According to the top-voted (15 points) response on Reddit's AskTransgender community, the main argument for transwomen's use of the women's room is not physical safety, but the fact that they have an a priori right to all women's spaces for supposedly being women.
In addition to being the top-voted reply, there was also no negative response by any member of the community, suggesting this mentality to be the consensus.
Recap of relevant parts of the thread:
[all emphasis by me]
I just read someone on Twitter claim that transwomen using the men's room don't face violence; that there's no documented cases of this having happened. I Googled a bit and couldn't find anything either, perhaps because all news sites concentrate on cases where transwomen face violence for using the women's room instead.
So, does anyone have links to documented cases of transwomen suffering violence for using the men's room?
Thanks.
More important to the argument; so what if we don't?
Are there documented cases of cisgender women facing violence for using the mens' room? If no, should they then be forced to use it as well?
Violence, while terrible, is irrelevant to the issue. Trans women shouldn't be using the mens' room because they're not men.
Yeah, this is looking for evidence to defend something that shouldn't need to be defended.
I use the woman's bathroom because I'm a woman, not because using the men's bathroom would be dangerous (although I'm sure it would).
To my knowledge, the rates of violence transwomen (allegedly) face when not allowed to use the women's room is one of the main talking points in the topic of bathroom bills. It's the impression I had anyway; that physical safety of trans people is the driving motivation behind the movement. It's an incredibly strong argument too: "physical safety of one person trumps the mere discomfort of another" (such as the discomfort a woman may feel when seeing a non-passing transwoman in the women's room).
Did I have the wrong impression? Is the prime motivation rather securing access to women's rooms for transwomen because that's logical from the standpoint that transwomen are women?
I mean, you're pretty strongly implying that, so sorry if I'm making you repeat yourself. I just want to be sure I don't misunderstand.
Oh, violence and safety are definitely primary talking points in political circles, but they miss the core of the issue nonetheless.
I don't use the women's room because I'm concerned about my safety in the men's; I use it because I'm a woman, and shouldn't be in the men's room to begin with.
Excerpts:
I feel like saying that they've included me by sending me to the disabled stall instead of just letting me do my thing where all the other women do really just reinforces the idea that I'm somehow not a woman, which is bulllllshiiiiittttt and is actually pretty demeaning.
As long as gender neutral bathrooms aren't being used as a "separate-but-equal" bathroom for trans folks, then I don't really see a problem. Personally, I'm going to use the women's washroom though, as I am a woman.
Note how there are also trans people in the thread who care not to bother women. It's not a homogeneous community, although the loudest and angriest misogynists seem to be leading it a lot of the time.
This is probably an extreme example, but hey:
