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[–]GenderbenderShe/her/hers 3 insightful - 8 fun3 insightful - 7 fun4 insightful - 8 fun -  (3 children)

What difference does it make if the strangers are male or female? You still don't know them, their intentions, etc.

[–]MarkTwainiac 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

But it's not just strangers we're talking about here. It's also family members, school classmates, work colleagues, neighbors...

The fact is, most communal change rooms are open-plan - and due to space constraints, that's how they most likely will always stay. Which means you're arguing that all families who go to a swimming pool or water park together should have to change in & out of their bathing suits with one another regardless of their different ages & sex. In other words, MA moms, teenage daughters & senior citizen grannies should have to be naked in front of MA dads, adolescent & teen boys, & elderly grandpas - and vice versa. As though in families, bodily privacy & sex boundaries should not be a thing.

Leaving aside female people entirely, as you clearly don't care about the vast majority of girls & women, the policy you advocate would be particularly hard on a segment of the sex you DO care about, namely pubescent & teen boys. Much to their embarrassment, males of that age get spontaneous erections and often find their dicks get stiff & stand up visibly at the slightest stimuli - including seeing their mums & grannies & sisters in their knickers, or sometimes just being in close physical proximity to their female relatives when fully dressed. The young males in these situations might be the sweetest, kindest boys in the world, with all the best intentions - but their bodies are still gonna do what the bodies of boys that age tend to do. Perhaps if you'd raised some boys you'd know that.

You're also saying that co-workers & classmates of the opposite sex should be forced to share toilets, change rooms & showers in schools and workplace settings. Where does that leave all the girls & women who want a measure of privacy when dealing with intimate bodily matters specific to the female sex like menstruation, flooding due to menopause & fibroids, pregnancy, breast leakage & miscarriages - many of which happen outside the home? Can't you see that many girls & women would feel uncomfortable washing blood off their hands & clothing, or washing out moon cups, with their male workmates & classmates looking on? Many girls & women have had instances where we've had to remove our skirts or trousers to wash blood off them at the sinks in communal loos, activities that can't be done in the stall. Similarly, a majority of breastfeeding women who work outside the home have had occasion to need to remove their tops to remove splotches of leaked breast milk, which again can only be done at the sinks rather than in the stalls. Then again, perhaps you think girls & women should have wash our hands & clothing off & rinse our moon cups by dunking them in the toilet bowls.

And where does your policy leave all the boys & men who feel bashful about taking a crap with their female work colleagues & classmates in the room? And all the boys & men who like to nip into the loo during the day for a stress-relieving wank? Don't you think the policy you advocate would be a discomfiting imposition on them, their privacy, bodily freedoms & peace of mind too?

[–]GenderbenderShe/her/hers 3 insightful - 7 fun3 insightful - 6 fun4 insightful - 7 fun -  (1 child)

The fact is, most communal change rooms are open-plan - and due to space constraints, that's how they most likely will always stay. Which means you're arguing that all families who go to a swimming pool or water park together should have to change in & out of their bathing suits with one another regardless of their different ages & sex. In other words, MA moms, teenage daughters & senior citizen grannies should have to be naked in front of MA dads, adolescent & teen boys, & elderly grandpas - and vice versa. As though in families, bodily privacy & sex boundaries should not be a thing.

Then maybe we should have separate facilities based on age as well. Old women go here, young women go here. MA women go here.

Leaving aside female people entirely, as you clearly don't care about the vast majority of girls & women, the policy you advocate would be particularly hard on a segment of the sex you DO care about, namely pubescent & teen boys. Much to their embarrassment, males of that age get spontaneous erections and often find their dicks get stiff & stand up visibly at the slightest stimuli - including seeing their mums & grannies & sisters in their knickers, or sometimes just being in close physical proximity to their female relatives when fully dressed. The young males in these situations might be the sweetest, kindest boys in the world, with all the best intentions - but their bodies are still gonna do what the bodies of boys that age tend to do. Perhaps if you'd raised some boys you'd know that.

You're saying "boys will just be boys" and are destined to harass women no matter what.

And where does your policy leave all the boys & men who feel bashful about taking a crap with their female work colleagues & classmates in the room? And all the boys & men who like to nip into the loo during the day for a stress-relieving wank? Don't you think the policy you advocate would be a discomfiting imposition on them, their privacy, bodily freedoms & peace of mind too?

I've used the men's restroom many times, and most men didn't care.

[–]adungitit 7 insightful - 4 fun7 insightful - 3 fun8 insightful - 4 fun -  (0 children)

You're saying "boys will just be boys" and are destined to harass women no matter what.

Gotta love it when liberals argue that protections of women from male violence are misandrist. Men harrassing and assaulting women is not the fault of women, nor is it up to women to fix men being fucked up and misogynistic. It's up to MEN to get their act together and stop preying on women in such high numbers that women need spaces free of them just to lead a semblance of a normal public life (which is the entire reason why feminists advocated for these spaces in the first place). Women's spaces are not the reason why men prey on women. It is absolutely fucked up to blame women and their spaces which exist as protection from male violence for the continuation of said male violence. Stripping protections of vulnerable groups because that's supposed to teach men not to assault women isn't going to make men not assault women. Even if your twisted misogynistic logic made sense, we literally have centuries of history where women lacked any spaces and protections, and guess which half of humanity specifically abused that to the point of having institutionalised ownership and rape of women, and guess which one didn't?