As I see it, we should ask: Why have sex-separated bathrooms in the first place? The practice is somewhat culturally relative, but it's also not entirely arbitrary.

I think the main reason is not preventing sexual assaults. My hunch is that people are just generally more comfortable doing their business around people of the same sex. But no one cares about the gender identity of one's co-restroomers, since you're not in there to get to know everybody. This is what you see in the high school locker room cases. The girls don't want to change in front of someone who is anatomically male. I don't think they are suggesting that they feel unsafe or vulnerable to sexual assault; clearly in the high school context, the policies cannot be abused as (some have claimed) they could be elsewhere, since men couldn't "fake" being transgender women.

This reason is either legitimate or it isn't. If it isn't, then the problem is not that restrooms are not the way transgender people like them but that they make any distinction by sex at all.

It's a weird circumstance. Ordinarily, if a policy change had the effect of making a group of teenage girls to feel uncomfortable, the left would insist that the policy change is sexist; they typically don't ask questions about how reasonable a minority's fear or discomfort is. But now there is another group involved, which is an even more oppressed minority--so the discomfort of women must be explained away.

Some commentators have also raised a legitimate concern: Suppose you are going to keep sex-separated restrooms, but allow transgender people to use the restroom of their choice. In what circumstance can a woman legitimately complain about someone in her restroom who does not look like a woman? "Misgendering" someone is supposed to be hugely offensive--so should women always choke on their concerns and discomforts in the restroom, lest they be bigots?

Last edited by Greg (4/23/2016 9:10 am)

Yes, it's clearly comfort, though if all it comes down to is 'the comfort of women in not being around men in the restroom' vs the sense of illegitimacy trans women feel by being made to go in the door that says "man" then emotionally and rhetorically the trans side will carry this and, as they did with homosexuality, feed off all objections stemming from mere discomfort.

The commentators concerned that no objections could be raised against men of any sort are logically correct, which is why I've ultimately considered this a push for unisex restrooms. It is possible that convention will sort out this issue, but if what matters about transsexuality is mere personal identity, then in principal anyone can do it at any time.

Last edited by iwpoe (4/23/2016 1:02 pm)

I think the present "left" gives primacy to resentiment in the Nietzschean sense: what is worst of all is to feel lower and the response is to level any distinction.

I think the best women could get would be a merely political concession.

iwpoe wrote:

Yes, it's clearly comfort, though if all it comes down to is 'the comfort of women in not being around men in the restroom' vs the sense of illegitimacy trans women feel by being made to go in the door that says "man" then emotionally and rhetorically the trans side will carry this and, as they did with homosexuality, feed off all objections stemming from mere discomfort.

The commentators concerned that no objections could be raised against men of any sort are logically correct, which is why I've ultimately considered this a push for unisex restrooms. It is possible that convention will sort out this issue, but if what matters about transsexuality is mere personal identity, then in principal anyone can do it at any time.

​The transactivists, like the homosexual activists, will only carry the day if they are able to characterise the feelings of discomfort as irrational and harmful prejudices. As I said above, I don't think we should scoff at instinctive or even habitual unease about issues like this. I think such feelings serve a purpose. As a Platonist, indeed, I believe all our faculties are connected and have a place; they are all a reflection of Intellectus. But on their own feelings of discomfort, of course, not a sure guide to knowledge. They need some kind of rational authority to appeal to. The problem with the issue of homosexuality and what may happen here is any rational support for these sentiments and habits was marginalised and they were left to fend for themselves against not just the arguments of social liberals but, even more importantly, an official culture with deeply embedded assumptions about sexuality and human norms. I don't think the marginalisation was a matter of the best arguments winning, though. I think cultural and social conservatives have the arguments to at least battle left-liberals to a stalemate. 

Just as there is still some continuing, though brow-beaten, unease over homosexual acts and so called marriages, I think there will long be some over transsexuality. Indeed, I think it likely to be even greater: I do think a lot of people will continue to have a hard time accepting that a transsexual is the sex they claim. My understanding is that even in places like Thailand, the acceptance of transexuals is hardly complete.