Trans women are women is a fine mantra, but it comes with some baggage. When the issue was perceived as who gets to use what bathroom, some of the baggage was shrugged off. After all, women’s bathrooms have stalls, and stalls have doors, and who cares anyway? Fair enough. But it was never about women’s bathrooms, which unsurprisingly eluded some people. That doesn’t make it righter or wronger, but more unclear, as a woman learned at Wi Spa in Los Angeles.*
A woman confronted the staff at the Wi Spa in Los Angeles after a man walked into the women’s section with his genitals hanging out in front of girls. He identified as a “woman.” The employees said he had a right to do that. The employees say that it’s the law.
Part 1 pic.twitter.com/m1VbU0WU6A
— Ian Miles Cheong @ stillgray.substack.com (@stillgray) June 27, 2021
To be fair, it wasn’t the spa’s choice, as it merely complied with California’s anti-discrimination law that prohibited discrimination against transgender people.
“He is a man,” the woman can be heard saying. “He is not a female. There are girls down there, other women who are highly offended by what they just saw and you did nothing. You sided with him.”
Wi Spa defended its policy in a statement to Los Angeles Magazine.
“Like many other metropolitan areas, Los Angeles contains a transgender population, some of whom enjoy visiting a spa,” the statement said. “Wi Spa strives to meet the needs of all its customers.”
And:
The spa defended its policy in a statement to Fox LA, saying that California law “prohibits discrimination against transgender and gender non-conforming people.”
“As a spa located in Los Angeles, Wi Spa complies with California law prohibiting discrimination by a business, including the Civil Code provision set forth above. Like many other metropolitan areas, Los Angeles contains a transgender population, some of whom enjoy visiting a spa,” the statement said.
Who is “transgender” may be a sticky subject, particularly when a person physically presents as a man but identifies as a woman. Some women will find this offensive. Some girls will find it traumatizing, as will their parents who do not want their children to be exposed to a penis and who do not want to expose themselves to a person with a penis.
Again, you may shrug at their concern or, if you’re more dedicated to the cause, express outrage at their discrimination against women with penises because it’s fine with you and so therefore must be acceptable to others. Or more bluntly, too bad for those who discriminate between women with vaginas and women with penises.
And again to be fair to the spa, their efforts to accommodate the transgender population is commendable provided their policy is understood by their cis patrons and they are aware that this “women only” spa may mean that they and their children may be exposed to penises.
But that was clearly not understood by the woman complaining, such that she could choose not to patronize the spa and risk potential exposure to penises if that was her choice. Then again, if California law forbids discriminating against people who identify as women but have a penis, there will be no spa where they can be assured that no patron’s penis will come into view.
And here’s the kicker to the situation. It was never just about bathrooms, and it isn’t about bathrooms and spas. Even in the initial guidance put out by the Departments of Education and Justice, the scope was bathrooms, locker rooms and sleeping accommodations. There have since been some goofy efforts, such as the transgender woman who demanded a Brazilian wax, which was not in the job description of the waxing person.
Whether trans women are women is an ideological choice, but penises are not vaginas. Perhaps the complaint is that we ought to get past genitalia and not make a big deal about being exposed to body parts we don’t possess. But that, too, is a separate issue from discrimination against transgender people. Would “get over it” be the same reaction if the person exposing his penis made no claim to being transgender, and he was just showing his man penis to young girls?
More to the point, we’ve yet to scratch the surface of where this is heading. After Congress enacted Title IX, a regulation made clear that schools “may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex” without engaging in sex discrimination. This was not only not controversial, but any other reg would have been considered outrageous and absurd. Of course that wasn’t what Title IX meant. Then.
But then, the word “sex” was universally understood to mean the binary of male and female. Now that it has morphed into gender identity, a law enacted for one purpose has similarly morphed into a law prohibiting discrimination that it was never intended to prohibit, and would never have been enacted had it been realized at the time that by redefining a key word, “sex,” the law would take on an entirely different meaning.
The point isn’t to take a side in the “trans women are women” debate, but rather to note that the ramifications have never been made clear and transparent. By focusing the debate on bathrooms, consideration has largely gotten caught up in the nuts and bolts of toilet stalls and urinals rather than the far broader issues of how this will effect societal change and create social conflicts that nobody considered.
My imagination is inadequately fertile to anticipate all potential issues arising from the prohibition against transgender discrimination, though I had suggested one potential problem back in 2016.
So, if we accept that gender identity discrimination is sex discrimination, and that it applies to all entities subject to Titles VII and IX, consider this hypothetical:
Joe meets Lola, and they take a shine to each other. Joe asks Lola on a date, and Lola affirmatively consents. Joe goes back to his dorm, and is subtly informed by his roommate, Enrique, that Lola is quite the excellent sweeper on the college’s men’s curling team.
Joe is confused. He’s a bit slow. So Joe texts Lola and asks, “Lola, are you on the men’s curling team?” Lola responds, “you bet I am. Can’t wait to see you tonight, dreamboat.” Joe, never one to miss a trick, replies, “I didn’t know you were a dude. Sorry, but I’m not into that sort of thing.”
Lola is crushed. Joe was so adorable. Lola is now hurt, angry and offended that Joe refused to go on the date solely because Lola was a biological male who identified as a woman. There was no other reason for Joe’s cancelling the date. That’s sex discrimination.
This will assuredly not be the only issue that could potentially arise, and there are likely a great many more banal problems, such as what happened at Wi Spa to women who did not accept the premise that their “women’s only” privacy would include children’s exposure to male genitalia. I get it, You think they’re wrong, stupid, discriminatory and their feelings about such exposure are unworthy of recognition. Why their sensibilities don’t matter while others’ sensibilities must be respected no matter what is where this dives down the irrational rabbit hole of ideology.**
*Some will reacts poorly because the video was posted by Ian Miles Cheong, but your feelings toward Cheong have nothing to do with the content of the video, which speaks for itself.
**Unsurprisingly, the next day protesters showed up. Anti-trans religious protesters were met by black-clad (but are they Antifa?) counter-protesters who demonstrated their cause of tolerance in their own curiously selective way.