What no one is saying about the trans bathroom debate

Responding to episode 4 of The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling

Photo by Tom Rogerson on Unsplash

Preface: I don’t really know if “no one” is saying this. I think that’s unlikely but it’s annoyingly difficult to write pithy-yet-accurate titles for essays that draw readers in. What is 100% fact is that I’ve never heard anyone explain it this way. But that’s also not saying much. ;)

In TERF Wars, The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, I heard JKR conflate a variety of issues into “sex-based space” issues as if they’re all the same. They’re not. The differences between these issues matter.

Consciously or not, I think this conflation positions trans people as problematic in an outsized way so that we’ll all be more likely to conclude that the best solution for all our problems is for people to not be trans. I don’t think this is her intention but it’s the outcome when an audience who lack attention span and/or good intentions only hear these brief sound bites. They see evidence of something not fitting into long-held norms as evidence that it’s disorderly, dysfunctional and illogical.

The conflation simultaneously artificially bolsters the logic of “sex-based spaces” as natural and superior. If sex-based spaces appear to occupy so much of our culture’s design, it gives us the impression that sex-based spaces are a given, so embedded, so universal, so natural. This is an intention I think JKR does have: She wants to preserve the normalization and perceived necessity of sex-based spaces.

So, let’s tease out the specifics around these concerns being conflated as problems within “sex-based spaces”:

1. Vulnerability of women in female prisons
2. Vulnerability of women in domestic violence shelters
3. Vulnerability of women in public bathrooms

They seem like they’re the same because they all involve women, men, and space. But their differences inform their solutions and help us to understand why they should never be used as any kind of leverage against trans people.

First, I’ll address prisons, then domestic violence shelters, then bathrooms. Then I will explain how you can be transphobic without necessarily being a transphobe.