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What a tough problem to solve. My current thought on the gender identity issue is that society should default to the absolute minimum amount of categorizing pe

What a tough problem to solve. My current thought on the gender identity issue is that society should default to the absolute minimum amount of categorizing people by their gender. What you identify as only matters to the extent that we divide people. Nobody would care if you used the women's bathroom, if such a thing did not exist. And when it is absolutely necessary for a distinction to exist, then we can spend the effort required to justify why, and along with that justification we should be able to clearly identify how it applies to transgender individuals. This would mean throwing out a lot of the more epheremeral complaints "I feel unsafe if there is a man in the bathroom." Why? Let's fix that part, then. Because there are going to be scary women too. I don't know. I don't have a really good answer I feel comfortable with. I do think a significant part of the problem, however, is not ideological, it is technological. It's way, way too easy to pile on with very little effort.

IncRnd 5y ago
> This would mean throwing out a lot of the more epheremeral complaints "I feel unsafe if there is a man in the bathroom." Why? Let's fix that part, then. Because there are going to be scary women too. Do you recognize that there are actual reasons that a woman might not want to go into a bathroom with 5 men in it?
- Udik 5y ago
  That they peed all around the toilet?
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  I recognize that. But isn’t that also a form of discrimination? The suggestion is that all men are capable of being perverts, using their camera phones inappropriately, bathroom harassment, etc. To build gender-specific bathrooms because of that generalization of men is hypocritical of the entire gender discrimination movement. Reverse discrimination.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  Careful, it sounds like you might be banning 99% of a minority because 1% behaved badly. I know that's not what you intend. :)
- tomp 5y ago
  It took a lot of mental self-awareness on my part, and reading a lot of such statements, to recognise how strongly I've been mentally programmed (brainwashed) by society to think of men as evil, and not even flinch when I used to read statements like the one above (implying / assuming that men are, by default, extremely violent and dangerous, and that everyone is justified by judging every man as such). It's easier to see if you replace "men" (currently a non-favoured demographic) by e.g. "black" (currently a favoured demographic). > Do you recognize that there are actual reasons that a white person might not want to go into a bathroom with 5 black people in it?
  - bjoli 5y ago
    I am a man, and I don't want to go in to the same bathroom as 5 other men, especially not of they are a group and drunk. The reason is simple: I have found it much more common for men to take pleasure in having power over other people by threat of violence. They are assholes of course, but that shit is pretty common. I would even claim that anyone that says otherwise probably never did more than 4 pub rounds. Or went to a public school.
    - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
      There’s also actual data that black people commit an outsized percentage of violent crime in the US yet any statement like this with “black” substituted for “men” would be downvoted into oblivion. The common argument is that it’s really society’s mistreatment of black people which is to blame for the criminality. Why is that same argument not applied here?
      - jsaflas 5y ago
        Let's concede your argument that Black men are more dangerous than white men (I don't think so, at least not due to genetic differences). At best the data shows a factor of 2 more violent. Men are more violent than women by 2 orders of magnitude. And, unlike your example, there is no doubt its physiological in nature We have testicles and therefore are frothing with testosterone. And it's not unique to humans; farmers castrate bulls to make them docile in an ox team.
- distrill 5y ago
  There are other solutions than what you're describing. I've been in a number of bars with unsexed bathrooms, where the sinks are all in the open and there are private secure individual stalls. I don't know that this is the best solution, but it does remove the gender distinction from the bathrooms and it certainly isn't "a bathroom with 5 men in it".
iammisc 5y ago
> This would mean throwing out a lot of the more epheremeral complaints "I feel unsafe if there is a man in the bathroom." Why? Let's fix that part, then. Because there are going to be scary women too. You realize having a woman's bathroom was a thing many early feminist groups fought for right?
LatteLazy 5y ago
I sympathise. Sadly society seems to be moving the other way recently: my gym and pool both have significant women's only hours and classes. My previous employer had women only sessions with the ceo to promote more women faster. There was a brief moment a few years ago when the government here (limey Britian) said people would be allowed to pick their gender without involving doctors/bureaucrats. I liked the idea, it's equality on steroids. Long queue for the ladies? Identify as a man for 5 minutes! Accidently go to the gym at 7 on a Wednesday? Be a girl for 90 minutes so you can work out! Link for when the policy was dropped https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/22/uk-government-drops-gender-self-identification-plan-for-trans-people https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/22/uk-governmen...
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  > Long queue for the ladies? Identify as a man for 5 minutes! Accidently go to the gym at 7 on a Wednesday? Be a girl for 90 minutes so you can work out! I like this. I’ve already identified to my employer that I’m partially Black even though, to the best of my knowledge, I’m not. They can’t deny it and it only benefits them (they can increase their ratios of minority employers which is public data). I can choose to identify as black if I like.
  - long_time_gone 5y ago
    ==I can choose to identify as black if I like.== What is the benefit for you? Is it trolling?
    - LatteLazy 5y ago
      I'm not OP. I generally answer the ethnicity question randomly. This is because: * I don't like be lumped into "white British" * the whole question is rude imho (why does the gym need to know my race and sexuality!?) * services I use shouldn't shouldn't lose "points" because of my colour/religion/sexuality/shoe-size
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Let us say that the OP believes in reincarnation and believes that his soul is black, used to live in black bodies, and was mistakenly reincarnated into a white body on this occasion, but still feels black and carries memories of being black. Quite a lot of people on Earth believe in reincarnation and would find such a situation entirely possible. The question is, is a Western country obliged to respect a religious argument like this? Maybe yes. After all, race is said to be a social construct. Why not add reincarnation into the mix.
HideousKojima 5y ago
>"I feel unsafe if there is a man in the bathroom." Why? Because men (biological males if we're being pedantic) are statistically overwhelmingly more likely to commit rape and other forms of sexual assault (and other violent crimes) and to be horny creepy perverted sex pests in general. Add to that the fact that men are much more physically strong than women (a ~5th percentile male is about as strong as a ~95th percentile female) and the options a woman has to defend themselves against such a creep are severely limited. But if you insist on creating a New Soviet Woman that isn't afraid of men, be my guest. Just do it far away from me in a different country, please.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  IMO bringing statistical likelihoods into it is a dangerous road to go down and could lead to some seriously problematic outcomes. For example, what if people in certain socioeconomic groups are more likely to commit rape? Or people of certain ethnicities? Would it make sense to require them to use separate bathrooms? Or is it only ok to slice and dice the stats based on certain characteristics? To me it's kind of a scary idea— just because a certain demographic is more likely to commit a crime doesn't mean we should make life difficult for all members of that demographic. Even if their facilities are, in theory, separate but equal.
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    My rule for any of these things are all or nothing, in the margins lie chaos. I think a private business should be able to have as many or as few bathrooms for as many categories and groups as they feel like. But if you're going to block them from doing that, you'd better block them from splitting up bathrooms on any basis, otherwise all sorrs of special interest groups and lobbying groups will be looking to make special exceptions and cutouts that help their group and hurt their enemies, it's inevitable.
    - 5y ago
exporectomy 5y ago
I agree except that I don't think we understand which ways of dividing ourselves are really biologically (including psychologically) important and which are just cultural and can be changed with the right environment. Culture often encodes biological needs that we don't really understand.
- freemint 5y ago
  I would rephrase it as: "Culture often encodes biological needs that we are not sure we did understand because nothing like that was written down and today we have a very good idea of our biological needs and can probably design more consistent or at least more utilitarian rules of culture" Do you think you could agree with that?

IncRnd 5y ago

> This would mean throwing out a lot of the more epheremeral complaints "I feel unsafe if there is a man in the bathroom." Why? Let's fix that part, then. Because there are going to be scary women too. Do you recognize that there are actual reasons that a woman might not want to go into a bathroom with 5 men in it?

Udik 5y ago
That they peed all around the toilet?
TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
I recognize that. But isn’t that also a form of discrimination? The suggestion is that all men are capable of being perverts, using their camera phones inappropriately, bathroom harassment, etc. To build gender-specific bathrooms because of that generalization of men is hypocritical of the entire gender discrimination movement. Reverse discrimination.
LatteLazy 5y ago
Careful, it sounds like you might be banning 99% of a minority because 1% behaved badly. I know that's not what you intend. :)
tomp 5y ago
It took a lot of mental self-awareness on my part, and reading a lot of such statements, to recognise how strongly I've been mentally programmed (brainwashed) by society to think of men as evil, and not even flinch when I used to read statements like the one above (implying / assuming that men are, by default, extremely violent and dangerous, and that everyone is justified by judging every man as such). It's easier to see if you replace "men" (currently a non-favoured demographic) by e.g. "black" (currently a favoured demographic). > Do you recognize that there are actual reasons that a white person might not want to go into a bathroom with 5 black people in it?
- bjoli 5y ago
  I am a man, and I don't want to go in to the same bathroom as 5 other men, especially not of they are a group and drunk. The reason is simple: I have found it much more common for men to take pleasure in having power over other people by threat of violence. They are assholes of course, but that shit is pretty common. I would even claim that anyone that says otherwise probably never did more than 4 pub rounds. Or went to a public school.
  - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
    There’s also actual data that black people commit an outsized percentage of violent crime in the US yet any statement like this with “black” substituted for “men” would be downvoted into oblivion. The common argument is that it’s really society’s mistreatment of black people which is to blame for the criminality. Why is that same argument not applied here?
    - jsaflas 5y ago
      Let's concede your argument that Black men are more dangerous than white men (I don't think so, at least not due to genetic differences). At best the data shows a factor of 2 more violent. Men are more violent than women by 2 orders of magnitude. And, unlike your example, there is no doubt its physiological in nature We have testicles and therefore are frothing with testosterone. And it's not unique to humans; farmers castrate bulls to make them docile in an ox team.
distrill 5y ago
There are other solutions than what you're describing. I've been in a number of bars with unsexed bathrooms, where the sinks are all in the open and there are private secure individual stalls. I don't know that this is the best solution, but it does remove the gender distinction from the bathrooms and it certainly isn't "a bathroom with 5 men in it".

iammisc 5y ago

> This would mean throwing out a lot of the more epheremeral complaints "I feel unsafe if there is a man in the bathroom." Why? Let's fix that part, then. Because there are going to be scary women too. You realize having a woman's bathroom was a thing many early feminist groups fought for right?

LatteLazy 5y ago

I sympathise. Sadly society seems to be moving the other way recently: my gym and pool both have significant women's only hours and classes. My previous employer had women only sessions with the ceo to promote more women faster. There was a brief moment a few years ago when the government here (limey Britian) said people would be allowed to pick their gender without involving doctors/bureaucrats. I liked the idea, it's equality on steroids. Long queue for the ladies? Identify as a man for 5 minutes! Accidently go to the gym at 7 on a Wednesday? Be a girl for 90 minutes so you can work out! Link for when the policy was dropped https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/22/uk-government-drops-gender-self-identification-plan-for-trans-people https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/22/uk-governmen...

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
> Long queue for the ladies? Identify as a man for 5 minutes! Accidently go to the gym at 7 on a Wednesday? Be a girl for 90 minutes so you can work out! I like this. I’ve already identified to my employer that I’m partially Black even though, to the best of my knowledge, I’m not. They can’t deny it and it only benefits them (they can increase their ratios of minority employers which is public data). I can choose to identify as black if I like.
- long_time_gone 5y ago
  ==I can choose to identify as black if I like.== What is the benefit for you? Is it trolling?
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    I'm not OP. I generally answer the ethnicity question randomly. This is because: * I don't like be lumped into "white British" * the whole question is rude imho (why does the gym need to know my race and sexuality!?) * services I use shouldn't shouldn't lose "points" because of my colour/religion/sexuality/shoe-size
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Let us say that the OP believes in reincarnation and believes that his soul is black, used to live in black bodies, and was mistakenly reincarnated into a white body on this occasion, but still feels black and carries memories of being black. Quite a lot of people on Earth believe in reincarnation and would find such a situation entirely possible. The question is, is a Western country obliged to respect a religious argument like this? Maybe yes. After all, race is said to be a social construct. Why not add reincarnation into the mix.

HideousKojima 5y ago

>"I feel unsafe if there is a man in the bathroom." Why? Because men (biological males if we're being pedantic) are statistically overwhelmingly more likely to commit rape and other forms of sexual assault (and other violent crimes) and to be horny creepy perverted sex pests in general. Add to that the fact that men are much more physically strong than women (a ~5th percentile male is about as strong as a ~95th percentile female) and the options a woman has to defend themselves against such a creep are severely limited. But if you insist on creating a New Soviet Woman that isn't afraid of men, be my guest. Just do it far away from me in a different country, please.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Rebelgecko 5y ago
IMO bringing statistical likelihoods into it is a dangerous road to go down and could lead to some seriously problematic outcomes. For example, what if people in certain socioeconomic groups are more likely to commit rape? Or people of certain ethnicities? Would it make sense to require them to use separate bathrooms? Or is it only ok to slice and dice the stats based on certain characteristics? To me it's kind of a scary idea— just because a certain demographic is more likely to commit a crime doesn't mean we should make life difficult for all members of that demographic. Even if their facilities are, in theory, separate but equal.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  My rule for any of these things are all or nothing, in the margins lie chaos. I think a private business should be able to have as many or as few bathrooms for as many categories and groups as they feel like. But if you're going to block them from doing that, you'd better block them from splitting up bathrooms on any basis, otherwise all sorrs of special interest groups and lobbying groups will be looking to make special exceptions and cutouts that help their group and hurt their enemies, it's inevitable.
  - 5y ago

exporectomy 5y ago

I agree except that I don't think we understand which ways of dividing ourselves are really biologically (including psychologically) important and which are just cultural and can be changed with the right environment. Culture often encodes biological needs that we don't really understand.

freemint 5y ago
I would rephrase it as: "Culture often encodes biological needs that we are not sure we did understand because nothing like that was written down and today we have a very good idea of our biological needs and can probably design more consistent or at least more utilitarian rules of culture" Do you think you could agree with that?