Crystal

Crystal Instagram – The Tories are introducing a bill to restrict gender neutral loos in public buildings
– This bill is distraction technique from a government desperate to score political points by exploiting culture war issues.
– There is no evidence suggesting that mixed bathrooms are more unsafe than sex segregated ones. Conversely, a Harvard study of 3,700 trans teens with restricted bathroom/locker room access found 37% of them had been sexually assaulted in the last year. Let’s focus on real impacts not hypotheticals.
– And also on the safety point, the other group that will suffer in this scenario are cis people who present gender non-confirming. I’m thinking of butch lesbians for example, many of whom “pass” much less well than a lot of trans women I know. They will be harassed and policed for using the bathroom. Gender neutral restrooms give many (not just trans) people a safe refuge.
– Let’s be very clear – women experience sexual violence, overwhelmingly from men. I’m not minimising that. But if that’s the purported problem we’re trying to solve, we should be holding this government to account to fix broken social services, policing, etc. This bill will do nothing for women’s safety.
– That said, I shouldn’t have rolled my eyes at Jean. But I find her comments about safety disengenous when I believe her goal is denying rights to trans people.
– Separate bathrooms are a patriarchal holdover in a society that has otherwise become very mixed. The idea being that women are vulnerable, and too delicate for male society. It’s a puritanical, reductive way of seeing the world that only enforces gender stereotypes and bolsters patriarchy.
– The bill that Kemi Badenoch has put forward doesn’t even reference safety, it references privacy and dignity. How much more privacy and dignity does someone need than a closed, locked cubicle?
– And In terms of cleanliness: women pee on the seat too. It is a very poor feminism that boils down to “seat up vs seat down”
– Finally, I recognise that these issues do not affect me as much as it affects trans people. I also know most of my trans friends wouldn’t want to have a conversation with Jean. It’s a hard balance and I hope I did ok. | Posted on 07/May/2024 18:10:30