seranine

"If trans women are really gay men, exactly what “threat” do men not s*xually interested in women represent in public restrooms?"

this whole thing is gold, honestly, and yeah, as usual, any examination of conservative talking points reveals how incoherently contradictory they are.

The debate over trans women’s access to cis-women’s “safe spaces” has never been about harm or even discomfort.

It’s about who draws the boundary lines around “women,” and what happens to the marginalized individuals that excludes.

Conservatives, who formerly took up arms against “institutionalized victimhood” and “safe spaces,” are reversing themselves on this single issue.

Mary Anne Franks (GWU) summarizes the old approach: “Contempt for vulnerability is the defining characteristic of contemporary American conservatism.

“Conservatives ridicule diversity initiatives, government assistance, anti-discrimination policies, the movement, worker protections, universal health care, family leave, forgiveness of student debt, and other progressive concepts as obsessions of the fragile and the dependent.” (1)

Suddenly they’re committed to “safe spaces”?

Only when it’s convenient, racist, or homophobic.

When FDR’s 1941 executive order ended discrimination in defense industries/government offices, “white women engaged in numerous labor strikes and walkouts” to fight back, “claiming that racial integration with blacks would cause them to catch syphilis from shared toilet seats and towels in public restrooms.” (2)

Resistance lasted for decades: “Memphis, Tennessee, employed this exact rationale in opposing the desegregation of restrooms in its public library [in 1961] …, because venereal diseases were commonplace among blacks, and an integrated ladies’ room would put white women at risk of catching VD from black women. …” (3)

When tr*******al Christine Jorgensen returned to the US in 1953, a vice cop confronted her: “Jorgensen, … If you dare to use a public restroom, … I’ll have you picked up and examined by a board of doctors.” (4)

The “Lavender Scare” lasted into the 1960s, founded on baseless claims that gay pedophiles were recruiting in public restrooms:

“‘Public restrooms can often be a hangout for the homos*xual,’ a narrator ominously explained [in the 1961 film “Boys Beware”]. ’Bobby and his friends hadn’t noticed the man who had been in the restroom when they changed.’” (3)

In the 1970s this became Phyllis Schlafly’s weapon against the Equal Rights Amendment, and justified tearing down gay bathhouses during the HIV/AIDs scare in the 1980s. (2) (5)

Today, as philosopher Adriel M. Trott (Wabash College) explains:

“The claim that ‘no, trans women should not have access to spaces typically designated for women only’ relies on one of the following premises:

“ASSUMPTION A) TRANS WOMEN AREN’T WOMEN. Or …

“ASSUMPTION B) TRANS WOMEN ARE DANGEROUS TO CIS WOMEN. Or …

“ASSUMPTION C) TRANS WOMEN ARE NOT NECESSARILY DANGEROUS, BUT THEY DO MAKE SOME CIS WOMEN UNCOMFORTABLE IN THESE MORE INTIMATE SPACES. Or …

“ASSUMPTION D) INCLUDING TRANS WOMEN IN WOMEN ONLY SPACES MAKES CIS WOMEN MORE VULNERABLE TO CIS MEN.” (6)

Skip Assumption A momentarily; even if the right accepted that trans women as women, the other assertions would still be in play.

Assumption B alleges that trans women are dangerous.

Between 2016 - 2024, 1.13 million women filed r**e complaints. More than 3.4+ million American men (20% of all r**es are gang r**es) r**ed 3.4 million American women. (7)

Law enforcement complaints that trans women in “women only” spaces r**ed or s*xually assaulted cis women is ZERO between 2016 -2024.

There’s no threat, any more than Black women infected toilet seats with STDs (which also does away with Assumption D).

Assumption C indicates that even absent threat, trans women should be banned for making many cis women uncomfortable in “women only” public spaces.

Trott highlights the implicit assumption by anti-trans advocates that “the discomfort of cis women deserves more normative weight than the costs of excluding trans women.”

I’ve heard repeatedly that “just women,” “real women,” or “biological women” are the only ones whose “” and perceptions matter. Because “trans women are not women,” “biological women” don’t have to consider any possible harms of exclusion to them, since they’re only “biological men playing dress up.”

Trott again: “In the case of trans women, given their heavily marginalized status … and that they have not in fact been dangerous to cis women, I am skeptical that some cis women’s discomfort warrants such exclusion.” (6)

One of my commenters argued that even an inadvertent glance at a trans woman’s body (which might, if naked, display a p***s) generates harmful trauma,

“Ur literally arguing that women’s rights don’t matter and men can flash them and it doesn’t matter cause there’s no physical harm. … that’s most flashing cases. No actual physical danger. Trauma is real tho.”

Leaving aside that “flashing” requires an intent to shock, surprise, or offend, it’s unbelievable to assert that today an incidental sighting of someone else’s ge****ls creates trauma on a scale justifying the prohibition of 700,000 trans women from using public accommodations any more than restrictions against Black or le***an women were justified in years past.

Absent from these discussions, always, are the impacts on affected trans women:

FIRST, such exclusions reduce trans individuals to second-class citizenship. Jody L Herman of the Williams School of Law at UCLA examined the distinct harms these exclusions cause, concluding that of the trans individuals surveyed, “18% of respondents have been denied access to a gender-segregated public restroom, while 68% have experienced some sort of verbal harassment and 9% have experienced some form of physical assault when accessing or using gender-segregated public restrooms.”

That was in 2013.

Herman documents the impact on trans Americans’ lives by such sweeping exclusions:

“A single experience of denied access, verbal harassment, or physical assault is certainly a problem in its own right. These experiences, however, can have far-reaching effects that impact people’s lives. Experiences of discrimination can impact people’s lives in many ways, even leading to poverty or to negative health consequences [relative to] education, employment, health, and participation in public life.”

You can tell this article — while excellent — is 13 years old. Just read this concluding sentences:

“This is something that many legislators, public officials, and administrators are currently grappling with as transgender and gender non-conforming people have increased their visibility, formed political coalitions in the United States, and organized to make known the issues and problems they encounter in our society.” (8)

Yep, Republican legislators are “grappling” with the issue of “transgender and gender non-conforming people” by erasing them.

SECOND, despite conservative Karens’ claims that “I can decipher a male vs a female on the higher end of testosterone for a woman … It’s a simple observation. There exists no trans women who look like women,” thousands of trans women “pass” every single day … as they’ve done for decades.

What bathroom hysteria has actually spawned is increased confrontation, harassment, and even attacks on masculine-appearing cis women.

THIRD, the anti-trans movement (created and managed by white male conservative strategists to get votes), cannot be analyzed without considering conservative identity policies that increasingly target everyone who isn’t white and heteros*xual for reduced status, disfranchisement, and erasure.

My commenters deny they act out of prejudice. Some say, “I have trans friends” as people used to say, “I have Negro friends” or “I have gay friends”; one said he couldn’t be prejudiced against trans people because he’s a furry.

Or they draw this differentiation: “I have 0 problem with trans ppl. Not all of them want access to women’s lockers. So I dislike a behavior. Not a group.” Sure you don’t. This is the same person who also says, “u can label protecting myself and kids as transphobic…. if that’s what that means I’ll wave a flag that proudly says I am … “

Yet their arguments for trans women not being women are ludicrous to anyone with a brain and a decent education.

I’ve already written extensively on how the word “woman” has been used legally and culturally since the American Revolution as a tool to support white supremacy rather than scientific understandings of s*x … (9)

… so now consider how incoherently anti-trans zealots use “women” to create boundaries excluding trans women from an entire critical sector of public services.

First they claim being a “biological woman” depends solely on chromosomes, genitalia, and — more recently — gametes.

Yet nearly 80% of American women (130 million) have never actually undergone chromosome testing; tens of millions couldn’t prove their own DNA on a bet. (10)

Large numbers of genes on chromosomes besides #23 impact the body’s expression of s*x and genitalia. Researchers increasingly understand that “s*x” isn’t merely a function of the reproductive system, but the interaction between neurological, endocrine, and reproductive systems. (11) (12)

S*x — like most biological processes — is only simple to simpletons.

The same simpletons also yammer “there is no trans, only mental illness.”

Nobody transitions without experiencing gender dysphoria, which isn’t defined as a mental illness under DSM. There’s massive evidence that neurological and endocrine mismatches with the reproductive system cause the mental and emotional symptoms.

Bubbas dismiss this as “woke” pandering to “leftists,” and insist that “trans women are just gay men with extra steps.”

You see this everywhere on social media, without the slightest awareness of its fatal flaw.

If trans women are really gay men, exactly what “threat” do men not s*xually interested in women represent in public restrooms?

So anti-trans Karens have started making a new claim that’s equally insane.

Trans women aren’t women because “U won’t understand this cause u didn’t grow up as a girl. U have no idea what it’s like to b a woman.”. They cannot experience the joys/difficulties of pregnancy, for example.

My favorite anonymous troll claim:

“Part of being a girl/woman is the anticipation of starting your period and the response to the way that you experience that - getting them early, starting late, regularly, irregulary [sic], stopping them temporarily, or very rarely never starting them, needing medication to stop getting them for 3 weeks a month, heavy, light... boys and men will never experience that.”

What they’re claiming is that trans women lack a “real” woman’s “inner sense of self.”

They’ve forgotten that the oldest anti-trans argument is that relying an “inner sense of self” is “mental illness,” because emotions are irrelevant to “biological s*x.”

Until anti-trans Karens claim otherwise.

Here’s the gist: there are no cogent arguments being offered by the right on this topic.

Only fear-mongering.

Fear-mongering for the hopelessly stupid.

========
SOURCES

(1) Mary Anne Franks, “The Second Amendment’s Safe Space, or the Constitutionalization of Fragility,” (Law & Contemporary Problems) (2020)https://www.law.uci.edu/events/supreme-court-term-review/2022/pdfs/franks-safe-space.pdf

(2) Gillian Frank, “The Anti-Trans Bathroom Nightmare Has Its Roots in Racial Segregation,” (Slate) (2015) https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/11/anti-trans-bathroom-propaganda-has-roots-in-racial-segregation.html

(3) Neil J. Young, “How the Bathroom Wars Shaped America,” (Politico) (2016) https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-bathroom-bills-politics-north-carolina-lgbt-transgender-history-restrooms-era-civil-rights-213902/

(4) Nikita Shepard, “‘The Relationship Between Public Morals and Public Toilets’: Christine Jorgensen and the Birth of Trans Bathroom Panic,” (Nursing Clio) (2024) https://nursingclio.org/2024/11/27/the-relationship-between-public-morals-and-public-toilets-christine-jorgensen-and-the-birth-of-trans-bathroom-panic/

(5) Doug Hubley, “Did closing New York City bath houses strip dignity from gay men?” (Bates University) (2018) https://www.bates.edu/news/2018/03/16/did-the-1980s-closure-of-nycs-bathhouses-strip-dignity-from-gay-men/

(6) Adriel M. Trott, “Women in Philosophy: Table Talk, or On the Possibility of Real, Open Conversation,” (APA Blog) (2018) https://blog.apaonline.org/2018/09/12/women-in-philosophy-table-talk-on-the-possibility-of-real-open-conversation/

(7) American Samizdat, 2/27/25 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02763fiF3LV5XLGkqn6E7Tcj6bWAnxbpUYtHR7jazvsWYcrKHesd7yvUgYpTg1mCPyl&id=61568011423015 see in particular “Number of reported forcible r**e cases in the United States from 1990 to 2024” (Statista) (2026) https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible-r**e-cases-in-the-usa-since-1990/?srsltid=AfmBOopYU9Y_EB9EDVQow6lL5tSdiX3cq78HZ8cio9IMeeayJkD2AbSE&fbclid=IwY2xjawUspz5leHRuA2FlbQIxMABwZG9mAWJyaWQRMTJhV1NHaFdjTGJMTmRaU2VzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeAfYpyTxDKObqFGoPgmy0uQdNNnWR7hy9JAbeJFMWO8iiaP3wpMfJvqfazXY_aem_vd_z3DcWQukXsvUzyhtQgg

(8) Jody L. Herman, “Gendered Restrooms and Minority Stress: The Public Regulation of Gender and its Impact on Transgender People’s Lives,” (Journal of Public Management and Social Policy) (2013)https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Restrooms-Minority-Stress-Jun-2013.pdf

(9) American Samizdat, 9/18/26 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02D24Nyt6WgtxQNsjwD2X3GnqvyqasZGfor9hfhJB9RWqJMoR3NmRotYCH4FzSG3dNl&id=61568011423015

(10) Christine M Swoboda, Akemi T Wijayabahu, and Naleef Fareed, “Attitudes towards and sociodemographic determinants of genetic test usage in the USA; data from the Health Information National Trend Survey, 2020,” (Journal of Genetic Counseling) (2022) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10087577/

(11) Madeleine Foreman, Lauren Hare, Kate York, Kara Balakrishnan, Francisco J Sánchez, Fintan Harte, Jaco Erasmus, Eric Vilain, and Vincent R Harley, “Genetic Link Between Gender Dysphoria and S*x Hormone Signaling,” (Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism) (2018) https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/104/2/390/5104458?login=false

(12) Florian Kurth, Christian Gaser, Francisco J Sánchez, and Eileen Luders, “Brain S*x in Transgender Women Is Shifted towards Gender Identity,” (Journal of Clinical Medicine) (2022) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8955456/

cn: csa

this is one of the most devastatingly heartbreaking things i've ever read. i don't recall ever hearing of this case at the time; to my knowledge, this is all news to me. the idea that this child was made to carry all this abuse, that all its consequences belonged solely to her, that none of it would ever spill over, and if it did, that would be her fault, too, is just... grotesque. all these accidents of time and place and birth, every failing of society around her, somehow her responsibility, as a child. unreal.

i'm of a mind that every crime has some sort of societal failing at its heart, that the human animal making harmful choices is a direct reflection of their environment. that it is a dereliction of duty for legislatures and legislators, as the constant architects of society, to never directly address every possible root cause and contributing factor. not to say that nothing is ever anyone's fault, and nobody has any individual responsibility, but that it is plainly absurd to suggest that these things happen in a vacuum, that the fault in a case like this lies solely with one most directly individually responsible for some great harm.

it all seems especially salient in light of recent news, more misogyny boiling over so dramatically it ever-so-briefly cannot escape notice. but it's all the same thing. it's misogyny all the way down, it is blaming women for the ways in which we survive the world that leads us to choose the bear. it is a natural consequence of the world of constant r**e, if not only the threat of it, everywhere, for all of us, all the time.

all too often it is also the world of racism.

any legislator — most especially one who sells themselves as tough on crime — who never addresses root causes and circumstances within their power and purview to change or at least bring to everyone's attention is an actively harmful person who, by their willful negligence, doesn't just allow things like this to happen, but personally and directly ensures that they will.

we have all we need. we have the science, we have the facts of whatever case, broadly speaking, even where they are inexact or incomplete. we have things we could address, and, mechanically, the means to address them, and instead we elect hucksters and conmen and frauds who often quite intentionally make things worse for everyone, while also failing absolutely to make anything better for anyone but themselves and their financial backers.

these things are gonna keep happening until enough of us agree, collectively, that they should not. enough of us to elect legislators who are serious enough about the job — architect of society — to actually do it. to mitigate as absolutely as possible every contributing factor to crimes like this, and abandon this frankly childish notion that every individual is solely responsible for the choices they make, that the choices available to one are the choices available to all, that there is no cause, only effect.

Tennessee says child rapists deserve to die. Now it prepares to execute one of their victims At 18, Christa Pike was sentenced to death for murder. What if the jury knew she had suffered years of s*xual abuse as a child?

with all the deliberate disinformation out there about trans people, and especially trans women, posts like these, i.e., full of actual factual citations (linked, even!), are invaluable. it's honestly quite a relief to be able to share them. after all, facts, as they say, don't care about your feelings.

Trigger warning: if you wear a red hat and like to harass trans women this one’s gonna be rough for you. I don’t care, and you don’t get to comment.

================
You’ve seen the comments.

A trans woman posts a question about whether cis-gender men would accept or reject them as date/girlfriend/wife material … or just asks how this outfit looks …

… and the comments fill up with bots, trolls, and guys who spent too much time lusting after sheep as teenagers saying …

“Any guy who has s*x with a tr**ny is gay.”

“This is just two gay men getting together.”

“If you’re attracted to these mentally ill men, you’re a homo.”

Those represent the nice ones.

Leaving aside the fact that “gay” and “homo” are only still slurs in states where a virgin is defined as a girl who can run faster than her brothers, or where foreplay amounts to, “Get in the truck, bitch!” …

… research suggests that Cletus, Larry, his brother Darryl, his other brother Darryl, Beauregard Junior, John Billy-Bob Boy, and Big Ronnie are probably quite a bit closer to being LGBTQIA+ than they’d like you to think.

A recent study of college students found that 12% (that’s about one in eight) young men who self-defined as “heteros*xual” had at least one s*xual experience with another man … and still consider themselves to be heteros*xual. (1)

(My money is on “other brother Darryl” above. There was always something about him.)

It turns out that in today’s world more and more heteros*xual men are decoupling their s*xual activities from their s*xual identity. (2)

Research has also unearthed the fact that when heteros*xual men consume p**n, about a quarter of what they choose to watch is … men having s*x with other men. (3)

That’s when they aren’t watching videos of a man drugging his wife so they can fantasize about ra**ng her while she’s unconscious, or ma********ng about hitting and slapping women while having in*******se … or worse. (4)

Let’s not forget the more affluent Bubbas among our anti-trans zealots, who visit Thailand to b***k minors and “ladyboys,” (5) or that statistics suggest that there’s nearly a 50% chance that any guy leaving this kind of comment has or will r**e or s*xually assault a woman within their lives. (9)

Reality is complex.

A 2018 Kinsey study found that one out of every three men (including lotsa Bubbas) fantasize about s*x with a tr*******al woman. (6)

On the other hand, a 2019 Canadian study found only 3.3% of heteros*xual males ready to do the deed with a trans partner. (7)

On the gripping hand (if you got that I know what SF you read), a 2021 Canadian study found that 54.9% of transgender women in “couples” reported that their partner was a cis-gender man. (8)

Back to the topic at hand: bubbas out there making noise about trans women being nothing more than “mentally ill gay men.”

Block them and hide their comments. All of them. Report them if they are the slightest bit threatening. Not just to clean up your pages, but because some of those guys are stalkers and dangerous. Violently dangerous. (9)

In one of my next posts I’ll cover — in detail — a study examining why more cis-gender, avowedly heteros*xual men than ever are interested in dating trans women … and why that finding is so disturbing.

========
SPURCES

(1) Arielle Kuperburg and Alicia M. Walker, “Heteros*xual College Students Who Hookup with Same‑S*x Partners,” (Archives of S*xual Behavior) (2018) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-018-1194-7

(2) Brandon Andrew Robinson, “Transamorous Misogyny: Masculinity, Heteros*xuality, and Cis Men’s S*xist Desires for Trans Women,” (Men and Masculinity) (2023) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1097184X221148208

(3) Josh Jackman, “Straight men watch gay p**n a quarter of the time, study reveals,” (The Pink News) (2018) https://www.thepinknews.com/2018/03/06/straight-men-watch-gay-p**n-a-quarter-of-the-time-study-reveals/?_gl=1*buhwmm*_gcl_au*NDQ2MzIxMzYuMTc5MDAzODk3NA..*_ga*OTA5ODg3MDkyLjE3OTAwMzg5NzQ.*_ga_BX9CRJ4BBP*czE3OTA0MzU5NDQkbzUkZzAkdDE3OTA0MzU5NDkkajU1JGwwJGgw

(4) American Samizdat, “CNN, MOTHERLESS, AND THE ‘RAPE ACADEMY’ — IT’S FAR WORSE THAN YOU PROBABLY THINK” (4/24/2026) https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02mTxvrqrHKC6NuWZbRQJ37PcqPE9VGx6xPyntBFxhwrdcsujJr92HedjUAMVynZqvl&id=61568011423015

(5) Ronald Weitzer, “S*x Tourism in Thailand: Inside Asia’s Premier Erotic Playground,” New York University Press, 2023. Do not visit Aunt Anna, of course. (To be clear: Weitzer emphasizes that Americans are only a tiny trickle in the flow of s*x tourists to Thailand, but his descriptions of them are damning.)

(6) Louisa McGillicuddy, “Tell Me What You Want: an exclusive extract from Dr Justin Lehmiller’s new book exploring what your s*xual fantasies say about you,” (New York Times) (2018) https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/s*x-relationships/article/tell-me-what-you-want-an-exclusive-extract-from-dr-justin-lehmiller-s-new-book-exploring-what-your-s*xual-fantasies-say-about-you-zl7w535ml

(7) Karen Blair and Rhea Ashley Hopkins, “Transgender exclusion from the world of dating: Patterns of acceptance and rejection of hypothetical trans dating partners as a function of s*xual and gender identity,” (Journal of Social and Personal Relationships) (2019) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0265407518779139?casa_token=VPMSwfbBhewAAAAA:ApTnzSaDZEI8k0iqPvrPZFA0CTM7nBjqWq4bJZ2391JOXIBCHuP-MzuOuwyFTLsaxy-MTn4tTuyR

(8) “State of the union: Canada leads the G7 with nearly one-quarter of couples living common law, driven by Quebec,” (Government of Canada) (2022) see specifically Table 3 at https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220713/t003b-eng.htm

(9) HRC Staff, “New Human Rights Campaign Foundation Report: Online Hate & Real World Violence Are Inextricably Linked,” (Human Rights Campaign) (2022) https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/new-human-rights-campaign-foundation-report-online-hate-real-world-violence-are-inextricably-linked

======================
American Samizdat is produced by Steve Newton, PhD, Professor of History and Political Science (ret.) at Delaware State University and Master Sergeant (ret.), US Army/VaRNG (former Shock/Trauma Tech).

I specialize in military history/policy, American history, LGBTQIA+ history, and Constitutional studies.

As a contractor I assisted in setting up the Department of Homeland Security in 2002. I’ve regretted that choice ever since.

I worked at a leading Historically Black College/University for 31+ years; as a parent advocate for special needs students in 8 states; and as a K-12 Social Studies teacher trainer in 28 states.

You can check out my published books on Amazon here https://www.amazon.com/.../Steven.../author/B001H6NIL4...

This site is repeatedly shadow-banned, so please consider following the page directly if you want to keep seeing these posts.

===============
A note on comments: I do not permit comments containing images, because I don’t give space to anti-trans memes or s**t posting. When they slip by the filters I will delete them manually as I see them. Likewise I will delete comments and block individuals whose only purpose is to come here and insult/attack trans individuals.

The intent of this space is to provide information that trans individuals and their allies need to understand their history and current realities of politics and the sciences. It has a secondary purpose to educate those who have been suckered in by anti-trans lies, and who are amenable to re-examining their views.

I have zero intent to provide space for anybody else to tell us that Jesus will send people to hell for being trans; that trans people are inherently delusional, mentally ill, cosplaying, or predatory; or who insist on pushing bogus science.

I could care less how they feel about it: my house, my rules.

WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING 😭

i can't stop laughing

y'all my profile *explicitly says* that i'm trans!! this is not a secret they're discovering! it is a fact they cannot wrap their heads around!

at least he hasn't started arguing with me about it
..

yet

good morning lol