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Gateshead woman with alopecia accused of being male while using female toilet at Tesco (www.chroniclelive.co.uk)
submitted 13 hours ago by [A] to c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk
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The 37-year-old, who has had the hair loss condition since she was a child, said she was left shocked when a cleaner at the Trinity Square shop asked her "Are you aware you're in the female toilet?" She said she became distressed and burst into tears.

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[–] 110 points 13 hours ago (5 children)

Transphobia harms everyone, not just trans people. It's sad that this argument needs to be used, but I've heard some cis people find it convincing.

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  • [–] 20 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

    Two cynical takes on “transphobia harms everyone”:

    • I only care if it affects me
    • trans are only a small percentage of the population, who cares, but if it harms everyone then it makes sense to care

    (Not apologizing for transphobia, just deconstructing the thought)

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  • [–] 23 points 12 hours ago

    Sure, ideally the way it impacts trans people should be enough. But anything that affects more people negatively is a worse thing.

    If I wanted to influence car safety policy, and I can pick from two examples to make my case:

    1. a car accident kills the person driving it
    2. a car accident kills everyone inside it and some bystanders

    I'd be a fool not to use 2 as an example.

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  • [–] 14 points 12 hours ago*

    I often think about this. I don’t think it’s wrong to provide selfish reasons to do the right thing.

    In the end, the world is full of people with different priorities and ways of thinking, if you restrict yourself to only the “pure” morality arguments it’s not like you can use the purity of your argument to correct the brains of all the people who are not swayed. But if you provide a variety of arguments you’ll convince lots more people.

    And in reality most people are not pure selfish or pure selfless. Spoonful of sugar (selfish benefit) helps the medicine (selfless morals) go down.

    Not trying to entirely quench your cynicism, just lightly cool it.

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  • [–] 11 points 10 hours ago

    Sadly even this doesn't help with some people.

    I once had a conversation with a particularly tall cis woman who'd briefly been the target of transphobic abuse in a womens' toilet. She somehow managed to blame this on the existence of trans people 🤷

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