Rex Kerr
2 min readJun 21, 2022

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I...what?! Given what a big deal passing is to many trans people--given all the pejorative accusations of "a man in a dress" (from both men and women), given all the tales of upset around "I was misgendered today" with no accusation of ill-will--do you really want to raise the standard for trans people to "clearly distinguishable from a man in drag"?

Trans people need to have access to basic necessities like bathrooms regardless of how much they have transitioned and how effectively they pass. There might be an argument for "pass as the new gender" being the standard, but I don't see how instituting a "pass as trying to leave the old gender and successfully doing so better than a cis man could with a little effort, even if he happens to have more feminine features than average" can do anything but cause additional stress and confusion.

Furthermore, although I think that some trans women and allies have taken cis women's concerns (and the concerns, perhaps overblown, of their male allies) seriously and made a good faith effort to address them, you thus far have not.

The "workable" solutions you mention are mostly cost-prohibitive (or at least, far more expensive than adding or converting to gender-neutral bathrooms).

The dismissal of safety concerns as "no great and present danger" isn't warranted given that there hasn't been any great and present opportunity for these kinds of problems: most places have not yet or only very recently had any policy about trans people's usage of bathrooms aside from "use what you look right for, and if you don't fit either category, tough". When the worry is about a change to policy, you can't use "before the change there wasn't a big problem" to counter "the change is going to cause a big problem". There haven't been many trans-pretender attacks on women (but there have been more than zero, e.g. https://adflegal.blob.core.windows.net/mainsite-new/docs/default-source/documents/legal-documents/thomas-v.-city-schools-of-decatur/thomas-v-city-schools-of-decatur---u-s-department-of-education-ocr-investigation-letter-(2018-09-14).pdf?sfvrsn=221fe529_4). There have been significant decreases in violence against trans people when they're allowed to use the correct bathroom (but it's not perfect!--mostly, the women's bathroom is safer than the men's bathroom).

Any argument that it's not an issue needs to be (1) quantitative and (2) distinguish between how-things-are-now and how-they-will-be-when-changed. I have occasionally seen trans people and trans advocates deal with the issue in a thoughtful way.

But though you've done better this time than the first ("zero"), you're still mostly doing insensitive-and-oppositional. This is one of the biggest barriers to acceptance of trans rights: people like you choose to fight ferociously against the loudest tiny sliver of people on the far right who won't accede to any changes or express any tolerance and in so doing expressing hostility towards the large number of people who are hesitant about any change but are good-willed enough to support measures that are well-justified.

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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