“Excuse me, but it’s a condition of this public bathroom that I inspect your genitals!”
“Oh, but I’m clearly in the right bathroom… You can’t suspect me of…”
“Sorry, but there was a trans woman in here last week and nobody noticed, so we’re being extra careful. And she matched your description.”
“But you’re a man. You shouldn’t even be in here.”
“No, on the contrary, I was born a woman but I’ve always felt that I was, well, a man and given the new restrictions where you can only use a bathroom based on the sex on your birth certificate, I felt the safest thing to do was to take this job guarding the female bathroom.”
Ok, in one simple dialogue I’ve managed to take a highly emotive issue and annoy just about everyone by completely over-simplifying it and showing that, as a man, I have no understanding whatsoever of any of the concerns of anyone.
Yep, it’s what I do.
I figure if Andrew Bolt and Paul Murray and Alan Jones have made more money than I get for trying to educate young minds then it’s only a matter of time before someone connected to Rupert thinks that I’m outrageous enough to offer me a column or a show where I reduce any situation to my opinion – or an interview with someone who agrees with my opinion – and I’ll be paid such vast sums that will give me the chance to do an incredible amount of good… only to decide that doing good is a waste of time because when I tried to do good, I was paid so little that I was only able to do a little good and now I’m being paid excessively I’ll be inclined to go: “Why didn’t I do this earlier?”
Anyway, as to the whole issue of trans women in female bathrooms, I’d like to announce I am a completely disinterested party here because a) I’m not a female; b) I’m not trans and c) I’m not a bathroom.
Having again said something that I’m sure will upset people so much that they’ll attack me so much that even if I don’t get to take over Bolt’s spot at least more people will respond than listen to his show on Sky After Dark (SAD, as I call it).
The whole thing seems to me that there are some legitimate points of view here that need to be worked through in a respectful and careful way.
- Women need spaces where the feel that they are safe from men
- Trans people who identify as a woman need spaces where they feel safe from men.
- Everyone needs a place where they can pee in peace.
- People should not make rash generalisations about other people without evidence.
- Point 4 is a rash generalisation but I’m writing this so, in the spirit of Bolt, it’s a legitimate point of view and doesn’t need evidence.
However one feels about the whole issue, I must say that when I read things from people that say that one can always tell a woman, I feel a little bit confused because I want to know how they know that they were right?
And however one feels about the issue, maybe we need to remember that there are plenty of people who need consideration and protection and we need to respectfully hear and consider different points of view…
Ah shit, I’ve just ruined my chance of becoming a rich, Murdoch mouthpiece…
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