Ask Lemmy

The thing you have to understand about TERF ideology is that they think:

• Men are evil rapists
• Women are dainty weak little waifs
• And, of course, gender is immutably determined by sex assigned at birth

So naturally they think trans women are evil rapey men trying to infiltrate women's spaces, while trans men are weak-willed stupid little girls who've been seduced into Gender and don't know any better.

Very feminist, much radical.

Every time a women came into the men’s bathroom I just assumed it was urgent and that the women’s bathroom was occupied or closed. Never had any different thought.

Edit: I don’t think any sane man would care if a female, trans, cyborg or alien would go pee.

Terf ideology more or less boils down to

Transwomen are predatorial men

Trans men are foolish women who were tricked

They probably don't believe in enbies.

Nope. Because it's about policing women and the appearance of women and the gender norms of women while pretending to be so very very concerned about the safety of women.

I’m a dude and have used the women’s room a lot of times.

Sometimes you gotta shit and dudes rooms don’t always have seats.

I dare you to live on the road with a punk rock band and only use one genders bathroom for the whole tour.

You’ll shit your pants.

No. They should be considering this, given that plenty of trans men look like large and intimidating men (because they are), and they'll be forced to use womens' restrooms if the TERFs had their way.

Ultimately, the restroom issue is only superficial. TERFs (and other bigots) will pick issues like this, but they don't actually care about the issues they're yelling about. What they really care about is keeping their privilege and their sense of superiority. And that requires having a "them" group to put down and exclude, to clutch their pearls around.

So when you see irrational takes like the restroom thing, remember that it's irrational because it's not actually important to them (though they themselves likely don't realize that).

I mean, *phobes have little problem with also being hypocrites.

TERFs don't want trans people using any toilet. TERFs want to push trans people out of public life, and ideally to stop existing all together, by making existing in it as difficult as possible.

I think the main reason people aren’t as concerned about trans men using men’s restrooms is that they don’t pose any more physical threat to the men in there than any other man would. A trans woman using the women’s restroom, on the other hand, is seen - fairly or not - as potentially introducing a physical dynamic that some people find more concerning.

I mean, even a cis woman could walk into a men’s restroom and most guys wouldn’t care. At my local swimming hall, there’s often a cleaning lady washing the floors in the men’s locker and shower area while guys are completely naked around her, and no one bats an eye. Now imagine the chaos if a 50-year-old male cleaner walked into the women’s showers - completely different reaction.

For the same reason most don't care if a trans male athlete wants to play against cis men but they do care when it's the other way around.

I think one thing that most people can agree on is that they prefer walking into an empty public restroom. ~~Nobody~~ few of us like using the facilities while under observation.

As far as I can tell, no. No one ever seems to care. I can only assume it's because they view men as the "dominant" sex and women as "weak".

It's not a TERF thing. Nearly no one cares about who goes into a "Men's" Restroom and it's always been that way.

They celebrated when Noah Ruiz (a trans man) was assaulted by men for being in the “wrong” bathroom (he had been told to go to the woman’s.)

They don't want trans men in women's bathrooms either. They want trans people to not be able to use public bathrooms at all.

Here is a video in which Katy Montgomerie (a fairly well know trans campaigner) discusses this: https://youtu.be/vmH6S_jwbl4

Doesn’t this just follow long established gender norms (self referential joke intended)?

As a thought exercise assume two genders and consider your reaction toward using the wrong restroom.

• most people would be up in arms over a man using a woman’s bathroom
• it may be novel for a woman to use the men’s room but does anyone really care? Think of a big event where there’s a huge line at the women’s room. Aside from annoyance at potentially having to wait, do you really care if some of the women use the men’s room? Or a high end bar/club? I’ve been in several that have a woman as a restroom attendant and my only concern is why do I need an attendant, why do I need to tip someone I’d prefer wasn’t there, regardless of gender. Again, I’ve never heard anyone complain.

So it actually does make sense for this issue to be an outgrowth of long standing societal norms, but maybe it’s an opportunity to have a deeper discussion about why we do that and whether/when it’s warranted at all. We had shared bathrooms in college and everyone survived (although I was always frustrated that I never used it as an opportunity for “fun”)

They’re seriously more bothered about there being a trans woman in a different cubicle where you can’t see each other than if it was a lesbian perving on your sounds, or a gay man being at the stand ups and sneaking a look at your winky (12” flaccid before you ask). This is not stuff normal people care about.

Not worried about lesbians though