I think those “spaces” debate definitely invoke why the division exhibits in the first place. For example when someone is worried about a trans person attacking someone in one bathroom or the other, they very clearly are invoking the fact that the bathrooms are segregated to reduce violence. In girls’ sports, it’s always about competition, body size, some sort of social benefit of promoting women, bathroom privacy. I just don’t think you’ve diagnosed the right problem here. Like as soon as someone gets to the word “because” in their argument about trans rights, they talk about why that gender segregation exists.
Yeah, I agree about the “clearly invoking ‘bathroom segregation [is intended to] reduce violence’ ”. I do think “they” are mistaken about that, however.
I had heard that the actual historical cause of bathroom segregation was originally an attempt to obstruct women’s (at that time) attempt to do more things outside the home.
The story goes: various places made bathroom segregation laws (using the “reducing violence” justification as a maybe-true-if-actually-implemented-as-implied excuse), and then built only men’s bathrooms, or a very disproportionate number of toilets in men’s rooms as compared to toilets in women’s rooms, or placed the women’s rooms in much more inconvenient locations like on different floors. This regime ended years later with further laws requiring certain equalities in men’s versus women’s bathrooms, leaving behind the actual bathroom segregation as a historical artifact, rather than it today being a measure implemented for the purpose of addressing a known violence problem.
Non-sequitur: it’s my estimate that more total violence results in the hypothetical where strict bathroom-matching-birth laws send trans folks into bathrooms in which they visibly do not belong, than in the hypothetical where t is is not the case. (Recall Social Dark Matter: the vast majority of trans folks do not stand out as such—they look like their chosen gender.) Despite it (supposedly) slightly reducing violence targeting cisgender folks in exchange for an increase in violence targeting transgender folks, I worry this trade-off is acknowledged and considered acceptable.
In the absence of these laws, the standard advice I hear trans folks give each other is “use the bathroom that matches your appearance, even if that means using a dispreferred bathroom because you don’t yet or can’t look the part” “or you know, keep an eye out for the rare nonsegregated or single-occupancy bathroom”.
I think those “spaces” debate definitely invoke why the division exhibits in the first place. For example when someone is worried about a trans person attacking someone in one bathroom or the other, they very clearly are invoking the fact that the bathrooms are segregated to reduce violence. In girls’ sports, it’s always about competition, body size, some sort of social benefit of promoting women, bathroom privacy. I just don’t think you’ve diagnosed the right problem here. Like as soon as someone gets to the word “because” in their argument about trans rights, they talk about why that gender segregation exists.
Yeah, I agree about the “clearly invoking ‘bathroom segregation [is intended to] reduce violence’ ”. I do think “they” are mistaken about that, however.
I had heard that the actual historical cause of bathroom segregation was originally an attempt to obstruct women’s (at that time) attempt to do more things outside the home.
The story goes: various places made bathroom segregation laws (using the “reducing violence” justification as a maybe-true-if-actually-implemented-as-implied excuse), and then built only men’s bathrooms, or a very disproportionate number of toilets in men’s rooms as compared to toilets in women’s rooms, or placed the women’s rooms in much more inconvenient locations like on different floors. This regime ended years later with further laws requiring certain equalities in men’s versus women’s bathrooms, leaving behind the actual bathroom segregation as a historical artifact, rather than it today being a measure implemented for the purpose of addressing a known violence problem.
Non-sequitur: it’s my estimate that more total violence results in the hypothetical where strict bathroom-matching-birth laws send trans folks into bathrooms in which they visibly do not belong, than in the hypothetical where t is is not the case. (Recall Social Dark Matter: the vast majority of trans folks do not stand out as such—they look like their chosen gender.) Despite it (supposedly) slightly reducing violence targeting cisgender folks in exchange for an increase in violence targeting transgender folks, I worry this trade-off is acknowledged and considered acceptable.
In the absence of these laws, the standard advice I hear trans folks give each other is “use the bathroom that matches your appearance, even if that means using a dispreferred bathroom because you don’t yet or can’t look the part” “or you know, keep an eye out for the rare nonsegregated or single-occupancy bathroom”.