Education & Work I'm all for Safe Schools but ...

This happens too with girls, and it's multiplied a million times if a boy happens to be there. Teenage girls, in their formative and vulnerable years, have enough 'body issues' with themselves and each other, let alone with a boy there.

I am for a girls toilet/change room, a boys toilet/change room; and a unisex toilet/change room, so that anybody who identifies as genderqueer, trans, or non-heteronormative can have their own space.

 

You're excused.

 

It wasn't a rhetorical question. It was a completely sincere and genuine question to which I'd appreciate a straightforward answer:

Why is it inherently "safe" for a child to be naked with a child of the same sex, but inherently "dangerous" for them to be naked with a child of the opposite sex?

 

Yes, apparently the assessment process is rigorous. I'm assuming it's an assessment for gender dysphoria.

I have no problem with it either. People do whatever makes them happy. They should live their authentic lives. But don't suspend disbelief in the process, because that causes only harm to yourself and others.

 

Is a 16 or 17 year old boy a child or an adult?

 

I know I am going right off topic now, but I must admit, I am now very curious about your opinion on homosexual marriage, BK.

At first I thought your veiws on the toilets was simply based on fear for the safety of your child. I can understand that fear, even if I believe it is misplaced. But having read more of your posts, I am now starting to wonder if the concerns go deeper then that. And the toilets are a mere focal point of your current frustration.

Whatever your issue though, you really have to stop taking it so personally when others disagree with you. Differences of opinion on topics like this often come down to fundamental beliefs, values and priorities. People are not going to change who they are or how they veiw the world because of some random debate on the internet. On either side. It doesn't matter what the topic is (toilets, gay rights, refugees, god, politics, etc).

Personally, I am just trying to figure out 'why' you think the way you do. Because it interests me to see things from other points of veiw, even if I do disagree. Because your point of veiw is not one I would naturally consider. It is as foriegn and makes as little sense to me as my point of veiw likely does to you. I am not going to dismiss it as simple bigotry. That is too easy. I want to understand things that challenge my own beliefs, because how can I hold to that belief unless I do try and understand the opposition. The human mind is strange, and i want to figure out why you are saying the sky is green when all I can see is pink.

 

Actually I'm a white female feminist. I used the terminology as I knew you would be familiar with it. Being female doesn't exclude me from having privilege in other areas.

 

No, it's not fear. It's acknowledging that girls and women have a right to privacy and safety.

Absolutely and wholeheartedly in support of gay marriage. It's a shame that the government is spending millions on a referendum, when we already know what the outcome will be. At the moment, a gay man/woman has no legal rights if the partner has been hospitalised. Partner turns up, hospital asks 'how are you related to the injured?', nothing. They deserve the same rights.

I think my answers have been pretty factual, even when the questions have been loaded and the person asking them has accused me of 'hostility' or whatever.

I think that when I say a person cannot change their chromosomes, I'm seeing a blue sky. When others say it's pink, I've kept on repeating it's blue. I know that challenges some people, and I think I've tried to explain why.

 

Usually, the person who asks the question first gets answered first, but I'll answer first. The logical groupings are "primary school aged children are primary school aged children" and "secondary school aged children are secondary school aged children". So for the purposes of discussion, we should consider the safety of children aged ~5-11 being grouped together, and ~12-17.

My point is that if it's safe for a 12yo boy to be in a changeroom naked with a 17yo boy, then I don't see why it's unsafe for a 12yo girl to be in the same situation, due to her gender.

If it's not safe for either - and I can certainly make that point! - then the solution is for every individual to have the right to privacy whilst naked, and have individual changing cubicles, which makes the issue go away.

 

And you are asking 12 year old girls to 'check their privilege'? How about asking males to check theirs?

 

Why only girls and women?

 

You may have daughters; I don't know. Do you think as 12, 13, 15, or 17 year olds, they would be happy to be changing and in a state of undress in front of boys? If they said that they weren't, would you foist it upon them, telling them that their rights were inconsequential, and that the boys' rights to be there outweighed their rights to privacy?

 

Yes, of course boys have a right to safety and privacy. That's why mothers take their sons into female toilets. I would too. But it's not trans men demanding to be in men's spaces. We are dealing with trans women wanting to be in female spaces. That's why 'only girls and women'

 

I cant speak for BK, but i used the term 'comfortable'. the bench mark for whether this policy is acceptable doesnt have to be physical danger.

For instance, i have never doubted my safety with a male health professional but sometimes i havent felt comfortable, and have waited until i could be see by a woman.

I was in the change room at the local pool last year and a guy walked through and took his daughter to the toilet. I dont think any of the half naked women were realistically in danger from this young dad, but we certainly felt uncomfortable.

 

Thank you for answering.
You are a bit of a connudrum for me. I seem to agree with you on a lot of issues. And yet not so much on others. And sometimez it is as if we are taking parrallel paths in logic and rational, but somehow still drawing two very different conclusions. Everytime I think I am gaining an insight inyo your veiws, it appears I have taken a wrong turn.

You say that to you the sky is blue. To me it is blue, and pink, and green, and orange and so many constantly changing and overlapping shades of every colour.

Personally I think we are all very privledged people here. You can tell just by virtue of the fact that we are on an Australian 'investing' site. So telling anyone to 'check their privledge' is a load of BS. Especially when we are on the internet and have no actual personal knowledge of one another. And discounting someones veiws simply because they are white australian, male or female, is stupid: especially when both sides are so privledged. Pot meet Kettle.

I wish they had more unisex toilets and change rooms around everywhere, not just in schools. It would make my life a hell of a lot easier.

Female toilets are all in cubicles anyway. And a lot of schools with changerooms often have cubicles as well for those kids who arent comfortable infront of their peers. Or of course they can use the toilet cubicles, as some do choose.
Having seperate male, female and unisex is a good compromise so everyone can feel comfortable. But I would have no issue with my children attending a school with only male and female toilets, and transgender children being allowed to use the one they identified with.
I had a friend in high school who was gay, who was bullied because of that, and who some of the students made it their mission to try and have her kicked out of the female toilets and change tooms because of it. This poor girl had never done anything, and yet was made to feel very unsafe and bullied, by a group of girls who had no real concerns, other then to make their victims life hell.
Girls can be vicious when they want to be. I do not fear so much for girls safety because of transgender children. I would fear more for the transgender childs safety, should those girls decide that they had reason to take issue.

 

If as a society we are saying its reasonable for trans people to use which ever gender toilet they want at school then we have to decide whether this is a priciple we will continue to apply to all gendered facilities.

There are lots of situations where school age kids will get changed with kids of the same sex. My local pool is full of school groups all week. Its not logical to tell the trans kid they can choose their toilet but they have to use the unisex change room.

 

That's really horrible. Girls at that age can be bitchy. As I said, lesbians are one of the most marginalised and invisible groups. I hope she's okay now. One of the girls in our girl group was and is gay. She came out in her mid teens. None of us thinks anything of it. When we have girls' weekends, it's her girlfriend who won't let her share a bed with any of us because she gets jealous, which we think is funny. Last time she slept on the couch alone because of her girlfriend. I would sleep with her in a heart beat knowing that she wouldn't do anything.

 

Whilst teenage girls can be horribly bitchy (and again, these are facts):

Let’s face it, males commit violent and sexual crimes against women. Statistically, it is indisputable. And criminal actions by and arrests of men don’t decrease after SRS (sexual reassignment surgery). In fact post SRS males have higher rates of criminality than the general public. There are voluminous incidents of transgender male violence against women. Murders, rapes, assaults. There are hardly any reports of crimes against male transgenders committed by female perpetrators. Statistically minute. What does that tell us? It tells us that females should have the right to sex-segregated areas in places where they are especially vulnerable to male crimes against women. And that includes males who suffer from GID.

 

Examples:
Bathrooms
Hospital Bed Assignments
Prisons
Locker rooms
Sports competition
Statistical Data collection
Women’s Health resources, statistics and research endowment
Sex based crime statistics
Support Groups
Rape Crisis Centres
Communal showers
Children’s sleepover camps
Women’s Shelters
Women’s colleges/universities

Men Love The Ladies Restroom- Transgender Edition

 

This from a gay man:

As a gay man I have only recently come across the trans community and from what I have read online in their responses to questions on a wide range of topics I am very certain that their are quite a few psychological issues that are not being addressed or are being covered up by doctors and psychologists who rather than challenge these people to accept themselves as who they are, to instead mutilate their bodies to become what they are not. I for one, being gay, do not see this group as being anymore than either a bunch of glorified drag queens or autogynophiles. But their demands are really over the top. I 100% support that they should not be able to use your, a natural born woman’s bathroom. It is your place, not theirs. No matter what they might say they are still biologically XY no matter how good the surgery (at least male to masquerading female transsexuals). I believe there are many narcissistic behaviors that are exhibited by the community too. For instance, quite a large amount in the community who consider themselves to be “straight women trapped in a man’s body” claim no responsibility to tell their straight male sexual partner that they originally had a dick. They say it the straight males responsibility to ask. I am sorry but that is beyond deception. If you are so good at pulling it off because you paid some doctor to change your genitalia around, it is truly unethical to say that the other person in the relationship is at fault for not knowing. I consider that predatory. Believe me, there are quite a few straight guys I am totally bonkers for, but I am not mutilating my body and lying to get some of that action. So it is not a stretch to think that male to female transexuals claim they are either lesbian or who are females trapped in a males body secretly might be straight males with a perverted and extremely narcissistic mind, not a stretch. At the end of the day, I hate to say it, but in this one instance the only way to protect the two sides, is the separate but equal solution. A unisex bathroom is the only place a trans should be able to go as it is the safest place for both parties.