Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

> Categories do not need to be immutable.

I agree, but you have to ask yourself, what purpose do the categories serve. It seems to me that th epurpose of sex-segregated bathrooms is two-fold: (1) to make people feel more comfortable, because many have weird hangups regarding intimacy and sex, and (2) to keep women safe. Even disregarding (2), it seems to be a choice between inconveniencing a tiny proportion of the population a bit more or inconveniencing most of the population a bit less. In any case, regardless of what bathroom trans people should go in, it doesn't even remotely start to solve other issues (e.g. what bathroom does a dad take his 4-year old daughter in) which is why I think the whole idea is a huge politically-motivated strawman.

View on HN

The error you're making in trading off a bit more discomfort for an already-marginalized group against any discomfort for the mainstream is exactly the reason having someone in an AI ethics board who doesn't see being a trans person as valid was a problem.

It's also the reason we need more ethics boards, because it's a common error technical training leads a person to, where we're taught how to optimize for common cases and defend against unusual cases---when the things we use aren't people and don't care if they're considered "common" or "unusual."

We could talk in circles about the details here. The fact of the matter is that those who harass others in bathrooms are already criminals (regardless of gender), and trans people are not overrepresented in those statistics at all, so it's a strawman to imply otherwise.

The fundamental difference that will not allow us to converse well here is that you are intentionally not accepting that a trans person is the gender they have transitioned to.

It's clear that's the case from, for example, you saying "to keep women safe" and very obviously not including trans women in that group. Trans women are women and also deserve to use the bathroom where they will feel safer.

The umber of trans people harassing somebody in the bathroom, or otherwise, is probably minuscule enough, and indeed there are laws that deal with that.

But you seem to be intentionally overlooking GP's main point -- people (dare I say most people, probably) have that strange hangup that they really prefer to visit the restroom with people of the same biological gender.

And before somebody comes back with "at some point people did not want to share bathroom with people of a different race", there was a movement to make people see folks of other color as fully human. There is no movement to make people accept seeing naked people with different genitalia.

(added) I don't think anyone is arguing seriously that transsexuals should not use public restrooms, period. But which restroom to use isn't quite as simple as "whatever gender they identify with", unless you believe that others have absolutely no say in the matter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com