I’m getting increasingly tired of the entirely specious argument that “there have been no reported case of a trans woman ever entering a women’s restroom and abusing anyone” (NYTIMES quote).
No, there hasn’t. But it isn’t trans women that are being feared. It’s male perverts. The fear is that, as the reality of transgender people becomes more visible and socially acceptable (which is a good thing), pedophiles, perverts, rapists and abusers will use this development to gain unhindered access to female bathrooms and locker rooms.
Once it becomes unacceptable to question anybody’s gender identification, what will be the mechanism of getting a male (not transgender, but male) pervert out of a women’s shower room? What are the words you use to ask him to leave? If it’s not ok to say “You are not a woman / man” because we now believe that the only reliable source of this identification is oneself, how is one to proceed in this situation?
This is an important issue that needs to be discussed and addressed collectively. Instead, both sides of the argument are convulsing in the midst of a massive and completely pointless freak out.
Forget toilets. In a society that worships at the altar of “identity”, there needs to be a consensus as to who has the right to name identities. Is it only the self that gets to decide on his or her identity? Or do others get to participate?
Clarissa's Blog 
It’s not identity, it’s behavior.
You’re supposed to go in, take care of your business, wash your hands and come out. Public bathrooms and locker rooms are not chit chat festivals. I do not engage other random women in public bathrooms, unless it’s an emergency.
Male and female bathrooms are separate because of specific excretory things people do in the bathroom. Men seem to pee on the floor. Women sprinkle the seat (lots of hoverers). Women’s bathrooms are usually less of a mess than the men’s bathroom. Women need those little wastebaskets for period products.
To me, public bathroom behavior is like elevator etiquette.
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What about locker rooms? while not always the most social.. certainly much more time is spent in there.
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…Again, the locker room is not a chit chat festival. I wouldn’t say much more time is spent there in aggregate. Grooming routines are kept to a minimum. For example, I don’t go through my entire shower and grooming routine in a locker room because 1)it’s not set up to do that and 2)other people want to use the facilities. I say this as someone who isn’t very “girly” in her gender expression. Seriously, I either go straight home and do that stuff or I’m on the way to somewhere else, so I don’t linger or engage other women.
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Forget toilets, though. What about wealthy grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants who don’t know a word of Spanish yet choose to speak in the name of Latinos and promote policies that are not favorable to an actual immigrant? What about things like autism? What’s to prevent anybody from claiming to have a very mild and easily imitable form and take away resources from the really severe cases?
It’s all about the same thing: the source of identity. There are completely straight folks who claim they are “queer” or “gender – non-conforming” based on nothing whatsoever but the coolness factor they attach to it in certain settings. What language can the counselors on campuses use to shoo away these fake queers who are claiming for themselves the very limited resources aimed at helping LGBT students?
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Identity is self determined, but in practice, it is also defined through consensus.
Hence when people claim an identity, they often list all the ways they fit how that identity was determined by consensus. If their internal identity doesn’t match this consensus they argue about it, or they buy things or change behaviors to match.
And to get people out of a space, this is what people say now, “I don’t feel safe with this person here.” Now how people manage competing claims of safety, I’m not sure.
I don’t know. I’ve changed identities and in each identity I’ve had people tell me I couldn’t possibly be [X] or do [Y] because of [Z].
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So you go in a public bathroom or locker room, see a man, and what do you do? This happened to me at my gym a while ago. The fellow was there to repair something and I got him to leave. The gym’s owner apologized profusely.
What would you do? Proceed to take the shower with the man there?
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What would you do? Proceed to take the shower with the man there?
I wouldn’t take the shower there with a repair person, male or female.
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I don’t ask cleaning ladies to leave, for instance. Or the women who come in to bring the towels. But I definitely object to a male cleaner or a male towel-bringer.
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“Male and female bathrooms are separate because of specific excretory things people do in the bathroom”
Yet anatomical differences have been set aside in determining male and female.
“Women’s bathrooms are usually less of a mess than the men’s bathroom”
I’ve heard the exact opposite of public bathrooms (workplace bathrooms might be different).
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“Yet anatomical differences have been set aside in determining male and female.”
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Who Gets to Name Identities?
Twitter mobs, of course.
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I just don’t anticipate slews of dangerous men invading women’s private spaces. I don’t think it’s a true risk. On the flip side, these new strict gender “bathroom laws” have a potential slew of side effects. For instance, I know a woman (lesbian) who presents as very masculine. She is a biological woman and identifies as a woman and but dresses in men’s suits when she goes to work, keeps her hair exceptionally short etc etc. As it is, she already had had occasional problems using women’s restrooms. So these laws are a worry for her. And she travels a great deal for her work and honestly doesn’t know what do should her work lead her NC (as it has before.)
But at any rate, there is a larger issue afoot here as Clarissa points out. Who decides identity? To my mind, race is less of a biological reality than sex. There are no significant biological differences between races at all. Yet, most liberals were troubled by Rachel Dolezal’s claims that she was African American–even as many celebrated Caitlin Jenner. Can someone claim AARP benefits because they “feel” old? Can 15 year olds legally drink because they “feel” 21?
At some point, identity construction crashes into biological reality. I don’t have the answers myself but it is something we as a society are going to have to think about.
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“But at any rate, there is a larger issue afoot here as Clarissa points out. Who decides identity? To my mind, race is less of a biological reality than sex. There are no significant biological differences between races at all. Yet, most liberals were troubled by Rachel Dolezal’s claims that she was African American–even as many celebrated Caitlin Jenner. Can someone claim AARP benefits because they “feel” old? Can 15 year olds legally drink because they “feel” 21?”
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Good points, but the obvious difference with race is its often easiest to “see”. More than anything skin color is often (but not alwasy obviously) pretty easy to determine. Melanin levells are by far the most noticabe racial difference. I am not in the least arguing people should be treated any different (of course they shouldn’t), just i guess explaining why I think that race turns out to be a big deal since it is usually more obvious than other differences.
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It’s not always that obvious. How easy is it to notice Jennifer Beals’ or Wentworth Miller’s African ancestry? Or that almost all Russians or Ukrainians have Mongol ancestry that shows up on DNA tests?
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