Yesterday, I published a blog post about female only spaces. One of the comments for that blog post (written by Ridana) suggested that I unfairly applied a gender stereotype to women as a group. Actually, I semi-expected such criticisms to appear in the comment section, because I myself have been wondering about whether my unwillingness to enter female only spaces constitutes sexism.
I strongly oppose sexism, misogyny, gender norms, and transphobia. I want a world in which every person, regardless of their anatomy or gender identity, was free to choose their lifestyle and fashion preferences. I also oppose labeling some behaviors as either “masculine” or “feminine.” For example, there is nothing inherently feminine about painting your nails. It’s just a cultural stereotype that associates said behavior with women. Such stereotypes are immensely harmful, and I strongly believe that every person ought to be free to do with their nails whatever they like. The last thing I want to do is promoting sexist stereotypes or treating people unfairly based on their gender.
And then there are some experiences I have had, which make me extremely reluctant to enter female only spaces.
Last time I spent a night in a women’s room in a hostel was a couple of years ago in Münster (that’s a city in Germany). At that time I lived in Mainz (Germany), I went to Münster for two days in order to participate in a debate tournament. In Europe, many universities have debate clubs, which organize tournaments. Debate tournaments usually last two or three days, and the organizers provide accommodation for participants. In Germany, places where a group of students can spend a night on a budget tend to be gender segregated. I was sent to a room that I had to share with six women, all of them university students in their early twenties. The first night there was fine, because I went to sleep late after a party at a bar, and I got up early in order to attend the debate tournament. The second night I spent there was nightmarish. The evening was fine, once again I went to sleep late after a long evening at the bar. In the morning, I woke up at about 10 a.m. I had to wait for two hours until my ride back to Mainz. It was winter, so I decided to stay in the room instead of going outdoors, where it was cold.
The six women around me started talking about nail polish, they all had painted nails and went around showing them to each other. Afterwards the conversation switched to discussing make-up in general. Then they talked about female fashion. I had to spend almost two hours listening to a group of women talking about all these topics. I pulled out my e-reader, I tried to focus on my book and ignore the conversation. That, incidentally, is pretty hard, because even with headphones you still hear what the people around you are taking. The women around me probably concluded that I must be asocial. They pretended to ignore me, I pretended to ignore them.
At that time, I had already figured out that I wanted to live as a man. Yet my appearance was still somewhat feminine, given how replacing your entire wardrobe costs a lot of money. I felt like the women around me were not only ignoring me, they were erasing my existence. They just assumed that this was a women’s space, therefore everybody inside it liked nail polish and wanted to talk about it. Those two hours were torturous for me.
This wasn’t just an isolated incident. I have been forced to use female only spaces for all my life. I have heard countless locker room conversations about nail polish; many European women in their late teens/early twenties seem to be really into painting their nails, and they routinely want to show their nails to every woman they meet.
If I were in a male only company and people around me started talking about beer, I would be bored. I don’t drink beer, and I couldn’t care less about some other guy’s favorite beer brand. But having to listen to such a conversation wouldn’t make me feel like I’m being ignored and erased from existence. It’s nice to be treated as just another guy, and boredom isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a person with gender dysphoria.
I have some female friends who have stereotypically masculine fashion preferences. I also have female friends who use make-up and like painting their nails. It’s up to them what they want to do with their bodies, that’s none of my business. My female friends who do like make-up already know that I’m not interested in it, thus instead we talk about the shared interests we have. If I’m talking with my friends or a few female strangers, I can influence the conversation topic and switch to discussing something that I find interesting. When I am alone in a room with six women all of whom want to discuss nail polish, there is nothing I can do, I can only sit in a corner and wait for this experience to finally be over.
If I’m in a mixed gender company with at least one man being around, women won’t start talking about nail polish without first checking out whether the guy finds it interesting. I was never extended this kind of courtesy.
Of course, technically it is possible that I am a victim of Murphy’s Law, and I routinely get unlucky. The moment I enter a women’s locker room, women around me talk about nail polish. The moment I exit, they start talking about astrophysics and philosophy. But so far I have had so many unlucky experiences, that I’m unwilling to take the risk once again. Instead I prefer to avoid female only spaces altogether.
I do strongly suspect that, statistically, women’s locker room conversations differ from those conversations that happen in men’s rooms or unisex spaces. I suspect that I’m not just imagining that there could be a statistically noticeable difference. Why do so many women actively seek female only spaces? Why do many people want friends of the same sex as they are? If people didn’t expect to have different conversations while being in female only or male only company, why else would they want gender segregated spaces in the first place? Wanting to spend time with other people whose genitals are shaped similarly to yours is irrational. Wanting to spend time with people whose interests match yours makes much more sense.
Ultimately, this is all a matter of statistics and probabilities. I never claimed that all women use make-up or like having conversations about it. Many women don’t do that. I am aware of that. Here’s how statistically noticeable differences arise. Most women do use nail polish. Most men do not use nail polish. Thus a spontaneous conversation about nail polish is more likely to happen among a group of randomly selected women. Of course, I have heard countless perfectly normal conversations while being inside female only spaces. Many women don’t want to talk about make-up or fashion. Even those women who love make-up and fashion don’t want to talk about these topics all the time.
In my entire life, I have never been forced to listen to a conversation about nail polish while in mixed gender or male only company. Simultaneously, I have been forced to listen to such conversations on countless occasions while in female only company. Randomly running into a conversation about nail polish hurts me in those situations when it triggers discomfort caused by my gender dysphoria. If I am in some public place and I overhear a conversation about nail polish between two strangers, then that doesn’t bother me. Conversations between other people are none of my business.
When I enter some space that is officially designated as for women only, people around me can start talking about nail polish with the expectation that I will approve their chosen conversation topic. They expect me to join said conversation. In such a situation, I personally am being treated as a woman. People around me expect me to conform to various sexist stereotypes about how an AFAB person should behave, they expect me to act like a woman, they expect me to be interested in things that are labelled as feminine by our sexist society with all its gender stereotypes. Whenever people treat me as a woman and expect me to be stereotypically feminine, that bothers me. It triggers in me various negative emotions that are caused by me having a gender dysphoria. I strongly dislike being treated as a woman, and female only spaces are the number one place where people routinely treat me as a woman. I don’t like it when my preferences are blatantly disrespected like this.
Thus I believe that I’m justified to say that I want to avoid women’s hostel rooms and locker rooms, because I don’t want to listen to yet another conversation about nail polish. I hope that this doesn’t make me sexist. Besides, being inside a women’s locker room causes negative emotions in me even if no woman tries to show me her painted nails. I’m inherently uncomfortable in there, I feel like I don’t belong in these places, I get tense and experience a desire to get out as soon as possible.
When a man wants to have male friends and use male only spaces, nobody questions him or wonders about whether he is secretly sexist. It’s taken as a given that, of course, many men will want to have male friends. I am not held to the same standard merely because of being AFAB. Instead I have to justify my demand to be allowed to use male or unisex spaces. I’m not complaining that some person questioned the sexist nature of a claim I made, because that was the reasonable thing to do. I myself have questioned my own perceptions and wondered whether I’m merely imagining something that isn’t actually happening. I know that anecdotal evidence isn’t evidence, but a string of anecdotes that form a specific pattern have been sufficient to make me want to stay away from women’s spaces.
Thus I believe that I’m justified to say that I want to avoid women’s hostel rooms and locker rooms, because I don’t want to listen to yet another conversation about nail polish. I hope that this doesn’t make me sexist.
If people (it is almost always mostly men) start talking about professional football, I leave the room. I hope that this doesn’t make me sexist.
Marcus @#1
The scenario you just presented significantly differs from my problem.
“I am inside some room, there are six women around me. They start talking about nail polish, I exit the room.”
versus
“I do not want to enter a room knowing that there will be six women inside, because I anticipate that they might start a conversation about nail polish.”
The first scenario is not questionable in any way. The second scenario is potentially problematic, because I anticipate some person to behave in some way only because of her gender.
On one hand, expecting some random woman to be interested in nail polish means applying gender stereotypes to her. That’s something I really don’t want to do.
On the other hand, if I have experienced some form of abuse in one and the same place on a regular basis in past, I consider myself justified to seek to avoid said place in future. Female only spaces are the number one place where I have experienced sexist and transphobic abuse in past, because the people around me treated me as a woman and expected me to have stereotypically feminine interests. Such actions hurt me, I perceived it as abusive. Seeking to avoid spaces where I am statistically more likely to get hurt and abused is only rational.
No, it constitutes how you feel with respect to your gender identity and how you wish your gender to be treated by others. Of course there’s a social aspect in gender identity. We’re a strongly social species. Of course we care how others perceive us. I don’t think you’re in the wrong at all, and I don’t think that it all just boils down to you being indifferent to nail polish. You want the people around you to behave like you’re the gender that you are.
I’ve been to Mainz a few times, it’s a beautiful city and Johannesfest is a blast.
This reminds me of how I feel about straight people’s “dating parties”.
This isn’t all straight people at all times, but there is such a thing as a get-together that, for lack of better language I’ll call “dating parties” where the organizers make a determined effort in advance to make sure that there are equal numbers of men and women, presumably straight and cis though I’m sure not always so. Somehow all the straight people know that this is a party where flirting with others and/or asking them out and/or just making out spontaneously is encouraged. I’m never sure exactly how it’s communicated, but the straight people seem to know what’s going on.
My experience of these dating parties is so bad that I will never go to another. The last one I attended was a Halloween dating party 23 years ago, give or take a year. One of the guys was being a ***complete*** asshat – forcing his way into the bathroom while women were peeing wasn’t nearly the worst thing he did that night. At one point he sexually assaulted one of the party participants and was not asked to leave! As the only person there trained in anti-domestic violence & anti-sexual violence type work, I ended up sitting next to the woman assaulted while she sat in t he very corner of the living room. The way it was set up, I functioned as a sort of permeable barrier allowing her friends to come and go from that part of the room while being responsible for keeping literally all the men away (because she didn’t want any of them near her at that point since the ones who weren’t the asshat were trying desperately to downplay his behavior as not serious). It was completely gross, and all the worst types of sexism, internalized misogyny and toxic masculinity were flagrantly displayed.
I know, of course, that not every straight dating party is going to be like this, but I have simply decided that the odds are too high for me to want to go.
If you are asked to enter a space that you know from experience has (what is for you) an unacceptably large risk of bad things going down, then declining to enter isn’t sexism. It’s managing your risk and making the decisions that best take care of you.
If you had never had a bad experience in any of those places you now avoid, but simply refused to go there because you imagined that women would act in such-and-such a way, then that would be sexism. I don’t think that’s what you’re describing, but ultimately it’s up to you to figure out if you’re comfortable with the answers you find when you ask these questions of if your ethics demand you make some change(s).
@Crip Dyke,
I am astonished that I have never heard of anything like a “dating party.” I wonder if that is a generational thing? Or maybe they just didn’t happen in the places I have lived? Or maybe I was just that far out of those social circles that they happened and I wasn’t aware… each of these are plausible.
That sounds like it would be a very unpleasant experience (at best!) unless the party were well curated by the hosts and rules and expectations were made very clear beforehand.
It seems fine to me: I actively wouldn’t want to go to a men’s only space.
IMO, as trans people being forced to perform the cis-het genders we were assigned should be understood as somewhat traumatic. Spaces like the ones you described and my entire school require everyone to perform gender in a specific way, and that’s usually not something that’s authentic for us as trans people.
If I’m in a mixed gender company with at least one man being around, women won’t start talking about nail polish without first checking out whether the guy finds it interesting. I was never extended this kind of courtesy.
There’s a reason for this. When women see you as a fellow woman, they expect you to just take it or leave it when they start talking about something deemed typically feminine: If you like it, you’ll join in, if you don’t you’ll find something else to do or someone else to talk to, or just shift the topic. In contrast, they have learned form experience that a man, if he doesn’t happen to be interested in the topic right then, is likely to respond in a mocking and derisive way.
Note how in contrast men have no problems talking about stuff that’s usually considered a guys’ topic when a woman is around. They’re confident that she’ll just put up with it or go away if it’s really boring her.
In other words, congratulations: You were clocked as a person who’s likely not to behave like an entitled asshole towards the women around you down if you don’t share the group’s current preferences. It’s telling that such basic manners is something women have learned to not expect to receive from men.
Ysanne @#7
You ought to understand that “you’ll find something else to do or someone else to talk to” is impossible if I am trapped inside a hostel room with six women all of whom want to discuss nail polish. “Like it or leave” is a problematic attitude when a trans man has nowhere to run to. What if the conversation about nail polish happens late in the evening, especially in winter? Am I supposed to leave the room and spend the night outdoors?
It sounds like I should learn from the more assholish men and start acting like them. If I were rude and mocked women I encounter, they would finally start treating me with some respect. /sarcasm tag
You are congratulating me for being somebody who is perceived as an easy target for victimisation.
When other people treat me as a woman, that causes me emotional pain. I don’t like the prospect of sitting in a corner and silently suffering. I am not a masochist.
It’s also telling that women respect the preferences of cis men but simultaneously fail to respect a trans man.
I’ve seen that happen all too many times in person. Me and my friendly neighborhood transman call that “amirite ladies?” talk. The worst iteration of it is when the subject turns to dieting – every woman’s obligation and sworn duty (ugh) but also one they don’t talk about as much with cis-men around.
You are supposed to put up with the minor inconvenience of people around you discussing something that is infinitely boring to you, just like everyone else does. Just like you would be fine to do if it were a group of men discussing something you’re completely uninterested in, such as beer. Just like any woman who thinks nail polish is incredibly boring would also do (trust me, there are lots of them, I’m one).
From the fact that you’re writing that the same situation with men would be fine, and why, it’s clear that this is about the women not having recognised and respected you as a man. And you assume that as a man, you deserve to not be bored by annoying women’s chitchat.
But the tendency that women don’t discuss probably-boring-to-men-and-coded-as-feminine topics in front of men has very little to do with respect and everything with not wanting to incur mockery and aggression. They’ll also discuss this kind of stuff in front of men whom they know to be non-assholes… because when 5 people are interested in something and the 6th is not, that 6th needs a really good argument for their wants to trump everyone else’s.
Conversely, if you want make this about respect: I don’t exactly notice groups of men avoiding their considered-boring-to-women topics (e.g. around finer details of some sports) when there is a woman present. Would you agree that clearly it’s OK for everyone to disrespect women, but not men?
Victimisation is a pretty big word for “a group of people in a room daring to have a conversation that you as the only person in the room are not interested in”. Not that you’ve actually told them that it makes you uncomfortable, in particular more uncomfortable than it would a non-nailpolish-liking woman, indeed they have no idea that you’re not a woman in the first place, but they’re supposed to read your mind and adapt their usually completely acceptable behaviour.
Ysanne @#10
Are you just another TERF trying to abuse me in the comment section of my own blog or are you genuinely clueless about what it means to be a trans person who has a gender dysphoria?
Alright, I got it. Thanks for the advice. The next time I get annoyed by a group of women, I will behave like an asshole towards them. I will be as aggressive and mocking as I possibly can (I used to be a debate teacher, trust me, I can mock and verbally abuse people extremely well). In my opinion, being feared is better than being abused and stepped over.
Imagine a small business. They have six male employees, one female employee. After successfully obtaining an important commission that will help the business grow larger and more successful, all the employees decide to celebrate. The six men all collectively vote to celebrate in a strip club. When the woman complains that such places make her uncomfortable, the men just dismiss her. After all, it is majority rule. Six votes against one are sufficient to determine that a strip club is the most suited place for the celebration.
Most people would agree that this scenario represents a toxic business environment in which women’s ability to prosper is seriously compromised. After all, the interests of cis women matter.
Trans people do not matter in the same way. We are perceived as abominations who aren’t supposed to exist. As a minority, we have no right to demand the rest of the society to accommodate our preferences. We are expected to silently sit in the corner and try to avoid disturbing the cis majority. The moment we ask for respect, we turn into an eyesore.
Do you have any clue what this does to a person’s sense of self worth? What it does to their social life? A trans person is treated as nonexistent, as invisible. As if your preferences weren’t valid. As if you didn’t deserve any respect. You are excluded from the community. The only way how you can socialize and try to make friends is by giving up your identity and instead pretending to be somebody you are not.
When people looked at my face, they wanted to see a feminine woman. Inside female only spaces, women shoveled their painted nails in my face and expected me to compliment the beauty of their nail art. If I refused to comply with their expectations, they discarded me, trey pushed me away and pretended that I didn’t exist. The only way how I could regain their attention and hope to make friends was by hiding my true self in order to conform with everybody’s expectations about what gender norms I should follow. That fucking hurt.
If I say that I am a man and want to be treated as such, but people treat me as a woman anyway, then that is abuse. It’s an attempt to undermine trans people’s sense of self.
In Münster, when I was told that I will have to sleep in a women’s room, I complained very audibly. I complained to all my friends who were there, I complained to people who organized said event. Everybody just dismissed me, they claimed that they had no spare place in any unisex room. That was a joke given how I slept in a sleeping bag on the floor anyway. I could have slept on the floor also in a men’s room. Nobody gave a fuck about my complaints or how I felt.
Incidentally, it’s fucking easy to tell whether some person likes make-up, nail polish, and female fashion. Just look at them, damn it. I have never painted my nails in my entire life, I have never used make-up. Even before switching to an entirely male wardrobe, I wore the most masculine clothes that I could possibly find in the women’s section of clothing stores.
You cannot claim ignorance when trans people very audibly complain about the way how they are being treated.
Excellent takedown, Andreas. It will be cool to have you around.
I don’t know if it’s because you’re younger than me, or because you have been extremely unlucky, but I have never discussed a lot of nail polish in my life. But I absolutely see your point here. Women use unisex spaces to discuss things freely that are dismissed and ridiculed when in company of men. I do have a friend who is into nail polish and we occasionally chat about it and I admire here really intricate designs, but I also know how such topics are treated in mixed company. While talking a bout beer is not put down as shallow and stupid in mixed company, talking about nail polish is. So women use those spaces to discuss those issues freely. Groups comprised of young mothers will often quickly talk about pregnancy and childbirth because it’s the only space awarded to these conversations.
Hence I think the solution must be two-fold:
1. No more mandatory gender segregation.
2. No more femmephobia and inherent devaluing of all things considered “feminine”. If the guys get to talk about beer, I get to talk about Urban Decay eye shadow.
Giliell @#13
I would like to emphasize that I do not consider interest in nail art as shallow. Body modifications can be cool, and most people are interested in looking nice. For example, personally I really enjoy fine men’s suits and jackets. I would be fine with discussing male fashion. I’m pretty knowledgeable about it, actually. Nail art is something I’m simply not into, it’s not something I disapprove on principle.
Having to listen to such conversations is something I’m planning to avoid at all costs. Pregnancy and childbirth are topics that make me inherently uncomfortable. Here https://andreasavester.com/my-country-wants-me-to-suffer-for-my-own-benefit/ I wrote about why my ability to use safe birth control is compromised by transphobic doctors. For me pregnancy seems like an inherently feminine experience that is absolutely incompatible with my gender identity. The thought of getting pregnant freaks me out. I don’t like being reminded about the fact that this might accidentally happen to me.
Yep, definitely.
That is reasonable.
Great American Satan @#12
I just realized how it feels amazing to have the “edit/delete” buttons. This is fun. Just look at what I did to servalan’s comments (#3 and #5) in this comment thread:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/andreasavester/2019/12/21/why-gender-specific-christmas-gifts-are-terrible/#comments
Actually it is not uncommon that when women establish a woman-only space it is taken with understanding that they have good reasons to avoid men, whereas men doing the same might be suspected with either wishing to engage in misogynistic behavior outside of women’s sight or seeking to remove women from important decisions – because there is a history of such behavior. See for instance Joe Biden’s nostalgia for the days he could swim nude in the senate pool.
An incident closer to me: My husband is an avid member of the Quantified Self movement. Years ago one of the organizers of the local meet-up started a separate group for women only, for those women who wanted to talk about women’s health issues in a women’s only space (some women were OK talking about such issues in mixed company, but not all were; there was no question of whether men would be comfortable listening to presentations on such topics). My husband noted that nobody proposed a men-only group, and that such a proposal would probably be greeted with suspicion.
anat @#16
Sure, I agree about the examples you mentioned.
I was thinking about somewhat different scenarios. Several male friends going to a bar together. Or several guys playing some sportsball in male only company.