you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]questioningtw[S] 5 insightful - 6 fun5 insightful - 5 fun6 insightful - 6 fun -  (5 children)

Ok, but how are you going to gatekeep who uses the woman's room? If you didn't know these people where trans because of youtube, then you would jut see them as other women. Women can have masculine features, in fact there have been natal woman that have been kicked out of the woman's bathroom because they looked "too male"

I also highly disagree with you that Natalie Wynn looks like a man.

[–]MarkTwainiac 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Ok, but how are you going to gatekeep who uses the woman's room? If you didn't know these people where trans because of youtube, then you would jut see them as other women.

Until recently in history, there was no need for "gatekeeping" of women's rooms because sex-segregation in communal toileting was learned early on in life and then self-imposed. Kids were raised to know that once a male child turns 8, he's got to use the facilities for his own sex - and by and large, males across the board kept to this rule. There was no need in the past to post sentries outside of women's restrooms in schools, workplaces and the public sphere - or outside female change rooms, locker rooms, hospital wards etc - coz droves of boys and men on a daily basis weren't trying to enter, use and claim female spaces, and those boys & men that did try to gain access to women's toilets, locker rooms, change rooms, spaces in HCFs etc were widely seen by everyone as either up to no good, or as confused & lost.

It's like anything else in society. When people drive cars, we don't need to have sentries and traffic cops posted every few feet to keep us from straying into oncoming traffic, taking over the bus or bike lane, driving on sidewalks and lawns or putting our foot on the gas and ramming other vehicles, running people over or crashing into buildings. Everyone knows the rules. Everyone knows which lane different vehicles belong in, and for the most part when we are behind the wheel, we all "stay in our lane" - and keep from driving on sidewalks, lawns, footpaths and into buildings too. When in doubt, there are visual cues - lines on the road, signs that say "Bike lane," "HOV only" or "No Trucks over XX weight" - to keep us all in line, as it were. Much like the signs that designate which restrooms are for which sex.

The customary and easiest way to make sure "gatekeeping" of women's toilets happens in a society is to raise children, particularly male children, to show the same awareness of, and respect for, sex differences and the female sex that we teach drivers to have for the various kinds of motor vehicles that use the roads, for the various kinds of spaces - sidewalks, lawns, footpaths, buildings - as well as for pedestrians and users of other kinds of wheeled vehicles (bicycles, skateboards, wheelchairs, prams and strollers, walkers, horse-drawn carts found in places like the USA's Amish country).

Used to be, children were raised with a solid grasp of the physical differences between the sexes. This started with teaching little kids that males and females have different urinary anatomy, and as a result we urinate differently and thus require different setups and fixtures to accommodate our different bodies - urinals for males, toilets with seats in enclosed stalls with toilet paper handy for females.

Used to be, children of both sexes growing up were also taught that girls and women menstruate, sometimes vaginally bleed for other reasons, can get pregnant, give birth, breastfeed, have miscarriages, go through menopause and can have a host of "lady problems" like pregnancy-related nausea & vomiting, frequency of urination, piles and urinary incontinence; cystitis; vaginal infections; childbirth injuries; leaking breasts if newly post-partum or breastfeeding; heavy bleeding occasioning leaks; age-related urinary and fecal incontinence and so on that give female humans myriad reasons to visit/need toilet facilities that go beyond "just peeing" and shitting - and which often cause us to take a longer time when we use these facilities too. For these reasons - and the fact that female urination as well as attending to menstruation and other issues involving our vaginas requires we partially disrobe so that our bottoms and vulvas are bared - it used to be the case that people of both sexes took it for granted that girls and women have a need for special toilet provisions and privacy in public/communal toilets that males don't.

At the same time, kids of both sexes used to be raised with an awareness of social boundaries; a respect for the basic bodily privacy of self and others; an understanding that different people have different needs, standards and feelings around bodily privacy; a basic grasp that outside the privacy of one's own home everyone has to practice some modicum of self-control and regulation; knowledge that not everyone gets everything they want in life at all times (or in many cases ever at all); and awareness that people's rights and wishes in societies often conflict. Moreover, as the concepts of women's rights and civil rights emerged, expanded and became widely accepted, people of both sexes used to be raised to believe that where desires conflict, it's not acceptable or fair to assume that those who are bigger, stronger, more aggressive, more selfish, more entitled, more privileged and in possession of more political power, higher social status and well, balls, should be able to use their greater size, strength, aggression, selfishness, entitlement, privilege, power, social status and balls to ride roughshod over the rights of others who are smaller, weaker, meeker, less selfish, less entitled, with less power, lower social status and no balls.

But in recent decades, something very wrong seems to have occurred with the way that many people have been raised and what they have learned in their formative years, and with what many males already into middle age have now come to believe. As a result, many males nowadays are very blatant in displaying an attitude that says, in essence, wherever I want to go and whatever I want to take must opened up or given to me as my right - girls and women be damned. Though they claim to be some kind of women, and they venerate and imitate what they & other males define as "feminine," to me males like BW and Contrapoints seem to have very little understanding of what being female means, and little respect for girls & women. When the rubber meets the road, as it were, males who say they want to be women almost always put their own desire and compulsion to use female spaces over the desire and need of girls & women to have spaces that are for our sex alone.

I also highly disagree with you that Natalie Wynn looks like a man.

Please C&P where I said Wynn looks like a man. I don't think I did.

Women can have masculine features, in fact there have been natal woman that have been kicked out of the woman's bathroom because they looked "too male"

I've been using female toilet facilities, locker rooms, change rooms and such for nearly 70 years, and I have never heard or seen this happening. Women have always known that many women have "masculine features" and most girls & women have not had an issue with it. We all know that there's a wide variety in the way girls & women look. Moreover, girls & women grow up fully aware that those women who start out life looking "feminine" very often develop "masculine features" when we age.

If your claim that some women have been kicked out of women's facilities for looking too masculine really is true, my hunch is that this has happened only rarely - and mostly in recent years when consumer capitalism and the gender identity movement have brought back sexist sex stereotypes in a big way. And when, for all the talk of "tolerance" and "inclusivity," young people have become more focused than ever on looks & as a result of genderism are unfortunately inclined to make wholly erroneous snap judgments about which sex a person is based on superficial aspects like hair length, clothing style, makeup wearing (or absence), accessory choice, & whether one has long lacquered fingernails.

I personally have been told several times in recent years by genderists that I and many other women past 50 are not real women coz in their view our age, personal style and manner put us outside the narrow parameters that they rely on to define what a woman is & what women should look like. In my view, it's ascribing to such sexist and ageist sex-stereotyped thinking that's the problem - not the fact that many women don't fit the stereotypes that sexists & ageists want to impose on us. Whereas your view seems to be that the solution here is to embrace sexist and ageist thinking even more, so that young males and like BW & Contra who present as "feminine" and "girly" can use ladies loos - and all the female people who don't do femininity but nevertheless need privacy, safety & peace of mind coz of our female bodies (bodies that tend to grow increasingly frail & vulnerable as we grow old & less "feminine") will be left with no place to go.

[–]questioningtw[S] 5 insightful - 5 fun5 insightful - 4 fun6 insightful - 5 fun -  (3 children)

I owe you an apology. I misread what you said in your paragraph about the surgeries and hormones. I do think gender dysphoria is a type of disorder and people that suffer from it shouldn't be automatically labeled as freaks and predators because of it.

[–]MarkTwainiac 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Apology accepted!

I do think gender dysphoria is a type of disorder and people that suffer from it shouldn't be automatically labeled as freaks and predators because of it.

I agree. But recognizing and saying someone's sex and pointing out they don't belong in the spaces meant for the opposite sex is not the same as labelling them freaks and predators. At all.

Lots of people have all sorts of mental health disorders and physical disorders. But "gender dysphoria" is the only condition constantly employed by those who sufferer from it as a tool of tyranny and as a truncheon aimed at others, particularly the 51% of the human race who are female. It's the only mental health problem used by males as justification for denying female people basic rights - such as the right to safety, privacy, dignity and peace of mind when attending to our intimate bodily needs in communal settings; the right to fair play in sports; the right to have names - girls, women, female humans - for ourselves that reflect the fact that we have special biology that makes us different to members of your sex; the right not to be forced to lie; the right not to be coerced into playing along with other people's fantasy lives.

Why is this one mental health condition so privileged?

[–]questioningtw[S] 5 insightful - 6 fun5 insightful - 5 fun6 insightful - 6 fun -  (1 child)

Do you think with the right kind of mental health care people wouldn't even need to transition? FTMS exist too, so it isn't all MTFS, or o you thik they transition for different reasons?

[–]MarkTwainiac 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

My hunch - and hope - is that yes with the right kind of mental health care, a great many people who now identify as trans would learn to better accept their bodies, appearance and the realities of their sex; would develop far healthier, more robust and resilient self-concepts & much improved self-esteem both in amount & durability; would come to understand where their ideas about, and preoccupation with, restrictive sex stereotypes came from; and would be supported to live in as nonconforming a way as they desire and to realize that in vast numbers of communities in countries like the US and UK they can live happy lives with full social acceptance coz huge swathes of the population got used to men wearing makeup & "women's clothes" and to women with very short hair in trousers who look "butch" many decades ago.

Clearly, therapy for someone (male or female) who is same-sex attracted, developed gender dysphoria in childhood & embraced a trans identity as a result of growing up in a homophobic, conservative home and milieu would be different to the therapy required by a heterosexual adolescent or adult male who has adopted an opposite sex identity coz of the sexual fetish known as AGP that he's been reinforcing on the daily by immersion in sissy porn.

My sense is that most FTMs today as in past decades are motivated by the desire/need to escape from being further sexualized and further sexually objectified, by a whole bunch of internalized misogyny, as well as coz they have a host of other mental health issues they're seeking a surefire and easy fix for.

IMO, anyone who sees a therapist - especially those with "gender" issues - would be best served by one who is well versed in the very different ways that males and females are socialized as well as in human biological sex. And who is well-versed in the various psychoanalytic schools as well as in practical therapies like CBT. And of course, the therapist needs to be a kind, compassionate person who is able to see each client/patient as an individual and not bring their own issues & ideologies into the therapeutic relationship. Unfortunately, all the "gender therapists" I've read about do the opposite.