988: In which Lily is not serviced

[monsterzero]

I think this comic describes the "debate" best.

[Chimerasame]

The Tailsteak-text below the comic seems to suggest that pro-trans people spend just as much time harping on the "security in bathrooms" angle as the anti-trans people. In my observation, this is not true. The anti-trans people make the security-related arguments and are guilty of disregarding all the other factors like locks on doors that the text accuses of.

The pro-trans people, in my observation, mostly just want folks to be able to use the bathroom that matches the gender they identify with. The little I've seen of "but you'll make trans women get assaulted in men's rooms" has primarily been in direct response to anti-trans people making the security argument, and (again, in my observation) isn't as much of a core part of trans folks' aims so much as just simple identity-respect.

Also, the people in favor of unisex bathrooms seem to mostly fall on the pro-trans side.

[Killjoy]

My experience so far has been that trans people just want to be able to go through life without being emotionally, socially, or physically harassed.

The whole "but but but bad men will dress like women to get into women's bathrooms and do bad things" hysteria strikes me as about the same as "but RPGs lead to evil!" or "there's a vast Satanic conspiracy to abuse kids in day care / preschool".

[meshach]

This isn't about keeping women safe. The cry of protecting white cis women has long been used to oppress other groups. See: http://www.newsreel.org/guides/Anne-Bra ... -Women.pdf

If this was about keeping women safe the Stanford rapist would have had a lot more jail time.

[Tem]

I mean, yes, obviously I'm in favour of letting people use whichever bathroom corresponds to their stated gender, (there's clearly a right and a wrong side of history on this one and I'm not an idiot),

Yes, there is a wrong side of history, and you are on it.

Because this is not only about bathrooms. The bathrooms are a red herring.

This is about allowing males, who used their male penises to rape (female) women, into women's prisons, because they "identify" as women. Whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. I do not identify as woman and I AM one.

This is also about changing rooms.

Nice to know that you would have me ogled by any male who feels like identifying his way into the women's changing room that day. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy that you respect me so much ... not. I thought you were a feminist, but apparently not. Males must come first, I see.


The current trans debate is not about unhappy males who had surgery to feel a bit happier about their bodies being allowed to use the women's bathroom to pee. No one had a problem with the old-fashioned transsexuals.

This is about any male who feels like it being able to identify his way into any women's space he wants to get into.

Including women's shelters.

Women have been kicked out of shelters for not wanting to share a room with a male. Accused of "transphobia"

In other words, women are second-class citizens. Males are more important. Another day in patriarchy, everything still the same.


(Also, intersex has nothing to do with gender nonsense, and should not be mixed up with it. Intersex is real. Gender is a feeling in a person's head that is as unprovable and unmeasurable.)


Perhaps a picture will help:

I do not want to share showers and changing rooms with this guy:

https://www.mumsnet.com/uploads/talk/20 ... g-4233.png

[Killjoy]

I mean, yes, obviously I'm in favour of letting people use whichever bathroom corresponds to their stated gender, (there's clearly a right and a wrong side of history on this one and I'm not an idiot),

Yes, there is a wrong side of history, and you are on it.

Because this is not only about bathrooms. The bathrooms are a red herring.

This is about allowing males, who used their male penises to rape (female) women, into women's prisons, because they "identify" as women. Whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. I do not identify as woman and I AM one.

This is also about changing rooms.

Nice to know that you would have me ogled by any male who feels like identifying his way into the women's changing room that day. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy that you respect me so much ... not. I thought you were a feminist, but apparently not. Males must come first, I see.


The current trans debate is not about unhappy males who had surgery to feel a bit happier about their bodies being allowed to use the women's bathroom to pee. No one had a problem with the old-fashioned transsexuals.

This is about any male who feels like it being able to identify his way into any women's space he wants to get into.

Including women's shelters.

Women have been kicked out of shelters for not wanting to share a room with a male. Accused of "transphobia"

In other words, women are second-class citizens. Males are more important. Another day in patriarchy, everything still the same.


(Also, intersex has nothing to do with gender nonsense, and should not be mixed up with it. Intersex is real. Gender is a feeling in a person's head that is as unprovable and unmeasurable.)

Self-identified transexuals are a pretty small percentage of the population, something less than 1%. Just what percentage of that small number is actually comprised of dudes who put on dresses so they can creeper?

So how often does this sort of thing actually happen? Do we have any good numbers?

( As opposed to, say, the "numbers" about campus rape. Of course, pointing out bad journalism and demanding facts makes me a "rape apologist", or so I've been told. )

[Darkfeather21]

-snip-

I could give an argument here that addresses all your points and spans 20 paragraphs...

But months of reading your posts have taught me that you don't actually want to change how you view the world. So, instead, all I'm going to say is this:

Men go to the men's room. Women go to the women's room.

Trans men are men. Trans women are women.

Ergo, trans men go to the men's room and trans women go to the women's room.

[SecretGamerGirl]

Reading the commentary under today's strip really was not the way I wanted to start my afternoon.

First off, I'm glad, at the very least, that we all seem to be on the same page that trans women being "allowed" to use the correct restroom is in no way a new idea (we've been in there for as long as restrooms have been a thing), that the boogeyman notion of trans women and/or men proclaiming themselves to be women poses threat of women being raped in public restrooms (again, not a new right, and yet there have been a whopping 0 cases of a trans woman assaulting anyone in a public restroom in all of recorded history), and the whole thing being a horrible witch hunt.

But then there's the rest of this post, generally making the argument that trans women's fears of being assaulted in men's rooms is just as much of a ridiculous fantasy and... that is really not the sort of statement you should make without checking if it's true first.

Oh and I'm specifically framing all of this from a trans woman's perspective because frankly this is already a really long post as it is, and again, we seem to generally agree that people aren't terribly concerned with what restrooms trans men and non-binary people are using.

I don't like a lot of the ways people bring up the concept of social privilege, but this is a topic where it really can't be avoided. As has been pointed out in other comments on this very comic, Tailsteak is one of those lucky individuals who basically never has to consider the threat of being violently assaulted by a stranger when out in public. Good for him, but when that sort of fear is totally alien to you, it's hard to get your head around it being a regular daily concern other people have to deal with, and safety measures such people take are going to come off as absurd. Case in point, Tailsteak's unfamiliarity with the safety concerns of public restrooms has him talking about people treating them as "some sort of rape bombshelter." That's backwards.

I'm sure I've seen a lot of hackneyed stand ups toss out things like "Have you ever noticed how women always go to the bathroom in groups? What's up with that?" It's one that generally only gets laughs from men because, women tend to know the actual answer is "violent predatory men go out of their way to ambush women when they're alone and out of public view, and while the odds of one being around at any given moment aren't terribly high, they're far enough from 0 that making a habit of not being alone in confined spaces is a pretty good idea when you're rolling against those low odds several times a day." And that's a terrible punchline.

When you actually look at them from the perspective of someone with a legitimate need to worry about being attacked by a stranger, public restrooms are horrifying. You're stepping into a small confined space with only one way in or out, no windows, or at least none you could escape or be seen through. No security cameras. A whole bunch of odd little closets specifically built for people to hide in. Often a lot of soundproofing efforts and windy corridors at the entrance. Weird social taboos preventing people from spending any time inside or checking on anyone who seems to be in distress. Sinks and soap dispensers for quick cleanups. If you specifically set out to design rooms for the express purpose of committing violent crimes against people undetected, you'd end up with a public restroom. Plus, typically, if you're entering one it's to do something that leaves you extra vulnerable, like use a toilet, clean your glasses, or change a baby's diaper.

So, they're dangerous places in general. This tends not to come up as an issue if you're a cis straight white able-bodied neurotypical fit dude, but the more of those variables you start changing, the scarier they get.

Things get particularly bad if you're unfortunate enough to be a trans woman. Aside from how women are already vulnerable in general, and being trans significantly increases the odds of random strangers deciding to rape or murder you, you're in a position where the odds of someone realizing you're trans go up (there's bright lights and big mirrors, you are likely adjusting your clothing to avoid any cloth being between your urethra and a toilet, which may involve your feet visible under a stall door facing "the wrong way" or the sound of urine hitting the water betray "the wrong pressure level," etc.) and by some person's estimation, you are "breaking the rules" by using the wrong restroom, which gives those with violent inclinations an easy rationalization for why they "need to punish you." And that's not even getting into the weird hang ups certain men have about their own sexuality and using public restrooms to experiment (we're all aware glory holes exist, right?) and how they can project that onto any "deviants" they encounter.

This wrong restroom thing is a point, by the way, that really seems lost on cis people in general. If you're trans, you're trans all the time. All day, every day, from when you're born to when you die. It's not like there's a costume you can put on and take off. If you're properly out as trans, no longer crossdressing, doing the whole HRT thing, maybe some other forms of medical transition, there's nothing you can do to suddenly pass as a cis man. People get this weird idea trans women all wear wigs and pad bras and have this alternate manly wardrobe and even if any of that were true, if you're out in public where exactly would you go to totally change your appearance if not the bathroom? Superman used to use phone booths for that but they don't have those anymore.

Alternatively, if you're totally in the closet, own nothing but manly clothes, have testosterone surging all over, making you look like a big hairy linebacker, that doesn't change the fact that you're really a woman pretending to be a man. Even if you're so deep in the closet you have no idea that you're even trans, on at least some subconscious level, a part of your mind knows that you're a girl in the boys' room and that's wrong, and there's something indefinably off about you that other people subconsciously pick up on.

I don't think I have ever met a trans woman who doesn't have stories from when they were like, 4, 5, 6 years old of bullies somehow pegging us as girls and attacking us on those grounds, often years before we can recall any other indicators that we were really little girls. It's like violent children have this weird sixth sense for sniffing out victims.

Personally, I've known for an absolute fact that I'm taking my life into my hands if I use any public restroom since I was maybe 8, and just avoid them altogether.

Women's rooms are inherently safer than men's rooms to use, just in general, but particularly if you're a woman, and much moreso if you're trans. "Safer" here referring to very real daily threats of being raped and murdered which, again, I wasn't happy to see dismissed as the same sort of hypothetical boogieman bigots try to scare people with.

Also, regarding gender neutral restrooms- I'm OK with them if all your restrooms are gender neutral. Everyone entering is going to expect equal odds of men and women being in there, nobody's seen as breaching taboo, odds of being jumped by someone aren't particularly higher, etc. What a lot of people push for though is to have specially designated "gender neutral" restrooms, in addition to dedicated men's and women's rooms, with the expectation that all trans people regardless of gender use the "other" room. Not only is that segregation and an active denial of the reality of trans people's genders, but you're also asking people to out themselves, and go into a dangerous enclosed space that simultaneously is explicitly open to anyone, but extremely unlikely for anyone to come in and catch someone in the act of committing a violent crime. Plus it's just wasteful. Trans people are such an incredibly tiny sliver of the general population, and it's absurd to dedicate every third restroom to... like 1% of the population.



Also, that whole post opened with a bunch of talk about someone's "stated gender" and references to being "MtF" which is all really inaccurate and alarm raising language for describing women with a weird glandular disorder. Not going to make a huge deal out of that since it's absurdly common for people to be taught that that's the "correct sensitive terminology," but for what it's worth, it isn't.

[Killjoy]

If I had to guess, based on anecdotal evidence, there are far far more instances of trans women forced to use men's public restrooms being assaulted or harrassed, than of trans women or "creepers posting as trans women" assaulting others in women's public restrooms.

(I apologize if I'm mangling terms, I mean no offense.)

As someone who was relentlessly bullied in elementary and middle school, I have some small idea of what it's like not feel safe in the sorts of spaces that public bathrooms are -- which is why my first principle on these sorts of matters is not enabling bullies.

[gaeila]

All the restrooms at Vanderbilt Hospital Clinic are unisex--one person at a time. Each doctor's office in the Clinic usually has at least 2 or 3 separate bathrooms.
For that matter, every doctor's office I've been to have unisex bathrooms--again, one person at a time. They all have very sturdy locks.
Those situations happily render the whole trans issue moot, don't you think?

But for the record, I agree with those who just want folks to be able to use the bathroom that matches the gender they identify with.

Now, as for creepers assaulting women in restrooms or changing rooms, here's the thing: What the hell makes anyone think a trans F is more likely to indulge in a spot of rape than a regular ol' cis M rapist who decides to invade a W restroom or any other place he should not be, in quest of victims to assault? I have noticed that rapists make something of a habit of invading places they should not be, in order to rape. In my experience, this often includes homes and other personal spaces. It's unlikely that a serious rapist is going to go through the rigmarole of claiming to identify as a trans F. They don't need to. Rape is a crime of opportunity and isolation. The whole bathroom/changing room argument providing rape opportunity is just ... specious.

Most rapes occur in isolated areas – such as lonely stairwells, elevators, laundromats, bus or train stops, biking or jogging trails. A victim’s home also provides seclusion for a rapist.

So OK, a bathroom or changing room might be unsafe if it and the surrounding area are deserted.

The example of a woman at a Women's Shelter being required to share a room with a penis-equipped trans F is mind-boggling. It may have happened, but such instances would be extraordinarily rare. It's far more common for a battered man (they do exist) to be refused aid at all Women's shelters, and to have no options, except, perhaps family or friends.

Finally, I would like to remind us all that the vast majority of women's bathrooms have stalls with latching DOORS. (So do all the changing rooms I've used in the last 20 years.) In general, no one is going to be looking at anyone else's genitals in a women's bathroom. Many trans F truly look as F as can be, so no-one can possibly tell what might lurk beneath their underwear. In such cases I fail to see the issue in folks using their bathroom of choice. For God's sake, no one ever complained about Janet Reno using the ladies room, and while she was undoubtedly cis F, I recall a plethora of comments remarking that she looked quite like a man.

In fact, the whole latching DOOR thing re women's bathrooms now has me thinking that all the Sturm und Drang and general turmoil this discussion has evoked is perhaps...just a wee bit silly. In fact, it's very silly, so I now shall stop (spoken in Monty Python voice).