I Don't Think That's The Right Metric

It’s pretty much impossible to talk about trans inclusion without being labelled a transphobe.

Are your thoughts on trans inclusion influenced by the fact that male patterns of violence and sexual aggression persist post-transition? You’re a transphobe.

Do you recognise the differences between trans women and the class of people we’ve known as women since forever? You’re a transphobe.

Do you think females have a right to spaces that males aren’t allowed to enter? You’re definitely a transphobe.

So in my article, The Case Against Men In Women’s Spaces, I decided to pick on another group that is cruelly denied access to female-only spaces; men.

I pointed out that even though the majority of men pose no danger to women, even though some men are gay or asexual or too small or weak to pose any danger to women, we still don’t allow them into female spaces. Not because we hate men, not because we believe all men are rapists and perverts, but because there’s no way to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys.

Plural objected to this flagrant man-phobia.

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Plural:

The problem I have with this is that it is a form of prejudice (in the literal, pre-judging sense). I get that you're not saying "all men" are violent, but that an arbitrary man is statistically more likely to be violent.

The thing is, all prejudices have some kernel of statistical truth. Illegal immigrant men do commit sexual assaults at a higher rate than others, Black men do tend to be felons at a higher rate, Jews are in banking and media more often, and most foreign terrorists are Muslim, etc. etc.

One of our most important jobs - particularlly in the U.S. where we are committed to equality and freedom - is to judge the individual instead of the group.

Once we take a statistic and ban a group from some spaces or opportunities (or even look at them sideways and metaphorically follow them around the store), we open the door to all pre-judging and prejudice.

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“Illegal immigrant men do commit sexual assaults at a higher rate than others, Black men do tend to be felons at a higher rate, Jews are in banking and media more often, and most foreign terrorists are Muslim, etc. etc.”

You would not believe how often I see arguments like this when I write about trans issues. As if keeping males and females separate is the same thing as keeping black people and white people separate. Or Muslims and Jews and Christians separate.

As if the physiological and hormonal factors that make men different to women are the same as the cultural, societal and historical factors that create disparities in society.

Men not being allowed into women’s spaces is not the same as racial segregation or Islamophobia. This is so obvious that I can barely bring myself to lay out the arguments.

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Steve QJ:

The thing is, all prejudices have some kernel of statistical truth

Yes, but in the case of male sexual violence, it's not a "kernel." Men commit 99%of sexual violence. There is no other disparity like it. Men have penises, which means that they can have sex with somebody against their will with an ease that women can't. Men are typically bigger and physically stronger and more sexually aggressive than women.

And because of all these factors, women are the victims of ~90% of sexual violence.

And to be clear, this still isn’t discrimination. If men were all suddenly allowed into women’s spaces, it wouldn’t make men any safer. The only thing it would achieve is to make women less safe. Women don’t have spaces that man lack. We aren’t being oppressed. We’re just beng asked to give them some privacy.

As I said, it would be lovely to find a way to keep women safe without implicating all men. If you have any ideas about how to identify the good guys whilst keeping out the bad guys, I'm all ears. But otherwise, the only sensible solution for anybody who cares about even making an attempt to safeguard women and girls is to keep males and females separate in certain cases.

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Plural:

It may be that men commit 99% percent of sexual violence, and nobody wants to allow or enable that.

But I don't think that's the right metric. The more important metric for excluding a person may be the likelihood they are an offender.

Let's say 5% of men are sexual offenders (seems high despite the 99% statistic). But 33% + of Black men are felons - probably mostly nonviolent drug offenses. So should we exclude Black men from schools and other drug-free zones? That would clearly be immoral and also a huge blow to diversity.

Attacks on young boys are naturally going to skew heavily towards gay men. Do we exclude gay men from spaces with boys?

I'm not arguing for men in girls' changing rooms here, and I do see your point. But I think it is important to also articulate a principle that justifies the exclusion. So far, I read your underlying principle to be "any group with a high percentage of offenders for a crime can be excluded from a space where that crime is a problem."

It's when we try to articulate the principle that it starts to look dangerous to limit and exclude men because it extends to others. (And probably means the idea is unconstitutional, btw.)

I'm also a little fuzzy on "women's spaces." If we mean changing rooms that seems fine (a reasonable principle of gender segregation where there is nudity.) But if you exclude men from any space it is definitionally now a women's space, so the exclusion idea seems circular. Can you clarify where men (or perhaps people with penises) should not be allowed to go?

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“Let's say 5% of men are sexual offenders (seems high despite the 99% statistic). But 33% + of Black men are felons.”

So wait. 5% of men seems high, but 33% of black men seems reasonable? I swear, the restraint I show in these conversation amazes even me sometimes.

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Steve QJ:

But I don't think that's the right metric. The more important metric for excluding a person may be the likelihood they are an offender.

Jesus, no, man. The right metric is how likely a woman is to be a victim. Or, more to the point, whether women have a perfectly valid point when they say that when they're naked, for example, they'd rather be in an enironment where there are no other males around. Whether women have a right to set boundaries around an issue that affects them in 90% of cases.

How on Earth are you managing to find a way to make this about you?

1 in 6 women have been the victim of an actual or attempted rape. I'd bet almost all have been the victim of unwanted sexual contact. Any argument against female only spaces increases the likelihood of both of these things happening.

And for what, exactly? What are you weighing this against? Men's "right" to make them uncomfortable by being around them as they undress? Those black crime statistics you mention aren't universal measures of black people. They're a reflection of what happens when poor, disenfranchised people, of any ethnicity, live in a particular area. But of course, more black people are poor and disenfranchised.

And guess what, many cities are de-facto segregated by race. Or, if you prefer, poverty. You absolutely couldn't make wealthy people live alongside poor people for exactly the fears about crime that you mention. And if the issue affected you, I'm sure you'd feel the same way. I suspect you'd kick up a fuss if somebody tried to make you live on skid row because, well, “how many of the crack addicts there are actually going to rob you? What are the odds that you'll step on a needle really?”

Men are the most dangerous type of human. This is just a fact. It doesn't mean we all are. It means that we are in that demographic. Again, if there ware a way to tell which ones of us are just evil by nature in some reliable way, you can bet we'd ssegregate ourselves from them (to a degree, this is what a prison is).

But we can't.

We can, however differentate between men and women and children. So we implement common sense safeguarding measures, only on a few occasions, to protect those two more vulnerable classses of human from the most dangerous ones. I think this is an indisputably good things to do. I have no objection whatsoever. And frankly, any man who does object is immediately suspect to me.

Men should go in men's spaces. We aren't being excluded. There is no facility that women have that men don't. They're even more convenient than women's spaces in many cases. And you know exactly what women's spaces are. Changing rooms, rape crisis centers, women's shelters, women's prisons. It's not a long list or a controversial one. What exactly are you arguing for here?

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Some of the most callous, brain-dead arguments I see on various issues come from people who are more than smart and decent enough to see through them. But who treat these debates as intellectual exercises rather than real issues that significantly affect people’s daily lives. 

We could spend all day debating the “prejudice” men face in society. And we do. To be a man is to be treated with a degree of suspicion. But the solution to this isn’t to make women’s spaces less safe for women. 

As I said in the conversation, abolishing single-sex spaces makes no difference in the lives of men. We still find ourselves exposed to violent men exactly as often as we were before. But abolishing single-sex spaces makes a huge difference in the lives of women. Recognising that difference is not transphobia. Not unless transphobia is synonymous with “caring about women’s rights.” 

I completely understand the need for solutions to sex segregation that will keep trans people safe. Trans people who don’t “pass” are in the maddening position of facing danger and discrimination whether they use men’s or women’s spaces. I just hold the apparently controversial view that we should find solutions that don’t reduce over 50% of the population to a feeling.