First, the call for advice:

My friend asked me why I was still in my Terfery. I said because I believe it protects the rights and wellbeing of women and girls. She encouraged me to watch the TV show, "Pose," which is set in the 1980s/90s around gay ball culture (I assume in NYC). I said I would watch ONE episode if she agreed to read materials that took an estimated 2/3 reading time of the length of the episode. She agreed.

Now I need to find sources. I'm probably just going to troll Reduxx.info for articles, but I thought I'd put this out here. I could give her something about the harm towards trans-identified children, but I don't fucking want to. While that's maybe the most horrific, it just pisses me off that it's not enough that harm is done to women. People just don't care. They can't even say, "do you feel comfortable changing next to a man in the gym?" It's always, "do you feel comfortable having your young daughter changing next to a man at the pool?" Obviously the second one is worse, but why isn't the first bad enough??

Anyhow, now the rant:

So this friend and I were in a car, she was giving me a lift after an event in our social circle. She asked me if I was still terfing online. I said yeah. She asked an impassioned, "why??"

I should mention there's a trans-identified male in our larger social circle. He doesn't come off as effeminate gay man, just regular dude. He was at the event and many of the women have accepted him (however I did talk to one woman last week who said she's just pretending so she doesn't get ostracized herself). So I think the "why??" was because she was in an openhearted, loving mood.

And I tried to tell her, go over the points I'd already made to her:

• I didn't want to have to change with a man at the local gym.
• I used to have no problem sharing bathrooms until I realized some men will put spy cams in them (and do more)
• I explained that as a service industry worker, I deal with one man in particular with a paraphilia who keeps targeting female frontline workers. To assume a man like him isn't going to put on a dress and go in a woman's bathroom is false.
• Women are trapped in prison with these men. Some have been impregnated and or/ raped.
• Imprisoning women with males is against the Geneva Convention.
• Bathrooms and other female spaces work by keeping men out. They are designed TO keep men out. Once you let one man in, you have to let in the others.

Her responses:

• There are always a few crazies.
• It doesn't hurt or affect anyone else
• Some women are psychopaths (so women can also be bad, so...)
• Some female prisoners get pregnant on purpose by passing packets of sperm across with male ones.
• They're such a tiny minority (so who does it hurt or affect)

And I'm just pissed off.

On one hand, I relate to her. I think a lot of us have this blank space when we think of female prisoners. You committed a crime, you're in prison. Sometimes, it's harsh. We should be fair. You're asking for special treatment. These are all things I used to think, and still wrestle with. But the bottom line is that there are a hierarchy of harms caused to these women prisoners:

• Discomfort (even if he is the sweetest, nicest, funnest buddy, it can be uncomfortable)
• Leering at her, masturbating to her in the shower or openly
• Physical threats (verbal or non-verbal)
• Molestation
• Chronic trauma from the living situation and PTSD
• Rape
• Anal rape
• Impregnation
• Beating, up to critical and permanent physical damage
• Murder
• Forcible transmission of HIV and other STIs

There are some bad, bad women out there. That's the truth. There are scary women I would never want anything to do with. There are some women so scary that if I had to choose, I might choose to risk being imprisoned with a man who is physically small and "seems sorta okay" rather than certain women. Maybe I'd be horribly wrong in my choice, but that's an aside.

But it doesn't matter because we don't get to make that hypothetical choice in prison. We don't get to choose a man who "seems sort of okay." We don't get to choose a male friend. We are simply locked in with these random criminal men who do everything you would expect these men to do IF YOU JUST ADMITTED THEY WERE MEN instead of saying they were "vulnerable people showing their true self."

My friend ended the conversation saying, once again, "but if it doesn't affect anyone..." with a stupid grin on her face. She thinks she is being nice and good. She thinks she is being fair. Well the men overall who think about female prisoners, if they think of them at all, don't think about women's wellbeing. They think about how to get pussy from them, by trade or undisguised coercion. That's what they think. But my friend is being nice and good and fair because if this guy in our circle (we'll call him Lilith) were to be in a prison, he'd be at risk from other men, and he's not that big, and he seems sort of okay, so it's okay that women should be stuck with him. Because some women are psychopaths, too, so... because...

She has no expectation of ever being in prison. She's known women in prison. She knows people who've struggled with addiction. She's a lower-middle-class woman (Millenial middle-class, not old-school where you could actually own your own house) who doesn't regularly go out to all these public facilities where she might once in a while get an unpleasant dose of reality in a bathroom or change-room. And yeah, she's white. Although not every woman who supports this is white, and not every white woman supports it. And if, god forbid, she ever finds herself in the unlikely situation of being imprisoned for a crime, or being falsely accused, or being criminalized for some cause that her government deems illegal to support, she may just find out...

THAT IT FUCKING MATTERS HOW FEMALE PRISONERS ARE TREATED. THAT SURPRISE, SUR-FUCKING-PRISE, IT AFFECTS HER.

But by then it'll be too late and the political and social power she had to say something about it will be much diminished or gone entirely.

Okay thanks for listening to my rant.