edit] Should have included issues with sports teams.

Safety first, yes. Should violence occur, I would blame the actor, to a much less extent someone specifically inciting it, to no extent someone who just has a different point of view, even if they hold it passionately. — Hanover

I would say that anyone on either side of the issue not willing to make reasonable compromises to minimize the danger of violence shares in the responsibility.

It's interesting that no one ever raises the issue of female to trans-male. No one seems to care — Tom Storm

I don't think people care nearly as much. I doubt anyone cares if trans males want to compete on a men's sports team. I read an article in the past couple of years about a trans man who competed on the Harvard swim team with no problem. The rest of the team accepted him.

IMO, the most equitable solution would be to provide three public, multi-occupant, wheelchair-accessible restrooms designated for Men, Women & Unisex. Someone has probably already pointed out that considerations of 'chromosomal biology' or 'gender self-identification' are too reductive for pragmatically providing disambiguated public accomodations.

First, if your saying that it's ok to put more women in danger — T Clark

You haven't demonstrated any danger. I have no evidence to suggest trans women are a "danger" in women's bathrooms.

What about those who’ve physically transitioned? Should an XX person with an artificial penis and testicles use the XX locker room? Should an XY person with artificial breasts and vulva use the XY locker room? How would a third party using the locker room even know that they’re artificial?

What if someone doesn’t know what their sex chromosomes are because they’ve never been tested? Although there’s a strong correlation between sex chromosomes and appearance there are all sorts of genetic conditions that differ from the common, and not everyone with them knows that they have them. They might be very rare but whatever laws or rules you have in place will need to account for them. Will all bathrooms and locker rooms require genetic testing?

What if someone is neither XX nor XY? Again it might be rare but again they need to be accounted for.

Copied from something I posted in a previous discussion:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-survey-idUSKBN13X0BK

Almost 60 percent of transgender Americans have avoided using public restrooms for fear of confrontation, saying they have been harassed and assaulted, according to the largest survey taken of transgender people in the United States.

The survey of 27,715 respondents reached an estimated 2 percent of the adult transgender population in 2015, seeking to fill a gap in data about a severely understudied group whose experiences and challenges from medicine to law to economics and family relations are poorly understood.

The findings by the National Center for Transgender Equality on public restrooms counter the message of mainly conservative politicians and religious leaders that transgender people are the antagonists preying on others. It found that 12 percent of transgender people were verbally harassed in public restrooms within the previous year, 1 percent were physically attacked and 1 percent were sexually assaulted. Nine percent said someone denied them access to a bathroom.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/transgender-teens-restricted-bathroom-access-sexual-assault/

Transgender and gender-nonbinary teens face greater risk of sexual assault in schools that prevent them from using bathrooms or locker rooms consistent with their gender identity, according to a recent study.

Researchers looked at data from a survey of nearly 3,700 U.S. teens aged 13-17. The study found that 36% of transgender or gender-nonbinary students with restricted bathroom or locker room access reported being sexually assaulted in the last 12 months, according to a May 6, 2019 CNN article. Of all students surveyed, 1 out of every 4, or 25.9%, reported being a victim of sexual assault in the past year.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8022685/

Also according to the declaration, the idea that protection for transgender people (including using the bathroom without constraint due to gender identity) harms the privacy and security of other users is a myth. Several critics point out that there is no evidence that non-discrimination policies or that explicitly allow transgender people to use restrooms according to their gender identities have led to an increase in the number of sexual harassment cases in bathrooms and women's locker rooms anywhere in the world (Doran, 2016; Hasenbush et al., 2019). States (19) and cities (more than 200) in the US that have passed laws against discrimination against LGBT people show that such measures have not caused any increase in incidences of crime in bathrooms (Maza and Brinker, 2014). This is not surprising, given that the approval of protections against discrimination has no impact on existing laws that criminalize violent behavior in bathrooms. In the absence of real incidents to base trans-exclusionary bathroom policies, anti-trans groups fabricate horror stories about trans-inclusive bathroom policies (Maza, 2014).

Security and privacy in the use of public restrooms are certainly important for everyone—including transgender people. Arguments that unilaterally conceive the access of transgender people to restrooms according to their gender identities as a risk factor for the safety of other people assume, even implicitly, that the transgender population does not deserve to be protected under the same standards as the cisgender population. This is particularly alarming, given that research shows precisely that young transgender people are exposed to much higher rates of violence in US schools' restrooms (middle and high school) than young cisgenders (Murchison et al., 2019).

Thanks for this. The evidence suggests the whole "trans people are a danger" narrative is false and as I pointed out earlier turns reality on its head. Ultimately, a reflection of a transphobic culture. I had dozens of trans students in Thailand and the thought of what bathroom they were using never occurred to me nor do I remember it ever being mentioned by anyone else. No one cared because there was nothing to care about.

I've not suggested one can choose not to be gay, straight, CIS, or trans. I said one can choose one's behavior, which is true.

I can choose to not have sex with women despite being straight. Such is a prerequisite for consent, without which one can't legally have any sex. — Hanover

Sounds like a pretty weak argument - the church used to say to gay people (and still does), 'It's ok to be gay, just choose not to love another man or have sex with one."

If someone is trans, I don't think we have the mandate to say - 'Be trans, just don't behave trans.' This is why I said choice hides a multitude of sins.

Most of the trans people I know have been beaten and spat on regularly. Quite often by people referencing the Bible, and in a couple of instances, the Koran. The advice they have been given by police is often, 'Sure, you're a trans woman, just don't dress like that around here.' Sounds like bigoted bullshit to me.

https://gcn.ie/trans-dehydration-avoid-school-bathrooms/

''A mother to a transgender Leaving Cert student recently spoke with the Irish Independent on how her son fasted during the school day in fear of using the school’s bathrooms, a struggle relatable to many trans students throughout the country. The mother has remained anonymous in order to protect her son’s identity.

Her seventeen year-old son first registered to a secondary school in Dublin as a female student. At this stage, he avoids using the bathrooms at all costs, to the extent of not eating or drinking during the school day. The mother touched upon the impact of fasting on her son’s health and academic performance as she recollected noticing him looking ill when picking him up from school'

The focus of this debate should be how to protect trans people from discrimination, bigotry, and violence concerning their use of bathrooms and definitely not on falsely stigmatising one of our most vulnerable minority groups as a "danger" or "threat".

Sounds like a pretty weak argument - the church used to say to gay people (and still does), 'It's ok to be gay, just choose not to love another man or have sex with one." — Tom Storm

That may be a weak argument, but it's not one I made. I never suggested transsexuals shouldn't express themselves. I'm not real sure what you're responding to.

What I said is that sexual expression is a choice. That one chooses to have sex with men, women, as a man, as a woman, or however is not of concern to me as long as it's consensual, meaning by choice.

You're reading things in my posts that aren't there and then telling me you disagree with what I didn't say.

You're reading things in my posts that aren't there and then telling me you disagree with what I didn't say. — Hanover

That's good to hear. If I misrepresented you, I apologise.

I've not suggested one can choose not to be gay, straight, CIS, or trans. I said one can choose one's behavior, which is true. — Hanover

I'm not sure why this point was made then. What behaviour are you referring to in relation to trans?

What about those who’ve physically transitioned? Should an XX person with an artificial penis and testicles use the XX locker room? Should an XY person with artificial breasts and vulva use the XY locker room? How would a third party using the locker room even know that they’re artificial? — Michael

To abstract it:

You have an X and you want to know how it might be used. You establish that it can be used only if A, B, and C occur. An objection is raised that B is not rationally related to the objective of the rule. What then follows is whether it's rationally related.

There will obviously be disagreement, but we can only make rules as best we can.

More concretely:

We distinguish on the basis of "men" and "women" In a variety of contexts: locker rooms, bathrooms, sports teams, individual dating decisions, social presentations, and I'm sure others could be identified.

Some of those distinctions are arguably worth preserving, like perhaps the locker room or sports teams examples. Assuming that, which @Banno challenges, and which I disagree, we have to now define the signs above the door, meaning what are "men" and "women."

I do believe that in many of these instances XX and XY accurately describe what the speaker meant when he hung the sign, not what the word eventually evolved into and what it was meant to protect.

If the rational basis for maintaining the historic distinction is comfort or perceived safety of the vast majority of users, that seems sufficient to me unless you wish to override the majority with a declaration of special minority rights that hasn't previously been declared. That is, unless the regulation of a transsexual from certain restrooms is a violation of human civil rights guaranteed under some special rule, the majority has the right to enforce their rule, even if it does not precisely and exactly achieve its every goal under every hypothetical.