[unitol]

> The trans topic is a wedge issue that has absolutely no impact on 99% of people.

The idea of "gender identity" as based on a subjective inner sense of self, and that "gender identity" must supersede sex, fundamentally reframes a core characteristic of the entire human population.

When implemented in law and policy, this affects everyone.

The impact is mostly on women and girls, for whom female-only spaces are essential for their safety and dignity. Allowing any man who says he's a women into such spaces undermines the very reason they exist in the first place, and effectively destroys them.

This isn't progress; it harms women and girls. It shouldn't be a surprise why so many people are against such changes being imposed.

[TheOtherHobbes]

But dying because a fatally unhealthy pregnancy can't be terminated, or being forced to carry a rape pregnancy to term, or being denied contraception, or being shot in a classroom doesn't harm women and girls?

Your priorities might be considered a little slanted.

Gender identity is used by the right because - like most sex-related issues - it's emotive and triggering. It's a single issue dog whistle.

Given the evidence, there is no reason to believe that anyone who uses it for political gain actually cares about women or girls.

[unitol]

You are making incorrect assumptions about my priorities. I don't support the political right either, for the reasons you mentioned and more.

[InsideOutSanta]

"The impact is mostly on women and girls, for whom female-only spaces are essential for their safety and dignity."

This is an inherently self-contradictory position, because it implies that trans men must be forced into women's spaces.

[unitol]

I don't see how this is a self-contradictory position. Women who've decided to call themselves men are in fact still women.

[InsideOutSanta]

Your position is that this is about protecting women's spaces and making them feel safe and dignified.

Your position is also that somebody like Buck Angel must use the women's bathroom, because he is "in fact still a woman."

My assertion is that this is contradictory, because forcing somebody like Buck Angel to use the womens' bathroom will make women and girls feel less safe, not more.

[unitol]

This is about every female-only space, not just bathrooms.

Consider prisons, for example. There have been many cases recently of male criminals being transferred to the female prison estate, on the basis of their self-declared so-called "female gender identity", who have then raped and in some cases impregnated women incarcerated with them.

It should be obvious that the same risk is not present from other female prisoners. Even if they happen to look very butch and/or hirsute. So keeping prisons single-sex is clearly a much better policy for incarcerated women.

Even for bathroom spaces, the prospect of laws that penalize males who decide to use female bathrooms is good news. This is because the threat of negative consequences for such behavior makes it much less likely that any such males will even bother trying, which means that women in general will not only be safer, but also can feel safer, because they know that any individuals encountered in these spaces are almost certainly female. Even if, like Buck Angel, they don't conform to feminine stereotypes.

[InsideOutSanta]

"It should be obvious that the same risk is not present from other female prisoners"

This is false. Female inmates are raped by female inmates, and male inmates are raped by male inmates. This is a "rape in prison" problem, not a trans women problem. In fact, rape of biological women by trans women in prison is extremely rare.

And, again, your stated hypothesis is self-contradictory, because it implies that the problem of inmates getting raped is solved by putting trans women in male prisons, which is plainly false. It will likely increase the number of rapes.

"the prospect of laws that penalize males who decide to use female bathrooms is good news"

I remember tiredly accidentally using a women's bathroom after a long flight. I'm not looking forward to being punished for it because of the latest moral panic. I'm sure all of the women who are falsely accused of being men because they don't conform to societal stereotypes of what women look like also feel much safer.

Meanwhile, there are, as far as I can ascertain, currently no cases of trans women assaulting biological women in women's bathrooms. I'm sure cases exist, but they must be exceedingly rare.

There are, however, plenty of cases of trans women being assaulted (and, in some cases, murdered) in men's bathrooms.

[unitol]

Rape of female prisoners by male prisoners is extremely rare overall because, thankfully, most prisons are still segregated by sex. However, in every jurisdiction that has decided to implement a policy of housing prisoners by self-declared "gender identity", this has - as everyone against such policy predicted - made the problem of sexual assault and rape in prisons worse, because this enables predatory males access to female victims, who are trapped in prison with these men.

This is why we have single-sex prisons in the first place, because of the inevitable harm to women, through violence, sexual assault, rape and unwanted pregnancy, that was committed against them by male prisoners in mixed-sex prison systems. Look up the work of Elizabeth Fry: she and other prison reformers extensively documented the horrors of prisons in Victorian England and in particular the awful impact upon women of being incarcerated with men.

Exactly the same is happening now, in the 21st century, because of these misogynistic "gender identity" policies that benefit males while deliberately ignoring the risks and harms inflicted upon women.

[foldr]

You’re assuming that most women would rather share bathrooms with trans men than with trans women. I suspect that were these mad ideas ever to be fully implemented in practice, we’d find that that was not in fact their revealed preference.

The truth is that most of the people currently stirring up a moral panic around gender are barely even aware of the existence of trans men and simply haven’t thought this through properly. Which isn’t surprising, as they don’t care about the issue itself, but only its potential as a political wedge.

[unitol]

It's a reasonable assumption that most women prefer to share female spaces with other women, regardless of how they look, and not with male intruders who have decided to disregard women's boundaries for their own pleasure while falsely identifying themselves as women.