This week: the Nobel-winning psychology of why you've never once won an argument about trans people, and never will. Featuring Daniel Kahneman, Richard Dawkins, and the man down the flat-roof
The irony here is in the fact that on our second date, Andie and I bonded over having both recently read The God Delusion, and cited it as a pivotal work in our like minded observations on organized religion. I think the most powerful take away I will get from this post is the driving analogy - we accept there is risk but are willing to trust everyone does not cross the painted line. People who object to trans women in women’s bathrooms need to trust that the trans women are no more likely to inflict harm than biological women. We go into public spaces with people of all genders every day and we accept that we are at risk of being attacked by someone, yet we move past that. Bathrooms, pronouns, passports are no different.
Bonding over The God Delusion on a second date and then ending up here is a lovely piece of irony. The driving thing is what I keep returning to as well. We accept an enormous risk every single morning, from strangers, at speed, in tons of metal, because the alternative is not being able to function at all. Nobody demands zero risk anywhere except here.
"In one narrow biological sense, the sentence is true. I wasn’t born female. I don’t produce ova. I can’t become the kind of woman my mother is."
I think this is a really important sentence. It's something very rarely admitted by those arguing for complete trans inclusion but with out it they are arguing straight past the feminist PoV.
I'm broadly supportive of the TERF position but I think this article is the best argument against it I've seen.
Thing is, there are compromises that achieve dignity and safety for both trans people and women but they are a complex question that requires listening and compromise.
You're the only person on this page arguing for a compromise, so it seems only fair to take you seriously. Late, I know. I've only just come back to this thread.
I'd agree with more of this than you might expect. The refusal to concede the biology has cost us enormously, and not because the concession was owed to anybody. It cost us because it made the whole case look as though it rested on a claim most people simply do not believe, when it never rested on that at all. I've said so in print and taken a fair bit of stick for it from my own side.
Where I'd push back is on the shape of the compromise. Two sides listening to each other sounds even handed, and isn't quite, because the two sides are not being asked for the same thing. One is being asked to accept a risk nobody has yet shown materialising at any measurable rate. The other is being asked to give up the lavatory, the changing room, the ward, and any job that requires either. Calling both of those a compromise obscures the arithmetic rather than doing it.
The second thing is that the hard cases were never really the argument. Prisons and elite sport are genuinely difficult, they involve small numbers and real competing interests, and I'd happily concede that blanket rules are the wrong tool in both. But almost nobody arguing this is arguing about the boxing ring. They arrive at the ring, settle it there, and then apply the answer to every woman in every Boots in the country. If what you want is individual assessment in the difficult cases and being left alone in the ordinary ones, then you and I want very nearly the same thing, and we should both be irritated by how little of the public argument is about that.
The last bit I'd not concede. Tone did not decide those cases. The idea that a better mannered campaign would have produced different judgments assumes the other side was persuadable and simply waiting to be asked nicely, and I've seen very little in the last few years to suggest it was.
I think we agree on most of it. To address your disagreements:
1. Women on the opposite side of this feel they are being asked to give up their sports, their safety and their identity. Not realising (whether you think they are valid or not) the extent of the genuine feeling from good people has cost the trans community a lot because it means their tactics are aimed at the wrong place.
2. I think the edge cases are crucial to the argument. They are what moved me from a position of absolute TWAW to largely supportive of Radfems. Most people don't see toilets as a huge issue in either direction but when rapists are put in women's prisions and immediately start raping they pay attention. Once was enough to change the entire UK prision policy. Similarly the rare ridiculous case in sports or rape crisis centers grab headlines and change minds.
3. I think tone is also crucial. I think tone is where trans activists lost. I've known Radfems who are prominent in the opposition to trans rights for decades and they were not always so hardened. Masked "men" threatening them at meetings and institutions ignoring their legitimate points (see 2) radically changed their views. Even more important tone affects the views of the wider public- screaming your pronouns (or the equivalent) just alienates people.
I don't personally think many of the people speaking for trans people give a fuck, they just enjoy a fight and an excuse to be abusive to women. I've encountered the same people in other left wing campaigns I've been in but it feels like they dominate trans rights discussion.
You don't need to win over people who are deeply bigoted to win but current strategy lumps everyone who does not espouse the 'right' beliefs in together; meaning the majority of the country is treated as an enemy.
I think we agree on more than either of us would admit in public, which is probably the most useful thing on this page.
One. Conceded, mostly. The feeling is genuine, and the people who shouted at it instead of answering it did my side no favours. I've said as much in print and taken stick from my own side for it, so you'll get no argument from me about the activists. I'd only add that I don't want to be lumped in with them any more than you want to be lumped in with the bigots. Lumping is the whole disease, and both sides have caught it.
Two is where we part. Karen White was real, she was a scandal, and the Prison Service apologised for her. But look at what you've just described: one case was enough to change the whole policy. That isn't evidence being weighed. It's a headline being governed by. If a single rapist in the wrong wing settles the rules for every trans woman in every changing room in the country, the edge case isn't informing the argument any more, it's replacing it. I'd take individual assessment in prisons and sport tomorrow. I'd also like it noticed that nobody is proposing individual assessment for the ladies' at a service station on the N25.
Three. Tone explains why the public turned. It doesn't make the rules that followed right. Those are two different questions, and the second one is the one I write about.
And your last line, about treating the majority as the enemy: that's precisely what I've been complaining about from inside my own side. So I'd say we want the same thing. I just don't think the radfems are offering it.
There's a reason we use 'cis' and 'trans', so I'm very confused by the claim that we don't admit that there are differences between trans and cis women. I guess this is why using cis gets such a hugely negative reaction?
I don't know who 'we' is in this context but my experience of the public policy debate in the UK is an awful lot of repeating 'Trans women are women' (or similar) from organisations speaking for (over?) trans people and not a lot of discussion of the genuine complexities in (for example) women's sports or women's prisons.
The upshot of this has been a ton of negative publicity and a series of lost legal cases that have left trans people upset, worried and a punching bag for the far right.
Years ago there was scope to listen to the feminists who've won these legal challenges and to address their concerns. Now everyone seems to be dug in for a war and trans people are stuck in the middle of it.
Trans women are women- the point of that statement is that not all humans born female are women, and not all women are born female. It's a problem because 99% are both, but people really want that to be 100%- and that just denies that anyone is trans.
I'm open to anyone willing to discuss the complexities of women's sports or women's prisons, but 9 times out of 10 when I try it ends up in a "I don't care if they've gone through a female puberty and not a male one" for sports and "I don't care about trans women getting raped in prison, that's a problem for men" for prisons.
So legitimate concerns sure, but it's hard to find people who aren't just looking to eliminate trans women full stop in practice.
"Trans women are women- the point of that statement is that not all humans born female are women, and not all women are born female. It's a problem because 99% are both, but people really want that to be 100%- and that just denies that anyone is trans."
If that's your argument you need to find a way to prove to the general population that trans women are litterally women. Most people's definition of women (adult females) excludes transwomen, so you are just arguing past them.
"I'm open to anyone willing to discuss the complexities of women's sports or women's prisons, but 9 times out of 10 when I try it ends up in a "I don't care if they've gone through a female puberty and not a male one" for sports and "I don't care about trans women getting raped in prison, that's a problem for men" for prisons."
You need to understand their argment. These women (the ones who've been so successful in altering the UK legal position) have been fighting for women's rights for decades. Telling them they need to give up some of those rights because trans women might be unsafe isn't going to work because they see males as the oppressor class they are fighting against.
"So legitimate concerns sure, but it's hard to find people who aren't just looking to eliminate trans women full stop in practice."
It's bizarre that you go from 'won't support trans women in women's spaces' to 'want to eliminate trans women. Eliminate as in kill? That kind of silly hyperbole is why the debate is terrible. Comments like that are what's fueling transphobia.
It might be less hypocritical to accuse TERFs of constantly sprouting slogans if I hadn’t heard the meaningless phrase “trans women are women” a billion and three times 🙄
"The hard question is this: what is the actual risk of allowing trans women into women’s spaces, weighed against the actual cost of excluding them, in light of the actual evidence?"
I asked about the cost of excluding trans people. Virginia laid out a fairly detailed cascade of that cost. You replied that you saw no cost to women in it. Correct, because that wasn't the question. You've answered a different one and marked your own homework as complete. The cost I asked about is still sitting there, unread.
https://switcheroo.azurewebsites.net/ I built an app today to take your arguments apart. Put yours in and see what it says. It explains how you're effectively providing weak evidence, a coherent claim, but weak evidence. Anyway, it's good fun. Knock yourself out. I built it because I was bored arguing with a few people.
There are two things bundled in that sentence, and the second is doing all the work while the first takes the credit.
The first is a definitional move. You've written men where the question said trans women, which settles the matter quietly before any argument gets started. Fine. I'll not fight you for the word, take it.
The second is the real claim and it is a moral one, not a factual one. You say our costs are not your concern. You are entitled to hold that, but look at what it costs you to say it. You are not arguing that the harm to us is small, or unproven, or outweighed by something heavier. You are saying it does not count. Which means your answer was fixed before any evidence arrived and no evidence could ever move it.
That is an admission rather than an argument. It also means you have given up safety as your reason, because safety reasoning is comparative by its nature. If one side of the scale is declared none of your business, you haven't got a scale. You've got a preference with a safety label stuck on the front.
I asked what the cost of exclusion was. You've told me you don't care what it is. Those are not the same reply, and only one of them is an answer.
If a service were to exclude trans women and tgerefore men from any reciprocal service then one could say well they just can't use that and indeed in life no one should be entitled. The trans people may simply find another service to use.
The difficulty faced is that by degrees trans people will reach a tipping point where they cannot function in society because of the scarcity of options.
In a rational society any woman should be able to go into a male changing space without risk of objectification, harassment or harm. That unfortunately is not the society I which we live. So when a service says trans women should use male changing spaces they are knowingly putting those trans women at risk. If that is a workplace then denying a trans person access to facilities is denying them work, whicb denies income, which denies food and accommodation. It is a cascade of increasing harm which becomes real though the original risk that a trans woman would harm a woman in a woman's space is unsubstantiated.
The added layer is that some men have developed a pathological hatred for trans women. This is clearly not motivated by any sense that they may be at risk from a teans woman. Consequently trans women need spaces where they can be away from that real threat.
The breakdown in thinking is to start with trans women once looked like men and tried to behave like men out of self preservation I will add, therefore they will always be men, therefore as men harm women trans women are a threat.
The real elephant in the room, which is a taboo notion, is that lesbian women will gravitate to women's single-sex spaces, some lesbian women will objectify other women and may pose a risk. 'May' must be emphasised because it is only on the basis that trans women may pose a risk that this has, on the face of it, come about.
There is however a parallel argument 'trans women are men who are taking away women's hard won rights'. More ask the question what rights are being taken away and be clear to distinguish between rights and privilege.
More often what you will hear is women have a right to a space without men. No, that is a privilege. Many women both cis and trans want that space but it is a privilege.
The final factor I will contribute is mutual respect. Too many people on all sides want their personal space and boundaries respected but are not willing to extend that respect to others. A woman using a single-sex space may legitimately not want her body inspected but to ensure her autonomy demands all others are inspected.
Trans-identified men entering men's bathrooms may be at risk from violence from other men. The numbers. However, are low. But it is far easier for them to defend themselves than it is for a woman to fight off a man in a women's bathroom. There are numerous examples of women and girls bring attacked in women rooms by me, usually heyerosexual. Why is it that TIM love to identify AS women but seem incapable of identifying WITH women? If they made an effort to understand why we want to preserve our dignity and safety, remembering that we have additional reasons to use bathrooms, then they would not breach our boundaries. But they're men after all and their concerns are not women's safety or dignity. And we know that.
You've moved smoothly from "rare attacks happen" to "and we know their real concern isn't safety," which is quite a leap from counting incidents to reading minds. The article's whole argument is that people swap the hard evidence question for an easy story about what's in someone's head, because the story is satisfying and requires no data. You've supplied the story. The evidence question is still where I left it.
If these men pretending to be women cared about or respected women, they would stop invading our spaces. But it's not about women's dignity, for them, it's about men's feelings and the insistence of men to have their own way. Nothing is new under the sun.
I said you'd swapped the evidence question for a story about what's in people's heads, and your answer is a longer story about what's in people's heads. "It's not about dignity, it's about men's feelings, men's insistence on their own way." You can't see inside me, Redwing. You've never met me. You've decided what I want and then treated your decision as a finding. That's the entire move the essay describes, and you've done it twice now in two comments.
The evidence question is still sitting where I left it. You've walked past it twice now to tell me what's in my soul.
You're quite right. I can't pretend to know what's in your mind or guess at your motivations. However, what I see as embarrassing is the narcissistic behavior of some trans-identified men, observable behavior, that does little to endear such men to women who prize their fast disappearing privacy.
“The hard question is this: what is the actual risk of allowing trans women into women’s spaces, weighed against the actual cost of excluding them, in light of the actual evidence?”
The question is not that but does society want people in the opposite sex’s spaces.
And how, pray tell, do you know if they do or they don't? Based upon all the podcasts that you watch with Helen Joyce and chums? Do you not think that's a very biased sample set? My sample set is the general public, because I live like this, 24/7, 365. And I can tell you right now, most of the general public are absolutely fine. They're not hysterical, they're calm and rational, and able to make decisions based upon risk. What you think is universal objection is nothing of the sort, because I live it, I see it. And by the way, that's the last comment I'll make to you.
Me: “The question is not that but does society want people in the opposite sex’s spaces.”
You: “And how, pray tell, do you know if they do or they don't? Based upon all the podcasts that you watch with Helen Joyce and chums? Do you not think that's a very biased sample set?”
I made no claim as to what society wants. My claim was about relevancy: what is relevant is what society wants, not necessarily the violence-risk posed by transgender people.
I have never seen a podcast and do not know who Helen Joyce is. Are you okay?
For gauging what the public wants, polls and surveys are best.
A U.K. poll shows the majority wanting male transgender people out of opposite-sex spaces.
And around two-thirds (68%) of the U.S. public say that whether someone is a man or a woman is determined by the sex they were assigned at birth:
Also for gauging what the public wants, see the actions of elected officials.
“My sample set is the general public, because I live like this, 24/7, 365. And I can tell you right now, most of the general public are absolutely fine.”
How they treat you to your face ≠ what they want.
People might refer to you as a woman out of fear you are a lunatic who will go off on them if they “misgender” you. My actions are influenced by that concern.
I am somewhat friends with a waiter who is trangender. If he ever asked me to refer to him as a female, I would do it, because I owe him after all the good service he has provided me (whereas I owe no such thing to random transgender people), and to avoid conflict with someone who is on the job, subject to management’s rules. But meanwhile, on social media, I am defending the truth about biological sex. I want transgender people out of opposite-sex spaces. If polled, I would say that; and I vote in elections accordingly.
“They're not hysterical, they're calm and rational,”
Same here. See my posts in this reply-chain.
“and able to make decisions based upon risk.”
But risk is irrelevant to me. If anyone simply wants transgender people of the opposite sex out of their spaces, that is all the reason I need to oppose transgender people in opposite-sex spaces. There is no burden on me to show any violence-risk.
“What you think is universal objection is nothing of the sort,”
I made no claim about any universal objection.
“And by the way, that's the last comment I'll make to you.”
You've been clearer than anyone else here, so let me return the favour.
You say risk is irrelevant, and what matters is what the public wants. Good. Then we agree on the important thing: your position has nothing to do with safety, and never did. You've removed the one justification that would make exclusion protective rather than preferential, and you've done it deliberately, in writing. "There is no burden on me to show any violence-risk" might be the most honest sentence anyone has produced on this subject. Thank you for it.
But look at what's left once safety is gone. "I want these people out and I owe no evidence" is a complete account of every exclusion anyone has ever been ashamed of in hindsight. The public preferring a minority's absence has been true, by polling, of every group that's ever been shown the door. That's the beginning of the moral question, not the answer to it. You've treated a headcount as a verdict.
Then your waiter. You'll call him "her" to his face because he's earned it through good service, but you'll vote to keep him out of the relevant spaces and defend that online. Sit with the shape of that. The dignity you extend is a tip, contingent, withdrawable, gone the moment he's a stranger or a ballot. That isn't respect. It's a transaction, and you've told me the terms.
You ask if I'm okay. I'm grand, thanks. I named Helen Joyce because the argument arrived pre-assembled in her shape. If you built it yourself, that isn't better, it's just the same conclusion reached more lonelily.
And you're right that you weren't rude. But "I want you gone and I don't have to say why," delivered in a perfectly civil voice, is the rudest thing in this whole exchange. That was rather the point of the essay.
Not rude? Calling a trans woman male is extremely rude. As to using polls to determine who deserves equal rights, well that is as 1930s Germany as it gets. Rights are rights. In the 1950s black people were excluded with full support from whites. In WWII those of Japanese heritage were locked up with full public support. In the 00's treating hays as lesser was very acceptable in general society. Transgender people are today's test. Congratulations on failing. We know where you would stand on those other issues in the past if you had been around then. Same for rights for women in the past and as those get limited in the future. When anyone's rights are limited all are at risk.
“Now, I want to be careful here, because there’s a version of me that wastes the rest of her life disputing whether a man can become a woman, and I’m not her.
In one narrow biological sense, the sentence is true. I wasn’t born female. I don’t produce ova. I can’t become the kind of woman my mother is. Fine. Granted. I don’t need metaphysical perfection from the universe before I’m allowed to exist with dignity.”
Hard question: "Can a man become a woman?"
Easy question: "Do I deserve to exist with dignity?"
That is the best objection on this page, and it still doesn't work, for a reason worth setting out properly.
A substitution is when you duck a question and answer a different one while believing you answered the first. I didn't duck yours. I conceded it, in your favour, in the very paragraph you've quoted. Granting the hard question outright is the opposite of swapping it for an easier one.
Then there's which of the two is actually hard. Yours is a question about a definition. Definitional questions feel weighty and are the easiest kind going, because nothing in the world can settle them. No measurement ever comes back and tells you that you were wrong about what a word ought to mean. That is precisely why it is the rung everyone climbs back to.
Mine has costs on both sides and is answerable with evidence, which is what makes it hard and what makes it worth asking.
And notice the work still waiting. Take the definition entirely, no argument from me, no caveats. You are still exactly where you started on what risk I pose, on what excluding me costs, and on how any serious person weighs the two. That was the question the essay asked, and it is still sitting there.
It does not even have to happen once. The fact that a man would, once again, think it is his perogative to take over our spaces refects what men have always done, ignore our right to privacy and safety.
That's the clearest thing you've written on this page, and I mean it. It does not even have to happen once. Safety is now formally out of the argument.
Look at the run of it. Three comments ago the cutoff was narcissistic behaviour. Then it wasn't behaviour at all, it was status. Now it needn't be anything that occurs. Whatever is doing the work here, it isn't risk. A risk has a rate, even when the rate is nil, and yours has just been excused from having one.
What's left is the presumption. A man would think it his prerogative. That's a claim about what's going on in my head, and you put mind reading down two comments ago on the grounds that you couldn't see inside anybody. It has walked straight back in wearing the word prerogative.
And take over is carrying more than it can. I've no designs on the space. Nothing I want to change about it, nothing I want it for beyond four minutes and the door. If presence is takeover then every woman in the queue is taking it over too, and we'd want a rather different word for what men have actually done to women's spaces, which was a good deal worse than standing in one.
The step is still sitting where it was, by the way. She is male, therefore she is kept out. That's five comments now, and it's still being asserted rather than shown.
Women do not behave that way. But men have always done so and continue to do do. It is a typical male move. I don't care where you are in terms of "transitioning," a ridiculous concept, or how innocent your motives, when you enter the Boots women's room. I am just stating flatly, and for the last time, for we really are not getting anywhere, that because you are not a woman, you do not belong in our spaces. Use the men's room.
Flatly is the honest version, and I'd take it over another five comments of it dressed up as safety.
I don't care how innocent your motives is the bit that settles it, though. Motive was the whole argument three comments back, when the problem was narcissistic behaviour. Now it has gone, and the rate went with it, and so did the harm. What is left is that I am not a woman and therefore I am out, which is the sentence you opened with.
You're entitled to it. It just never stopped being a sentence.
I'm sorry I wasn't clear. My cutoff for determining which men can enter women's spaces is not their behavior. That's not the point. The fact that some men, no matter what they call themselves, insist on entering our spaces, because of their insistence on breaching women's spaces (some may be narcissists who don't recognize other people's needs) is my point. They are not women; they do not belong in women's spaces.
Then we've got somewhere, because you've just put down the part that was doing the work.
Two comments ago the problem was narcissistic behaviour. Now behaviour is explicitly not the cutoff. I'll take that, it's a straighter position than the one you started with. But look at what's left holding it up.
What's left is that they insist on entering our spaces, and that they do not belong in our spaces. The first clause is only an offence if the second one is true, and the second one is the thing you were meant to be showing me. Entering somewhere you belong isn't an insistence, it's a Tuesday. So the sentence folds back into they are not women, which is the rung I conceded in the essay itself, before you ever arrived.
Take it again. I was born male, I don't produce ova, no surgeon altered that.
Now do the step. From she is male to therefore she is kept out of the changing room in Marks and Spencer. How much risk, how often it has actually occurred, set against what the exclusion costs. That question has been sitting in the same spot for four comments now.
There's a practical cost to the swap, too. Behaviour you can at least in principle observe at the door. Status you cannot, not without asking every woman in the queue to account for herself, and that bill gets paid almost entirely by women who have nothing whatever to do with me.
Because we can never know the consequences of the risk, women are happier keeping men out of our spaces altogether. It is a question bof safety and dignity. Why would men wish to go where they are clearly unwanted?
Two moves in that comment, and they pull against each other.
The first is that we can never know the consequences of the risk. Take it exactly as stated and look at what it does everywhere else. You drive, presumably. Two cars pass each other at a combined hundred and twenty miles an hour with nothing between them but a painted line and an agreement not to cross it. You cannot know what the oncoming driver will do. Nobody has ever proposed closing the road on those grounds, because unknowability isn't a finding. It's the ordinary condition of every risk anybody has ever run. A principle that forbids whatever hasn't been measured forbids leaving the house.
And it isn't unknowable. It's unexamined, which is a different thing, and rather the subject of the essay you're commenting under.
The second move is the one that gives the first one away. Women are happier. That's a preference, and you're perfectly entitled to it. But you can't run happier and safety in the same sentence, because safety reasoning is comparative by its nature and happier isn't. It doesn't ask what the harm is, or how often, or what the exclusion costs the people excluded. The moment the case rests on what would be more comfortable, the sum has stopped being done and something else has taken its place.
As to why anybody would go where they're not wanted. I'm not going anywhere. I want to buy a lipstick in Boots, use the lavatory while I'm in there, and go home. That question has been put to every group anyone ever wanted rid of, and being unwanted has never once been the reason for the exclusion. It's the product of it.
Three things in there, and the first is the interesting one.
Because we can never know the consequences of the risk. Look at what that standard does everywhere else. We can never know the consequences of getting into a car, and yet two of us pass each other at a combined hundred and twenty miles an hour with nothing between us but a painted line and an agreement not to cross it. We don't ban driving. We weigh what has actually happened, how often, against what the alternative would cost. Unknowability doesn't hand the argument to whoever got there first. If it truly is unknowable, then neither of us is entitled to call the question settled, and that cuts at your position at least as hard as at mine.
It also isn't unknowable. A rate is precisely the sort of thing that can be counted, and trans women have been using those rooms for decades, here and everywhere else. What I notice is that the count is the one thing nobody arguing your side ever seems to want.
Then there's happier, which is not the same word as safer, and you've swapped them inside a single sentence. Happier is a preference. I don't doubt it's sincerely held, and it may well be the majority one. It still isn't a sum. The majority being more comfortable has never been accepted by either of us as a reason to exclude anybody in any other case, and you'd not accept it for a moment if the head count went the other way.
And the last one. Why would men wish to go where they are clearly unwanted. Because it's a lavatory in Boots, not a dinner party. Nobody is asking to be wanted, or liked, or included in anything. If not being wanted somewhere settled who was entitled to be there, it would have settled rather a lot of things you and I would both want unsettled.
Thank you for this, genuinely. Seventy-seven replies and counting, and I don't think a single one engages the actual question the piece asks. They restated my three-rung ladder word for word and asked what was wrong with it. They accused me of switcherooing in the same breath as switcherooing. One of them announced I work in IT as though that were a refutation. It's the most thorough proof of a thesis I've ever been handed, and I didn't have to lift a finger. So please do keep linking it around. Every new reply is another footnote I didn't have to write myself.
Ugh. Read a bit of it, but so much garbage. Felt like I was reading the ramblings of a group of 12 year old boys complaining about the current actor for Superman. Basically a group of people saying 'we want to exclude group xyz' and the rest going 'yes, thank you for saying what we've been thinking'. Today xyz is transgender women, 30 years ago it was gays/lesbians, 60 years ago it was blacks. 80 years ago Jews. 100 years ago Italians/Scottish/etc. I could go on but throughout history groups in the majority LOVE to exclude minority groups and they will make up any argument for it - often 'think of the women and children' is the core of it, just like today, and NEVER do they have one ounce of factual evidence. Modern science has shown trans women's brains are more like cis women's brains than cis men's - both pre and post hormone replacement, and both while alive and studied after death. These studies are damn easy to find btw.
Thank you so much for this clear explanation of a painful experience for us. I learned early on that arguing with transphobes online was a waste of time. They’re not there to have a discussion. They’re there to spread their hate. You cannot ever win. So I block and move on.
Blocking and moving on is the sane version of what I did. I just took several thousand arguments and a burnt out engine to arrive at more or less the same place.
The irony here is in the fact that on our second date, Andie and I bonded over having both recently read The God Delusion, and cited it as a pivotal work in our like minded observations on organized religion. I think the most powerful take away I will get from this post is the driving analogy - we accept there is risk but are willing to trust everyone does not cross the painted line. People who object to trans women in women’s bathrooms need to trust that the trans women are no more likely to inflict harm than biological women. We go into public spaces with people of all genders every day and we accept that we are at risk of being attacked by someone, yet we move past that. Bathrooms, pronouns, passports are no different.
Bonding over The God Delusion on a second date and then ending up here is a lovely piece of irony. The driving thing is what I keep returning to as well. We accept an enormous risk every single morning, from strangers, at speed, in tons of metal, because the alternative is not being able to function at all. Nobody demands zero risk anywhere except here.
"In one narrow biological sense, the sentence is true. I wasn’t born female. I don’t produce ova. I can’t become the kind of woman my mother is."
I think this is a really important sentence. It's something very rarely admitted by those arguing for complete trans inclusion but with out it they are arguing straight past the feminist PoV.
I'm broadly supportive of the TERF position but I think this article is the best argument against it I've seen.
Thing is, there are compromises that achieve dignity and safety for both trans people and women but they are a complex question that requires listening and compromise.
You're the only person on this page arguing for a compromise, so it seems only fair to take you seriously. Late, I know. I've only just come back to this thread.
I'd agree with more of this than you might expect. The refusal to concede the biology has cost us enormously, and not because the concession was owed to anybody. It cost us because it made the whole case look as though it rested on a claim most people simply do not believe, when it never rested on that at all. I've said so in print and taken a fair bit of stick for it from my own side.
Where I'd push back is on the shape of the compromise. Two sides listening to each other sounds even handed, and isn't quite, because the two sides are not being asked for the same thing. One is being asked to accept a risk nobody has yet shown materialising at any measurable rate. The other is being asked to give up the lavatory, the changing room, the ward, and any job that requires either. Calling both of those a compromise obscures the arithmetic rather than doing it.
The second thing is that the hard cases were never really the argument. Prisons and elite sport are genuinely difficult, they involve small numbers and real competing interests, and I'd happily concede that blanket rules are the wrong tool in both. But almost nobody arguing this is arguing about the boxing ring. They arrive at the ring, settle it there, and then apply the answer to every woman in every Boots in the country. If what you want is individual assessment in the difficult cases and being left alone in the ordinary ones, then you and I want very nearly the same thing, and we should both be irritated by how little of the public argument is about that.
The last bit I'd not concede. Tone did not decide those cases. The idea that a better mannered campaign would have produced different judgments assumes the other side was persuadable and simply waiting to be asked nicely, and I've seen very little in the last few years to suggest it was.
I think we agree on most of it. To address your disagreements:
1. Women on the opposite side of this feel they are being asked to give up their sports, their safety and their identity. Not realising (whether you think they are valid or not) the extent of the genuine feeling from good people has cost the trans community a lot because it means their tactics are aimed at the wrong place.
2. I think the edge cases are crucial to the argument. They are what moved me from a position of absolute TWAW to largely supportive of Radfems. Most people don't see toilets as a huge issue in either direction but when rapists are put in women's prisions and immediately start raping they pay attention. Once was enough to change the entire UK prision policy. Similarly the rare ridiculous case in sports or rape crisis centers grab headlines and change minds.
3. I think tone is also crucial. I think tone is where trans activists lost. I've known Radfems who are prominent in the opposition to trans rights for decades and they were not always so hardened. Masked "men" threatening them at meetings and institutions ignoring their legitimate points (see 2) radically changed their views. Even more important tone affects the views of the wider public- screaming your pronouns (or the equivalent) just alienates people.
I don't personally think many of the people speaking for trans people give a fuck, they just enjoy a fight and an excuse to be abusive to women. I've encountered the same people in other left wing campaigns I've been in but it feels like they dominate trans rights discussion.
You don't need to win over people who are deeply bigoted to win but current strategy lumps everyone who does not espouse the 'right' beliefs in together; meaning the majority of the country is treated as an enemy.
I think we agree on more than either of us would admit in public, which is probably the most useful thing on this page.
One. Conceded, mostly. The feeling is genuine, and the people who shouted at it instead of answering it did my side no favours. I've said as much in print and taken stick from my own side for it, so you'll get no argument from me about the activists. I'd only add that I don't want to be lumped in with them any more than you want to be lumped in with the bigots. Lumping is the whole disease, and both sides have caught it.
Two is where we part. Karen White was real, she was a scandal, and the Prison Service apologised for her. But look at what you've just described: one case was enough to change the whole policy. That isn't evidence being weighed. It's a headline being governed by. If a single rapist in the wrong wing settles the rules for every trans woman in every changing room in the country, the edge case isn't informing the argument any more, it's replacing it. I'd take individual assessment in prisons and sport tomorrow. I'd also like it noticed that nobody is proposing individual assessment for the ladies' at a service station on the N25.
Three. Tone explains why the public turned. It doesn't make the rules that followed right. Those are two different questions, and the second one is the one I write about.
And your last line, about treating the majority as the enemy: that's precisely what I've been complaining about from inside my own side. So I'd say we want the same thing. I just don't think the radfems are offering it.
There's a reason we use 'cis' and 'trans', so I'm very confused by the claim that we don't admit that there are differences between trans and cis women. I guess this is why using cis gets such a hugely negative reaction?
I don't know who 'we' is in this context but my experience of the public policy debate in the UK is an awful lot of repeating 'Trans women are women' (or similar) from organisations speaking for (over?) trans people and not a lot of discussion of the genuine complexities in (for example) women's sports or women's prisons.
The upshot of this has been a ton of negative publicity and a series of lost legal cases that have left trans people upset, worried and a punching bag for the far right.
Years ago there was scope to listen to the feminists who've won these legal challenges and to address their concerns. Now everyone seems to be dug in for a war and trans people are stuck in the middle of it.
Trans women are women- the point of that statement is that not all humans born female are women, and not all women are born female. It's a problem because 99% are both, but people really want that to be 100%- and that just denies that anyone is trans.
I'm open to anyone willing to discuss the complexities of women's sports or women's prisons, but 9 times out of 10 when I try it ends up in a "I don't care if they've gone through a female puberty and not a male one" for sports and "I don't care about trans women getting raped in prison, that's a problem for men" for prisons.
So legitimate concerns sure, but it's hard to find people who aren't just looking to eliminate trans women full stop in practice.
"Trans women are women- the point of that statement is that not all humans born female are women, and not all women are born female. It's a problem because 99% are both, but people really want that to be 100%- and that just denies that anyone is trans."
If that's your argument you need to find a way to prove to the general population that trans women are litterally women. Most people's definition of women (adult females) excludes transwomen, so you are just arguing past them.
"I'm open to anyone willing to discuss the complexities of women's sports or women's prisons, but 9 times out of 10 when I try it ends up in a "I don't care if they've gone through a female puberty and not a male one" for sports and "I don't care about trans women getting raped in prison, that's a problem for men" for prisons."
You need to understand their argment. These women (the ones who've been so successful in altering the UK legal position) have been fighting for women's rights for decades. Telling them they need to give up some of those rights because trans women might be unsafe isn't going to work because they see males as the oppressor class they are fighting against.
"So legitimate concerns sure, but it's hard to find people who aren't just looking to eliminate trans women full stop in practice."
It's bizarre that you go from 'won't support trans women in women's spaces' to 'want to eliminate trans women. Eliminate as in kill? That kind of silly hyperbole is why the debate is terrible. Comments like that are what's fueling transphobia.
It might be less hypocritical to accuse TERFs of constantly sprouting slogans if I hadn’t heard the meaningless phrase “trans women are women” a billion and three times 🙄
The irony of what you said is beyond delicious. I can't stop laughing. If you don't like where I write don't read it .
"The hard question is this: what is the actual risk of allowing trans women into women’s spaces, weighed against the actual cost of excluding them, in light of the actual evidence?"
What is the cost of excluding them?
I asked about the cost of excluding trans people. Virginia laid out a fairly detailed cascade of that cost. You replied that you saw no cost to women in it. Correct, because that wasn't the question. You've answered a different one and marked your own homework as complete. The cost I asked about is still sitting there, unread.
Excluding men from women-only spaces is to the benefit of women. Any issues men might have with that are not women's concern.
https://switcheroo.azurewebsites.net/ I built an app today to take your arguments apart. Put yours in and see what it says. It explains how you're effectively providing weak evidence, a coherent claim, but weak evidence. Anyway, it's good fun. Knock yourself out. I built it because I was bored arguing with a few people.
Did not click.
There are two things bundled in that sentence, and the second is doing all the work while the first takes the credit.
The first is a definitional move. You've written men where the question said trans women, which settles the matter quietly before any argument gets started. Fine. I'll not fight you for the word, take it.
The second is the real claim and it is a moral one, not a factual one. You say our costs are not your concern. You are entitled to hold that, but look at what it costs you to say it. You are not arguing that the harm to us is small, or unproven, or outweighed by something heavier. You are saying it does not count. Which means your answer was fixed before any evidence arrived and no evidence could ever move it.
That is an admission rather than an argument. It also means you have given up safety as your reason, because safety reasoning is comparative by its nature. If one side of the scale is declared none of your business, you haven't got a scale. You've got a preference with a safety label stuck on the front.
I asked what the cost of exclusion was. You've told me you don't care what it is. Those are not the same reply, and only one of them is an answer.
Would you like me to tell you that you, a man, belong in women-only spaces?
Right. To rephrase your statement, "the costs to trans women don't matter. So what are the costs?"
If a service were to exclude trans women and tgerefore men from any reciprocal service then one could say well they just can't use that and indeed in life no one should be entitled. The trans people may simply find another service to use.
The difficulty faced is that by degrees trans people will reach a tipping point where they cannot function in society because of the scarcity of options.
In a rational society any woman should be able to go into a male changing space without risk of objectification, harassment or harm. That unfortunately is not the society I which we live. So when a service says trans women should use male changing spaces they are knowingly putting those trans women at risk. If that is a workplace then denying a trans person access to facilities is denying them work, whicb denies income, which denies food and accommodation. It is a cascade of increasing harm which becomes real though the original risk that a trans woman would harm a woman in a woman's space is unsubstantiated.
The added layer is that some men have developed a pathological hatred for trans women. This is clearly not motivated by any sense that they may be at risk from a teans woman. Consequently trans women need spaces where they can be away from that real threat.
The breakdown in thinking is to start with trans women once looked like men and tried to behave like men out of self preservation I will add, therefore they will always be men, therefore as men harm women trans women are a threat.
The real elephant in the room, which is a taboo notion, is that lesbian women will gravitate to women's single-sex spaces, some lesbian women will objectify other women and may pose a risk. 'May' must be emphasised because it is only on the basis that trans women may pose a risk that this has, on the face of it, come about.
There is however a parallel argument 'trans women are men who are taking away women's hard won rights'. More ask the question what rights are being taken away and be clear to distinguish between rights and privilege.
More often what you will hear is women have a right to a space without men. No, that is a privilege. Many women both cis and trans want that space but it is a privilege.
The final factor I will contribute is mutual respect. Too many people on all sides want their personal space and boundaries respected but are not willing to extend that respect to others. A woman using a single-sex space may legitimately not want her body inspected but to ensure her autonomy demands all others are inspected.
I see no cost to women in your reply.
Your question was very broad. “What is the cost of excluding them”. The cost was given to you. Do you believe trans women deserve to be harmed?
Do you believe women deserve their own spaces?
Trans-identified men entering men's bathrooms may be at risk from violence from other men. The numbers. However, are low. But it is far easier for them to defend themselves than it is for a woman to fight off a man in a women's bathroom. There are numerous examples of women and girls bring attacked in women rooms by me, usually heyerosexual. Why is it that TIM love to identify AS women but seem incapable of identifying WITH women? If they made an effort to understand why we want to preserve our dignity and safety, remembering that we have additional reasons to use bathrooms, then they would not breach our boundaries. But they're men after all and their concerns are not women's safety or dignity. And we know that.
You've moved smoothly from "rare attacks happen" to "and we know their real concern isn't safety," which is quite a leap from counting incidents to reading minds. The article's whole argument is that people swap the hard evidence question for an easy story about what's in someone's head, because the story is satisfying and requires no data. You've supplied the story. The evidence question is still where I left it.
If these men pretending to be women cared about or respected women, they would stop invading our spaces. But it's not about women's dignity, for them, it's about men's feelings and the insistence of men to have their own way. Nothing is new under the sun.
Stop... you are embarrassing yourself now.
I said you'd swapped the evidence question for a story about what's in people's heads, and your answer is a longer story about what's in people's heads. "It's not about dignity, it's about men's feelings, men's insistence on their own way." You can't see inside me, Redwing. You've never met me. You've decided what I want and then treated your decision as a finding. That's the entire move the essay describes, and you've done it twice now in two comments.
The evidence question is still sitting where I left it. You've walked past it twice now to tell me what's in my soul.
You're quite right. I can't pretend to know what's in your mind or guess at your motivations. However, what I see as embarrassing is the narcissistic behavior of some trans-identified men, observable behavior, that does little to endear such men to women who prize their fast disappearing privacy.
“The hard question is this: what is the actual risk of allowing trans women into women’s spaces, weighed against the actual cost of excluding them, in light of the actual evidence?”
The question is not that but does society want people in the opposite sex’s spaces.
And how, pray tell, do you know if they do or they don't? Based upon all the podcasts that you watch with Helen Joyce and chums? Do you not think that's a very biased sample set? My sample set is the general public, because I live like this, 24/7, 365. And I can tell you right now, most of the general public are absolutely fine. They're not hysterical, they're calm and rational, and able to make decisions based upon risk. What you think is universal objection is nothing of the sort, because I live it, I see it. And by the way, that's the last comment I'll make to you.
Me: “The question is not that but does society want people in the opposite sex’s spaces.”
You: “And how, pray tell, do you know if they do or they don't? Based upon all the podcasts that you watch with Helen Joyce and chums? Do you not think that's a very biased sample set?”
I made no claim as to what society wants. My claim was about relevancy: what is relevant is what society wants, not necessarily the violence-risk posed by transgender people.
I have never seen a podcast and do not know who Helen Joyce is. Are you okay?
For gauging what the public wants, polls and surveys are best.
A U.K. poll shows the majority wanting male transgender people out of opposite-sex spaces.
And around two-thirds (68%) of the U.S. public say that whether someone is a man or a woman is determined by the sex they were assigned at birth:
https://apnorc.org/projects/most-say-gender-is-determined-at-birth/
Also for gauging what the public wants, see the actions of elected officials.
“My sample set is the general public, because I live like this, 24/7, 365. And I can tell you right now, most of the general public are absolutely fine.”
How they treat you to your face ≠ what they want.
People might refer to you as a woman out of fear you are a lunatic who will go off on them if they “misgender” you. My actions are influenced by that concern.
I am somewhat friends with a waiter who is trangender. If he ever asked me to refer to him as a female, I would do it, because I owe him after all the good service he has provided me (whereas I owe no such thing to random transgender people), and to avoid conflict with someone who is on the job, subject to management’s rules. But meanwhile, on social media, I am defending the truth about biological sex. I want transgender people out of opposite-sex spaces. If polled, I would say that; and I vote in elections accordingly.
“They're not hysterical, they're calm and rational,”
Same here. See my posts in this reply-chain.
“and able to make decisions based upon risk.”
But risk is irrelevant to me. If anyone simply wants transgender people of the opposite sex out of their spaces, that is all the reason I need to oppose transgender people in opposite-sex spaces. There is no burden on me to show any violence-risk.
“What you think is universal objection is nothing of the sort,”
I made no claim about any universal objection.
“And by the way, that's the last comment I'll make to you.”
Suit yourself, but I have not been rude to you.
You've been clearer than anyone else here, so let me return the favour.
You say risk is irrelevant, and what matters is what the public wants. Good. Then we agree on the important thing: your position has nothing to do with safety, and never did. You've removed the one justification that would make exclusion protective rather than preferential, and you've done it deliberately, in writing. "There is no burden on me to show any violence-risk" might be the most honest sentence anyone has produced on this subject. Thank you for it.
But look at what's left once safety is gone. "I want these people out and I owe no evidence" is a complete account of every exclusion anyone has ever been ashamed of in hindsight. The public preferring a minority's absence has been true, by polling, of every group that's ever been shown the door. That's the beginning of the moral question, not the answer to it. You've treated a headcount as a verdict.
Then your waiter. You'll call him "her" to his face because he's earned it through good service, but you'll vote to keep him out of the relevant spaces and defend that online. Sit with the shape of that. The dignity you extend is a tip, contingent, withdrawable, gone the moment he's a stranger or a ballot. That isn't respect. It's a transaction, and you've told me the terms.
You ask if I'm okay. I'm grand, thanks. I named Helen Joyce because the argument arrived pre-assembled in her shape. If you built it yourself, that isn't better, it's just the same conclusion reached more lonelily.
And you're right that you weren't rude. But "I want you gone and I don't have to say why," delivered in a perfectly civil voice, is the rudest thing in this whole exchange. That was rather the point of the essay.
Not rude? Calling a trans woman male is extremely rude. As to using polls to determine who deserves equal rights, well that is as 1930s Germany as it gets. Rights are rights. In the 1950s black people were excluded with full support from whites. In WWII those of Japanese heritage were locked up with full public support. In the 00's treating hays as lesser was very acceptable in general society. Transgender people are today's test. Congratulations on failing. We know where you would stand on those other issues in the past if you had been around then. Same for rights for women in the past and as those get limited in the future. When anyone's rights are limited all are at risk.
I bowed out of that one months ago and I'm not climbing back in, but it's kind of you to bother.
Using a head count to settle what somebody is owed is the bit that gets me too. It's only ever a method while it's winning.
“Now, I want to be careful here, because there’s a version of me that wastes the rest of her life disputing whether a man can become a woman, and I’m not her.
In one narrow biological sense, the sentence is true. I wasn’t born female. I don’t produce ova. I can’t become the kind of woman my mother is. Fine. Granted. I don’t need metaphysical perfection from the universe before I’m allowed to exist with dignity.”
Hard question: "Can a man become a woman?"
Easy question: "Do I deserve to exist with dignity?"
That is the best objection on this page, and it still doesn't work, for a reason worth setting out properly.
A substitution is when you duck a question and answer a different one while believing you answered the first. I didn't duck yours. I conceded it, in your favour, in the very paragraph you've quoted. Granting the hard question outright is the opposite of swapping it for an easier one.
Then there's which of the two is actually hard. Yours is a question about a definition. Definitional questions feel weighty and are the easiest kind going, because nothing in the world can settle them. No measurement ever comes back and tells you that you were wrong about what a word ought to mean. That is precisely why it is the rung everyone climbs back to.
Mine has costs on both sides and is answerable with evidence, which is what makes it hard and what makes it worth asking.
And notice the work still waiting. Take the definition entirely, no argument from me, no caveats. You are still exactly where you started on what risk I pose, on what excluding me costs, and on how any serious person weighs the two. That was the question the essay asked, and it is still sitting there.
It does not even have to happen once. The fact that a man would, once again, think it is his perogative to take over our spaces refects what men have always done, ignore our right to privacy and safety.
That's the clearest thing you've written on this page, and I mean it. It does not even have to happen once. Safety is now formally out of the argument.
Look at the run of it. Three comments ago the cutoff was narcissistic behaviour. Then it wasn't behaviour at all, it was status. Now it needn't be anything that occurs. Whatever is doing the work here, it isn't risk. A risk has a rate, even when the rate is nil, and yours has just been excused from having one.
What's left is the presumption. A man would think it his prerogative. That's a claim about what's going on in my head, and you put mind reading down two comments ago on the grounds that you couldn't see inside anybody. It has walked straight back in wearing the word prerogative.
And take over is carrying more than it can. I've no designs on the space. Nothing I want to change about it, nothing I want it for beyond four minutes and the door. If presence is takeover then every woman in the queue is taking it over too, and we'd want a rather different word for what men have actually done to women's spaces, which was a good deal worse than standing in one.
The step is still sitting where it was, by the way. She is male, therefore she is kept out. That's five comments now, and it's still being asserted rather than shown.
Women do not behave that way. But men have always done so and continue to do do. It is a typical male move. I don't care where you are in terms of "transitioning," a ridiculous concept, or how innocent your motives, when you enter the Boots women's room. I am just stating flatly, and for the last time, for we really are not getting anywhere, that because you are not a woman, you do not belong in our spaces. Use the men's room.
Flatly is the honest version, and I'd take it over another five comments of it dressed up as safety.
I don't care how innocent your motives is the bit that settles it, though. Motive was the whole argument three comments back, when the problem was narcissistic behaviour. Now it has gone, and the rate went with it, and so did the harm. What is left is that I am not a woman and therefore I am out, which is the sentence you opened with.
You're entitled to it. It just never stopped being a sentence.
Bye-bye, Redwing. No hard feelings this end.
None at all.
I'm sorry I wasn't clear. My cutoff for determining which men can enter women's spaces is not their behavior. That's not the point. The fact that some men, no matter what they call themselves, insist on entering our spaces, because of their insistence on breaching women's spaces (some may be narcissists who don't recognize other people's needs) is my point. They are not women; they do not belong in women's spaces.
Then we've got somewhere, because you've just put down the part that was doing the work.
Two comments ago the problem was narcissistic behaviour. Now behaviour is explicitly not the cutoff. I'll take that, it's a straighter position than the one you started with. But look at what's left holding it up.
What's left is that they insist on entering our spaces, and that they do not belong in our spaces. The first clause is only an offence if the second one is true, and the second one is the thing you were meant to be showing me. Entering somewhere you belong isn't an insistence, it's a Tuesday. So the sentence folds back into they are not women, which is the rung I conceded in the essay itself, before you ever arrived.
Take it again. I was born male, I don't produce ova, no surgeon altered that.
Now do the step. From she is male to therefore she is kept out of the changing room in Marks and Spencer. How much risk, how often it has actually occurred, set against what the exclusion costs. That question has been sitting in the same spot for four comments now.
There's a practical cost to the swap, too. Behaviour you can at least in principle observe at the door. Status you cannot, not without asking every woman in the queue to account for herself, and that bill gets paid almost entirely by women who have nothing whatever to do with me.
Because we can never know the consequences of the risk, women are happier keeping men out of our spaces altogether. It is a question bof safety and dignity. Why would men wish to go where they are clearly unwanted?
Two moves in that comment, and they pull against each other.
The first is that we can never know the consequences of the risk. Take it exactly as stated and look at what it does everywhere else. You drive, presumably. Two cars pass each other at a combined hundred and twenty miles an hour with nothing between them but a painted line and an agreement not to cross it. You cannot know what the oncoming driver will do. Nobody has ever proposed closing the road on those grounds, because unknowability isn't a finding. It's the ordinary condition of every risk anybody has ever run. A principle that forbids whatever hasn't been measured forbids leaving the house.
And it isn't unknowable. It's unexamined, which is a different thing, and rather the subject of the essay you're commenting under.
The second move is the one that gives the first one away. Women are happier. That's a preference, and you're perfectly entitled to it. But you can't run happier and safety in the same sentence, because safety reasoning is comparative by its nature and happier isn't. It doesn't ask what the harm is, or how often, or what the exclusion costs the people excluded. The moment the case rests on what would be more comfortable, the sum has stopped being done and something else has taken its place.
As to why anybody would go where they're not wanted. I'm not going anywhere. I want to buy a lipstick in Boots, use the lavatory while I'm in there, and go home. That question has been put to every group anyone ever wanted rid of, and being unwanted has never once been the reason for the exclusion. It's the product of it.
Three things in there, and the first is the interesting one.
Because we can never know the consequences of the risk. Look at what that standard does everywhere else. We can never know the consequences of getting into a car, and yet two of us pass each other at a combined hundred and twenty miles an hour with nothing between us but a painted line and an agreement not to cross it. We don't ban driving. We weigh what has actually happened, how often, against what the alternative would cost. Unknowability doesn't hand the argument to whoever got there first. If it truly is unknowable, then neither of us is entitled to call the question settled, and that cuts at your position at least as hard as at mine.
It also isn't unknowable. A rate is precisely the sort of thing that can be counted, and trans women have been using those rooms for decades, here and everywhere else. What I notice is that the count is the one thing nobody arguing your side ever seems to want.
Then there's happier, which is not the same word as safer, and you've swapped them inside a single sentence. Happier is a preference. I don't doubt it's sincerely held, and it may well be the majority one. It still isn't a sum. The majority being more comfortable has never been accepted by either of us as a reason to exclude anybody in any other case, and you'd not accept it for a moment if the head count went the other way.
And the last one. Why would men wish to go where they are clearly unwanted. Because it's a lavatory in Boots, not a dinner party. Nobody is asking to be wanted, or liked, or included in anything. If not being wanted somewhere settled who was entitled to be there, it would have settled rather a lot of things you and I would both want unsettled.
Best see my most recent reply. Bye-bye
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5538715-article-on-arguing-with-a-terf
Discussion on Mumsnet
Thank you for this, genuinely. Seventy-seven replies and counting, and I don't think a single one engages the actual question the piece asks. They restated my three-rung ladder word for word and asked what was wrong with it. They accused me of switcherooing in the same breath as switcherooing. One of them announced I work in IT as though that were a refutation. It's the most thorough proof of a thesis I've ever been handed, and I didn't have to lift a finger. So please do keep linking it around. Every new reply is another footnote I didn't have to write myself.
Ugh. Read a bit of it, but so much garbage. Felt like I was reading the ramblings of a group of 12 year old boys complaining about the current actor for Superman. Basically a group of people saying 'we want to exclude group xyz' and the rest going 'yes, thank you for saying what we've been thinking'. Today xyz is transgender women, 30 years ago it was gays/lesbians, 60 years ago it was blacks. 80 years ago Jews. 100 years ago Italians/Scottish/etc. I could go on but throughout history groups in the majority LOVE to exclude minority groups and they will make up any argument for it - often 'think of the women and children' is the core of it, just like today, and NEVER do they have one ounce of factual evidence. Modern science has shown trans women's brains are more like cis women's brains than cis men's - both pre and post hormone replacement, and both while alive and studied after death. These studies are damn easy to find btw.
This was very well done. It expertly put into words what I've been noticing for a while.
Thank you, Mason. Noticing it is most of the work. I just had the bad manners to write it down.
Thank you so much for this clear explanation of a painful experience for us. I learned early on that arguing with transphobes online was a waste of time. They’re not there to have a discussion. They’re there to spread their hate. You cannot ever win. So I block and move on.
Blocking and moving on is the sane version of what I did. I just took several thousand arguments and a burnt out engine to arrive at more or less the same place.