So a trans guy friend came over to my house for dinner last week. Somehow we got onto the subject of public toilets and bathroom bans, and I made the point that back in 2010-2011, when I co-founded a feminist society/pressure group at University in London, desegregation was basically our main policy position.
And this was not unusual for feminist groups at that time. There was a sense that we were close to the end of a century-long struggle to desegregate society: Universities and most schools were now mixed (my own former school had just become co-ed at this point), youth groups like the Scout Association had recently made it mandatory for all groups to admit girls, there was growing public pressure on men-only spaces like The Garrick Club to admit women, most modern swimming pools had co-ed changing facilities, and gender-neutral bathrooms were starting to become more common.
One of our campaigns was to make all bathrooms in the Students' Union building gender neutral. In the end this failed because of pressure from a group of (white, wealthy, English) men in the Conservative society who insisted that sharing bathrooms with women violated their devout Christian beliefs - they weren't even Christian actually but they managed to spook the lawyers enough in light of the recent Equality Act.
We also frequently discussed desegregating sports - it was widely understood by our (pretty much entirely cis women) members that sex-segregation was a misogynist project that resulted principally in women being paid less. The long mission to get equal prize money at Wimbledon had been won only a few years earlier, and there was pressure on other sports to follow suit. Now we were discussing introducing mixed-gender University sports teams to play competitively.
Bear in mind that the issue of trans women basically never came up in these discussions (mainly due to ignorance: the only reference to trans women I had ever encountered at this point was Ace Ventura). It was principally a matter of desegregation as a moral position that positioned the logic of segregation as part of the systemic oppression of women. The fact that it was right-wing men who were the ones objecting to desegregated toilets (something that has been true throughout the history of toilet segregation) just solidified this point.
Anyway, I gave all this as context to my trans guy friend to explain why I felt frustrated at recent attempts to paint bathroom bans as a win for feminism. That it's depressing to see the feminist activism of 15 years ago sacrificed on the altar of transmisogyny.
This guy has been medically transitioning for a little over a year, and has been discovering feminism in that time too. He recently learned about things like the gender pay gap, and will try to explain it to me like he thinks it's news to me. The gendered nature of domestic abuse is also a favourite topic of his. Before he transitioned, back when he referred to himself as a woman, he tended to take a more liberal normie "men and women are equally oppressed by gender expectations, just let everyone do what they want" line, but tbf we didn't talk about feminism much back then anyway.
The combination of being an early-transition trans guy who is also learning baby's first feminism can be a really dangerous one. He is only now discovering how much he has suffered at the hands of this form of oppression called "misogyny", but at the same time he is a man. He is reading all this literature that positions "men" as the oppressor but also positions people like himself as the oppressed. The easiest way for him to resolve this conflict is to mentally transpose "men" with "AMABs" and "women" with "AFABs", even if he's not aware that's what's happening in his brain.
So in response to my frustration with bathroom bans he starts saying all this stuff about women's reasonable concerns about male violence, how it's difficult to balance the various needs of different groups, how trans men are "obviously" not a threat to women so they should clearly be allowed to use women's toilets. He views the existence of trans women as a spanner in the works of an otherwise rational system with cis men on one side and AFABs on the other.
I try to point out that toilet segregation is actually a real concrete problem for me, the flesh-and-blood person in front of him who he has been friends with for years. That I am risking violence no matter which toilet I use, no matter what clothes I'm in, no matter whether I'm wearing make-up or not. If I use the women's I will get harassed for sure. If I use the men's I have a high chance of being assaulted. His only response is that he also is nervous about using the women's because after a year on T he already passes for cis in nearly all situations. The idea that he should just use the men's since he's a man who looks like a man gets a blank look from him: why should he not be able to use the women's, he's experienced "AFAB oppression" too, hasn't he?
By this point I'm getting quite frustrated. We're talking about feminism as a leftwing movement and I bring up the kind of socialist guy we all know well who says stuff like "misogyny isn't really a priority for me". He hasn't really been listening but he hears me quote this hypothetical man and assumes I'm saying it in earnest. "Did you say misogyny isnt a priority for you?"
Suddenly I, the woman who has been involved in feminist activism for 15 years, am having to defend myself against accusations of misogynist bigotry from a man who discovered feminism a year ago because he decided to not bother listening to what a woman was saying until it was something that sounded incriminating as a soundbite.
At this point I sigh and put my head on the table, exhausted of trying to explain this to him. Later he messages to say that the way I behaved made him feel really shit about himself, like sighing is the rudest thing he's ever heard. I apologise for sighing and go and wash up the dishes from the meal I cooked for him. He goes home and thinks about his innate connection to womanhood.
amandla
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