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Another what-if on locker rooms

Another what-if on locker rooms

Last updated on: April 22, 2016 at 6:43 am by Jane the Actuary

Another what-if on locker rooms 2016-04-22T06:43:57-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Look, we all get it: an individual who has transitioned is in a position where you can’t just demand they use the locker rooms corresponding to their sex at birth.

But at the same time, well, it’s driving me batty when people treat this as only an issue of bathrooms, and something to get past just by not being prudish.

So here are a dozen scenarios.

Which of these individuals would you feel comfortable using the locker room at a public pool along wtih your 7 year old daughter?

1) a cisgender man

1a) who is dressing as a woman in order to access the locker room and look at naked women and expose himself

1b) who is dressing as a woman on a dare from friends

1c) who is just wearing ordinary (male) street clothes/swim trunks

2) a biologically-male individual who identifies as “genderqueer” or “agender”

3) a biologically-male individual in the beginning stages of transitioning, who is consequently dressing as a woman (long hair, women’s clothes) but hasn’t had any treatment affecting their body?

3a) a biologically-male individual who is not “out” as transgender, but spends occasional weekends out-of-town cross-dressing

4) a biologically-male individual who has begun hormone treatments but has not had any surgery

5) a biologically-male individual who has had surgery

6) a biologically-female individual who has begun hormone therapy and has had “top” surgery and from outside appearances is neither obviously male nor female but dresses in a masculine fashion

7) a biologically-female individual who has had extensive surgery and whose hormone treatments have substantially altered the appearance, including beard, muscles, etc.

8) an intersex person (that is, for whom ambiguousness about sex is a matter of biology, not any artificial hormones or surgeries)

9) anyone who wants to be there and prefers it to the men’s locker room.

Let’s get down to specifics, and the hard cases.

ADDED: to clarify, the “7 year old girl” is there not because of fears that girls are particularly at risk of being leered at, but because, last I checked, the consensus in our society was that girls at or past this age should not be exposed to naked men; that is, they should not be viewing penises. At least, I presume this consensus still holds . . .

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHK_%E5%A0%85%E5%B0%BC%E5%9C%B0%E5%9F%8E_Kennedy_Town_%E5%A3%AB%E7%BE%8E%E9%9D%9E%E8%B7%AF%E5%B8%82%E6%94%BF%E5%A4%A7%E5%BB%88_Smithfield_Municipal_Services_Building_%E6%9B%B4%E8%A1%A3%E5%AE%A4_changing_room_Sept-2011.jpg; By Limysei1235 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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