Trans men In bathhouses

[BootmanLA]

I mean: let's face it.

Nobody on here - NOBODY - is arguing that trans men don't belong in bathhouses simply because they think there's some language line being crossed.

The reason people object to trans men in bathhouses is they don't want to be around (or see, or both) a vagina while they're having sex. That's the only reason.

Now, some may object to calling that bigotry or prejudice. I disagree, but I'll at least grant that maybe there's a better word (though I can't think of one). But it's not some noble cause of "preserving gay spaces for gays" or anything like that. 

[brnbk]

4 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

 

It's not fine when you want to use your subjective opinion to exclude (choose one or more: same list) from a public place simply because you don't want to have to see or interact with people from that list.

If the group you want to exclude poses some potential threat (say, "known muggers"), that might be rational. But there's no difference between "I don't want to go to a bathhouse where they let trans men play" and "I don't want to go to a restaurant where they let Black people eat."

Thank you everyone for your spirited discussion and honest sharing of your views. Just wanted to jump into the pan myself. 

is exclusion from a public place ever acceptable? For e.g. libraries might only be open to members, and I might be denied rights to access a book, even though i am a member of the community but not a member of the library. 

You have a very valid concern about inclusivity and true acceptance but even as members of the LGBTQ we do bar lesbians from gay bathhouses. Could it be possible that barring Transgendered men from gay bathhouses be on valid grounds? Of course barring people is very tricky as given the history of abuse, phobia towards anything that wasn't white christian male being a reality of the US,  - barring can sound and be a very negative experience for those who are being denied entry.

I mean while say for eg refusing to go to a restaurant coz it allows inter-racial dinning is clearly bigoted, could someone be allowed to say i don't like mexican food or chinese cuisine or french food for that matter — too fancy!  and choose not to go to those restaurants.  

 

On 12/4/2023 at 8:54 PM, BootmanLA said:

Anti-trans bigots are roughly in the place that anti-Black bigots were in 1960; it was still considered acceptable by some to express those opinions, but society was moving quickly in the direction of recognizing that bigotry for what it is. We're doing the same here, but sadly, we're still in the earlier stages of this change. 

i totally agree that trans people are probably one of the most hard hit minority at the moment and they face the maximum violence and sheer hatred for who they are. Bigotry against them is still socially acceptable and people are very slow to change.  

 

On 12/5/2023 at 10:23 AM, BootmanLA said:

No. But people who say "trans (men or women) do not belong in this space that I like" are.

Even trans people have sexual preferences. believe me, a very handsome man that i know knew, is trans and was in the US Marines and he told me he was once out and dressed as a women and a guy made a pass at him, he was going to beat up the guy who made a pass at him. I was very confused when he related the story to me but explained He is trans but is attracted to women not men!

On 12/5/2023 at 2:52 AM, ErosWired said:

I’m Autistic. I can’t change it, and wouldn’t even if I could, even though the Neurotypical majority has made my existence hell for most of my life because of it.

There are other human conditions besides race that pose intractable challenges in dealing with the prejudice of others. There’s no prize for being the most marginalized - this isn’t the Suffering Olympics.

it doesn't need to be an Olympic of Oppression and there doesn't need to be a hierarchy even but i think, categories always remain. Racial bigotry is unique and while disability can bring hostility and perhaps even hate, but can it really equal hate- such as those towards another race(Cowboys vs Indian), gender – that women,  religion (catholic vs protestant etc) ?

[ErosWired]

7 hours ago, brnbk said:

Racial bigotry is unique and while disability can bring hostility and perhaps even hate, but can it really equal hate- such as those towards another race(Cowboys vs Indian), gender – that women,  religion (catholic vs protestant etc) ?

Shall I tell you who were among the very first systematic victims of Nazi “cleansing” of the population? Autistic people. Yep. Before they even got started on Jews and homosexuals. I’ve had people tell me to my face that the reason they’re oppressing me is that I’m Autistic. Frankly I grow rather tired of hearing people say that their suffering is worse because it’s race-related. Let’s check off the boxes for mental illness: Special verbal slur? Check. They call Autistics ‘retard’, which, FYI, is every bit as offensive to us as the N-word.  Institutional incarceration? Check. They’ve been throwing neurodivergent people into institutions that are in some ways worse than prisons since the middle ages, and you can still be committed to one without being convicted of any crime. Arbitrary violence? Check. People seem to feel entitled to hit the ‘crazy’ person because they feel threatened. Stereotyping? Check. There are plenty of people who, on hearing that I’m Autistic, automatically assume I lack self-control and am apt to go on a shooting spree, or that I’m just like Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man. Discrimination? Check. Sooo many ways, because people don’t want anything to do with someone who is Autistic (which isn’t even a mental illness) or suffers from a condition chronic depression. I can’t get a pilot’s license because the government is afraid I’ll go nuts on a plane. People are denied employment, promotion, housing, and services all the time, and have even less recourse than those discriminated against on the basis of race, because you can’t see mental illness by looking at someone’s skin. Hate? It’s worse than hate. You have to be taught to hate another race, but people have a visceral repulsion to someone who they feel is acting ‘crazy’. If you gather a bunch of humans of all races into a room, they’ll all gather together on the side of the room opposite the ‘crazy’ person.

And history is full of examples where killing us was the simplest solution.

I have great empathy toward those subject to the unthinking hate of others. But don’t tell me that I can’t understand until you’ve put on my shoes and walked a few paces through Hell with me.

[BootmanLA]

10 hours ago, brnbk said:

is exclusion from a public place ever acceptable? For e.g. libraries might only be open to members, and I might be denied rights to access a book, even though i am a member of the community but not a member of the library. 

If you mean a privately owned library, of course it's OK for it to be restricted to members only, just as any other privately-owned facility can be. Public libraries may restrict checking out of materials to local residents (because they're the ones paying the taxes for the library), but I think pretty much all public libraries allow non-residents (ie "non members") to at least use the materials while in the library. And I've never known any library to demand ID proving you're a local resident in order to enter the building.

 

10 hours ago, brnbk said:

You have a very valid concern about inclusivity and true acceptance but even as members of the LGBTQ we do bar lesbians from gay bathhouses. Could it be possible that barring Transgendered men from gay bathhouses be on valid grounds?

Three points: First, it's the OWNERS of the bathhouses that bar women - not just lesbians, but women in general, not other patrons demanding that they not be present. That's not to say one way or the other that the owners are morally, ethically, or otherwise "right" or "wrong" to do so, but it's a different issue from other patrons demanding accommodation of their own prejudices.

Second, given that bathhouses are oriented towards *men*, and lesbians are (by definition) looking for *women*, I don't think there's a line of lesbians who are just itching to get into bathhouses and only kept out by the whims or caprices of the owners or other patrons.

Third, it seems to me that such places have (in large measure) decided that it's the gender identity of the person that matters, not whether he has a penis or not. That seems to me to be a valid way to operate (and again, it's the owners' call).

10 hours ago, brnbk said:

I mean while say for eg refusing to go to a restaurant coz it allows inter-racial dinning is clearly bigoted, could someone be allowed to say i don't like mexican food or chinese cuisine or french food for that matter — too fancy!  and choose not to go to those restaurants.  

Absolutely! There's no problem with saying "This place isn't for me, it doesn't meet my tastes" - whether that's a Chinese restaurant that doesn't serve your favorite tacos, or a bathhouse that allows trans men.

The problem comes when patrons demand that the Chinese restaurant not serve Lo Mein because they don't like Lo Mein. Or when the patron demands that a bathhouse exclude trans men because they don't want to be near a vagina.

10 hours ago, brnbk said:

Even trans people have sexual preferences. believe me, a very handsome man that i know knew, is trans and was in the US Marines and he told me he was once out and dressed as a women and a guy made a pass at him, he was going to beat up the guy who made a pass at him. I was very confused when he related the story to me but explained He is trans but is attracted to women not men!

I'm not sure what to make of this muddle of a paragraph. Are you describing a person who was assigned male at birth, but identifies as female (which is what "trans" means)? If so, continuing to call her "he" and "a man" and saying "he" was "dressed as a women [sic]" is insulting; she's a woman who was born in a body that doesn't conform to her identity. And parenthetically if she's still attracted to women, that would make her a transwoman who is a lesbian. 

 

11 hours ago, brnbk said:

it doesn't need to be an Olympic of Oppression and there doesn't need to be a hierarchy even but i think, categories always remain. Racial bigotry is unique and while disability can bring hostility and perhaps even hate, but can it really equal hate- such as those towards another race(Cowboys vs Indian), gender – that women,  religion (catholic vs protestant etc) ?

ErosWired addressed this better than I can, but I would note that while racial bigotry is unquestionably (from a historical perspective) America's biggest bigotry problem, that's in large measure because of a combination of severity and numbers. Women were oppressed in greater numbers, but not to the same degree as African-American slaves or Indigenous peoples. Treatment of those deemed "crazy" or "mentally defective" was often as cruel as what was handed out on the basis of race, but the numbers affected were much smaller and thus flew under the radar for longer.

So in some measure it depends on whether you look at severity of treatment or the scope of affected persons when deciding whether two forms of bigotry are "equal". It depends on what you're measuring.

[ErosWired]

45 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

If you mean a privately owned library, of course it's OK for it to be restricted to members only, just as any other privately-owned facility can be. Public libraries may restrict checking out of materials to local residents (because they're the ones paying the taxes for the library), but I think pretty much all public libraries allow non-residents (ie "non members") to at least use the materials while in the library. And I've never known any library to demand ID proving you're a local resident in order to enter the building.

As a person whose graduate degree deals with libraries and archives, I can tell you that from the perspective of the library profession, there is no such thing as a public library open only to a select group. Any such arrangement would be in direct contravention of the professional code, the Library Bill of Rights, one Core Value of which reads:

All information resources that are provided directly or indirectly by the library, regardless of technology, format, or methods of delivery, should be readily, equally, and equitably accessible to all library users.

Based on this, a 2014 interpretation guideline for the LBR on Restricted Access To Libraries states:

Libraries are a traditional forum for the open exchange of information. Attempts to restrict access to library materials violate the basic tenets of the Library Bill of Rights.

In other words, we don’t do that in public libraries. You might not be allowed to check out a book if you don’t have a library card, (they have to have some control over circulation) but you can still read it in the library.

Certain collections may be access-restricted, however, such as rare or fragile manuscript archives, or classified materials held in governmental libraries otherwise open to the public and subject to FOYA. And certainly, not all libraries are public. Owners of private library collections (including law firms, corporations, governmental agencies, and universities) are free to restrict access however they wish, although a professionally certified librarian has to do some soul-searching before agreeing to abandon the LBR to work in some situations.

Edited December 7, 2023 by ErosWired

[Close2MyBro]

12 hours ago, brnbk said:

You have a very valid concern about inclusivity and true acceptance but even as members of the LGBTQ we do bar lesbians from gay bathhouses. Could it be possible that barring Transgendered men from gay bathhouses be on valid grounds? Of course barring people is very tricky as given the history of abuse, phobia towards anything that wasn't white christian male being a reality of the US,  - barring can sound and be a very negative experience for those who are being denied entry.

I mean while say for eg refusing to go to a restaurant coz it allows inter-racial dinning is clearly bigoted, could someone be allowed to say i don't like mexican food or chinese cuisine or french food for that matter — too fancy!  and choose not to go to those restaurants. 

I'm guessing a lot of people are not familiar with the Paradox of Tolerance. We keep speaking about inclusivity and tolerance and labeling those people who don't meet a certain "standard" of tolerance as ignorant bigots. The truth is, as I mentioned earlier, that by the same standard, those people are also ignorant bigots. The only way to have true tolerance is to accept those people to whom you have "no tolerance" for. If you don't then you yourself are intolerant. [think before following links] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

[BlindRawFucker1]

The brown stuff might be about to hit the spinning blades.

 

The LGBT community, like most minority groups, can be extremely bigoted and unaccepting.

 

It is well known, that minority groups bash other minorities, to make themselves feel superior.  Which is sad.

 

Being blind, I know this firsthand.  I can talk to someone, without my cane visible, and I am treated like a “normal” person.  If I do something, or unfold my cane to use it, attitudes often quickly change.

 

EurosWired, seems like an intelligent man.  But, how many of you would feel uncomfortable around him?  How many of you would think I had an emotional issue if I did something out of the ordinary, and didn’t have my cane?

 

Usually, if I’m waiting for a friend, who maybe went to the restroom or something, I’ll pull out my cane strictly for identification purposes.  This can be a two edged sword.  People will be overly helpful, or totally avoid me.  People who may be considered different, for whatever reason, just want to be treated as a person.  It has become totally acceptable to treat those we don’t like as garbage.  We’ve “GOT” to do better!

 

If we openly discriminate or exclude members of our own community, how do we expect to be accepted in the larger society?

 

There is a major difference between not wanting to be around someone because you are afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing, and not wanting to be around “those people.”

 

I know this post won’t change a single thing, but, maybe just a single individual might see the light and start trying to be more open to those who are different.

 

Now, I might need to climb into a hole, and keep my head down, for my own safety.

 

Take care, and think before you act.

[BootmanLA]

2 hours ago, ErosWired said:

In other words, we don’t do that in public libraries. You might not be allowed to check out a book if you don’t have a library card, (they have to have some control over circulation) but you can still read it in the library.

That was my point.

[BootmanLA]

2 hours ago, Close2MyBro said:

I'm guessing a lot of people are not familiar with the Paradox of Tolerance. We keep speaking about inclusivity and tolerance and labeling those people who don't meet a certain "standard" of tolerance as ignorant bigots. The truth is, as I mentioned earlier, that by the same standard, those people are also ignorant bigots. The only way to have true tolerance is to accept those people to whom you have "no tolerance" for. If you don't then you yourself are intolerant. [think before following links] [think before following links] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

If you properly understood the Paradox of Tolerance, you'd realize that (broadly speaking) it's rejected in the absolutist form you state. Karl Popper, for example, who wrote one of the more significant works on the paradox, noted that if we have tolerance of everything, including intolerance, we will end up with toleration of nothing - absolute intolerance - because everyone would have to tolerate everyone else's intolerant attitudes about something.

It's been said that the Constitution is not a suicide pact, and that if taking any provision to its logical extreme would end up negating the protections of the Constitution, then that provision can't be interpreted in that extreme matter. Free speech is limited, for instance, in that you can't legally incite a violent crime to a group of followers who are ready to commit violence. You can't claim freedom of religion as justification for human sacrifices. You can't claim freedom of the press (or speech) to excuse libel, particularly of a non-public figure. And so forth.

There's nothing contradictory about not tolerating intolerance. Tolerance is owed to those who would not use the principle of tolerance to bring harm to others. Or, as Popper himself put it, "We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."

[BlindRawFucker1]

One thing I have learned is, there are a lot of intelligent, thoughtful people here on BZ.

 

Sometimes, I feel like a total idiot.

 

However, feeling like an idiot is somethimes a good thing.  From those moments, I learn, and hopefully expand my horizons.

[BootmanLA]

9 minutes ago, BlindRawFucker1 said:

One thing I have learned is, there are a lot of intelligent, thoughtful people here on BZ.

 

Sometimes, I feel like a total idiot.

 

However, feeling like an idiot is somethimes a good thing.  From those moments, I learn, and hopefully expand my horizons.

For what it's worth, I never feel like you're an idiot, total or otherwise. I think you bring an important viewpoint to the table, one that many of us otherwise would forget to recognize.

[BlindRawFucker1]

Thank you.

 

Those are extremely kind words.

[Close2MyBro]

41 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

There's nothing contradictory about not tolerating intolerance.

Thank you for proving my point.

[ErosWired]

55 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

Karl Popper, for example, who wrote one of the more significant works on the paradox, noted that if we have tolerance of everything, including intolerance, we will end up with toleration of nothing - absolute intolerance - because everyone would have to tolerate everyone else's intolerant attitudes about something.

Which would be a recipe, ultimately, for anarchy, and the total breakdown of the social systems that compose human society. The Universe itself, though we see structure and order and systems all around us, is ultimately (wait a few quintillion years) bound for the absolute dissolution of all order as entropy takes its final toll.

Decay of systems happens around us constantly - I just had to replace my toilet valve last tight because the water suddenly wouldn’t stop running - and the only way we keep systems running is by constantly adding more effort to restore order. Maintaining tolerance in a society similarly requires a repeated influx of effort, and new energy, because it is a cognitive advance that has to be overlain over intolerance, which is an outgrowth of survival instinct by which creatures avoid unlike creatures to prevent predation, competition, and disease.

But a biome survives and flourishes as a holistic system when each member species learns what other members it can tolerate and accept, and which it cannot. The gazelle can peacefully tolerate sharing the Serengheti with the elephant, but it would be suicidal to tolerate the lions wandering among them, even though the lions occupy the plain as well and aren’t going anywhere.

The Constitution helps the American biome figure out how all out gazelles, elephants and lions (and warthogs) coexist in a thriving system…that includes a certain amount of moderate intolerance of lions.

[brnbk]

7 hours ago, ErosWired said:

Shall I tell you who were among the very first systematic victims of Nazi “cleansing” of the population? Autistic people. Yep. Before they even got started on Jews and homosexuals.

I appreciate your taking the time to put forward you viewpoint. 

 

I am not aware of the details of this and honestly I wouldn't've have suspected that was the case, though I did know that the Nazis disliked any kind of "imperfection" in the Aryan race and did try to exterminate disabled people. I am going to try to read up more about it. 

I think the way a society treats its sick and special needs people, tells a lot about who they are as a people. I personally like to include both disabled differently abled people and regular people in special needs because I think anybody can be special needs. For e.g. A woman can be special needs compared to a man when it comes to physical strength.

7 hours ago, ErosWired said:

S Check. There are plenty of people who, on hearing that I’m Autistic, automatically assume I lack self-control and am apt to go on a shooting spree, or that I’m just like Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man. Discrimination? Check Hate? It’s worse than hate. You have to be taught to hate another race, but people have a visceral repulsion to someone who they feel is acting ‘crazy’. If you gather a bunch of humans of all races into a room, they’ll all gather together on the side of the room opposite the ‘crazy’ person.

I disagree with treating autism as mental illness and imagine autistic people have mental illness just like the general population, and people who have mental illness need instinctive support not visceral repulsion. Sadly People can react with cruelty to people who are different. 'Crazy' people need our support not rejection.