Helen Pluckrose on Risky Businesses
Helen Pluckrose on Risky Businesses
Lost in the space between threat and claustrophobia
I read the recent piece …
… which is her response to the X-post by “The Pissed Off Lawyer” …
So this is really a response to a response, but first I want to make a couple of observations about the original tweet, because as Helen Pluckrose notes:
Trans men are particularly likely to be perceived as men if they have a beard
“Why Are Trans Men Often Ignored in the Bathroom Argument?”, Helen Pluckrose
Which is surely the point of trying to pass. Would it be consistent for a ‘trans-man’, who wants to pass and most likely objects to being ‘mis-gendered’, to be offended for being excluded from female-only spaces? Mightn’t they be flattered for being so convincing as to be perceived as a potentially threatening presence? Too strong? Re-read the tweet and tell me it does not relish the idea of making women feel uncomfortable.
Also, if that last one still seems to be a stretch, just remember there are numerous examples of autogynephilic trans-women writing about the thrill of being objectified or used by heterosexual men. Sure that is a sexual proclivity but it is also about validation of a chosen identity. It’s what people want.
The suggestion that women don’t care about the safety of trans-men is scurrilous and hypocritical. Because whilst empathy for the ‘trans community’ it is commonplace amongst women, it does not appear to be generally reciprocated, since the movement is often open in its misogyny.
Pluckrose recognises the X-post by ‘The Pissed Off Lawyer’ (a trans-man) as a ruse to smear the cause of preserving single sex spaces, implying it is inconsistent and rooted in bigotry. Yet, if trans-men (born female) genuinely want to maintain their right to female spaces on the grounds of personal safety, it can only be because of the on-average asymmetric threat that males pose to females. To be logically consistent, they should seek to exclude trans-women from female spaces too and the real contradiction is that generally, they don’t.
I am onside with Pluckrose but have some reservations that some of what she says undermines her otherwise excellent argument. She commences with ‘the kernel of truth’’ in what The Pissed Off Lawyer posted.
It is true that gender critical feminists do not often address the issue of trans men in single sex spaces. […]
Gender critical feminists have argued that women can feel fear, alarm and a sense of violation when somebody who appears to be male appears in a space where women are vulnerable.
ibid.
This is going to seem pernickety but the phrase ‘women can feel fear’ when vulnerable is an inarguable statement of fact. There is no need to hedge here, because the opposite claim that, ‘women cannot feel fear…’ in those situations, would be absurd. This may seem trivial or even pedantic but hopefully it will soon become clear why this is relevant. It concerns the problem of pathologising legitimate fear by labelling it a phobia.
Women [in public single sex bathrooms]… have the right to an expectation of privacy away from men in such situations, feminists argue. Therefore, even when that individual just wants to pee and is no threat to women at all, he should respect women’s boundaries and not make them feel fearful for their safety or that their privacy has been violated.
ibid.
Agreed. However, care must be taken, not only in the way we define terms like ‘fear’, ‘threat’ and ‘safety’, but also how we distinguish between them in this context. That trans-people actively seek to cross certain boundaries to assert themselves over women (irrespective of how fearful it makes women feel) is evidence of the empathy gap that is not normally found in women. Therefore the onus should not be on women to over-ride their fear in a given situation to avoid offending someone. It is here that female agreeableness is weaponised against them.
To have used reasonable force when tackling a threat to personal safety is a defence available in law. That defence is still valid if it later transpires that, unbeknownst to you, the knife to your throat was made out of cardboard. Why? Because the fear that you were in danger was rational. But here’s another thing. The option to use reasonable force is not available to most women when confronting by a male assailant. This means there is even less room to make generous assumptions.
In what respect then do trans-women (born male) really identify with women when they seem to have so little sympathy for them? Similarly, is the jettisoning of empathy and the adoption of misogynistic attitudes necessary accoutrements, to be a passing trans-man?
This does potentially cause something of a problem when the individual who appears to be male is, in fact, female, because other women are still just as likely to experience fear and a sense of violation.
ibid.
There is no problem if our guiding principle is that to be fearful is a reasonable response in those circumstances. From that we can also decide that being in fear is not an acceptable default state to be tolerated by women (or anybody for that matter) in order to accommodate others.
You see, the conversation about transphobia is no longer just about overcoming prejudices (if it ever was) but displacing it with a different kind of bigotry that pathologises women’s legitimate fears and seeks to trample their rights.
So what about the rights of passing trans-men (born female)?
[On being excluded from female spaces]
While this presents a genuine problem, however, it is not one that justifies overruling the drive to protect women’s single sex spaces. Although gender critical feminists do raise the issue of fear and privacy, their primary concern is that of safety from predatory male sex-offenders who will abuse self-ID laws and norms to gain access to women where they are vulnerable and sexually assault them.
ibid.
This kind of distinction between fear and safety in this situation is unhelpful because, if there were no assaults there would be no fear, but that is currently out of range of being a realistic prospect. Fear is a response triggered by a perceived threat, and in this context, assault is the threat being realised. It is a bit like me saying that I am less fearful about not wearing a seatbelt than I am going through the windscreen (windshield). It’s obviously true but to minimise that particular risk I have to maximise my diligence in fastening the belt. It would be incoherent of me to decouple the risk from the mitigation.
To suggest that fear is less of a concern, is to imply that fear of masculine-presenting-people in a female only space can sometimes be irrational - precisely the point the accusation of ‘transphobia’ is designed to make. It’s unreasonable to expect women to suppress or justify the fear they feel in the moment.
I want to briefly say something about risk because it’s essential to understanding the argument that follows. It is often the case in non-STEM professions that risk tools are developed by people who do not understand how risk works. So let me explain what I mean by risk and how it is assessed in industry without using any technical language.
Risk Assessment
A risk is a two dimensional quantity and it relates to an identified hazard, so to start an assessment of a situation or system, the hazards must be formally or informally identified. Next, for each hazard the severity of consequences (i.e. should the hazard come to pass), are estimated. Finally the probability of each hazard occurring is assessed. We put that information into a matrix to determine the risk rating - how we devise that matrix is unimportant, but this is how relative risks are compared. It allows us to identify intolerable risks and the types of mitigation that can be used to reduce their likelihood. The ‘fight-or-flight’ response is effectively a natural rapid assessment of risk that leads directly to a decision. Yet what options are there for a woman in a confined space with a predatory male? What decision is in her power to make?
Women who naturally have more masculine features, women who favour a masculine aesthetic and trans men do not fit this category and so they do not present a danger to women.
ibid.
It is not true to say that these groups present no danger to women and I am sure this must be an uncharacteristic slip.
Obviously, the majority of men would not assault women in public restrooms either, but that is beside the point. In terms of risk profile, most sexual predators are men and most victims are women and children. However, sexual battery is not uncommon amongst same sex couples and the following is from an interesting fact sheet on the subject, which I have linked.
Sexual abuse by a woman partner has been reported by up to 50% of lesbians
“Lesbian Partner Violence Fact Sheet”, Suzana Rose, Ph.D.
National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center
University of Missouri at St. Louis
To spend any time thinking about it, is to realise that sexual assault in a publicly accessible bathroom, does not require a penis. In the general population it is a relatively low risk but it is important to recognise why. Risk is two-dimensional and it is not ‘low risk’ because it is necessarily less severe but because it is less likely.
One of the risk factors is differential physical strength so it is evidently true that on that dimension alone, a trans-man who takes testosterone is a bigger threat to a woman than a female who does not. Similarly, a trans-woman who has had any of the benefits of male genetics, bone structure, bone density, embryology, adolescence, musculature, lung capacity, etc. has a physical advantage over women. Those are also differential risks between individuals, and if we are being strictly objective, indisputable. This is not to impugn the character of people within certain groups but to recognise the new asymmetries those groups create.
The fact that they may still make women fear danger is also not something that can be resolved in any way that is ethical by feminist standards or liberal ones. The only solution to this would be requiring all women to present in a typically feminine way which is something that feminists and anybody who supports individual liberty cannot endorse.
“Why Are Trans Men Often Ignored in the Bathroom Argument?”, Helen Pluckrose
This can be resolved ethically if we de-personalise it and make it about risk factors. Public bathrooms for women’s exclusive use was the innovation that freed women from the urinary leash. What was the urinary leash? In the Victorian era it was not possible or safe for women to use the facilities that were designed for men and were de facto male-only. Consequently their ability of women to travel was often limited by the accessibility of bathrooms in the homes of friends and family.
There is no need to second guess that need, or to suppose that enforcing the sanctity of female spaces now, poses any kind of ethical dilemma.
[We have] an imperfect solution that prioritises protection from the greater harm of women being sexually assaulted over the lesser harm of women experiencing mistaken fear and/or women being wrongly accused of being in a place they should not be.
ibid.
Even in the case of ‘the lesser harm’ the fear is never ‘mistaken’. It is a legitimate response whether the perceived threat is real or not. We have to be careful of normalising fear and inhibiting vigilance on the basis that certain fears are reduced to the status of being irrational i.e., a phobia. That’s dangerous, because where there are physical and hormonal power imbalances, the fear is rational.
Let’s think of it this way. To comply with someone pointing a gun you is rational. It does not become retrospectively irrational, or ‘gun phobic’, if subsequently it’s determined that the gun was not loaded.
[on the risk to trans people in male spaces]
… people seeking solutions to this should focus on the provision of third spaces and not pass the risk presented by violent men onto women. While trans women who pass and just want to pee can, in practice, use women’s spaces without anybody being harmed or afraid, a consensus on a blanket rule on women’s spaces being sex-based is the only coherent way to protect women from the minority of men who are sex-offenders and will use self-ID rules to offend.
ibid.
I believe that women-only spaces should be exclusively and unambiguously sex-based and agree that ‘third spaces’ would help. Regardless of what you believe, nobody deserves to be subjected to violence on the basis of how they present themselves.
I also think that we men must be made to understand that violence against transgender people puts women at risk.
To men I say this:
If we force transgender people to seek safety in female-only spaces, it will be us who will have helped open the door to predators too, which would make us enablers. The best we can do is allow trans-persons safe and unfettered use male spaces.
That might be too idealistic. I therefore concur with this too:
I agree with feminists who advocate that trans women at risk of male violence and others concerned about this should set up those spaces rather than co-opting women’s).
ibid.
And also,
[to minimise risk for trans-men]
… continue to work for that consensus on women’s spaces being sex-based. By achieving an overwhelming consensus on this on a social level and enforcing it on a legal one, women’s fear of encountering a sexually predatory man in their space will drop.
ibid.
However, even if ‘overwhelming consensus’ is achieved, how could it be enforced legally while women are simultaneously being encouraged to become desensitised to masculine presenting people in female only spaces?
The ambiguity is unhelpful so the ‘third space’ seems to be an inevitable part of any solution. However, it raises the question of whether three separate spaces would be enough i.e., if we are genuinely concerned about the safety of (female born) trans-men. Pluckrose suggests that with other protections in place it may be possible to accommodate them in female spaces.
They will then be much more likely to assume a masculine-appearing woman to be a masculine-appearing woman and neither be afraid nor sound an alarm causing her to be forcibly ejected from the space.
ibid.
Perhaps. The danger is that we end up with the same arms race between tolerance and vigilance. Women tend to lose out in that type of competition due to higher on-average levels of empathy and agreeableness, of which the next paragraph is an admirable example.
As a liberal, I do not, on principle, prioritise the rights and issues of any group but as an empiricist, I accept that strength differences and statistics around sexual offending make women more vulnerable to predation by men than men are to predation by women. For this reason, it is reasonable to focus more urgently on protecting women’s single sex spaces than men’s. However, if enough men become concerned about people who are biologically female being in spaces where they are undressing and feel that their right to privacy is being violated to form a movement over it, I will support that too.
ibid.
In the context of male spaces, this is where we do need to recognise that the hazard to privacy is different to the hazard of assault. Without trivialising the need for male privacy, even at worst case, it’s unlikely to be a safety issue. Due to strength asymmetries, the average man will not be physically threatened by a someone who was born female. It then comes down to a question of whose safety we should be most anxious about.
Pluckrose acknowledges that men can be victims of acts by women that should be considered sexual offences. I agree, although, the examples she gives are not predicated on the female having superior physical strength. Also, amongst decent men, there is a taboo against physical retaliation towards women, which in some cases can be exploited.
I think few people claim … that there is a perfect way to… entirely remove any risk of misperception resulting in an unwarranted fear of sexual violence …
ibid.
It is true and there has to be compromise all the way up to finding a solution. However, I take issue with the suggestion that fear can be ‘unwarranted’ and although it can distort our perceptions, it is not the responsibility of women - or indeed anyone, to second guess themselves when confronted with a possible threat.
Fear is a response to a perception, and even if we later establish there was no threat, the reflexive reaction is not something anyone can be blamed for. We have to be careful of pathologising fear which is what the slur of ‘phobia’ aims to do.
Helen Pluckrose is extremely reasonable in the face of all unreasonableness which is why her writing it so important. I always feel a bit more grounded after reading her or someone like and more recently. It’s not that I always agree but they give me the feeling that there are some grown ups trying to work things out methodically with level heads.
However, being agreeable is only part of the answer and getting out of this mess will involve a range of attributes, including the willingness of some to be assertive or even combative. My purpose in writing this is not really to criticise but to make the point we need ‘have her back’ and plug the gaps that being agreeable can leave open.
However, using the non-zero possibility of error and negative consequences of that as a ‘gotcha’ and a way to argue for having no safeguards at all, as I believe The Pissed off Lawyer to be doing, is a terrible way to protect anyone.
ibid.
Absolutely. And unreasonable demands to dismantle safeguards need to be met with commensurate assertive responses, including perhaps, some intractable masculine ones.