The 37-year-old, who has had the hair loss condition since she was a child, said she was left shocked when a cleaner at the Trinity Square shop asked her “Are you aware you’re in the female toilet?” She said she became distressed and burst into tears.
This is what always happens with terfs. They hate women. Nobody hates women more than terfs. Women who are different than them in any way. Women who don’t fit their extremely narrow definition of what a woman should be. What a woman should look like. What a woman should think.
Terfs hate women.
Transphobia harms everyone, not just trans people. It’s sad that this argument needs to be used, but I’ve heard some cis people find it convincing.
Two cynical takes on “transphobia harms everyone”:
- I only care if it affects me
- trans are only a small percentage of the population, who cares, but if it harms everyone then it makes sense to care
(Not apologizing for transphobia, just deconstructing the thought)
Sure, ideally the way it impacts trans people should be enough. But anything that affects more people negatively is a worse thing.
If I wanted to influence car safety policy, and I can pick from two examples to make my case:
- a car accident kills the person driving it
- a car accident kills everyone inside it and some bystanders
I’d be a fool not to use 2 as an example.
I often think about this. I don’t think it’s wrong to provide selfish reasons to do the right thing.
In the end, the world is full of people with different priorities and ways of thinking, if you restrict yourself to only the “pure” morality arguments it’s not like you can use the purity of your argument to correct the brains of all the people who are not swayed. But if you provide a variety of arguments you’ll convince lots more people.
And in reality most people are not pure selfish or pure selfless. Spoonful of sugar (selfish benefit) helps the medicine (selfless morals) go down.
Not trying to entirely quench your cynicism, just lightly cool it.
I need to copy this down. What a mature and well-reasoned response to much of what is fucked up in the world and how to answer it.
Sadly even this doesn’t help with some people.
I once had a conversation with a particularly tall cis woman who’d briefly been the target of transphobic abuse in a womens’ toilet. She somehow managed to blame this on the existence of trans people 🤷
This is what transphobes want, gender policing not just against trans women, but any woman who doesn’t match up.
She doesn’t even look male.
They can always tell.
They can always guess
When we were paying for parking he chased after us and gave me a bunch of flowers.
That Tesco manager chasing after Helen and her husband with flowers was a class act though.
Helen said she feels the incident in Tesco may have stemmed from the debate in recent years over transgender rights. She said: "I suspect it’s stemming from this which is a shame but I think potentially why people are being more cautious.
"I can understand the cautiousness from a business point of view but they’ve also got to be aware of diversity and people being different. They should not make assumptions on visible differences.
“I just think that we need to raise awareness of the condition and that people do look different. If you’re concerned about something ask privately or sensitively.”
What is this “cautiosness” she’s talking about? There has literally never been a case of a transgender person doing anything inappropriate in a public toilet…
"I can understand the cautiousness from a business point of view but they’ve also got to be aware of diversity and people being different. They should not make assumptions on visible differences.
Isn’t that exactly what the law forces though? To somehow decide based on looks alone who should be in which toilet?
Couldn’t they also just not do that? Surely the law doesn’t require them to hire someone to police the toilets.
Gender neutral toilets could also get around it surely. Worked in multiple places with them and no one has ever cared.
Surely the law doesn’t require them to hire someone to police the toilets.
It pretty much does. Not specifically to have someone dedicated to check everyone, but they have to take reasonable measures and a member of staff speaking up would fall under that.
Why though? Its a toilet. Couldn’t they just say the sign is only suggested genders. Women can clean men’s toilets still.
Point is, there are malicious people, both men and women. I think there have to be security measures in order for it to be impossible (or at least, highly difficult) to do things as spying or putting hidden cameras. But of course, that shouldn’t be done based only in the looks, but mostly in the behaviour. Anyone with a suspicious behaviour should be policed, but that’s like something that should be taken for granted in the first place.
Women can clean men’s toilets still.
About this, I ask rhetorically: would you also say that “men can clean women’s toilets still”? I personally doubt it given a lot of previous experiences on this topic, and I believe that in such a case one must be consistent: either both or neither.
would you also say that “men can clean women’s toilets still”?
Yes. I don’t even see why we need to have gendered toilets in the first place. No one has one at home. Seen a fair few places with a single toilet that is obviously not gendered. Never seen a gendered disabled toilet either.
Well, that’s fair.
In a gender-neutral bath we can have the double of good people to stop any bad person that wants to abuse others while they’re vulnerable, so, yeah, I don’t know either why there is a separation. If anything, there could be gendered baths only for people that feel really uncomfortable in gender-neutral ones, but that’s only to have more options (which is always good).
Exactly what the law enforces will differ by jurisdiction
This is in England.
This is not devolved and I believe the law being refered to is the one that has been clarified in the recent guidance after a supreme court decision.
Health is normally devolved, but this is counted as “human rights”.
Sire but most of “the world” OS not in the US
Sorry I think we are misunderstanding each other. I was talking about the UK as this is a UK specific story and community. I assumed that you were talking about the constituent countries in the UK that have different laws in your previous comment.
May I ask how it is you got here? - I am curious seeing as you’re on a PieFed instance.
My bad. I only ever really browse the top / unfiltered feed, never by community. Fediverse is small enough that there’s only a few active communities and the content is fairly homogenous.
I’m from Australia and am used to explaining to Americans in the fediverse that other jurisdictions exist I guess.
Not sure what you mean about piefed? quokk.au is the dweeb fork of piefed I think?
I think she was just trying to be diplomatic.
Even if there were, that person is responsible for their actions, not an entire category of people.
Yeah. And I don’t doubt there are, but they’re just a minority inside a minority.
If the business were to be cautious, they’d fix their damned toilets to not be gendered, divisive and exclusionary.
What is this “cautiosness” she’s talking about?
The law requires businesses to police toilets somewhat.
That’s nuts.
Just get rid of gendered toilets already. If you can’t play nicely with it, you shouldn’t have it.
The SEATAC airport has a few non-gendered restrooms and they’re pretty nice. There’s a big shared area with sinks, a wall of “stalls” (really fully enclosed toilet rooms, no panel gaps and floor to ceiling doors), and a separate room off in the back with urinals (and an automatic sliding door). Kinda seems like a pretty good solution all around.
It’s close, but sometimes women really do need the whole room as private gendered space, eg to wash blood off clothing.
The best solution is that each stall has its own sink, but that isn’t usually practicable as it takes up more space and reduces the total number of stalls. Five Guys manage it, though.
I’m sorry. Care to explain? Wash blood off clothes? I can’t imagine women standing ass naked in a bathroow washing up her panties and trousers because she got period blood on them? In that case, they can use the disabled room.
In all my years, i have never heard of this and i lived with a very oversharing mother (midwife and sex ed teacher) and with my wife being very open about these things. (Because it’s normal body routines, nothing to be embarrassed about in a relationship)
Women need a gendered space to keep men out, simple as.
And you want it to be the bathroom?
You want men using the bathroom while women are in there? How comfortable do you think a woman would be with men marching in and out of the same restroom with them? Do you actually know any women?! Maybe there’s someone you forgot to ask?
Oh, forgot I’m on lemmy. This simple take will somehow mean I’m anti-trans. 🙄
Honestly I don’t care if the toilets themselves are private. Why are common sinks a problem?
The bathroom is for dumping your shit and piss, washing your hands and getting out. I don’t understand why it’s some kind of hallowed ground to some people.
You need urinals in some fashion, a row of standing urinals can be pretty private if you just have a tall divider, but their throughput is so much higher it would be terrible if you lost them in high traffic areas.
lol you assume that the doors have to be open. you can have floor to ceiling doors like places with gender neutral bathrooms do
You need urinals in some fashion
I don’t think you understand what the word “need” means
TERF Island having a normal one, I see
Better an island than a whole fucking continent of more violent TERFs.
Helen, who appeared as an actress in zombie movie 28 years later, said she decided she did not want to hide her hair loss by wearing wigs.
I just saw that film and didn’t remember which role she had, so I checked IMDB, and it just says “infected women”.
Turns out they gave her really shitty patchy strands of hair as part of that role: https://www.facebook.com/groups/379052361293089/posts/725981959933459/ That was accidentally kind of funny and unexpected.
Helen said she feels the incident in Tesco may have stemmed from the debate in recent years over transgender rights. She said: "I suspect it’s stemming from this which is a shame but I think potentially why people are being more cautious.
"I can understand the cautiousness from a business point of view but they’ve also got to be aware of diversity and people being different. They should not make assumptions on visible differences.
“I just think that we need to raise awareness of the condition and that people do look different. If you’re concerned about something ask privately or sensitively.”
So she’s not against the public harassment of people using toilets per se, just doesn’t want them directed against people with her condition specifically? Girl, visible differences are almost entirely what this boils down to in practice—people being uncomfortable when they see someone who doesn’t look “normal”. Justifying the underlying motive but not the outcome just means you want a carve-out
I don’t see where she gave any such negative opinion? Closest was she said she understood from a business point of view, as in, a business needs to follow the law.
Least surprising instance to be getting pushback from lmao
We’re talking about transphobic nonsense laws that should be rightfully ignored and challenged in court
Sure, but a business isn’t going to be able to do that. The law isn’t unfairly discriminating against businesses, aside from giving them a near impossible task. It’s people affected by these laws who would have to take it to court.
They should not make assumptions on visible differences.
“I just think that we need to raise awareness of the condition and that people do look different.
The concern isn’t about people being targeted, it’s about the wrong people being targeted.
“Visible differences” encompasses everyone.
She has a condition and wants to take the opportunity to highlight the difficulties people with it go through.Neither of these imply malice towards trans people. They’re neutral statements.
Maybe she does feel that way, maybe not; she hasn’t really let on either way.
Once idiots feel empowered to become the Pants-contents Police, this is where it leads.
Why has a company as rich as Tesco still got mostly gendered toilets anyway?
This may have been an entirely innocent interaction, a cleaner - thinking a bloke was in the women’s said that this is the women’s. I’m sure the cleaner was embarrassed to find out that they made a mistake. I think it is blown out of proportion to fan culture wars and generate clicks. Barley newsworthy.
I was once changing my child in the boot of my car when I had long hair and a man assumed I was a woman by “saying excuse me love, where is x”, I turned around and my beard and generally male appearance startled him and he apologised. I then told him where X was. Perhaps I should of went to the BBC and by now I could have had a published autobiography.
