21
DiscussionHow would you feel about TIFs using the women's restroom?
One of the main "counters" to the argument of having female-only restrooms is that mandating single-sex restrooms would mean TIFs would have to use the women's room. The argument goes that TIFs would cause greater panic or uproar because they would look like biological males and thus scare more women than would be scared/worried about TIMs in the women's room.
TRAs really seem to like the idea that women can't win here, that either way there will be mannish-looking individuals in the women's room that look like men and thus make us uncomfortable. Now, the degree to which TIFs look like men is questionable, of course, which puts this argument into some doubt.
But anyway, how do you think it would go in practice? Would it cause more worry/uproar than if a TIM tried to use the women's room? How would the typical non-GC, non-TRA woman react?
And related to this question, how easy is it for the typical person (so not necessarily knowing which signs to look for) to distinguish between an FtM TIF and an MtF TIM (as opposed to the TIFs and TIMs that don't even bother trying to look convincing)? (As opposed to, while being able to recognize the person as a TIP, not sure which way.)
And what would the "typical TIF" do in this situation, do you think? Say something like "I was assigned female at birth"?