And who doesn't love the good old fashioned argument of men pretending to be women so that they can gain access to women's spaces?
00:17. All right, so notice the framing. She reduces a material boundary issue to a mind-reading accusation. But women do not need to prove a man's secret motive to object to him being in the women's locker room. His intentions are irrelevant. A woman's locker room exists because sex matters when people are undressed, vulnerable, showering, changing, or recovering from exercise.
This is a popular anti-trans argument.
00:49. No, it's a popular pro-woman argument.
My first question is this: how does one person get to define what is pretend, or what is real for another person?
01:07. This is what actually proves the point. This is what we are always saying. If reality is entirely self-defined, then there is no enforceable boundary at all. A man can say this is real for me, and every woman in the room is expected to surrender her own reality, privacy, and instincts. But single-sex spaces are not based on someone's internal feelings. They are based on observable sex. Women are not required to validate a man's self concept in order to use a locker room.
And secondly let me tell you a story about how that might have happened to me sometime last year I'm at the gym and I'm getting my s*** out of a locker and I hear a voice that is very decidedly male and that startles . . .
01:54. So her own body recognized the threat category before her ideology cleaned it up. She heard a male voice in the women's locker room and she was startled. That reaction is not bigotry. That is pattern recognition. Write that down, lady, pattern recognition.
And that startles me. So I look up and I see there are two people changing their shoes and chatting with each other. And I identify that mail sounding voice coming out of a human being that is presenting as a woman . . .
02:38. Exactly! "Presenting as a woman" is not being female. Long hair, women's clothing, and a feminine aesthetic does not transform a male body into a female woman. If Womanhood is reduced to a costume, styling, and a performance, that is not progressive, that is sexism. That is regressive sexism with better branding.
Long hair, didn't look like a wig, wearing female clothing. So you know what I did? I turned around and I went on about my business.
03:16. Cool story. But her personal comfort does not erase other woman's right to say no. One woman's willingness to ignore a male in the [female] locker room does not become a universal rule imposed on all women and girls. That is manipulation. Her saying "I was fine with it, therefore you must be fine with it too." No. Fuck you. Women are allowed to have different boundaries. Girls are allowed to have privacy. Trauma survivors are allowed to feel unsafe. Religious women are allowed to require sex-based modesty. And ordinary women are allowed to say "I don't want males in the space where I undress." And I ask you this, lady, what if that man that you heard chatting happened to be naked and happened to not have on those women's clothes and happened to have shorter hair and you saw his dick and balls in the locker room and you yourself were also half-naked, your breasts were exposed, maybe your vagina was exposed. Would you feel the same way? Would you feel the same way? What if you had been sexually abused by someone who would expose themselves to you when you were in the shower when you were little girl? They knew you were in the shower and they came in, and it was a full grown man naked. Maybe it was your uncle. Maybe it was your father. Maybe it was a brother. Maybe it was some other male that had access. How would that make you feel if that was your experience in the locker room?
That, that's really all it, all it takes.
05:10. No, that is all it took for you and that particular situation. What it takes for women's rights is enforceable boundaries. Because if the only rule is "be nice and look away," then women no longer have single sex locker rooms. They have mixed sex locker rooms and we are socially punished for noticing. And the obvious question remains, "Why was he not in the men's room locker room, chatting and tying his sneakers?" Why does his comfort require access to women's undressing space? Why is the burden always placed on women to accommodate ignore validate and pretend women spaces are not emotional support settings for men's identities they are sex based spaces for female privacy dignity and safety his feelings are his business our boundaries are ours.
There have been cases of men in women's locker rooms where little girls were fully naked and women were fully naked, and the man was filming them secretly. There are cases when little girls and women were completely naked, and a man was in there also naked and he turned out to be a sex offender. That's right, a sex offender. A pedophile. A predator. A rapist. And who do you think has the moral compass to go into women's spaces?
Do you think it's someone that has a moral compass, that has already committed crimes against little girls and women? Someone who has already raped a little girl or a woman? Do you think that's the type of person that might go, "Hmm. I think I'm going to go into the women's locker room." All they have to do is say "I'm a woman. I identify as a woman. You let one in, you're letting them all in. It's an obvious loophole. Wake the fuck up, ladies. Wake up.
I don't know that probably makes me a weirdo but that's okay I will wear my weirdo flag with pride.
07:48. No, it doesn't make you a "weirdo." It makes you someone who is willing to dismiss and minimize women's boundaries because you personally decided they weren't important. And that's the entire problem with these arguments. You had one experience where your own body immediately noticed a male voice in a woman's locker room and reacted to it. You were startled. You looked. You recognized something was unusual that was happening and then you built an entire political conclusion from the fact that nothing happened afterward. But rights don't exist for the situations where nothing happens. Boundaries exist for the situations where something does happen. What if that man had been intimidating? What if he had been standing completely naked in front of you? What if he had followed you around the locker room? What if he had cornered you in conversation? What if he had gotten just a little too close? What if he had done everything short of technically breaking the law?
