Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre stepped into the debate over trans rights on Wednesday, saying “biological males” should be banned from women’s sports, change rooms and bathrooms.
“Female spaces should be exclusively for females, not for biological males,” Poilievre said in Kitchener, Ont.
The Conservative leader made the comments after being asked if, as prime minister, he would introduce legislation to prevent “transgender women” or “biological men” from participating in female sports or entering female prisons and shelters.
“A lot of the spaces … are provincially and municipally controlled, so it is unclear … what reach federal legislation would have to change them,” Poilievre said.
“But obviously female sports, female change rooms, female bathrooms should be for females, not for biological males,” he added.
Fuck this guy. What fucking washroom do I fucking use then? The one where I pass as a woman and no one notices or cares that I’m trans, or the one where I get assaulted or harassed by a man.
Guess I’ll just shit myself.
I’m going to go ahead and vote for the gender neutral one - having separate washrooms is dumb.
Not always an option. Maybe thats where legislation should be?
Let’s end segregation.
Pretty simple from his point of view: He would rather you get assaulted, beaten, raped, and murdered.
I’m sorry you have to go through this shit.
you know that single occupant toilet with the handrail? it doesn’t see a lot of use …
What exactly are you tying to say?
communal bathrooms are fucking stupid and anyone who doesn’t feel safe has an option
Those one off bathrooms don’t exist everywhere. Work just moved us into a building with gendered washrooms from a building that did have the single stall gender neutral washrooms.
The option isn’t always there my dude.
Gendered washrooms are silly. Actually enforcing gendered washrooms is pants-on-head backwards and I think everyone in this thread agrees on that.
There is a cohort of women (biological) who are very in favor of sex-separated bathrooms. Women are vulnerable to sexual assault when having to take care of bodily functions and have the unique risk of being impregnated from said assault. This article discussed issues with public toilet access and usage for women in India, for example. If a group of women in fact want sex-separated bathrooms, then I think logically that should win out over those who don’t care. Men’s bathrooms should also be safe for gender non conforming people and could in fact be the default bathroom for everyone.
Non-gendered bathrooms aren’t just the same bathrooms we currently have, but just letting everyone in. It’s either a single room with a toilet and sink, or a stall that completely closes from floor to ceiling on all sides, then having communal sinks. I’m definitely more in favor of having sinks more out in the open, because not enough people wash their hands, and maybe that would help.
That’s a fair point, but flimsy stalls that you can inadvertently make eye contact through the door gaps in, are not what I have in mind. Rather, individual rooms for doing private business, potentially with a common area for washing hands, are what I imagine, and are already being used in several establishments.
The one where you get harassed
In a more liberal society you wouldn’t get harassed for that
Great. Thanks.
You’re not supposed to exist at all, according to people like him.
Honestly I think this is just a bad take. I didn’t see it on lemmy so I’m posting it (never done this before).
For athletes and competitive sports, realistically that’s a discussion that you need nuance for.
Blocking trans women (and not men for some reason) from change rooms and washrooms? Are there even cases where trans women are creating issues? Lesbians are perfectly capable of ogling women in those spaces anyway.
Are there even cases where trans women are creating issues?
Pretty sure that’s purely a right-wing boogeyman. And, let’s face it: a man who wants to spy on women in a washroom just needs a janitor’s coverall and some small cameras they can plant while “cleaning” or “performing repairs”.
And, let’s face it: a man who wants to spy on women in a washroom just needs a janitor’s coverall and some small cameras they can plant while “cleaning” or “performing repairs”.
Or you know just walk in and hide in a stall.
In my utterly not humble opinion competitive sports are dumb and sports should just be fun ways to stay healthy… as such I’d be happy to see sex specific sports leagues and sports leagues in general go the way of the dodo.
If you like competitive sports then uh… sex does have a pretty strong correlation with muscle mass and the like but so does a lot of other shit. We should probably just follow wrestling’s approach and weight class everything.
We should probably just follow wrestling’s approach and weight class everything.
We should just let every sporting body make its own decisions because every sport has different nuances that we don’t understand.
I’m not into competitive sports, but I don’t think they’re fine. I’m in favor of gender neutral or weight classed leagues.
On some level though I think it’s okay to tell trans athletes they can’t compete in certain leagues. I’m colourblind and I can never be a firefighter or a pilot or a cop, and I had to back off from my dream of doing art school because I didn’t think I could compete. There are biological restrictions which preclude things we want, and I do think being trans precludes competing in the sex based leagues, but as mentioned earlier we can revise our leagues to make them a better fit on a per sport basis.
While it is true that most trans women are very bad at sports because they’re big nerds and generally can’t compete, there are a few trans women who through great effort have managed to reach a level on par with cis athletes. For example a few years ago a trans person won an Olympic medal for the first time, and that’s huge. Now obviously this is after 15 years of trans women being allowed into the Olympics, and hundreds and hundreds of cis women winning medals, so this isn’t to make the claim that trans women are generally equal to cis women in sports. But eventually someone trans was good enough to compete at the Olympic level, and that’s something to be proud of! I don’t think we should be barring ALL trans people from sports just because most of us suck at them.
Lesbians are perfectly capable of ogling women in those spaces anyway.
Yeah, but that’s OK since it’s sexy and makes his little PP hard.
So our most likely next PM is going to be a massive transphobe. Great.
My sister literally just moved here so that her daughter wouldn’t have to suffer this shit in Britain, and it turns out the same bullshit is waiting for her right here.
Why do Conservatives have to live their entire lives finding new groups of people to hate for no good reason? There are actual problems in this country that need solving, and instead you want to put your energy into being mad that someone decided they weren’t comfortable in their assigned gender?
(and no, it is not new to me that Pollievre has transphobic views, but he at least wasn’t being so utterly blatant about them before. The fact that he feels comfortable saying this stuff so openly is fucking terrifying)
Why do Conservatives have to live their entire lives finding new groups of people to hate for no good reason?
Because they hate themselves.
It’s like they all have a bully complex, but failed to outgrow being that 12-year-old jackass in elementary school.
I think that’s too convenient and loaded an explanation. I suspect a better one can be found in social identity theory, with positions like these being social markers that they use to establish firm boundaries around their in-group. Every group tends to develop social markers, things you’re expected to believe or otherwise exhibit to show that you’re “on their side.” There may be some particular reason why any given marker first shows up, but once it gets adopted it becomes essentially self-perpetuating.
I would believe that only if these people say/do horrible things while in their group.
The reality is, they are just as hateful in private as they are in public.
Social markers are usually not a conscious thing. Once it becomes part of the “this is the way a proper person behaves” ruleset it gets internalized.
It’s actually precisely so they don’t have to solve those problems. Most politicians don’t campaign on accomplishments alone. Increasingly, they campaign on empty promises and real threats.
I’m a biological cis male and I use women’s washrooms fairly frequently, why don’t I get to be the target of the culture war?
Anyways, please put more baby change tables elsewhere and I won’t have to do that anymore.
This. It’s abhorrent that fathers have no facilities for their children’s needs.
I recently went to a mall where the baby change room was separate from the washrooms, except you had to walk through the women’s washroom to get to it. And the actual location meant there was no reason they couldn’t have had a separate door directly out into the hall.
Well that’s some seriously stupid design.
Once was in a pediatricians office 🤦
deleted by creator
Don’t forget intersex people exist, and even more people with chromosome issues, upon whom genetic determination might be nuanced.
The real goal, of course, is to throw red meat to his base. Non-political casualties are unimportant.
Follow up question for PP, what’s a biological male?
Anyone without an X chromosome in any cell in their body.
The alternative conservadumb answer is:
Anyone married to a biological female.
Cool, I never knew lesbian couples consisted of two males. What a wild world.
The more you know!
Personally I think beings with no x chromosomes in any cell of their body should be allowed in bathrooms.
After all, if you can’t bust a nut in the john, where can you?
“But obviously female sports, female change rooms, female bathrooms should be for females, not for biological males,” he added.
Shows how much he values other opinions.
Make a policy on any of the issues Trudeau is supposedly bungling <-> Murican’ style culture war
Sweaty superhero meme.
Yeah, I’m not sure why he’s doing this. I guess his general polls are looking really good so he’s focusing on his own caucus? Or maybe he just wants to distract from his own (deliberate, strategic) lack of vision, since I’ve increasingly seen it get media attention.
Guess he supports women only spaces in general? Nah, who am I kidding he would ban women only spaces if he could.
Hmm I used to be proud of being Canadian. These days it’s getting harder and harder.
I was ten once too
Gross. That’s all I have to say.
I wonder how he would label post-op trans women. They still have a Y chromosome, and are therefore “biological males.”
That’s the problem with Pollievre’s language.
And even pre bottom surgery trans people are vulnerable.
It feels like a given that trans people deserve to be able to use public washrooms and change rooms without fear, and I haven’t seen any actual evidence they cause any issues beyond offending some closed minded people.
There are biological female spaces which it makes sense to exclude trans people from, they do have different experiences than cis women when it comes to growing up, periods, giving birth, etc. But bathrooms don’t seem like one them.
I remember that headline where the story is that a bunch of cis girls in a changeroom were perving on their underage swim teammate and staring at her penis. Like literally there were lines in the article that were like “I couldn’t stop staring at my teammate’s dick”. And then the headline on the article and the narrative framing is “trans girl makes teammates uncomfortable by using changeroom for its intended purpose. How dare she!”
‘It’s definitely awkward because Lia still has male body parts and is still attracted to women,’ one swimmer on the team told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.
While Lia covers herself with a towel sometimes, there’s a decent amount of nudity, the swimmer said. She and others have had a glimpse at her private parts.
“Help, help, I’m being repressed! I stared at a teenage girl’s genitals and now I’M uncomfortable!”
That feels like one of those cases where someone should step in and separate her because that situation sounds uncomfortable for everyone… or even bringing a screen to separate her if they don’t have access to another space for her to change.
There’s not that many trans people, it feels like accommodating this would be easy.
Most boys are perfectly capable of being in the same room as a penis without losing their minds. If we’re going to end segregation then we need to get everyone comfortable with being in the same room as other naked people. I say we give those pervy cis girls some mandatory sensitivity training on when it is not appropriate to look at other people’s junk.
Pierre Poilivere is attempting to begin the first stage of genocide: Classification.
Personally I think any sport which has rankings / championships should be separated by biological sex rather than gender.
Allow anyone to join “XY” teams but only allow female-at-birth to join “XX” teams. Unless it’s a just-for-fun league then anyone can join.
It does get complicated though with intersex and whatnot, but unfortunately life isn’t fair and some people draw the short straw. They can join the “XY” leagues if they are good enough.
Couple of things. Politicians have zero idea of what they’re talking about, especially one like Pollieve who’s looking to demonize trans women to rile up his base. Calling someone a “biological male” is just their fancy way of saying “man in a dress”. It’s their way of making it seem like they’re less transphobic than they actually are.
Trans women and trans men are biologically no different from their cis counterparts. Trans women lose the muscle mass and strength they had when testosterone was their primary sex hormone. They perform no better or worse than cis women when it comes to sports. Trans women take on the same health risks as cis women; and the same can be said for trans men.
Furthermore, chromosomes don’t work the way you’re suggesting here either. They act more like blueprints during development in the womb. There are also XY cis women with androgen insensitivities, as well as cis women who produce higher levels of testosterone.
Long story short, you don’t need a degree in biology to understand the arguments being put forth by Pollieve and folks like him are absolute bunk. They’re intended to antagonize people against trans folks.
trans women and men are biologically no different than their cis counterparts.
I want to start by saying I don’t have a horse in the race, I’m not a competing athlete (anymore) and honestly believe sports should be accessible to anyone but, I have seen “reports” (who knows how accurate) of trans women wiping the floor with cis women athletes. Like the D1 swimmer. Or, Natalie Ryan(who’s a disc golfer which is my niche). Are these largely outliers?
I honestly don’t know enough about biology to know how the human body reacts to those treatments. If you’re correct, that’s awesome! While it’s more inconclusive(at least as far as I’m aware) if you’re outclassing your competitors, you should have to play with your skill level. In terms of disc golf, there’s FPO(female professional open) and MPO(mixed professional open). If you don’t really have competition at FPO, you should have to play MPO.
Now, in my example, there are more layers because disc golf is a tiny sport, Natalie Ryan wins any small tournament she’s in, but when it comes to the big ones, she’s middle of the road. So, I’m not going to say she’s the prime example of “dominating a female field” and honestly, not sure there is one. So, you’re probably onto something.
And I say that Poilievre should be buried 6 feet under, but we don’t always get what we want, do we Pete?
I don’t wish death on him or anyone else. That’s just a one way ticket to division.
