I think an important consequence of the rule ‘biological women only’ is that males who may surreptitiously enter these spaces will not be able to easily engage in the behaviour that is most likely to make women uncomfortable - that is, explicitly reveal their maleness. It would be enforceable to ask a male person who is naked in the change room to leave, whereas it would be impossible to do this if the rule did not exist. So the behaviour that makes women the most uncomfortable (the open display of male genitals) would be extremely difficult to engage in.
Yeah, I'm getting that. If I say I can't, I am defending men entering women's spaces, apparently. If I am ever uncertain, I need to keep my mouth shut, obviously.
The biggest problem here is self ID rules. Prior to self ID rules, a male person had to make some (usually considerable) effort to “pass” in order to get into women’s spaces. Now they don’t need to make any effort at all, beyond a declaration of being a woman (and even that isn’t necessarily required in the moment). So it becomes impossible to tell the difference between a trans woman who just wants to pee and a man intent on fooling you. While that may have been true anyway, and some men will try and have gained access before, it’s now significantly easier for someone intent on fooling people to do so. No effort required. Prior to self ID, a bystander might have stopped a male looking person from entering a woman’s only space. Now that’s far less likely to happen, to everyone’s detriment, including the trans women who just want to pee.
Trans activists often make the point that cis men are a danger to trans women and that’s why trans women don’t want to go in the men’s room. Even if we grant that, it should only underscore the point of why women don’t want to make it easier for such men to have surreptitious access to women’s spaces.
One question to activists can be, if there were a trans women only space, how would men intent on fooling people be kept out of there? The same method could at least be a starting point in other spaces.
While that doesn’t solve the problem of not having *any* male people in women’s spaces, it should at least get an honest activist thinking about the issue from more than one direction.
That’s my issue as well. If a man can just claim to identify as a woman with zero burden of proof, then women have no recourse if some creepy guy is in the women’s locker room or bathroom getting his rocks off
I agree with this argument. To the question "how can you tell which person is actually a man" my immediate response would be "the person I am unsure about will know with certainty, so I can ask them". If a man is asked if he is female, and then lies - his fault, not mine. He's made the gym a mixed sex place against the rules, he hasn't changed the rule. It is about the honour rule. You can join an Under 18s race when you're 22, but only by lying, doesn't invalidate the rule, and crucially it doesn't make age a matter of opinion. Likewise, your cheating male.
The reality with trans-activists is they want women to know they are men in female spaces, but also to force us to pretend, and declare, that they are women if they say they are. They need both things to happen, to validate their self-declared identity. So any trans-identifying man who cheats his way into the gym is only achieving a part of his desire, he can't make the gym owner or the members say "transwomen ARE women".
We can always tell. There’s no excuse for a man to be swinging his schlong and balls around in a woman’s or girls locker room. And we’re sick and tired of freaks trying to defend these mentally deranged people. Enough is enough.
Then people who have been tricked into sexual activity are lying and actually consented? If someone gets past the rule and into Natalee's gym, we assume the gym had no intention of being a single sex space but says that as a ruse to fool women into getting undressed in front of men?
How does this claim function to protect women and girls?
Or maybe you can tell with 100% accuracy but most people can't. We need solutions that work for most people. I'd like one that works for me. There's a 50-year-old cashier at my local supermarket who may be male or female. S/he is my height, but has a squarer jaw and broader shoulders than most women. I think s/he is probably a woman because boobs hang very low and I don't see why anybody wearing false ones would choose saggy ones, but maybe this is a thing you can buy and some people choose to. I simply don't know. What am I supposed to do with "You can always tell" in a situation where I can't?
That is false. I've been a radical feminist and lesbian separatist for decades, yet was tricked by a straight couple that the man was a woman and lesbian separatist. Though I have what I thought was highly attuned man-radar, and allowed them to stay in my living room for weeks. I had no idea. I've been fooled another time or two. It simply isn't true that we can all always tell. We may think we can, but may well not realize we've ben tricked. If we've been tricked, we may never realize.
Yes. Absolutely. I see that Natalee has locked down her Twitter account now so I can't show you, but she also posted in support of this when somebody had said men need male gyms. His rationale was that women work out in their underwear now and cause men to lust and that men need spaces away from women, but men should be able to have single sex gyms for any reason they like. I think the ones that exist at the moment are for gay men but, yes, straight men should be able to open them too.
- When he gets mad he yells at you to 'Suck my ladydick!'
Women rarely, if ever, threaten to rape and murder others and insulting someone with their genitals is an almost uniquely male thing. When you get into an argument with a girlfriend do either of you yell at the other, "Well you can just eat my pussy!"?
All people have the right of association with whom they choose. It’s first amendment.
If an association expresses a mission of all female identify, then it’s easy. Their events are all private for women only.
The moment they have commercial transactions those transactions are public accommodation.
If Michfest were an association whose mission was female-only association, not a problem. If the membership was by invitation, not to general public it’s not a problem. If their event was by invitation only to members, it’s an association meeting.
If they invite the general public, even if it they only invite women in the general public, that event is public accommodation and it falls under commercial rules.
Bohemian club in SF is a private, members only association who never are open to the public, and never has public commercial transactions. It’s all male, and never been cracked open so to speak.
We're in the UK, though. Also, ethics and laws are different things. Sometimes laws are good and sometimes they are not. That sounds good to me, though.
Yes, I’m afraid for all my bombast I don’t know UK law. We have has a terrible history of commercial implementation of ethnic, sex, religious restriction which was nullified by civil rights legislation regulating commercial activity.
I agree that "we can always tell" is a weak argument that should be avoided. Still, I'm not sure it's entirely meritless in certain situations. As an analogy, take a night club that has a "no sneakers" rule for entry. If the bouncer didn't spot the sneakers, one could argue that it's no big deal that those get in anyway. There's no loss of atmosphere. Similarly, one often hears in the trans bathroom debate arguments like "If you couldn't tell, how can it be a problem if trans women use the female bathroom stalls?" *If* that debate was only about female comfort (a big if), it would be tempting to go to the "we can always tell" claim. But as you've nicely argued, there are a lot of downsides to using that claim.
A case could and should be made that ANY restriction, woman only, male only, trans only...etc. is discrimination. Consider how many formerly 'men's only' clubs or places have been deemed to be discriminatory - the same rules should be applied to that gym.
No one said life is fair, nor should ANY playing field be level, the answer is easy; don't feel safe - DON'T GO!
It could, but I'd oppose that too. I actually have a piece on the go about men having the same right to single sex spaces as women. The only exception to this is in the case of professional associations or clubs where professional contacts are made and opportunities arise.
thing is...men and women who are professionals have plenty of opportunities on their own to make connections. Failure to do that is a personal not societal problem.
Want equality - then everyone plays in the sandbox, otherwise it is just new found hegemony with a misandrist mask!
My problem with this argument is that it always seems to be women who have to give up our spaces. I agree that men should also have their own spaces, but women are always going to be in more physical danger from men than vice-versa. If you say “don’t go if you don’t feel safe”, then eventually that will just be all women’s spaces gone. Single-sex spaces were fought for for a reason
Well, we're both saying neither sex should have to give up their spaces, but there is a difference between spaces for being undressed and competing in physical contest and spaces for meeting up and having a drink. It's not wrong to point out that sex differences exist and that women are the ones who are disadvantaged by this.
There are two arguments here:
Men and women should both be able to have single sex spaces for any reason.
Men present a physical threat to women that women do not present to men.
You can't really conflate these on political grounds because that won't make any difference at all to the material reality of sex differences.
Good logic, but inaccurate. Men & women do not always have single sex spaces and the word "should" is not a legal one, therefore it is meaningless to your argument.
You think the physical threat men pose to women is greater than the reverse? Then figure out how to live your life without discriminating against men and in doing so, keeping yourself safe.
Your missive makes me wonder how humanity has survived thus far!
I'm not making a legal argument. The law allows or bans all sorts of shit depending on time and place and sometimes its wrong and sometimes it's right. I am arguing for how things should be, not stating how they are under any law of any country.
Yes, men are a greater physical threat to women than women are to men. If a woman is a sex offender or violent and tries to attack a man, he can nearly always fight her off. The same is not true in reverse. I'm sure you know this.
I do live my life without discriminating against men. The exception is in single sex spaces where people are undressing and in sporting categories. This is due to the sex strength difference.
I'm pretty sure humanity has always recognised the sex strength difference.
Geez. John you might have had half of a point about the right of both men and women to have protected spaces, but your point is completely lost by your obtuseness about male strength and statistical propensity toward violence, and by you just generally being unkind.
But no one’s ever been put at risk because country clubs or whatever had to integrate sexes. Of course there are plenty of mixed-sex spaces that are perfectly safe for women, but locker rooms, change rooms etc aren’t. I have no issue with women’s only or men’s only gyms, but when you’re talking about social clubs and that kind of thing, making them single sex can impact people’s lives negatively, career-wise and in other ways. Making a gym single-sex doesn’t negatively affect anyone unless they wanted to creep on other people at the gym
Exceptions to the principle of free association can be made when employment discrimination can be justified, but not in social clubs more broadly.
For liberals, both harm and denial of freedom are negative impacts. Men and women must have the right to set up single sex social spaces as freedom of association. They don't need to show that they are harmed by not having spaces to just be with other men and women. Anybody wanting to deny them the right to make that choice has to show that it does harm to others if they choose it. In cases where others can still go to social clubs that are mixed and are of their own sex and not being able to go to any particular one does not discriminate against them in employment, they should be allowed to make that choice.
It is a legitimate question and it deserves an honest answer...is this 'terror' of men because of an incident or is it the meaningless repetitious ramblings of a group rather than a well thought out expression?
"A case could and should be made that ANY restriction, woman only, male only, trans only...etc. is discrimination."
But the reason we tend to say that discrimination is bad is that it excludes people without good justification, often to their detriment. Either that, or "discrimination" is practically defined as that kind of exclusion.
There's seldom if ever a good reason for professional networking organizations to be male-only, since being male or female is generally irrelevant to that sort of thing (and to the extent that it is relevant, it's usually because of sexism). On the other hand, women usually have good reasons for not wanting to see penises in spaces where they may themselves be exposed.
It might be helpful to remember that the term "discrimination" need not have a solely negative connotation. We discriminate between children and adults, and much of our legislation is based on that discrimination. We discriminate against adults who want to have sex with children, and it is a morally good thing that we do! We also discriminate against children who want to drive a car on public roads (in the UK), and that's a morally good thing.
So yes, a women's only gym will discriminate against men who want to enter that specific gym - but where is the detriment to men? A man who wants a single sex gym for straight men is just as welcome to establish one as the woman in this case is to establish a women's only gym. There is no detriment that I can see.
Equally, transgender people are welcome to establish their own spaces, but even when they are offered this, it often turns out not to be what they want. In Scotland, a trans-identified natal male doctor was offered a private changing room, but said he did not want this, he wanted access to the women's changing room, in order to change along with the female nurses and doctors.
I think an important consequence of the rule ‘biological women only’ is that males who may surreptitiously enter these spaces will not be able to easily engage in the behaviour that is most likely to make women uncomfortable - that is, explicitly reveal their maleness. It would be enforceable to ask a male person who is naked in the change room to leave, whereas it would be impossible to do this if the rule did not exist. So the behaviour that makes women the most uncomfortable (the open display of male genitals) would be extremely difficult to engage in.
The response "we can always tell" is a result of emotional dysregulation. It's meant to serve as an insult rather than address a problem.
Yeah, I'm getting that. If I say I can't, I am defending men entering women's spaces, apparently. If I am ever uncertain, I need to keep my mouth shut, obviously.
.
The biggest problem here is self ID rules. Prior to self ID rules, a male person had to make some (usually considerable) effort to “pass” in order to get into women’s spaces. Now they don’t need to make any effort at all, beyond a declaration of being a woman (and even that isn’t necessarily required in the moment). So it becomes impossible to tell the difference between a trans woman who just wants to pee and a man intent on fooling you. While that may have been true anyway, and some men will try and have gained access before, it’s now significantly easier for someone intent on fooling people to do so. No effort required. Prior to self ID, a bystander might have stopped a male looking person from entering a woman’s only space. Now that’s far less likely to happen, to everyone’s detriment, including the trans women who just want to pee.
Trans activists often make the point that cis men are a danger to trans women and that’s why trans women don’t want to go in the men’s room. Even if we grant that, it should only underscore the point of why women don’t want to make it easier for such men to have surreptitious access to women’s spaces.
One question to activists can be, if there were a trans women only space, how would men intent on fooling people be kept out of there? The same method could at least be a starting point in other spaces.
While that doesn’t solve the problem of not having *any* male people in women’s spaces, it should at least get an honest activist thinking about the issue from more than one direction.
That’s my issue as well. If a man can just claim to identify as a woman with zero burden of proof, then women have no recourse if some creepy guy is in the women’s locker room or bathroom getting his rocks off
I agree with this argument. To the question "how can you tell which person is actually a man" my immediate response would be "the person I am unsure about will know with certainty, so I can ask them". If a man is asked if he is female, and then lies - his fault, not mine. He's made the gym a mixed sex place against the rules, he hasn't changed the rule. It is about the honour rule. You can join an Under 18s race when you're 22, but only by lying, doesn't invalidate the rule, and crucially it doesn't make age a matter of opinion. Likewise, your cheating male.
The reality with trans-activists is they want women to know they are men in female spaces, but also to force us to pretend, and declare, that they are women if they say they are. They need both things to happen, to validate their self-declared identity. So any trans-identifying man who cheats his way into the gym is only achieving a part of his desire, he can't make the gym owner or the members say "transwomen ARE women".
We can always tell. There’s no excuse for a man to be swinging his schlong and balls around in a woman’s or girls locker room. And we’re sick and tired of freaks trying to defend these mentally deranged people. Enough is enough.
Then people who have been tricked into sexual activity are lying and actually consented? If someone gets past the rule and into Natalee's gym, we assume the gym had no intention of being a single sex space but says that as a ruse to fool women into getting undressed in front of men?
How does this claim function to protect women and girls?
Or maybe you can tell with 100% accuracy but most people can't. We need solutions that work for most people. I'd like one that works for me. There's a 50-year-old cashier at my local supermarket who may be male or female. S/he is my height, but has a squarer jaw and broader shoulders than most women. I think s/he is probably a woman because boobs hang very low and I don't see why anybody wearing false ones would choose saggy ones, but maybe this is a thing you can buy and some people choose to. I simply don't know. What am I supposed to do with "You can always tell" in a situation where I can't?
That is false. I've been a radical feminist and lesbian separatist for decades, yet was tricked by a straight couple that the man was a woman and lesbian separatist. Though I have what I thought was highly attuned man-radar, and allowed them to stay in my living room for weeks. I had no idea. I've been fooled another time or two. It simply isn't true that we can all always tell. We may think we can, but may well not realize we've ben tricked. If we've been tricked, we may never realize.
Any chance we can have all male gyms?
Yes. Absolutely. I see that Natalee has locked down her Twitter account now so I can't show you, but she also posted in support of this when somebody had said men need male gyms. His rationale was that women work out in their underwear now and cause men to lust and that men need spaces away from women, but men should be able to have single sex gyms for any reason they like. I think the ones that exist at the moment are for gay men but, yes, straight men should be able to open them too.
By all means, go open one.
Two ways to tell a woman is actually a man:
- He's issuing rape and death threats
- When he gets mad he yells at you to 'Suck my ladydick!'
Women rarely, if ever, threaten to rape and murder others and insulting someone with their genitals is an almost uniquely male thing. When you get into an argument with a girlfriend do either of you yell at the other, "Well you can just eat my pussy!"?
The argument is easy.
All people have the right of association with whom they choose. It’s first amendment.
If an association expresses a mission of all female identify, then it’s easy. Their events are all private for women only.
The moment they have commercial transactions those transactions are public accommodation.
If Michfest were an association whose mission was female-only association, not a problem. If the membership was by invitation, not to general public it’s not a problem. If their event was by invitation only to members, it’s an association meeting.
If they invite the general public, even if it they only invite women in the general public, that event is public accommodation and it falls under commercial rules.
Bohemian club in SF is a private, members only association who never are open to the public, and never has public commercial transactions. It’s all male, and never been cracked open so to speak.
We're in the UK, though. Also, ethics and laws are different things. Sometimes laws are good and sometimes they are not. That sounds good to me, though.
Yes, I’m afraid for all my bombast I don’t know UK law. We have has a terrible history of commercial implementation of ethnic, sex, religious restriction which was nullified by civil rights legislation regulating commercial activity.
I agree that "we can always tell" is a weak argument that should be avoided. Still, I'm not sure it's entirely meritless in certain situations. As an analogy, take a night club that has a "no sneakers" rule for entry. If the bouncer didn't spot the sneakers, one could argue that it's no big deal that those get in anyway. There's no loss of atmosphere. Similarly, one often hears in the trans bathroom debate arguments like "If you couldn't tell, how can it be a problem if trans women use the female bathroom stalls?" *If* that debate was only about female comfort (a big if), it would be tempting to go to the "we can always tell" claim. But as you've nicely argued, there are a lot of downsides to using that claim.
Brilliant argument which can be applied to so many issues.
Women do not deserve single sex spaces!
A case could and should be made that ANY restriction, woman only, male only, trans only...etc. is discrimination. Consider how many formerly 'men's only' clubs or places have been deemed to be discriminatory - the same rules should be applied to that gym.
No one said life is fair, nor should ANY playing field be level, the answer is easy; don't feel safe - DON'T GO!
It could, but I'd oppose that too. I actually have a piece on the go about men having the same right to single sex spaces as women. The only exception to this is in the case of professional associations or clubs where professional contacts are made and opportunities arise.
thing is...men and women who are professionals have plenty of opportunities on their own to make connections. Failure to do that is a personal not societal problem.
Want equality - then everyone plays in the sandbox, otherwise it is just new found hegemony with a misandrist mask!
No, big business really was done almost exclusively in Men's Social Clubs in London.
I'm in the US
Ah, well you have less of an issue where these clubs were based on having gone to one of the notable, private, boys boarding schools.
My problem with this argument is that it always seems to be women who have to give up our spaces. I agree that men should also have their own spaces, but women are always going to be in more physical danger from men than vice-versa. If you say “don’t go if you don’t feel safe”, then eventually that will just be all women’s spaces gone. Single-sex spaces were fought for for a reason
The problem with your argument is: 'The only safe space for women is women only'
Don't give up your spaces then - and don't expect to be allowed in Men Only spaces!
See, you can't have it both ways: be safe or do not mix with your opposite sex.
Well, we're both saying neither sex should have to give up their spaces, but there is a difference between spaces for being undressed and competing in physical contest and spaces for meeting up and having a drink. It's not wrong to point out that sex differences exist and that women are the ones who are disadvantaged by this.
There are two arguments here:
Men and women should both be able to have single sex spaces for any reason.
Men present a physical threat to women that women do not present to men.
You can't really conflate these on political grounds because that won't make any difference at all to the material reality of sex differences.
Good logic, but inaccurate. Men & women do not always have single sex spaces and the word "should" is not a legal one, therefore it is meaningless to your argument.
You think the physical threat men pose to women is greater than the reverse? Then figure out how to live your life without discriminating against men and in doing so, keeping yourself safe.
Your missive makes me wonder how humanity has survived thus far!
I'm not making a legal argument. The law allows or bans all sorts of shit depending on time and place and sometimes its wrong and sometimes it's right. I am arguing for how things should be, not stating how they are under any law of any country.
Yes, men are a greater physical threat to women than women are to men. If a woman is a sex offender or violent and tries to attack a man, he can nearly always fight her off. The same is not true in reverse. I'm sure you know this.
I do live my life without discriminating against men. The exception is in single sex spaces where people are undressing and in sporting categories. This is due to the sex strength difference.
I'm pretty sure humanity has always recognised the sex strength difference.
Geez. John you might have had half of a point about the right of both men and women to have protected spaces, but your point is completely lost by your obtuseness about male strength and statistical propensity toward violence, and by you just generally being unkind.
But no one’s ever been put at risk because country clubs or whatever had to integrate sexes. Of course there are plenty of mixed-sex spaces that are perfectly safe for women, but locker rooms, change rooms etc aren’t. I have no issue with women’s only or men’s only gyms, but when you’re talking about social clubs and that kind of thing, making them single sex can impact people’s lives negatively, career-wise and in other ways. Making a gym single-sex doesn’t negatively affect anyone unless they wanted to creep on other people at the gym
Exceptions to the principle of free association can be made when employment discrimination can be justified, but not in social clubs more broadly.
For liberals, both harm and denial of freedom are negative impacts. Men and women must have the right to set up single sex social spaces as freedom of association. They don't need to show that they are harmed by not having spaces to just be with other men and women. Anybody wanting to deny them the right to make that choice has to show that it does harm to others if they choose it. In cases where others can still go to social clubs that are mixed and are of their own sex and not being able to go to any particular one does not discriminate against them in employment, they should be allowed to make that choice.
Do you have a personal experience to share with the class or are you just a parrot of intolerance?
Go away, John, if you cannot engage seriously.
It is a legitimate question and it deserves an honest answer...is this 'terror' of men because of an incident or is it the meaningless repetitious ramblings of a group rather than a well thought out expression?
Better yet - I'll just block you both!
"A case could and should be made that ANY restriction, woman only, male only, trans only...etc. is discrimination."
But the reason we tend to say that discrimination is bad is that it excludes people without good justification, often to their detriment. Either that, or "discrimination" is practically defined as that kind of exclusion.
There's seldom if ever a good reason for professional networking organizations to be male-only, since being male or female is generally irrelevant to that sort of thing (and to the extent that it is relevant, it's usually because of sexism). On the other hand, women usually have good reasons for not wanting to see penises in spaces where they may themselves be exposed.
It might be helpful to remember that the term "discrimination" need not have a solely negative connotation. We discriminate between children and adults, and much of our legislation is based on that discrimination. We discriminate against adults who want to have sex with children, and it is a morally good thing that we do! We also discriminate against children who want to drive a car on public roads (in the UK), and that's a morally good thing.
So yes, a women's only gym will discriminate against men who want to enter that specific gym - but where is the detriment to men? A man who wants a single sex gym for straight men is just as welcome to establish one as the woman in this case is to establish a women's only gym. There is no detriment that I can see.
Equally, transgender people are welcome to establish their own spaces, but even when they are offered this, it often turns out not to be what they want. In Scotland, a trans-identified natal male doctor was offered a private changing room, but said he did not want this, he wanted access to the women's changing room, in order to change along with the female nurses and doctors.