Via the comments, and the pages of Gay Community News, more attempts to justify the odd and improper:
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is updating its Code of Practice to allow for single-sex spaces (such as toilets, changing rooms, and refuges) to be restricted based on biological sex.
Ah, a glimmer of realism, one might think. Perhaps the fever is passing.
This will very likely lead to trans people being excluded from public life,
Or put another, less dramatic way, cross-dressing men will be excluded from ladies’ toilets.
The negative impact this will have on the lives of thousands of trans and non-binary people cannot be overstated.
And yet.
They already face widespread exclusion and discrimination, and this will pave the way for more of the same.
You see, not being allowed to violate the intimate boundaries of other people – specifically, women – in order to exult in a deception, a sexual fantasy – is deemed both oppressive and terribly unfair. Indeed, “cruel and demonising.”
We’re then told, in ways both emphatic and unconvincing, that restoring normal proprieties to toilets and changing rooms is “actually dangerous for cis people as well.”
If a law keeping weird, cross-dressing men out of ladies’ toilets and changing rooms doesn’t sound obviously dangerous to women – unlike those aforementioned weird, cross-dressing men – an attempt at persuasion is made. Or at least some crumbs are scraped into a pile:
There are many recorded cases of cis women facing exclusion based on not being deemed “female enough.”
As you might imagine, the word many is doing some heavy lifting, to a degree one might call deceptive. However, we’re steered towards a handful of examples, spread over a decade, in which actual women were mistaken for cross-dressing men and questioned on their use of female spaces:
Back in 2016, the American Civil Liberties Union reported that “a Texas woman trying to use a women’s restroom in a hospital was accosted by a man twice her size trying to make sure she was ‘going in the right place,’ all because she was wearing a baseball hat with short hair.”
A slightly absurd situation, granted. Though readers will note the phrase a man twice her size – and perhaps ponder how that phrase might inform objections to men intruding in women’s intimate spaces. Including rape shelters, where, as we’ve seen, events much like a nightmare can rapidly unfold.
Because it turns out that when forcing brutalised women to share a space with mentally ill men, the result is not, amazingly, one long, girly pillow-fight.
Oh, and we mustn’t forget Mr Morgane Oger, mentioned here, who spends his time campaigning to financially cripple women’s rape shelters, on grounds that said shelters don’t also cater to cross-dressing men, i.e., men much like himself. A preoccupation that possibly tells us quite a bit about the kind of man he is.
The author then performs a bold rhetorical manoeuvre:
So, are these policies really protecting women and girls? Do these trans bathroom bans and single-sex spaces make so-called “biological women” safer? These reports suggest the opposite.
Female readers – sorry, “so-called ‘biological women'” – are welcome to say whether they would feel safer in toilets and changing rooms with or without the presence of weird, cross-dressing men who feel entitled to violate normal boundaries. And whether the overlap of cross-dressing and unsavoury phenomena is a thing one might wish to bear in mind.
Unsurprisingly, the piece includes many questions of a somewhat disingenuous nature. Among which,
Is this what we want as a society? Do these exclusions actually protect anyone?
And,
What does a woman look like? What does a man look like?
Regarding the latter, it turns out that human beings are actually quite good at determining the sex of other people, especially of adults, and especially men. With studies suggesting an accuracy very close to 100%, even in restricted conditions – i.e., no visible hair, no make-up, no facial hair, ears hidden, no movement, etc.
The author of the quoted piece, Mr Sophie Molly, aka Sophie Sparkles, aka Euan Weddell, is, you’ll be shocked to hear, one of those weird, cross-dressing men. The ones that women and girls should welcome into their toilets and changing rooms. His activities include boasting of demanding needless bra fittings from lingerie department shop assistants, and sharing photos of himself wearing only a ball gag and improvised nipple-clamps.
So, hey, nothing to worry about, ladies.
At which point, readers may wish to consider some of the factors pointedly not mentioned by Mr Molly. Among which, the fact that the incidents he refers to, in which actual women have been challenged on their use of female spaces, are not only extremely rare, but have only occurred since cross-dressing men – men much like Mr Sophie Molly – have started barging into women’s spaces, heightening sensitivities. Which one might think has some bearing on the case he’s trying to make.
As commenter Ollq puts it,
The argument being that when MtFs try to normalise going into spaces where they’re not wanted, there’ll be pushback from the people who don’t want them, and that pushback unfortunately includes masculine-looking women being mistaken for MtFs and confronted.
MtFs make the issue salient by publishing pictures of themselves territory marking in women’s bathrooms, crowing that they’re in every bathroom, probably in your bathroom, and there are more of them every day. The result of this awareness raising is that square jawed or broad shouldered women, who previously would have been taken to be women who happen look a bit masculine, are now more likely to be taken for MtFs.
The demanded solution, obviously, isn’t for MtFs to stay out of where they’re not wanted, but to legally protect the right of MtFs to go where they’re not wanted and to punish those who don’t want them there.
Indeed.
Should any readers be blissfully unfamiliar with the boastful, territory-marking nature common to such boundary violations, a compendium of intrusions can be found here. Though I should add that the linked video, while strongly recommended, is rather vivid and not for the faint of heart.
Update:
One of Mr Sophie Molly’s favoured slogans is “Trans led journalism that reports the truth behind the lies.” Which is almost funny, in a grim kind of way.
Setting aside Mr Sophie Molly’s implausible omissions, contrived framing and ludicrous hyperbole, we’re left with a claim that a law keeping mentally ill men and cross-dressing perverts out of spaces where women and girls get undressed is “actually dangerous” for women and girls and should therefore be abandoned.
Why, it’s almost as if men who lie continually – whose “identity” is premised on an attempt to deceive – and to coerce – are not entirely trustworthy.
Fancy that.
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