Does J.K. Rowling believe that trans people — or at least trans women — don’t deserve the presumption of innocence? That seems to be the clear implication of an op-ed she wrote for the Times (UK) today. But she is cagey enough in her wording that she can and probably will figure out a way to say, my goodness, I wasn’t saying anything of the kind.
You can decide what you think she meant.
Here’s the relevant quote in context. She is — in the midst of a longer attack on First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon –insinuating that men routinely pretend to be trans women in order to get easier access to women to abuse:
The third argument Sturgeon uses is that it’s transphobic to suggest any man would fraudulently claim a female identity. This claim is extraordinary. Nobody but the very naive can fail to be aware that predatory men are capable of going to great lengths to gain easy access to victims, and have often sought out professions or special status that offer camouflage for their activities. Sex offenders have historically been found among social workers, teachers, priests, doctors, babysitters, school caretakers, celebrities and charity fundraisers, yet no matter how often the scandals break, the lesson appears never to be learned: it is dangerous to assert that any category of people deserves a blanket presumption of innocence.
In the next paragraph, she backtracks a little, if only a little:
This shouldn’t need saying, but in the current climate, it does: literally no feminist I’ve ever met claims all trans women are predators, any more than we believe that all men are predators.
As @Bronwen85 puts it on Twitter,
Seriously if you can tell me how any of this is different from Trump’s “they’re murderers, they’re rapists…and some, I assume, are good people” speech you’ll be a liar, because it’s not
It’s the same fucking thing.
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@Lumipuna
I think it actually ends here in terms of logic. JKR is just one of a large number of transphobes who insist (and/or demand that everyone accept the claim) that crime statistics for men (or AMAB people more generally) are definitive in some sort of ontological way and must be taken as true for every specific subset of AMAB people (specifically, trans women). This is quite obviously a matter of the fallacy of division, so for the past few months at least there’s been some sort of concerted effort to cover up the core of the claim with references to e.g. the infamous “Swedish study” or, as JKR does in the op-ed here, to insist that the only possibilities are to conclude that trans women are identically likely to be a threat to cis women as cis men are or to conclude that no trans woman is ever a threat to anyone. It’s strategic use of a false dilemma to cover for a fallacy of division, but it’s consistent with the transphobic claim of the ability to make their rhetorical categories absolute physical realities.
Jazzlet,
Actually, we have historically banned the male sex from such spaces. JKR obviously has this in mind, seeing as how her op-ed discusses male entry to them by deceit.
Ada Christine,
The statistics being clear with respect to sex means the restrictions ought to continue being based on sex. And, prejudice? Desired outcome? You are making assumptions here. These reservations of some spaces from the male sex has factual basis.
Crip Dyke,
It is not demonizing or stereotyping; there is data at the root of this. Your complaint, that I am allowed to remain free simply for recognizing the importance of laws based on sex rather than identity for protected spaces, is hopefully sarcastic; if not, it reveals much more about you than what think you have uncovered about me.
As for your point about criminality, remember the topic of JKR’s op-ed. She is not claiming trans people are more or less likely criminal than background, she is arguing against a presumption of innocence just because someone claims to be a trans woman, as any male can claim trans identity in bad faith.
Your next point is based on, as far as I can tell, a complete misunderstanding or misread of anything said so far. I certainly have not claimed “gamete production or genital appendage length” is causative of increased crime, nor even maleness in general. I left the causative relationship unstated because, for all I know, it might be entirely social in origin. All we know is that when crime statistics are sorted by sex, we see increased violence from males towards female than the reverse. No claim of specific causation is made in stating an association.
The final mistake you make is that wishing to protect sex-based protections is anti-feminist.
@Anna Kidna, insisting that criminality data for men more accurately describes trans women than actual data about trans women doesn’t stop being fallacious because you and JKR want it to be accurate.
It was not a “complaint”. It was a challenge to your argument.
Your argument is that if a statistical relationship to violence is found, then everyone in the group found to be more violent should lose freedom in order to make everyone in the group found to be more victimized more safe.
That is the core of the argument – both as made by JKR and as made by you.
AND YET… there are many, many statistical relationships with increased violence that as a matter of public policy we do not use as a basis for restricting freedom.
For one, there is race, which is correlated with arrests for violent crime. In neither the UK, nor the US, nor Canda do we use that statistical correlation to pass or enforce laws that prevent Black persons from using the same public restrooms as white persons.
And yet the argument for banning trans persons from using public restrooms based on gender is **exactly** this shallow.
The question then is the one I asked earlier and that you ignored:
Originally that was asked about a policy banning certain persons from certain public venues based on expressions of bigotry, but it works equally well for the question of why we do not enact or enforce such policies based on race.
Why is a statistical correlation with increased violence sufficient to exclude trans people from public bathrooms, but not sufficient to exclude persons of specific races, or persons who have a history of stereotyping or bigotry?
We are well aware of the correlation you cite. What you do not do is justify why such a correlation should be used in lawmaking in this case but not others.
Without a principled distinction, your argument remains both special pleading and bigoted.
So please answer the question: Why are violence correlations properly used to exclude trans people from bathrooms, but not people of certain races or who are otherwise members of groups correlated with increased use of violence?
To respond to me without actually answering the challenge that I propose to your argument (especially as you seek to paint me as the person advocating for limited freedom when that is your, as yet unjustified, argument) is mere dishonest deflection.
Yes she is. That’s the entirety of what she’s saying, that trans people are more likely to be violent. Violence against other people is a crime. How dare you lie like this? What do you gain by sacrificing your credibility on such ridiculous and obvious mendacity?
No, it is based on a fuller understanding of your argument than you appear to realize yourself — meaning you haven’t thought your own argument through. But your ignorance is not an argument against the truth.
The association of violent criminality with maleness is irrelevant to whether trans persons’ access to bathrooms affects the safety of ciswomen **unless** it is some specific factor that is innate to maleness itself that causes the increased violent criminality.
If the cause is entirely social, then JKR has no case at all. Without not merely correlation, but actual **causation**, neither you nor JKR have any reason at all to deny trans persons free access to public restrooms.
But, of course, your profession to have “no idea” about whether the causes is entirely social must further represent a willful ignorance on your part. There have been studies on whether bathroom and dressing-room related violence changes in jurisdictions where trans people are granted the same free access to public restrooms as anyone else. The data says that there is no discernible increase or decrease in safety based on trans access to bathrooms.
If you cared about safety when considering bathroom access policies, you would, of course, bother to find out what the data says about safety in jurisdictions when such policies change.
Why don’t you know about these studies? Why don’t you cite them?
Here’s one:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-018-0335-z
If you need a non-academic write up of the article’s findings, you can try this link:
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/no-link-between-trans-inclusive-policies-bathroom-safety-study-finds-n911106
That one, which was the best study ever done on the subject at the time of its release, focuses on Massachusetts, but there have been others since in both Europe and North America, IIRC.
Since your hypothesis that trans bathroom access decreases safety has been disproven by rigorous research, shouldn’t you give up your opposition to trans bathroom access?
To maintain your opposition when your argument has been disproven requires a new rationalization.
My concern is that since this information has been out for YEARS and you don’t know anything about it, you must be engaging in willful ignorance, not accidental ignorance, and your motive for attacking trans freedoms when you know or should know such restrictions will not increase safety for anyone starts to strongly resemble bigotry.
I am, of course, willing to listen to a new argument, should you have one, that hasn’t already been disproven, but I strongly suspect you don’t have one.
Just as you ignored my original challenge to your argument that you justify why certain correlations with violent behaviour can and should be used to restrict freedoms but other correlations cannot and/or should not, I believe you are likely to continue deflecting and avoiding responding to the substantive challenges to your argument I’ve laid out here.
But please. Surprise me. Make a good and eloquent argument for restricting trans bathroom freedom that doesn’t depend on myth, stereotype, and bigotry. Show the self-awareness required to recognize that without biological causation of violence by maleness your argument would make no sense on its face even **before** it was disproven by studying the real-life effects of the policies you oppose.
Engage in something beyond thoughtless defamation. Show us the considered argument that depends on no illogic, no assumptions already proven false. Educate us with the generous detail that we have offered you.
Or, you know, crawl off to a bigoted corner of the internet and complain that we irrationally reject your correlation-based argument merely because it’s harmful to trans persons, doesn’t help cis persons, and was refuted years ago. You could always do that.
I would like to say, without the rape since Anna hates that I talk about my own experience, that there is nothing stopping men into the bathrooms or changing rooms even though we “ban” then. My husband has come into a bathroom or a changing room with me many times when my mobility was limited. And even came in times without me being right there. A simple text that says “hey I need help” sent him into a woman’s bathroom or changing room. And that may have got a few odd looks from the cis women in the bathrooms. And you know what he had to do? Say “sorry,my wife needs me ” and that was that. Gladly and fully allowed into a “woman’s” space. No penis police showed up to arrest him and kick him out.
@Elaine: I’ve seen that happen many times too. After the original reflex surprise, all the women were calm about it, and thought the man was a very good husband “aw, how sweet”. And of course, disabled people often have opposite-sex carers, who are legally allowed to accompany them into toilet areas.
I once (before cellphones) became aware of a woman in the same restroom as me who needed help; when I inquired as to how I could help, she sobbed that her husband X was outside and could I tell him. So I went to the door and said to the one anxious-looking man “X? Your wife needs help.” X charged in to save the day. No violence ensued. And that was from what I think was a cis AMAB man who appeared to have full testosterone, plus being socialized into being a man from birth.
Also, trans women generally keep a low profile. They try to avoid attention since they’re (sadly) used to abuse up to and including murder.
@Crip Dyke: *standing ovation*
I’m hoping for your last paragraph, or at least for @David to realize she’s boring as well as a bigot, and needs to stop clogging up the site. I think you struck enough blows that she’s all out of candy.
FARTs, like other right-wingers, are all about their feeeeels, not actual info. Well, as the right-wingers are wont to say, “fuck your feelings”.
Not for a right-winger. Their feelings don’t care about facts, and in this instance I suspect their feelings are something along the lines of “Ewww! Penis cooties!”
Oh, it’s far, far worse than that. If there is a biological causation of violence by maleness, it is almost certainly mediated by testosterone (else women with XY-total-androgen-insensitivity would be notoriously violent, and they aren’t). Which means the trans people Anna should be worried about are trans men. Which her proposed bathroom restrictions would … force to use the women’s restrooms. Oops!
More likely by far is that the violence correlated with maleness is social in cause (as with that correlated with race), and the fix is to fix those social causes (toxic masculinity, poverty, bigotry). Those proposing the necessary fixes are all on the political left and non-TERFy: feminists, socialists, and antiracists.
Also, I thought there was research showing that allowing trans people to use the bathrooms corresponding to their gender identities did increase safety … of trans women.
@ Anna Kiddna
Try reading what people write a little more carefully, strangely having been around for several decades I had noticed that most toilets and changing rooms are segregated by sex.
I just wanted to thank all the people who have written so cogently and eloquently here, particularly Crip Dyke (chapeau bas!) and Elaine, for taking a terf’s display of bigotry and motivated ‘reasoning’ and turning it into this thread instead.
Unty M,
The data does not apply to ‘men’, it applies to male people. This category is agnostic as to the trans status of anyone; as such it still includes trans women.
Crip Dyke,
You challenged my argument and you complained that I and JKR can walk free despite our opinions. As for the argument made, males are not ‘losing’ any freedom; they have equivalent spaces of their own. Thank you however for making obvious your ultimate goal: no space for the female sex that a male can be kept out of.
Please stop misstating the specific case. Trans people are not being excluded for their gender, male people are being excluded for their sex.
No, male people from female spaces.
Same mistake. Are you unable or unwilling to see this?
As for the question of how protected spaces for the female sex can be justified, I give you the history of the interplay between the sexes. It is a matter of historical record that bathrooms, change rooms and similar were created to permit the burgeoning female workforce to have such spaces away from the male sex, for their protection and privacy. This was considered necessary due to the social advantages enjoyed by males – which have been reduced though not eliminated – and the obvious disparity in musculature.
If you wish to argue that this need has been deprecated, I welcome such a time but I do not agree that we are there yet.
You repeat your rather basic misunderstanding of what is being said. For the fourth (?) time this post alone: male people are the ones being pointed out as more violent.
You can tell yourself this if you wish, but all you are doing is justifying your own strawman. I did not make the argument as you characterize it, I did not even specify whether the violence is biological or social or any mix thereof.
Not true; learned behavior can be retained post-transition. Which we see empirically studied here, which found:
“Second, regarding any crime, male-to-females had a significantly increased risk for crime compared to female controls (aHR 6.6; 95% CI 4.1–10.8) but not compared to males (aHR 0.8; 95% CI 0.5–1.2). This indicates that they retained a male pattern regarding criminality. The same was true regarding violent crime. By contrast, female-to-males had higher crime rates than female controls (aHR 4.1; 95% CI 2.5–6.9) but did not differ from male controls. This indicates a shift to a male pattern regarding criminality and that sex reassignment is coupled to increased crime rate in female-to-males. The same was true regarding violent crime.”
Notice this leaves unanswered whether the criminality is due to retained socially-learned behavior or retained biological tendency towards aggression among trans women, nor does it answer whether the increased violence in trans men is due to new socially learned behavior or new biological tendency towards aggression among trans men.
@AK: okay I will bite. What is your definition of male and female? And what evidence do you have that the crime statistics you are citing broke people down by that same definition rather than just whether or not people presented as men or women?
Oh, bullshit.
You even recognized the sarcasm the first time you addressed this. Humor and sarcasm are common rhetorical devices — which you first acknowledged. NOW you’re claiming outright that I “complained” that you and JKR walk free.
NO.
I pointed out that **IF CORRELATION WITH VIOLENT BEHEHAVIOR CAN BE USED TO RESTRICT FREEDOM** we still have to decide WHICH correlations are relevant to policy making and which are not.
I then used that as the predicate to ask, what is it that makes your freedom in the presence of behaviour that can be correlated to violence different from trans freedom in the presence of some biological characteristic that can be correlated to violence?
I **pointed out** your freedom in order to set up the question. I did not (and do not) object to your freedom or complain about its existence.
For very important reasons which I take as background to this conversation, the freedom of speech is sufficiently important that even if willingness to engage in certain speech correlates with later violent behaviour, it would be unjust and wrong to use that speech to restrict the freedom of people who engage in it.
The challenge to your argument is that EVEN IF A CORRELATION EXISTS, that is still — on its own — not enough to justify restricting freedom.
THEREFORE, you have to decide: do you want to live in a world where ANY correlation with violence is by definition sufficient reason to restrict freedom (in which world your freedom might be restricted for certain speech or for your race or for any of many other possible reasons which I have no reason to know about you), or do you want to live in a world where the mere existence of a correlation to violence is insufficient to justify a restriction in freedom?
If your argument is the former, you are exposed as one who openly endorses tyranny.
If the latter, then your argument is bullshit because it lacks that latter piece: the piece about what makes THIS correlation to violence relevant to policy making in THIS particular area of human freedom.
I do not believe you would openly endorse the tyranny in which any correlation to violence can be used to restrict freedom, but you certainly are free to chose that path.
What I expect from you is something more than “correlation exists, therefore X”.
But again, feel free to simply declare yourself fascist if you prefer that.
===================================================
First let’s dispense with the irrelevancy of “losing” freedom. Restricting freedom is restricting freedom regardless of whether the status quo ante is more freedom and the restrictions would represent a loss or if the status quo ante is less freedom and the restrictions are unchanged from their form in the recent past.
Non-trans men **as a whole** are not experiencing freedom, but trans people are. There is extensive documentation of violence and harassment of trans persons in bathrooms and other public spaces, as well as documentation that there is heightened incidence of violence and harassment targeting trans persons in highly gendered spaces, including gender-restricted public bathrooms.
Trans people are seeking a safer system of access to existing public bathrooms, a system that would allow their free access to public bathrooms to equal the free access of of other groups.
You oppose that safer system of access. The only system that you’ve identified as an alternative is the status quo system which promotes and tolerates violence against trans persons that effectively denies equal access to public bathroom facilities to trans people as a group.
Do you actually support some new system of access that you just haven’t mentioned?
If not, that says some pretty bad things about you.
If yes then ON THE POLICY MAKING LEVEL we still have to consider the pros and cons of your favoured policy(ies) compared to the pros and cons of normalizing access to public bathrooms in ways that permit more gendered freedom to choose the safest option.
You have not attempted that argument (pros and cons of one proposed policy vs. another) which leaves your conversation partners with no option other than believing that you endorse the current system which denies safe and equal access to trans persons.
I would think that you would want to dispel that notion, but you do you.
==========================================
I can see how you might think that. However we have ONLY been discussing public-access restrooms such as those maintained by restaurants or governments that are currently gender-restricted.
You don’t actually have any evidence that I embrace the “ultimate goal” you state.
And, in fact, I don’t embrace it. So while your mistake is vaguely understandable, it outpaced your evidence and now that you have me on record I would hope that you do not repeat that mistake.
==========================================
I can see how you think that this might be true.
However in point of fact we do not measure testosterone levels before bathroom access is granted. Nor do we measure the length of any genital appendage such as a clitoris or penis.
IN THE REAL WORLD bathroom access is not dependent on sex, but rather on gender.
Unless and until the doors of bathrooms are locked until one passes a chromosome check (or whatever other test you think is the relevant and appropriate test of biological sex for the purpose of access to public bathrooms) then you are using the language of sex to justify a restriction that will be enforced by gender.
So answer this:
If you really intend bathroom access to be granted only on the basis of biological sex, then what measure of biological sex will be used and how is a woman in the bathroom supposed to know when the rule is being violated so that she can call the appropriate authorities (anyone from location manager to actual cops)?
I strongly suspect that you think women should contact authorities based on gender without knowing a person’s medical history or examining a birth certificate. HOWEVER if that is true, then you’re advocating for a policy in which bathroom access is enforced by gender on the excuse of sex, not an actual policy of access based on sex.
But please, tell me that I’m wrong and that you have a policy in mind that does not use or reference gender assumptions of the gender public or the gender expression of individuals as the criteria for enforcement. You would be the first to propose a coherent system that accomplishes that, but I’m prepared to be awestruck by your genius.
==========================================
You misunderstand.
If the cause is entirely social, then JKR has no case at all to restrict bathroom access by sex.
In the hypothetical case you cite, JKR would have a case to restrict bathroom access by learned behaviour — NOT by sex.
JKR’s argument is only valid if sex is causal. If sex is not causal then there is a reason to justify excluding persons from the use of (some) public bathrooms, but only on a trait OTHER THAN sex — whatever trait it is that is causal.
To say otherwise is to say that we can go back to a system of whites-only bathrooms in any jurisdiction where being Black or otherwise racialized correlates with increased violence.
I propose fighting the causes of violence, not fighting stigmatized groups in the name of peace or safety. Labeling certain groups as inherently dangerous and writing them off has never solved violence in the past. Why should we expect it to do so in the future?
==========================================
Sigh.
I had hoped that you were better than this. But I see you are not.
The study specified:
You probably don’t remember, but in my first comment I said this:
The bolding is new and added to the quote for emphasis.
The reason that I included the section about “in societies supportive of trans equality” is specifically because of the study you cite and others like it. Pre-1989 the society under discussion could hardly be called “supportive of trans equality”.
The study you cite hasn’t been “debunked” (which some people will say) but the purpose to which you’re putting the study has. The fact that marginalized people who were at vastly increased risk of being victims of sexual and other violence and to be deprived of normalized modes of earning money sufficient to survival and normal societal participation were more likely to commit violent and economic crimes is not a useful measure of whether trans people learned anti-social modes of behaviour from participation in gender roles assigned to them at birth or through consistent anti-social role modelling by persons who didn’t want to share a society with trans people.
I do not think that we currently live in a society “supportive of trans equality” at this point, but we are certainly vastly closer to that state than were were in 1989.
And **since 1989** transitioning persons have not been identified as engaging in the patterns of behaviour you identified.
The study you cite tells us something — but it doesn’t tell us whether a particular policy with regard to public bathroom access will increase, diminish, or leave unaffected the safety of cis, female women.
We actually have research on that specific point.
It is quite telling that where we have research on bathroom policies and safeties, you IGNORE that research to point out that people transitioning before 1989 who faced horrific rates of violence and marginalization (social, economic, religious, and otherwise) from their societies ended up adopting anti-social behaviours.
But you have no argument for why we should ignore the actual research on actual bathroom policies analogous (or even identical) to the ones under discussion.
We know that policies which promote fair and safe bathroom access for trans persons do not diminish the safety of non-trans persons, so long as those policies are enacted in a context reasonably tolerant of trans persons and their rights to participate in society.
We know this because we’ve actually studied reality.
Why, in your opinion, should we dismiss the reality that we’ve actually observed in order to base policy on tangentially relevant factors?
(Such as the criminality and criminalization of trans persons who accessed medical transition services pre-1989 or based on just “maleness” in general, with no other rationalization provided)
Please address the questions actually presented:
1) What must be present besides a correlation with violence in order to justify policies diminishing or restricting freedom to participate in society?
2) Why do you think those additional factors are present here but not present with other violence correlations (such as racial ones) to the extent necessary for relevant policy making?
3) What practical measures do you propose for shifting bathroom access from being socially coded and enforced (as they are now) to being biologically coded and enforced? How would persons even know to complain without access to the medical history of a person that they witness using a public restroom?
4) Why do you propose using sex as the basis of restriction when you see the cause of increased violence as distinct from sex? Why wouldn’t you simply use the presence or absence of the cause of increased violent criminality?
5) Why are you ignoring the fact that we have actual evidence on the safety of the policies under discussion? Do you understand that when we have actual research on point the behaviour you demonstrate of ignoring that fact marks you as dishonest and/or ideologically driven?
6) Given that actual research on these policies show that trans-inclusive gendered access to gendered public bathrooms is consistent with the equal levels of safety provided by past and present policies which stigmatize trans persons and deny them safe and equal access to an important aspect of societal participation, why do you cling to advocacy for the policies which make cis, female women no safer? Is it simply a matter that you deny the facts? Or do you embrace social policy making that increases violence toward trans persons?
Oh, fuck.
I said this earlier:
When what I meant (hopefully obvious from context despite my error) was this:
Also, I was making the point in relation to policies on public bathroom access. I hope (and believe) that that was also obvious. Whatever other restrictions on freedom may or may not be present, I’m not discussing them here. From the length of my comments I should hope that it’s apparent that just addressing the bathroom policy arguments is time consuming enough.
(and, of course, on top of the time is the emotional cost of defending one’s basic freedoms — I have a legit interest in limiting that cost so I’m not attempting to defend trans liberation more broadly here.)
@Anna Kiddna
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Every transphobe uses that article. EVERY SINGLE ONE.
Do you even understand what it’s ACTUALLY saying?
@Makroth
One hopes not. It’s honestly a more hopeful view of the state of the world to imagine Anna Kiddna fails to understand the article than that AK fully understands it and is using it dishonestly, as that would very nearly entail that AK simply hates trans persons in a conscious way, making considered choices to attack trans persons despite the existence of no threat from them.
To believe that AK actually understood the article when posting the link is to believe that AK would be a happy and enthusiastic employee of 1994’s Radio Mille Collines.
I fervently hope and prefer to believe that that is not the case.
Unfortunately if my hopes are correct, that means that AK is either pretty fucking stupid (belied by the language and length of AK’s comments) or that they simply don’t bother reading what others are saying carefully enough to actually understand them, lest they be forced into a moment of self-reflection in which they question their own beliefs. (That one seems rather consistent with their behaviour in this thread.)
There are no good looks for AK here, but being too ideologically motivated to read for comprehension and reflect on meaning is certainly preferable to being an enthusiastic cheerleader for scapegoating stigmatized minorities who then suffer violence as a result.
Anna
So you would like the cops to be called on my husband when he goes into a public bathroom to help me because of my mobility issues. Am I understanding that right? Someone looks male so they should have the cops called on them. I know quite a few cis lesbians that would really hate that shit too.
@Anna Kiddna; @Elaine the Witch:
Know what other class of people frequently requires potty assistance from caregivers who might be a different gender? That’s right—that first refuge of the authoritarian, The Precious Little Children™! So would you bar a father from diapering his baby daughter? Or the existence of Family Restrooms specifically designed for people of whatever age and condition who need an assistant (and tacitly non-gendered; as the old Olive Garden slogan put it, “If you’re here, you’re family.”)
You guys!!!!!11!!!
I have 3 bathrooms in my house.
ALL OF THEM have been used by AMAB men, and transwomen and transmen.
So I should be scared of them, right? It happened before, it might happen again!! The penises are everywhere!!!eleventyone!!!
But the neighbors and the city frown on me peeing/pooping in my yard, so… I guess I’ll remain sane and toilet wherever I want.
By the way, persons of cis- and trans- male or female identity have used the 2 showers too, but I think I’ll still keep clean and not worry about who else has used them (Except the husband. That man is incapable of clearing out a drain when he’s done. But that’s more of an eyeroll than a panic).
However, the upside is I’ll never have to worry about AK coming to my house.
@Crip Dyke: you are ever so much patient and more informed than myself. I’d bow to you, but my neck’s acting up today. So please have an emoji bow: orz and another: mOm.
@FMOx: Family bathrooms are a great invention, even for cis people.
Think of the chillldren™! If dad’s gotta diaper a baby girl, should he just hand it over to some random woman who’s going into the vagina-only bathroom to do it for him? Or let her sit in a wet/stinky diaper? What if the baby is also be-penised? How about just letting human beings of all ages pee without DRA-MA?
@Elaine: I have seen some butch lesbians who were AFAB and looked more male than some of the trans males I’ve seen. Yet all their parts are female and they wouldn’t take kindly to having the Loo Cops called on them. A number of cis women have PCOS and have beards too; AK apparently wants to strip-search them all to make sure there aren’t dicks under there.
@David: Definitely out of candy. Save poor Crip Dyke’s fingers, will ya?
I gotta go pee. Wish me luck. It’s dark, but it’s too cold to go out to the yard.
Damn. I am impressed here, with everyone involved (even the effort of AK), but especially you, Crip Dyke. I mean, damn. Compared to you, I don’t have the faintest clue what “argument” even means, let alone how to frame one
Know who else benefits from Family Restrooms, which are extra-spacious and include amenities like grab bars? Disabled people with assistive devices, whether or not they need an attendant; they afford me not only a toilet I can comfortably use but room for my personal collapsible shopping cart (which doubles as a balance support), which I therefore needn’t leave unattended. The same goes for things like walkers, wheelchairs, and service dogs; same goes for extremely plus-sized people.
@FullMetalOx:
You would not be surprised to learn, I am sure, and may already know that trans persons were the second constituency, not the first, to encourage adding large large single or single-family occupancy public bathrooms to new construction requirements.
Nope, those bathrooms were a major policy point of persons with disabilities before there was ever a significant mass of trans persons active on issues of bathroom access. Trans people were probably the second constituency (possibly not? my knowledge here is far from perfect) but definitely not the first.
In fact my first bathroom-access protest demo was created by and for my ataxic housemate in, oh, 93 or 94 and there had been a number of bathroom access protests around the USA, Canada, Australia, NZ, and the UK before then. There was at least one major one in France that I read about (courtesy of my housemate), which of course means that France must have had a ton of more local ones as well.
The success of that campaign was built into the Americans with Disabilities Act, but it has been a solid boon to trans persons ever since.
We still struggle, of course, not least because the ADA does not automatically require retrofitting of existing buildings, but I’ve seen some fantastic cooperation between PwDs and trans folks on this and other issues.
Anyway, you probably knew most of that, but others are reading along, so I figured why not credit people with disabilities for their accomplishments and contributions to society? It’s not like we’re overloaded with appreciation for folks with disabilities.
@.45:
I’m not special (in that sense) — law school does that to you. I just happen to also have been around for a long time in activist communities so I can combine that law school training with knowledge relevant to certain conversations like this one.
@Anna
The assumption I’m making is hardly a stretch. The things you’re saying are very old GC tropes, and you seem insistent that my gender identity is irrelevant and that my observed sex characteristics at birth and the relationship between that and your statistics are what demand my exclusion and that of other trans women. There are all kinds of prejudices that are “informed” by statistics, as Crip Dyke so helpfully and thoroughly explained to you, yet those are also not considered a legal basis for discrimination. The only thing you have to rest on is “but sex [characteristics], statistics!!!”
Fuck off already.
Assigned Sex At Birth should not be considered anyone’s default status for the rest of their life; we don’t apply this logic to the question of, say, whether or not someone can drive a car.
SpecialFrog,
You know, the usual. Having the anatomy of one side of the sex divide or the other. What evidence do you have that it wasn’t?
Crip Dyke,
<blockquote>You even recognized the sarcasm the first time you addressed this.</blockquote>
No, I was genuinely unsure. And when you did not clarify this in further exchanges, and in fact used it in your argument, it seemed that sarcasm was decreasingly likely. Only now do you specify that it was sarcasm, so that settles that.
And now you would like clarification on the difference between creating female-only spaces, and… let me see if I have this right… restricting people who “demonize and stereotype” “us” from public amenities. Is this accurate? I will proceed with this summary in mind, but do correct me if I have parsed <a href=”https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2022/10/16/j-k-rowling-it-is-dangerous-to-assert-that-any-category-of-people-deserves-a-blanket-presumption-of-innocence/comment-page-3/#comment-3690657″>this comment</a> incorrectly.
Firstly, I did not demonize or stereotype anyone, I pointed to a real trend in real data. Secondly, <em>if</em> I demonized or stereotyped anyone, it was the male sex and not trans people. Thirdly, which amenities do you propose I be barred from? Given that I was referring to male people, and your claim is that I am therefore an increased risk to male people, I take it as the male amenities. I have no problem with that.
And, I did actually provide a (terse) explanation of why female only spaces exist. Here it is again:
“As for the question of how protected spaces for the female sex can be justified, I give you the history of the interplay between the sexes. It is a matter of historical record that bathrooms, change rooms and similar were created to permit the burgeoning female workforce to have such spaces away from the male sex, for their protection and privacy. This was considered necessary due to the social advantages enjoyed by males – which have been reduced though not eliminated – and the obvious disparity in musculature.”
I will expand slightly on that last. The social advantages enjoyed by the male population had created spaces that were effectively male only, in addition to male spaces that were <em>statorily</em> male only. In workplaces that women were beginning to enter, amenities were not necessarily for men only, but given the lack of legal protections and the high chance of sexual harassment or worse, separate facilities were considered necessary.
This has been the case for over a century, if it is your position that this it no longer the necessary, please point to what has changed and why that change is sufficient. If it is your position that this logic was never valid, well, I can only say that I disagree. Public need and real data led to policy, the system working well.
===
<blockquote>Non-trans men **as a whole** are not experiencing freedom, but trans people are. There is extensive documentation of violence and harassment of trans persons in bathrooms and other public spaces, as well as documentation that there is heightened incidence of violence and harassment targeting trans persons in highly gendered spaces, including gender-restricted public bathrooms.</blockquote>
And also sex-restricted bathrooms. Bear in mind, when a male person enters a female-only space, many of the people already there experience the discomfort of seeing someone that is often obviously male. But your point of view appears to have no room for consideration of that imposition; you probably don’t even see it as such. Yet it exists.
<blockquote>Trans people are seeking a safer system of access to existing public bathrooms, a system that would allow their free access to public bathrooms to equal the free access of of other groups.</blockquote>
No, they are seeking to overturn the system implemented for the safety of the female sex for their own wants, which they phrase as needs. This is not a net gain; recall the subject of this story is JKR pointing out that men will use self-id laws in bad faith for access to these spaces, eroding their benefit.
As for the harassment and worse faced by trans people, the correct approach to increase this safety is not by eroding a protection for the female sex, but by using the method you describe in your first comment in this thread:
“I live in a world where we have been progressively teaching men to be better, less violent people and men have responded. Attitudes toward rape and sexual assault and domestic or intimate-partner violence have all changed for the better over the last few decades.”
That is, progressive messaging and education.
===
<blockquote>You don’t actually have any evidence that I embrace the “ultimate goal” you state.
And, in fact, I don’t embrace it. So while your mistake is vaguely understandable, it outpaced your evidence and now that you have me on record I would hope that you do not repeat that mistake.</blockquote>
Okay, now extend me that same courtesy. Out of curiosity, which female only spaces do you support?
===
<blockquote>IN THE REAL WORLD bathroom access is not dependent on sex, but rather on gender.</blockquote>
Just plain wrong, so wrong I will never understand how an otherwise intelligent person could arrive at this conclusion. The sex of a person is nearly always visible, without needing the absurd lengths you propose. Face structure, build, voice, proportions… these observable traits are strongly indicative of sex. Not faultless, but quite powerful nonetheless.
This has been the system of enforcing the sex segregation of public facilities since their inception, there is no need for that to change.
===
<blockquote>You misunderstand.
If the cause is entirely social, then JKR has no case at all to restrict bathroom access by sex.</blockquote>
The misunderstanding is yours. Sex segregation of amenities is not predicated on the disparity of violence and sex related crime having a particular cause (biological or social), it is predicated on the simple fact that there is a disparity of same <em>at all.<em> Whether it is T or socialized behavior or any combination is irrelevant; there exists a disparity of crime and hence safety <em>whatever the cause.</em>
===
<blockquote>The reason that I included the section about “in societies supportive of trans equality” is specifically because of the study you cite and others like it. Pre-1989 the society under discussion could hardly be called “supportive of trans equality”.</blockquote>
The study found male-pattern criminality in post-transition trans women in trans women whose transition was before 1989, and did not find that association to a degree that rose to significance in those that transitioned in 1989 and after. It is also true that attitudes towards trans people have eased since then. What is not clear is that this easing is causative of that change in finding, which is what you appear to take as the cause.
If that is indeed your thinking, you should know the reason for this loss of trend is stated in the the table mentioned in your quote: sparse data from 1989-2003. The authors do not state, that I could find, whether this was due to changes in crime data collection, crime classification, loss of records or some other reason.