[RD] LGBTQ news

[Nick723]

This doesn't say what you want it to say.

Well please can you enlighten me, then? I confess the terminology does get confusing.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Well please can you enlighten me, then? I confess the terminology does get confusing.

Are you cool with elliot page being in the same toilet as you? Or would you prefer Laverne cox?

 

[Nick723]

Toilet - comfortable with either / both.

Changing facilities (eg. at swimming pool, gym etc) - more comfortable with Laverne.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

We get it, you view trans women as men.

In before you come out with more terf/biological essentialist views, whilst simultaneously telling us that you hold no animus against trans people.

 

[sophie]

I’m not sure I would describe this bill as stupidity. Dividing loos and prisons by sex is a reasonable position to take in my opinion.

Of course well designed unisex loos are another potential solution.

It is not a reasonable position.

It does not address any of the core safety concerns. Legally defining bathroom access does not constitute some magical spell or barrier that automatically wards off potential predators. Sexual assault is already a heinous crime, and the threat of a class 2 misdemeanor is not going to deter a rapist from entering the bathrooms of his intended victims.

Such a bill does, however, expose more people to risk. It exposes us trans women to risk. If, as the very framing of the safety concern claims, all men constitute such an existential threat to any woman that the mere titillating thought of some woman sitting in a toilet in proximity to a man exposes that woman immediately to untold sexual violence, then what does that pose for trans women, who in addition to experiencing sexual assault at higher rates than any other group, also frequently experience random acts of violence or harassment.

It exposes trans men and trans masc to violence. Last year there was a story about a trans man on a camping trip in Ohio, who, following state law, went to use the women’s restroom. Another woman was in there, saw a man in the woman’s restroom, so, in a panic, got three male friends who went in there and beat the absolute **** out of him. If the “safety” justification is that men pose an immediate and substantial threat to women in bathrooms, then the logical outcome would be to subject trans men using women’s restrooms to high levels of violence where no such risk would apply in the reverse.

It endangers cis, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people. To legislate bathroom access on a the basis of particular sex or chromosomal characteristics which are typically unknowable by the general public, is to introduce a culture of fear and suspicion upon all people. We know imposing these sorts of bathroom restrictions is just as likely to fall on cis men and women as it is to fall on trans people. There are manifold stories of butch lesbians facing harassment or eviction from bathrooms because they were perceived to be men or trans women. The simple reality is that “we can always tell” is a lie.

Sexual dimorphism is far less absolute as one typically imagines, applying only to very narrow wedges on the tail ends of the respective curves, and overlap on all features exists. Cis women have Adam’s apples, facial hair, narrow hips, broad shoulders, flat chests, and big heads. The psychology of clocking is generally a reverse procedure, where the person has already concluded in their mind that a person is trans, and once that conclusion has been reached, it is very easy to reverse engineer any physical feature as belonging to the opposite sex and thus constituting a smoking gun on their fundamental transness. This essential truth means that restricting bathrooms to birth sex means the creation of a culture of suspicion and surveillance whereby any person - cis or trans - can be accused and harassed at any time on the basis of any feature.

The real purpose of such bathroom laws is twofold: 1) to limit the amount of time trans people are able to be in public to only as long as they can hold it (less transit time to and from home) and 2) impose rigid gender norms on everybody else, where any perceived deviation or nonconformity places you in the trans group and subject to state and public violence.

Denying trans women access to women’s prisons is also unreasonable. 60% of trans inmates are raped at some point during their incarceration, compared with 4% for the general inmate population. As mentioned in the linked article above, a very common practice in prisons in the US is something called v-coding, where trans women are intentionally placed in cells with the most violent offenders. There are many many stories of trans women entering men’s prisons and being raped every day, multiple times a day, for years. There was a story recently from Georgia of a trans woman who was raped by a man, later arrested for burglary, and subsequently placed in a cell with her rapist, who then raped her again multiple times. The objections of trans women are often disregarded, or met with solitary confinement. It is also exceedingly common for the rape and abuse to come at the hands of correctional officers, who subject trans inmates to humiliating public strip searches, require them to perform lewd or degrading acts in front of other officers or inmates, or else repeatedly rape them.

These arguments, particularly for prisons, also generally expose certain sexist assumptions or attitudes. Cis women are also capable of rape, and cis women rapists and sexual offenders are routinely housed in women’s prisons with no qualms or political outcry. Additionally, a frequent source of sexual violence in women’s prisons comes not from Inter-inmate violence (trans or cis), but rather from cis male correctional officers, who routinely use their positions of power to rape, harass, humiliate, or assault female inmates.

This is also of a kind with women’s shelters where, as far as I know, we don’t really have documented cases of trans women gaining access to such spaces to predate on victims, nor of cis men taking on the guise of trans women to gain access to such spaces. But we do have many examples of cis men working or disguising themselves as janitors or shelter workers to do so.

The point is, these laws don’t actually serve to increase safety for anybody. They expose cis people to harassment and policing of their free expression, and (1) dramatically increase the physical danger to trans and gender non-confirming people, and (2) restrict those people’s freedom or ability to be in public. As I said, this Florida ban doesn’t mean I have to use a different toilet when I go to Florida. It means I cannot go to Florida at all. I look like a woman. I generally do not get clocked. If women being in the presence of men in a bathroom setting is a priori unsafe, than me going into men’s restrooms is a priori unsafe for me. So my options are: use the men’s, get harassed and/or raped, or use the women’s and run the risk of getting clocked and thrown in a men’s prison and definitely getting raped. How is that a reasonable policy?

 

[Cloud_Strife]

He doesn't care, the ramifications it would have for people like us, let alone cis people, don't even enter his mind, that it would ruin our lives and lead to even more discrimination and violence against us aren't bugs of his beliefs; they're features.

 

[aelf]

Aren't bigots all about what they are comfortable with? It's basically their basic motivation.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

I’m not sure I would describe this bill as stupidity. Dividing loos and prisons by sex is a reasonable position to take in my opinion.

Of course well designed unisex loos are another potential solution.

I think about this, too, but the answers I anticipate will typically revolve around transgendered persons being allowed to pick whatever facility they want to, ergo unisex is "forcing" them into an unpreferred choice.

such was the case when I first learned about this discussion many years ago, in whose details I forget at the moment. some school in the US offered this up, and the student in question said no, because according to the article I read, that would be "singling them out" or words to that effect...
I'd have to find it again.

 

[sophie]

I don’t mind unisex single-occupancy bathrooms, generally speaking. What I don’t like is when a third category of unisex single-occupancy bathrooms are proposed as “a solution” or “a compromise” to trans women accessing women’s restrooms.

As always it is the treatment of us as something wholly separate from cis society, something to be sequestered or quarantined, that is the problem. I am a woman. I am entitled to use the woman’s restroom. If you want to change bathroom rules so that everyone uses unisex bathrooms together, that’s fine, but that should then apply to cis women as well. Otherwise it’s *just* bigotry.

 

[Nick723]

It is not a reasonable position.

It does not address any of the core safety concerns. Legally defining bathroom access does not constitute some magical spell or barrier that automatically wards off potential predators. Sexual assault is already a heinous crime, and the threat of a class 2 misdemeanor is not going to deter a rapist from entering the bathrooms of his intended victims.

Such a bill does, however, expose more people to risk. It exposes us trans women to risk. If, as the very framing of the safety concern claims, all men constitute such an existential threat to any woman that the mere titillating thought of some woman sitting in a toilet in proximity to a man exposes that woman immediately to untold sexual violence, then what does that pose for trans women, who in addition to experiencing sexual assault at higher rates than any other group, also frequently experience random acts of violence or harassment.

It exposes trans men and trans masc to violence. Last year there was a story about a trans man on a camping trip in Ohio, who, following state law, went to use the women’s restroom. Another woman was in there and thought he was a man, so, in a panic, got three male friends who went in there and beat the absolute horsehocky out of him. If the “safety” justification is that men pose an immediate and substantial threat to women in bathrooms, then the logical outcome would be to subject trans men using women’s restrooms to high levels of violence where no such risk would apply in the reverse.

It endangers cis, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people. To legislate bathroom access on a the basis of particular sex or chromosomal characteristics which are typically unknowable by the general public, is to introduce a culture of fear and suspicion upon all people. We know imposing these sorts of bathroom restrictions did as likely to fall on cis men and women as it is to fall on trans people. There are manifold stories of butch lesbians facing harassment or eviction from bathrooms because they were perceived to be men or trans women. The simple reality is that “we can always tell” is a lie.

Sexual dimorphism is far less absolute as one typically imagined, applying only to very narrow wedges on the tail ends of the respective curves, and overlap on all features exists. Cis women have Adam’s apples, facial hair, narrow hips, broad shoulders, flat chests, and big heads. The psychology of clocking is generally a reverse procedure, where the person has already concluded in their mind that a person is trans, and once that conclusion has been reached, it is very easy to reverse engineer any physical feature as belonging to the opposite sex and thus constituting a smoking gun on their fundamental transness. This essential truth means that restricting bathrooms to birth sex means the creation of a culture of suspicion and surveillance whereby any person - cis or trans - can be accused and harassed at any time on the basis of any feature.

The real purpose of such bathroom laws is twofold: 1) to limit the amount of time trans people are able to be in public to only as long as they can hold it (less transit time to and from home) and 2) impose rigid gender norms on everybody else, where any perceived deviation or nonconformity places you in the trans group and subject to state and public violence.

Denying trans women access to women’s prisons is also unreasonable. 60% of trans inmates are raped at some point during their incarceration, compared with 4% for the general inmate population. As mentioned in the linked article above, a very common practice in prisons in the US is a practice called v-coding, where trans women are intentionally placed in cells with the most violent offenders. There are many many stories of trans women entering men’s prisons and being raped every day, multiple times a day, for years. There was a story recently from Georgia of a trans woman who was raped by a man, later arrested for burliest, and subsequently placed in a cell with her rapist, who then raped her again multiple times. The objections of trans women are often disregarded, or met with solitary confinement. It is also exceedingly common for the rape and abuse to come at the hands of correctional officers, who subject trans inmates to humiliating public strip searches, require them to perform lewd or degrading acts in front of other officers or inmates, or else repeatedly rape them.

These arguments, particularly for prisons, also generally expose certain sexist assumptions or attitudes. Cis women are also capable of rape, and cis women rapists and sexual offenders are routinely housed in women’s prisons with no qualms or political outcry. Additionally, a frequent source of sexual violence in women’s prisons comes not from Inter-inmate violence (trans or cis), but rather from cis male correctional officers, who routinely use their positions of power to rape, harass, humiliate, or assault female inmates.

This is also of a kind with women’s shelters where, as far as I know, we don’t really have documented cases of trans women gaining access to such spaces to predate on victims, nor of cis men taking on the guise of trans women to gain access to such spaces. But we do have many examples of men working or disguising themselves as janitors or shelter workers to do so.

The point is, these laws don’t actually serve to increase safety for anybody. They expose cis people to harassment and policing of their free expression, and (1) dramatically increase the physical danger to trans and gender non-confirming people, and (2) restrict those people’s freedom or ability to be in public. As I said, this Florida ban doesn’t mean I have to use a different toilet when I go to Florida. It means I cannot go to Florida at all. I look like a woman. I generally do not get clocked. If women being in the presence of men in a bathroom setting is a priori unsafe, than me going into men’s restrooms is a priori unsafe for me. So my options are: use the men’s, get harassed and/or raped, or use the women’s and run the risk of getting clocked and thrown in a men’s prison and definitely getting raped. How is that a reasonable policy?

Thank you for the great post and presenting the counter argument so well. Definitely have sympathy for your position, and it does sound rough.

One day perhaps we can live in a society where this isn’t the case, one can hope!

 

[Cloud_Strife]

How can you have sympathy when you still want us to use men's spaces

 

[sophie]

Thank you for the great post and presenting the counter argument so well. Definitely have sympathy for your position, and it does sound rough.

One day perhaps we can live in a society where this isn’t the case, one can hope!

The first step in getting there is in unlearning a lot of the assumptions and supposed truisms about sex and gender that we internalize as a result of growing up in a sexist, patriarchal society.

At base, trans women are women, no different than black women, Jewish women, Polish women, fat women, old women, or disabled women. There are aspects about our upbringing, identity, and relationship to our gender and society that are unique to us as a type of woman, but that is no different than any other group of women. When you find yourself making pronouncements about what trans women ought to be permitted or restricted from doing, or how they ought to be viewed or treated by society, take a second’s pause and replace trans with any of those other descriptors:

Would you really feel safe putting a convicted Polish woman rapist in a prison with women?

Jewish women are invading women’s spaces and we must insist that anybody born Jewish should not be allowed to use women’s restrooms in the interest of protecting all women.

It sounds absurd, right? That should clue you in that there’s some sexist assumptions about trans people (and cis people, honestly) that are driving all that. Now, you may say that those are bad comparisons to make because we have no reason to think Jewish or Polish women aren’t women, or pose a threat to other women, whereas we do have good reason to think so for trans women. It would be a good time to remember that once upon a time people really did feel that way about certain types of cis women, and likewise felt they had good reasons and strong evidence to drive those sentiments. The reality is, just as the belief that Jewish people constitute some kind of insidious, corrupting infiltrator from which “our good, pure” women must be protected can today be recognized as baseless and obviously driven by anti-semitism, we need to strive to recognize the characterization of trans women as hulking, rapacious brutes as likewise baseless and obviously driven by transmisogyny.

The reality is that trans women are like any other type of women. We’re mostly normal people who want to be able to feel comfortable to do our business in peace, without fear of being heckled, leered at, or attacked, so we can wash our hands and go about our day.

We aren’t a monolith, of course. Some trans women are criminals, some are violent, rapists, or murderers. But again, that is true of all women. It is only with trans women, it seems, where the woman part of our identity is held as intrinsically suspect, and any evidence of trans individuals raping or murdering is held as grounds to revoke womanhood from the group altogether. Ghislane Maxwell or Aileen Wuornos are not held up as exemplars of *all* white women, or trotted out as reason enough to revoke womanhood from white women, deny them access to women’s restrooms or throw them in men’s prisons, whereas any conversation about trans women’s fair treatment *on any topic whatsoever* invariably brings out Isla Bryson almost immediately.

 

[Samson]

NHS treatment algorithms ‘not taking transgender patients into account’

A host of algorithms used by medics to assess disease risk and help make decisions on treatment are failing to take transgender patients into account, doctors have said.

Many metrics and thresholds in medicine, including ideal body weight, alcohol clearance rates, kidney function and risk of cardiovascular disease vary by gender.

A team of UK doctors and medical students have issued a warning over a lack of evidence as to whether trans patients should be considered for these gender-based scores according to their gender assigned at birth or the gender they have transitioned to – or whether alternative scores are required.

They say the situation could be putting trans patients at risk of situations ranging from receiving the wrong dose of a medication to being denied dialysis for kidney problems.

In an effort to tackle the issue, the team have launched a research initiative called Trans Gap Project.

Dr Michael Niman, a junior NHS doctor and chair of the project, said: “Currently, daily medical decisions involving gender-based scores have limited to no research for the trans community. This means that trans patients are often forgotten about or not considered in the medical world, leading to a significant gap in their access to appropriate medical care.”

Niman said there could be a glibness by the medical community towards trans people in relation to gender-based medical scores. “Common responses I get from clinicians are ‘oh, I hadn’t thought about that,’ ‘does it make a difference?’ [or] ‘there’s not that many [trans people] anyway’,” he said.

However, the team say the ramifications of inappropriate gender-based medical scores can be serious, and the issue is a concern for all trans patients, not just those on hormone replacement therapy.

“The use of inappropriate scores has real-world implications and can result in trans patients being denied access to necessary medical care, being underdosed for antibiotics [or] incorrectly anticoagulated,” said Niman.

 

[Samson]

Met accused of ‘siding’ with far-right group in anti-drag act protest

Police have been accused of “siding” with a rightwing group during violent protests over a drag act’s performance at a south London pub.

A formal complaint has been lodged over the behaviour of Metropolitan police officers during a demonstration organised by Turning Point UK (TPUK) against a storytelling session by drag queen That Girl at the Honor Oak pub in Lewisham.


The mayor of Lewisham, Damien Egan, is also believed to have raised concerns with the Met following accounts of the policing at the TPUK protest last weekend.

In addition, Lewisham councillors are planning to contact Sophie Linden, London’s deputy mayor for policing, to investigate allegations that counter-demonstrators were subject to police aggression even as TPUK supporters threatened and intimidated them.

The incident is the latest in a series of “culture war” protests by far right and rightwing groups aimed at drag queen story-telling events with one recent event leading to arrests outside the Tate Britain art gallery.

A coalition of far-right groups are increasingly targeting the issue including the neo-Nazi Patriotic Alternative and its splinter group, the Independent Nationalist Network.

TPUK – which campaigns against the “tyranny of woke ideology” – has prominent ties with the Conservatives. Tory MP Marco Longhi is listed as its honorary president and the group has been hailed by deputy party chairman Lee Anderson along with former ministers Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel.

Launched in 2019 as a UK offshoot of a pro-Donald Trump US campaign, TPUK organised the protest outside the pub because it was staging children’s story events hosted by drag acts. TPUK’s Twitter account has called drag acts “groomers”. Activists who organised a counter demonstration in support of the event have dismissed such attempts to tarnish it as “preposterous”, saying they are story-telling sessions for parents and children with “no sexual content”.

A Lewisham councillor, who requested anonymity, alleged that TPUK supporters were aggressive towards counter-demonstrators while police were slow to intervene.

“I observed a number of concerning things during the policing of the protest,” they said. TPUK protesters were allowed to walk up to people outside the pub and film them. Later, several officers, including those from territorial support group [TSG] units, were seen pushing crowds back aggressively and we’ve had reports of serious injuries, including a cracked rib,” they said.

Witnesses also claim some officers wore badges offering support for the “thin blue line” movement which in the US is associated with white nationalism, with officers implicated in the Capitol Hill siege. The Met is currently reviewing the wearing of such badges, but states that they are accepted as demonstrating camaraderie among officers and are “not representative of a specific cause, belief or charity”.

“An officer came around and said the teachers were a risk to public order standing next to the school. Police threatened to drag the teachers away, and I saw officers punching and kicking people. I’ve got bruises on my shins from their kicks.”

 

[EnglishEdward]

Allowing demonstrators and counter demonstrators to be at the same
place at the same time inevitably means allowing a widespread brawl.

To my mind the demonstration ought not to have been allowed there
because pubs are generally not an appropriate place for demonstrations.

 

[Gorbles]

Allowing demonstrators and counter demonstrators to be at the same
place at the same time inevitably means allowing a widespread brawl.

To my mind the demonstration ought not to have been allowed there
because pubs are generally not an appropriate place for demonstrations.

To be clear, the storytelling session?

 

[Bugfatty300]

Allowing demonstrators and counter demonstrators to be at the same
place at the same time inevitably means allowing a widespread brawl.

To my mind the demonstration ought not to have been allowed there
because pubs are generally not an appropriate place for demonstrations.

Right-wingers showed up to a legitimate function to intimidate, grift and spew spittle at parents and children. There was only one group who shouldn't have been allowed to be there.

 

[Samson]

parents and children.

And teachers of the school they were at, probably paid by the same local authority as the police who beat them up.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

I still have a hard time understanding how these drag storytime/puppet show/whatever acts somehow get fitted under the larger umbrella of "lgbt issues" when it's basically a free-speech performance. Other than it's just one thing more to push people's buttons. But maybe that's the point: it's avant garde.

Like, who woke up one day and said "you know, illiteracy can really be curbed by men dressing up as women"?

Probably not a very effective way to get into kids' pants, as the protestors would have us think, but at the same time, I still think it's incredibly stupid and pointless...
*shrugs*

 

[Samson]

Like, who woke up one day and said "you know, illiteracy can really be curbed by men dressing up as women"?

Is this about illiteracy? That is a pretty green and leafy bit of London, I reckon it is pretty rich and will not have much illiteracy. I think it is much more about storytelling as a performance artform than about illiteracy but I do not know.

Spoiler Satellite view of the area :