What to say about this?

Let's compare the trans debate to gays pursuit of marriage.

The common accepted understanding of marriage was that it was between one man and one woman. The one and one was codified when the US refused to allow Utah to become a state unless they outlawed polygamy. So much for separation of church and state. The US forced the current day Christian view that marriage was one man and one woman down the throats of Utah.

About 100 years later, the gays wanted to be able to be married. What were they really asking for? Using the Utah case as the example, they want the states and federal government to recognize their unions as marriage. That gave them all the legal protections where the term marriage was used in law. States tried out civil unions. The challenge is that would require updating all the laws to be civil unions or state that a civil union was legal equivalent to marriage. My opinion, the state and federal governments should stay out of the concept of marriage completely.

Now back to your discussion of why what you call the trans activist movement argued that a trans-woman = a woman. Specifically because for all practical purposes that was how society was effectively operating before it became a discussion. Specifically, trans-activist-woman acknowledging they exist. Trans-woman and malicious men dressing as woman have been using woman's bathrooms and woman's locker rooms for ever. It's not new. Just as gay men have been using men's locker rooms and bathrooms forever. A subset of str8 guys only had a problem when they started knowing a guy in the bathroom or locker room was gay.

So what was the goal of trans-activists wanted to say a trans-woman is a woman. To basically legalize what was already happening.

The challenge was that they started pushing it into other domains that were not already happening. A trans-woman with a penis parading around a woman's locker room naked or using a woman's hot tub naked. A trans-woman competing in woman's or girls sports. Trans-women serving in the military. Trans-woman in women's prisons. And finally, trans-woman wanting medical care/insurance to help with the hormones and transition surgery. These all pushed into new spaces. Most trans-woman were not interested in being provocative by pushing into these spaces. That has caused pushback. Including drag queens doing library story hours - I never understood why this one became a thing. Seems to me it was just provocative.

But your bottom line comment "They shared none of the concerns that sane men and women felt about rapists and perverts in women’s spaces." That has nothing to do with any of the boundaries that trans-activist are promoting. As I stated above, malicious men were already dressing as woman to get into woman's spaces. No one ever checked for gender on a license or ask someone to do a strip search.

The only new area where malicious men are now accessing woman's spaces is prisons. This one is not hard to sort out. Many of the malicious men posing as women have a history of sexual assault. Also, everyone knows they are a man. They have already been stripped searched. My guess much of the abuse caused by malicious men in woman's prisons is happening because guards are amused by the situation. This gets into a question of how guards keep any prisoner safe in prison. If you're gay in a men's prison, you might as well walk around with your pants down because the guards are not going to stop other men from raping you.

Is it trans-women's responsibility to make sure as you call them "rapists and perverts can't get in there with them?" Seriously, when trans-woman were not being activists you didn't asked them to solve this problem. Why is it their responsibility now? For prisons, the problem has nothing to do with trans activists. We know most prisons are not safe for anyone. Calling out a very small fraction of malicious guys posing as woman and getting into a woman's prison is a nit on the problem of safety in prisons.

Thanks for letting me comment without a subscription. Use to pay for your substack but you implied you didn't want me commenting anymore so I stopped. You always seem to have a huge problem with my perspective.