amigocabal reposts stupid crap from conservative blog

[Sidewinder]

None of that shit matters legally or ethically. She identifies as a woman, therefore she has all the legal rights of any other woman, and that's how it should be.

If this person has male genitalia, most people wouldn't see past this organ when identifying the transgendered person. They'd probably think, "He has a penis; therefore, he's a man," and assume the worst regarding a man in a women's changing room. If this person has female genitalia, they'd probably think, "She has no penis; therefore, she's a woman."

[spaceviking]

I think we need more details before we judge the person named in the article. Did this transgendered person undergo a female-to-male change, meaning "he" is legally a man, but fears being raped if "he" uses the men's changing room? Did this person undergo a male-to-female change, meaning "she" is legally a woman, and the girls' parents are being bigoted alarmists? Has this person NOT YET undergone a male-to-female change, meaning "he" is still legally a man, therefore the girls' parents have legitimate concerns?

I think "fears of being raped" is a bit much. This is a normal locker room not fucking prison, a natural born women could use a men's locker room without fearing being raped (though the men might still act creepy as fuck).

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The false analogy between "a woman, with access to woman-only spaces" and "a paratrooper" is pretty fucking obvious, Duchess.

A person, with a right to volunteer to any position in the US military, and a cripple.

I am not so sure of that, and your haste to associate me with right-wing ideals on this subject is more than slightly ludicrous. Transpeople are disabled due to a severe medical condition and should be covered under the ADA... That I unquestionably believe to be the correct approach. It provides for "reasonable accommodation" -- which this isn't, nothing more.

More generally, the fact that our society doesn't make medical correction freely available to all transpeople doesn't change the fact that it's needed.

[Terralthra]

The false analogy between "a woman, with access to woman-only spaces" and "a paratrooper" is pretty fucking obvious, Duchess.

A person, with a right to volunteer to any position in the US military, and a cripple.

I am not so sure of that, and your haste to associate me with right-wing ideals on this subject is more than slightly ludicrous. Transpeople are disabled due to a severe medical condition and should be covered under the ADA... That I unquestionably believe to be the correct approach. It provides for "reasonable accommodation" -- which this isn't, nothing more.

More generally, the fact that our society doesn't make medical correction freely available to all transpeople doesn't change the fact that it's needed.

Your haste to assume whatever the fuck you assume about my position, or my opinion of your position, is fucking irrelevant. I haven't associated you with any ideal on this subject. My only post in this topic is the one you quote, pointing out that your analogy is a false one.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Your haste to assume whatever the fuck you assume about my position, or my opinion of your position, is fucking irrelevant. I haven't associated you with any ideal on this subject. My only post in this topic is the one you quote, pointing out that your analogy is a false one.

This isn't high school and the winning points game of cheap one-ups, this is actually a serious discussion about a very serious and delicate issue. I am trying to express a legal concept in laywomen's terms and if you don't understand quite what I am trying to convey, ask for clarification.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Duchess, you seem very willing to make people's decisions for them because you feel that if they disagree with you they obviously can't be mentally sound and are incapable of making decisions at all. This is really distressing and I hope you grow out of it before you become in charge of anything important.

Why do you feel current attitudes towards genitals should be the only factor in what rights transgender individuals have? To bring up the analogy that's come up before in this thread, do you think black people should've been legally barred from any position where they would have reasonable odds of having to share a bathroom or a fountain with white people? Public attitudes at the time wanted that form of segregation enforced, too.

[Alyrium Denryle]

None of that shit matters legally or ethically. She identifies as a woman, therefore she has all the legal rights of any other woman, and that's how it should be.

Do we allow people in wheelchairs to become paratroopers?

Yeah, that analogy does not work. A paratrooper or firefighter is a position that has obvious physical requirements that cannot be changed without impacting a critical job function.

A public facility like a shower is a public good or a fee for use service. At a university it is paid for out of tax revenue, at a club it is paid for from user fees. Either way, it is discriminatory in a way that does not pass rational basis scrutiny to deny them access to these facilities.

What about people who cannot at that time afford GRS? Or who are undergoing various stages of transition? This is, as you well know, a medical condition. Why should the society punish them, rather than protecting them from assholes by way of the other available options such as providing unisex facilities or where that is not possible by protecting their ability to use single-gender facilities appropriate for their identification? It is not as if those same single gender facilities are not an attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole in the first place...

Why is it not a reasonable accommodation under the ADA to provide one of those two options?

To use a different tack: do we prohibit flaming gay men from using such facilities because some bigoted asshole decides that they are in there exposing themselves in order to convert the children to sodomy? That is afterall where the basis of the problem lies. Not in the physical inability of a person to perform some function, but in other people's bigotry.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I think we need more details before we judge the person named in the article. Did this transgendered person undergo a female-to-male change, meaning "he" is legally a man, but fears being raped if "he" uses the men's changing room? Did this person undergo a male-to-female change, meaning "she" is legally a woman, and the girls' parents are being bigoted alarmists? Has this person NOT YET undergone a male-to-female change, meaning "he" is still legally a man, therefore the girls' parents have legitimate concerns?

I think "fears of being raped" is a bit much. This is a normal locker room not fucking prison, a natural born women could use a men's locker room without fearing being raped (though the men might still act creepy as fuck).

Transwomen during transition have a chance of being raped that is an order of magnitude higher than ciswomen during the same period. And uh... you will be shocked at how public rape and sexual assault can be...

[Terralthra]

Your haste to assume whatever the fuck you assume about my position, or my opinion of your position, is fucking irrelevant. I haven't associated you with any ideal on this subject. My only post in this topic is the one you quote, pointing out that your analogy is a false one.

This isn't high school and the winning points game of cheap one-ups, this is actually a serious discussion about a very serious and delicate issue. I am trying to express a legal concept in laywomen's terms and if you don't understand quite what I am trying to convey, ask for clarification.

It might help, when trying to express a legal concept, if your position had any basis in existing law, which it does not. The ADA and WLAD require non-discrimination against people with handicaps, including severe mental illness, including any "place of public accommodation", under which a public university falls. Under Washington law, a transwoman (or transman) legally can not be discriminated against because of their "having or being perceived to have a gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior, or expression, whether or not that gender identity, selfimage, appearance, behavior, or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the sex assigned to that person at birth." Preventing a transwoman from using a woman's locker-room in a place of public accommodation is fairly clearly illegal, on its face.

The only court case on the subject in Washington is from 1993, before the passage of the WLAD.

Further, the ACLU believes that under the WLAD public school officials should be required to allow transgender students to wear clothing that matches their gender identity, call transgender students by the appropriate name and pronoun, provide transgender students with access to a safe and appropriate restrooms and locker rooms (or appropriate alternative places in which to change for gym class), and accommodate transgender athletes.

Treating me as if I'm ignorant isn't helping your cause. I'm active and informed in trans* issues in what is probably the largest locus of trans* activism in the country.

Your analogy sucked.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Duchess, you seem very willing to make people's decisions for them because you feel that if they disagree with you they obviously can't be mentally sound and are incapable of making decisions at all. This is really distressing and I hope you grow out of it before you become in charge of anything important.

...I'm going to assume this is sarcastic, because the alternative is that someone on SD.net actually thinks I'll be in charge of something important someday! I thought I was too much of a laughingstock for that to have been the case since about 2003...

Why do you feel current attitudes towards genitals should be the only factor in what rights transgender individuals have? To bring up the analogy that's come up before in this thread, do you think black people should've been legally barred from any position where they would have reasonable odds of having to share a bathroom or a fountain with white people? Public attitudes at the time wanted that form of segregation enforced, too.

Genitalia are a major human identity signifier which is much more hardwired than skin colour, unfortunately--and also much more indicative of actual differences. The average woman doesn't have C-scan vision that can inform her that the individual with said genitalia actually has a female brain, so this becomes a very serious issue.

Also, women are an oppressed class in society, and are oppressed by people with penises, generally speaking. They are often the victims of traumatic violence on the part of those people too. For our legal system, therefore, we might imagine a certain degree of weighted rating table: A transwoman, as a woman, certainly has a right to use a bathroom, as the stall doors and the locks provide a reasonable expectation of privacy. Likewise a changing room with independent locked changing stalls and shower stalls would, again, fall under a reasonable expectation of privacy and be a protected right. But the large-scale social ills--whatever the cause--of allowing disrobing in areas with no reasonable expectation of privacy, in which disrobing is a consequence of a voluntary activity (sport or a limited field of employment), trumps the right to disrobe there.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yeah, that analogy does not work. A paratrooper or firefighter is a position that has obvious physical requirements that cannot be changed without impacting a critical job function.

Yes, well, biophysical appearance is unfortunately an important part of the mental process for assigning sex in the human brain, with grounded physical cause.

A public facility like a shower is a public good or a fee for use service. At a university it is paid for out of tax revenue, at a club it is paid for from user fees. Either way, it is discriminatory in a way that does not pass rational basis scrutiny to deny them access to these facilities.

Ah, but the reasonable expectations of the other paying members must also be considered.

What about people who cannot at that time afford GRS? Or who are undergoing various stages of transition? This is, as you well know, a medical condition. Why should the society punish them, rather than protecting them from assholes by way of the other available options such as providing unisex facilities or where that is not possible by protecting their ability to use single-gender facilities appropriate for their identification? It is not as if those same single gender facilities are not an attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole in the first place...

Why is it not a reasonable accommodation under the ADA to provide one of those two options?

Since when did I say I was against mandating unisex facilities and free GRS? Jesus christ, that would be great. I support both of them. It's just that changing rooms and communal showers in particular are associated with a very small and limited number of activities which are all voluntary, so considering involuntary exposure of a much larger number of individuals to something which may be traumatic to them is not unreasonable.

To use a different tack: do we prohibit flaming gay men from using such facilities because some bigoted asshole decides that they are in there exposing themselves in order to convert the children to sodomy? That is afterall where the basis of the problem lies. Not in the physical inability of a person to perform some function, but in other people's bigotry.

Unlike with homosexuals there are major biophysical differences involved here, Aly. The brain may be the same, but again, the body isn't designed to assign sex based on the shape of someone's brain.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

It might help, when trying to express a legal concept, if your position had any basis in existing law, which it does not. The ADA and WLAD require non-discrimination against people with handicaps, including severe mental illness, including any "place of public accommodation", under which a public university falls. Under Washington law, a transwoman (or transman) legally can not be discriminated against because of their "having or being perceived to have a gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior, or expression, whether or not that gender identity, selfimage, appearance, behavior, or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the sex assigned to that person at birth." Preventing a transwoman from using a woman's locker-room in a place of public accommodation is fairly clearly illegal, on its face.

I happen to have lived most of my life in Washington State. There is quite a difference between access to women's health and women's resouces generally and bathrooms and so on where expectations of the privacy of one's body may be reasonably held, and a place where nothing of the sort exists. We cannot forget the fact that women are an oppressed class and that provision of rights in favour of a certain minority which inflict severe distress in a larger part of the group is a serious challenge.

The only court case on the subject in Washington is from 1993, before the passage of the WLAD.

Further, the ACLU believes that under the WLAD public school officials should be required to allow transgender students to wear clothing that matches their gender identity, call transgender students by the appropriate name and pronoun, provide transgender students with access to a safe and appropriate restrooms and locker rooms (or appropriate alternative places in which to change for gym class), and accommodate transgender athletes.

Treating me as if I'm ignorant isn't helping your cause. I'm active and informed in trans* issues in what is probably the largest locus of trans* activism in the country.

Your analogy sucked.

Yes, it did. Oh well. The fact of the matter is that a biological condition and an "identity" are not necessarily the same thing, and that furthermore humans are wired to be concerned only with the biophysical presentation; and of course that there are many women who have quite a lot of reasons to suffer severe emotional harm from being exposed to male-appearing genitalia. I will again note that the only place that this is an issue is for activities which are strictly voluntary. We restrict large classes of individuals from many voluntary indulgences based on scientific evidence: 18 to 21 year olds are banned from drinking or buying alcohol because evidence suggests their brains cannot cope with the effects of intoxicant as effectively as those of people over the age of 21, for example.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I will at this point exercise my right to concede the argument and withdraw my participation from this thread. I do not wish to further engage on the subject, nor elaborate on why I do not feel it is something I have a particular interest in continuing to debate, except to say that the emotional stress of arguing this point seems by definition to be ridiculous when no possible countervailing benefit can be derived from the debate.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Ah, but the reasonable expectations of the other paying members must also be considered.

Not in this case, where the expectations are born from animus. Otherwise you torpedo all non-discrimination law. The reasonable person standard assumes someone generally informed about the world. Neither a genius or a slack-jawed mouth breather. A reasonable person knows that transwomen exist and have uses for public facilities. Animus toward transpersons does not and should not factor in. And if you are going to use the argument that women as oppressed people should not be at risk of seeing a penis in a public space like that, I have to look at you cross-eyed because we BOTH are well aware of just how miserable the lives of transpeople can be.

It's just that changing rooms and communal showers in particular are associated with a very small and limited number of activities which are all voluntary, so considering involuntary exposure of a much larger number of individuals to something which may be traumatic to them is not unreasonable.

Unless the trauma itself is unreasonable or derived from animus. Under your logic, we should ban people who have massive burn scars from using public facilities because it might traumatize people with weak stomachs. Gay people should not be permitted to walk down the street holding hands because it might traumatize people who Think Of The Children.

What about the social stress of being prohibited from voluntary activities that other people take for granted? Do I need to talk about the suicide rates? I can remind you of the suicide rates. Who has it worse? The person who sees a penis--something they have seen before and will see again--and who, once informed that the person is trans will get over it and not need therapy... or the person continually barred from multiple parts of human social life that everyone and their mother takes for granted and considers normal, suffers massive stigmatization and in the long run often does suffer psychological damage from these deprivations?

We both know the answer to that question.

In the long term, the only way to fix the problem is to normalize being trans. To make it no longer a "thing". You know, like black people using the same drinking fountains as whites, and gay people prancing gaily down the street in sequenz.

[Hamstray]

I think "fears of being raped" is a bit much. This is a normal locker room not fucking prison, a natural born women could use a men's locker room without fearing being raped (though the men might still act creepy as fuck).

Transwomen during transition have a chance of being raped that is an order of magnitude higher than ciswomen during the same period. And uh... you will be shocked at how public rape and sexual assault can be...

I'm not sure about the fears of rape in this case. However as rates of transphobia are relatively high among adolescent boys I can see how assault would be an issue. Conservative outcry might have been just as high if she'd used the mens changing room.

[Ralin]

I'm not sure about the fears of rape in this case.

It happens. A lot. People feel amazingly free to brutalize and attack transpeople in any and every way possible for committing the crime of existing in their presence. Quite often, the legal system validates these feelings.

[Serafina]

Duchess, i fail to see how a transwoman behaving like any other woman (using a facility for women where you are sometimes naked) is in any way an indicator of mental instability.
Some transwomen can somewhat accept the fact that some parts of their bodies are as they are. I know that this appears to undermine one of the major arguments for SRS - but it actually doesn't, since that is a) only done by a few transwomen, b ) doesn't mean that they won't be much more comfortable after SRS or other procedures and c) it still resolves some discrimination issues.

As i see it, Ms Francis simply decided that the drawbacks of not being able to use certain recreational facilities outweights the drawback of being outed as transwoman. That's her choice to make, and a perfectly valid one.

Attempting to ban her because an aspect of her body might gross out some people is in no way ethically justifiable. You could use the same argument to ban someone with, say, a highly visible scar from facilities where some degree of nudity is to be expected. It's discimination, plain and simple.
Gender segregation of public facilities is justified for the safety of the women (and in some cases men) involved - it reduces the odds of sexual assault. Someone possibly being offended by looking at a human being with a different body from their own isn't a justification.


Also, @ amigocabal:
You are an idiot and a bigot.
You are an idiot because you do not see a difference between seeing some exposed human flesh and being sexually assaulted and abused.
You are also a bigot for believing anything that comes from a source which refers to a woman as male just because her body is different from the norm. Guess what, she identifies as a woman, that makes her a woman. But you most likely believe that transwomen are just men in drag anyway, which brings us back to you being a fucking bigot.

[Hamstray]

I'm not sure about the fears of rape in this case.

It happens. A lot. People feel amazingly free to brutalize and attack transpeople in any and every way possible for committing the crime of existing in their presence.

Yes, but if someone feels disturbed about other peoples sexual identity, like feeling deceived to be attracted to someone by their feminine features who then turns out to possess male genital parts, wouldn't rape be sort of inconsistent. Isn't that sort of analogous to if homophobes were to rape gay guys?

[Ralin]

Yes, but if someone feels disturbed about other peoples sexual identity, like feeling deceived to be attracted to someone by their feminine features who then turns out to possess male genital parts, wouldn't rape be sort of inconsistent. Isn't that sort of analogous to if homophobes were to rape gay guys?

You would think, but it's more about wanting to make them suffer than sexual attraction. At least as near as I can tell.

[Serafina]

Rape is mostly about power and control, rather than about sexual pleasure.
And unless i am severely mistaken, gay men being raped by straight men does actually happen quite a bit. Just for that reason - to "show them" how "weak, pathetic, unmanly" etc. they are, to humiliate them and so on.

[Lagmonster]

Okay, Alyrium. Here we have you arguing that a woman who appears physically male could be expected to avoid the male changing room because of her justified fear of rape:

I think "fears of being raped" is a bit much. This is a normal locker room not fucking prison, a natural born women could use a men's locker room without fearing being raped (though the men might still act creepy as fuck).

Transwomen during transition have a chance of being raped that is an order of magnitude higher than ciswomen during the same period.

Next, we have you arguing that women in general should be wary of men because of a similarly justified fear of rape:

If a woman sees a big guy in a dark alley, her monkey brain starts screaming "danger, Will Robinson!" for good reason, because that danger is actually real. Even if the guy is perfectly nice. Even if he would not hurt a fly. She has no way whatsoever of knowing that. Just like a gazelle on the African savannah has no way of knowing that the lion over there is not hungry.

Do you see the potential conflict here? You’ve argued both that men should be considerate of the feelings of women because of the prejudices that arise from physical appearances, and that those exact same prejudices from those exact same women should be disregarded when confronted by what superficially appears to be a man in a dress joining them in the ladies’ change room, because as you put it elsewhere here, “A reasonable person knows that transwomen exist and have uses for public facilities.”.

I’m not arguing what she or anyone else should have or had the right to do, but it seems as though your position on reasonable behaviour has some conflicts.

[Hamstray]

You would think, but it's more about wanting to make them suffer than sexual attraction. At least as near as I can tell.

Even if it's less about sexual attraction, there is at least some sort of degree of sexual attraction involved.
Just like prison rape, which is usually about control rather than about sexual attraction, in the eyes of a homophobe is considered totally gay just as everything which is in the slightest bit gay (how would the assailant be able to maintain an erection if there was no sexual attraction involved). So you'd think that transphobes would have a similar mindset. Or maybe I am just expecting too much logical consistency from the intellectually impaired.

[amigocabal]

And Amigo displays his inability to think of any... well anything beyond the most superficial level possible yet again. Color me surprised (I think surprise is periwinkle).

How about some common sense?

What proportion of fathers in America would be just fine with Colleen Francis (the person in question) walking around naked in a locker room their teenage daughter(s) are using.

Feel free to round to the nearest percentage point.

Is Colleen Francis a woman for all intents and purposes? Yes. Is she attempting sexual liaison with these teenage girls? No. Is she using the facilities for their intended purpose (getting dressed after a a swim, etc)? Yes.

Okay, assuming that it is correct that Colleen Francis merely intended to simply use the locker room merely to get dressed, how was the girls' swim coach supposed to know that?

The swim coach made the right call.

You did not answer my question. What is the alternative? Is she to use the men's locker room and risk being physically assaulted, raped, or even the same thing that happened here--having the police called on her? Is she to be barred from using public facilities because someone needs to think of the children?

The university can make reasonable accommodations, such as a small, single-stall restroom for use. I do undersrtand that Evergreen State is required to make reasonable accommodations for transgendered. There is a bit of discretion on what reasonable accommodations may be provided, and the university could provide dedicated dressing rooms, which would have far less marginal cost than, say, providing ramps for wheel chair users.

[amigocabal]

And Amigo displays his inability to think of any... well anything beyond the most superficial level possible yet again. Color me surprised (I think surprise is periwinkle).

How about some common sense?

What proportion of fathers in America would be just fine with Colleen Francis (the person in question) walking around naked in a locker room their teenage daughter(s) are using.

Feel free to round to the nearest percentage point.

Why the fuck should the bigots get to decide what's acceptable?

What proportion of fathers with teenage daughters are bigots?

[Keevan_Colton]

Is that an appeal to popularity I smell there?