No Man is Man: Thoughts on Privacy and Sexual Segregation in Sports Participation and Restroom Access

      Like most other issues in politics and society, the transgender sports and bathroom issues are being framed in a false dichotomy: "Should sports be sexually segregated everywhere, or nowhere?"
     In this article, I would like to ask: "Why can't sports be sexually segregated in some places, but not in others?"
     I believe that this strategy will provide balance, achieve compromise, and offer something to everybody who wishes to be accommodated.

     The idea that all sports should be sexually segregated, whether in private or public contexts, is too extreme, because it doesn't let women voluntarily choose to expose themselves to the great challenge of competing against men and trans people who are (on average) much stronger than they are.

     (This is the same principle that Mary Wollstonecraft communicated, in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, when she explained that girls were considered stupid because nobody had bothered to teach them to read. We should be asking ourselves whether the average woman would be larger if psychotic cave males had beaten and killed fewer of the larger cave women.)
     Women do not lag behind men in all activities. But for those activities (reading, specific sports, etc.) in which women do lag behind men, women who expose themselves to the challenge of competing against men, do it because they want to get better at it, compete against the best, and win solely by merit (not because certain people or types of people were excluded).

     But the idea that no sports should be sexually segregated, is also too extreme, because it places unreasonable demands on individuals who don't want to shower, change, or relieve themselves in the same rooms as people who have different gametes and reproductive function than they do, or were born with different organs, or whatever the criteria of the person who feels that their privacy has been intruded upon.

     Sexual orientation could be part of that criteria, just as well. There is no reason why a building shouldn't or can't have multiple bathrooms - one for gays, one for lesbians, one for cis hetero men, one for cis hetero women, one for trans people, one non-gender-specific stall - if that is what the most frequent users of the building (or the company's customers) demand, based on the needs and demographics of the people who use it. There is no reason why gay men shouldn't be able to keep lesbian women out of their bathrooms, in neighborhoods where gay men are threatened by lesbian women (and you can repeat this idea with any other combination of people you can think of).
     If that is reasonable, then shouldn't heterosexual men, too, have the right to access safe, secure, and private bathroom facilities - which are for heterosexual men only - in neighborhoods which are heavily populated by homosexual men?

     It should be up to an individual athlete, whether that person wants to participate in sexually segregated sports, or whether that person would rather participate in sexually integrated sports.
     Public schools should permit both to exist, side-by-side, while also ensuring the privacy and safety of each individual athlete, to access restroom and changing and shower facilities, with the expectation of privacy, however each person defines it (within reason).
     If a school cannot promise safety and privacy - and achieve them, de facto - then that school should stop expanding its athletic program until proper security is hired and all bathrooms and locker rooms are safe.

     At the same time that we should honor the rights of people who want to shower and change in groups, we must not delude ourselves into thinking that this would achieve actual, full privacy.

     Privacy means being free from being observed or disturbed by other people.
     Unless you are using a very loose definition of privacy, “privacy” does not refer to a group of people changing clothes or showering in the same room. They have privacy from some people, but not from all people. One does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy when that person chooses to get naked in a room full of naked people.

     In a single-person shower stall, or a single-person bathroom stall, however, that is different; one does have an expectation of privacy there.

     Policies, regarding sexual orientation and identification, as they relate to participation in sports and access to locker room facilities, should not be based on self-identification, but based on how to achieve the total equality and total freedom of each individual involved, at the same time. Neither freedom nor equality can be compromised, nor should they.

     Sexual segregation in sports (and sports accommodations) should be legal in private contexts, and non-sexually-segregated sports should also exist and be legal. But, just as nobody should be prohibited from participating in sexually segregated sports, nobody should be compelled to integrate with people they don’t feel comfortable around in close quarters.

     But also, a person should not be compelled to change and shower in the same room as other people, simply because they are of the exact same combination of biological sex, sexual orientation, and gender role as the other people are. Some people, such as survivors of sexual abuse, do not feel comfortable showering or using the bathroom or changing around anybody. Not enjoying being naked near complete strangers is not a crime, and it is not unreasonable to suggest that accommodations can and should be made for such people, and that doing so would not be an undue burden upon anybody.

     Same-sex bathroom stalls can and should solve most or all of the bathroom access issue, because it achieves equality of accommodations, through separation. There's nothing wrong with being separate but equal, as long as you're actually equal, and there's no slavery. The only way to have no slavery, and be totally equal, is to be completely free, and thus equal in our freedom.

     Belonging to a group isn’t what makes us unique, or special, or deserving of freedom or rights. Being individuals is what makes each of us unique, special, and deserving of freedom and rights.

     No man is Man.

Written and published on May 9th, 2023.