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John, just on the issue of "ME, a man" commenting on this. I'm asked to comment on it all the time. Secondly, far more importantly the majority of such businesses, where I am, are women owned or couples owned. This could not happen without initiating it or their buy in. If there was opposition by women to non-gender wash rooms, we would of heard it by now. Not a peep. I live in a highly feminist city, gay city, and transcity: San Francisco. Thirdly, they are and never were 'safe spaces'. This sort of nonsense (IMO) about bathrooms being safes paces because men are not "allowed" in do in fact make it quite UN-safe because it allows women to have half as many people there to stop an assault (as you acknowledged they take place there anyway, law or now law). The fact is that there are thousands of rapes committed in "women only spaces" because rapists violate the law and don't care about it (did you know that many places have no laws concerning this whatsoever? That this is based on cultural customs and not legal statute?). We would of course have to disagree with this about assaults being more likely in gender neutral bathrooms. This issue has, btw, zero to do with excluding transwomen from such spaces as they are, for all intents and purposes, women (fortunately the dystopian idea of genetic checks haven't made it feasible to exclude transwomen. Now such access just has to be legitimized in law). An example I stumbled across in Mexico City about 10 years ago was that there are women only cars on the Mexico City subway. I was shocked (simply because it was so unexpected by me and my friend I was traveling with). We were stopped by an armed (with an assault rifle) women cop who told us only women "beyond this point". It seems this was instituted on the demand of women who organized for this because of the epidemic of groping by men on the subway over years. Women have the choice of using this or the main set of integrated cars. This was totally supportable. Again, however, the issue of transwomen (who look like women and is key to this particular issue) are of course able to use this car since no one, the women on the car, the cops guarding it, and the potential molesters can't tell who is trans and who is not). But those on this list, some, would argue that transwomen shouldn't use such facility as in the Mexican subway system because "genetically they are men and that is what counts". And this goes to the heart of this discussion. I defend women only spaces when in fact they are a function of women (cis or trans) organizing to do so. This includes of course transwomen who ARE transwomen and not just men who say they want to transition. This last issue is a huge one and goes to the self-identity issue that has caused so much fanfare and hatred. BTW...I attended the ISO Socialism Conference, the one in 2017 that had over 2,000 attending and they made all rest/wash rooms gender neutral. There were no problems reported. Of course a socialist conference such as that obviously is not at all representative of society at large. What I see, *politically* the hot potato is not what you and I are politely discussing. Rather, it is over the issue of "self-ID". This is what is hugely complicated and often transcends the basic civil rights issues, or perhaps "subsumes it" as a better expression. I would like to see more information on this (this has to do with things like transathletes, locker rooms and other issues where it is *only* the self-identificiation that makes someone transgender and how to handle this in society. It is this issue above all else that has caused the heat, "de platforming" and so on. David W. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
