Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

[p0lka]

Ok I take it back sorry. I was the first one to mention trust in a literal sense by using the word distrust, but I had also brought the issue of trust into the equation by bringing up misandry in the first place, as that's about trust too.

edit: I still think my misandry claim is correct though.

 

[p0lka]

Same in the US. Ease of cleaning the floor, ventilation, and seeing if stall is occupied without being too nosy.

In the UK we have doors that show red or green depending on whether someone is inside and has turned the lock or not.

 

[Thermal]

In the UK we have doors that show red or green depending on whether someone is inside and has turned the lock or not.

We have them here and there, too. When I was on the rescue squad, we had to pull a few people out of stalls that had passed out in them (usually drugs, a couple times elderly or other medical reasons). The victims were seen because they were crumpled on the floor, visible from anywhere. Pretty sure a couple of them lived because the partitions didn't go all the way down. Thats also why the doors have to be flimsy in their locking and often open inwards- we gots to be able to kick them in easily.

 

[Ziggurat]

Have you ever looked under someone else's occupied stall for more than, say, a tenth of a second? I haven't. I avert my eyes as soon as I identify human feet.

I don't stare at feet under the stall, because normally, there's nothing worth looking at. But that shadow was noteworthy, in plain view, and rather quickly recognizable.

You would have to look for a while to realize what the creep was doing,

Just a couple seconds, and when she was already suspicious of him (a reasonable position), not an unreasonable thing to do.

I mean, flip the script. How would you react to a transwoman looking under the occupied stalls

What do you mean by looking under the stall? Do you mean observing what's there from a normal viewing angle? Or do you mean bending down to see from a low angle? There's a difference. I'll assume you mean the former, but in that case, anyone can look all they want, no skin off my nose.

and recording a cis woman he thought was masturbating?

First, that isn't really a thing. Again, female sexuality is fundamentally different than male sexuality. I'm not saying females don't masturbate, but they almost never do it in public places. Males do.

Second, regardless of frequency, if it's very obvious that this is what they're doing, then OK, go ahead and record them. Because they shouldn't be doing that in a public place either. I think it's less creepy for a female to masturbate in the women's locker room than for a male to masturbate in the women's locker room (it's also less creepy for a male to masturbate in the male locker room), but it's still inappropriate, and if someone wants to document that, go ahead.

Right, but again, the opposite policy works just as effectively.

No, it really doesn't. The opposite policy creates problems for women.

Full tolerance solves the same problem that zero tolerance does.

No, it doesn't. A policy of full tolerance will not actually make women comfortable with the presence of males in their intimate spaces. A policy of full tolerance will not prevent males from acting inappropriately in women's spaces.

Neither is doing the right thing all the time

Perhaps (though I'm not sure when you think sex segregation does the wrong thing), but at a minimum sex segregation does the right thing more often. It is a vastly better policy than self-ID. And no other policy options are actually on offer between the two, so I don't know what sort of magical middle ground you think is possible beyond single-occupancy spaces, which isn't going to happen for cost reasons if nothing else.

, and some will be uncomfortable with the rare trans person around, and some will be uncomfortable with being part of a society that advocates open bias against them.

Why is it bias to say that a trans identifying male can't go into the women's bathroom but it's not bias to say that a cis identifying male can't go into the women's bathroom? If you treat trans identifying males different than cis identifying males, then you haven't avoided bias, you're just enacting the bias that you prefer.

In this story, the main issue is general inappropriate behavior

The inappropriate behavior started when an obvious male entered the women's locker room.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Personally I prefer the wolves and sheepdogs metaphor. It gives men moral agency, a clear choice about what kind of person they want to be, and a call to beneficial action.

Yes, but foxes and hens lets me reference Fight Club, which makes me happy

 

[Emily's Cat]

"The ping brings up an alert on your screen.'

EC: "it doesn't for me. Except that it does. Buy I don't pay any attention to it, except to clear them because they grab my attention so much"

This is just surreal.

It's not an alert.

This is probably a difference in language use. Let's talk about how my phone works. I have notifications for my emails turned off. When they're on, my phone makes a noise every time I get an email, and it also pops up a specific message on my home screen telling me I got an email, who it's from, and the subject line. That's an alert.

My email app icon still shows how many unread emails I have. That's not an alert.

 

[Thermal]

I don't stare at feet under the stall, because normally, there's nothing worth looking at. But that shadow was noteworthy, in plain view, and rather quickly recognizable.

I dunno. Took me a while to even realize what I was supposed to be seeing. Far longer than I would have looked at feet in an occupied stall.

... then you haven't avoided bias, you're just enacting the bias that you prefer.

The inappropriate behavior started when an obvious male entered the women's locker room.

This is the whole debate in a couple sentences. If this was an open gender policy state, and we know PF is an open policy gym, then nothing inappropriate happened. You are enacting the bias that *you* prefer, and make that your starting assumption. Basically, you start off with the supposition that the trans guy is unquestionably already in the wrong.

Living in such a state, I have yet to run across many people with that assumption. We just don't think it's that big of a deal, ad that's the women telling me that (which I admit I found kind of surprising). They think I am more wired out about it than they are, but in fairness, they have not been subjected to assaults by transwomen. I have.

California, as we have discussed, is like 3 to one in favor of the open gender policies. Mass is pretty chill about it too. So I am not sure that your line for where the start of inappropriate behavior is should be taken as a given.

 

[Thermal]

It's not an alert.

This is probably a difference in language use. Let's talk about how my phone works. I have notifications for my emails turned off. When they're on, my phone makes a noise every time I get an email, and it also pops up a specific message on my home screen telling me I got an email, who it's from, and the subject line. That's an alert.

My email app icon still shows how many unread emails I have. That's not an alert.

(the feature is literally called an alert here)

 

[smartcooky]

It's not an alert.

This is probably a difference in language use. Let's talk about how my phone works. I have notifications for my emails turned off. When they're on, my phone makes a noise every time I get an email, and it also pops up a specific message on my home screen telling me I got an email, who it's from, and the subject line. That's an alert.

My email app icon still shows how many unread emails I have. That's not an alert.

Correct. That is an "app icon badge". On my Android phone, I get the same badge for phone calls, Messenger messages and Facebook posts

What are App Icon Badges & How to Use Them [2024]

App icon badges are small visual markers on an app's icon that display unread notifications or updates. Learn how to use them to boost user engagement and accelerate app growth.

clevertap.com

 

[Emily's Cat]

Something I heard recently that I tend to agree with, "I'm not worried about transwomen victimizing women in women's spaces as much as I worry about predatory men who are willing to pretend to be trans in order to get into women's spaces."

There are some implicit assumptions in here that I disagree with.

First, it assumes that "genuine" males with transgender identities cannot be a threat to females. That's an unsupported assertion and pretty much wishful thinking. There's no good reason to assume that males who prefer to dress and express themselves in a female-typical way are somehow precluded from behaviors that occur throughout all males.

Secondly, it's a straightforward No True Scotsman fallacy. Essentially, it results in any male who professes a transgender identity who does victimize females being retroactively defined as "not trans" and only pretending.

Third, and most fundamentally important... There is no way to tell beforehand which male who claims to have a transgender identity is a "real trans" versus a "fake trans". But they're ALL male.

The net outcome of this is that females end up being obligated and forced to let in any male who says magic words. And we can only eject them AFTER they've harmed females... and then only because now they're "faking" it. It removes the ability of females to take reasonable preventive measures to protect ourselves from harm - especially harms that we already experience at a massively higher rate - in supplication to making sure the feelings of some males don't get hurt.

The short version is: The feelings of males are more important than the safety and rights of females.

 

[Emily's Cat]

And that's a sound and persuasive argument, as long as you are not saying out of the other side of your mouth "you should see these tranny freaks, they're cross-dressing perverts". Tips the hand and reveals the bluff a bit.

YOU use that language, Thermal. Stop pretending other people are doing so.

 

[Emily's Cat]

It can be. It can also be a solution.

Demanding that females must surrender their boundaries and submit to increased risk, predation, and voyeurism/exhibition or they can just ◊◊◊◊ off and stay out of public life isn't a solution I think is even remotely reasonable. It's regressive and downright sexist.

 

[Emily's Cat]

In Hyman's case, she lives in a state with open access, which 3 out of four Californians support.

Do you have support for your stat?

New California Poll Reveals Dramatic Decrease for Support of “Gender Identity” Policies Since 2020 — Women's Liberation Front

The tide is turning as a majority of California voters “strongly disagree” with allowing men to identify into women’s spaces like changing rooms and shelters, up nearly 20 points in the past three years.

womensliberationfront.org

 

[Thermal]

YOU use that language, Thermal. Stop pretending other people are doing so.

Sugar coating doesn't change meaning for many of us. If someone says "Those lovely black people should be hung", I don't think they really think those black people are lovely.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Which is why I brought up misandry as you're clearly demonstrating it.

I don't hate males, I'm quite fond of them. But I still recognize that they're a potential danger to females across the board. That's not misandry.

For consideration, I adore jaguars and leopards. It's entirely reasonable to be wary of a strange big cat and to take precautions against them eating me when I'm out in the wilds. It would be irrational to describe that as felinophobia.

 

[Ziggurat]

Ok I take it back sorry. I was the first one to mention trust in a literal sense by using the word distrust, but I had also brought the issue of trust into the equation by bringing up misandry in the first place, as that's about trust too.

edit: I still think my misandry claim is correct though.

I think your claim is wrong. And I think your view of trust is also simplistic and unrealistic.

Now, trust and risk are related, so again, I don't think you were wrong to bring up the issue of trust. But I think your conclusions about trust, particularly in relation to EC's statements, are wrong. Risk involves not just an assessment of odds, but also an assessment of consequences, both upside and downside. So let's run through a couple fake examples to examine some relevant factors in risk evaluation and trust.

Suppose I'm at a bar, and I want to go use the bathroom while leaving a $10 bill on the counter which I want to be able to reclaim when I get back. I don't know the guy next to me, and I think there's a 1% chance that he might steal it while I'm gone. But 1% chance isn't very high and the stakes are low (an expected loss of only $0.10 and a maximum loss of only $10), so I might choose to trust him under the circumstances. But there are still other factors to consider, namely what's the cost of not trusting him. If I've got pockets I can easily shove the bill into, then the cost of not trusting him is also low, possibly lower than the expected $0.10 loss, so I might not trust him and shove the bill in my pocket. On the other hand, if I can't easily pocket the bill, if doing so is actually a significant inconvenience, then the cost of not trusting him goes up and I'm more likely to choose to trust him. So trust can actually depends on more than just the odds.

What if it's the same odds but higher stakes? Let's say I want to hire a babysitter, and I think that the candidate I have to babysit my kids has a 1% chance of abducting and murdering them. The cost of not trusting may be substantially higher as well (suppose it's my last chance to see my favorite band perform before they retire), which would provide more incentive to trust than in the above example. But the potential cost is so high that even with the same odds as above, even with a higher cost of not trusting, there's still no way I'm going to choose to trust them.

And even here, we haven't touched on what affects the odds, but that's relevant to the discussion as well. Because we use information about a person to inform what we think their odds of taking a particular action might be. Does the guy at the bar look like a homeless junkie? Odds might go up. Is he someone I recognize regularly attends my church? Odds might go down. Is the potential babysitter a guy with a sketchy windowless van? Odds might go up. Is it my dentist's neice? Odds might go down.

In regards to males in female spaces, it's hard to calculate the odds of a bad outcome with precision. And the odds of minor bad outcomes (creepy learing) are higher than the odds of extreme bad outcomes (rape). But they're higher for males than for females. They are ALSO substantially higher for males who choose to enter female intimate spaces than for males who choose to remain outside female spaces. And that's the scenario we're considering: not what happens if you randomly throw males into female spaces (an equivalent of the man/bear question), but what happens if you allow in the males who self-select to be in there. I don't know what the odds are mathematically, but there's nothing misogynistic about a woman being uncomfortable with those odds, given the range of possible bad outcomes.

Now, we're still not actually done with our evaluation, though, because we still haven't evaluated the cost of not trusting. What does it cost EC to not trust males in female spaces? Well, you lose out on having males in those spaces to immediately do things that you might want a male to do. For example, if a door gets jammed, you don't have immediate access a male who might have the strength to force it open. But these situations are not only exceedingly rare, the cost is generally not that the thing can't be done, but that it takes a bit of time to go fetch the male to do them. So I don't want to claim that the cost is zero. But let's be realistic: the cost of not trusting males in female intimate spaces is really low. It might as well be zero even if it isn't actually zero.

So for EC to conclude that it's not worth the risk of admitting males really doesn't mean she's a misandrist. All it takes is a recognition that males who self-select to enter female intimate spaces do pose some risk, the potential negative consequences are not trivial, and allowing them in provides her no real benefit. All of these are factually true. None of them require misandry of any sort.

 

[Emily's Cat]

"We're almost constantly at the mercy of males to not ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ kill or rape us".

Jesus Christ, I missed that on the first reading.

@Emily's Cat, get help. Men don't decide not to gratuitously rape or kill out of 'mercy'. We don't do it because we are generally not the violent animals you seem to think we are.

I don't think you're violent animals. I think you're bigger and stronger and more aggressive.

If I put you in a cage with a polar bear, you will be entirely at the mercy of that bear not to kill you. If that bear decides you look tasty, there's not a damned thing you can do about it. You get that, don't you?

Same thing here. The vast majority of males have no deside to rape or kill females. But be real, Thermal - if you suddenly decided you wanted to do physical harm to a random female out in the world, what chance does that female have of stopping you? Virtually none, because regardless of your intent, the reality is that you are physically capable of completely overpowering virtually any female.

 

[p0lka]

I don't hate males, I'm quite fond of them. But I still recognize that they're a potential danger to females across the board. That's not misandry.

For consideration, I adore jaguars and leopards. It's entirely reasonable to be wary of a strange big cat and to take precautions against them eating me when I'm out in the wilds. It would be irrational to describe that as felinophobia.

If you are treating males as a category, in the same way that you would treat a jaguar or leopard then that seems like misandry to me.

 

[Ziggurat]

I dunno. Took me a while to even realize what I was supposed to be seeing. Far longer than I would have looked at feet in an occupied stall.

Didn't take me long at all.

This is the whole debate in a couple sentences. If this was an open gender policy state, and we know PF is an open policy gym, then nothing inappropriate happened.

No. Nothing against policy happened. Policy itself can be inappropriate. Making something policy doesn't make it appropriate.

You are enacting the bias that *you* prefer

Of course I am. Just like you are. It's not even possible, let alone desirable, to avoid all bias. We just don't like to call it a bias when it's one we agree with.

So the question was never actually about what's biased and what's not biased, but what's an appropriate bias and what's an inappropriate bias.

Basically, you start off with the supposition that the trans guy is unquestionably already in the wrong.

Let's be more specific here. My starting premise (we can call it that for now although it's actually more of a conclusion based on other reasoning) is that obvious males should not be in female intimate spaces. Based on that premise (which at other times you have seemed to agree with), then yes, the trans identifying male was in the wrong for entering that space.

What's your starting premise? You have one, otherwise you wouldn't be able to form an opinion.

 

[Thermal]

I don't think you're violent animals. I think you're bigger and stronger and more aggressive.

If I put you in a cage with a polar bear, you will be entirely at the mercy of that bear not to kill you. If that bear decides you look tasty, there's not a damned thing you can do about it. You get that, don't you?

Same thing here. The vast majority of males have no deside to rape or kill females. But be real, Thermal - if you suddenly decided you wanted to do physical harm to a random female out in the world, what chance does that female have of stopping you? Virtually none, because regardless of your intent, the reality is that you are physically capable of completely overpowering virtually any female.

I totally get what you're saying. Do you get that the way you phrased it is incredibly insulting to us guys who have spent much of our adult lives being no threat whatsoever to women in any way, shape or form, and being their active allies and partners?

You would never say you are almost constantly in fear of being raped or murdered by black people, would you? Phrasing and all that.