Quote:
Originally Posted by Amelia
I just want to be specific here so I am not misunderstood.
I am not afraid of being assaulted in a bathroom or dressing room by men. I have been sexually assaulted by both male and female genders. I do not think all males are a danger to me, so I hope no one here is thinking that was my point.
I was speaking generally about everyone's privacy and the way society views protecting that privacy by separating genders and not by sexuality. I wasn't speaking about my own privacy as much as I was speaking about addressing the gender separation being FLAWED. .
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Can someone please explain why gender separation is flawed? I find it imperative to my safety and comfort to use public fitting rooms and women's bathrooms with multiple stalls without the risk that a man may intrude. I require women's space for the same reasons I have always required it. Those reasons include privacy, but that's only one part of the equation. Do I feel unsafe in closed quarters when men are present? You bet I do. Am I a frail, delicate person who lives in fear? Ha! You would have to have met me to know why that's such an outrageously funny thought.
I live and work in the real world. I work with huge men, often well over 6' tall and very well fed, who congratulate themselves for not having assaulted the women in their lives, ("Hey, I'm a good guy. I never even hit her!"). These men sometimes need to be told that it's not OK to use racial slurs. One fairly large man was recently thrown off the job for assaulting a cleaning woman in the bathroom. Many of us agreed that he would have faced NO REPERCUSSIONS had that happened even as recently as a decade ago. Are these the people that I'm supposed to feel comfortable with in a room where they are exposing their penises and my pants are down? When I hear people in my community calling for erasure of gendered bathrooms I want to ask them whether they're crazy or just naive. My friends who work in academia can theorize about gender from the luxury of their libraries. I don't have that option.
I've heard about and seen men direct their most potent sexual aggression against masculine women. Butches are perceived as gender transgressors and have been the object of violence and sexual violence as a result. I have no trouble imagining some of my co-workers feeling a need to show a trangressively masculine woman that she's still a woman after all, and that he can still violate her. This is one important way in which our female bodies, no matter whether those bodies belong to very feminine or very masculine people, put us at similar risk. I'm mystified about why a masculine, female bodied person would invite the risk of men's sexual aggression by sharing really vulnerable space, such as bathrooms, with them. Am I the only person here who has to deal with male sexual aggression, or is it just so common that no one else feels the need to mention it?
Bathrooms and fitting rooms are traditional common, recognised women's spaces, but there are some other really important venues. For instance, what about girls' and women's sports? If you attempt to erase gender separation from sports you will only erase women from sports. Period. Perhaps this won't be as obvious to anyone who is too young to have played girl's sports, or tried to, in the U.S. before Title 9. Take my word for it. It's better now. Unless a person is born intersexed, a female body no matter how masculine, will be unlikely to be competitive with a male body in most competitive sports. There will always be exceptions. I was competitive with boys when I ran on their track teams before Title 9, but that was very rare. This is another place where we, butch and femme, are the same. Sports are played with bodies. Female bodies are different than male bodies. Like it or not, that's due to naturally occurring physical size and hormones.
So, at the risk of derailing this fine thread, why is gender separation flawed?